M any years of euphoric growth in the industry in India has reated a new focus on HR.

The better companies today are developing their own HR frameworks that would not only support the business strategy of the company but also drive it to a significant extent. This has happened only because people have realized that ‘People Make Things Happen’ and HR has to be the catalyst and enabler. The new meaning of HR is human resources function and strategy and not just people who work in HR. The emphasis has moved away from training, hiring, benefits and performance reviews. Not to say that these are not important, but that they are done from a different perspective. Today the question is not how much training an employee has done. Today companies want to determine what is the key business need (e.g., customer orientation or teamwork) that training should drive. The emphasis is on performance management so that it drives individual and company performance. Companies want to identify the top talent and put it through leadership development programs to enable it to do higher level roles. Companies are also keen on, and bold enough for, weeding out the poor performers. This was not thinkable a few years ago.

Technology Aids HR
Another opportunity to increase the reach and effectiveness of HR is the creative use of IT. In a company with many locations, the CEO no longer has to travel to each place to meet with the employees. One can use technology to have broadcast or chat through the Internet. Community building, e-learning, HR administration, helpdesks, and many more can be done a lot more effectively today leaving the managers to develop and implement strategy.

Amongst all this good news, two major questions have emerged in the current slowdown. Here is the first one. You can hire easily now and the attrition is lower than imagined.

So what happens to the HR approach now? The second question is a corollary of the first one. Several managers are consciously or subconsciously taking a tougher approach towards people because the demand-supply gap is no longer there (actually, it has revered for the time being). Is this appropriate?

Slowdown Is Making Consolidation Happen
Mature managers and companies are taking this opportunity of slowdown to consolidate their HR frameworks. They see this as the opportunity because they are no longer stretched in trying to hire alone. They recognize the need for even higher focus on HR. Employees are feeling insecure because they are no longer being pursued and are seeing jobs being cut all across. It now requires extra effort to keep them motivated and hence productive. Customers are demanding more and companies have to make more efforts to continue to keep the customers happy. The fundamentals of managing talent continue to be the same: the right brand equity as a place to work, immense learning opportunities, the right career opportunities for each employee, competency based systems to enhance leadership capacity, performance linked rewards and compensation, rich environment and relationships, and effective communication in all directions.

Finally, there are two fundamental thoughts that I believe can multiply the value you can get through HR. The first one is when the top management knows (not just believes) that people can drive the business strategy. When this happens, passion creates a strong flow to make things happen. The second one is more fundamental and applicable to the whole of mankind—most people make other people and outside environment responsible for their success or failures. If companies decide to help their employees realize that they can and should be their own master, it would give a new insight, energy and a sense-of-being-responsible to the employees. This would be good for them and for the company and create a situation where good things would be sustainable for ever because of this new attitude.

Aadesh Goyal
V-P and head, HR (IT and corporate communication)
Hughes Software Systems