Anything HR by Ed

A Leader's Check List for Building High Performance Teams

2009-11-13T10:21:00.007+08:00

I have been conducting training for 14 years and facilitating team building workshops for more than 10 years. I have done all sorts of team building approaches. I facilitated indoor and outdoor activities, ropes course, paintball, amazing race types and a mix of everything. I followed most of the teams I worked with to see if they succeeded in building teamwork or not. And just like not all those who buy self-help books really get to help themselves, not all of those who go to team building workshops help themselves to become effective teams.

What differentiates those who succeed from those who fail to fully harness their team strength?
Two things; leadership and execution (although the latter also boils down to the former)
Leaders area able to follow through, relentlessly on whatever is needed to build the team.

I've always said that going through a team building workshop and then not following through is worse than not going at all. Why? Because it erodes trust to a much lower level than before you did your team building activity. That's definitely not a good thing.

If you are an HR Manager or a Team Leader and you want to build a high performing team, I have five suggestions you might want to add to your to do list:

First, understand the role you play as a leader in building your team. Some managers send their teams to team building workshops expecting that it would turn them into droids who will follow every command without complaining. Some think team building workshops are attitude adjustment events suitable only to their staffs and not to them. They go to the workshop, give an opening remarks then leave or stay in the sidelines. All these come from lack of understanding of the nature of teamwork. As far as I am concerned, it is the leaders who need to make the biggest attitude adjustment if they want better teamwork. If you need help in equipping your managers and supervisors for building high performance teams, click here. I'll be more than happy to help.

Second, pick a team building intervention that is not only fun but one that allows your team to agree on a set of norms to build trust, manage conflicts, demonstrate commitment, be accountable for their actions, and focus on results (Patrick Lencioni, 5 Dysfunctions of a Team). A good team building workshop will not only help participants learn about team working principles, it should help them take specific actions after the workshop to work more effectively as a team. Check out ExeQserve's team building workshop design based on this framework.

Third, follow through on whatever action items were committed during the team building workshop. Managers should meet their team at least a week after the workshop and talk about implementation of norms. Setup a number of review meetings to assess execution of commitments. I believe that team work is not achieved overnight. It takes some painstaking nurturing and shaping from the leader to make it happen. As John Maxwell said. Everything rises and falls on leadership, hence, the leader must actively pursue this.

Fourth: In my experience, particularly with Filipino teams, having norms for open communication is not always enough. Our culture have a very different definition of respect for authority.( See my post on creating a culture of candor and assertiveness in the Filipino Workplace) To be assertive in a Filipino workplace is to risk being branded as disrespectful, griper or too radical for one's own good. To increase the amount of productive collaboration in the team, it helps for every team member ( yes, including the leader) to learn assertive communication skills. If you see your team as having the need to communicate more effectively, please check out this link.

Last but not the least, it helps to have systems and processes that harness the power of teamwork. Programs like Kaizen, Quality Circles and the likes help teams put more structure and regularity to team collaboration. It also helps teams focus their energy towards improvements. If you like this idea, please see our program for implementing the 8D approach to team problem solving and decision making.

Let me reemphasize that everything rises and falls on leadership. The success in building a high performing team depends on the leader's ability to lead. Kouzes and Posner ably encapsulated leadership as inspiring a shared vision, modeling the way, enabling others to act, challenging the process and encouraging the heart. These are all learned skills. Have your leaders learn them.

You may download ExeQserve's complete Team Culture Building Program here.

From Transactional to Strategic HR, The Needed Competencies

2009-11-05T11:15:00.003+08:00

This is the fourth and last of the series on transitioning to strategic HR but definitely not the last time I'm going to write about it. Please read the three previous posts to appreciate this proposal in its totality.

So, aside from the usual HR skills, what other competencies should a strategic HR have? Let me share with you what I think are core. If you think I'm missing some, please feel free to contribute by adding a comment below.

Here's my list.

Strategic Planning
HR should devote some amount of time on learning strategic planning specially from an HR's vantage point. HR should be able to participate in company-wide planning sessions by creating its own plan that responds to and align with the organization's strategic direction. If the company is taking a particulars strategy to achieve it's growth goal, HR should be able to respond to questions like, how many people is needed to perform that strategy? How many of them are here? How many are not? What kind of skills are available? What can we develop, what can we buy from outside? What kind of HR programs should be put in place to ensure consistent alignment with the goals?

Business Savvy
HR cannot continue to think of and implement all sorts of programs and be oblivious of business realities. Every HR action has a corresponding cost attach to it. HR then should always consider returns for every HR-related investments it makes or proposes. HR should learn the language of the business and use it to communicate with management. This is the only way for both parties to fully appreciate HR strategies vis-a-vis organizational strategies.

Mindfulness
In order for the strategic partnership to prosper, HR should be seen as a trusted ally by all, and by all I mean management and employees. HR should be seen as "pro-what's-right" rather than pro-management or pro-labor. If everyone is clear about what HR stands for, they should be able to appreciate HR's action more. In order for HR to successfully demonstrate this, HR needs to communicate a lot. It should be able to explain the wisdom of all it's action. It's not hard when HR is clear about it's values and is able to demonstrate that value with integrity.

Relationship Building
I believe that HR (or any leader for that matter) should operate from a position of influence rather than authority. If HR is to build good working relationship with other managers and the rest of the organization, it cannot throw it's weight around by being impervious to feedback or criticism. HR has to be consultative and attuned to how the rest of the organization is feeling. Propose and sell HR programs and policies, do not impose them. Welcome comments most importantly complaints because that is the best way to improve how things are done within the department. Make friends, don't be distant. I personally propose that you let people call you by your first name rather than ma'am or sir as a lot Filipinos are accustomed to. It will break down invisible barriers like you never imagined.

Change Management
A strategic HR is accustomed to change. The organization that a Strategic HR supports goes through whatever HR related changes smoothly because HR knows change management. I personally recommend that HR looks at all the changes it is implementing using John Kotter's Change Management model as a guide. People are naturally resistant to change they do not understand and have no skill to apply with. Communicate heavily and equip people with the necessary skills. I wrote about the role of this model in my last post, please take time to read it.

Risk Management
A strategic HR is not risk averse, neither is it careless and hasty. Use a methodology for identifying the risks of all your HR actions and incorporate it in your change management plan.

Project Management
Guilty! is my plea and I'm sure a lot of other HR practitioners too on the accusation that our HR programs are almost always behind schedule. There is a lot of reasons (eherm! excuses) for the delay and a lot of them, we will point out to be external. A good project manager identifies all these and work on an implementation plan with all the variables in mind. We should really learn better project management folks!

Technology Savvy
The world of HR is very dynamic. A lot of changes and technological breakthroughs are happening. However, not a lot of them are fully appreciated and applied because a lot of us (I speak from experience) are uninterested. How many of us are using Balanced Score Card? 360 Degrees feedback, sounds familiar? HRIS, Intranet, paperless transactions, telecommuting, blogging, social networking,Online learning or webinars, CBT, blended learning... I can go on and on with new technologies for HR to manage human resources better. A lot of these information are available on the web, most of them free but there only few takers. Take them, run away with them.

If you are serious about giving relevant contribution to the success of your organization, keep all these in mind. And as I said if you have any additional competencies in mind, fire away! I'd like to hear it.

From Transactional to Strategic HR, Where do We Begin?

2009-11-03T10:09:00.001+08:00

This is a third of a series. Please read my two previous posts so you can appreciate this one more.

"Where do we begin?" I heard this question right after I went down from the stage during the 3rd HR Philippines Convention where I was asked to speak about how to transition from transactional to strategic HR. Right there and then I realized I missed talking about something very important. That is my main motivation for writing this post.

Where is ground zero? How do we make the first step? and the next? HR can't suddenly wake up one day and say to the boss, "Boss, we've decided to go strategic so we expect you to support a lot of changes that are going to happen from now on." Let me share with you an actual experience I had helping one HR Department play a more strategic role in their organization.

It of course all started with a decision. The HR Department said they want to play a more strategic role and realized they needed help. They called a team of HR Consultants to help them. That team included me.

As consultants, our first step was to determine how far they've gone with their HR work and found that they are in fact doing mostly transactional activities with a sporadic instances of doing more strategic work as they were allowed to do. we designed a sort of a crash course on developing a strategic HRD plan that ran for five days. After the workshop we guided the HR team in the process of actually developing and implementing their strategic HRD Plan. We followed Kotter's 8-step change management process to ensure that all the necessary changes are identified and fall into place. From here on, I will tell my story using Kotter's model.

Step 1:Create Urgency - HRD talked to management. They said that they are doing mostly transactional work. With management's support and the cooperation of the rest of the organization, HR can play the role of a strategic partner that can help the company get the most out of its human capital. They laid out the transition plan to management that looks like this:

They will conduct focus group discussion with managers to determine their perception of HR's roles and to find out what they expect if HR is to play a more strategic role in the organization.
The expectations will be presented to mancom together with a strategic plan that details how these expectations will be met.
they will craft a set of HR Philosophy, Principles and goals in partnership with line management to ensure that all these are aligned with the organizational goals and strategic direction.
They will carry out a well studied change management plan to ensure that all changes are acceptable and doable.

