Just Sharing One Old Published Paper :)

Nothing really new in this post. Just post it as a sign that I will be regular again blogspot to share my wee knowledge. Thanks a lot to all 3100+ viewers from around the world especially from USA, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh,  Philipine, Great Britain, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and South Africa. Love you all.

From The Court Of HR: Why Employees Leave Organizations?

Numerous reasons are behind for leaving current workplace. Each new day HR starts fighting with posting job advertisement in Website(s), LinkedIn, Twitter, Newspaper, Head-hunters and so on. Question is why? Why employees leaving even though the work environment is superb, perk and benefits market standard etcetera. Much has been claimed that, employees leave because of poor HR policies. If anyone sticks too long to a company s/he is taken for granted that s/he won't leave and also perceive that perhaps not getting a job outside. In addition to that organization culture and environment plays crucial role to retain the employees.

Let me give my own example. I quit from one reputed organization earlier in my life because of my bad manager. I tried a lot to cop-up with that manager style of work, attitudes but still unable to keep myself motivated in the long run. Even though that person completed his Masters from USA but still lack of positive attitudes like giving right recognition, provide adequate facilities and never appreciate for good work. However, he is the Head of HR for that organization. I do believe many of you had the same experience.  

Some of you already raised you eye-brew that I am pointing my fingers to that poor fellow without saying about my lack of skills or others. Trust me Manager(s) is one of the main reasons for employees’ drives away from the company. Allow me to share one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. That study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called "First Break All The Rules." The survey result not surprising me as it said if you're losing good people, look to their manager. Manager is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization as well as manager is the reason why people leave. When people leave they take knowledge, experience and contacts with them, straight to the competition. According to that book authors, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman: "People leave managers not companies," Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit - often over a trivial issue. Talented men leave. Dead wood doesn't.

Allow me to share another case happened in the corporate world. ‘S’, got an offer as a senior HR executive from a reputed business giant located at Malaysia. Previously, he was working as HR officer in a Singaporean company based in Jurong, Singapore. He was thrilled by the offer as the salary is good with re-location benefits, company had all the right systems in place with employee-friendly HR and e-HRM system, a state of art new office premises, healthy and renowned caterer for employee canteen and the CEO is very popular for his awesome charisma. ‘S’ seems happy to get the offer but within six months he quit from that Malaysian company. He walked out because of his immediate supervisor’s racial attitudes with him. ‘S’ leaves the company not for better pay or profile but for the manager.

What HR Can Do To Tackle Such Situations:

1. Ensure good ‘Exit Interview’ practice for every level of employees.

2. Strict and well circulated ‘Sexual Harassment’ policy.

3. Proper and regular ‘Employee Rewards and Recognition’ practices.

4. Follow-up meeting with every department with HR at least twice in a year, better in each quarter.

5. Well articulated policy for ‘Grievance Handling’ and have online option for HR service desk.

6. Ensured career path for everyone with succession planning and training.

P.S: Any of my articles/write-ups can be shared, modified, used anytime for better Human Capital Management, with or without giving credentials. I do believe: Sharing is Caring :)

© Shaki, Ahmed R (2012), Candidate of PhD in HRM, UUM

Work Life Balance: (It's Not A Joke With A Joke)

Every Human Capital Managers' one of major responsibility is make sure, employees work-life balance are there. HR professionals have to promote work-life balance to retain and motivate employees. As Jonathan Huie mentioned that, "The concept of Work-Life Balance can become a two-way street - give as well as take. Think of it as an extension of Flex-Time. Flex-Time doesn't create less work, it simply allows employees to rearrange their work hours to fit their life priorities. Work-Life Balance should be the same - an opportunity for your employees to do what is most important in each moment - both taking a day to nurture a sick child, and also taking a Sunday evening to prepare that important presentation. By taking a leadership position in offering a Work-Life Balance program before it is demanded, you have the opportunity to set the ground rules as well as to position your company as an innovator in human resources".  (Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2332342)

Pic Source: http://www.tcd.ie/wiser/balance/

Before ending about this issue let me share one of hilarious conversations between two colleagues which I got by email from Amit Bhagria http://www.younghrmanager.com/ Young HR Manager Inc, 15 Nehru Place, New Delhi, India. Enjoy!!! :)  

This is good...

During lunch break one afternoon at work, Rajgopalan and
Shakaracharya were chatting.... 

Rajgopalan: Shankar, I've been working late every day since I have
joined here & hence I got a promotion and very good bonus this
appraisal.

Shankaracharya: How could it be Raj? Is that the only secret?

Rajgopalan: No, in the process of staying after office hours, I
have also gathered a lot of General Knowledge; & my boss also asked
me such questions at appraisal time. 

Shankaracharya: Like what? 

Rajgopalan: For example, do you know who is Graham Bell?

Shankaracharya: No 

Rajgopalan: He's the inventor of the phone in 1876; if you spent more time in office after office hours you would know this! 

The next day, the same discussion took place:
Rajgopalan: Do you know who Alexander Dumas is?

Shankaracharya: No 

Rajgopalan: He's the author of "The 3 Musketeers", if you spent
more time in office after office hours you would know this!

