Here is a poser, troubling or inspiring positive action, as you wish to take it:

Who is more valuable for a listed company: employees or shareholders?
Ever heard of reducing dividend while cutting jobs? Ever seen employees being told they are important when dividends are held back and salaries increased?

Reliance HR Services (RHRS), a human resources company formed by the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), will recruit half a million people for the group in the next four years. These recruits will be deputed to Reliance Communications, Reliance Webstores, Reliance Capital, Reliance Consumer Finance, Reliance Money, Reliance Life Insurance and Reliance Energy. About 90 per cent of these employees will be on sales functions, while the rest will be on the back-end and customer service functions.

Amitava Ghosh, CEO, RHRS, said, “Currently, about 20,000 employees are on RHRS payroll, serving various ADAG companies.” RHRS has also formulated a plan for the five forthcoming financial years to become a global HR outsourcing and consultancy organisation.

“By 2013, RHRS will evolve into an end-to-end HR outsourcing provider and an HR consultant,” Ghosh said. By 2009, RHRS plans to offer HR outsourcing services. “We can offer HR outsourcing services to companies that operate in sectors such as retail, IT BPO, among others,” Ghosh said. RHRS also plans to offer consultancy services, including compensation surveys and feedback reports.

by Sandeep Mann

The title flips the oft-repeated “Walk the Talk”. One cannot overemphasize the need to walk the talk. Here we stress the need to talk the walk.

Every individual, every management professional, every top management person has a style of working. She is churning out actions, decision points, information and communications. Always.

But many a times care is not taken to share the rationale or behind the scenes story, so to say. So much of what transpires as business and managerial transactions stays couched in layers of unstatedness. So many people in these roles act intuitively and impulsively, and find it difficult to justify what they do. nevertheless, the situations demand they keep on acting.

This is where people go wrong. They need to carry the team along, and this demands glasnost. It not only requires sharing, it also requires selling the plan to he internal customers.

A lovely benefit speaking aloud about the ‘walk’ brings is greater clarity to the key person herself. The team binding too enhances.

Definitely, confidentiality and corporate secrecy discourages openness about many such actions. But to exclude your ring of close people again harms: no mentoring, no democratization of strategy decisions, no succession planning.

Just as walk the talk takes a hit at the loud-mouthed tall claim makers; talk the walk asks for that minimal description of what is happening lest being laconic induces ambiguity. It asks for verbalizing in attractive (not adorning) epithets; it asks for repeating a few times so that even the inattentive get the message. It asks for making the so called internal thing visible: for comment, for seeking opinion, for critique.

Mostly the achiever who is action-oriented suffers from not talking enough. Is that you?

This is out of order, as instead of being original, we excerpt from one typical blog:
http://www.recruitinganimal.com/. The idea is you begin to delve deeper into the HR blog world for gaininbg insights and ideas.

How To Change Jobs
Source: Venus de Micro

Here’s the formula anyone should follow in planning her next move.
1. Identify your next big career goal
2. Assess the skill gaps between here and there
3. Look for companies that need what you already know and will give you the experience you need.

You can find information about companies via: corporate career sites, corporate bloggers, LinkedIn, conference presentations, networking, user group meetings, alumni meetings, recruiters.

Location
Short list a number of places that you would move to for the right position. Think about cost of living, weather, lifestyle, schools, social networks. Online tools like homefair.com provide comparisons of cities.

The Work Environment
The people you work with will the biggest impact on your job satisfaction but it’s hard to find out much about this in advance of working with them. Some questions about the team can be answered in an interview but remember this: selling is lying. So says The Funny Banker and in an interview with an attractive candidate a company is trying to make a good impression and you only see what the company chooses to show you.

You might find references to the corporate culture, especially in larger companies, in articles and discussion groups. You might be able to access some information via social networks. But it’s hard to find out if you’re going to be working with a micromanager or a cheapskate or a bunch of dorks.

Here, however, are some questions you should ask yourself.
- What kind of environment is going to make you want to show up every day?
- Where have you enjoyed working most?
- What types of people do you want to surround yourself with?
- Who can you learn from?
- What kind of peers and managers help you do your best?

Career Progress In One Company
You might be able to work through much of your career progress within one firm. Look at the company’s career site to see if they have the types of roles you need for your career progress. See if you can find profiles of people working at the company (on LinkedIn, for instance) and see if the person has moved through a number of roles in the firm. You might approach employees and past employees you identify online for this kind of information. Note, however, that future employers might see your exposure to only one company as a limitation.

