High Impact HR

HR planning is done annually and few organizations do plan for 3 years and they call it perspective planning.  Lot of thoughts and ideas are discussed and finally translated into HR strategy for next 1-3 years.  Isn't it exciting!

Most often these plans are developed to meet the expectation of Top management and BU heads, who are major stake holders for HR.   Many good ideas HR professionals conceive do not take expression, since they fear, it may not be understood or appreciated by their stake holders.    

Many a times HR is perceived to administrative in nature and very rarely given opportunity to truly demonstrate what they truly believe in or capable of demonstrating.   Many good ideas are knocked down, since top management and Business leaders are afraid of the jargon or framework they propose.  They are not comfortable giving control to HR professionals to play an advisory role.   

Good way to address this issue, is to place responsibility on HR professional to come up with ideas, and provide recommendations, as to what is good for the business, with due consultation with relevant holders.  Sometimes this will put things in positive perspective, and right environment is created for HR to put forward their view.  

Some of the common high impact HR solutions that can benefit organization can be:

1. Balanced Score Card design, is a powerful tool for organization to implement their organizational strategy, by creating Strategic map, linking strategy to Objectives & performance indicators under perspectives like Customer, Financial, and Process and learning Growth. This will help in cascading strategy and link the last employee to be part of strategy, it will also provide a framework to measure and monitor business performance  

2.  Please consider Assessment/Development Center  to develop 2nd and 3rd level leaders.  This tool has a very high reliability of 0.65 compared to any other type of Assessments.  Which means, for every 10 Assessments you make 7 will be accurate assessments.  This tool is very helpful in leadership Selection, Graduate Trainee Selection, Succession planning, key promotional decisions, Hi Pot employee identification to name a few.  Additionally consider including 360 degree/Behavioral Assessments. 

3. Consider Shared Services/HR shared Services as another concept if you want to leverage Economy of scale, improve process optimization, improve efficiency & save cost to business.  These are very helpful if you have multiple business groups and there are some common business Services and Corporate services are commonly provided to these business groups.  You can optimize the processes by bringing them under Shared Services, use Technology to connect, and see how effectively service can be delivered using this concept.  

4. In order to strengthen your HR systems and processes and create a systematic approach for improving HR practices, please go through People CMM Capability Maturity Model v.2 developed by Software Engineering Institute, CMU.  This framework contains nearly 499 best practices in HR and they have been adopted by various countries viz. India, US, Middle East, Korea, China, Australia, many south East Asian countries.  It has around 5 levels of maturity to bench mark your HR with these best practices and systematically develop using structured approach. People CMM link:  https://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/09tr003.pdf        please also refer to Investor in People another framework in HR, which can help you align HR from business point of view.  Refer to link:https://www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/sites/default/files/IIP%20Framework%20Summary.pdf

5. Leadership Coaching for first six months, whenever a new leader joins the organization  is worth to consider as many new leaders struggle to perform initially and align themselves to the new system,  and become a contributing member soon( as they need to cater to multiple stake holders :Top management, Peer group, subordinates, Client, Board).  They have to prove their worth in a shorter period of time.  Burn out rates are higher and acceptance issues puts more stress. Coaching is very helpful tool to align new leader to organization

6. Strong Analytics including HR analytics found to be beneficial to consider as it provides early insights/projections on future business reality. Some intelligent business focused lead and lag indicators provides information to management to take timely management decisions that can impact Topline or bottom line.

7. Periodic HR audit at minimum once in 6 months are very helpful in addressing implementation and institutionalization issues.

8. Survey tool considered to be very helpful to know organization pulse and taking relevant interventions that has maximum impact to the organization.  It is ideal to have this done atleast once a year.   Some progressive organization do have faster mechanisms like opinion polls/department polls conducted periodically or based on need to continuously engage employees and to know their pulse.

9. Leadership selection is very critical to any organization.  Decision need to be accurate.  Hence it is better to use Behavioral assessments or psychometric tools,Assessment Center, enough time should be devoted to select good leaders.  

