In most organizations HR personnel together with the Senior Management are jointly responsible for creating all employee related initiatives. However the charge of properly communicating and executing the same remains primarily with HR, hence even if HR personnel are not directly responsible for an initiative going wrong, they definitely remain accountable for it.
Many organizations have adopted various forms of Management by Objectives (MBO) where the focus is on goals or outcomes rather than just activities. Hence if an initiative does not materialize, it affects the entire HR department’s goal sheet. Since in such transparent systems there is no option to pass the blame to some other department or person, it is always a good idea to take the responsibility and come up with corrective and preventive measures to ensure that such incidents do not recur.
To mend such problems, the following steps can be taken:
1. Do a ‘root cause’ analysis – the first step is always to find out why the initiative had failed; methodologies like the Five Why’s, Pareto analysis, Fishbone (Cause- Effect/Ishikawa) diagrams can help.
2. Have a corrective action plan – to remove the root cause and clearly assign tasks. Things like who, when, what and how needs to be made clear to bring accountability into the process.
3. Periodic/Milestone reviews and follow ups – have a plan to check the progress or execution of the incentive on a periodic basis or based on the agreed milestones. Have frequent follow up meetings or provide feedback wherever deviations are noticed.
4. Update to all stakeholders – all employees and relevant stakeholders (like customers, suppliers etc.) need to be informed about the initiative and its progress or effect. Transparency, accountability, and increased chances of success in execution can then be maintained.
5. Training – is highly essential to ensure that the new defined process is understood and followed properly. For example in our organisation, our training programs ensure that all employees have awareness of the quality system and are process oriented.
Whenever an employee related initiative fails, due to whatever reasons, all stakeholders are a little worse off. For the employee it might also create a perception of ‘false promises’ or ‘lack of interest’ from the Management. However if the processes are transparent and there is collective accountability, chances of the initiative succeeding are high. By removing the “us vs. them” mindset, HR can help ensure all initiatives succeed. This in effect makes the organization a better place to work in and also positively impacts employee loyalty.
Changing Role of HR
HR has traditionally played mostly a support role in most organizations and the general perception remains that HR is just the execution wing of the Senior Management’s decisions or initiatives. However recent developments shows that HR is gradually moving to a more strategic role in organizations, wherein HR advises the Management on the initiatives to introduce and/or prioritize based on either the industry norms/benchmarks or feedback received from the employees. Hence HR is now actively involved in all the stages of the initiative, right from planning to execution.
Proper communication and explanation is the key for the success of any initiative. Similarly, celebrating successes is also the key to spreading the message of policy adoption. In our organisation, HR runs the internal global newsletter that provides a very convenient and accessible forum to explain policy benefits, successes and the occasional hiccups!
Though HR actively advises the Senior Management on the type of initiatives or employee policies that needs to be included for maintaining a good work environment and organizational culture, it is the Management which decides and finalizes the same. Post such decisions however, it becomes the responsibility of HR to ensure that all initiatives are executed properly and in a timely manner. Whenever an employee policy backfires or a good work culture is not being maintained, HR remains primarily accountable for the same.
In our organization, employee satisfaction is in the goal sheets of HR dept as well as all Senior Managers. It is one of the four mother strategies adopted in finalizing our corporate goals. HR is always represented in the weekly corporate management meeting. Any employee policy/initiative is developed and formalized jointly with Senior Management. Execution of these policies/initiatives is the responsibility of HR at the organizational level and of the respective managers at the departmental level.
A real life example on managing an initiative headed towards failure
Though I am yet to experience an initiative that has completely failed, I do have experienced many cases where corrections/changes had to be made to HR policies/initiatives to ensure their success. To cite a fairly recent example, we had revised our appraisal process to tie all salary hikes and incentives to performance outcomes based on Key Result Areas (KRAs) mutually agreed between the employee and his/her reporting Manager. The appraisal cycle was also changed from July to April this year. However neither the Senior Management nor HR was prepared for the turn of events (global economic recession) that happened right afterwards.