Compensation
It’s not enough to know the base compensation. You have to take the benefits that are important to you into consideration. Consider things like child care reimbursement, medical deductibles/co-pays/flex spending accounts, transportation assistance (bus passes, car pools), reimbursement for cell phone or Internet, corporate discounts, levels of coverage for medical/dental/vision, legal assistance programs, paid holidays and vacation time, tuition assistance, health programs (weight management, smoking cessation).

Networking
You can’t build a social network in a moment. To have access to a group of people you can call upon for insider information about a company or an industry, you have to make business friends whenever the opportunity is offered and maintain relations with them on a regular basis. And you have to help them in order to make them willing to help you.

The Key Idea
If you figure out what is important to you and think about it every now and then you won’t be caught in the headhlights when a recruiter calls. You will know what you are looking for and will be able to ask the right questions to see if this opportunity might deliver it.

Sample rest of this blog too, good inputs.

The depression of 1929 in US of A was a harrowing time. Russia after fragmentation of USSR went through a similar phase. Is India onto that path?

The optimistic would say nay. And those who have lots on stake, would also deny negativism, lest they upset public sentiment and lose much more. What about the realists?

On a macro level, amongst other vectors driving the current situation, the most significant is the involvement of a 2 billion plus population (of India and China), since 1990s, on the consumption front. Naturally, the supply is chasing the humongous demand growth rates, and failing to match up. So world over inflationary pressures. Compound on this the shakiness the Western investor is experiencing, primarily because he is unwilling to accept that:
a) his greed of expecting a CAGR of 20-30% on corporate performance is unsustainable; and
b) his splurged consumption habit pattern, where he sourced from rest of the world, has competition from growing richness of this ‘rest of the world’

It will take him a while to accept and either temper himself, or bulldoze the Asian powers (which he might well be able to do, temporarily). Till a new stability phase emerges, it is curtains for many, world over, India and China inclusive.

Industry is going to find input costs unmanageable, and pushing sales prices would reduce sales volumes. The industry with product approach would possible stockpile its output, and wait for better times. The ruin for many who would not be able to tide over the low sales period is facing us.

Agriculture has woes with no answers. Having seen institutional and governance apathy for decades, it is unlikely to offer any bail-outs. Those employed in this sector, have stayed on subsistence levels through centuries of thick and thin, and shall somehow manage same way.

Service sector, which has seen a glamorous phase, is sadly a perishable commodity economy. This shall take a severe hit, with unemployment shooting up. Only those with specialised essential services would save their skin, at discounted prices. Sadly, suiciding shall enlarge its membership beyond farming community.

Consumers, with low consumption habits, shall sustain the period to come; the others would soon see their cash reserves and savings vaporising.

According to Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935, the quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket. This is highly recommended now, not for doubling, but for retaining per se.

Ironically, this is also good time to strategize for future if you have the inclination.

This is directed at someone who is not the CEO, but aspires to be one one day.

If you are at Vice-President or higher echelon, DO YOU find no time to play golf? Or chill out in some other way.

If you are an Asst Mgr or above, do you have a 12 hour workday, and at times longer; with most Saturdays and even some Sundays put in work.

If yes, take it that you boss DOES NOT want you to grow. Growing needs conceiving creative solutions to work problems and business challenges. Growing requires time for reading (and surfing on) of industry trends, business biographies, newspapers and magazines. Growing demands steady enhancement of learning via various interactions at professional fora and arming with certifications. Growing needs networking with industry peers.

If your boss insists that you primarily put time in transactional issues and not strategic, he leaves no time for you to rejuvenate and come enthused day in day out to work, it is time you change:
yourself/ boss/ organization culture.

Which one is it going to be….

What an interpretation. Yea, some literary license seems to have been taken, but the end result is lovely and so respectful to the Gods above…

vakratunda: go for non-linearity. the twisted trunk exhorts us to drop the linear way of looking at problems and the linear way of finding solutions.

The legends around Ganeshji too exemplify this. Illustratively for masses, when Ganeshji was asked to circumnavigate the world seven times in the shortest time, he took seven rounds around his parents declaring the parents are the world!

