cont

ents

33

9

43

21

53

Cover Storyinspire

inform10 The New Leadership Team at National

HRD Network

11 Election Results Announced

12 Chapter News

17 Learning Centre

19 “Glimpses of The Dinner Meet” July 7, 2011, Leela Kempinski Gurgaon

illuminate44 Creating Value through People

47 Kautilya Re-discovered: The first Management Guru in Indian Context

24 Managing Change and Learning

27 Behavior based Safety (BBS) in Indian Organisations

54 Numbers

56 Amazed

incubate

imagine

August 2011

If human resources are critical to the success of an organisation, and that the organisation is thriving to succeed in dynamic situations, it is imperative for the human resource function to play a critical role in building such ‘dynamic organisations’

Team

Editor

K. Srinivas Rao editor@nationalhrd.org

Editorial Assistant Blessy Pais

Publisher, Printer, Owner & Place of Publication

Anirudh Sen Head – Learning Centre, NHRD Network on behalf ofNational HRD Network C-81C, DLF Super Mart I, DLF City, Phase IV, Gurgaon – 122009, HaryanaTel: 91-124-4217171-79 Fax: 91-124-4041560Email: ed@nationalhrd.org

Editorial Team (Minds in Motion)

Arathi Ponangi Madan SrinivasanDr. Padmaja Palekar Rachna Gujral Ratna C. S. V.

Support Team

Anirudh Sen Rati MalikJasmine Sayeed Quasim AliV. Mayan Sukrit Ghosh

Creative Design Editor

Neishaa Gharat www.karmaventures.co.uk

Produced by

L.B. Associates (Pvt) Ltd. H-108, Sector 63, Noida - 201301 Tel: 91-120-2427280/82, Fax: 91-120-2427108 Email: info@lbassociates.com Website: www.lbassociates.com

Printed at

Multi Colour Services 92A, DSIDC Shed, Okhla Industrial Area Phase-1, New Delhi - 110020

Website : www.nationalhrd.org Feedback, Suggestion etc. : feedback@nationalhrd.org Contributions : articles@nationalhrd.org Advertisements / Subscriptions : rati.malik@nationalhrd.orgLearning Centre : anirudh.sen@nationalhrd.orgHR Talks / Webinars : sukrit.ghosh@nationalhrd.orgMember Services : rati.malik@nationalhrd.org

“26th NHRDN AGM in Mumbai “

National President’s MessageDear friends,

I am honoured and privileged to have been appointed as the new National President of NHRDN from July 2011 to June 2013. I take this responsibility with a feeling of pride and excitement, and look forward to your wholesome participation and support to do justice to this new role over the next two years.

My endeavour would be to bring in the concept of ‘Shared Leadership’ approach and build a climate of camaraderie as we move forward. I would be focusing to strengthen the present NHRDN Initiatives, to maintain continuity while also striving to bring in a new dynamism, value based initiatives and speed to make NHRDN more stronger with excellent value add for all our members, and to the HR profession at large.

I thank N.S. Rajan and the immediate past leadership team members comprising of Pankaj Bansal and Ashok Reddy for their immense contributions in reinforcing a strong institutional framework over the last two years. Also, my sincere thanks go to the outgoing Regional Presidents for their overall responsibility and support to NHRDN during the past few years. Today, with the institutionalization of the GEN (Governance, Engagement and Network) Framework and the National Secretariat, we at NHRDN find ourselves at a relatively strong position to leverage the inherent strengths of the Network and strongly launch ourselves towards the ‘Next Orbit’.

For an organization like ours, which thrives on volunteerism, the process to appoint the new leadership team which is both dynamic and sensitive towards the requirements of the members and stakeholders, has far reaching and strategic consequences. Keeping this in mind, we followed a consultative process to evolve many options and then deliberated on the strengths of each before arriving at a final view of the new leadership team to join me in taking responsibility of NHRDN for next two years.

It gives me great pleasure to announce the names of the new leadership team comprising of Prince Augustin (M&M) – National Secretary; L. Prabhakar (ITC ) – National Treasurer; S. Varadarajan (Tata Teleservices) – Regional President North; S.V. Nathan (Deloitte) – Regional President South; Rajeev Dubey (M&M) – Regional President West; and, Sourav Daspatnaik (Apeejay Group) – Regional President East.

Leading with the Shared Leadership perspective, we will work to create alliances based on the principles of collaboration and co-existence, build relationship with policy makers, strengthen self sufficient financial model infrastructure, multiply membership, engage Gen Y, operationlise HR Compass, conduct HR Research and further strengthen NHRDN Chapters.

However, firstly I thought to have a Brainstorming Session on the Vision and Direction of NHRDN for 2015-16. Accordingly, a Brainstorming Exercise with select past National Presidents and NHRDN seniors was also undertaken to this effect. Now to clearly arrive at the Roadmap for 2015-16, I would now soon be writing to you with the outcomes of the Brainstorming Exercise and would seek your preferences and expectations to prioritise the action items with short, medium and long term time frames.

The 26th NHRDN AGM held on June 17, 2011 witnessed the approval for revision of membership subscription and member value proposition. The revised membership fee would come into effect from October 1, 2011. Currently, the membership fee is very low as compared to the cost of servicing which is increasing due to inflationary pressures in the country. And also, the last revision of membership fee was done in April 2006. It is due to these reasons that we thought of revising the membership fee. In view of the above and coupled with an enhanced NHRDN brand, we could take the opportunity of the period from now till the time the revised fee gets functional. This period could be used to undertake the ‘Membership Drive’ across India and significantly increase the NHRDN membership base. I would request your personal efforts in this regard.

I thank you in advance for all your support and cooperation in helping us further enriching member value proposition for the next two years thereby building a stronger, bigger and better Network, based on the principles of ‘Caring, Sharing and Leading’.

Sincerely

S.Y. Siddiqui National President, NHRDN and Managing Executive Officer Admin (HR, Finance, IT & COSL), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

Editorial

My Dear Fellow Travelers

As the new season sets in and transforms the environment, we can feel the change in the atmosphere and appreciate the essence around.

As the new guard sets the agenda and pace under the leadership of Mr. S. Y. Siddiqui, we look forward to the changes in the NHRD environment too. We take this opportunity to congratulate the new leadership team and wish them the very best in their journey. (The inform section introduces the new leadership team.)

Under the program of Author’s Alumni, we plan to connect with all the authors who have contributed to the NHRD Newsletter, and also invite new authors. The idea is to create a group of likeminded professionals and use the intellect to enhance the quality of contributions and explore new ideas of making the Newsletter sharper and reader friendly. We invite all budding authors to write to us at articles@nationalhrd.org with cc to blessy.nhrdeditorial@gmail.com to ensure that we include you in the e group.

‘Building Dynamic Organizations – Role of HR’ is the highlight of this edition of the Newsletter. The cover story draws attention to ‘Dynamic Organizations’, a relatively new concept, which refers to organizations confronting continuous change. These organizations deliberately seek to be infinitely innovative and adaptable in the marketplace by adopting loosely coupled organizational forms that harmoniously blend characteristics of chaos, fluidity and flexibility on one hand, with a modicum of order, control, and predictability on the other.

The cover story explores the Role of the Human Resource Function in building Dynamic Organizations and the various practices and activities that enable the attributes of dynamism to be built in their design. These include the ability to sense the external markets, create rapid responses, exploit temporary advantages and embed organization learning.

This issue’s Inform Section covers information on the new Leadership Team at NHRDN, snippets on the three new elected members and workshops and seminars by the Learning Centre on Gen-Y and Employee Engagement.

The articles Managing Change and Learning and Behaviour Based Safety in Indian Organizations, are feature stories of the Incubate section, while Creating Value through People and Kautilya Re-discovered; the First Management Guru in Indian Context, grace the Illuminate Section.

My personal favorite in this issue is Kautilya Re-discovered, besides the Cover Story.

Once again, let me assure you that we at the Editorial team are working towards making this journey a pleasurable and meaningful one to all our fellow travelers. Happy Reading, and do write in to us with your feedback…

K. Srinivas Rao Editor Chief Strategist & Partner – The Strategist

We take this opportunity to congratulate the new

leadership team and wish them the very best

in their journey

10

The New Leadership Team at National HRD Network

RAJEEV DUBEYRegional President-West, NHRDN

and President (Group HR & After-Market) & Member of the Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra

SOURAV DASPATNAIKRegional President-East, NHRDN

and Director, HRD and Strategy and CEO Shipyard Initiatives, Apeejay Surrendra Group

S. VARADARAJAN

Regional President-North, NHRDN

and Executive President - HR, Tata Teleservices

S. V. NATHAN

Regional President-South, NHRDN

and Director U.S. India Talent, Deloitte

PRINCE AUGUSTIN

National Secretary, NHRDN

and EVP-Human Capital, Mahindra & Mahindra

L. PRABHAKAR

National Treasurer, NHRDN

and Head-Human Resources (Agri-Business Division), ITC Ltd

S. Y. SIDDIQUI

National President, NHRDN

and Managing Executive Officer Admin (HR,Finance,IT & COSL), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

N. S. RAJAN

Past National President, NHRDN

and Partner and Global Leader - People & Organisation, Ernst & Young

11

Election Results Announced

We are pleased to inform you that the following three candidates have been elected as members of the National Executive Board, NHRDN for a two year term from July 2011 to June 2013, in line with the

spirit of NHRDN bye-laws.

We congratulate the three elected members and wish them a fruitful tenure as Elected Board Members of National HRD Network.

Mr. Nihar Ranjan Ghosh

Executive Director-HR, Spencer’s Retail Ltd, Kolkata

Mr. Nihar Ranjan Ghosh is the Executive Director – Human Resource and member Management Committee for the Retail Sector of RPG Group, with responsibility for Spencer’s Retail Limited.

Mr. Madan Srinivasan

AVP HR – HCL Tech Noida

An alumnus of XLRI, Mr. Madan Srinivasan has over 16 years of experience in Colgate- Palmolive, ICICI Bank, PepsiCo and HCL. He has acquired expertise in the areas of Learning/OD, Talent Management, Leadership Development.

Mr. Ramchander Maddela

Vice President – HR & Strategy Sumudra Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

He is a visionary Human Capital leader & facilitator with 20 years experience. Presently working with Sumudra Technologies Pvt. Ltd. as Vice President for HR & Strategy.

12

Category 1st Prize 2nd Prize

Best Practice in Engagement & Retention

Infosys Ltd., BBSR HRD Jindal Steel, ANGUL

Best Practice in Leadership Development

Tata Refractories Ltd. Jindal Steel, ANGUL

Best HR Strategy for Business Growth

Jindal Steel, ANGUL Dhamra Port

Extra Miler (Individual) Anindita Roy, JSPL

Chapter News

BhubaneswarNHRD, BBSR Chapter launched for the first time, Zenith a Reward & Recognition Program, on July 16, 2011, to celebrate excellence and reward high performers in the HR fraternity in Odisha. This was initiated by NHRDN members and was hosted by Infosys, Bhubaneswar.

Zenith had invited nominations from talented groups/individuals that had really made a difference in their organisations. The categories for which nominations were invited included:

• Best Practice in Engagement & Retention;

• Best Practice in Leadership Development;

• Best HR Strategy for Business Growth; and,

• Extra Miler (Individual).

The event started with a panel discussion on ‘HR as Business Partner – Myth or Reality’. The panellists for the discussion were: Prof. Dr. Jitendra Mohanty, PGDM (XIMB), Ph. D (Utkal); Dr. Saroj Mohapatra AVP-HR, Jindal

it is the need of the hour for all HR professionals that through their work, they ensure that HR as a function is involved in the Strategy formulation in an organisation. The next leg of this discussion was on ‘What it takes to be an effective HR business partner and the challenges that we should be prepared for’. A few of the points deliberated upon during the discussion were about knowledge requirements for HR, using diagnosis to transform relationship and opportunities, staying focused on issues that matter to business, and delivering capabilities that make a real difference. The VRIO (Value, Rarity, Imitability and Organisation) technique was also addressed during this discussion. The panel discussion concluded with the audience directing questions to panellists on different aspects of the topic, such as, “is this our need to be a partner” and “is it a business need”.

