Anything HR by Ed

Can Your Recruitment Staff Headhunt?

2012-01-05T10:58:00.002+08:00

We all know good talents are hard to come by these days. You post an ad in the papers and in the Internet and then you get a lot of practically useless resumes and close to no one is good enough for the job. Is there really no available talents out there? There are great talents out there. The best of them are gainfully and happily employed and may not even be looking at news papers or online job boards for opportunities. It takes a deliberate and creative effort to find them and takes a little bit more to reel them in.

Are you wondering why your recruiters go back to you empty-handed? Maybe this answers your question; if all they do is advertise, chances are they won't find what you want them to find.

As a manager of a company that does a lot of headhunting, I've interviewed recruitment specialists from various organizations and this is what I've come to figure. Most of them are trained to post vacancies and screen candidates, not to source and much less attract good candidates by pitching or selling the company's employer brand.

Nowadays when companies are battling to attract and retain candidates, isn't important for your recruitment frontliners to hunt good candidates and be capable of reeling them in? I believe it is.

I am running a half-day learning session on this topic on February 16. And for 1,500 (plus VAT) I will share some headhunting secrets with the participants. I invite you to invest that amount for your recruitment staff to learn some new tactics in sourcing and getting candidates to explore. I believe any beginner in the recruitment practice and those who feel they are stuck in the old ways of hiring will benefit from this learning session.

Here's a disclaimer - inviting candidates and getting them to explore your company is one thing, getting them to sign up is another. It is dependent on the employer value you are offering which should be part of your elaborate employer branding strategy. Let me talk about that next time. :)

Check out the details of that seminar below:

Headhunting 101 - February

Equipping Your Line Managers/Supervisors to Handle Disciplinary Issues

2012-01-02T15:13:00.002+08:00

Discipline is a line responsibility. This is not always how it is understood in many organizations. Often, people think that it is the sole responsibility of HR to discipline people. In fact, many managers' send their erring employees to HR for disciplining instead of acting on the issue themselves. Even HR sometimes do not understand the division of responsibility between them and the managers when it comes to dealing with erring employees. This is why many HR practitioners in the Philippines act like school principals, looking over people's shoulders and acting like the corporate cop they think they out to be. This is incorrect and ineffective for several reasons; If disciplining is relegated to HR alone, no body will know the company policy except for HR (which is true in many companies). Companies do not have enough HR staff to play this cop/school principal role. Line managers when fully equipped can do a better job of discouraging people from violating company policies, call their attention or apply disciplinary action if they err, better appreciation of policies will help them make recommendations on how they can be improved and implemented.

In order for company policies to be effectively implemented, line managers or supervisors must understand their role in maintaining discipline in the workplace. They should also learn how due process works and what role they play in ensuring fairness when investigating possible violation of company policies. Most importantly, managers should be capable of handing out discipline when necessary with their minds set on improving performance more than just punishing employees for their wrong-doing.

The organization's culture is shaped by its managers. There is so much that managers can do to ensure that what is written on paper is consistent with what is happening on the floor. When people know that their managers fully appreciate the company's policies and will have no qualms about addressing misalignment, they take the company's policy more seriously.

A manager is well equipped when one is capable of preventing deviations from policies, know when an employee is deviating, can go through the proper procedure of applying due process, hand down disciplinary action in a way that does not expose the company to legal liabilities and is also able to maintain the employees self esteem and the relationship as a disciplinary action is handed down.

If you need help in transitioning your managers towards becoming actively engaged in preventing and addressing disciplinary issues, I encourage you to attend our 4-hour no frills training on the subject matter on February 8, 2012. Details are stated below. If you want a customized "Maintaining Discipline in the Workplace" Workshop for your company, please contact me and I'll be happy to work out a plan with you.

andling Discipline Issues and Due Process - February

Do Your Managers Know How to Interview Candidates?

2011-12-29T10:23:00.001+08:00

If you are in charge of or a participant in the recruitment process, you know very well this is an important question.

A lot of recruitment efforts go to waste because Managers take their part in the process for granted. They don't prepare for interviews, don't know which questions to ask and don't know what to make of candidates' responses to their questions. A lot of managers go by their gut feel when deciding who to hire. While I continue to believe that instinct should have considerable weight in hiring decision making, it should not be the sole basis for it. A lot of expensive hiring mistakes are made when managers fail to account for the necessary competencies when making hiring decisions.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, hiring is everything. A wrong hire is difficult if not impossible to correct with training and did I also mention expensive? If you agree with me on this, you must also agree that managers need to learn how to conduct better job interviews. There has to be a deliberate effort for them to find out what kind of preparations are needed so that people involved in the hiring process know what they are looking for. They need to know how to prepare for a screening process. They need understand all those reports you as a recruitment/HR person (if you are this person) are preparing to aid them in interviewing and sorting out candidates.They need to learn how to formulate questions that will help determine if these candidates have what it takes to succeed in the job. They need learn all these things whether by reading a book or attending a training. By whatever means they need to recognize the importance of opening the organization's gates only to those who have the best chance of succeeding in it.

HR as a strategic partner needs to look at the manner by which managers choose their people and see where they can improve. This idea is easy to sell. Just analyze the effectiveness of your hiring mechanism in choosing people for the job in terms of the new employees' ability to succeed or fail in the job and you will be able to easily see if your selection process needs improving. A failure to hire is caused by poor recruitment strategy, a failure to hire the right person, I believe is a failure to establish an effective screening mechanism where interviewing is an important part thereof.

I invite you to send your managers to ExeQserve's No Frills Training Workshop in February on Effective Interviewing Techniques. Let me know if you have questions about this program and I will be more than happy to address them for you. In the mean time, please check the workshop details below.

Effective Interviewing Technique- February

ExeQserve Launches No Frills Training

2011-12-26T11:24:00.002+08:00

I'm interrupting regular blog programming to share with you some information about the training product we are launching at ExeQserve.

We are formally launching No Frills Training in February and the first three workshops are; Job Interviewing, Handling Disciplinary issues and Headhunting 101. We will add more titles as we develop new courses that follow the program pattern. I'd like to share with you the thoughts behind this plan, my motivation and why I think this idea works most for the learners.

Here are a number of realities that we in the business of running public seminars must contend with:

People's learning habits are changing. The over abundance of information is causing us to have shorter memory and attention span. Accommodating information in our head is too much of a burden so we tend to intentionally forget them because we know they can be accessed again through various means.
There are other ways to learn. You probably notice that you are engaging Google, Wikipedia and YouTube for your learning needs more often now. The new members of the workforce and the ones who will join us in the future will be so accustomed to it they will have less use for traditional training approaches to learn new things. There are various materials that can be downloaded from the Internet. In fact, with some materials, enough courage and a little "googling," you can build your own home-made rocket. For more than a dozen times, I looked at YouTube to learn how to cook certain dishes. The only problem with self-paced learning methods like this is that they don't have features that tell you if you are doing it right. A good training program that teaches skills should be able to do that for you.
Not everything is useful. Many trainers tell participants that attending a seminar is like going to a buffet with lots of food offered on the table. You get what you want and what you need and you consume them. you leave out those thing you don't need. Well, apparently, Buffet is not the best metaphor for public seminars, They're more like plated dinners with dishes served one by one. If you don't like what is being served now, you'll have to wait for the next round. It's a waste of your time and that of the resource person. What if you paid for the whole course but you are really just interested in one particular dish?