10. Promotions for key positions,use Assessment Center, so that these are accurate, besides your regular internal appraisal.  

11.  Role based and competency based Training programs to focus on building Capability rather than just skills.  These are the need of business today.   

Aravinda Prabhu T is an experienced HR Global consultant worked in India, US, Africa, Oman and South East Asia, assisting and advising over 100 organizations across various industry verticals.  He can be reached at aravinda.prabhu@mpower-hr.com

Please share few lines on high impact HR areas you consider most important ones and beneficial to organization. 

 Also See

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/holistic-hr-approach-business-aravinda-prabhu-t/edit

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-hr-aravinda-prabhu-t?trk=prof-post

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141125172046-18881634-what-is-next-post-people-cmm?trk=mp-reader-card

What is NEXT - POST PEOPLE CMM

Post People CMM few top of mind thoughts.

·         People CMM  is one the great tool that was introduced in the year 1998 by Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, CMU

However in these last 16 years, many organizations have either attempted implementing or have formally undertaken  journey to attain particular maturity levels and some of them have successfully achieved their desired maturity levels.   It is a significant achievement.   Great masterpiece work designed to achieve business results.

Most of the organizations have witnessed immense business results and have shown greater enthusiasm and vigor in implementing this framework successfully.    Sustaining this enthusiasm and vigor is the key and some are satisfied with what they have achieved and most of them should realize, it is not the end, it is just the beginning of great expectation they have set for themself.  

The most pertinent question is what is post People CMM? .  Some say, we should benchmark with other People CMM organizations and improve our current practices,  some want to sustain with audit rigor and ensure the true benefits are capitalized over sustained efforts of implementation.

As  time passes, due to many organizational changes, including people,  the same enthusiasm and vigor fades away.   Suddenly management starts questioning us  what is the true benefit we derived out of People CMM? then people start searching for answers.    It is indeed a matter of pride and responsibility when you call yourself Level 5.   Let us think through what are few things to be done post People CMM... 

Some benefits People witnessed/reported:

Process Benefit
   -Indent-to-join cycle time drop from   60 to 40 days (WIPRO)
   -33% drop in attrition (Novo Nordisk)
   -“Structured knowledge Management” (Covansys)
   -“Improved talent attraction” (Siemens)

- Employee Benefit
  - 60% increase in ESAT( Boeing BRS)
  - 45% in people exceeding  performance expectations due to
    competency-based recruitment (Covansys)
  - “Higher employee morale” (CSC, WIPRO)
  -  Created Sense of real empowerment (Club Mahindra)

- Service/Delivery Excellence

 - Drop in Rework due to higher competency(21% co-relation)Infosys
  -With 110% increase in training time,  improvement in review         efficiency  by  100%  and  drop in   rework by   45% (TCS)

- Business Impact
  - 12% increase in guest  feedback scores (Club Mahindra)
  - “Enabled scalability” (Techspan)
  -  Increased competitive edge (CSC)

People CMM – Challenges (commonly observed)- Post achieving. 

• Increased process over-load maintenance by HR.
• Obtaining continued buy in to sustain People CMM maturity by Line Managers, Investment of time seems tough. 
• Top management finds it as an effective tool to show case value to future customers and other stake holders, however, needs more tangible results on HR's contributions to business.
• Mixed results of increased maturity vs. Adhoc practices prevailing within organization.
• The maturity levels slip from level 5 to level 3 over a period of time and process adherence appears more mechanical rather than truly leveraging the potential benefit.

What is the missing link?

• Most of the organizations find the overall initiative too cumbersome as they start moving towards higher maturity and looses grip in fully capitalizing the true potential, and ends up merely to achieve assessment results
• Peer pressure is immense and PCMM becomes hygiene rather than truly capitalizing
• very few organizations are able to demonstrate
• Befits to Individual productivity improvement
• Team benefiting and truly optimizing and learning from other teams becoming high performing teams.
• How to create an environment where people excel and learn from each other.  Did we sufficiently achieve this?   May times answers are mixed and needs to really examine, what we could have done better. 