With Management approval, HR went ahead with their plans and started working on their focus group discussions. They talked to several managers and supervisors in the head office and branches in several regions. They found that HR was failing in most expectations. Line managers feel HR was not doing enough, they don't appreciate much of HR's programs and policies, they feel that the Performance Management System was too complex and cumbersome to use, and they don't fully appreciate its value. There are even managers who are unfamiliar with company offered benefits. It was a painfully humbling experience for HR but it was what they needed to go back to management to get their blessing on courses of action that HR needed to make so they can play a more strategic partner role.

Step 2: Form powerful coalition - When HR presented to the whole management team its strategic plan, they can't help but agree because a lot of the things HR said need to be done came straight from them. HR made sure that the line managers are with them all the way so HR said that all the policies and procedures born out of the new plan will be done in collaboration with the line managers and in consultation with representatives from various sectors of the organization. In a nut shell, the approach was both iterative and collaborative. The line managers liked the idea.

Step 3: Create a vision for change - Everyone wants goal clarity. HR devised a set of HR philosophy, principles and vision to vividly describe the results of the new strategic partnership between HR and the line. These exercise made it clear to everyone in the management team that HR Management is not the sole province of the HR Department but a shared function between them and the line managers.

Step 4: Communicate the change - HR presented to management a plan on how it will communicate the changes before and as they happen to make sure that everyone is on the same page, understands and appreciates what HR is doing and the role the line plays in each stage. They used all possible channels including, office memos, emails, discussion forums, bulletin boards and focus group discussions.

Step 5: Remove obstacles - HR realized that any obstacle to their plans are born out of misunderstanding and lack of capability, either theirs or those of the recipients of HR services. HR came up with avenues for feedback mechanism and engaged people in dialogues. They made it easy for people to raise their concerns and their reason for whatever unwillingness they have so HR can better understand them. HR also made training an important component of each change to make sure that line managers are not only appreciative of the change but are also equipped to play their role. For example, HR made sure that managers don't only have full appreciation of the new Performance Management System but are equipped to take on a performance manager's role. They taught the Managers how to do behavioral interviews so managers can put their traditional questions to rest and start being more strategic in their screening of candidates. These strategies helped HR relieve managers and employees of worries about the new HR actions.

Step 6: Create Short-term wins - Because HR's strategic plan was so clearly drawn, everyone knows when a milestone is achieved. They celebrated each milestone, recognizing not only the people in HR who made it happen but everyone in the line who contributed. This helped strengthen line championing of HR strategic actions.

Step 7: Build on the change - We realized how important it is to build continuous improvement into the systems and procedures HR created. They made sure that multi-sectoral evaluation of the newly implemented programs were done. This helped ensure that policies and procedures are changed before they become obsolete.

Step 8:Institutionalize the change in the culture - HR included the changes in the company orientations and on boarding programs. The needed HR skills to help line managers play their HR roles were made part of the company's management development program. Newly promoted supervisors and managers undergo HR briefing so they know at the very onset that HR is not a department and that HR Management is a shared role between them and the HR Department.

The steps towards becoming a more strategic partner is not cast in stone. There are no hard and fast rules. You can come up with your own strategy or borrow from what I shared here, it doesn't matter. What matters is you take the first step and never stop until you are able to achieve your goal. You will face a lot of discouraging barriers like doubts and resistance, you should not let these things stop you. Playing a strategic HR partner role will sometimes feel like you are leading from the middle. It's true, get used to it.

Next post: From Transactional to Strategic HR, The Needed Competencies.

Watch out for it!

From Transactional to Strategic, A Change in HR Mindset

2009-10-28T19:27:00.002+08:00

This is the second post of a series. Please see my previous post here.

If HR is to remain relevant, it has to play some relevant roles in the organization. In order to play relevant roles, HR has to change its mindset.

Here are some observations. Companies are beginning to outsource some of the most traditional of HR tasks like recruitment and training. They are also automating most of HR transactions from timekeeping, records keeping, to benefits administrations. There are now HRIS that enable HR administration transactions with as little paper and human intervention as possible. On several occasions line managers call me for some interventions because they recognize that their own HR can't help them. I am now going full swing on marketing total HR outsourcing so that companies can take advantage of my network of consultants with varying expertise including strategic HR planning that they can avail on a limited engagement. We can do all these while we relieve them of their menial HR tasks so they can concentrate on the business at hand. I dare say that there will always be a market for our brand of service for as long as there are HR managers who refuse to see the signs of the times.

It is in deed sad to note that many HR practitioners are still stuck with the administrative nature of HR work rather than it’s strategic side which the business needs considering the toughening competition in the market place. A lot of us still measure our performance in terms of done/ not done when we should be measuring the impact of our contributions to business results. Let me cite some examples:

Some HR Managers are still stuck with the administrative aspect of recruitment when the real battle is in building the right strategy for defining requirements, strategic sourcing, acquiring reliable screening tools and equipping managers to choose well.

Some HR Managers still cannot respond well to the training needs of the organization because they are boxed-in by costly traditional training approaches that don’t bring in business results. No wonder training is the first to go every time companies have to cut cost. HR Managers who think strategically out of the box will easily solve the dilemma between training needs and training cost.

Here are some more comparison between transactional and Strategic HR Mindsets

Timeliness of delivery vs job fit in hiring
Use of gut feel vs systematic hiring process
training hours Vs skills application as measure of training performance
stuck to traditional training methods Vs. use varied training approaches
Done/not done Vs Impact as measurement of employee relations activities
No career and succession plan Vs. having well thought out one
Performance Appraisal Vs. Performance Management
Generic Vs. Customized performance management strategies
Form-oriented Vs. Goal and discussion oriented performance appraisals.
misaligned Vs. aligned and integrated human resource management and development system.

Here are some questions which I believe HR should be able to answer in order to play their strategic partner role well.

How are HR activities aligned with organizational directions and objectives?
How can your recruitment strategy have a positive impact on organizational results?
How do you help employees acquire the necessary skills to do their jobs well and how do you make sure that they are using these skills?
How do you lessen the impact of attrition on business continuity?
How do you help managers manage their team members' performance better?
How can you contribute to employee retention?
How do you leverage technology to make your HR services more efficient and user-friendly?
How can HR help improve the strategic partnership between them and the rest of the organization?

If you notice, all of these are "how" questions and the expectations are all results-oriented. I believe this is the mindset HR must embrace if it is to serve well as a strategic partner to the organization.

The increasing demand of business to align all its investments with results, the advent of technology and availability of outsourcing services requires that HR take a new look at its role, stop resisting the need to change and then change. Question is, are you?

On my next post, I will answer the question "From Transactional to Strategic HR, Where Do We Begin?"

Abangan!

From Transactional to Strategic HR, The Challenge

2009-10-26T09:31:00.004+08:00

I spoke about the topic in the recently concluded 3rd HR Philippines Convention last October 21, 2009. This article is to share what I said there and some of the ideas I was not able to mention during my presentation. This will come in several installments so as not to bore you with an overly long post. Today I'm going to focus on the challenge that many Filipino HR Practitioners face related to the topic.

In my presentation, I started by sharing what Jack Welch said in the Society for Human Resources Management Conference in the US that HR should be right up there with the CFO. I acknowledged that there are several organizations in the Philippines where the HR Managers play such a pivotal role. However, in many other companies, HR is relegated or not empowered enough to make a relevant contribution to the company's strategic direction. There is a real challenge for many of us to transition from doing purely transactional activities that can be automated or outsourced to becoming the organization's strategic partner for growth.

I posted two current problems with today's HR in the Philippines. One is that HR has too little power and too little influence in the organization. In many organizations, HR is a glorified clerk who undertake all other tasks that do not fall under operations and finance. Many of us also do not have the ability to move from that position to that of being a strategic partner because of a lack of competency to do so. We do not have a solid understanding of the business we are in, worse some of us do not have a solid understanding of the business, period.

On the other hand, I've met HR practitioners who wield too much formal power but lack the necessary influence to be taken seriously. What do I mean? I've seen HR Managers who write and impose all sorts of policies without working in partnership with the line. They tend to end up being scoffed at and reviled for coming up with initiatives that people don't understand, don't appreciate and of course, don't take seriously. Some HR Managers act as the police, judge and executioner of company discipline. I don't agree that HR should play this role. I believe that HR can't play the strategic partner role if line managers hide behind them whenever these things have to be done. Some of the indicators that HR has too much formal power but has no influence are the following:

Recruitment procedures are not followed because managers don't see the connection between filling out forms and hiring the right people.
Managers make all sorts of excuses not to send their employees to training because they don't see how training will improve their staff's performance.
They do performance appraisal to comply with HR's instruction and not to manage people's performance.
The company's code of discipline is the butt of many jokes (and the line managers are the ones laughing the loudest).