These inspired me to come up with the concept that will offer training programs that are so focused, they answer questions you typically type in your Google searches like, "how to write a job description," or "how to give constructive feedback to employees with performance issues," or "how to write a business plan." No Frills Training will not give you a buffet or a lengthy string of plated options. Our facilitators will offer you a tool and strive towards helping you learn how to use it. This is where No Frills Training is better than YouTube. When you attend our programs, you will have coaches who will allow you to try out the skill and give you feedback that will help you develop the confidence in applying it when you return to the workplace.

As I have mentioned in the video, No Frills training will give you:

Exactly the skill you want to learn, no beating around the bush, no wasting of your time
Soft copies of tools and templates that you can use immediately after the session.
A working knowledge of how to do it, not just appreciation of the concept
LOW PRICED, HIGH VALUE TRAINING!

Am I saying that No Frills Training is now the only way to go and that there is no more use for standard training approaches? My answer is a big fat NO. No Frills Training is a hot dog or a shawarma stand or any of those food stands that offer one product each as compared to standard training that can be compared to full service restaurants. There are programs that cannot fit the No Frills Model. How do you, for example train people how to conduct effective presentations in four hours? You can't! That's why ExeQserve will continue to offer regular training programs but in-house and as public training programs.

Please see a partial list of our February program below and watch out for more training programs coming out of our No Frills Training Program.

No Frills Training for February

Talent Management: Making Sense of the Grissoms and the Ecklies of the World.

2011-12-22T10:37:00.002+08:00

I must admit that I am a late blooming fan of that spectacular TV Series, CSI. I spent the past few weeks devouring seasons 1 to 8 and is looking forward to seeing the rest of series soon. As much if not more than the mind blowing crime scene investigations, I got very interested in the dynamics of the CSI workplace. The HR man in me kicked in as I observed the characters' jobs and realized that they are in their right positions in the organization even if at times, it seems that they shouldn't be so. Grissom, the night shift supervisor and Ecklie, former day time supervisor and now Grissom's boss are a perfect study in talent placement.

For the non-CSI fans, let me tell a bit about the situation here. Between the two, it would appear that Grissom is the better scientist and the only reason why Ecklie edged him to that higher position is because he plays the politics card which to my eyes look like organization savvy.

If you sit through those many episodes and seasons, it is hard not to be blown away by the Grissom genius. You'll be so much of a fan that you know he should be a shoo-in for promotion. I felt the pain (his pain?) when they promoted Ecklie instead of him because just like everyone else, I want the good guys to get rewarded with plump promotion.

In hindsight though, I realize why Ecklie's perfect for his job and there is nothing better for Grissom than to continue to show his brilliance where he is. Know why? If you are a fan like me, you can probably see how Grissom will suck in a job where he does not look at DB's (dead bodies) anymore and instead work his way through the bureaucracy to get things done. Ecklie is so much better in doing the latter than the former. Grissom is at his best when he works closest to the ground while Ecklie is best at making sense of the administrative bureaucracy and using the same to get things and people aligned. There are very few scenes where Ecklie is given a chance to see some redeeming factors and that's probably because Americans like to 'stick it to the man.' i do hope to see some of it in the episodes I haven't seen.

What's the point, you may ask. Placement of people in roles where they can be at their best is crucial to organizational success. Many organizations however, follow the Peter Principle. People expect promotion for the prestige and additional salary and perks it brings. This is why we have a lot of supervisors who are still possessive of their old skills and choose to "do the job" instead of delegating it. That's because they can't let go of things they find most enjoyable to do... And they don't enjoy the supervisory stuff as much.

I can go on and on with examples of popular people who are better coaches than players or better players than coaches. Think Freddie Roach, Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, Manny Pacquiao, etc.
We are not learning. We designed our organizations where people can't be stuck to being great players and people who have better potential at strategizing and leading are overshadowed by star players.

How do you change this situation? I believe it requires a great deal of paradigm shift (ah, paradigm shift, I just have to put that favorite HR word in!). We need to build a culture where staying in a position where you obviously can do better than leading a bunch of folks can be more rewarding both financially and emotionally. We need to design two career tracks (or more?) where the technical track go as high as the managerial track and therefore can be as rewarding. If we do this, we can only get people to take on leadership or management roles for the sheer joy of doing it and not just for the perks. We also need to take a closer look at people's competencies in order to better match them with jobs. HR needs to get into this competency modeling business and learn how to put the models to good use in hiring and placing people. This is of course not to say that great players cannot be great managers. Of course, they can but not all of them, just some. I mean, how many Clint Eastwoods are out there? Know what I mean? Some people should stay as actors and forget about being directors. Doing it and making others do it require different sets of competencies.

Check out ExeQserve's Competency Modeling Proposal:
ExeQserve Competency Mapping Project

Empowering Employees to Make Decision

2011-12-17T21:08:00.000+08:00

On several occasions, I'm asked to emphasize decision making in my supervisory and management skills workshop, which actually is needless to say because decision-making is in deed an important part of it. The reason for this "special request" is that managers think their employees can't or don't have the skill to make sound decisions.

More often than not, they are right about their employees' inability to decide but wrong about the lack of skill. As a matter of fact, the right decisions are often just hanging there not being taken because those who are expected to make decisions do not have the... (drum roll please) needed empowerment to make them!

Employees' inability to decide is a good indicator of no empowerment. It's not a matter of "can't" but more a matter of 'Won't!' They won't because of the risk involved in making decisions which include blame, punishment and loss of trust. Imagined or not, this barrier to decision making are not without reason. Legacy events normally cause people to sort of learn from those experiences and try not to make the same mistakes again. When I say mistake I mean the mistake of taking it upon themselves to decide.

Failure to empower is caused by managers' inability to apply the right directing styles in given situations. These errors are costly in the manager-employee relationship because they cause failed expectations on both sides. I believe that if managers want their employees to be accustomed to making decisions, they need to get them ready for it and then help them develop more confidence not only in their ability to decide but confidence in the relationship. Yes my friends, empowerment is not just a leadership issue, it's a team building issue. If your managers don't know how to lead and how to build teamwork, it will be fairly difficult to get people to make decisions where and when it counts.