The next day, once again:

Rajgopalan: And do you know who Jean Jacques Rousseau is?

Shankaracharya: No 

Rajgopalan: He's the author of "Confessions", if you spent more
time in office after office hours you would know this!

This time, Shankaracharya got irritated and said:

Shankaracharya: And you, do you know who is Balachandra Appaswamy?

Rajgopalan: No 

Shankaracharya: He's the guy roaming with your wife every evening
!! If you stop spending more time in office after office hours, you
would know this! 

Moral: There is 'something' important in life than Work and General Knowledge. Enjoy life.

P.S: Any of my articles/write-ups can be shared, modified, used anytime for better Human Capital Management, with or without giving credentials. I do believe: Sharing is Caring :)

KPI for HR: How, When and Where?

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) also known as KSIs which stand for Key Success Indicators are not specifically linked only to HRD, but has to do with the entire organization. Since HR is the heart of any organization usually HR is assists other department also to set and identified their KPIs, which are measurable and quantifiable in nature so as to measure the success of the organization in terms of the organization's mission and goals. Hence KPIs can be defined as measurements for an organization's success.

For example, HR Department could have Employee Turnover as one of its KPIs. The goal for setting this KPI would be to reduce employee turnover. It could be defined numerically for better definition such as to reduce employee turnover by 5% every year. This KPI could be defined as the total of the number of employees separated from the organization for reasons of resignation or termination divided by the number of employees at the beginning of the year. It could be measured on a fixed time schedule like every month or every quarter. For HR Department other KPIs can be following: Recruitment KPI, Training KPI, Health and Safety KPI, Performance KPI, HR Efficiency KPI, Working Time KPI, Compensation KPI, Labor Relation KPI, Employee Satisfaction KPI, Employee Loyalty KPI, HR Budget and Accounting KPI etc.

Sample Explanation:

Frequently used HR KPIs include:

FTE = Full Time Employees

Revenue per Employee (FTE) 

Assets per FTE 

Training Hours per FTE 

Training Costs per FTE 

HR Department Cost per FTE 

FTEs per HR Department FTE

Acceptance Rate 

Average Cost per Hire 

Absence Rate

Turnover Rate

Resignation Rate 

Human Investment Ratio 

Compensation & Benefits/Revenue 

Average Remuneration

Time taken per recruitment

Cost per recruitment

The choice of HR KPI will vary from year to year, subject to organization’s strategic planning, corporate strategies and objectives which in turn affect HR’s strategic planning, HRM strategies and objectives. Bellow, I am providing only one KPI’s in details here. If anyone needs the details of other metrics, please do email me.

Training KPIs include key performance indicators as follows:

1. Training courses

• Number of courses offered

• Number of courses implemented.

2. Training costing

• Organization training expenditure (% of salaries and wages)

3. Training certificates

• Number of employees completing sponsored education programs

4. Training hours

• Average number of training hours per employee

5. Training budget

• % of HR budget spent on training

• Average training costs per employee

6. Training satisfaction

• Employee satisfaction with training.

7. Training results

• % of employees gone through training

• Average time to competence. That is average time it takes until expected competence level is reached.

• % & employee reach competence after training.

8. Training penetration rate

It measures the percentage of employees completing a course compared to total number of employees employed.

9. E-learning training

• e-learning courses utilized

• % of e-learning pass rate

And indeed e-HRM is the key tool to measure all the metrics successfully with 0% error.

© Shaki, Ahmed R (2012), Candidate of PhD in HRM, UUM

Back to Basic!!!

In any organization, Human Resource Management (HRM) is one of the mostly needed departments now a day. Forget about Personnel Management. That is a Stone Age concept. The function of any organization which is responsible for recruitment, provide job descriptions, assess performance in tenure, doing need assessment for required training for further individual and organizational development, working strategically aligned with the management and offer direction to the human capital time to time is HRM. In the present age HRM is not only the task for HR department rather HRM can also be performed by line managers.

As Susan stated in about.com that HRM is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training. I would like to add one more point and that is innovation. And that innovation must be tagged with Information System like e-HRM, HRIS.

Pic Source:www.adroitglobalnetwork.com.my/photo_53.gif

HRM manage people within and beyond the organization. HR personnel have to have the mentality that they are the spokesman of any organization so that they have to be more trained in customer services both internal and external. Managing people from a different race, culture, religion, beliefs and gender as well as disabled is one of the core issues of HRM. For sure, friendly and considered HRM can bring more success and keep the work place environment breathy. Effective HRM certainly accelerate the employees motivation level and that contribute significant input to any organization to achieve optimum productively and the accomplishment of the organization's goals and objectives.

If you or you’re the management of your organization still believe in traditional personnel, administration, and transactional roles, my write-ups are not for you. We are in the year of 2012 now e-HRM with bio-metrics, RFID, chips are widely using. HR start adding value strategically to the organization from the last decade and it’s a profit centre and measurable.

Last but very important basic in my view about HRM is: please do not choose your career in HR, if you do not love to mingle with people. HR is truly by the people, of the people and for the people. Chiao!

© Shaki, Ahmed R (2012), Candidate of PhD in HRM, UUM