The strategic partner role, means that HR must work in partnership with its line counterparts. It cannot operate in a vacuum and then expect to be taken seriously. As I said in my previous post, HR is not a department. It's a shared responsibility between HR and the Line Managers. Hence, they must share the strategy for making things happen. If you think about what I just said here, you must realize that it becomes really important for HR practitioners to appreciate the work of their counterparts and to help the Line Managers understand the role they play in human resource management. If this happens, a few other things can happen:

Line managers will realize how important it is for them to explain clearly their recruitment requirements so HR don't have to guess what they need and want.
Line managers will actually appreciate the screening reports given by HR and use it as one of the bases for hiring. They will also learn how to properly interview applicants and refrain from asking stupid questions like "how will you sell ice to an eskimo in the North pole?"
Line Managers will send their employees to training that HR programmed because these courses were deemed by both to be important. Not only that, Managers will support the training with ongoing coaching and mentoring.
Line Managers will realize that performance appraisal is a small portion of a larger intervention called Performance Management. They will realize that it's intent is not only to serve as a basis for salary review but to actually align employees' performance with the organization's direction.
Line Managers will appreciate the importance of the company policies and will lead the way on compliance because they participated in writing these polices. They are also equipped to act on employees indiscretion because they are trained to maintain discipline in the workplace. HR doesn't have to act as the company's school principal anymore. (No offense meant for school principals).

if you find all these interesting, watch out for these next posts:

1.From Transactional to Strategic, A Change in HR Mindset
2. From Transactional to Strategic HR, Where Do We Begin?
3. From Transactional to Strategic HR, The Needed Competencies

Reasons Why You Should Attend The 3rd HR Philippines Convention

2009-10-06T19:49:00.003+08:00

TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK...

If you are an HR Practitioner working in the Philippines or a manager in a company with no HR department and you haven't signed up for the upcoming convention on October 21 and 22, let me give you some reasons to sign up.

First and not necessarily the most important, I'm talking about transitioning from having strictly transactional HR Role to becoming the Strategic HR partner of the organization. This is important, why? Because the world of work is changing. Companies need to put their money where their mouth is when they say that their human resources are their best asset because it's true. If human resources are not your best asset, they are your worst liability. Human Resource practitioners need to step in and make an impact in the organization. This is of course easier said than done. You don't go to sleep one day a transactional HR and wake up a strategic HR. Wanna know what it will take for you step in to this role effectively? Join me on October 21.

Who else are worth seeing in that momentous event? Anna Maria "Penny" Bongato, who is the Director for Human Resources and Administration at Logica, one of the leading multinational IT companies and a Director at People Management Association of the Philippines will talk about "Strategic Talent Planning".

Immediate Past President of Philippine Society for Training and Development and trainer extra ordinaire, Joselito "Jet" Nera will share his vast experience in organization development when he talks about the HR's role in managing organizational changes.

As the world economy turns into it's tumultuous state, the need for HR to influence the organization to engage in activities that help the community becomes apparrent. Dr. Leonardo “Nards” Garcia, Jr., CPM –DEAN, Lyceum of the Philippines University will cover this topic.

A representative from Watson Wyatt will share some very useful information on the "Real Cost of Employee Investment" (Balancing variable and fixed).

Randell Tiongson, a Personal Finance Coach, President and COO of Personal Finance Advisers Philippines Corporation will share his insights on how HR can help employees become more mindful of their money by investing and spending wisely. Why is this important? As the economic crunch intensifies, employees need to manage their finances more or else their income will always be lacking. You and I know what that means.

We will start the second day of the convention with a panel discussion on the effects of Web 2.0 (i.e, blogging, social networking and the Internet at large) to our human resources. Should we allow it or ban it like many other companies do? What can HR do to capitalize this technology? How to do we avoid abuses? Our panelists composed of who's who of Philippine Web 2.0 namely Janet Toral, of E-Commerce Philippines, Inc., Carlo Ople of Friendster and Jayvi Fernandes, to be moderated by another seasoned HR professional and Web 2.0 enthusiast Sonnie Santos and of course your's truly.

In break out sessions, Business Maker Academy Vice President, Karen Cyndy Meghrajani-Sajwani will share some new technologies in training, Viventis CEO, Yu Ming Chin will share some of the latest trends in recruitment and sourcing and Sonnie Santos, VP-HR of CATS Motors, Inc.. will talk about how we can set up our HR Policies to manage the use of social media in the work place.

The second half of the second day will see Atty. Emerico de Guzman of ACCRA Law office sharing some of the latest Labor Jurisprudence which I'm sure a lot of you will be interested in hearing. Donald Lim, CEO of Yehey Corporation will talk about how HR can help build an organizational culture by sharing his own experience at Yehey. Rizalino Rivera, a member of the Board of Directors at Splash Corporation will talk about what values HR practitioners should embrace as they work for the interest of the company and the employees.

If this does not whet your appetite for some HR learning, I don't know what will.

MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS NOW! CALL US AT;

ARIVA! Seminar & Convention Organizers
895-8058 / 895-9527 / 890-9651
Call/Text: 0917-3257870 Dou: 022114363

By the way, we are throwing in a lot of prizes and surprises to ensure you get SO MUCH MORE than your money's worth in this event. Seats are limited so don't wait too long.

HR Philippines Convention Highlights

2009-10-04T12:53:00.003+08:00

"It’s back in Manila!"

Note to my regular readers: This blog is paving the way for this important assignment. I believe immensely in the intention of this event. If you are an HR professional practicing in the Philippines, I invite you to attend this program as you are sure to benefit from it.
....................................................................................
The HR Philippines Convention will be coming to Manila again after the huge successful Convention in 2007 and in Davao in 2008 which attracted over 350 HR Professionals from leading companies.

Join the hundreds of HR Professionals who participate in the Annual HR Philippines National Convention to enhance their core skills & competence and to stay ahead of evolving trends.

Convention Overview:

Human Resource Management has evolved through the years, from transactional to people management champion. And now with the advent of technology and changes on business landscape, HR must again adapt to be relevant.

Convention Objectives:

1. Learn how others position the traditional HR silos to be strategic.

2. Understand web 2.0 and how you can use this in people management

3. Learn the latest SC labor jurisprudence

4. Learn the latest trends in HR

Don't miss these event take- aways:

1. Learn from HR practitioners on how they adapt to the ever changing business environment
2. Engage in break out sessions and develop action plans you can implement in your organization
3. Share your ideas with other participants, and stay networked with others who share similar goals

Convention Highlights:

Day 1: October 21, 2009 - Function Room 1, SMX Convention Center

Plenary: "HR’s Strategic Impact On Bottom-line Results" *Albert G. Mateo, Jr., President & Country Manager - Pfizer Philippines

Breakout Session:

Session 1: Strategic Talent Planning & Acquisition: “Getting the Right People: How Do We Get SMARTER In Our Recruitment Habits? Resource Speaker: Anna Maria “Penny” Bongato, Logica CMG (Phil.), Inc.

Session 2: Performance-Based Reward System: “Building a Performance-Driven Organization. Ensuring that People Contribute”

Session 3: Organization Development: “Managing Organizational Change: A Culture That Transforms Organizations” Resource Speaker: Joselito “Jet” Nera, SH!NE JG Nera Consulting and Past President - Phil. Society for Training & Development

Session 4: “How to Transition from Transactional to Strategic HR” Resource Speaker: Edwin C. Ebreo, President - ExeQserve Corporation

Session 5: “The Real Costs of Employee Investments: Balancing Variable and Fixed”
Resource Speaker: *Representative from Watson Wyatt Worldwide

Session 6: Corporate Social Responsibility and HR Implications: “Advocacy Management: Enhancing Corporate Social Responsibility” Resource Speaker: Dr. Leonardo “Nards” Garcia, Jr., CPM –DEAN, Lyceum of the Philippines University

Day 2: October 22, 2009 - Function Room 1, SMX Convention Center

Plenary (Panel Discussion) : “HR 2.0: HR Amidst New Technology”

Resource Speakers:
- Janette Toral, Owner - E-CommercePhilippines.com
- Jayvee Fernandez
- Carlo Ople - Level Up

Breakout Session:

Session 1: "New Trends in Training and Technology"
Resource Speaker: Cindy Meghrajani-Sajwani, Executive Vice President - Businessmaker Academy, Inc.

Session 2: "Latest Trends in Recruitment and Sourcing"
Resource Speaker: Yu Ming Chin, Executive Director, Viventis Search Asia

Session 3: "HR Policies On Use of Social Media"
Resource Speaker: Sonnie Santos, Assistant Vice President, HR – CATS Motors, Inc.

Plenary:

Topic: "Labor Jurisprudence"
Resource Speaker: Atty. Emerico O. de Guzman, Sr. Partner – ACCRA Law Office and Past President of PMAP

Topic:"Building an Organizational Culture"
Resource Speaker: Donald Patrick L. Lim, President and CEO – Yehey.com

Topic: "Embracing HR Values and Ethics"
Resource Speaker: Rizalino Rivera, Independent Director - Splash Corporation / Cluster Head, HR – Ateneo Professional School

(*speakers to be confirmed)

Gain a solid grasp of all aspects of human resources management and ensure your success by joining us at the 3rd HR Philippines National Convention
Theme: H.R. 2.0 Bringing HR to the Next Level

on October 21 - 22, 2009 (8:30AM - 5:30PM)
at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia, Pasay City

Your Learning Investment for the 2-Day Convention

HR Phil. YahooGroup Member: P2,498 + VAT per seat

Early Bird Rate: P3,388 + VAT per seat
(Pay on or before September 21, 2009)

Regular Rate: P3,888 + VAT per seat
(Starting September 22, 2009)

On-Site Rate: P4,088 + VAT per seat

LEARNING INVESTMENT INCLUDES:
A "Fun-filled" Learning Experience, complete with Convention Kits, Souvenir Programs, Certificates and Freebies!! plus... AM Snack, Sumptuous Lunch & PM Snacks!
"We are accepting payments via all major credit cards."

MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS NOW! CALL US AT;

ARIVA! Seminar & Convention Organizers
895-8058 / 895-9527 / 890-9651
Call/Text: 0917-3257870 Dou: 022114363

Email: SuccessSeminars@Ariva.com.ph

R E G I S T E R O N L I N E: www.Ariva.com.ph

When is Training NOT a Waste of Time?

2009-09-29T11:09:00.001+08:00

I was tempted to write "when is training a waste of time?" but decided it isn't constructive so I got this instead. The truth is a lot of training intervention, important as they are fail to add value to the organization because they are not set up right. Here are a few suggestions that will help you get your training money's worth:

First, make sure that your training programs run parallel with company improvement initiatives. For example, sending your employees to customer service training won't improve the quality of your customer service if it is not attached to a service enhancement program. I've seen this too many times. It pains me to see employees inspired by attending a program and ready to adapt to the enhancements on the floor but nothing happens, leaving them frustrated and cynical about future training.

Second, make sure managers are on board. HRDs often produce separate development programs for managers and their staffs. When the latter attend training that their bossess did not attend or appreciate fully, follow through is difficult if not impossible. Some insecure managers might even resist some of the changes the employees want to bring in as a result of the training. I suggest that whoever is in charge of training brief the managers at the very least to make sure they know what to expect and take the necessary action to support the learning. The best thing of course is for them to attend the same training ahead of their staff. Nothing beats that.

Third, institutionalize follow through. Make learning a part of the organization's culture. Make the following a default management action towards training:

- identification of training needs and determination of competencies to be demonstrated after training

- Make managers fully aware of training content so they can support it

-Make training return on investment not just HRD's responsibility but everyone else's, specially the supervisors and managers. If that won't make managers follow through, I don't know what will.

Fourth, if you intend to seek a training provider, find one who is willing to partner with you and go the whole nine yards in in helping you make everything I mentioned possible. Here's the contact nuumber of that training provider - (63)9189399294 or landline (632)8933199 . That's shameless self promotion right there. I hope you don't mind.

Because five is my favorite number, here's my fifth, don't be afraid of change. These things that I say here scare the wits out of many managers. In fact, I suspect that some of the people I talk to are afraid of effective training programs because they require so much. Because of this, for many managers, HR included, the training becomes the end rather than a means. For them, people trained is mission accomplished. When managers think like this, training time and money is wasted.

HR Is not a Department

2009-09-28T10:22:00.004+08:00

"It's HR's job"is the excuse I often hear whenever line managers refuse to cooperate with Human Resource Department activities and initiatives.

Proof? Lack of management participation in many HR activities like recruitment, training, performance management, employee relations and the likes. More proof; partially completed manpower requisition forms that leave HRD guessing and often wasting their time finding people using partial data; poor participation in training needs analysis or failure to send people to right training; doing performance appraisals for compliance purposes; relegating discipline to HRD and nonattendance in events aimed to improve management and employee relations.

This is all because they think these things are all HRD's job, not theirs. Theirs is to produce business results by making people work their asses off. The funny thing is, many HR Managers think this is true, and this is why many HR managers take it upon themselves to hire people with as little input from the line as possible, dictate training needs, discuss performance and discipline issues directly with employees and taking full ownership of employee relations activities.

As a result, HRD often fails to meet expectations of both managers and employees. It also results to wrong hires, non attendance in training or poor or non-followthrough on learning, ineffective performance management systems, toleration by managers of employees violating company policies. I would even go to the extent of saying that most of HR's problem is rooted in this mindset that these things are the sole province of HRD.

The truth is, HR is human resources, in other words people. To say that HR is not the line managers' business is to say that people are not their business. Line managers are not managers of processes and machines, they are managers of people who are in charge of these processes and machines. HRD, the department is in charge of HELPING line managers, manage their human resources, not manage their human resources for them. HRD is not a surrogate parent, it's not a nanny, it's the doctor that supports the employees' health. It's the school teacher that helps in the employees' education. It's the congressman that drafts rules in consultation with the managers so managers can set clear work-related guidelines. You get the metaphors? The line managers are the persons responsible for managing their people, not the department. The department is there to;

Support the managers in finding the right people for the job;
Support the managers in training their employees;
Support the managers in managing their employees' performance;
Support the managers in building better relationships with their employees; and
Support the managers in their efforts to retain the right talents.

HR is everyone's job but moreso the Line Managers'. HRD, the department is, I repeat a support group. I believe that if both line managers and HRD play their roles right, the employees and the organization at large will benefit from it. In a company with the right cooperation between HRD and the line, These happen:

Managers hire the right people with HRD's help
Managers get their employees trained with HRD's help
Managers manage their employees' performance with HRD's help
Managers build relationship with their employees with HRD's help
Managers make their employees accountable for their behavior with HRD's help.

Truth be told, I was tempted to say "with or without" HRD's help but I realized I'd be out of the job if I say that...hehehe.

Seriously, managing human resources is not easy. With managers in charge of business results, they need all the help they can get in managing their most complex resource - People. HRD should be there to help, not to take over.

Suggestions on How to Make Your HR Life Easier

2009-09-22T13:45:00.003+08:00

I was reviewing my Personal Effectiveness Workshop in preparation for a series of run a few weeks from now when it dawned on me that a lot of these stuff I'm talking about can make some people's lives easier, particularly the HR People. Here are some of them.

Stop Tolerating What You Shouldn't be Tolerating
Us HR people are stickler for making rules and procedures but are probably the most problematic in implementing them. Cases in point. We prepare staffing requisition forms and procedures but when requesting managers don't fill them up or folllow the procedure, we tolerate them. As result, we are left guessing about the details of the vacancies and end up recommending the wrong people. Don't tolerate noncompliance. When you say the cut-off for submitting time records, leave availment and overtime payment requests falls on a particular date of the pay period, be firm about it. Don't extend the deadline for people who make up a lot of excuses to submit them one or two days after the deadline that leaves you working through the night because the employees will raise hell if you pay them late. If people don't submit in time include whatever adjustments they need on the next payroll. Make sure though that you made proper announcements. This goes with all the other cut-offs and procedures that you've been very lenient on in the past. Be accountable by making others accountable for them. It will definitely make your life easier and help others realize that HR is to be taken seriously.

Take All Those Obsolete Policies Into the Garbage Bin
Times change, policies you or management thought were good sometime ago might not be applicable anymore. Don't waste your energy trying to defend them or worse penalize people for violating them. Review them and make the necessary changes. Case in point, office uniforms are on their way out. Bill Gates and his cohorts changed the rule a long time ago. If you want to hire young, creative people, you might want to rethink those office uniform policies and come up with a dress code that is more attuned to the time. Let me get a cowards way out on this by saying, this of course does not apply to everyone...hehehe. Another point, the availability of new technologies and media is changing the way people work. If you are preventing people from accessing them, it will only work to your disadvantage. You won't be able to enjoy their benefits and people who want them will shy away from your company. So, in the advent of web 2.0, Facebook, Twitter and the likes, how do you manage to keep people productive and not turn into cyber loafers without shutting them out of these technologies? My answer, make their performance goals clear and make them accountable for it. I believe that if these are clear, people will have the discipline to use these tools for productivity more than entertainment. These are just some of the few in my mind. As this does not apply to all, it is fair to say that HR together with the other managers agree on what is applicable for their companies. Some of the policies out there have been handed down from one HR generation to another. It's time to retire those policies that do not make any contribution to organizational effectiveness. Rule of thumb, if no body can explain why a particular company policy is important, throw it out.

Stop Acting Like the Corporate Police, Judge and Executioner
Many people have this perception of HR. In fact a lot HR people have this perception of the role of HR. I believe that this is not our role. HR is responsible for equipping the organization with the right people, with the right set of knowledge, skills, attitude and add to that; discipline to do the right things for the company. It is every manager's job to make sure that everyone is aligned with the company's goals and directions and to make everyone accountable for it. By making managers realize their HR roles (Please see my previous post on this topic by clicking here) HR wouldn't have to take this role that makes it look like the scum of the universe.

Stop Making the Hiring and Firing Decisions
If you are still doing this, you must be in the receiving end of plenty of blames. Managers need to learn that they should be making final hiring decisions and again be accountable for them by not passing on the hatchet job to HR. In most companies I've served as HR, I sold this policy to managers. As a result managers became accountable for their hires by making sure they perform or else they will carry the responsibility of firing them before the probationary period ends. Since they know that regularizing the employment of a poor performer is a bad idea, the only way to not fire an employee is to see to it that they perform well. Of course, if all else fail, they have to face the music. It made my job easy and helped the managers become more effective because they can't run behind HR to fire people for them.