Four factors are necessary for people to become empowered to make sound decisions, first they have to be in the job they are good at. This means hiring the right person for the job. Second, they need to develop the necessary skills to do their job. This means training. Third, they need to develop confidence in making decisions that matter. This means coaching and mentoring. Fourth, they need to know the boundaries of their decision making power. Being unclear about the boundaries is just like being in a really dark cave. you won't move a muscle because you don't know what you'll be stepping into next.

Check out this course if you wish to train your managers about delegation and empowerment.

Ed Ebreo - Applying Situational Leadership Workshop

Who Builds Your Team?

2011-12-06T07:49:00.001+08:00

If you are the leader of a team, then it is you. The success or failure of any team building effort depends on your ability and willingness to make things happen. Leaders lead, followers follow.

At exeQserve, our team building facilitators make it a point to lay this down clearly. I talk to whoever is the leader of a requesting organization and clarify both his/her role and ours as workshop facilitators.

If it is an organization-wide team building, we talk to all the managers and let them in on the strategy and tell them what role they will be playing during the workshop and then more importantly, after. This way, we already have them as ally or co-facilitators right at the start of the workshop.

I personally believe that more than the other members, leaders must approach a team building effort with the right mindset. In fact, I would go on to propose that in order to get maximum result from a team building effort, leaders should go through a leadership workshop that has a proper focus on building and managing teams. They need to understand that it is a process and not a one time event. Teams don't get built over night, much less over a day or a few hours. The purpose of facilitating team building workshop is to jumpstart the process. Effective leaders use the momentum to push their agenda for strengthening teamwork in the group.

Speaking of mindset, here is what I believe leaders must be able to do in order to strengthen their teams; if they want to build trust, they must encourage it, if they want to improve communication, they must open all possible channels, if they want commitment, accountability and focus on results, they must model them. Yes, talk is cheap action speaks louder than words. A leader must be clear about this and then some, before she goes to a team building event with her team. When leaders fail to follow through on their team building commitments, teams go to a worse shape than before. Hence, it is critical for leaders to take their role in this process seriously and passionately.

If you feel you need help facilitating a team building workshop for your group, call us at exeQserve and let us show you how you as a leader can succeed in building your team. Check out my download page to see exeqserve's various team building related programs.

13th Month Pay Questions and Answers

2011-11-14T09:26:00.003+08:00

November is the month all these questions land in my inbox that I answer one by one. Each time, I have to do some researching of my own to validate my own understanding of how it works because I've not done HR admin work for quite a while. I decided that now may be the best time to talk about it and share some informational resources as you compute for 13th month pay both as an employer or employee. If you are paying for the first time, this post may be helpful as you don't want to start a wrong practice that you will have to change later. If you pay more than you have to now and then realize you're doing it all wrong, you will have a problem changing it back to normal due to the non-dimunition clause indicated in the law.

Please note that I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on the law, so if you find some of the information here as wrong or outdated, please let me know as I would gladly change it if there is a good basis. Let's get started.

What is the 13th Month Pay?

The 13th Month pay by definition according to the labor code means one twelfth (1/12) of the basic salary of an employee within a calendar year. Please take note of the because it has something to do with how you compute for it. The 13th month pay is mandated under Presidential Decree No. 851 by former President Ferdinand Marcos. Some changes were made in the revised guidelines issued during the time of President Corazon Aquino. Check the links for details on this law.

What is basic salary in the context of 13th Month Payment?
Again according to the labor code, basic salary include all remunerations or earnings paid by an employer to an employee for services rendered but may not include allowances or monetary benefits which are not considered or integrated as part of the regular or basic salary. Examples of these are cash equivalent of unused leave credits, overtime, premium, night differential and holiday pay. The only reasons why these should be included in the computation is if there is an internal arrangement or collective bargaining agreement to do so.

Who are entitled?
All rank and file employees who have worked in the company for at least a month is entitled to a prorate 13th month pay. I will show you the computation later. By law paying managerial employees 13th month pay is an employer prerogative. Government workers, house hold workers (although this may change soon as a bill is already filed in congress entitling them to it.), those who are paid on purely commission, boundary, or task basis, and those who are paid a fixed amount for performing a specific work, irrespective of the time consumed in the performance thereof, except where the workers are paid on piece-rate basis in which case they are entitled.

How do we compute the 13th month pay?
The revised guideline says that "The "basic salary" of an employee for the purpose of computing the 13th month pay shall include all remunerations or earning paid by this employer for services rendered but does not include allowances and monetary benefits which are not considered or integrated as part of the regular or basic salary, such as the cash equivalent of unused vacation and sick leave credits, overtime, premium, night differential and holiday pay, and cost-of-living allowances. However, these salary-related benefits should be included as part of the basic salary in the computation of the 13th month pay if by individual or collective agreement, company practice or policy, the same are treated as part of the basic salary of the employees." take note of the line I highlighted. It says all earning paid for services rendered. Does it mean absences without pay and deductions due to tardiness and undertime should be removed from the annual basic salary paid? I believe so but this is where I see companies differ in the way they compute for 13th month pay. If you follow this computation literally, the computation should look like this:

daily wage X number of paid days = basic salary within a calendar year
basic salary within a calendar year/ 12 = 13th month pay

and the way to compute for a prorated 13th month pay if you only work several months(let's say 3) should look like this:

basic salary paid for 3 months/ 12 = prorated 13th month pay

If this is not how you compute for prorated 13th month pay, it is likely that you will pay higher than necessary. I've been trying to find a formula for computing 13th month pay for piece-rate workers but I couldn't find any. if you know the formula, please share here.

When must it be paid?
Law says it shall be paid not later than the 24th of December of each year. An employer may also choose to divide payment by paying the first half midyear and the rest on or before the prescribed date.

Is 13th month pay taxable?
If together with other financial benefits the total do not exceed P30,000.00, then it isn't taxable. If it exceeds the said limit, the amount in excess shall be taxable.

Other Considerations
What I discussed here are the minimum requirements of the law. If you choose to be competitive and want to give more than what is required as a matter of strategy, then you should be congratulated. Please note however that what you do as a practice becomes nature of the benefit, meaning that if you reduce it reflect the minimum requirement of the law, you may be violating this provision:

Prohibitions against reduction or elimination of benefits

Nothing herein shall be construed to authorize any employer to eliminate, or diminish in any way, supplements, or other employee benefits or favorable practice being enjoyed by the employee at the time of promulgation of this issuance.

HR Philippines is Conducting a Fundamental Supervisory Skills Workshop

2011-11-08T20:17:00.000+08:00

Send your supervisors to this rare training opportunity. I am running a workshop with some of the well respected training professionals in the industry like Jet Nera, Sonnie Santos and Raffy Perfecto on December 5 and 6, 2011. If you wish to know more about the program, download the document here:

HR Philippines Fundamental Supervisory Skills Workshop

The Importance of Having a Management Development Strategy

2011-11-02T09:47:00.000+08:00

I sometimes wonder how we are more careful of hiring an entry-level employee than promoting a person to a supervisory or managerial person. The damage of wrong hire have already been talked about and estimated but many of us continue to take unnecessary risk in raising people to what the Peter Principle points out as their level of incompetence.