An HR Quiz Round ensued. All the nominations received were evaluated on a two-fold basis, one part of which was offline evaluation which was done by the selected jury, and the other part, which was on presentation including Content, Relevance, Clarity, Replicability and Q&A.

The following were the winners of ZENITH, NHRD BBSR Chapter Reward & Recognition Program:

The Vote of Thanks was presented by Ms. Bobby Patnaik, Treasurer. She spoke about the efforts behind this programme to make it a success. The event concluded with lunch for all present.

Steels; Mr. Santanu Rath, Director-HRD at OPTCL; and, Dr. B.B. Mohanty, Visiting Faculty, XIMB. The moderator for the discussion was Sumesh Kumar Khatua. All the panellists agreed that

13

Delhi & NCRMay 2011The May 2011 Special Event of NHRDN Delhi & NCR Chapter was held on May 28, 2011 at PHD House, New Delhi, and was titled ‘Reward & Recognition – Best Practices’. The methodology adopted was that of a panel discussion with two HR Heads sharing their experiences and their challenges in this area. The panel discussion consisted of Mr. Sunil Pathak, Director-HR, Cadence Design Systems and Mr. Manish Sinha, Director-HR, Becton Dickinson as speakers. The session was moderated by Ms. Nishi Chaturvedi, DGM-HR, Schneider Electric.

COMPANY TOPIC

Hi Tech Carbon Organisational Health Check

TI India Total Employee Involvement

L & T Leadership Development

Ashok Leyland Young Executives

EID Parry Coaching

Lifetime Careers

Hiring

Taj Group Employee Engagement

After all presentations were complete, questions were volleyed and it became an interactive discussion. The moderator stepped in and requested people to vote for their favourite presentation by SMS – just like in Indian Idol! As people

voted, the online site was projected and everyone was able to see the scores: Ashok Leyland walked away with a landslide 39 percent of the votes for their approach to Young Executives; TI had 25 percent for their work on Total Employee Involvement; and L&T got 14 percent for its Leadership Development initiatives. The others were evenly distributed but as keenly debated and informative.

Topics covered were: Organisational Health Check; Total Employee Involvement; Leadership Development; Young Executive program; Coaching; Hiring; and, Employee Engagement. All were well researched and provided much food for thought. Many went away with their minds buzzing with new ideas and methods. All in all, it was a refreshing and exciting interaction.

ChennaiIn the midst of the excitement and heat of the IPL, the Chennai Chapter hosted its own version of the T20. A unique and fast-paced program, it invited members to present a best or unique HR practice from their companies at the monthly meeting on Friday, May 27, 2011.

The catch? Presenters were allowed only 20 slides and each slide was permitted only 20 seconds! It was amazing to see how beautifully the presenters managed to capture the essence of what they wanted to convey in exactly six minutes and forty seconds. There were fifteen short-listed entries for the program and the organizers had to split it into two separate sessions – one in this monthly meeting and the next in June 2011.

Companies that took part were as follows:

This was an excellent interactive session for Human Resources professionals who attended the programme.

The thoughts, experiences and practices shared by speakers with the participants were highly appreciated. They shared their experiences in the following areas:

• Sharing the Best Practices from their respective organisations;

• Talent Recognition – Innovative Practices; and,

• Reward Management – Issues & Challenges.

About 130 members and HR professionals attended the programme. The programme was well received and appreciated by the participants.

June 2011On June 30, 2011, Delhi & NCR Chapter organised a Special Event on the theme “Employer Branding – why, when and how.” The panel discussion consisted of Mr. Rajan Kalia, Director-HR, Max New York Life Insurance and Mr. Basab Bordoloi, VP-HR, Administration & Corporate Affairs, Domino’s as speakers. The session was moderated by Ms. Jayantika Dave, VP-HR, Ingersoll Rand International.

14

KolkataTransforming HR at IOCLOn May 20, 2011, the Kolkata chapter was honoured to have Mr. V.C. Agarwal, President - Corporate HR, RPG Enterprises and Ex-Director – HR, IOCL who had gladly accepted to share his experience in Transforming HR at IOCL .

their children in a proper manner; that which leads to a positive effect on the children.

Showing unconditional love, care, forgiving the children for their mistakes and giving them the chance to be penitent are some of the basic things a parent needs to follow in order for a child to be his/her self in front of the parents. Imposing strict punishment sometimes makes the child worse but not better. Parenting technique is one of the most important parts in one’s life.

In between, Dr. Shalini held a separate short session exclusively for the women and it proved very useful. After the break, there was a question and answer session where many doubts regarding grooming the children and issues relating to family were discussed.

The parents participated very actively and cleared many of their doubts. Ms Jyothi – Women Council Chairperson presented the vote of thanks. Appreciation was given to Hotel Sarovar Portico, JPSR, ITC, GRT & the volunteers. Many gifts and compliments were given to members of the audience. On the whole, it was a memorable day for all.

Mr. Bordoloi discussed the importance of two phases of branding viz. Internal & External. He shared his company’s point of view on branding, which defines that the brand ambassador for them is their field employees (delivery boys) who act as their brand ambassadors in the market. Domino’s philosophy is to take care of these field employees, which makes them feel valued and propagate good things about their company, implicitly strengthening their brand value as employers in the market. He put emphasis on time to time training and regular feedback for complete employee satisfaction to promote employee branding.

On the other hand, Mr. Kalia pointed out the importance of commitment level of the employees towards their company for effective branding. He suggested that it is very important to sculpt and manage the internal and external image of a company, which is done by various processes including working environment, performance development and measurement, rewards and recognition, style of management, core competencies, core values, brand leadership and employee brand expectation.

About 125 members attended this thought provoking programme which was full of practical tips that the attending HR professionals could deploy at their work place.

HosurThe NHRD Hosur Chapter organized a public program on ‘Art of Parenting’ facilitated by Dr. N. Shalini, M.B.B.S, Ph.D. The meet was held on June 26, 2011 at Hotel Sarovar Portico in Hosur on the warm Sunday afternoon. Approximately 150 couples came from different parts from in and around Hosur. The noon began with a prayer song, followed by a warm welcome address by Mr. Nagarajan, Chapter President. The faculty for the session was Dr. N. Shalini, a well-known and reputed psychiatrist from Chennai. Mr. Israel Inbaraj, Hon’ Secretary of the Chapter introduced the speaker. A bouquet was presented to her by the Executive Committee members’ spouses.

Next was the speaker’s address and Dr. Shalini took the audience through “The Art of Parenting”. She gave many insights to the parents who had come to learn about the art of parenting and the different kinds of behaviour of the children. Dr. Shalini gave a lot of examples on how a child develops itself in this world. Not just the parents but society in general is equally responsible for the growth of the child. Children are the most delicate beings and can be influenced easily, so the sole responsibility of parents is to influence

15

Mr. V.C. Agarwal segregated his discourse into three parts:

• History of IOCL;

• Best HR practices at IOCL;

• HR interventions at IOCL.

Briefly, the genesis of IOCL during the early sixties & seventies was portrayed, which was followed with discussion of the under-noted good HR practices:

• One Establishment-One Recognized Union;

• No External Representation in Union;

• Bipartite Negotiations-Tripartite Agreements.

While Mr Agarwal touched upon the changes made in various processes, including revamping of Recruitments, Appraisal Systems, Internal Mobility Practices, the Major HR interventions included:

a. Organisation Structure for new businesses & Talent Management thereof;

b. Linking PMS Score with Monetary Incentive;

c. Providing CTC Concept like family benefits-LTC;

d. Defining Core Values & Revisiting the company’s vision;

e. Merger & Integration of subsidiary companies.

The fulcrum was on: Care, Innovation, Passion & Trust.

The event was held at the Auditorium of International Management Institute (IMI), from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm and was followed by High Tea & Networking for the members.

MumbaiMay 2011Interactive Lecture Meet – Subject Next Learning, Unwrapped: NHRDN, Mumbai Chapter organized an Interactive Lecture Meet with Dr. Nick Van Dam, Director, Chief Learning Officer in Global Talent of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu on Monday, May 9, 2011 pm at WE School.

The 90 minute thought-provoking and stimulating power-point presentation “An Overview of Next Learning Unwrapped”, followed by an energetic and lively Q&A session was appreciated by over 70 plus persons who participated in the function. He gave a bird’s eye view of new innovations happening in the field of learning because of constant technological changes. All persons who attended the event were deeply impressed by the high level of commitment, energy and passion with which Dr. Nick Van Dam was serving the cause of knowledge sector.

This event was organized with the help and cooperation of Mr. Dhananjay Bansod, Chief People Officer of Deloitte Group and Member EC of NHRDN, Mumbai.

June 2011• Friday June 17, 2011 – Seminar on

Managing Gen Y @ your Workplace at ITC Grand Central Hotel, Parel (Paid Workshop jointly organized by Learning Centre & Mumbai Chapter). Over 120 delegates representing various companies participated in this seminar which was addressed by 16 prominent HR experts from Indian Industry.

• Saturday June 18, 2011 – Meeting of the National EC Members of NHRDN at Basant Room of Four Seasons Hotel, Mumbai followed by AGM at the same venue.

• Saturday June 25, 2011 – Workshop on Training & Development jointly organized by National HRD Network and NHRDN Mumbai Chapter Paid

16

Workshop jointly organized by Learning Centre & Mumbai Chapter. This was attended by 32 delegates.

• June 23 - 25, 2011 – 3-day workshop for faculty members of B Schools jointly organized by EFI, NHRDN & WE School. This was attended by 28 delegates.

NagpurNagpur Chapter Organises Workshop on NLP Nagpur Chapter organised a workshop on Neuro Leinguisitc Programming on June 18, 2011 at the Hotel Ashoka. The trainers of this programme were Sat and Siri from Alphastar Delhi, the only certified NLP trainers in India from Dr. Richard Bandlers’ Society of NLP USA with 20 years of experience. Prof. Shyam Shukla, President Nagpur Chapter, in his opening lecture said that he was grateful to the trainers who agreed to contribute their experiences and learning to the Nagpur Chapter members without charging any professional fees. Mrs. Vinda Warhadpande, General Secretary, welcomed the trainers with flowers. Mr. Mahendra Kakde, Jt. Secretary Nagpur Chapter, conducted the proceeding. Sat and Siri in this workshop shared the NLP tools and persuasion secrets which were applied during the Presidential Elections of Barrack Obama. The trainers also taught how these tools can be used

The speaker explained the concept of facilitation known as Group Process Facilitation, which is defined by the International Facilitators Network, US. It uses powerful Divergence and Convergence Tools to engage people in discussions, meetings and decision making processes. Using these processes makes all participate equally and effectively. HR can introduce this process to the business side so that the business can have more healthy participation from their team in any discussion process.

This interactive session started with an icebreaker exercise where the participants were asked to write down what they thought about Training, Consulting & Facilitation on the various chart papers which were put up. The concept of facilitation and the various methods which can be used along with basic facilitation model, different types of convergence and divergence tools, and where Facilitation can be used, were explained. A demonstration of one such facilitation tool was given for the better understanding of the participants wherein the participants were divided into groups and each group was given a different article to read. Later, the participants were asked to talk about their article to other group participants and gather information about the article which the other participant had read. After the allotted time, the participants were asked what they learnt from this exercise and how they could use that in their organisation.

Overall, the session was a success and the participants found the session very interesting and informative.

