IIM ROHTAK H U M A N E - R CLUB P re s e n ts
H R BULLETIN VOLUME 97
humane.r@iimrohtak.ac.in
H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
HR BULLETIN
Don’t leave HR to HR! It does not matter which position you are hiring for at the start, whether you are looking for a coffee vendor or a co-founder or a temp coder or a permanent member of sales staff, you as the founder need to be hands-on in the hiring process. This is for the ones who aspire to start their businesses from the ground up and those who have a start-up, HR is far too important to be left to the ‘HR department.’ Don’t get me wrong, I am a loyal supporter of human resource management, having been a practitioner, researcher, and an academician in the field. My simple point is that the management of your human resources is far too important a task to be left to the ones who you employ to take care of ‘HR stuff.’ It is not a support function you look into when you need to scale up or to check off statutory boxes. It is a strategic partner who you need to know and understand from the start of your journey. Stay with me, and hear me out.
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
Be the driver When you start a business, whether you want to be the next Unicorn, or impress a certain Shark, or expand your family business, or just present your idea to the world and earn while you are at it, one of the most important partners are the people who are with you from the start, your co-founders, your CXOs, your full-time employees, your contract staff, basically, your human resources. The team that you assemble at the start will be the team that could make or break the business. You may be the one who conceptualized the idea, prepared the business plan, brought in the funding, lined up initial interested customers, and did a few more things, yet you can’t be the only one handling everything. As the mind and soul behind your start-up, it is vital that you accept that you still need arms and legs, to put it crudely, to get the company moving. And I hope most of you are nodding along while you are reading this, and it may seem common sense as well. I am hardly presenting this as an original idea. My point to drive home is that when the selection, motivation, development, and retention of the initial team is so important for you and your business, why not invest your time and talent in this from the start the same way you do in the other aspects of your business. Be active in hiring It does not matter which position you are hiring for at the start, whether you are looking for a coffee vendor or a co-founder or a temp coder or a permanent member of sales staff, you as the founder need to be hands-on in the hiring process. I am obviously not saying that the intensity of the involvement is similar in all these positions. You might actually find it a lot tougher to negotiate with a coffee vendor who can provide the perfect dark elixir every morning at an affordable cost and high level of hygiene than you may to stumble across an enthusiastic young coder willing to work long hours to help develop your app. Be clear on what you are looking for One of the crucial functions of human resource management is workforce planning, and this is true for any business at any stage of its life cycle. Workforce planning for you as a founder, in the initial phase would mean mapping out all essential and non-essential activities and operations over the period of next 12 months to your planned business goals. Once you do this, you further map the resource allocation requirements for all these activities. For example, if you intend to create a beta version of a mental fitness app in the next six months, you need to know what are the resources in terms of capital, equipment, technology, labour, infrastructure, and knowledge that you would require to do so. Let’s focus on the labour aspect. Say, you decide you would need two coders working for 40-45 hours a week along with you to do this. You then jot down the type of activities that both coders would be involved in, their required levels of knowledge, skills, and abilities, your preferences for educational backgrounds, required prior experience, the behavioural aspects you think are important for them to be a part of your team, and the pay you are willing to offer for the positions. This is the first level of clarity you need in order to pitch to the pool of applicants out there to be willing to come work for you. This clarity is mapped out in what is known as job descriptions. The elevator pitch HR is a crucial strategic tool in your arsenal that warrants your attention and involvement. The initial activities of workforce planning, hiring, onboarding, pay design need to be aligned with your values and vision for the business. You can work in tandem with an HR expert or consultant and even outsource part of these functions to more qualified people. What you should not outsource is the final decision on who becomes a part of your initial team. Know their name, their backgrounds, their intents, their life goals, their motivations, their pain areas, and you will gain a committed, engaged, productive team who will partner with you to cross the milestones that you have set for your first year…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/dont-leave-hrto-hr-34058
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
HR Day Special: How talent leaders are rewriting the playbook in 2022 The two years of disruption not only expanded HR’s business influence but also led to a renewed focus on employees. So, what happens next, and what should HR prepare for? The world has seen a major transition in work culture, employee and employer mindsets, and reliance on technology, giving rise to unprecedented challenges for businesses and leadership. The handbook for this new era of business doesn’t exist; everyone is drafting their own as they go along, dealing with situations with no prior precedent and solutions in history. The human resources (HR) department, which has changed and adapted to become more business-oriented, is now an independent decision-maker in terms of a company's strategy and direction. HR executives are increasingly at the forefront of business and are expected to drive more value creation and delivery. From ensuring flexibility, building trust, fostering collaboration, exploring new avenues of growth, actively listening to workers' needs, to building a strong and healthy culture, talent leaders are now called upon to deliver more in the new era of work and rewrite the playbook for the future. However, creating jobs and career pathways to meet those motivations is difficult, especially as people's motivations at work are more varied and divergent than in the past. The edges of the firm are getting more and more blurred and the relationship between worker and firm more fluid, thanks to the way technology facilitates gig labour, remote employment, and the automation of certain jobs. This is making the job of people leaders – which is ALL leaders – more difficult than ever. The greatest challenge over the next few years will be to accelerate transformation by instituting new approaches to old challenges - a difficult undertaking in itself. Talent managers must understand that they ought to create an environment in which individuals WANT to (not NEED to) show up at work every day…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/hr-day-specialhow-talent-leaders-are-rewriting-the-playbook-in-2022-34046