What needs to be done?

·         People CMM puts the focus on four key aspects.

             How to achieve individual capability,

             Team capability levels

             How to create high performing atmosphere.

             How to leverage this to realize business benefit    

Since the People CMM has 499 practices and while implementing these practices, organization gradually looses focuses on how it helped in terms of business.  Did we sufficiently demonstrate true benefit to the business.  Satisfying and sustaining these practices takes more momentum and overall focus is diluted.

Hence it is time to reflect a bit more and bring the focus back.  My personal view is that it  is a very good beginning we have made, however it is important to make it more powerful.    The power comes from

• Narrowing down practices from 499 to 20 manageable practices against each thread, to achieve the business objectives.  Overall it comes to around 80-100 manageable practices
• Each of these practices have to be made more robust and deeper and evaluated against the true business benefit it is truly demonstrating.
• Some of the focus should definitely lie on
• Increasing Individual productivity levels 
• Team excellence and creation of high performing teams
• How HR practices and interventions can be limited to creating high performance work culture.
• How measurements system can demonstrate ROI and truly value to business goals of any organization.

This should help organizations to truly leverage these business benefits to influence internal and external stake holders.

IN SHORT NARROW DOWN PEOPLE CMM FROM 499 TO MANAGEABLE 20-30 POWERFUL PRACTICES for each threads.  Which strives to achieve Individual productivity levels, High performing teams, High performance work culture and Measurements to demonstrate Strong ROI to your business.     This would mean you will approximately have around 80-100 practices or even lesser.    Let us make it more customized to suit our Business requirement and truly show case HR's value to business.

Understanding Stress

I come across people who are distressed, need last minute help undergoing  deep stress.   I realize at that moment they have reached the edge of their tolerance and want to pour out with someone they trust what they are facing in life as a challenge.  They can no more keep it inside.  They are almost bursting out.  I am sure all of us either have experienced this in our own life or met some one reaching out to us in this deep distress.  What is your response to them.  What is your feeling at that point of time.   Do you Avoid this?  Do you advice them which may not require or you are sympathetic towards them.  What is your personal response to this..

The first realization is it can happen to anyone. I remember reaching out to someone during this period and there was one person who cared to patiently listen to me, did not judge me, gave his time and made efforts to understand my problem.  Try to provide his understanding or help in his own way.   I should admit that person even understood my unspoken part of my words and helped me to deal with my situation, which was a challenge to me.  That help was so precious and that helped me to come out of that challenge i was going through.  Trust me the connection i felt between me and that person was that of one human being to another.

 So being available to another human being in distress or a stress is a great human service according to me.  One of the thing i do is understand that they need help and even though i am busy, i make sure i take some time out for these people.  As they need someone at that moment to share what they are going through in their own way.    I feel there is no more important thing in the world to patiently listen to another human being un-interrupted.    Some of us are able recognize it is a stress and many are not.

The person who is in stress often not comfortable to share he or she is under stress. Few are able to understand it is a stress and able to deal with it.  Mostly many don't even know they are under stress and accept the life as it comes.  Then stress becomes part and parcel of life.  As they say when the Giant is small you can kill it.  Stress is also like a Giant, early detection, you are able to deal with it.  Once it starts impacting you at different levels.  It takes more time to come out of stress.

What really bothers me most is often those who are unable to open up, while they are under stress, they are misunderstood due to various signals and signs they show up.  I call them passive people who are either unaware they are under stress or unable to express it to others. 

Some early signs to know they are in stress include

01. They are aloof, not mingling with others,
02. Keep issues to themselves, do not open up even when asked.
03. Their food habits suffers, they tend to eat less, or hardly eat their food.
04. Frequent  reporting  of headache.
05. Irritation, unnecessary fights, Apathy towards others, being bit insensitive.
06. Unable to relate with situations around. Completely disconnected. Living in isolated manner.
07. You may find them generally unhappy.
08.  They avoid facing people, going out in parties.
09.  They prefer to be at home.


