Human Resources - Is the title just symbolic..?

I think there is some merit in saying that these days the 'Human Resource' has become just a symbolic word to reflect the 'human capital' within an economic activity or enterprise, and there fore should be removed. In many enterprises, it seems that the function has stopped cultivating a enterprise community of engaged human beings sensitive to broader community needs. One of the reason it may be the way the exploitative behaviour is encouraged rather than enterprising behaviour. The latter supports an innovative mind frame amongst employees and free from drivers like money. Fortune 500 ranks based on sales hardly help resolve the trauma of those occupying 'wall streets'. Managements tend to underline the objectives and discourages employees to be enterprise to think independently. Rewards and Scales helps to measure but hardly makes the enterprise responsive to external community needs.

hedging on diversity during times of social instability.

People are not alike, everyone is different. Diversity therefore consists of visible and non-visible factors, which include personal characteristics such as background, culture, personality and work-style in addition to the characteristics that are protected under discrimination legislation in terms of race, disability, gender, religion and belief, sexual orientation and age. Harnessing these differences can create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, their talents are fully utilised and organisational goals are met. how organisations successfully embrace diversity to measurable benefit is worth evaluating.

Science of Management , and a global euro zone

Intentions are your Expressions Says GITA

Power of Intentions is the Success Formula Says Management

GITA Says

Your Intentions should be clear, practical, achievable and should differentiate you from the winner

Key players who can determine the power of your intentions
Wisdom and Science (Gyana and Vigyana)

GITA says Science can be understood by our senses, i.e. Mouth speaks and understands various issues through, eyes, ears and other senses.

Wisdom will make the power of your intentions very strong

Wisdom will create an inner feeling (Intuition), which can be transformed in to Introspection, after series of inner understanding if your mind says yes it becomes intentions

GITA says use the value of science for taking decisions in known things, Science why, Wisdom can focus how.

Intentions should be a mind factor says GITA

E.g.: You’re planning to fast today and you will proclaim to people that, I will not eat any food, Science can brings ways and means, yes I can drink water, fruit juices

But what if you’re Mind thinks of delicious foods and contemplating on that, then your action (FASTING) does not call for any value

Power of Intentions is mind phenomenon

Arjuna was able to visualize only the Parrot, when all others saw different parts of Trees

Yudhister was able to see only good people. But Duroydhana was able to see only bad people. But People are the same, intention power is different

Power of Intentions is the Success Formula Says Management

Organizations slowly understand the power of intentions

Try this Exercise

Visualize that you are smelling the fragrance of ROSE …….

Visualize that you are smelling garbage ….

Observe the two reactions in a Mirror ……

The Answer …… is clear….

So it is evident that inner intentions can only parallel your outer expressions , even though a small amount of camouflage is done finally you get what you intend .

Many times we hear jargon like Think Global Act Local

I will say the Jargon Actually shows the power of intentions, you know why

When you think global, you will automatically make your local a global place

So Intentions starts with an inner feeling, then transforms into intuitions and travels as introspection and ably supported by wisdom becomes an action plan and your expressions and through science it becomes success formula.

Author - V.VA Sriram

work life and social debt

the recent developments in euro zone provides ample lessons for welfare administrators of state and also their younger siblings of HR managers of Industries of that State. developing countries too can learn a lot. work life patterns of 35 hrs per week, long week ends, and higher social security net of even 50% of the salaries and a consumption oriented social life have over the years infalted their national debts to disproportinate sizes which no community can pay off now even if they work 7 days a week and sell those goods and services to others. For the current year the writing is on the wall that the system is going to fail . Budget book balancing may happen becuse of political support from sister countries to prop up such economies. For Hr managers the lesson is that there should be a line drawn to balance work life and social life. both need to be balanced and fundamentally, work should be an enabler to support life standards corresponding to community needs. One need to analyse deeply the need for extending a soft loan to an employee working in a community where a Jaguar or a Mercedez is not needed at personal level. Rather public transport infrastructure for shared consumption is needed. Employees should not be encouraged to show off disproportionate social wealth and at the same time should be encouraged to generate disproprtionate values - of product or service- to the community; higher i mean. ; value addition graph should always be higher than work life cost curve. Such wage patterns will be non inflationary , supportive to strengthen national debt servicing abilities; instead of going with a begging bowl to IMF; or needing to fight trade wars with other nations or even from the need to deploy heavy Security expenditures with an eye on newly found wealth lying in unpopulated islands..!!

work life quality indicator.

The best way to see figure out organisational culture is to see how people behave during lunchtime. If they are eagerly waiting for the break, it means time is passing slowly at their workstations. If they forget the lunch break, then they clearly are doing something at the workstation that they're enjoying a lot. Time is constantly contracting and expanding at the workplace. Time can expand or contract, depending on how engaged you are in your work. This is better illustrated in Gita as how the space and time gets defined there. What ties humanity and purpose of life is 'Karma' time 'capsule' in 'space'. A different subject of course..

Sectoral perspective for HR –Oil and Gas: 10th June 2011: Energy Sector: OPEC decides not to increase output: Bloomberg Panel discussion with OPEC Secy General.