PunePune Chapter conducted a two hour interactive session on May 27, 2011 at SCMLD, Aundh. The topic for the session was ‘Using Group Process Facilitation Skills’. The session was conducted by Mr. Ajit Kamath who is a member of NHRD Network and also a Sr. Trainer & Director - WizTalks; Founder Member – Facilitators Network of India. He is a Certified Facilitator for DDI and MindGym in India. He is also certified to deliver Stephen Covey’s ‘7 Habits’.

in day-to-day HR practices. Dr. C.V. Chalapatirao, Directory Grade Scientist NEERI, said that the workshop was very enriching for the members. Mr. Sachin Khedikar, Treasurer Nagpur Chapter, presented mementos to the trainers.

17

Seminar on Managing Gen Y @ Workplace - Mumbai

Learning Centre

National HRD Networks Learning Centre and NHRDN Mumbai Chapter in association with Jagan Institute of Management (JIMS) hosted an enriching Seminar on

a very important and emerging challenge ‘Managing Gen – Y @ Workplace’ on Friday, June 17, 2011, at ITC Grand Central, Mumbai.

The Seminar gathered some of the esteemed speakers from the HR fraternity addressing sessions on various topics. In the first session, ‘Wooing Gen-Y’ the speakers; Marcel Parker, Chairman, IKYA Human Capital Solutions, (Chair), Sonali Roychowdhury-Head Human Resources, Procter & Gamble India, Judhajit Das - Head Human Resources, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, K. Sudeep, Head, Talent Acquisition-India, Tata Consultancy Services and Dr. J.K. Goyal-Director, Jagan Institute of Management Studies, participated and shared their insights on ‘The Branding Way - Channelizing the vigor and Enhancing the proficiency’.

In the next session on ‘Gen-Y- The Communiqué’, speakers Saagarika Ghoshal-Chief People Officer- Reliance BIG Entertainment India, Ramesh Sangare-President, HRDC, Ujjwal Banerjee-Head-Quality Assurance, Academy of Global Education Services and Pooja Jain-Associate Professor- Jagan Institute of Management shared their practical thoughts on the use of new communication mediums and the emerging role of social media.

“Keeping Gen-Y Engaged” was another very interesting topic which the speakers shared their thoughts on. Gen-Y, a perfect example of man being a social animal needs to be engaged the holistic way. Not just limited to compensation and monetary benefits, Gen-Y needs their share of frolic and care at the work place. Building this engagement entails aligning Gen-Y with the organisational culture and vision while recognizing and respecting his socio-cultural background, thus enabling him to blend in with the organisation. The session saw speakers like Rajesh Padmanabhan-Head-Human Resources, Capgemini India (Chair), Dr. Tanaya Mishra-Chief People Officer, ACC Concrete Limited, Balaji Chandrakumar-Vice President, Human Resources, Etisalat DB Telecom and Dr. Sujaya Banerjee-Chief Learning Officer, Essar Group.

“Y Stay-Retention Strategies for Gen-Y” was the topic for the 4th session and points like Work-life Balance, Growth Opportunities, Monetary and Non-Monetary Benefits were impressively discussed by Gopalji Mehrotra-VP and Global Head - HR, Zensar Technologies Ltd. (Chair), Swati Datye- Director-Human Resources, First Data India, Aparna Sharma-Director-HR, DBOI Global Services (Deutsche Bank Group), Priyank Parakh- HR Business Partner, Kraft Food (Cadbury India).

Our Partners for the event were JIMS (Principal Sponsor), Ernst & Young (Knowledge Partner), Times Jobs (Online Recruitment Partner) & People Matters (Magazine Partner). ■

18

Workshop on ‘Improving Employee Engagement using Social Media Tools’

As more and more people share and connect with each other on social networks like Facebook

and Twitter, many organizations are wondering if they can replicate such technologies internally within their corporations and how beneficial would it be. Realizing this, the NHRDN Learning Centre came up with the initiative to make organizations more aware of the importance of Social Media at the workplace and how it can be used constructively to benefit the organizations in engaging their employees.

The first workshop was organized on ‘Improving Employee Engagement using Social Media Tools’ on June

24, 2011 at Delhi and was attended by over 35 participants from various sectors of industry. Looking at the positive feedback and enthusiasm of the participants, the workshop was repeated in Pune on July 16, 2011, and again saw more than 40 participants in attendence. Both workshops were a success which can be measured by the overwhelming participation and feedback received.

Keeping in mind the importance of Social Media at Workplace, NHRDN HR Talks also organized a Webinar on ‘HR & Social Media’ on July 27, 2011. The speaker for this webinar was Mr. Ravi Shankar B, Sr. VP – HR, HCL Technologies.

Gautam Ghosh, Product Evangelist at Qontext Inc and one of the leading HR bloggers in the country, facilitated both workshops. He made deliberations on a number of topics relevant to the theme and ensured that the participants were engaged throughout the program by making them participate in various activities.

The topics covered in the Workshop were as follow:

• Importance of social media and its impact on society and businesses;

• The Millenial generation and their expectations from organisations;

• The imperatives for organisations to embrace Open Collaborative nature; and,

• Use of Social Technologies by HR.

The contents for this program were very carefully chosen with lots of research and inputs from a number of HR thought leaders to make sure it was relevant and valuable for the audience.

These workshops are part of the new initiatives taken up by NHRDN Learning Centre, which are supported by our Academic Partner FORE School of Management and our Annual Sponsor Thomas Assessments, to improve and enhance the skills of HR professionals so that they can contribute more towards their respective organizations and the HR fraternity at large. ■

NHRDN Learning Centre added another feather to its cap by starting a series of workshops on Leveraging Social Media at Workplace.

19

“Glimpses of The Dinner Meet” July 7, 2011 Leela Kempinski, Gurgaon

Dr. Arvind Agarwal Presenting Memento to Mr. Pankaj Bansal

Dr. Santrupt Misra Welcoming Mr. S. Varadarajan, NHRDN’s New Regional President North

Mr. Aquil Busrai Welcoming Mr. L. Prabhakar, NHRDN’s New National Treasurer

Mr. K.K Sinha Welcoming Mr. Sourav Daspatnaik, NHRDN’s New Regional President East

Mr. Marcel Parker Welcoming Mr. S.V Nathan, NHRDN’s New Regional President South

Mr. NS Rajan Welcoming Mr. S.Y Siddiqui-NHRDN’s New National President

Mr. P. Dwarakanath Welcoming Mr. Prince Augustin, NHRDN’s New National Secretary

Mr. S.Y Siddiqui Presenting Citation to Mr. N.S Rajan

NHRDN Seniors

NHRDN’s New Leadership Team

Sand Artist - Creating Magic with Sand The Invitees

Advertorial

24

Managing Change and Learning

Shiv Kumar Muthyala

In an ever changing corporate environment there is unprecedented pressure on the HR department of an organisation to manage change through learning and not just mere communication of change.

IBM in its global CEO study in 2008 noted that the CEOs are finding it extremely difficult to anticipate, and more importantly, manage change in the complex market

conditions and rapidly changing scenarios. The study also revealed that there is a gap of 22 percent in the ability of the CEOs to handle change as opposed to the need to manage change appropriately.

“We have seen more change in the last 10 years than in the previous 90.”

— Former CEO, Telecom Major

“We are making acquisitions for the people and not the assets”

– Financials Markets CEO

“Technology is driving huge changes in our industry landscape”

– Government health agency leader

Organisations experience change in many forms – M&A, change in leadership, introduction of new processes or procedures, change in the laws of the land, culture change efforts, policy changes, organisational structure change etc. One common thread that runs consistently across all these is the need for consistent change management initiatives with embracing learning as the core. Researchers place the total percentage of failure of change efforts between 70 and 75 percent; the basic reason for such failure has always been attributed to resistance within the organisation and refusal of the employees to embrace

Organisations experience change in many forms – M&A, change in leadership, introduction of new processes or procedures, change in the laws of the land, culture change efforts, policy changes, organisational structure change etc

25

change. However, let us consider the important reasons for such employee behaviour:

• Lack of understanding of the need to change;

• Improper information on the total impact of change;

• Failure to answer “What is in it for me?”

• Top management’s belief – “Our way or the highway”

• Lack of learning to embrace change.

The 25 percent of change efforts that are successful laid a great deal of emphasis on learning of change by the employees which is critical to the organisation.

The Change Learning ModelShared View of Change: This is the core of any change management initiative. We have always spoken of an organisation’s shared values, however, we fail to understand that the same holds good for an organisation’s shared view of change. Change is not an isolated activity

and cannot take place in pockets or sections for it to be successful. Change Championing, Change Embracement and Change Sustenance in ensuring that the organisation has a common shared view of change. Belief in the shared values is critical to an organisation and so is ‘the shared view of change’.

Change ChampioningChange Championing refers to the engagement of top management in the change efforts. While interacting with the leaders of organisations, it has been observed that the leadership decides on the change to be implemented, however, is not completely aware of the total

involvement impact. Lack of involvement in the total change actively is a critical reason for failure on the change initiative; this dilution of the change philosophy and thus deviations are expected from such behaviour. As much as it is a good idea to engage change consultants for this activity, the concept of ‘our way or the highway’ has to be reduced to a bare minimum.

Change Embracement Change embracement refers to all sections of the organisation accepting change and understanding the need and importance of it.

a. Create a network of change champions who will:

• Carry the message of change across

• Be the change barometer and will raise an alarm if they observe anything going awry

• Will coordinate all change management activities

It has been my observation that most of the organisations have senior managers as a part of the change champions’ network. This does not necessarily yield the desired results owing to various factors:

• Lack of time for all change activities. I have observed that the senior managers do not attend at least 70 percent of the total meetings and workshops related to change as this is considered a secondary activity

• Employees do not open up to the senior managers because of the virtue of their designation

• Senior managers consider it beyond their designation to interact with the shop floor workers.

It is advisable to have positive influencers across levels be a part of this network.

b. Training Sessions: Some of the change activities for example, process harmonization and ERP implementations, need exhaustive

26

training for employees to work on the new system\processes\procedures. The change leaders should ensure that this is included in their change management project plan and should not be a stand - alone activity being managed by the process training team.

c. Workshops: This has been the most underrated activity in a change management initiative from a learning perspective. I have observed that the number of employees attending these workshops or road shows is minimal and disinterested. It should be noted that workshops answer extremely critical questions- need for change, benefits of the change and the total impact. Workshops should be made mandatory, while it is understandable that this might not be effective, it should also be noted that there are different learner types – Auditory, kinesthetic, visual etc.

Learning about change is not limited to just these activities, it is critical to have a robust communication plan which aims at ensuring reinforcement of the “benefits of change”.

One of the leading information management services companies during acquisition of a BPO in India took a conscious decision to ensure that only leaders (AVP and above) conducted the workshops and awareness session along with the leaders of the respective

business in both the acquired entity and the parent company. It was critical for all the employees to attend the awareness sessions, which was monitored not by the HR but by the business itself. A change agent network was also constituted which consisted of employees from different sections of the company at different roles, designations and department to ensure consistency and regular information dissipation. An e-mail ID was also created, which was managed by the leadership during the initial quarter to decrease the anxiety and answer the queries, which were probably individualistic in nature as well. Attrition, which is an important concern during such change scenarios, was kept under control and the number of employees raising queries related to the acquisition and the impact reduced in the second quarter post the acquisition.