A managerial or supervisory role is so important and dealing with having the wrong person in place is so messy that I believe organizations need to have a strategy for selecting candidates for these roles, prepare them and then continue to develop them. If John Maxwell is to be believed, everything rises and falls on them. As usual, I have some recommendations.

Use a Competency Model
Mapping the ideal competencies for important positions in your organization is very useful. It can be used to objectively assess your candidates' readiness to take on the role. It can also be used determine the needed developmental interventions for employees who are not yet ready but have the potential.

Check out exeQserve's Competency Mapping service offering here.

Consider Performance But...
We all heard this familiar horror story. A company needed a manager, promoted the best worker to a supervisory role and then ended up having a lousy one and losing a great worker. Was Phil Jackson a great basketball player? Was Freddie Roach a great boxer? I don't think so! They were above average at best. And then I've heard of really great players who made lousy coaches. There, I rest my case.

Again, Hire for Attitude, Train for Skills
This is true for recruitment as it is for promoting people to key positions. Get people who have sound attitude about leading and management because they respond well to leadership and management development interventions. It's as common a sense as having someone who really loves math take up a major in math as opposed to someone who doesn't care about it except for counting money like myself.

Have a Way Out
Sometimes, what looks good on paper do not translate as well in real life. With all your best effort and intentions, you will realize that no management development strategy have rocket science accuracy. Your policy should enable you to recall appointment by offering the person his old position back or let the person move on. Messy, I know. This, however is so much better than enduring a deadwood manager or supervisor.

Clarify Expectations
my benchmark of a good supervisor or manager is someone who will approach me as her superior and lay down her proposals even before I figure out my own expectations. That does not always happen, so be ready to crystalize your expectations to that person so she can act on it. Preventing them from guessing what looks good to you and what's not will save you a great deal of waiting time.

Empower
People throw away what they learned from training because they feel that they don't have the power to apply the recommended changes in the workplace. This is also because they are not made accountable for making changes happen in the workplace. I have heard people dismiss the training as ineffective when they see no changes, when the real reason is that they did not empower the person to apply what they learned. Okay, let me step back a bit and define my own understanding of empowerment. It is the appointment of responsibility with commensurate amount of authority and accountability to a person. Empowering a person, therefore means giving the person clear descriptions of his responsibility, limits of authority and accountability for performance and behavior at work. Making this clear to a person and then connecting the purpose of training to these responsibilities and paving the way for change to happen, makes change happen. If training is likened to learning to ride a bicycle, empowering employees is giving them the bicycle.

This blog article is inspired by recent experiences running leadership and management workshops for several government agencies and private companies. Those experiences cemented my belief that training must be anchored on a sound employee development strategy that is linked to an organizational development strategy, that is of course, also linked to organizational direction and strategies. I believe that a reasonably sized organization should have this. Put bells and whistles if you mus,t but to me what's important is having a logically framed strategy that selects, trains and empowers people to be at their best as supervisors and managers.

If establishing a Management Development Program is a challenge for you, maybe I can help. Check this out:

ExeQserve Training Consultancy Service Program

Some Thoughts on Maintaining Discipline in the Workplace

2011-10-28T10:00:00.011+08:00

These last few days gave me several opportunities to talk about and listen to what other people say regarding discipline in the work place. I will not try to relate all of them together, instead, I am writing them here as bits of pieces of ideas that you may pick up in case you are interested. Here goes...

Clarifying HR and Line Management Roles in Maintaining Discipline
Who hires and fires? If you answered HR, then you are wrong. HR is instrumental to it but it should never be HR's call to hire and fire unless they are hiring a person for the department. Hiring, discipling and firing is a line responsibility. Line managers must be equipped to do it. HR on the other hand must be equipped to help but not take away that responsibility from a line manager. Why? Because line managers must take responsibility for the choices they make. In one BPO company where I worked. I told managers, they will have to fire the people they hire if those people fail to meet performance expectations. If they don't like firing people, they should do two things. Hire the best candidate and equip them so they can achieve their performance objectives.

Invest in Values Clarification and you'll spend less time policing.
Someone said (or at least this is how I remembered it) that maintaining discipline is largely a function of leadership. If organizational and individual values are clear then there won't be much need for so much code of discipline and schedule of disciplinary action. I totally agree and I hope that in the future there really won't be much need for them. While we can't prove yet that they are not necessary, let's keep them handy for the mean time :)

Start at Hiring the Right Person for the Job
Somebody asked "what should I give more weight in hiring, skill or attitude?" I answered most people get fired due to their attitude rather than their skills. The best answer should be both but more often, hiring managers get attracted to experience and skills because they are more visible and easier to distinguish. Attitude on the other hand, specially the bad ones are masked to the candidates best ability. For this reason, those who make hiring decisions must be fully equipped to make more informed decisions rather than rely solely on their guts. What I mean is train your managers to read all those psychometric reports and then help them learn to ask more than the traditional questions that we often hear like "tell me about yourself" etc.

Sing the Same Song
Workplace Discipline is achieved through a collaborative effort and commitment of all managing parties. Often we see inconsistencies between what HR says during employee orientation and what managers and supervisors say or allow on the floor. This causes ambiguity and lack of commitment among workers. I also notice that those who look the other way when employees violate rules tend to get more popular than those who enforce the rules. No wonder many managers choose to look the other way. In some companies, this has become so prevalent that there's already a valley of gap between what is written and what is practiced. Don't let this happen to your company. Gather the bosses and talk about how all of you can be consistent in your message of maintaining discipline in the workplace.

I conduct workshops on maintaining discipline in the workplace. Contact me if you wish to have one for your company or see my typical course outline below.

Ed Ebreo - Maintaining Discipline in the Workplace Workshop

On Becoming an HR Leader

2011-10-24T09:32:00.009+08:00

If you are an HR professional and you are experiencing the following, you are likely suffering from a lack of credibility;

People not taking the performance management system you launched seriously;
Not much happens after you launch a training and development program;
Your HR programs die a natural death;
People do not appreciate the fact that you are spending most of your waking hours working for them; and
People still call your department "Personnel" and think that all you do is keep time, arrange Christmas Parties and company outings.

The problem with HR in many Philippine organizations is not that the expectations are too high but that the expectations are too low. It is not only due to the lack of management appreciation of what HR can do but the lack of appreciation of the HR professionals themselves. Many of us think that our role as a support unit is to wait for orders, coordinate and implement rather than lead or take initiative. This has got to change.

Dave Ulrich and his Associates released in 2007 the result of a study called the Human Resource Competency Study that serves as a good guide for HR professionals who want to bring their organizational contribution to the next level. I'd like to talk about my take on these competencies in the next few outings. For now, I'd like to focus on one very important and sorely lacking competency- on becoming a Credible HR Activist.

