Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
Book Review: Introduction to People Analytics
People Analytics will undergo a big shift. How do we build a people function that is relevant for the post-Covid world? HR will need to offer measures of productivity, engagement and skills. Analytics can be a great conversation starter, because it is hard to argue with insights that are data-driven. This book can be a good read for everyone in HR. The line that stayed with me was, “HR will not be replaced by data analytics. But HR people who do not use data and analytics will be replaced by people who do.”
Employee Experience Design: Making It Boundaryless
Do the employees trust the intent of the leaders? Without trust, even the best of EX designs will be looked at with suspicion. Is the leader fair? Does the leader have integrity? The biggest element for great EX is to co-create it. The company’s policies reflect the assumptions the employer has about the employees. When Netflix said they offered unlimited vacation, they said the employee could be trusted not to misuse it.
Before fixing bias in AI, let us fix our own
Something happens to us when we see ourselves as the majority. The people who are not like us become invisible. The majority writes the rule book to favor themselves in every way. Think of the challenge of left-handed people who wish to play the guitar or use a pair of scissors. The French word for right is “droit” and that is how adroit becomes a synonym for skilful in English. The left hand is called “gauche” in French which is how we describe something that is socially awkward.
Freelancers - the hot trend in talent management
Every freelancer has to be their own C-Suite. If they do not understand the complexity of the taxes they have to pay, they can work with an accounting firm or a tax lawyer. In an organization, the Learning and Development team will assess the gaps in soft skills (along with the technical knowledge and domain knowledge) that are there for each employee and create a plan to bridge the gap. That option goes away for freelancers. They can’t assess their own skill gap in this area.
Your L&D strategy is missing one key element
To help employees build the habit of learning, providing them some slack time to learn and reflect plus the opportunity to try it out at work and get feedback.
Talent Acquisition in the Gig Economy
Working with open-talent system of gig workers will need specialized talent acquisition teams. New processes in every department from legal contracts to accounts payable will be needed. New technology that makes it possible for the gig worker to give his or her best need to be created. Experts already find that they make more money through gig work while having the flexibility of hours and the freedom to choose the projects they wish to work on.
Using AI to Improve Talent Acquisition
While the job descriptions may be the same, you probably do the same job very differently from your predecessor. Personality shapes several aspects of the role – our ability to bounce back after rejection (Sales roles); risk taking ability; our method of competing with others or even how much we voluntarily socialize with colleagues can be traced to personality. A caveat: use a personality assessment tool that is scientifically validated and reliable. Humantic uses AI to assess the candidate for Big Five personality traits without requiring her to answer a questionnaire.
Building India as a talent-hub
Automation may require an estimated 375 million workers to reskill for new jobs by 2030. New jobs are being created that have never existed before. Being a standup comedian is a thing now. As is the role of a ‘Tweeter-in-Chief’ that Twitter it looking for to run its Twitter account. The position requires a “fun, creative person with story-telling skills”.
The Boundaryless Talent Pool - Digital Nomads
Neelima and Shivya are two samples of what lies ahead for HR. The talent pool is soon going to become location-independent. These are new kinds of careers that did not exist before. This work is being done by a boundaryless worker whose office is their mobile phone. Their resume is on social media.
Courage and Inspiration: The New Leadership Standard
The most inspiring name on the 2019 list of leaders is Greta Thunberg. She is a 16 year old student activist who is campaigning for climate change. On Twitter page she describes herself as "a 16-year-old climate activist with Asperger [syndrome]". Her work on climate change earned her a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Making her a year younger than Malala who won it at the age of seventeen.
Book Review: Demystifying Digital Transformation
The 5 E model begins with Exploration. This is where businesses must re-evaluate their value-proposition in view of the recent technology trends and shifts in the consumer’s behavior. This where the organization must generate options to deliver the value-proposition in the new world. Phase 2 is called Experimentation with all possible ways to deliver the new value-proposition. Evaluate its potential to develop and scale. Check if the new options cannibalize the existing product lines or augment it. Read more ...
Performance Management - beyond count and comparison
Advertising agencies are judged on two parameters. The clients evaluate them on the impact they had on the additional sales and trust in the brand. The peers compete on the number of awards won. The industry judges the agency on the thought leadership and breakthrough thinking. The senior leaders are judged on the number of awards the team members have won under their leadership. If work is going to be all about creative output, maybe it is time for performance management to be designed along with people who have figured out how to evaluate and nurture creativity – the mad men.
Book Review: Great at Work
The way to do this is to redesign your work so as to focus on value, not goals. Looking at your work in terms of the impact you are creating for others helps you discover your passion and purpose. Spending just 15 minutes a day of “deliberate practice”. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance – like Jiro crafting each piece of sushi.
Trust in a hyperconnected world
When people put up videos that are slickly edited to leave out flaws and pauses, they convince us that they are not being authentic. It is your flaws – not your perfect self that makes you trustworthy.
The New Skills Marketplace
We can no longer tell a first-time workforce entrant to find a stable job. The job market is in a state of “perpetual beta”. There are sectors and organizations that are collapsing because of new business models. Jobs are getting unbundled and being looked at as a set of skills. Some of these skills will be automated. Some skills will be done by humans. Definitely, constant skill upgradation is the new norm.
Book Review: Just Start
The authors of the book "Just Start – take action, embrace uncertainty", create the future says just that. That’s what serial entrepreneurs do. They don’t wait for the fog to clear. They start moving as soon as they have an idea. They try to stay within what they would define as an “acceptable loss”. They create a prototype and wait for the reaction of the consumer or potential consumer.
Can a growth mindset enable success
The experiments in “growth mindset” were primarily done on children in the beginning and it was observed that intelligence does change in children and fluctuates the most during adolescence and then stabilizes. So just wishing for it to increase is not going to make it happen. Think of intelligence as the processor in a computer. Having a faster processor makes the programs load faster.