Change Sustenance I have observed that many change consultants do an awesome job with managing change. However, they do not institutionalize any system that will ensure that the change activities are carried on even in their absence. The solutions:

• Ensure that the change network is active and equipped

• Change is a state of mind as far as the employees are concerned, ensure that the change is absorbed

• Remember that the consultant is available to facilitate the change and you need to carry the change throughout, hence, from the start ensure that the change network takes the lead

• Always ensure that you conduct dip-stick studies to study the impact of change. Carry out course correction wherever and whenever essential, listen to what the employees are saying

ConclusionGartner’s industry analysts have highlighted that about 55 to 70 percent of CRM projects are unsuccessful and/or are discontinued. The core reason attributed to this is people. We lay a lot of emphasis on processes and technologies; however, we miss the critical aspect of people. The news release on blazenews, Tim Creasey, Prosci’s Director of Research and Development states “Projects with excellent change management programs met or exceeded objectives 88 percent of the time, while projects with poor change management met or exceeded objectives only 17 percent of the time.”

Employees need to learn about change before its introduction and through its introduction and implementation as well. Learning is not about a classroom session or long lectures, we as individuals learn everyday and every minute. Similarly, as change specialists, it is critical for us to understand that an employee is learning of change every minute, and now it is upto you what you want them to learn. Their involvement through learning is more important to the success of a change initiative than mere employee representation. ■

Shiv Kumar Muthyala currently works with a leading IT company in its HR consulting division. He can be reached at mshivkumar@gmail.com or you can follow him on twitter @ kumarshivm.

It was critical for all the employees to ensure

the awareness sessions which was monitored not by the HR but by

the business itself, HR facilitated the process

27

Behavior based Safety (BBS) in Indian Organisations

Dr. H. L. Kaila

IntroductionBehavioural safety is an approach designed to improve safety performance directly through peer observations of safe behaviours, goal setting, performance feedback, and celebrations or incentives for reaching safety goals (Wirth and Sigurdsson, 2008).

Recently, three clauses of OHSAS 18001:2007 (4.4.3.2 participation and consultation, 4.3.1 planning hazard identification, risk assessment and determining controls, and 4.4.2 competence, training and awareness) emphasized the human behavioural aspects of safety. The OHSAS 18001 is an occupational health and safety (OH&S) standard which is used

to establish occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS).

To reduce accidents, Indian managements have adopted safety interventions such as risk assessment, suggestion scheme, training, safety committee, auditing, motivational programmes (quiz, award, incentives), SOPs, plant inspection, work permit system etc. Most of these safety management systems are aimed at controlling unsafe conditions, whereas 80-95 percent of accidents are triggered by unsafe acts or behaviours (Pettinger, 2001).

At-risk behaviours are at the core of any near misses, injury, fatalities (figure 1). If we control at-risk behaviours, we may not even have near misses.

The major focus of this survey is to make out as to how Indian organisations have adopted the behavioural safety approach as compliance with the OHSAS clauses so that other organisations can benefit from their experiences in improving their safety situation

Figure 1: Behavioral Safety triangle (Kaila, 2006, 2009).

28

2

The major focus of this survey is to determine as to how Indian organisations have adopted the behavioural safety approach as compliance with the OHSAS clauses so that other organisations can benefit from their experiences in improving their safety situation.

MethodThis article is drawn from an on-going national action research survey on behavioural safety including 1765 executives and 893 workers. The survey participants were asked to narrate their field-observations and experiences during almost 200 behavioural safety training workshops in a period of twelve years between 1997 and 2009 across 63 Indian multi-national organisations (including petroleum, steel, cement, chemical, power, automobile etc).

The training exposure to all the survey participants was provided for a day on the behavioural safety concepts, processes and implementation of behavioural safety in the organisation. The trained behavioural safety observers used the checklist of critical behaviours to collect their observations. This checklist included safe and at-risk behaviours pertaining to using PPE (eye glasses, hearing protection, gloves, hard hat etc),

The major focus of this survey is to make out as to how Indian organisations

have adopted the behavioural safety approach

as compliance with the OHSAS clauses 1

housekeeping (work area maintained appropriately, e.g. trash and scrap picked up, no spills, walkways unobstructed, materials and tools organized), using tools and equipment (using correct tools for the job, using tools properly, and tool in good condition), body positioning/protecting (positioning/protecting body parts, e.g. avoiding line of fire, avoiding pinch points), material handling (e.g. body mechanics while lifting, pushing and pulling, use of assist devices), communication (verbal and non-verbal interactions that affects safety), following procedures (e.g. obtaining, complying with permits, following SOPs, lockout, tag-out procedures), visual focusing (attentiveness), and using mobile while working. The data was collected during these behavioural safety interventions across organisations.

For this paper, only a few organisational case studies featuring ‘at-risk and safe behaviours’ are extracted from this larger research study that brings significant information to the existing research in the field of behavioural safety.

Survey FindingsAnalysis of at-risk Behaviours: As per OHSAS clauses, the organisations under study involved workers in assessment of at-risk behaviours. The employees trained in behavioural safety from various organisations (during the years 2005 and 2006) were asked to report at-risk behaviours of their co-workers as perceived during the last one year, which revealed that almost every worker has practiced on an average 3.5 at-risk behaviours at their workplace on daily basis which can convert into an accident, near miss or can be fatal depending upon the activity workers engage in.

Case Study of a Power Company: Through the behavioural safety training in the year 2007, this organisation established a procedure for employee’s participation in risk assessments making them aware of benefits of improved safe performance as per OHSAS clauses.

29

a

b

c

de

f

3

1st shift 2nd shift

Safe beh at-risk beh safe beh at-risk beh

1st day 105 73 142 38

2nd day 64 33 82 15

The technicians and engineers observed that behavioural safety induces self-introspection and alertness among workers. It helps building positive safety culture. They emphasized that observers need to discuss both creating safe environment and promoting safe behaviors in their monthly meetings. They wished to know more about: “how to regularize/sustain behavioural safety, different types of PPE, and how to achieve cooperation between observer and observee”.

Table 1: Reduction of at-risk behaviors due to behavioral safety training

Field Observations during Behavioural Safety Action Research: The organisations under study during the past twelve years have implemented OHSAS 18001:2007 clauses which enabled the involvement of workers in hazard identification, risk assessments and determination of controls through maintaining an account of human behaviour in terms of percentages of at-risk and safe behaviours month-on-month basis. The field observations disclosed that:

Each of the behavioural safety training groups of 25-30 people has demonstrated almost 50 percent of safe and 50 percent of at-risk behaviours as being experienced regularly at the plant. Hence, it is felt that almost everybody carries a set of at-risk behaviours which is an integral part of their work life. Thus, these individual at-risk behaviours are a kind of potential for accidents and a source of threat against organisational safety.

It is perceived that conversion of at-risk behaviours into safe behaviours requires four to five interactions between an observer and observee. It is like when we go to a doctor and report four or five symptoms, he gives medicine and asks you to come after 3/4 days, and then again sees you and like this he takes 4/5 interactions before you feel almost all right.

Behavioural safety checklist is not filled-in so mechanically that the observer neglects the main purpose of behavioural safety which is primarily to identify and control at-risk behaviour so that the observee is saved from risk. Behavioural safety observer must save the person first if observed doing a very risky work, should not go on filling checklist mechanically. In this case, first save the document.

The education of behavioural safety to employees can be useful at home, on the way and at the plant.

An observer need not find out ‘reason’ on why a person is engaged in an at-risk behaviour or why an observee ‘should’ not behave safe, rather an observer has to actively observe and give feedback showing his concern to an observee.

‘Observation schedule’ is very important for each observer so that he can cover all locations/shifts/observees each working hour during his daily observation tour.

During the training, 20 technicians and 13 engineers observed their co-workers about safe and at-risk behaviours at workplace. The results (table 1) reflected that due to behavioural safety training, the safe behaviours have gone up and at-risk behaviours have reduced from 1st shift to 2nd shift on both the days. It was also observed that almost 1 percent risk-reduction is contributed by each behavioural safety trained observer, which indicate’s that more the observers, more the number of observations, and higher the percentage of risk-reduction in the organisation.

It is perceived that conversion of at-risk behaviours into safe behaviours requires

four to five interactions between an observer and observee

30

During behavioural safety meetings, never use the name of an observee to others.

There are two types of observers, one who gives concession that is, he observes at-risk behaviour of an observee, but does not document; the other, is the one who meticulously documents all at-risk behaviours and gives feedback. The latter is perfect.

All observer groups must be given some incentives e.g. individual recognition, group accolade etc as they participate in bringing down at-risk behaviours and creating safe environment.

A Plant Head said very enthusiastically, “Through behavioural safety training, we wish to create everybody as safety officer. People need to take care of their own safety as well as others”.

BOFP between observer and observee impacts gradually: it follows stages such as informing observee about at-risk and safe behaviours, observee denies and feels shy about his at-risk behaviours, then he experiences alertness, consciousness, slowly he attempts to change his at-risk behaviours to safe behaviours, then realizes internalization of such behaviours, stabilizing change, self-

observation, and then ready to change others.

The workers should not feel that management is dumping safety on them by launching behavioural safety as it is a bottom-up approach, they should not get a feeling that management is shirking away from their safety responsibilities towards workers.

gh

i

j

k

lm Suppose a company implemented

behavioural safety and after 6 months of its implementation, an accident happens. The behavioural safety observers may suddenly feel that they have failed in their duty. The management may feel that we have given control of safety in the hands of workers, it’s their problem. This is time to reflect upon the trend/percentage of at-risk behaviours over months across different units and understand where we went wrong because at-risk behaviours are the root cause of any near-miss, injury or accident.

Survey Realizations and ConclusionsThough OHSAS 18001:2007 has included three clauses that emphasize behavioural aspects of safety, the organisations have not yet followed it exactly as the OHSAS 18001:2007 document does not provide any guidelines on how to implement these clauses. However, the Indian organisations have begun to implement human behaviour aspects of safety at workplaces more as compared to yester years which demonstrates a demand for behavioural safety interventions across the country of India. The managements have started believing that at-risk behaviours need to be controlled in order to ensure total safety at workplaces. Engineering controls alone do not provide adequate safe workplace unless behavioural safety is practiced.

An Indian experience on behavioural safety (Kaila, 2010) in the past 12 years in diverse industrial sectors and locations reveal that the organisations have customized behavioural safety as per their socio-cultural conditions. Some organisations first exposed their senior management to behavioural safety concept, process and implementation; and then taken down the levels. Others have started off with bottom level employees and contract workers; whereas some other organisations

An Indian experience on behavioural safety (Kaila, 2010) in the past 12 years

in diverse industrial sectors and locations reveal that the organisations have

customized behavioural safety as per their socio-

cultural conditions

31

exposed their middle management and non-management employees together. At some places, organisations have introduced ‘train the trainers’ programme and then these in-house trainers have trained other employees in various departments.

Behavioural safety exposure to employees has been an enriching and refreshing experience on understanding the fact that in order to prevent near misses at workplaces, at-risk behaviours need to be tackled first through behavioural safety approach.

The present survey research reveals that at-risk behaviours do exist across Indian organisations and employees engage in at-risk behaviours on daily basis. It is also observed that the behavioural safety training facilitates increase in number of safe behaviours, assists in reducing number of at-risk behaviours and also the number of unsafe conditions in organisations.

This survey discovered that in order to implement behavioural safety at

workplaces; the Indian organisations used the following step-wise approach:

Conducted an awareness programme on behavioural safety for management staff at all levels;

Organized behavioural safety awareness training for all employees across the plant;

Selected (20%) observers from these trained employees; and conducted in-plant practical training of behavioural safety observers on how to set up the observation process, how to develop the measure, making accuracy and consistency checks, steering committee functioning etc.;

Formed steering committee of 8-10 people from these trained observers;

At this stage, behavioural safety observers and steering committee members were suitably prepared to implement behavioural safety at workplace.