Here are a few bullet points to describe the behavioral attributes of this competency:

Delivering results with integrity.
Sharing information.
Building relationships of trust.
Doing HR with an attitude (taking appropriate risks, providing candid observations, influencing others).

What do the attributes tell you? To me it says leadership, it says taking a position and influencing others to share one's desire for better human resource development and management. To take a position is one thing, to be listened to and believed is a whole other ball game. And to be that HR professional requires a great deal of work. Work that I wish all Filipino HR professionals are willing to do. What do I mean?

I mean deliberately and passionately understanding all HR-related works in relation to their business applications. To be able to sell a performance management system, HR must be able to distinguish a system that works and one that doesn't and be able to choose and champion ones that work. There are just too many HR strategies out there that people don't buy into because we fail to sell the connection between the system and the business. A good credible HR activist to me is someone who looks at recruitment, training, compensation and benefits and others not as tasks but strategies that have a great deal of impact on the business. He steps up to the platform and explains to his stakeholders the importance of partnership and taking a strategic approach to human resource management.

Aside from having a respectable amount of knowledge and skills in applying the HR tools, this competency requires that we as HR professionals must learn to effectively communicate both in writing and orally. We must learn the importance of ethos, logos and pathos in getting others to embrace our cause.

All the HR and communication skills are worthless of course, if we cannot muster the courage to stand up and find our voice a midst the drowning exchanges among other managers about market and product development, cost management, increasing net profit, production, etc.

Here's my call to action - Have passion, deliberately make an effort to sharpen your skills in your craft, and developing both assertive and persuasive communication skills. Most importantly be brave, have courage and find your voice.

Others will not change the way they look at HR unless we in HR change the way we look at ourselves.

Internal Corporate Social Responsibility - Charity Begins at Home

2011-07-13T11:12:00.001+08:00

I sat down in one lecture on CSR where I gained some insights on best practices in the Philippines and abroad. What caught my fancy is the idea of doing it internally. This makes a lot of sense to me because I too believe that charity should begin at "home". I learned that so much can be done to initiate an internal CSR and it starts with paying the right taxes, giving what your employees are due them in terms of compensation and benefits which I believe is a moral obligation as much as a legal one. There are a number of things too that we can do that go beyond the basics and give back to the country/society by starting with our very own employees. Here are some ideas.

When I was with SPI Technologies, I got an educational loan that I used to enroll in a web design course in Informatics. It helped me in marketing my freelance consulting services after my stint with the company. Without my former employers knowledge, they were able to contribute in preparing a future entrepeneur and employer get started in the business. Others who took similar loans got a shot in fulfilling their life goals and that company made it happen. I will forever be thankful to my former employer for that act of kindness.

Here's another idea, if you have employees whose spouses just stay at home and often experience some financial problems because there is only one income earner in the family, how about providing livelihood training for these spouses and facilitate the establishment of a livelihood coop for them? You can go further by providing some seed money for this project. There is so much benefit to having a successful program like this. Employees won't have to worry as much about money so they can concentrate on doing work and by doing this, you enhance your relationship with your employees.

If you are ready to earmark some money for charitable contribution, why not start with the children of the poorest of your employees? Need I say more?

Lastly, I believe that any serious focus on people development is one big social contribution. We are a country of millions of unemployed and underemployed people because they don't have the ability to fill some desirable but hard-to-fill positions. Companies that establish themselves as training grounds for future contributors to the Country's productivity and economy get my most heartfelt admiration. Most companies just want to buy highly skilled talents often jacking up the market rate of these people, while other companies take the painstaking route of hiring green horns and shaping them into the professionals that they need to be. If all companies do this, we will have enough capable people to go around and churn our economic machinery.

Oh, by the way, I heard ( I have not confirmed this) that CSR expenses can earn you some tax credits. I wonder if investing in people's training will earn you the same. Somebody in the know, please enlighten us on this.

From Employee Relations to Employee Engagement

2011-07-04T10:24:00.006+08:00

As the rules of the game change between employers and employees, the need for those in charge of employee relations to take on a more strategic role becomes more apparent.

What rules have changed and how does HR change the way it plays its ER role?

What changed?
Competition continually steps up everytime a competitor comes out with an upgraded product or service or lower cost and value added features. This necessitates companies to be on the look out for better ideas and more efficient processes from within the organization.

What Changed?
Highly talented employees have great choices in terms of where to work and at what package. Companies now compete for employees' attention not just customers' attention.

What Changed?
The millenials who came in to work recently carry with them a new mindset and motivated by things different from what a lot of us are accustomed to. Their attention span is shorter and they like to multitask. How do we deal with it?

More than just retaining employees, we in HR must now think of how we can engage employees and fully harness their talents and abilities. How do we keep them caring about the company and give their best not only in terms of work output but also in terms of creative ideas to help improve everything from the workplace to the results of work?

The Gallup Poll fielded 12 questions to measure employee Engagement. The questions themselves provide good inspiration as to where to start in improving employee engagement.

We must now use this keyword "Employee Engagement" when we search the web or the bookshelves for knowledge on how to keep our people engaged. We need to rethink our HR activities and events for maximum impact in building a sense of community among members of the organization and not just satisfy traditions ( remember christmas party, company outing, family day, sports fest and the likes?) We must stop from doing them for the heck of doing them and start thinking about how they can be managed to help employees really build bonds, care about each other and the organization. Getting them involved is a good first step in the process of building this community in the workplace.

Another good initial step is to get employees to be proud of the company and develop a sense of purpose by carrying out activities that are not just profit oriented but also cause oriented. See what common cause people are interested in and have them participate in it.

And my last suggestion but not necessarily the last available means to us is building an empowering work environment. Develop a mechanism for employees to be involved in workplace and work improvements. Have a best suggestion program and reward great ideas in a big way. Start quality circle or process improvement programs. Work on building a solid working relationship between supervisors and employees because they are the most common breaking point in terms of employee engagement. Somebody once said that employees leave their boss not their company. By equipping your managers to lead better, you may be able to help them engage their people better.

It is surprising how a change of words can change mindset. By moving focus from employee relations to employee engagement, there is so much more meaningful initiatives that we in HR can put in place to help the company not only keep employees happy but also to keep them committed and engaged.

Happy hunting!

Personality Tests and Better Team Management

2011-06-24T22:06:00.001+08:00

Many companies in the Philippines aquire various screening tools that include personality tests to determine the candidates' fit with prospective jobs. More often than not, the results of these tests don't reach or are not explained to prospective supervisors or managers. After determining if the candidate passed or failed this part of the screening, the results are filed in the 201 record if the candidate is hired or elsewhere if the candidate failed to meet expectations.

I feel that failing to explain the result of a test whether, aptitude, pshycological or personality to a future boss is a waste of a great opportunity to lead or manage a team better. Why so, let me explain my points.