At a deeper level, a broken line is constituted by several linear unbroken lines. Overall, it may be said that the shortest distance between two points on a line may not be through the intervening points’

mahakaya: go for largeness. it is a perspective that aspires for larger than life canvas, looking at the entire BIG picture, not getting lost in its detail and components. Again, it is not size being advocated, it is pervasiveness. Like Microsoft Windows has tried to pervade the geographies. It is like extending your influence circle far and wide, and this would happen only when you have the Big picture in mind and when your spreading mechanism has a sustainable basis. Hitler’s methodology obviously wasn’t sustainable though he tried to pervade all through.

koti surya samprabha: let the sparkle and energy of billions of suns characterize your work. let it have the equivalent charisma and dazzle. let it have the energy funding of so many suns. And sun of all celestial bodies carries utmost purity and transparency, purifying everything and making everything visible and transparent. let your work have an equivalent influence and effect. let this be the ideal you aspire to be.

nivirghinam: and without any obstacles let things happen. your strategizing has to be so complete and mature that you can visualize unencumbered pursuit of vision, goals and targets. let your communication be straight and direct, giving clarity to the target audience, not messing them in confusion.

kuru mein: the platform is this entire world. the war field of Kurukshetra of Mahabharata is the entire stage. And just as Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage and we have a role to play”, we understand that this world has thousands of people playing various characters. and in this theatrical inter-play of relationships, all has to be figured out and managed. the business organization is not a narrower smaller world than the entire world, it is not a separate reality. al operands work on the entire world canvas, do not lose sight of this larger reality. and see that there is beyond war and battles. and there is a beyond life continuing into a stream of life terms on the same resources of the planet. so mange the world resources smartly, you would need them in your next life forms. and strategy is essential in winning wars. and all wars are eventually unwelcome, but the righteous cannot and shouldn’t run away from just wars.

deva sarve: every deva is a pedestalization of a unique set of characteristics and powers. accordingly it is a definition of a way of looking at things. each such point of view needs to be factored when trying to fathom the entire reality. this is thus a prompt to consider all dimensions of a situation. this goes beyond the four physical dimensions of space-time and extends into the realm of n-dimensional mathematical treatment for all. look for a balance point amongst various dimensions and amongst various force vectors operating all over.

kaaryeshu: stay focused on the eventual work, on the final outcomes. the desired outcomes should happen. let analysis not bringforth paralysis, the show must go on. the real world is not lost in endless contemplation on itself, it is always in a state of flux and in constant churning. such flux and churning lends this world its freshness, newness and dynamism. love it for its attempts to change itself, do not try to thrust static conditions, for they won’t stay ever. do not force clinging to the security and the known; explore for the unknown, always. do not rest on your laurels. but it is not recommending change for the sake of change. the final outcomes have to b monitored, albeit looking at the larger picture.

sarvada: an element of timelessness is to be felt. aspire for creativity and destruction so that the maintenance of the world is beyond timelines. again, in day to day work, value timelines, but look at the larger time picture; consider things from point of view of years rather than months and quarters, from point of view decades rather than years, and from point of view of centuries and millennia rather than decades. the solutions and methodologies would always change and manifest flux, but the eventual outcome of staying on course of vision can show timeless success.

A newly joined trainee engineer asks his boss “what is the meaning of appraisal?”
Boss: “Do you know the meaning of resignation?”
Trainee: “Yes I do”
Boss: “So let me make you understand what an appraisal is by comparing it with resignation”

Trainee: “Yes boss enough, now I understood my future. For an appraisal I will have to resign … !!!”

These are not current trends, or at best are at a very fledgling level of visibility. These are however soon going to be seen by all and gather momentum as more and more organizations and individuals adopt and adapt them. Yea, a few of these are mutually antithetical, making precise prediction difficult.

1.
So far intrapreneurship (having an entrepreneurial style of working from within the confines of corporate walls on behalf of the corporate) has not been affirmatively supported by Boards and Leadership Managements of Corporates. This is going to change, how else is retention going to be there of mid-level and top-level management talent. People need ambition, money, anti-boredom, opportunities to Do Their Ownthing; and the Bosses won’t be able to deny their people all this.

2.
Working from home (or from wherever) has begun to invade just a handful of firms and industries, and the other firms await the Mega Invasion. Walled corporates are going to be a thing of past. Interesting would be how we manage traditional factory floor production in a distributed set-up, though this seems a little afar now.

3.
User friendly GUIs have allowed not so tech savvy staff to efficiently dispatch office business. However, one can see a transition period of maybe 3-5 decades where you would need to hardcode your own programs in higher level languages. The generic solutions available in the market would just not be adequate in handling your data storage and information processing needs; you would need to be hands on whatever current technologies are working: Oracle, SAP, C++, Java, .Net et al. By the end of next half a century or so, better aggregating yet individually customizable solutions would emerge. Till then, you would have to learn repairing your own car and your electric-electronic installations; you won’t be able to survive with a mere “knob twirling”/ “mouse clicking” understanding.