Since most of the KRA’s were linked to the customer, many employees who were handling customers in countries that were in recession were starting to get apprehensive about their jobs. The general mindset was that the appraisal will be used to either get rid of the low/not-important performers (at worst) or give no salary hike but a tentative job security (at best). With the recession affecting some of our strategic business units, the Management was also debating about postponing the appraisal cycle back to July or scrapping it altogether for the current year. However after many internal discussions involving the Senior Management and HR, it was agreed that postponing or scrapping the appraisals would have a very negative impact on all employees. After doing some research on the industry and competitors, a new method of salary increment was devised. It comprised of a unique combination of variable and incentive based pay linking the individual and the overall organization’s (instead of country/region) performance. The critical part was then about communicating it in a proper manner to all staff so that there was a collective agreement that the process was fair and transparent. First the Senior-Managers/Department-Heads were communicated about the new scheme and their feedback taken. Once an agreement was reached with them, HR communicated this scheme to all Managers followed by a general meeting with all staff.
By having a tiered formal communication, there was a joint responsibility from all levels of management to ensure that the initiative was a success and there was a collective buy-in on this scheme. Employees were also encouraged to have both formal channels (HR, reporting Manager’s) and informal channels (team members) of communications to have a better understanding of the new appraisal processes.
Excerpts of this article has been published in Express Computers - http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20090921/technologylife01.shtml
Many organizations have adopted various forms of Management by Objectives (MBO) where the focus is on goals or outcomes rather than just activities. Hence if an initiative does not materialize, it affects the entire HR department’s goal sheet. Since in such transparent systems there is no option to pass the blame to some other department or person, it is always a good idea to take the responsibility and come up with corrective and preventive measures to ensure that such incidents do not recur.
To mend such problems, the following steps can be taken:
1. Do a ‘root cause’ analysis – the first step is always to find out why the initiative had failed; methodologies like the Five Why’s, Pareto analysis, Fishbone (Cause- Effect/Ishikawa) diagrams can help.
2. Have a corrective action plan – to remove the root cause and clearly assign tasks. Things like who, when, what and how needs to be made clear to bring accountability into the process.
3. Periodic/Milestone reviews and follow ups – have a plan to check the progress or execution of the incentive on a periodic basis or based on the agreed milestones. Have frequent follow up meetings or provide feedback wherever deviations are noticed.
4. Update to all stakeholders – all employees and relevant stakeholders (like customers, suppliers etc.) need to be informed about the initiative and its progress or effect. Transparency, accountability, and increased chances of success in execution can then be maintained.
5. Training – is highly essential to ensure that the new defined process is understood and followed properly. For example in our organisation, our training programs ensure that all employees have awareness of the quality system and are process oriented.
Whenever an employee related initiative fails, due to whatever reasons, all stakeholders are a little worse off. For the employee it might also create a perception of ‘false promises’ or ‘lack of interest’ from the Management. However if the processes are transparent and there is collective accountability, chances of the initiative succeeding are high. By removing the “us vs. them” mindset, HR can help ensure all initiatives succeed. This in effect makes the organization a better place to work in and also positively impacts employee loyalty.
Changing Role of HR
HR has traditionally played mostly a support role in most organizations and the general perception remains that HR is just the execution wing of the Senior Management’s decisions or initiatives. However recent developments shows that HR is gradually moving to a more strategic role in organizations, wherein HR advises the Management on the initiatives to introduce and/or prioritize based on either the industry norms/benchmarks or feedback received from the employees. Hence HR is now actively involved in all the stages of the initiative, right from planning to execution.
Proper communication and explanation is the key for the success of any initiative. Similarly, celebrating successes is also the key to spreading the message of policy adoption. In our organisation, HR runs the internal global newsletter that provides a very convenient and accessible forum to explain policy benefits, successes and the occasional hiccups!