First, I hope you agree with me that better understanding of the personalities in the team is useful to leaders who want to match their "strokes with the different folks" that they have on board. I believe that a properly explained assessment result can help managers do this. Let me cite my experiences as examples.

16 PF can help managers assign employees to tasks where they are likely to succeed. When I was Head of Training for a BPO company, we used this tool to determine who among our employees have the personality profile most suited for playing Line Trainer role. We benchmarked all our existing line trainers, compared the profiles of our best trainers with the others and found us some trends that we used to compare prospective trainers against. It also helped us identify what kind of help employees need in order to work better as line trainers. Learning from this experience, I used the same method to choose potentially successful MTs.

I also found MBTI and similar tools useful in understanding team member personalities. It helps explain how and why they do certain things when they do them. A good understanding of the tool helped me predict fit of employees with certain type of tasks.

Another tool I find very useful is the Thomas-kilmann Conflict Resolution Mode. Knowing how my own dominant mode affect the dominant mode of others help me take the necessary action to improve collaboration. For example, I know that my dominant mode is competing and some of my staff's style is avoiding. In order to promote collaboration, I need to lay back a bit and encourage my avoiders to gain courage to express themselves. I believe that a manager who wants better collaboration can do well by understanding how his/her members behave in situations that require healthy exchange of ideas.

There are number of other tools out there. Some are even more sophisticated and user-friendly than the ones I mentioned here. If HR can properly educate managers on how to use this information, I'm sure it will help them greatly.

Hold on. Let me end this by saying that the key to effectively using these tools for team management is for the manager to understand her own personality and how it affects others. It's an important reference in find ways to adjust one's own style to match the styles of one's staff.

Better ROI from Change Driven Training

2011-06-02T10:02:00.001+08:00

A few weeks ago, I received a request to conduct a Customer Service Training. As usual, I asked the client why they want to have it. The answer I hoped to hear was that they plan to launch a customer service program and that they expect the training to be customized to equip the employees to perform under the new program and policy. As usual, what I got was the typical answer that in effect says their employees lack the skill. And as usual, this triggered me to passionately lecture about the importance of having a training program that support organizational change initiatives as opposed to having a stand-alone program conducted as a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived training need.

A well thought out organizational change initiative provides a motivation for people to learn the required skillls both through training and workplace practice. A launching of a Performance Management system for example will entice people to learn how to manage performance based on the embraced concept. A sales training based on the organization's adopted sales methodology enables people to demonstrate what is expected. Implementing a quality improvement program like quality circles or Kaizen will allow employees to use problem solving and decision making tools immediately after the training. A creativity and Innovation training works best when the company that sponsored it is deliberately cultivating a culture of creativity through a culture building iniative. I can go on and on with examples but I'm feeling that you already get the drift.

So, do I oppose training given because of an identified need? Not necessarily. I have a simple rule of thumb for that. For every training that you send your employee to, you must make your expectations clear and then make the employee accountable for demonstrating those required skills. If you think about it, it's still change driven albeit on a personal basis.

Here's another rule of thumb. If you are to train a person to ride a bicycle, be sure there is one to ride, otherwise what's the use? A change initiative or an implementation of a new program, practice or technology, provide employees with clear means to apply their new knowledge, hence the ROI.

Here's a Strategic Training and Development Template that I created sometime ago. I just thought, I'd throw this in to help people in charge of training visualize how they can play their roles better.

Strat HRD Plan Template

You are Invited to My Leadership Basics Seminar on May 27, 2011

2011-05-10T17:54:00.001+08:00

Dear Friends,

If you are looking to equip your new managers and supervisors with the necessary leadership skills, look no further. I am running this workshop the aforementioned date and I assure that I can give your learner a positive learning experience. What's more is that they will go home from the workshop with a clear plan for applying what they learned because I follow my advice on connecting training with performance.

ExeQserve Leadership Basics Seminar

Are Your Managers Territorial?

2011-03-30T15:13:00.001+08:00

When Organizations fail to meet objectives or take forever to effect needed changes, one need not look too far down to identify the reason for the hindrance. It is often caused by poor management and poor leadership culture.

Here are some signs that your managers suffer from Turfing Syndrome and later let me share with you what I think should be done.

When managers go to management committee meetings as representatives of their departments rather than members of the management team, they tend to tune in only when the issue involves their department. They would vehemently reject anything that would cause their unit to make some sacrifices even if it is for the sake of the organization. They would also resent any suggestion or recommendation that indicates they're not doing their job well enough. They see this as an attack to them and their territory. Why is this bad? When this happens, the management team loses its focus on the real goal because the managers are focused on protecting their turfs.

Managers who are territorial lack concern in organizational change initiatives they do not themselves initiate. They see this as a waste of time that they believe they should be spending doing something else. When I was an employee in charge of organizing company events aimed at building a sense of community and employee engagement, I encountered managers who discourage their staffs from joining because they have "more important things" to do. I have too many examples of this in so many organizations. When this happens employees get confused about what's important. In the end it causes resentment and disengagement. The desired change do not materialize and investments go to waste. Then you'll hear some managers say "told you it's just a waste of time." When you see a lot of half-finished change projects, failed automation, policies that are not taken seriously and unsuccessful company events, you can blame it on managers who don't take ownership of agreed upon initiatives.

Territorial managers build silos that cause lack of cohesiveness among members of the management team. When there is no cohesiveness, you will see managers criticizing management in front of employees and wash their hands off when they are forced to implement an unpopular management decision. They widthold information and they intentionally or unintentionally make it difficult for others to get some help from them.

The worst sign that managers are territorial is that all of the above signs happen unabated without anyone accountable enough to stop it. Territorial managers only focus on protecting their turf and the divisiveness work to their advantage.

If even one of these signs show in your management team, I recommend that you do something about it because situations like this tend to worsen rather than get better if not addressed.

It pays to have a strong and cohesive management team culture because it enables the organization to effect necessary changes in the most efficient manner. Issues gets identified and addressed sooner rather than later. Cohesive management teams are a sight to behold. People in the organization don't get mixed messages from their managers so they know when instructions come down, they know nothing less than commitment is expected.

I personally believe that building a strong management team is an important prerequisite to building a high performance organization and something worth investing into. If you feel you need help in facilitating this for your management team, call us, maybe we can help.

Setting Objective Performance Targets

2011-02-25T16:49:00.000+08:00

If you search the web for how to evaluate performance, what you'll see most frequently are performance measures that are prone to subjectiveness. Employees are also at the mercy of their superiors' high or low standards. Add these to the usual dysfunctions of many performance management systems like poor compliance, prejudice and lack of discussion. What you'll get is a recipe for a complete waste of time.

When evaluations are based on the manager's perception of poor, needs improvement, met expectation, etc., and not on actual, quantifiable and verifiable results, you run the risk of rewarding people for perceptions of performance that do not reflect the organization's real performance.