Plan
Define your role in the organization, come up with strategies on how to fulfill them and act on them. Even more important than the idea of planning is involving others in the planning and implementation process. It's not enough that you clarify your role, it's important that you clarify the other people's role as well. Why will this make your life easy? When people have complete buy-in on the things you want to implement and they are able to contribute enough information so you can customize your program to make it useful for them, it will save you the time of redoing it and the frustration of making things that people don't want to use.

I'm sure there are so many other things you can do and decide on today in order to stop you from feeling that you are doing a thankless job. Identify them and work on them now.

HR Briefing for New Managers

2009-09-14T10:22:00.002+08:00

I'm happy to note that I'm still learning things every day. I realized lately that there are things I could have done or done better when I was an HR Manager. I'm sharing them with those of you who haven't thought about them in the hope that you can pick up where I left off. For those of you who have a good program already running, I'll really appreciate you sharing your experiences in the comment section below.

A lot of line managers fail to appreciate their hr management role because no body really formally gave them a good orientation. They learn things mostly on-the-fly. They learn when a situation confronts them and they don't know what to do. They run to HR for help or worse, they guess and at times guess wrongly. This is why many managers have very low appreciation of their hr roles or worse, they have poor appreciation of hr.

In order to play their hr roles right, new managers, whether newly promoted or hired should be given thorough orientation and training regarding what they need to do related to human resource management. Here are some of the things that should be given to them:

Recruitment
Managers should have a complete appreciation of their recruitment role and the process. They need to understand those documents we produce after we administer our tests. They need to understand what they mean and how they can use these results to make decisions. HR should walk them through the process and let them ask their questions. This should help them make more informed recruitment decisions.

Training
Let your line managers know what available tools and options are available to them regarding training. Let them appreciate their responsibilities and make them accountable for them. Training is a big but worthy investment only if managers will make good on following through.

Performance management

Many managers see this as a chore that they need to comply with because this is often tied with compensation. When there's no proper training managers try to get away with as little of it as possible. They fill up the appraisal sheets and make their recommendations to HR. There's no real effort to manage performance because there's no full appreciation of it and worse no skill to carry it out.

Implementation of HR Policies
HR is often seen as the school principal, the corporate police, judge and executioner, in short all around bad guy because line managers are not giving their share of seeing to it that hr policies are fully implemented. Implementation and administration of hr policies requires partnership between hr and other managers. They need to fully appreciate the use of these policies and what they need to do to maintain compliance. They should also know that if a policy is not working to anyone's advantage anymore, they have the power and responsibility to talk to hr about making the necessary changes.

You may include more in your orientation as you please. These here top my own list. I recommend that you start putting together your manager orientation program today. Include as much written instructions, charts and templates as necessary. I believe it will help enhance the partnership between hr and the line and should enhance hr's strategic contribution to the organization.

Automating HR Processes

2009-09-08T11:50:00.004+08:00

If HR is to play a strategic business partner role in the organization, it needs to streamline its activities so it can find time to handle the rigors of strategic HR Management and Development.

When HR Transforms into a strategic partner, it cannot shed off it transactional activities like pre-employment screening and administration, personnel administration and others. As it embarks on taking a bigger role in Strategic recruitment, training, performance management, career and succession planning and others, new daunting tasks of information gathering and management also arise. It is easy to be caught in these tasks that there will be little or no time left to look at the HR situation and carry out strategies to better it. There are only two options for HR to take on the job and do it effectively. The first one is to have enough complement to address the organization's HR needs. The other one is to invest in IT to automate the mundane and repetitive tasks that get in the way of tackling HR's more strategic roles. I choose automation over increasing the HR population unnecessarily.

what should be automated?

Human Resource Information System (HRIS)
When I worked at a large data processing company employing thousands of people, we had a 201 file room that could house my current company. The 201 files were in brown folders so they get misplaced and or lost and had to be rebuilt again. We also had about three people managing personnel records. Imagine the cost of that versus buying a decent HRIS that can be managed so that people have different access levels.
Some good HRIS cover a wide range of HR services. Here are some Philippine HRIS vendors that I was able to Google:
http://www.aclt-computing.com
http://www.sigmasoft.com.ph/index.php

Time-keeping and payroll.
If you have between one to 50 employees, you can probably still work with excel sheets and paper time log, but as you grow bigger as an organization, these tasks will require more and more time. When I was a young HR Manager, I computed the amount I need to spend for automating this process and the amount I will pay someone to do the timekeeping and payroll for 100 employees and found that the cheapest system is worth 3 months the salary of the person I'm going to hire. I showed this to management and had my very first Timekeeping and payroll system. Let me also add that the use of biometric system also helps reduce the need for manual inputting and prevents fraud.Below are some local vendors:
http://www.supremosoft.com/
http://www.jeonsoft.com/JeonsoftPayroll.html

Performance Management System
A good performance management system should allow a line manager to set his employee's performance goals, monitor his performance, provide timely feedback for capacity and capability building, evaluate performance of the employee for a period, and reward performance accordingly. it should also give higher management an opportunity to look at the collective performance of the employees look for exploitable strengths, identify gaps and address these gap. If you have more than 50 employees this process can get pretty daunting. A good automated system should allow both manager and employee to set performance goals online, track performance against goals, record feedbacking sessions and developmental interventions, evaluate performance and then complete the cycle by setting new goals. A good automated system should also allow the manager to compare the employee's performance with others or against past performance to determine if there is growth or if there is a gap that needs to be addressed. The link below is from Storm Consulting. They have a very good system.
http://stormconsulting.com.ph/prodservices/performance-management/

Training Management
Identifying training needs, coming up with a training plan, managing the training events, evaluating training and ensuring follow through are some of the challenging tasks in managing training. A lot of these can be automated. If these activities can be automated, HR will have more time looking at the soundness of the training plans, effectiveness of training delivery and strategizing for future training. Some very good HRIS have training management as a component.

Benefits Management
Benefits management is normally a part of a typical HRIS. It's fairly simple and easy to manage. If you are looking at the possibility of coming up with a cafeteria type benefits management program, you'll do well to automate it or even outsource the management of it. The cafeteria style of benefits management can help a company customize it's benefits package to suit the needs and wants of the employees but managing it is quite complicated. Without automation, can be fairly difficult to manage and quite resource hungry. It helps to have a good system in place.
http://stormconsulting.com.ph/

Intranet
Communicating HR policies and events is one of the biggest challenge of HR. an Intranet will help them make sure that employees can access needed HR related information via the intranet. It also relieves HR of the need to repeatedly explain things to employees. A good intranet program should be interactive and allows employees not only to access soft copies of company policies and memos, but also transact with HR using forms and templates available through the system.

Parallel Run
Keep in mind that automation seldom work well right away. It's always a good decision to run the old new system simultaneously until you are confident that the new system is working well.

Back Up
You know what Murphy said, Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is even more true with computers and software. They crash, conk out, attacked by viruses, etc. It is always safer to back up your data and have them stored in several locations.

If you know of good vendors, and other HR activities that can be automated, please feel free to share them by commenting below.

3rd HR Philippines National Convention in October at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia

2009-08-26T14:47:00.004+08:00

"It’s back in Manila!"

The HR Philippines Convention will be coming to Manila again after the huge successful Convention in 2007 and in Davao in 2008 which attracted over 350 HR Professionals from leading companies.

Join the hundreds of HR Professionals
who participate in the Annual HR Philippines National Convention to enhance their core skills,competence and to stay ahead of evolving trends.

Convention Highlights:

Day 1: “HR’s Strategic Impact On Bottomline Results”

Session 1: Strategic Talent Planning & Acquisition: “Getting the Right People: How Do We Get SMARTER In Our Recruitment Habits?”

Session 2: Performance-Based Reward System: “Building a Performance-Driven Organization. Ensuring that People Contribute”

Session 3: Organization Development: “Managing Organizational Change: A Culture That Transforms Organizations”

Session 4: “How to Transition from Transactional to Strategic HR”

Session 5: “The Real Costs of Employee Investments: Balancing Variable and Fixed”

Session 6: Corporate Social Responsibility and HR Implications: “Advocacy Management: Enhancing Corporate Social Responsibility”

Day 2: “HR 2.0: HR Amidst New Technology”

Session 1: New Trends in Training and Technology

Session 2: Latest Trends in Recruitment and Sourcing

Session 3: HR Policies On Use of Social Media

Labor Jurisprudence

Meeting Global HR Standards

Embracing HR Values and Ethics

Gain a solid grasp of all aspects of human resources management and ensure your success by joining us at the

3rd HR Philippines National Convention
Theme: H.R. 2.0 Bringing HR to the Next Level

on October 21 - 22, 2009 (8:30AM - 5:30PM)
at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia, Pasay City

"We are accepting payments via all major credit cards."