Though HR actively advises the Senior Management on the type of initiatives or employee policies that needs to be included for maintaining a good work environment and organizational culture, it is the Management which decides and finalizes the same. Post such decisions however, it becomes the responsibility of HR to ensure that all initiatives are executed properly and in a timely manner. Whenever an employee policy backfires or a good work culture is not being maintained, HR remains primarily accountable for the same.
In our organization, employee satisfaction is in the goal sheets of HR dept as well as all Senior Managers. It is one of the four mother strategies adopted in finalizing our corporate goals. HR is always represented in the weekly corporate management meeting. Any employee policy/initiative is developed and formalized jointly with Senior Management. Execution of these policies/initiatives is the responsibility of HR at the organizational level and of the respective managers at the departmental level.
A real life example on managing an initiative headed towards failure
Though I am yet to experience an initiative that has completely failed, I do have experienced many cases where corrections/changes had to be made to HR policies/initiatives to ensure their success. To cite a fairly recent example, we had revised our appraisal process to tie all salary hikes and incentives to performance outcomes based on Key Result Areas (KRAs) mutually agreed between the employee and his/her reporting Manager. The appraisal cycle was also changed from July to April this year. However neither the Senior Management nor HR was prepared for the turn of events (global economic recession) that happened right afterwards.
Since most of the KRA’s were linked to the customer, many employees who were handling customers in countries that were in recession were starting to get apprehensive about their jobs. The general mindset was that the appraisal will be used to either get rid of the low/not-important performers (at worst) or give no salary hike but a tentative job security (at best). With the recession affecting some of our strategic business units, the Management was also debating about postponing the appraisal cycle back to July or scrapping it altogether for the current year. However after many internal discussions involving the Senior Management and HR, it was agreed that postponing or scrapping the appraisals would have a very negative impact on all employees. After doing some research on the industry and competitors, a new method of salary increment was devised. It comprised of a unique combination of variable and incentive based pay linking the individual and the overall organization’s (instead of country/region) performance. The critical part was then about communicating it in a proper manner to all staff so that there was a collective agreement that the process was fair and transparent. First the Senior-Managers/Department-Heads were communicated about the new scheme and their feedback taken. Once an agreement was reached with them, HR communicated this scheme to all Managers followed by a general meeting with all staff.
By having a tiered formal communication, there was a joint responsibility from all levels of management to ensure that the initiative was a success and there was a collective buy-in on this scheme. Employees were also encouraged to have both formal channels (HR, reporting Manager’s) and informal channels (team members) of communications to have a better understanding of the new appraisal processes.
Excerpts of this article has been published in Express Computers - http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20090921/technologylife01.shtml
If processes are not transparent, how do we solve this problem?
ReplyDeleteHi Taleb,
ReplyDeleteYou have asked a very relevant question. I think before I can answer this, the reason for why the process is not transperent needs to be identified. Some reasons and their possible solutions can be as follows:
1. Is it because the process is not clearly defined (ad-hoc processes)?
If yes, then it will be quite hard for HR or the Management to articulate it clearly to the staff. In fact staff will distrust such a process and the chances of the initiative being a sucess would be extremely low. In such cases a complete and clear (step-by-step) process document is recommended.
2. Is it because after the process is defined, it is not communicated properly to all staff? If yes, then the root cause might lie in the formal and informal channels of communication (top-down) you might have in the organisation. Most initatives fail not because it is not planned properly but because it is not communicated and executed properly.
3. Is it because the staff just has a perception that the processes though well defined are not actually followed?
If yes, this might be the most difficult situation to overcome. Some ways of getting rid of this real (or perceived) mindset is through - a) conducting an "Open House or Forum" with the senior Management or HR before launching any new process/initative, b) building trust through a proactive employee relations program, and c) welcoming anonymous feedback (good or bad) from the staff on the new process.
Hope this helps. If not please feel free to drop me a mail.
Regards,
Partha