Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
How To Raise Smart Employees
We inherit most employees at the workplace. We do not raise them in the strict sense that parents raise children. Parents lovingly will potty train their progeny, teach them language skills, values and give them unconditional love despite the pranks and bad report cards. They will willingly cart them around for soccer matches after school, suffer them through teenage tantrums and beyond. Is it even fair to expect managers to do somewhat similar stuff for their team members? For one the managers do not necessarily choose every one they need to manage. They hire some of them, some are inherited and some join teams as a result of the shifting sands of time. There is research that shows good schooling correlates particularly closely to higher I.Q.’s. One indication of the importance of school is that children’s I.Q.’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them).
Managing the Net Gen
Just who is the Net Generation? If you are between 11 and 31 this year, this is the label that describes you. The web2.0 developments describe what this group wants. They want to collaborate, exchange ideas, opinions (and music), wants to multi task all the time and thinks TV is for the older humans. This gen spends money on texting friends. The technology that grows up as a response to this generation reflects these themes - social networking tools, individual expression and sharing stuff about their lives digitally that would make their parents blush. The generation that started using MySpace and Facebook when the previous gen believed MySpace refered to the messy corner of the house where the teenagers chucked their socks and underwear that would someday be washed.Lesson for organizations: Learn to use the social networking sites to build your company's presence on the net. Whether you like it or not others are already saying things about you and your organization - some of it is available on the net for you to see. You might as well get there and shape the opinion actively. If you want to be an employer of choice for them think whether your employer brand is attractive enough to attract the top 1% of the eligible workforce. Do you know what your net profile looks like? Do you have a page on Facebook or fan club on Orkut? Do any of your top leaders blog? Do your employees make fun videos on their phones and post it on youtube for the world to see? If you are still thinking that we are a serious company and work with serious people and all this Facebook page stuff is all fluff then think again. You will never be able to talk to the brightest NetGen employees and even if you manage to hire them you won't be able to retain them or engage them long enough. Does your company's Staffing team understand digital marketing at all? Here is a recruitment video made to attract teachers to New York city's inner schools which have traditionally had difficulty attracting the best teachers. I love the tag " I teach NYC because every day it teaches me"While you do not HAVE to be chronologically between 11 and 31 years old to be considered the Net Gen, let me put a small question to you. What do you use the phone for? To talk to my friends/ colleagues etc. you say. Ask the net gen this question and they will say the phone is used to tell the time, take pictures, listen to music, watch clips, text their friends and receive call from parents to tell them that they will be late. Let us try question two. If you have a deadline that you need to meet for your project submission will you lock yourself in a room where you are away from the sound of the television or music that someone is playing at home? Or will you put on the computer, switch on some music, keep the phone handy to text your friends, receive instant messenger alerts from your online friends, quickly check on your facebook friends, sneak a glance at the music video on TV and tweeter your current status in 140 words and yeah... all this while you keep working on the project. If the latter describes the Net Gen's definition of multitasking. Work and fun are all deeply intertwined. Nothing holds their attention span for long. A TV commercial of 30 seconds could be too long to hold their attention if the story is not told in an engaging manner. Books are read by flipping through for some nuggets and key ideas and not necessarily read page by page and certainly not line by line! There is a change in the way information is obtained and shared.Lesson for organizations: Does your organization not have enough opportunities for people to vent and share opinions about what they don't like about the organization. Do you still believe that conformance and managing by terror is the way Human Resources needs to set the tone of the org culture? Then all that will change with the NetGen in the office. If you don't give them opportunities to share their unvarnished opinion then they will form communities and blogs anyway where they will share their point of view. It is commonplace today that as soon as the employers finish doing the college rounds and hand out internships and job offers, there are communities that will spring up on the social networking sites where to be employees trade info, gossip and research about their possible manager. It is all about two way communication, seeking opinions, collaborating and a non hierarchical work environment. If you think just because you let the newbie call you by first name you are non hierarchical, think again.Implications for Managers: Make the work interesting. You will get a lot more out of the NetGen if they are actively engaged. This is a generation that has grown up getting a lot of attention and appreciation from their parents. Doting parents have hugged them and applauded them for doing stuff all toddlers have done across generations without even being acknowledged. The 11-31 year old will automatically look up to the manager to receive frequent doses of appreciation for accomplishing anything in the workplace. The NetGen is used to the limelight being on themselves. This is the iPod generation which has the ability to tune out the world around them by simply plugging in to their earphones. Give clear guidelines and share clearly consequences of non compliance but don't look over the shoulders to see if they are still preening their status on Facebook.Check out this brilliant eight part series by Don Tapscott in Businessweek
Predictive Analytics for HR
Human Resources has long been looked at as a touchy-feely business. The stereotype of its practitioners is that they give warm and fuzzy answers to most business queries. A lot has been said to malign them. But with HR professionals increasingly turning to use Predictive Analytics all that is set to change. The wikipedia says Predictive Analysis uses different techniques that will analyze historical and current data to make predictions about the future behavior.