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
How are companies attracting new IT talent? Hint: It's not just pay Financial incentives are still popular, but employers are promoting other benefits as a way of attracting and keeping badly-needed talent. A chronic shortage of talent has become the number one challenge in the IT sector. In a new global survey conducted last month by multicloud solutions company Rackspace Technology, IT leaders worldwide are finding it one of the most pressing issues today. 53% of respondents across all industries singled out the talent shortfall as the top business challenge, even more so than inflation (48%) and supply chain issues - even the chip shortage that plagues industries is less troubling than this. The biggest immediate challenge resulting from the talent shortage is the inability to adopt and implement new technologies, according to IT decision makers. In some cases - the survey highlights cloud technology as an example the talent shortage is a barrier to meeting the organisation's top IT priorities. Companies are still trying to figure out the best options for attracting and retaining IT talent, though. On the one hand, elevated salaries have become the norm for many companies desperately trying to attract tech talent - anecdotes abound of talent being lured away by massive premiums - but on the other hand, spiralling wages are not sustainable. The Rackspace survey found that companies are now trying to attract IT staff with training and development opportunities (40%) instead. Financial incentives are still popular, with 32% offering 'moderate' increases in starting salaries and 21% still offering 'large' increases, but just as many employers are promoting flexible work instead, and in fact flexi/hybrid/work from home opportunities, together with training and development, are rated the most successful strategy for retaining the talent they already have. Oddly, 77% of respondents say their employees prefer working from home and 69% say their staff work longer hours from home, but only 32% consider flexible work a key strategy to attract new IT talent.
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruitment/how-arecompanies-attracting-new-it-talent-hint-its-not-just-pay-34039
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
Making the switch: The growing trend among professionals Gen Z is giving conventional careers a miss for lucrative and alternative professions these days. HR leaders explain the emergence of the trend, how the pandemic changed the landscape of work, what millennials are looking for in a job today, and whether this trend will persist. What’s the one thing that is common among the celebrated fashion designer Vera Wang, actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos? All of them realised their true calling later in life. While many individuals opt for traditional education paths such as engineering, finance, banking and law due to parental pressure or a lack of awareness, a lot of them in their late 20s these days are making the switch to lucrative and unconventional careers, which include travel blogging, turning influencers, building their startups, acting, and even writing. So, what is the reason behind this rising trend? Is it the desire for a better work-life balance, being your own boss, flexible hours, contributing towards the society or working at a pace that is to one’s liking? According to the Michael Page India Talent Trends 2022 report that was out recently, 86% of employees will be looking for new career prospects over the next six months. Emergence of the trend Clinton Wingrove, an HR consultant, is of the opinion that trends of this nature typically have their origins in the formative years of these individuals – the environment in which they had their early nurture and the period of education up to their mid-teens…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/making-theswitch-the-growing-trend-among-professionals34049?media_type=article&subcat=culture&title=making-the-switch-thegrowing-trend-among-professionals&id=34049
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 97
Prioritising candidate relationships improves hiring performance: Report 50% of companies say they did not hit their hiring goals and 60% say it is taking longer to hire, reveals The Hiring Insights Report by GoodTime, which goes on to show what it is important to move ahead in this key aspect in the era of the 'Great Resignation', the 'Distance Economy', and the 'War for Talent'. Antiquated pre-Covid tactics -- like just flaunting nap rooms and massage chairs -- are, and will continue to be, ineffective in wooing top talent but creating meaningful relationships with candidates is the key, a report says. Nearly 46% businesses say creating meaningful relationships with candidates is more important than ever, reveal the findings from the recent report by GoodTime, whose flagship product, Hire, allows organisations to win top talent faster with Candidate Relationship Intelligence. Among the leading candidate-focused hiring practices include flexibility in scheduling during the interview process and demonstration of the company's culture, mission, and values. Providing office tours and free lunch during the interview were also noted but considered "relics of the past". The Hiring Insights Report by GoodTime surveyed 560 HR, talent, and recruiting leaders across the US to hear about their most critical hiring challenges—and how they're meeting the demands of modern candidates in a changed hiring landscape. The report highlights the challenges of hiring during both the 'Great Resignation' as well as the emerging 'Distance Economy', focusing on what companies are doing, not doing, or are planning to do to hit their hiring goals…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/news/strategic-hr/prioritising-candidaterelationships-improves-hiring-performance-report34028?media_type=news&subcat=recruitment&title=prioritising-candidate-relationshipsimproves-hiring-performance-report&id=34028
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