4.
Work definitions would alter, where a family gains an integrated employment with a corporate. This would extend to employing small communities of 5-20 friends who have got together on any affinity band: lifestyle interests, competencies, ideology. Employing a discrete individual would find itself a declining practice.

5.
Face to face interactions as a necessity for regular work would significantly decrease with catching up of working from home, best replaced by video interface. This would also lose currency in one-off events like recruitment/ exit interviews; the necessity of seeing a person in flesh and blood for furtherance of corporate transactions would lose relevance. The transition period would pose the challenge of evaluating from telecons and 2 D streaming video images till better viable 3 D technologies emerge.

6.
The workplace transactions are going to shift from analog style to digital: expert human judgment would need to be invoked less and less. This would happen by numbers and searchable fields splitting the problem substrate into navigational decision trees. As a fallout, emails are going to be short, narrations are going to be minimal replaced by quantitative strings, bulky documentations in text are not to be produced anymore. A small chunk of management activities would surely get automated.

7.
Without doubt, a truly multi-disciplinary competency set is going to be required; the artificial walls between functional areas (HR, Marketing, Finance, Operations) and between management hierarchies (Top, Middle, Junior) are going to dissolve and fall like the Berlin wall. Idea pooling with idea merit dictating the course of decision-making would come in. This is not to say, office politics and games-people-play would vanish. Instead, political maneuvering would be possible only by those who genuinely understand coding of firm processes besides designing the same at architectural plane.

8.
Recruitment across global geography would be in vogue bringing about its own cultural challenges. A large meltdown attempting homogenization by dissolving heterogeneity would initiate (has initiated in fact); but human spirit would manage to evolve to different planes of differentiation-individuality-heterogeneity. The remuneration-fixing subjectivity is going to get marginalized and a better level playing field to emerge. The recruitment practice of a panel of people evaluating a candidate is going to change; the candidate too is going to be represented by an army of experts trying to leverage/ investigate/ negotiate various facets of employment upfront: consultants, financial-legal experts, family members. The arm twisting corporate indulge in la feudal lords won’t be sustainable.

9.
We have been witnessing a hypocrisy on accommodating diversity over last few decades writing we are equal opportunity employers. Bah! Genuineness is going to creep in. It would not be possible to proclaim goody-goody words and agendas while working in snide manner towards pushing individual biases and assumptions. Gender diversity would shatter the glass ceiling holding women from echelon positions, even the untouchable Board positions are going to be accessible. The recruitment interview where the interviewers arrogantly proclaim they make a yes/ no decision in first 15 seconds the candidate walks into the hall are going to face immense heat; the demanded accountability and the talent demand-supply crunch would deal a death knell to nepotism of any form: region, community, gender. Whistle blowing is naturally going to foster corporate governance and meaty social responsibility allocations.

10.
Single exclusive ownership on a person’s working time of 8-12 hours is soon going to be a fossilized archetype. Multiple employments, many running concurrently are going to be the toast of the day. The key demarcator is going to be deliverability and service levels the individual offers its employers.

This all is reverse flip of employees gaining one upmanship on corporates after centuries of repression and exploitation by the ruling and by the men of money. It is going to take 2-3 centuries for a balanced point to be discovered, where the employees develop an understanding of limitations of corporate commerce. Hopefully by then, corporates too are a changed lot, better sensitized to needs of internal and external customers.

: Sandeep Mann, COO, ZCS

1.
in a world of ambiguous roles and uneven relationships,
we believe we complement corporate as equal strategic partners in sourcing talent

2.
in a world of commodification of any and everything,
we believe in humane approach to every candidate, extending him all value and genuine respect

3.
in a world that demands responsiveness come what may,
we believe in solid prior research than adopt ad hoc fire-fighting maneuvers

4.
in a world of shaky and unreliable loyalties,
we believe in valuing client confidentiality most of all

5.
in a world clouded by non-transparency,
we believe in upfront sharing of market insights and feedback

6.
in a world where customers demand perfection,
we believe in delighting by exceeding expectations

7.
in a world cluttered with grandiose and conflicting goals,
we believe in having a simple focus on subtly creating benchmarks in talent sourcing