What should we do then? Among other things, managers must set clear performance expectations that will be used as basis for getting performance scores. What I mean is state your targets so that the employees know in quantifiable terms what kind of results will give them an excellent rating as well as a poor rating.
Here's an example:

By consistently tracking the key performance indicators and using actual data as basis for determining performance score, real performance is reflected in the employee's performance evaluation sheet.

Why is it important to do this? First because this is much easier to communicate and secondly it frees the managers from the discomfort of rating employees low without a solid basis. In fact, many managers give their employees' an average or above average rating simply because they do not have the guts to explain a low rating.

So, is a manager's perception unimportant? It is important. Subjective evaluation should have its place in the performance management system. It is the managers' way of saying "you achieved this result because of what I believe you did. And that if you improve the way you do things, I believe that you will also be able to show better results."

How do you do this? Let the manager evaluate behaviors while letting results speak for the employees' performance. Now, where you put more weight between the two (results or behavior) will speak of what you value more as an organization) Personally, I am for putting so much weights on the results, that a biased evaluation wil have less effect on the overall score. If the manager is able to discuss her evaluation of the employee's behavior, and it resulted in having an individual development plan, then the subjective evaluation would have achieved its real objective.

Now here's the usual grumble I get when I talk about these things. Some people say that what they do is impossible to measure. I have two responses to that. One, I agree that some results are difficult to quantify but they are not impossible to measure. Second if you are trying to measure what you are doing, you are not measuring results, you are measuring efforts. Efforts, no matter how well intended don't always lead to results. Efforts seldom earn the company money to reward employees with.

Measuring and rewarding results require creativity in devising ways for monitoring. Technology helps but it is the manager's in dilligence tracking and providing constructive feedback that really seals the deal.

How Do You Encourage Leadership Behaviors Among Your Managers?

2011-01-26T15:56:00.001+08:00

The absence of leadership action among your managers can be a learned behavior. As such it can be unlearned and replaced with a new set of behaviors.

I was with a friend the other day whom I had a chance to work with for three years. He is concerned about the inability of his managers to think strategically and lead some necessary changes in the workplace. He has worked with these managers and this is the first time I heard him complain about this. This is because he has never required them to think strategically and lead in the past. They used to take care of fairly stable processes and make sure that people are compliant. Until lately, they were expected only to make sure that the processes are being run effectively and efficiently. But as all businesses need to change to remain competitive, his company did as well. They started accepting new orders that require the managers to use their experiences to device new solutions. That's like asking a man with a hammer to use that tool to cut a wood or smoothen a surface. So what happened? My friend had to lead solution development until he becomes so tired of it. No matter how often he says that they need to start leading the change, they don't know exactly how and so they are afraid to try.

This here is my recommendation to my friend that I'd like to share with you as well.

First, you need to communicate in clear terms what has changed and what new expectations from you have come with this change. Be clear about how you will evaluate their performance from now on. If you want them to think strategically, you will need to recognize process improvements more than compliance with old processes.

Second, you may have to impress to them the importance of thinking and behaving like the leaders that they are. Make it known to them that washing their hands off or not taking ownership of management decisions is conduct unbecoming of a leader. If they have problems with top management decisions, they should take their issues upward and never downward.

Third, as leaders they need to learn to use influence and inspiration to rally their team towards a common goal. This means they need to learn how to communicate better through words and actions. They cannot say go that way and yet their action leads to the opposite way.

Another leadership ability is empowerment by enabling and confidence building. Enabling comes from the leader's ability to train and coach. Confidence is built through encouragement and expression of trust. Enabling and confidence building cannot be independent of each of each other. They go hand in hand.

You know that you will not suddenly gain confidence in your managers' leadership ability just because you communicated these things. That is because you know it will take more than well constructed words to unlearn years of programming. You need to practice what you preach. The communication takes care of inspiring and influencing change of behavior, you need to be more deliberate and concrete about enabling and confidence building. Train your leaders to lead. Coach them to build confidence. If you need help in doing this, let me know.

I conduct a workshop aimed at strengthening the leadership attitude and skills of managers. See if this is something your supervisors and managers can use to reinforce their leadership skills.

High Performance Team Leadership

The CEO's HR Responsibility

2011-01-16T10:37:00.000+08:00

As we advocate for HR to take on a more strategic role in organizations in the Philippines, we observe several stumbling blocks that make it difficult to achieve transformation. The most critical of these is the lack of readiness of HR to play the role. Years of traditional expectations have caused those who are looking for HR professionals to use criteria for hiring that do not consider HR's strategic and change agent roles. As a result, we now have an oversupply of HR professionals who are very good in playing traditional roles and are efficient in managing personnel transactions but are barely able to stand shoulder to shoulder with other managers in addressing the organization's strategic needs.

As we all agree that people (knowledge, skills, attitude and habit) are vital to organization success and that many HR practitioners are not prepared to step up to the plate, CEO's need to put more attention to it and take a more active role in enabling an environment that promote professional growth and people alignment.

What should CEO's do?

The best thing really is to find an HR manager who is capable of playing a strategic partner role. Someone who can be effective in doing administrative tasks as well as an internal consultant and change agent.

If the CEO does not have this kind of luxury, they have two choices. The first is to seek competency development for key HR people, the other one is to be actively involved in HR Management. In all cases CEOs need to ensure that HR goals are aligned with business goals. They need to shift HR's mindset from traditional metrics to ones that really make a difference. For example, recruitment measure should not just be timeliness of delivery but job fit as well. Training metrics should not just be about number of training hours but transfer of learning to the workplace. Instead of comprehensiveness of the company's performance management system, CEOs should see to it that performance improvement is being monitored. This is of course not to say that the other measures are not important, i'm just saying that to stop at measuring HR activities is to diminish HR's accountability for contributing to business result.

More than money and technology, people makes the most difference in organizations. People management is easy to take for granted because people fend for themselves with or without interventions. However, it pays to give some focus to it and ensure that effective strategies are applied to people management.

Spider Web ExeQserve Team Building

2011-01-07T14:25:00.000+08:00

Here is one of the team building activities we facilitated last December, 2010. We customize and facilitate this kind of activities for our clients. If you wish for us to design one for you, please contact us at (632)8933199 or visit our website at www.exeqserve.com

Saving HR from Myopia

2010-12-13T08:39:00.001+08:00

Myopia is a condition commonly known as nearsightedness. Nearsighted people have difficulty seeing distant objects clearly. This I believe is a perfect metaphor to describe the current condition of many HR practitioners in the Philippines and maybe elsewhere in the world. As in the physical condition, HR myopia can be cured but before any treatment is applied, an understanding the condition and the cause is essential.

