ORMSCan Math help improve HR mandates in an organization? This was a question I posed to Atanu Basu while I was interviewing him for a blog post I was doing on Predictive Analytics for HR. Atanu works for this firm called DataInfoCom who have been working on solving a bunch of business problems for companies like Dell and Microsoft. Since then I have been talking to him about potential opportunities for building Predictive HR. Recently the Operations Research and Management Sciences Today magazine in their October 2010 issue printed the article Atanu and I co-authored on possible opportunities for using Predictive Analytics for four major areas of HR. Here is the article that appeared in the ORMS Today magazine.Listen randomly to ten interviews of Global Fortune 500 CEO’s and you will hear them mention “it is all about the people” in the company. HR professionals have the important mandate of making a business successful by acquiring, engaging, and developing talent. While some corporations are legendary for their people practices – GE and PepsiCo come to mind – most companies still go about the business of talent acquisition, retention, and development the same way they did in the past. While there has been intent, in the absence of the appropriate tools, HR and business leaders have found it challenging to deliver on the HR agenda. Predictive Analytics and related technologies have the ability to transform HR as we know it. We started exploring this area over a year ago.Let’s look at the HR mandates and explore how predictive decisions can deliver business value.
I believe that HR and Marketing should be part of the same department. Marketing is about having conversations with the external world while HR is about having conversations with the internal world - aka employees. There is something lopsided about organizations. They will spend oodles of dollars trying to know about what the customers want, track their shifts, buy research on how their products compare to the competitors. Above all, a minor shift in consumer preferences will lead to long debates in the boardroom. Ever see the Internal Marketing department obsess about the needs, wants and aspirations of the internal customers? See, how you don't react to that statement unless I say ever seen the average HR department obsess about tracking and studying employees with the same degree of meticulousness? Naah. It is just not in the DNA of organizations. It maybe the same behavior that prompts people to be more courteous and caring towards a potential partner than when that partner morphs into a spouse. Valentine's Day is the one day that majority of husbands buy flowers for their wives. The other 364 days be damned.Until now I thought it is just Marketing and HR that should be merged. Now I am convinced that we need to bring CRM into the same department. I looked up the definition of CRM in Wikipedia."Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work together to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs."Wouldn't it be great if there were to be a CRM aimed purely at salvaging employee grievances? Read the article to know how.
The Wall Street Journal was doing a story on How to Get Hired at Wipro. Then we got talking about things like Leadership Qualities that help people succeed at Wipro and of course the vital question:What helps an individual grow at Wipro?My answer: First would be strategic leadership. This would involve an individual’s understanding of the business environment and ability to inspire people in that direction.The second quality will be customer-centricity. Your customer decides whether you have met their expectations or not. Thus, to grow you need to understand customer priority.The third would be to work in collaboration to get a multiplier effect. This is a huge trade quality one must have. For example, as an individual you are able to achieve X and someone else achieves Y. Instead of working to get a collaborated result that is a sum of X+Y, people should instead work to get a result that is X x Y.Building talent will be the fourth. This helps in promoting different styles of doing the same thing. There is a widely known 70:20:10 model of development that describes what helps people to grow. According to this model, 70% of a professional’s development happens from experiences gained while at the job. If the job is challenging enough it contributes 70% to the individual’s development. Some 20% is driven by the kind of mentor you work with at a level senior to yours and the remaining 10% comes from the formal inputs and classroom sessions you have. Coaching is a significant part of development. The more conversations you have with an expert the more you learn.
Peter Cappelli is the Director - Center for HR at The Wharton Business School. The author of a very insightful book The Indian Way - How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management and of course Talent on Demand. He has been a thought leader in the area of Talent Management. His recent study done for PWC stirred up a lot of HR professionals. (If you haven't read it, you should and share it with your HR team as well the business leaders.) I asked him a few questions about what he would advise HR professionals at the entry level and also the experienced ones. Read on for more.
Anyone who works for a "staff function" or a "support function" will tell you that the nature of this function is advisory. The people belonging to this function investigate, research, and give advice to their line managers. The value of the function really then lies in becoming a trusted advisor to the business. Being a trusted advisor simply means that the "clients" value the deep subject matter expertise that the specialist brings to the table. All advisory professions have to earn the trust of the client without which they are not relevant. That is as true for Human Resources professionals as it is for a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant ... the list goes on. The feeling of professional self worth of such professionals is very directly linked to how valuable they and their advise is to the others. The more they are consulted the more valued they feel.
I believe that leaders who bring in a multi function, multi business and multi geography perspective will succeed better since business opportunities are going to lie at intersection points. For instance: When you have a leader who understands not just mobile technology but also consumer needs around entertainment or education, there is a business opportunity. If that person were to be a designer, you have a brilliant combination. I believe the consumer will become more sophisticated and look beyond meeting purely functional needs. They will look for design and aesthetics in the products or services. Leaders who are equally at home in quantitative analysis as they are in understanding qualitative nuances will be more successful. Clearly people who have a more eclectic education - say Finance, Human Resources and Design will be valuable. A more international outlook will make a leader comfortable in not only understanding cultural nuances of the consumer but will also build a more inclusive work environment which will attract the best talent globally.
When you ask interns about their experiences with their project guides or managers, you get to hear some crazy stories. The insecure and moronic will always treat Interns as a form of life similar to amoeba and consequently low down on the food chain. While the smarter people use the interns to get a fresh perspective to some real life issues and problems. The evolved look at it as an opportunity to build the employer brand.The jobs are back. So are internships. Their cover story of 15 April 2010 is labelled Angels, Bosses and Demons. The article clearly identifies the ideal boss. You have to decide who they refered to as Demon or Angel. JAM's reporter Prachi Parekh wanted to know how I would treat an intern. Here are some excerpts...