Your Learning Investment for the 2-Day Convention

Early Bird Rate: P3,388 + VAT per seat
(Pay on or before September 21, 2009)

Regular Rate: P3,888 + VAT per seat
(Starting September 22, 2009)

On-Site Rate: P4,088 + VAT per seat

LEARNING INVESTMENT INCLUDES:
A "Fun-filled" Learning Experience, complete with Convention Kits, Souvenir Programs, Certificates and Freebies!! plus... AM Snack, Sumptuous Lunch & PM Snacks!

MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS NOW! CALL US AT;

ARIVA! Seminar & Convention Organizers
895-8058 / 895-9527 / 890-9651
Call/Text: 0917-3257870

Email: SuccessSeminars@Ariva.com.ph

R E G I S T E R O N L I N E: www.Ariva.com.ph

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Become a sponsor for

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in partnership with ARIVA! Events Management

500 to 800 HR Practitioners from top companies from different industries nationwide

For further details or to confirm your sponsorship spot in our advertising plan, please feel free to call us and
Look for JM Matienzo

ARIVA! Seminar & Convention Organizers

895-8058 / 895-9527 / 890-9651
Call/Text: 0917-3257870

Email: ArivaEvents@gmail.com

Is HR a Thankless Job?

2009-08-26T10:50:00.002+08:00

I've heard it so many times that I believed it. At some point I accepted that people look at HR as some kind of a malevolent entity (just like Catbert). Employees suspect HR of being too pro-management. Managers suspect HR of being too pro-employees. I have resigned to the thought that people will have a hard time seeing that as an HR person, I am pro-the-right-thing-to-do-given-a-situation. I thought people have unrealistic expectations of HR and that no matter how I try, I will never measure up to that unrealistic expectation. Is frustration a natural part of the career I have chosen?

But as I grow older, I started learning or to put it more accurately, unlearning the mindsets I have developed over the years listening to fellow HR practitioners and proving them right. I saw what I was conditioned to see. HR was a thankless job, because that's what a lot of people around me say about it and I believed them. When I started questioning my own beliefs about this job, I realized that no, HR is not a thankless job, as a matter of fact, I could not count the times people appreciated what I did as an HR practitioner.

I could not count the number of people who thanked me for facilitating their employment.

I could not count the number of times a fellow manager thanked me for helping him/her find the right person for the job.

I could not count the number of times managers thanked me for helping them deal with a situation concerning their employees.

I could not count the number of times an employee thanked me for clarifying an issue or for helping them with what they need.

I could not count the number of times people thanked me for listening to them.

I could not count the number of times a training participant thanked me for sharing a part of myself.

I could not count the times I received thanks for helping an entire organization.

This job is not thankless. And knowing the kind of person that I am, I am still in this business because of the countless number of thanks I get for doing my job.

When I changed my belief, the frustrations went away and I was more energized to do my job. The more energized I am to do my job, the better I get at it and the more the rewards came my way. If you ask me though, I'd say that for me, the job is its own reward. I am thankful that I get to do what I do every chance I get.

Lastly, Any job can be a thankless job for as long as people don't see the reason why they should thank the one carrying out the job. At least, that's what I think.

What If We Turn Training Departments to Performance Management Department? Part 3

2009-08-20T10:32:00.004+08:00

As promised i'm giving you the third part of a series on the subject matter. If you haven't seen part 1 and part 2, i suggest that you read them first.
Today, we're going to look at how more effectively a department in charge of training can design and implement a training plan if they are in charge of performance management first and foremost.

A department in charge of seeing to it that employees' performance improve, should have a gamut of strategies to capacitate people, formal classroom training will just be one of them. Unlike a training department in charge of training delivery, a performance management department will be accountable for seeing to it that training interventions lead to behavioral and hence performance change.

Let me now go into how I imagine a performance management department should go into addressing performance issues related to competency gaps.

First, they would look at a slew of tools and pick one or two that should address the competency gap most effectively and efficiently. They could choose from formal training, coaching by the superiors, mentoring, better work manuals or instructions, readings, etc. The limit is the performance manager's imagination.

If the solution is formal classroom training. The course design should take into consideration the behavioral attributes described in the competency profiles of the employees. It helps therefore, to have accurately and clearly described competency models for them to be useful in training design.

If training is outsourced, it would definitely help to show the training service providers the competencies being addressed and then require them to present an effective training strategy for closing the gaps.

Because the performance manager would be more interested in seeing training translate to performance, he should include in the program a reentry plan where training participants will engage in projects or activities that will require them to use and test their new-found skills.

In case you're asking what the employee's manager's role in all these, I'd say that if the company's performance management system is designed in such a way that the managers' performance reflect the collective performance of the team they manage, then they should play a huge role in all these. Everything that the performance management department does is aimed at helping the line managers manage their teams' performance better. None of it would matter if the line managers refuse to use any of them. Line managers and the performance management department must work in partnership to help employees achieve their full performance potentials.

Let me conclude this series by reiterating the point I've been trying to make. Companies mobilize and fund their training departments to run programs in the hope that it would lead to improved performance. Many training departments however have a myopic view of their responsibilities. They look at training and performance management as separate boxes. Sadly too, they see performance management as a box outside their own silo. So, is there really a need to change the name of training departments? Not really, but if that's what it would take to make it clear to everyone that without a solid connection between training and performance management, they are just trying to fill a leaking drum then, I'm all for it. That's my opinion.

What If We Turn Training Departments to Performance Management Department? Part 2

2009-08-17T11:05:00.002+08:00

I finally mustered enough energy to write the follow-up post to Part 1. This time, I'm talking about using performance appraisal results as a training needs analysis tool.

Many Training Departments in the Philippines don't have access to Performance Appraisal Results. Hence, they depend on Training Needs Analysis Surveys to help them identify the employees' training needs. I've had my fair share of doing these surveys and I often find the resulting data immensely unbelievable. I felt that asking people about what their training needs are is like asking a man, or a woman what their ideal woman or man is. They often end up going with the ones who are completely the opposite of what they described as ideal. My point? The identified training needs are often inconsistent with what they really need.

This should not happen if the training managers are using performance appraisal data which often go with individual developmental plans. This is provided that the performance appraisal tool is conceived and designed well. I've always found competency-based performance appraisal tools (again, those which are well conceived and designed) to be very useful in identifying training needs. All the training manager has to do is run some statistics on the performance appraisal results and they should be able to identify some trends that will pinpoint who will need to improve which competencies. The chart shown here is an example of an appraisal trend on "Customer Focus" competency.

Wow, it looks like there's going to be a Part 3. When It comes, I will write about using the same competency based performance management tool for designing and managing training. Watch out for it!

The Power to Hire and Fire and Everything in Between

2009-08-15T22:51:00.001+08:00

When I started work as HR Director in a BPO company, I noticed that line managers depended on the HR Department to do most of the "people management" stuff. When managers encounter performance and behavior issues with their employees, they look to HR to clean up the mess. When difficult communications have to be made, HRD is expected to deliver it. I, however, refused to play the cannon fodder role. I clarified to the line managers that the role of HRD in d company should that of a strategic business partner and enabler. I went to work on playing this role by doing the following:
I leveled expectations on the role of HRD and the HR role of the line managers. I told the managers that their powers include the power to hire and fire. This meant that I will not do those things for them. I will send people their way to choose and hire from but won't choose for them. I will make sure that they are doing all the right things before firing an undeserving employee, but won't fire 'em for them.
A lot of HR work is necessary to help make this happen. HR has to familiarize managers with all the recruitment concepts and selection procedures. Line managers need to appreciate that they share accountability for employees' success and failures. Hence, managers need to be committed to performance management. They need to set performance goals, monitor, develop capacity and capability, evaluate, reward and recognize good performance. They should also weed the company out of employees with undesirable performance and behaviors by enforcing the company's code of ethics and adhering to the dictates of the labor laws on due process. Managers also needed to appreciate their role on identifying those who have the potentials to succeed them and prepare them for the eventuality. A lot of preparations made this possible. I and my HR team developed a management development plan for our company's managers and team leaders. They went through several training and workshops that include basic leadership and management, performance management, coaching, maintaining discipline in the workplace and others. Before I left the company, Managers were making final hiring decisions and were accountable for those decisions by making sure that they equip their employees with the right technical training, were coached about their performance so that they are able to meet performance expectations. Those who failed despite their managers' intervention were asked to leave the company.

On AWOL and Training Allowance

2009-07-23T14:16:00.005+08:00

I received two questions from readers on the topic recently. I have already responded to them but decided to share my thought with the rest of yous in this blog.

First question:

What does AWOL mean?

if you informed your supervisor about the reason why you are absent prior to start of shift and submitted a medical certificate to certify sickness, is it still considered AWOL?

My answer:
AWOL is absence without leave. In other companies, they add the word "official" so it becomes "Absence Without Official Leave". It means that if you did not abide by the company's policy on filing or notification, it will be considered a violation of company's attendance policy. Now, if you followed the rules, there is no reason for them to charge you with that violation. If they think your reason is not sufficient excuse to be absent, the one thing they can do is disapprove your leave application. Hence, you will not be able to use your leave credit. Many supervisors get confused with these rules and fail to apply the appropriate measures. I suggest that you go back to your supervisor and point out how you followed the company policy on filing for sick leave. If you are not satisfied. you can always bring up your concern to HR.