The HR and Safety departments together need to conduct BBS training

References:

1. Kaila, H.L. (2006). Behavior based safety in organisations. Indian J Occup Environ Med 10:102-106.

2. Kaila, H.L. (2009). Behaviour Based Safety for Accident Prevention in Indian Organisations, India Safe, July 82-85.

3. Kaila, H.L. (2010). Industrial Safety and Human Behavior. New Delhi: AITBS Publishers.

4. OHSAS 18001. (2007). Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series. http://www.scribd.com/doc/10081792/OHSAS-18001-2007-Occupational-Health-and-Safety-Management-Systems-Requirements1. Retrieved on 02 February 2010.

5. Pettinger, Chuck B. (2001), People-Based Safety: The Optimal Approach to Behavior-Based Safety. Safety Performance Solutions, Inc.

6. Wirth, O. and Sigurdsson, S. O. (2008). When workplace safety depends on behavior change: topics for behavioral safety research. Journal of Safety Research, 39 (6), 589-598.

Dr. H. L. Kaila, Behavioral Safety trainer & Implementer, can be reached at kailahl@hotmail.com

workshops for involvement of employees in ensuring the safety of organisations as per OHSAS 18001:2007.

The success of behavioural safety lies in the top management’s engagement with the BBS project activities, creating BBS awareness across employees in the organisation, and the frequency of observations made regularly by the BBS trained observers.

It is hoped that the findings of this research survey shall assist safety professionals and HR/ line managers in the application of behavioural safety for reduction of accidents and promoting safe behaviours for developing safe and caring environment in the organisations. ■

a

bc

de

Behavioural safety exposure to employees

has been an enriching and refreshing experience on

understanding the fact that in order to prevent near

misses at workplaces, at-risk behaviours need to tackled first through behavioural

safety approach

inspireHRD

34

Building Dymanic Organisations – Role of HR

Dr. Padmaja Palekar

Increasingly, firms find themselves, either by design or circumstances, operating in business environments fraught with unprecedented, unparalleled, unrelenting, and largely unpredictable change. For them, competitiveness is a moving target.

In this rough and tumble world, many stumble and a few fall, often because the rate of change in their marketplaces outpaces their organisational capacity to keep up. Naturally enough, this has led a number of firms to experiment with new, and what they hope will be more dynamic, organisational forms. This accelerating pace of change in the marketplace forces organisations to become adaptable and flexible, while maintaining order and stability. Organisations have to consciously embrace opposites – chaos and order, change and stability, flexibility and control. Such organisations, confronting this paradoxical situation, are the Dynamic Organisations. While organisations confront these kinds of situations, it is the human capital in the organisation that is affected the most. If human resources are critical to the success of an organisation, and that the organisation is thriving to succeed in dynamic situations, it is imperative for the human resource function to play a critical role in building such ‘dynamic organisations’. This article explores the role of human resource function in building dynamic organisations.

35

What are Dynamic Organisations? A Perspective‘Dynamic Organisations’, a relatively new concept, refers to organisations confronting continuous change. These organisations deliberately seek to be infinitely innovative and adaptable in marketplace by adopting loosely coupled organisational forms that harmoniously blend characteristics of chaos, fluidity and flexibility on one hand with a modicum of order, control, and predictability on the other1. For example, if we look at the organisations in the software services industry, they were innovative and adaptable to marketplace changes as they grew. In order to adapt to the marketplace changes, they changed their organisation forms as they moved up the value chain in software services. This called for a lot of flexibility, but also required a lot of control and order to manage the changes and growth. The software services organisations are a good representation of dynamic organisations. By design, agile enterprises are able to evolve spontaneously, innovate instantly, seize unexpected opportunities, organize on the fly and respond instantly to unexpected demands2. Dynamic organisations thus exhibit paradoxical characteristics because they are expected to consciously embrace opposites – chaos and order, change and stability, flexibility and control.

Bureaucratic organisations epitomize continuity. While they can and do change, they tend to do so reluctantly, incrementally or episodically, and only up to a point. Common responses to new competitive realities have taken the form of programmatic fixes – process reengineering, total quality management, cross-functional teams, employee involvement (or empowerment), and seemingly endless rounds of restructuring that move the

The software services organisations are a good representation of dynamic organisations. By design, agile enterprises are able to evolve spontaneously, innovate instantly, seize unexpected opportunities, organize on the fly and respond instantly to unexpected demands

1234

boxes around without disturbing the underlying structure3. These stop-gap measures, which are primarily aimed at helping firms improve what they already do, often help – for a while. But, they fall short for firms operating in truly dynamic environments because what their need, as Figure 1 suggests, is not so much to get better as it is to get different4.

Dynamic organisations have four prominent characteristics:

Ability to sense the markets: This refers to the ability to scan external environments, locate and analyze emerging developments, and quickly turn the resulting information into actionable decisions5;

Mobilizing rapid response: This refers to the capacity to quickly and easily make decisions, translate these decisions into action, and choreograph the essential transitions6;

Exploiting temporary advantage: This refers to the capacity to quickly and easily enter new markets and to deliver competitively priced products and services to these markets as long as, but not longer than, they remain the most attractive options on the horizon; and7,

Embedding Organisational Learning: This is the inherent capacity to constantly create, adapt, distribute and apply knowledge8.

For dynamic organisations, it is most important and critical to understand how such organisations go about developing and defining their organisational competencies to build a

36

‘sustainable competitive advantage9’. Organisational competencies that are valuable, rare, and inimitable provide at best only a temporary source of competitive advantage. For a sustainable competitive advantage, it is necessary to build an organisation capable of developing, exploiting, and continuously renewing these competencies, and of doing so better, faster, and cheaper than current or potential competitors. Organisational capability derives from

and stability, flexibility and control at the same time, HRM plays a central role in realizing the value from its human resources. In such a case, the nature of HRM has to be different.

Earlier in this article, I said that software services organisations were dynamic organisations. Using the same example, let us now understand how HR Practices are delivered to build dynamic organisations. I shall focus on four core practices – Recruitment & Selection, Training & Development, Performance Appraisal, and Compensation & Benefits.

Recruitment & Selection: In an

opportunity-driven market like the software services industry, organisations wish to have more capacity i.e. people so that they can bid for larger projects and thus make more profits. When organisations expand their capacity, they recruit people on a continuous basis, thereby increasing the challenge in a demand heavy market. As a result, organisations tend to do things differently to meet their recruiting demands. Sensing the need to have employable talent in the long run because of the increasing demand supply gap, software services organisations used an innovative approach towards building the talent supply chain through

Rapid growth as a result of the rapidly growing

industry, combined with the labour shortage in the market led to

increased attrition, which lead these organisations

to alter their target applicant pool

The Dynamic Organisation: A New Paradigm

Source: Adapted from Dyer and Shafer (2003): Dynamic organisations: Achieving Marketplace and Organisational Agility with People, CAHRS Working paper series.

the systemic interaction of several key components of which human resources is but one. While human resources form a critical organisational capability, it is the ability of the human resource activities to create and facilitate the required agility to build dynamic organisations.

Delivering Human Resource Practices to Build Dynamic OrganisationsTraditionally, HRM has dealt with a static environment. However, in dynamic organisations, given that organisations have to embrace chaos and order, change

37

their initiatives towards building a strong industry academia interface. Rapid growth as a result of the rapidly growing industry, combined with the labour shortage in the market led to increased attrition, which lead these organisations to alter their target applicant pool. Many software organisations did so by lowering the educational qualifications required for the job and used multiple recruitment sources to attract talent. They also altered the start timing of their campus level recruitment so that they could hire the best talent from the campuses earlier.

External factors like competitors’ selection methods and labour market conditions influence the decision on using any particular selection method. Organisations moved away from the existing best practices like selecting using psychometric tests, systematic training programs, and making recruitment and selection part of the job of the line manager, to more ad hoc practices like selecting people based on availability, and training only if needed or just providing information on interviewing skills; essentially in response to the market needs and exploit the temporary advantage that organisations were getting. It is interesting to note that reference checks process which was inherently a descriptive people intensive process succumbed to the changing business context and the customers’ need for security. Reference checks process got replaced by an inherently investigative background check process, which was not traditionally a part of HR policy.

The above two paragraphs clearly indicate that recruitment and selection strategies in dynamic organisations are more opportunity-driven and thereby organisations cannot afford to be in a reactive mode. The recruitment and selection practices in dynamic organisations were driven by the ability

of the recruitment & selection function to sense the market conditions, mobilize rapid response and exploit temporary advantage; characteristics of dynamic organisations. Thereby, the recruitment and selection function too gets categorized as a dynamic function.

Training & Development: In dynamic organisations, like the software services industry, training and development of existing and new employees is a very important activity. As the organisations grew, and so did the industry, there was increased competition in the market, leading to increased attrition in organisations. Employees were likely to move to their competitor organisations because of better opportunities in terms of career growth. In order to facilitate retention of employees in this kind of a context, organisations created a strong linkage between the individual goals and the organisations goals, thus facilitating the career growth and development path of individuals in the organisations. With increased lateral movement within organisations, there was a shortage at the middle management and senior management level. Developing leadership capabilities in these organisations thus becomes a challenge and hence leadership oriented training becomes a priority. Also as these organisations grew globally they inducted managers through global mergers and acquisitions, and recruited people internationally. All this meant that more and more employees would have to work in cross cultural teams, and hence it became important for employees to be sensitive to different cultures. Cross cultural training became a key area of training in these organisations. Apart from the advantages of managing increasing size and scale, technology based trainings allow for greater adoption, and for continuous learning to happen at real time. When the skills required on the job are

Training employees for short term needs as well as long term needs

happens in parallel in large organisations that are

growing at a rapid pace as organisations invest in

training their people to be ready for the present and

the future

38

changing very fast, real time training can be a virtue. It allows for people to be more effective and responsive to the changes expected on the job. The software services organisations widely adopted technology based trainings for the above two reasons.

In the case of dynamic organisations thus, there is a need for organisations to build technical as well as leadership competencies simultaneously, for the future, primarily because the tight labour markets add to the shortage of people across all levels, a crucial internal and external environmental condition. Having technically trained people and technically trained leaders would prove to be a competitive advantage for organisations. Training employees for short term needs as well as long term needs happens in parallel in large organisations that are growing at a rapid pace as organisations invest in training their people to be ready for the present and the future. These investments could be in the form of changing the structure of their training department, using a mix of training delivery resources, or by starting the training delivery in advance. The training delivery thus has the ability to sense the external market conditions, mobilize rapid responses, and exploit

temporary advantage, thereby making it a dynamic function.

Performance Appraisal: In dynamic organisations, like in the software services organisations, managers are expected to evaluate the performance of employees, coach and counsel the team members and also contribute to the organisational objectives. As these organisations deal with the expanding demands from the external market and customers, movement of people across job assignments in the organisation is likely to increase. Multiple job assignments become the order of the day as these organisations try to create an inherent capacity to constantly create, adapt, distribute and apply knowledge. It is thus important for employees to have clarity on their new assignment in order to achieve the desired performance on the job. However, this is likely to create disparity because not all employees in the organisation will experience multiple job assignments in a year. It is critical to review the goals of individuals periodically in order to meet organisation’s objective. Periodic review of goals of the employees allows organisations to get a realistic picture of the performance, and provides opportunities for revision and improvement. Thus, organisations create mechanisms to provide an opportunity to the employee and the supervisor to periodically review the performance goals. When employees move across job assignments, it is critical for organisations to ensure that the employee gets feedback from all his supervisors for developmental purposes. This demands an on-going interaction between the rater and the ratee, and organisations will be forced to create mechanisms to provide that platform. As a result, organisations will have to create robust mechanisms to ensure that every employee gets feedback from all his supervisors. However when the workforce becomes more global, technological interventions in appraisal implementation become very crucial. Teams are spread across

In dynamic organisations, like in the software

services organisations, managers are expected to evaluate the performance of employees, coach and

counsel the team members and also contribute to the organisational objectives

39

multiple locations, and it is critical to keep track of the performance of employees. Technology allows organisations to gather information on performance parameters of employees in spite of distantly located teams. But this makes the appraisal process a very transaction oriented system. The aspect of reviewing goals and periodic feedback to employees would most likely be more effective if there is face to face interaction. It is extremely difficult for dynamic organisations to create such opportunities from the cost and time perspective. Thus, it is likely that such organisations would be forced to compromise on the desirable face to face interactions between the supervisor and the subordinates, and rely mainly on the technology mediated interaction. The performance appraisal process in dynamic organisations tends to become more reactive. The process does not tend to become dynamic though.