I would say that there are two types of HR myopia. One is obvious while the other one is a little harder to identify. I'd say that HR is obviously myopic if it only tackles the "here and now" issues that typically occupy HR professionals. These include such chores as personnel records administration, employee services, disciplinary actions,day-to-day counseling, occasional events management which include, company outing,Christmas party and again, occasional serving of training. The goal of the sufferers of this condition is efficiency in carrying out the transactions. HR is bereft of any developmental initiative which I believe is an important role that HR professionals must play.

The second type of myopia is less obvious because HR is doing practically everything that it has to do according to HR bible. The company has a performance management system. There are strategies for everything, from recruitment, training, benefits administration, employee relations, career and succession planning. How do we know there's myopia in this one? When strategies are being put in place because HR must have them, when Performance management system is not being a useful tool for performance improvement or when the performance management tool is not being assessed in terms of effectiveness; when recruitment strategies are not delivering the expected output or when training is not being applied at work or when training is identified as a solution when the problem requires other forms of interventions. When HR does all these stuff for the heck of doing them rather than aligning people with organizational direction.

There are reasons why many HR practitioners suffer this condition. One primary is that HR transactions require the most immediate and consistent attention. Failure on the administrative side of HR tasks could cause massive dissatisfaction from both employees and management. Inefficient and inaccurate are two labels HR cannot afford to have. The focus and energy that HR put into the transactional aspects of the job helps them develop the necessary skills to do it. They in deed become so successful at it that it becomes their comfort zone. completing transactions after transactions and managing events with little or no complaints become HR's measure of success.

HR can do more and be more - The way many HR people measure themselves and the way others measure their performance can be worlds apart. I have seen situations when HR people lament that their job can be thankless and wonder why despite so much effort, neither management nor employees appreciate their work enough. I believe this is because Many of us in HR measure our work in terms of the effort and time we put in while others outside of HR measure us based on the impact of our contributions. They do not look at how much time we spent sourcing and screening people, they are more interested in how we are able to find the right people for the company. They are not concerned about how elegant your performance management system is, they are more interested in how they can get interested with it. This is because a lot of times, they're not. They don't see the connections between the HR initiated performance management system and performance improvement. This disconnect between HR and HR Outsiders' view of the department is causing a lot of dissatisfaction. If HR Department can only see itself better. If it can only show people that it can do more, it will be able to play the vital role of aligning people with organizational objectives.

HR Should correct itself - I believe that it is the responsibility of HR professionals to upgrade themselves from being the company's gopher and paper pushers to becoming everyone's partner towards individual and organizational success. If they do this, they will be elevating the practice to a higher level. The wealth of information available out there to make this happen remain largely untouched because of disinterest. What I mean is if you research on how to make competency maps and profiles using the internet, you'll get all the information you need. But how many HR practitioners actually do that? I'd say they are a minority and if they do that, companies should find these people and hire them. I do not think becoming a strategic HR partner requires genius level intelligence. However, it requires a strategic mindset, courage, confidence in communicating and the absence of silo thinking. HR Professionals must be strong collaborators and seekers of partnership. Nothing that comes out of HR will work without buy-in and clarity. Therefore, HR must involve others from the identification to implementation of strategies.

If you are a young HR professional and you've reached this part of a rather long article without rolling your eyes to the back of your head, I congratulate you because a lot of the others would have given up. They don't have time for this and besides the next payroll cutoff is near. I also encourage you to heed my call of developing a strategic HR mindset. Keep your saw sharp by keeping abreast with HR best practices and finding our how you as an HR professional can be an effective organizational tool for human development and performance improvement. It can be done.

Some Good Labor-Related References from Scribd

2010-12-02T13:47:00.000+08:00

I was trying to look for some good references on the web and found that there are a lot of useful materials that can be found from Scribd. I collected some of the really good ones and I am sharing it here. Enjoy downloading!

The Labor Code of the Philippines

Philippine Dole Handbook 2009

DOLE Advisory No. 4

And if you happen to visit Scribd, why don't you pass by my profile and see some of the materials I got there Here's the link: http://www.scribd.com/edebreo

Honing Your HR Communication Skill

2010-11-04T12:45:00.000+08:00

This is something that a lot of people will deny. I've seen many HR practitioners struggle in their roles because of their failure to communicate effectively. See if any of these are familiar:

Management disapprove proposals after proposals for well meaning HR projects
Employees are either unaware or griping about HR policies
HR is the source of organization's intrigues and bad politics
Employees laughing at how funnily incoherent HR memos are.
Employees find it painful to listen to HR presentation.

We are not just talking grammar here. If you've been reading my blog, you'd know I have no authority in that area. If you are looking for impeccable English, go to Grammar Pulis. It is however, undeniable that HR professionals need to achieve a decent level of English communication skill both orally and in written form.The amount of defensiveness I get whenever I discuss this need with someone is unbelievable. The reaction I get range from incredulity to making excuses on how they have no time to address this need. I find it sad that people who are in charge of developing others resist their own need for development. Don't you?

If you are an HR professional and you acknowledge your own need to enhance your skill in communication, consider these suggestions:

Improve your grammar skills everyday. Have a dictionary or thesaurus handy. Know how to use the web for this purpose. When in doubt about the proper way of saying it, Google it. There are hundreds of website that can help you say things right. See ExeQserve's English as a Business Language Workshop
Learn to write and speak in business terms. Many HR proposals fail because of the inability of the writer to justify the cost of the project. I often see companies go to the lowest training service bidder because HR failed to justify the cost of a better training program that looks like it costs a little bit more on paper. So, HR needs to learn the skill in proposal making and the necessary preparation for coming up with one that is worth approving. Find a good business writing program that will address this need. See ExeQserve's Business Writing Workshop
Hone your public speaking skills. I find the Toastmasters program as a very effective way of helping bumblers progress into professional level speakers. It takes some hard work of course. You can't improve just by sitting in meetings or paying your dues, you have to get yourself in the thick of the action. Deliver speeches play roles, observe your improvement areas, well, improve. Find a local chapter here or Check out my home club, Butter N Toast Toastmasters Club.
Learn to follow the code of HR ethics. Know that whatever comes out of your mouth can be taken in a bad way. Learn restraint and honor confidentiality. See my article on HR Ethical and Behavioral Standards.
Learn how to be assertive. If you are to serve as an effective internal consultant, you should be able communicate assertively with both management and employees. This means having a heightened listening skill and communicating with tact. Assertive people are confident but but not conceited or obnoxious. You should know the difference between being assertive and aggressive. (See ExeQserve's Assertiveness Training Program)
Learn the rudiments of change management and organizational communication protocols. One of the main reasons HR programs fail is because HR professionals keep on ignoring these. When you ignore them you run the risk of getting fragmented buy in and lack of clarity. When that happens, every body loses. HR, Management, the employees, everybody. See ExeQserve's Change Management Workshop

If it is not obvious enough that your success as an HR professional is hinged on your ability to communicate effectively, let me tell you now that it is. We all need to continually grow the skill. It won't just happen. Have a personal communication skills development plan and follow it.