2nd Question:

Hi! I have been recently hired by an employer . I will be assigned to a new branch. Since the new branch isn't finished yet, they told us to come to the first branch to come for training. I have already been training for 4 days now. (training days are usually on weekends) And then I find out that there is no training allowance. The employer said that they want us to use that time to familiarize ourselves with the stuff needed for the job, therefore the training would not be paid until the new branch opens. Problem is, the new branch is slated to open August 1 but because of other circumstances, it might be later. Is this fair? No allowance until the new branch opens?

My answer:

From an employee perspective, I say that you get what you bargain for. You need to be clear about the details of the engagement including training allowances before getting on board so you won't be frustrated. If and only if you are happy with the deal should you move forward with the engagement. If you feel you've been tricked, move out of there unless you want more tricks in the future.

From an employers perspective, I opine that not giving employees allowance during training is cold especially in a country like ours where a lot of workers get so little in exchange for back-breaking work. The least you can do for your trainees is cover their transportation and meal expenses while they are undergoing "training" which to some of us became synonimous to free or cheap labor. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure if there's a law that prescribes giving training allowance. I just think that giving them is the right and moral thing to do.

By the way, to those who are wondering why their questions were not featured here, let me tell you that I receive them and has replied to most of you. I choose what I post depending on how I feel about their usefulness to others. There are some questions that I completely ignore because they are hard to understand.

If you have any questions and you think you can benefit from my opinions, please send them using the form on the right or by posting your question in the comment section of this blog like others do. When you do however, please give me enough details to go with.

What If We Turn Training Departments to Performance Management Department? Part 1

2009-07-13T11:14:00.005+08:00

Im just thinking aloud here. I'm thinking that maybe companies who have training departments can change their mandate and start calling them performance management department. They'd probably be doing a lot of the same stuffs and then some. I'm not sure if this is an original idea. I'm typing this post in my cellphone as I sit in a bus. For those who have never thought about it, you might want to consider my ponderings.

I mean think about it. A lot of training investment go to waste because because companies fail to make a direct link between training and performance management. In many companies, training and performance management belong to separate boxes handled by separate groups who are often poorly coordinating if they ever did. In many companies training managers fail to use performance data for identifying training needs. What they often do is send out training needs questionnaires that respondents hastily fill out without much thought and then these become the basis for the company's training plan. In the meantime performance data that scream for the real development needs that impact performance, sit on tables or gather dust in 201 file folders. This is simply because the company use them only as basis for salary review, rewards and all others except training. Many companies don't run an analysis on performance trends that will most likely reveal the needed development interventions. It's such a waste of useful information.

Because training departments are often detached from the business of managing performance, their own performance is often measured by hours of training or successful implementation of annual training plan which may or may not have an impact on actual performance. I'm thinking that if top management can see the direct result of an intervention to performance, maybe they won't be so quick to put them on the chopping board whenever the need or urge to cut cost comes up.

If this post engaged you enough to read up to this far, I imagine you asking how i propose the shift from training department to happen. Here are my answers:

First, let us suppose that top management and training department people are now convinced that this is a right move to make, I imagine that the next logical step is to create a clear mandate for the remodeled group. Off hand, I imagine the purpose of this group to be stated like this:

"To help improve organization-wide performance by offering useful performance management tools, monitor key performance indicators, identify competency gaps, offer solutions in the form of training, coaching, improved work instructions, etc. Monitor the effectiveness of these solutions, create action plans geared towards continous performance improvement and finally make recommendations on items that may be addressed by other departments."

I can see my bus stop ahead and this post has become awfully long. I'm going back to this topic as soon as I can. In the mean time, please help me by co-imagining with me about the possibility of this happening. Share your thoughts by commenting below. I will also appreciate fair warnings. See you next post!

Why Go on a Company Outing During Rainy Season

2009-07-10T14:04:00.003+08:00

ExeQserve and CheQ Systems hit the beach in Iba Zambales last June 20 and 21. At that time a storm was brewing up north and the waves were crazy. I'm just glad that the decline in that area was gradual. That was because nothing stopped us from playing in the waves. We had the time of our lives which convinced me that going on a company outing on a rainy season was not such a bad idea at all. Let me tell you why:

1. Playing and swimming in the rain is so much fun. Need I say more?

2. Most of us Filipinos don't need to get tanned. Going to the beach under an overcast sky or in the rain rid us of the fear of getting sunburned.
3. No overcrowded beaches. The one we went to was practically empty. No need to worry about bothering others with our rambunctious horse playing.

4. The hard rain during the night could drown out the off-key singing (no guarantee).

5. Because it is off-season, you can negotiate a good low rate with the resort and the bus rental company. More money for booze and food.

6. Have you tried drinking booze in the rain? (just make sure the rain water don't mix with the liquor) It's great! Binge eating too.

7. If you go to a resort with a more relaxed house rules,( not one of those tight b*tt resorts that make you pay for just about every little thing and ram a barage of rules down your throat) you can come up with a wild party like we did i.e, sing at the top of our lungs, dance like we were drunk (wait, we were drunk!), played crazy games and pour beer and water (whicheve is available) on each other. Because there is practically no other guests, the resort staff just made sure we don't pour water or beer on the karaoke machine.

If you haven't gone to the beach, it ain't too late. If you have, you can always consider doing this next year.

One requirement for having fun, take people who are fun-loving and not those who hit the sack right after dinner or those who will not go out in the rain to swim when it's raining because they are afraid they might catch a cold. :)

You Can't Have Teamwork If You Can't Manage the Change

2009-07-07T15:10:00.001+08:00

In my opinion, the reason why many efforts to build teamwork go to waste is because managers fail to manage the change. I often get inquiry about team building and when I inquire back about how far they want to go with it, I get silence.

Many managers are convinced that they need to improve teamwork but are unwilling to do the necessary work to have it. They think (or wish) that a one or two-day off site will create some magic that will suddenly turn the backbiting off. That it will suddenly make people more committed to the goals and do their fair share in improving organizational performance. Sadly, this rarely happens or if it does, the improvement is short lived.

No wonder some people are skeptical about it and have lost hope that a team building intervention will help a team work better. I know at least one person who declare that team building is for suckers. I can't blame all those who think the kind of solutions that proliferate out there are not real solutions. I'm of the opinion that a lot of the things people learn from a decent team building workshop are valid. The problem lies in how the whole thing is set up and how follow-through is given.

Building Teamwork is pretty much about managing change. Let's listen to what Change Management Guru John Kotter has to say:He said first "Create urgency". This to me means make a case for the change. Do you need it? Or do you need an excuse to go on a company outing? Be sure that you need it and are willing to go towards great lengths to achieve it.

Kotter then said, "Form a powerful coalition". This means that the journey from no-teamwork to with-great-teamwork is bought into by the leadership of the organization and are committed to championing the change. Since we are talking about building teamwork here, they should also be committed to modeling the way by showing teamwork among themselves.

The third step is "create a vision for change". This is important. We don't have a common understanding of what it is like to have teamwork. For some it's unbridled collaboration and empowerment, for others it's allowing the boss to herd the rest of the team like cows. So what do you really want to see into the future when the team succeeds and becomes a high performing team? This has to be expressed in vivid terms.

Next, "communicate the vision. This can be part of the preparation for an off site activity or can be done in the early part of the event. I prefer the former. I think everybody should be clear about why they are camping out. I tell you I've had more than enough of participants mistaking the offsite activity for company outing and the team building activities mere parlor games! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! ( Sorry, got carried away there)

The fifth action is to "remove obstacles". This is why people go out for a two-day off site team building. This is so they can identify what get's in the way of teamwork and decide how to overcome them. Patrick Lencioni identified five dysfunctions that get in the way of teamwork and prescribed some ways to overcome them. I use his prescription in my workshops.

You can't go home from a team building event without doing Kotter's 6th step and that is "create short-term wins". You need to identify the things you can do right after the workshop that will pave the way for building a stronger, more cohesive team. These quick-win activities should be clear, specific, actionable and observable.

This will be the subject of step seven, "Build on the Change" Which is following through on the norms set in the workshop and see to it that they all happen. Managers should not let up until all the agreed changes in behavior become habits and that quick wins are pursued and achieved.

The last stage is "anchor the change in the corporate culture". Let it grow roots. Build your policies around strengthening and rewarding teamwork and discouraging, even prohibiting the absence of it.

See? You build your team building effort around John Kotter's 8-step model and I tell you, there's hardly any reason for it to fail.

Here's one more thing. I'll be more than happy to help you use this model to facilitate an organizational culture change for your company if you let me. Forget the one-day or half-day sessions that lead practically to nowhere.

If you want teamwork, manage the change.

Let's Grow More Talents

2009-07-06T13:08:00.002+08:00

The Funny thing is, despite the economic downturn which some people say lead to loss of jobs, companies continue to find it hard to find good qualified people in the Philippines. There is a tough competition for talent and experience. Mostly the latter than the former.

Many companies prefer to hire people with the right exposure, the right experience in the business they are in, the kind of clients they handle and the technology they are using. This is understandable. It is quite expensive to develop people to have all these and much riskier if the people they are hiring are managers. There is of course the risk of losing an employee after painstakingly training them because other companies who are unwilling to train, are more willing to part with their big bucks eating the cake that another company baked.