Compensation & Benefits: Compensation and rewards function play a very crucial role in dynamic organisations, especially from the point of view of attracting, retaining and motivating employees. When these organisations expand their capacity, they mainly recruit from external market. Given this, external pay equity is given a higher priority than internal pay equity, the pay systems are mainly market driven, and organisations would do some equity adjustment once in a year to bring the pay of the existing employees up to a market level10. When there is a talent crunch in addition to the challenge of growth at a rapid pace, the situation gets tougher. Organisations need to have compensation packages that allow competitive positioning, enhance productivity, and adjust organisation and business priorities to suit the changing business environment. Compensation is a cost that the company has to bear. When organisations have a variable component in the compensation plan, they link it to the individual, organisation and team performance. Thus, when either one of them does not do well,

organisations do not have to pay out that component, thereby reducing the cost borne by the company; e.g. in the case of the software services industry, during the downturn, when the organisations did not perform well, the outflow to the variable component in the employees’ salaries reduced, allowing organisations to save costs there. While in good times when organisations did well, they paid 100 percent of the variable component in the salary. Thus, organisations de-risked their performance by linking it to the employees’ salaries, in the form of an increased proportion of variable component. This allows for adjustment of costs in the changing business environments.

With the increasing competition in the market, and every organisation using compensation to attract people, there was a realization that money is not the only thing that can motivate and retain people in the organisation. While money is not the only motivator, and people need recognition from time to time to keep them motivated, dynamic organisations tend to have instant award and recognition programs in which they applaud the performance or good work of an employee, and offer him/her awards like communicating his/her success to the entire group/organisation, or giving a small gift or gift vouchers. These organisations tend to use recognition as a motivation tool for employees. The software services organisations introduced policies that would allow employees to have a healthy work-life balance. This resulted in the introduction of flexi time policies, concierge services, child care facilities, and work from home options, etc.

Compensation and benefits function in dynamic organisations needs to have the ability to sense the market trends and make the best out of the temporary advantage available to them. For example, usage of variable pay is a great way of exploiting the temporary advantage available to the organisation. Compensation and benefits function

40

Static Environment Dynamic Environment

Periodic activity•

Small numbers •

Person-job fit•

Select from a pool of applicants • available at the time the vacancy is identified

Continuous activity•

Large numbers•

Person-opportunity fit•

Identify different pool of applicants and • attract them to apply.

Focus on individual skill acquisition•

Provide and monitor professional • development programs

Plan and coordinate training • programs

Focus is on building organisation • capability

Facilitate knowledge networks•

Identify and share internal as well as • external best practices

Facilitate culture building activities in • the organisation

Monitor and modify individual • performance

Reduce undesirable behaviors and • set desired behaviors to enhance

Individual performance•

Reinforce organisation culture•

Monitor adequate compliance with • policies and practices

Link individual performance to • organisation performance

Enhance team and business • performance

Compensation linked to yearly • reviews

Monetary rewards•

Bonuses •

Promotions•

Compensation to de risk the • organisation performance (quarter based component in the compensation structure)

Monetary rewards•

Nature of assignment•

Overseas opportunities•

Work culture•

Education opportunities•

Holiday sponsorship•

Administrative help for home•

Work from home options•

HRM Activity

Recruitment & Selection

Training & Development

Performance Appraisal

Compensation, Benefits and Rewards

41

1Peterson, R. S and Mannix, E. A. 2003 Leading and Managing People in Dynamic Organisations.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Mahwah, New Jersey.

2Shafer, R. 1999. Only the Agile will survive. HR Magazine. HR in the 21st Century, 50-51

3Heckscher, C. 1994. Defining the post-bureaucratic type. In Heckscher, C. &Donnellon, A. (eds). The post-bureaucratic organisation: New perspectives on organisational change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

4Hamel, G. 2000. Leading the Revolution.Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

5Teece, D., Pisano, G., &Shuen, A. 1997.Dynamic capability and strategic management.Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), 509–533.

6Brown, S and Eisenhardt, K. 1998.Competing on the edge: Strategy as a structured chaos .Harvard Business School Press, Boston MA.

7Peterson, R. S and Mannix, E. A. 2003.Leading and Managing People in Dynamic Organisations.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Mahwah, New Jersey

8Grant, R. M. 1996. Toward a Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm, Strategic Management Journal 17(Winter Special Issue): 109–22.

9Barney, J. 1991. Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1): 99-120

10Balkin, D., and Gomez-Mejia, L. (1987).Toward a contingency theory of compensation strategy.Strategic Management Journal, 8(2), 169–182.

Author is an associate Partner and Chief Research Officer, The Strategist

needs to have the ability to sense the market developments, and respond accordingly. For example, in case of the software services organisations, when the financial sector opened up, continuing with giving subsidized loans as a benefit did not make sense. Thus compensation and benefits function has to be dynamic in nature to help build dynamic organisations.

ConclusionToday’s business environment is dynamic and it is important for organisations to be dynamic too, if they have to succeed in the environment. Organisations that operated in the static environment did not experience the dynamism and they have now got used to operating with a certain set of rules and regulations, thereby making it difficult for these organisations to build the competencies required to survive in the dynamic environment.

In order to build dynamic organisations, it is important for the HR activities (a combination of principles, policies and practices) to have the attributes of dynamism built in their design. This means that the HR activities should be designed such that they are able to sense the external markets, create rapid responses, exploit temporary advantages and embed organisation learning. Recruitment & Selection, Training & Development, and Compensation & Benefits functions need to be dynamic to build dynamic organisations.

Refer the Table on page 38 compares some of the HR practices adopted by organisations in static environment vs. dynamic environments.

In order to be able to create an impact, it is important that the individual HR policies be designed to ‘fit with and support each other’ (internal/horizontal fit) so as to enhance agile attributes in the context created by the remaining HR activities. Achieving this synergy by designing HR practices with the principles for dynamic organisations, allows organisations to simultaneously become much more flexible, responsive, efficient, and, ultimately, make a strategic contribution to their company. At the individual employee level, these synergies in HR practices could motivate employees to be proactive, assume multiple roles at simultaneously, rapidly redeploy across these roles with a minimum of wasted time and effort,

so that help happens when it needs to happen. And, once in new roles, they spontaneously collaborate by actively engaging with colleagues around the task at hand. Having employees with such dynamic mindsets enhances the chances of better productivity and better organisation performance. ■

Recruitment & Selection, Training & Development,

and Compensation & Benefits functions need to

be dynamic to build dynamic organisations

44

Creating Value through People

R. Krishnamurthi

“Don’t treat them as employees, but treat them as people,” Drucker.“Management is nothing more than motivating other people,” Iacocca.

The only differentiating factor among organisations is people. People make differences to business. Vineet Nayar’s philosophy of ‘putting employees first and

customers second’, sparked a revolution at HCL Technologies. The Japanese always believed in ‘Keep your business and that will keep you.’ Similarly, people are the keepers of business. If we keep them, they will keep the business. It boils down to ‘Keep the keepers,’ but still even with all these philosophies and practices, employee attrition has always been a highly sensitive issue in organisations and retention has always been a challenge. According to Global HR Groups Randstat, “Attrition has been a big worry for the fast-growing Indian Employment market and could even have a snowballing effect on the country’s vast talent pool”. Attrition stands at 17.24 percent as per Employment Outlook Report for the Jan-March quarter of 2011 brought out by the Teamlease Services Pvt Ltd. Employee Benefits

Communication, On Boarding, March 24, 2011 mentioned that “A recent survey has confirmed that Indian companies are facing high challenges regarding employee attrition rate. They are really finding it difficult to tackle the issue of employee attrition in the present situation.” The moot question is, ‘What are the hidden reasons for people leaving organisations’? ‘And how can we retain them and create value through?’

This article presents seven intangible practices that can help an organisation in having good management practices and healthy corporate culture to create value through people. The seven practices are:

1. Contribution;

2. Competence;

3. Capability;

People want to contribute to their organisation’s growth and development. But there are many hidden reasons that prevent them from giving their best

45

4. Challenge;

5. Consideration;

6. Commitment; and,

7. Connection.

The article is a compilation of the author’s experience and observation, and the views of many professionals. Maximizing a company’s human capital will be the key for competitive success in the 21st Century. Effective talent management is about creating and engaging the right workforce, to achieve organisational objectives.

Hidden Reasons Employees Leave OrganisationsBranham’s1 breakthrough research work formed the base for this article. The hidden reasons are:

• Job/Workplace was not as expected;

• Mismatch between person and job;

• Too little coaching and feedback;

• Too few growth and advancement opportunities;

• Feeling devalued and under recognized;

• Loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders; and,

• Stress from work life imbalance.

The real surprise for the author was that even when companies knew what the root causes were, they were not doing nearly as much as they could to eradicate them. The author says too many companies are still relying on the tangible, easy-to implement solutions that revolve around pay, benefits, and trendy perks when the most powerful solutions revolve around the more challenging intangibles such as good management and healthy corporate culture.

The source for the book was from Saratoga Institute in Santa Clara, California, a division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers2.

Contribution: The first reason is: ‘Job/Workplace was not as expected.’ People want to contribute to their organisation’s growth and development. But there are many hidden reasons that prevent them from giving their best. Most of the time the reason is: the expectations of the superiors and the organisations are not clearly communicated. The problem stems from Job Previews. Many practitioners found that Job Previews were exaggerated. Recruiters tend to present only positives to woo prospects. But they, after joining, have a lot of reality shocks. That’s the reason there are many surprise resignations. To make people contribute from day one, Job Previews have to be realistic and there has to be an acceptance that people want to contribute to the growth of their organisation. Heads of the departments have to communicate to subordinates their expectations and visions of organisations. People perform better when they know what is expected of them and why they must do what is expected. They must be given chances to exhibit their talents.

Competence: The second reason is: ‘Mismatch between Person and Job.’ What Aristotle envisioned long ago still holds true. “If a teacher becomes

a soldier, the society will lose a good teacher and get a bad soldier.” This is very true as the qualities and skills needed to be a teacher are different from that of a soldier. Hence, much importance is laid on competence based selection. Selection must not stop with selection. It must go beyond – to placement and work assignment. People perform based on their preferences. Everyone wants to have choices. Effortless achievement is doing what one loves doing. Confucius said, “If you love your job, you do not need to work.” The ratio between doing what one loves and loving what one does can be 80/20. Let people do 80 percent of what they love doing and 20 percent of loving what they do. Ned Herrmann’s ‘Whole Brain Inventory’ will be a useful tool to identify peoples’ preferences. People find room to actually become passionate about what they do once working no longer seems a burden and is not frightening.

Capability: The third reason is: ‘Too little coaching and feedback.’ The latest trend amongst youngsters is to prefer organisations that offer maximum learning and development. People want to grow along with their organisations. Nehru said, “Training is expensive. Without training it is more expensive.” Are your employees provided adequate developmental opportunities to sharpen their skills? Organisations do not need obsolete employees. People must be developed to align themselves with the vision and mission of their organisation. Now Human Resource Development (HRD) is not just the responsibility of Human Resource Department. Every line manager is in charge for HRD. So, it is everyone’s responsibility to organize developmental programmes for employees. They need to keep track of the number of quality training sessions each employee has undergone; and how much of the nomination for training is done based on TNA or competence.