The people who silently going through stress often mis-understood in terms of :-

1. Person is short tempered
2. Arrogant
3. Lacks sensitivity towards others.
4. Self Centred
5. Some parents think their child is born to trouble them, as it often bring complaints home.
6. Sudden outburst.

But often we fail to understand these signals and read as we perceive them.  But in reality the deep inside the person  he or she  may be feeling so lonely, helpless , needing support and love.  They keep giving their messages subtly to us, but they are really really subtle and we try to downplay this saying they seek sympathy and importance when they want help.  Isn't it so disturbing.  Some times people realize it too late... Hope it is never too late...  Some subtle messages go like this.


01. No one loves me.
02. No one understands me.
03. If people are bad to me why should I  be good to others.
04. I will teach them a lesson, when time comes.
05. I don't want to mingle
06. Don't keep telling me.  They keep saying out of distress and pain. 

I have tried talking to such people.  It is not easy to strike a conversation with them and they will hardly open up and tell you everything what they are going through.  However, it is also not that difficult.  If you show them genuine friendship and love and be nicer to them, you will create an atmosphere where there are more chances they will open up.


One of my face book friend had shared this some time ago.  It really helped me to understand various signs of stress at different levels.  I am sharing the same without knowing the source, but it might be of help to you as well






Some common reasons for stress could be 

01. Relationship issues between husband and wife.
02. Bad boss.
03. Office politics
04. Financial Crisis.
05. Lack of People skills to deal with home or office issues.
06. They are too good and always strict to their principles and lack practicality.
07. Joint family situations.
08. Conflict between friends.
09. Relationship issues with a partner
10. Property disputes
11. Parental issues
12. These days school kids go through early stressful situations.  They lack coping up in school atmosphere.
13. Any type of Abuse ( violence, sexual abuse)
14. Kids not settled.
15. Old age issues. 

( The above are only indicative, not exhaustive, there can be numerous issues which are beyond this)

What you should do when you realize someone is under stress.  Rather than what you can do i suggest what you should not do first .

01. Avoid offering Sympathy.  They might not need this.
02. Avoid providing advices, which are un-related to their problem
03. Do not Generalize issues like all men, all women, all school going people, all office people. They have specific challenges to deal with.  Hence it will not help.
04. Avoid your best way to deal with issues.  Your situation and the person going through may be different.
05. Avoid telling you have this comfort, and that, still why you have these issues type.  These can bring down their self-confidence.
06. Do not start with what is your problem
07. Avoid comparing them with others.
08. Do not give how best they can be in life hence what they should be doing.  They are already struggling, we are increasing their difficulties and increasing self-doubt.

Again, these are some common things we might attempt to address, need not necessarily exhaustive. 

Some of the things you can try.

01. Recognize that it is a sign of Stress. 
02. Create an open and friendly atmosphere, where they are able to share what they are going through.  Do not force them to open up.  As famous Carl Rogers put it

The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism” (Rogers, 1951, p. 487).

So reach out to people, knock the door , if they willingly allow you to step in, do step in.  Remember they have given permission to you to enter into very inner circle of their life.

03. Stress can be of different types.  If the stress is of temporary nature and person is able to deal with it.  Just offer your support and be there.  The person himself or herself will be able to address it just with mere your support and love

04. If you think the person needs help. It is better to refer to an expert Coach or Counselling support.  They can bring them out of this and transform them into better high performing human being. 

Stress if it is not dealt for a prolonged period can lead to serious health issues.  In extreme situation people can go into deep depression and can lead to loss of life.  

So please recognize and offer understanding to those around you.  As this can happen to any one of us.   The greatest support and understanding that reaches a person during this stage can change their life and you can make that difference to people  around you.

I want to conclude this, with a message:

Either Change the Events or situation or Response to the Event or situation to improve your life.