In a grander scheme of things, I am of the opinion that this situation is hampering productivity and profitability on a national level. Why? Because the war for talent is jacking up the market rate of hard to find jobs and causing some companies not to afford them. The war metaphor clearly indicates that there are winners and losers here. The price losers pay in the war for talent is stunted growth and mediocre performance. On the other hand, we have an over abundance of talents with no training (and college education, don't get me started with that!) and experience who are left to get whatever work is available. This is why we have business majors who are sweeping floors, engineering graduates working as data entry operators and other jobs that leave them with very little return on their college investment and very little purchasing power to buy the products and services that the industries are churning out. No wonder the economy is bad.

I think both government and industries need and must focus on human resource development. Companies must put up a human resource development plan of their own that will address the competency needs of their businesses. They should be able to hire younger, less experienced people and hone them well enough to succeed incumbent highly skilled people when they move on. Companies should develop their own career development and succession planning program. The Philippine government must look into giving more tax incentives to ALL companies who invest heavily on human resource development. This should ease the burden of finding qualified people and increase the opportunities of young professionals for career growth. I believe in the end, everybody will win.

A Culture of Candor and Assertiveness in the Filipino Workplace

2009-05-31T21:59:00.007+08:00

Note: Not all Filipinos are passive or have the tendency to avoid conflicts or confrontations but most are. In this blog, I'm talking about most Filipinos, not all.

There's not enough of it in most Filipino work places. We Filipinos are not big on saying it as it is.We are non confrontational. We are specially timid around bosses. Geert Hofstede's research on power distance index puts us at top 4. That means that we are among those who have the most tendency to avoid contradicting or challenging a boss' opinion. This go both ways. I've seen managers go ballistic at small hints of challenge. We don't expect to be corrected by subordinates. We see it as an upfront, an uncomfortable, ego busting upfront.

The world is changing. The amount of education and information being absorbed by team members and their talents and intelligence would easily go to waste if they are not given the chance to speak up and speak their minds as freely and whenever possible.
I propose, that we change the way communicate in the workplace. Let us encourage candor and assertiveness. There are so much benefit for doing so. It will help managers make more informed decisions. It can save us from making expensive mistakes. Most importantly, it can increase engagement and teamwork.

Here's the difficult question, how do we go about it? How do we turn around ages of programming? How do we make unassertive people, assertive? How do we change a workplace that subscribe to hierarchical relationship?

This is what I tell my employees.

"I can't possibly be right all the time, hence I appreciate being corrected. Whenever you feel that I am making a bad decision, try to stop me. But don't expect me to just change my mind just because you tried. I'll put up a fight and I expect you to do the same. If I see you taking the coward's way out, I will call your attention until you realize that it pays to have a healthy exchange of ideas with me."

Let me tell you however, that saying those things is not enough. You cannot have that litany and then expect things to change right away. Leaders need to put their money where their mouth is by putting people to task about being open with their ideas, feelings and opinions.

That too however is not enough. Two interventions are necessary to establish a culture of candor and assertiveness. One requires establishing team cohesiveness by building trust, open communication, commitment, accountability and focus on result. The other one requires building the team's including the managers' assertiveness. They should be able to shift from passive or agressive to assertive style of communication.

There are dozens of available interventions out there on team building and assertiveness training. They will help you build a highly interactive and high performing team. If you need my assistance, call me at (63918)939-9294.

My Recommendations for Building a Strong Filipino Team

2009-05-26T13:00:00.001+08:00

Aside from the fact that I am a Filipino working in a Filipino setting, I observed that Filipinos are different in many ways from people in the west and even from neighboring countries. This is of course not to say that we are totally different. It is the concoction of similiraties and differences that we need to take good look at and build on as we establish a completely engaged team. Here are my recommendations:

Equip Managers to Lead Teams
Many Filipino Managers are young, lacking in proper leadership training and inexperienced in leadership. Many of the new managers I've encountered are mostly task managers concerned mostly with getting things done. They have a very vague concept of teamwork, much less the dynamics that go with it. Many companies go to team building workshops without addressing a key ingredient to making teams work-- Leadership.

A Team Leadership workshop should address important team leadership issues as understanding the difference between management and leadership, the role they play in team development, what can get in the way of teamwork and what they can do about it. It should also offer coaching tools in large servings.

Train Your Employees To be Assertive

Filipinos are some of the least assertive people in the world. A research made on Power Distance Index place us one of the countries with the highest tendency to defer to authority. What does this mean? It means that most Filipinos are unlikely to challenge a wrong decision coming from a boss. Let me go further by saying that we are mostly non confrontational. We will hesitate to call the attention of a fellow worker whose doing a poor job for fear of ruining the personal relationship. we can do this to the point of damaging the performance of the whole operation. When this happen, we tend to be less engaged because we don't like the fact that the boss is not seeing or not addressing the performance issues.

An assertiveness training will help team members assert themselves when they need to speak up to the boss or to their team mates. This will allow the team to have more available information, quality decision making, and more engaged team members. Training them however is one thing, encouraging them is another. I have always find it a challenge to get team members to speak up to me about issues and I'm trying. What more those who discourage it?

Build Norms around trust, communication, goals, behaviors and results.

This one is universal.I think all teams in all over the world need this. I'm coming from a book written by Patrick Lencioni on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you've been reading me from sometime, you'd know how I feel about this thing. My teambuilding workshops uses a lot of Patrick Lencioni's proposal on how to build cohesive teams. Let me know if you want to hear more from me about this.

Establish Opportunities for Teamwork

Give your employees a venue to practice teamwork. Equip them with tools. Things that come to mind are quality circles, six sigma teams, business process improvement exercises, etc. You can give them training on problem solving and decision making and other process improvement based tools that go with the programs I mentioned. Institutionalize process improvement. I've seen a lot of process improvement training that went for naught because of lack of a program to sustain it.

You probably know that I am very passionate about this I have created a complete team culture building solution that focuses on the things I've mentioned here. If you are serious with building a team culture for your company and I do think you should, please call me at (639)18-939-9294 or email me at ecebreo@exeQserve.com

Addendum I recently put together a new holistic team building program inspired by the proposal I wrote here. If you want to see it, just click this link:

The Power of Empowerment in the Workplace

2009-05-24T16:15:00.003+08:00

I don't get it. Why would a manager not empower their employees? I didn't think I even have to talk about the benefits of empowerment. In fact it took me long to write about this subject matter because I thought it was too elementary.

What changed my mind? I've been encountering too many situations lately where lack of empowerment is causing some companies to slowdown, make wrong decisions or lose good people. Let me cite some instances.

In one company, a Country Manager micro manages everything including work performed by very junior managers. As a result, bills are not paid on time, some decisions that can be made at certain levels are refered to him causing delay and frustrations. It causes managers to leave the company, sometimes soon after they accepted the job.

In another, American bosses situated on the other side of the earth make decisions for their Philippine operation while very senior managers who have better understanding of the culture on this side of the planet are accountable for results but do not have enough authority to make things happen.

I could go on and on about some companies' lack of nimbleness that can be attributed to absence of empowerment but that's not the purpose of this blog. My purpose is for managers like me to recognize the power of empowerment and utilize them in the workplace as much as they can.

What is empowerment? If you Google it, you'll come out with so many answers so let me share the description that I know and the one I am referring to in this topic.

Empowerment is the delegation of responsibility, accountability and authority necessary to succeed in one's work. Now, a lot goes into making that happen. That is because just delegating per se won't cut it. The person giving the empowerment may cause the one being given power to fail if that person is not ready for empowerment. Factors like ability, readiness and willingness are critical to success of delegating responsibilities, accountability and authority. It starts therefore in hiring the right person, ensuring that, that person has the tools to make things happen and providing that person all the necessary support to gain confidence in what she is doing. This includes allowing the person to make mistakes and learn from them. This is tricky because we all know how expensive some mistakes can get.Sometimes we just can't allow them to make those mistakes so we become more controlling. The only way however, for the people we are leading to not make mistakes is for us managers to make the mistakes ourselves. If we are leading a lot of people, that would be a lot of mistakes on our part. This is why a lot of failures can be traced back to the inability of top leaders to make right decisions or their failure to make right decisions on time. I've seen it in my recruitment business. We've lost quite a number of great candidates because the top manager had to decide on the employment of people several rungs below him when the prospective immediate superior could have made that decision. By the time the top manager becomes available to interview a candidate, he has already accepted a job offer elsewhere.

I have seen the power of empowerment in my own team. I am able to do what I'm able to do because I've spread problem solving and decision making among my team members. It has a lot of benefits. People understand their responsibilities, are accountable for them and know that they can do whatever is necessary within the bounds of the company resources to make things happen. It frees me to focus on strategizing and more development works. It also frees me to coach. If you are doing a lot the decision making in the company, I assure you, it will very difficult to coach.

I enjoin you to look at how much empowerment you are giving your employees and resolve to ready them for empowerment. It makes their job more meaningful and yours less cumbersome.