Challenge: The fourth reason is: ‘Too few growth and advancement opportunities.’ To challenge is to create a demanding and stimulating situation

People want to grow along with their organisations. Nehru said, “Training is

expensive. Without training it is more expensive”

46

work first and family next. Generation X employees treat work as part of their life. So they work and live. For them, work and family are equally important. But for Generation Y, work and family are two different identities. They work to live. For them, family is more important than work. One of the major stressors for middle aged employees is: inability to balance work and family. Family life is demanding. If we want to create value through people, we need to include family as part of the organisation. We can do some ‘home work’ to know about our peoples’ families – to stay connected with them. Check how many activities are carried out to connect the families of employees and the organisation.

ConclusionThe above seven practices, if practised religiously, will help an organisation leverage the best of its human resources. That implies satisfied, committed and engaged people with individual productivity, team contribution and organisational excellence. People are the front wheels of a vehicle. Values are the rear wheels of a vehicle. If we take care of front wheels, rear wheels will follow. “One does not make a difference unless it is a difference in the lives of people,” Drucker. Keep making differences in the lives of people to keep them to keep business. ■

that will influence individual growth and organisational culture. Growth is one’s birth right. People want to grow. Growth is possible only when there are challenges. It is true that behind the success of every person, there are many unsuccessful years. What is called overnight success takes twenty years. Problems, challenges and hardships prepare people. One of the reasons the Pandavas could win the Kurukshetra War was the hardships faced by them for thirteen years. Those challenges prepared them to face further challenges. So, give your people assignments and work that makes them stretch. Make them leap beyond reach. Let’s remember Roger Bannister for breaking the self imposed barriers. Challenging their thinking with a purpose by giving assignments that they may think difficult to achieve will make them grow beyond their expectations.

Consideration: The fifth reason is: ‘Feeling devalued and under recognized.’ Contributions, small or big, must be recognized. Be considerate of your people and their achievements. Let them feel proud of their contributions. Make them feel great as that will increase their self-esteem. A person’s self-esteem has direct bearing on one’s performance. The wise old wisdom says, “People don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.” Make them feel they are more than money. Moreover, all employees spend two thirds of their time in a day related to work. If they don’t get the message that they are important, they will not treat their work and organisation as important. They should feel proud that their work is recognized. You may practice the ‘LEAF’ model. This is a universally accepted model that helps one build excellent relationship. Expansion of LEAF is: Listening, Encouraging, Appreciating and Forgiving. Make LEAF a practice in your organisation and measure the amazing impact it creates on your people and their performance.

Commitment: The sixth reason is: ‘Loss of trust and confidence in

senior leaders.’ Bill Gates says, “Great organisations demand a high level of commitment.” Commitment is needed to bind the entire organisation through concentrated effort. People can be motivated to contribute though proper communication, with the right competence, capability, challenges and consideration. They may not perform better and take their organisations to next level, if they do not have a commitment. Make them committed by involving them in projects and assignments. Encourage open discussions to get their commitments. People of this generation, because of technology and open communication, expect maximum commitment from their superiors. In psychology it is said, ‘a person can take another person only so far as he has gone.’ That is true with commitment. Leaders cannot expect commitment from their followers when they themselves are not committed. It is a challenge to exhibit leadership qualities.

Connection: The seventh reason is: ‘Stress from work-life imbalance.’ An employee is a social and emotional person. Peoples’ work influences their family and their family influences their work. Work and family are inseparable. Baby boomers treated work as worship. They lived to work. For them, it was

R. Krishnamurthi, Corporate Trainer, IMPACT, Coimbatore. can be contacted at krishnatrg@yahoo.in

1Branham, Leigh. (2005) The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to recognize the subtle signs and Act before it is too late. New York: AMACOM

2Saratoga Institute maintained a database of 19,700 exit and current employee surveys it had conducted from 1999 through 2003. Saratoga’s survey data included companies in a wide range of industries – financial, industrial, technology, manufacturing, distribution, insurance, health care, telecommunications, transportation, computer services, electronics, consumer products, consulting and ‘other services.’ The author analyzed the data and verbatim comments from those surveys.

47

Kautilya Re-discovered:The first Management Guru in Indian Context

Dr. Sharda Nandram

India is a country which has brought the world many inventions, scientists, great philosophers and visionary leaders. Kautilya, also known as Chanakya, was such a leader, who lived 2400 years ago. Chanakya’s teachings have been updated and compiled in a book in Dutch language which has been recently released at the global awards event of the Priyadarshni Academy in Mumbai on September 2010. During this global award event, I had the privilege to deliver a speech on the theme “Kautilya: The world’s first management guru and strategist”. In this article, I will describe why, according to me, Kautilya should be considered as the first Management Guru.

According to Kautilya the leader should study four branches of knowledge: philosophy, scriptures, economics and politics, because these are the basics for being trained in spiritual welfare (dharma) and material wealth (artha)

48

Introduction Kautilya, also known as Chanakya or Vishnugupta lived from 350-275 BC. He was a great political strategist, economist, educator and an expert in diplomacy. He had a holistic approach for societal problems, education, economics, governance, business and financial management and was the man behind the rise of Chandragupta, the first Mauryan Emperor. How can his ideas be helpful to India now and what are the management principles he has taught the world?

India is dreaming of driving the global economy and it has reasons for nurturing this dream. However, the current achievements mainly have been realized by following the Western model of education, management and entrepreneurship. If it continues to follow this path it will/could face difficulties in maintaining the current position. India needs to go back to the basics, to find its core, its strength, its authentic roots and its wealth in order to have a competitive advantage, to strengthen its base so that its strategy can’t be imitated by others. Imitating the Western model will result in exhausting its resources. I believe only with a long lasting competitive advantage India can become a global power again what it has been centuries ago, a wealthy and sustained economy. Based on the richness of Kautilya’s teachings in his encyclopaedia on wealth management called the ‘Arthashastra’, he must be labelled as the first Management Guru in the world. And, I believe India should rediscover its authenticity to be able to differentiate itself from the rest, because authenticity can’t be copied and thus is a sustainable asset. It needs to study and apply the teachings of Kautilya to nurture its dream.

Let me mention the main elements of his teachings in management to build the thesis of considering him as the first management guru.

Kautilya’s Teaching on StrategyMandala, partnership, time management

When he was prime minister he was the main advisor of the emperor, Chandragupta. With his successful Mandala strategy he slowly chipped away at the edges instead of attacking the heart of Nanda’s territory. He was able to throw out invaders by building alliances with the small kingdoms. With his time management approach, he defined a daily routine for the King. He allowed the king 5 -10 hours as his own time, the

rest he needs to spend for his duties as a king.

The Mandala strategy, building alliances and time management are potent tools that can be useful in governance, management and entrepreneurship. Especially building alliances is an important strategy in entrepreneurship due to the well accepted fact of the world becoming a global village. Those entrepreneurs who may be content-wise competitors are in reality not, because of their operations in a geographic different region and internet technology allowing knowledge sharing. Employees have more than one role. Therefore, they

Teamwork is about finding similarities first and differences second

Utilize knowledge that is easily available, search for partnership and co create to maintain a competitive advantage

Schedule your tasks properly and stick to it in order to achieve your business goals

Lessons for executives

India needs to go back to the basics, to find its

core, its strength, its authentic roots and its

wealth in order to have a competitive advantage,

to strengthen its base so that its strategy can’t be

imitated by others

49

need to spend their time available in an efficient way.

Leadership PrinciplesWealth, Welfare and Wellbeing: Furthermore, Kautilya’s view on leadership departs from a holistic view. Though he did not talk about management in the terms of holism a deeper study reveals that his leadership approach was holistic: it was built on deeper human values that strengthen the connectivity between citizens and their leaders. According to Kautilya, the leader should study four branches of knowledge: philosophy, scriptures, economics and politics, because these are the basics for being trained in spiritual welfare (dharma) and material wealth (artha). In his Arthashastra, he talked about combining both because in his personal view realizing artha without dharma was not sustainable. Therefore, one can say that the meaning of the Arthashastra is a framework for building wealth, welfare and wellbeing. In the daily routine that he prescribed for the King, he allocated time for meditation. In essence his leadership focuses on finding a balance between the inner self and the outer world, the balance many managers are lacking today.

Eastern Perspective of Mindfulness: Managers, however, these days are seeking tools to find this balance. One popular framework they use is mindfulness which is about understanding the outer self and discovering and aligning the axis of our consciousness to our inner Self. The Western mindset these managers use is predominantly macrocosmic; they are interested in understanding their mind, behaviour, attitudes, surroundings and society at large. A Western approach to mindfulness therefore focuses on understanding and optimizing the mind’s functions to help individuals achieve success and ‘happiness’. The East traditionally holds a more microcosmic worldview, which translates into an interest in man’s inner relationship to

himself and to his spiritual or universal core. An Eastern view holds that our relationship with the world around us is a reflection of our relationship to our Self. This is the reasoning behind the popular expression, ‘change begins in the heart of each individual’. With a closer observation of the USA President Obama, it can be said that he is a mindful leader. My study on Kautilya’s leadership makes me conclude that Kautilya was able to integrate this micro cosmic with the macro cosmic approach which makes his perspective holistic. Furthermore,

his focus on leadership was based on his understanding with the outer self and aligning it with the inner consciousness. Another element of his teachings is the value based approach that the leader should take. This concept can nowadays be found in the discussions related to corporate social responsibility.

Charisma and Values Driven Approach: He stressed the importance of learning and acquiring the right skill to be an effective and charismatic leader. Self purification and inner cleansing were necessities in Kautilya’s approach, to be able to hold the right perspective. He warned for excess and inactivity to be watched for and avoided. He mentioned values which a leader should possess: truthfulness, reliability, gratefulness, liberality, promptness, freedom from vices (lust, anger, greed and vanity), long term vision and respect for the advice of elders. The essence of leadership lies in the ethical foundations therefore the leader should adhere to justice and ethics.

Servant Leadership: Though Greenleaf coined the term Servant leadership in the 80’s, it seems that Kautilya held the same perspective with the words. “In the happiness of the people lies the ruler’s happiness. Their welfare is his welfare. The ruler shall not consider what pleases

Knowledge is accessible easily, what makes the difference for success is leading with wisdom based on values

Serve in order to lead and be a role model to build commitment in your team

Be a mindful leader and try to align the outer acts with the inner values so that your subordinates feel motivated

Work on your charisma, be friendly to your employees, be approachable to them and bring your knowledge on philosophy into practice

Lessons for executives

50

and benefits him personally, but what is pleasing and beneficial to the people”.

Relevance of Kautilya’s Teachings on GovernanceGood Governance: The concept of good governance gets a lot of attention in Western society especially in current times where big changes take place with respect to the political dominance of right wing political parties where discussions arise about the position of immigrants and welfare for all citizens and that of the next generations. The Dutch social welfare system seems to turn towards its edge because of the growth in ageing population and thus more people making use of it through medical facilities. Especially immigrants who dropped out from school often face problems at the labour market. Due to prejudices towards these groups, mobilization at the labour market becomes somewhat difficult for them even if they put a lot of effort. Therefore good governance is required to have a positive political and safe societal climate. The Arthashastra is a manual for practicing politicians. Kautilya’s contribution comes also in where he prescribed specific tested administrative procedures.