The Charm of Raga Desh
What I heard at home as I grew up was almost entirely Hindustani Classical with a limited exposure to a few composers of Western Classical. The radio was our chief source of music. There was of course an old turntable and a large collection of vinyl records that we all heard through the weekend. My father was a classical music buff and if he was home, the radio was on. He would occasionally pull out an old diary and scribble some notes after he heard a piece of music. "I maintain when I have heard what Raga and the name of the artiste", he used to say. "The same raga sung by a different artiste will evoke a different feeling."
Your Resume is Your Commercial
These are tough times and most employers are not even hiring. Wrong. The demand for talented people never drops. Even during recession, the demand for high calibre talent never wavers. During boom times, the good, the bad and the mediocre all get wooed by the employers to counterbalance those leaving the company through the revolving door. In economies which are growing, there is always a need to upgrade talent and the talent scouts are always on the prowl. When the times are demanding, all that changes is that the need to differentiate talent also rises. It is in times like this how you get your foot in the door matters. If a business card summarizes your contact details then your resume is like a print advertisement for your career. So treat your resume as your chance at creating the one page commercial that gives you a high share of the hiring manager's mind.
Five Years Later
"What do you see yourself doing five years from now?" I remember being asked this question when I was a fresh MBA. When I was applying for a role to head Human Resources for an advertsing agency a few years back the question popped up again. I suspect it is not the last time I have been asked that question.Why is this question asked? There could be many different reasons.
Who Wants to be a Manager?
Like the rest of the planet you started off your career at the bottom of the food chain. Everyone around in the office knew you weren't expected to accomplish anything imprtant in the first few days or even months. You were paid to just exist and crib - which you did in plenty. You cribbed to other low life around you and complained that you were underpaid and overworked even while you took long coffee breaks and longer lunch breaks. You complained how unfair life was treating you because you were doing all the grunge work while your manager got all the attention.
Surviving Day One
It happens when you are a starting off your career at the bottom of the food chain. It again happens each time you change jobs. Heck, it happens when you get transferred to a new office/ branch of even the current employer. The newbies all have horror stories to share about how on day one they have been made to feel lost, angry and even humiliated in the office. If that happens to be the first day in a new organization, it leaves the employee wondering if it was indeed a smart decision to have left the previous employer in favor of the current monster. Having spent oodles of money wooing the hotshot talent from the competitor, we now leave them to stumble and fall till they find the roads in our neighborhood and learn how to find their way around. Sounds really convoluted you would say, but it happens everyday in most offices. Chances are that you have experienced it yourself.
Arresting Attrition -Learning From BPOs
In a market where demand for talent far outstrips supply, the organizations continuously face the task of keeping the talent from being snared away by other employers. Over the last few years as India became the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) capital of the world, a new breed of employees started to step into the office cubicle. They were the millennials.
HR Made Easy: How To Do Training Needs Analysis
You flip through the set, smiling at your own cleverness. The trick is to choose something that everyone can be trained on. Finance for Non Finance comes to mind. Everyone needs to do it - including some of them in the Finance department itself. Didn't they all go for it last year? Fuggedit. Going through spreadsheets can be painful. How about Marketing for Non-Marketing or Human Resources for Non Humans... naah... they don't even offer these much needed training programs.
Alumni as Brand Ambassadors
He walks in to your office and in a move that has clearly been learnt from hours of watching soap operas. He whips out his resignation letter and hands it over to you. Your heart skips a beat. You want to show your emotions - but there is a voice inside you that says, "Down boy!! ". You want to jump with joy. You pray that he joins your competitor, because that is the only way the average IQ of both organizations will go up.
The Development Dilemma
Organizations have to make a choice. Should they just buy out managerial talent or grow their own. The short term solution is a no brainer - buy the talent. That usually means fishing around in organizations which have faced similar business challenges as you are. In hiring talent from another organization it works well if besides the work experience fit, there is a match between the values of the two organizations.
Why Do They Quit?
Your favorite team member just walked up to you and announced that she wants to quit. You feel a rush of anger creeping up your spine. Here is the person for whom you went out on a limb and got an extra bonus payout and not to forget the schmoozing time with the big cheese that you spent highlighting this team member's achievements. As they say in T-Group labs, "This is the time to get in touch with your feelings."
Building a Cool Place to Work
Being cool is tough. Ask any teenager. The definition of cool changes every time we change the reference group. Being cool has its payoffs. Everyone wants to be seen around with you. When you look at that happening with an organization, it can be a great talent magnet. Most of the times, the shape of the office building and the recommended distance from the cookie vending machine is seen to make an office cool - at least to the wide eyed newbie. If instead, you focus on these five factors, you can build a CPTW (Cool Place To Work) that can be sustained.
Who Is Your Competitor?
"If you don't know where you are going, you cannot get lost!" Sound advice for a lot of drivers and travelers you would think. Rascal Rusty had once said "When in doubt, it is a safe option to ascribe any saying to Confucious. After all not too many people will be able to check back with him."
Early Adopters, Long Tails and Laggards
A trend happens when a fad goes mainstream and stays for a duration long enough to attract increasingly larger percentages of the population. A fad is therefore a trend in diapers. We have no idea if it will grow up to be a Nobel Laureate or a serial kisser. Both begin with some brave souls who are tired of conforming to the norms of the larger group. That large group could be defined as your little fiefdom in the office map or the society at large. The need to be "different" is the mother of all fads and trends.