Danda Policy: Another contribution that one should mention is the coercive authority (danda) when officers do not meet their task or if citizens do not obey the rules and regulations. He conceived danda to be the surest and the most universal means of ensuring public security as well as the stability of the social order. He contemplates the universal application of danda irrespective of the offender’s rank and status. He was aware of financial fraud committed by the government officials. Government officials could enrich themselves either by cheating the government or by exploiting the public. He prescribed punishment for both types of fraud. If Kautilya would be alive today he would sanction all the stakeholders of the financial crisis such as financial institutions and governments and CEO’s of corporations who failed to sustain the ethical foundations of governance. The right wing political parties in Europe address the use of coercive power by making each citizen more responsible for their success. Thirty years ago, every unemployed individual above 18 years would automatically get a survival compensation from the Government. Nowadays, a lot of effort should be put to get this earning and a lot of effort is

required to get a job as soon as possible, and one needs to accept a job even if it does not meet his expectations fully i.e. when it comes to capabilities. This requires discipline.

Profit Policy and Incentives: Profit was a must in Kautilya’s scheme of running public enterprises. His mixed economy is an example for the current efforts between public and private institutions to address wicked societal problems. An official who did not generate adequate profits in crown undertakings was punished. Kautilya mentioned that incentives are a good motivator for official to get work done. Those who took higher risk for example in trading were benefited more than those who took lower risks.

Recruitment Policy: Another main contribution is Kautilya’s theory of the recruitment and selection of officials. Kautilya developed tests to purify officials before appointing them. According to him, the civil servants need to be watched and guided so that they do not misuse their position. The candidate who applied for a position was tempted by different means through secret agents. He had developed the wealth tests, the virtue test, the pleasure

The concept of good governance gets a lot of

attention in Western society especially in current times

where big changes take place with respect to the

political dominance of right wing political parties where discussions arise about the position of immigrants and welfare for all citizens and

that of the next generations

51

test and the fear test. Those who passed all four tests were appointed as ministers. The Arthashastra explains in detail the principle of righteousness in management and in politics and stated that it is the essence of Kingship.

In judging employees, put focus on their talents and capabilities and not on their background or class

Punish misconduct and laziness within organisations

Use compliance based rules to create discipline in the organisation

Use tests not only at recruitment of new personnel but also at job evaluation interviews

Lessons for executives

Relevance of Kautilya’s Teachings on EducationCognition, Emotion and Spirit: Kautilya’s Arthashastra identified the significance of education. He stated that teaching wrong things is a great crime. Learning is called learning from which results righteousness and wealth. In his opinion, training and learning destroyed unrighteousness, poverty and hatred. Along with the different sciences the student was urged towards discipline and self-control. Thus it was a combination of intellectual skills and yogic discipline. Not everyone was capable of the type of discipline he valued as important for education. Therefore, he stated that the lessons of discipline could be imparted to those whose intellect had the desire to learn, capacity to listen attentively, power to grasp what was taught, to retain it in memory, discriminate between the important and the unimportant, draw inferences, deliberate and imbibe the truth. Students stayed at residential schools the so called Gurukulas. Kautilya stated that sciences should be studied and their precepts strictly observed only under the authority of

specialist teachers. Nowadays, the goals of education are not always lucid to the students and the teachers. Students were to spend the forenoon in receiving lessons in military arts concerning elephants, horses, chariots, and weapons, and the afternoon in hearing about Indian culture and history. During the rest of the day and night he should not only receive new lessons and revise old lessons, but also hear over and again

what had not been clearly understood. This teaching method stressed upon knowledge and application.

Data Management: Animals were regarded as a part of the same cosmos as humans, therefore there was veterinary medicine. The average citizen and villager was expected to be able to defend his own hearth and home, therefore, military training for citizen was mandatory. Trading with other countries was profitable. Therefore there was commercial education. Statistics was one of the main subjects. Data were collected in the agriculture but also for marking animals for categorization. Besides the intellectual learning, the Arthashastra stressed upon moral education and character building as essential tenets of education.

Creativity And Productivity: Kautilya was a professor at the University of Takkasila (also known as Takshila). He was an expert in commerce, warfare and economics. Takkasila was one of the topmost centres of education and according to some it was the world’s first university where more than 50 subjects were taught. The fame was due to that of its teachers. Another great university was the Nalanda where Chanakya was once a student.

Encourage the several dimensions of your employees’ knowledge: intellect, experience, reflection, wisdom

People management can create a real asset, therefore a continuous mentoring, training, lifelong learning are required

Build a data system for assessing performance and opportunities and communicate clearly

Foster creativity, imagination, intuitive power as processes for initiating innovation and seeking new opportunities

Wealth management and practicing universal values should go hand in hand in education systems

Lessons for executives

52

Similarities with other Gurus in Management ScienceThe teachings of Kautilya have relevance even today, after the industrial revolution and the information revolution. This is because Kautilya’s work in essence was about managing people, and people have not changed that much in these centuries. Peter Drucker a well known management guru claims that 90 percent of what organisations are concerned with is related generic knowledge. For only 10 percent organisations differ. The differences between businesses in different industries are not bigger than between business and non-businesses, or between a multinational bank or a toy factory he says. Only the last 10 percent of management has to be fitted to the organisation’s specific mission, culture, history and its specific vocabulary.

Robert K. Greenleaf wrote: “The Servant Leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He is sharply different from the person who is leader-first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve after leadership is established. The leader first and the servant first are two extreme types. Between them are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.” (Greenleaf, 1970).

McGregor’s theory X portrayed man as a beast who is evil in nature. The new emerging theory Y finds that human beings are self-actualizing in nature and fundamentally good (McGregor, 1960). Kautilya had policies in place for both types of man.

Motivation models stress that the cognitive ability of subordinates whose focus on results is driven by their expectations and values (Steer, Porter, 1987, Vroom, 1964). Kautilya’s policy focused as well on individuals

who were driven by expectations. The Transformational Leadership theory of Bass and Burns encourages us to understand that the behaviour of both leaders and followers has more relational dimensions: their interactions uplift each others’ morale and motivation (Bass, 1985, Burns, 1978). Relationships help us to redefine our values, expectations, aspirations and norms and thus lead to higher motivation and commitment. According to Kautilya, the leader should be a role model to his subordinates in order to let them follow the right path.

Different management gurus stress the twin principle of Kautilya: king and philosopher. Also Plato stressed that the leader should be charismatic and a philosopher. Covey promotes “The Character Ethic” which is about aligning one’s values with so-called ‘universal and timeless’ principles. Covey sees principles as external and values as internal and subjective. Chakraborty (2004) talks about this character building too. He mentioned the concept of Rajarishi, being a king and a philosopher. ■

References:

1. Bass, B.M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organisational Dynamics, (Winter): 19-31.

2. Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper and Row.

3. Chakraborty, S.K. & Chakraborty, D.: 2004, The Transformed Leader and Spiritual Psychology: A few insights. Management Centre for Human Values, Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, India, Journal of Organisational Change Management; Volume, 17; Issue 2.

4. Greenleaf, R.K. (1970). The Servant as leader. Indianapolis, Ind: Greenleaf Center for Leadership.

5. Mohanty, S. (2008). Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader. Routledge, London, New York, New Delhi.

6. Nandram, S.S. (2010). The betekenis van Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Holistisch regeren, ondernemen en managen vanuit een financieel en economisch perspectief. Praan Uitgeverij.

7. Peter Drucker. Managing People & Organisations: Peter Drucker’s Legacy. EFMD Global Focus issue 03 2010.

8. Priyadarshni Academy (2009). Kautilya’s Arthashastra: The Way of Financial Management and Economic Governance. Jaico publisher, India.

9. Steers, R.M., & Porter, L.W. (1987). Motivation and work behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

10. Steven R. Covey (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: powerful lessons in personal change. Pocket books, Britain.

11. Vroom, V.H. (1964). Work and motivation, New York: Wiley.

* Sharda S. Nandram, a Dutch resident, born in Surinam, and of Indian origin, is Professor Entrepreneurship at the University of Applied Sciences HAN and Associate Professor at Nyenrode Business Universiteit within the Center for Entrepreneurship. She has her own consultancy Praan Solutions. She can be contacted at sharda@praansol.com

53

mail enCounters –a bird’s eye view of the Dept. of Posts

54

90% Rural Areas

7,176 Average people served by a

post office

21.21 sq.km Average area served by a post

office

25,563 Departmental post offices

129,416 Branch Post office (rural areas)

2.06 Lakh Departmental employees

2.69 Lakh Grameen Dak Sewaks

(rural areas)

Outstanding balance as on 31.3.2010 from Savings A/cs, Recurring Deposits, Time Deposits, Monthly Income Scheme, Public Provident Fund, Kisan Vikas Patra, NSC, Senior Citizen Savings Scheme.

Savings accounts operated by the Post office Savings Bank, the oldest & largest banking institution in the country.

`5,828,329.6 Million

579,595 Letter boxes in the country

29.32 million kms Covered by 1273 mail motor vehicles to convey mails & operational requirements

14,415 Post offices computerised

240 Million

Financial Services

Interesting Facts

2 types of postage stamps are released by the Department of Posts:

DEFINITIVE Stamps: for day-to-day mail articles, printed in large quantities and longer periods

COMMEMORATIVE Stamps: to commemorate special occasions, printed in limited quantities

154,979Post offices in

the country

55

The Human Resources Function @ Dept. of Posts

Enabling The Differently Abled

15%

85%

Empl

oyee

Dem

ogra

phic

s (D

epar

tmen

tal)

31,011 Women

175,323 Men

1,411 Ex-Servicemen

27 Disabled Ex-Servicemen

37,196 Scheduled Castes

14,402 Scheduled Tribes

EMPLOYEE WELFARE

(2010-11)

3% Reservation under Sec 33 of PWD Act in respect of Direct Recruitment vacancies for disabled persons

1% for persons with blindness & low vision

1% for persons with hearing impairment

1% for persons with loco motor disability or cerebral palsy

`21,430,000 allocated to staff welfare activities

`15,630,000 allocated to sports activities

52 postal dispensaries in 45 cities / towns

3% of funds under educational schemes earmarked for scholarships of handicapped children of employees drawing up to Rs. 29,790 per month.

Source: Annual Report 2010-11, Department of Posts

56

DOWN1. It is a concept that explains the gap between basic wage rates and

actual earnings, which tend to be higher because of overtime, bonuses, and other monetary incentives. (4,5)

2. Feature of wage incentive plans that call for a substantial increase in incentive payments when the quantity and/or quality of output reaches a specified level.(4,5)

3. It is a situation in which persons able and willing to work actively seek to work at the prevailing wage rate but remain unemployed (12)

8. Is an individual who has just joined an organisation as an employee. (3,4)

9. It is the paid time leave granted only to men upon the birth of a child. (5,5)

10. It indicates decrease in the size of a workforce through normal processes, such as voluntary resignations, retirements, discharges for cause, transfers, and deaths. (9)

ACROSS1. He is an individual who believes that public interest

overrides the interests of their organisation and publicly “blows the whistle” if their organisation is involved in corrupt, illegal, fraudulent or harmful activity. (7,6)

4. This despised emblem of excessive formality and attention to routine has its origins in the red ribbon with which clerks bound up official documents in the last century. The ribbon has disappeared, but the practices it represents linger on (3,4)

5. It is a process of translating planning and programming decisions into specific projected financial plans for relatively short periods of time. (9)

6. It is a government department, agency or subdivision of it. (6)

7. In “Expectancy Theory of Motivation,” the term means value that an employee places on an incentive or reward.(7)

11. Transferring a worker from one assignment to another in order to minimize boredom and/or enhance skills. (3,8)

12. Appointment of an individual from outside of the organisation to a position above the bottom level of a generally recognized career ladder. (7,5)

13. It is the basic pay that an employee earns for a standard workday. (5,4)

14. It means discrimination against those who are considered old. (6)

15. It refers to any standard that is identified with sufficient detail so that other similar classification can be compared as being above, below, or comparable to the set standard.(9)

16. The jargon stands for a promotion in which though there is an increase in status but there is no monetary increase. (3,9)

Solution

57