From the latest developments it appears that the sector has lot of potential for long term investments. For starters OPEC has exposed its real interests long term that it is only looking at reasonable returns for its member nations for the efforts their member nations are putting in to the sector in terms of fresh investments for more extraction and sales consequently. The volatility in the prices and OPEC has accused West and US for its inability to control market speculation which has no basis on actual production, supply or demand statistics, is not helping the OPEC in controlling the production and keep its member nations satisfied and induce them to make further investments in this Sector. During early quarter this year the prices went from 50 to 160 and close to 200 and then within 2 months fall to 30 dollars and again within 2 months went up to 70 dollars and again came down to 50 dollars etc etc. The oil prices and volumes of trade indicate that there is an underlying market demand for oil and supplies are not catching up and hence prices per barrel are flaring up. But the reality is not so. The supply or production output is in excess of demand in as much as some member nations are finding it difficult to sell their crude output. In such a scenario the OPEC cannot ask its member nations to further increase output. Also member nations are shying away from making further investments as markets are becoming difficult to get into. The speculative prices are in no way indicative of the real supply and demand economics. It is just indicative of surplus money floating around and fewer commodities or investment avenues available for speculators to play around. What is lacking is again lack of control or inability of western markets US and Europe to control this speculation in the market. There is another bubble like housing market in making… nothing else. Gold, crude oil and commodities market is going to be next victim except that this time there are going to be much wider social and economic repercussions as commodities have a direct bearing on inflation rate and social living conditions worldwide.
That being so, the developments gives pointers to the inherent strength the market holds for long term. First: OPEC fels there is considerable scope for exploiting oil reserves for meeting world crude demand for another 50-100 years. So far it appears that only 1/3 rd have been exploited and already there is twice as much established reserves lying. This is without taking into account new markets and developed but idle markets like Iraq, Iran gas etc. Also with Libyan crude, though being the best crude is out of supply. Secondly, the energy mix is growing giving more space to alternative energy sources like wind, solar etc. Thirdly, nuclear energy is still considered as a viable alternative despite the Japan tsunami incidence and green peace movements. Even though Germany and France have decided to limit further expansions in this area the technology is very much being shared and transferred to new emerging markets like India etc. Fourthly, new producers like Khazakthan etc have entered into oil and gas production. Fifth, there is an awareness and political recognition to transport gas by pipelines from Russia/CIS and Caspian Sea area to Europe. This is expected to help European countries to have a control on the energy spend over decade, encourage more effective utilisation of crude energy and reliance on low cost transportation network and thereby low gas prices for home use. Governments in EU in turn will get freed of rising crude subsidy burden and debts to help come out of the economic turmoil they are into. The European political landscape is slowing becoming congenial for effective pipeline network infrastructure building from Caspian base to Europe. Sixth, in emerging markets investments into hydro, nuclear sectors are coming up very much in next decade; though with strict regulation and assistance of technology from Europe and west industries. 7th ; the recent developments in shale gas, in US has added necessary fillip to the gas demands in US and a viable alternative to energy security there. 8th: In India more investments are coming in to Coal Sector as coal based gas is seen as a viable alternative to its power sector. Also in the next decade several hydro projects are getting commissioned as India had during last decade missed the hydro energy bus unlike china.
All the above pointers helps to recognize that there is considerable scope for growth in this sector and enough players around. The sectors that will remain rugged for sustainable growth in revenues, economic value addition and sharing of gains are therefore crude oil refining sector, lng , hydro , coal, nuclear, wind, solar, shale gas and new gas finds. For HR , the industry backdrop will help it to reach further heights.

value based hr practices

organizational values are often reflected in hr policies and practices. conversely hr policies and practices need to re-iterate those values and encourage employees' subscription to those values. The employee 'Brand', non tangible as we perceive, will then gain visibility in market place. It is a whole new paradigm , a perspective that can re-engineer hr processes considerably; be it in area of talent search, work culture, performance, compensation or even separations. Communities will start looking at such organizations and their products with more respect and regards. A recent listing of most ethical companies worldwide had few Fortune 500 top rankers !

Sustainability elements for human resource management

Sustainability enhances credibility and adds strength to core processes in long term. The policies and practices which we evolve and implement now should not be at the cost of future capabilities.; rather existing policies need to be refined, where necessary, to make it sustainable and supportive to continued compliance in future. eg providing an open platform for employees' interaction and opinion formation on various hr processes will enhance credibility and also makes the processes more satisfying for the future; or to review whether confidentiality policies enhance mutual trust and faith amongst employees ? In short how green are we...?

Ethics - business & people

Compliance to business ethics and conflict declaration have become like marriage vows..where a divorce can still happen. But is there a case for stating business ethics for hr professionals to uphold? if so, what can be its core values? and who can state those 'statements' for HRM functionaries to comply with? What about employees' expectations from hr guys..and also management needs from the function? How should 'Values' like Integrity, transparency, honesty, diplomacy, win-win attitude, equality, commitment, courage of conviction, politeness , empathy to be stated for HR professionals to comply with ? Will that put the function in a dilemma at times? I think if an organisation is mature enough to open these topics for discussion with its own employees that itself will be a huge step forward. HR function essentially need to be steered to organization's internal social values and who else can better reflect it other than HR guys ... for rest of employees. Well, the converse is also very true and telling that reflects the organization's maturity..!!

Mapping compensation trends....

The old cliche, 'wage islands' still exist.. regional compensation trends, nowadays very much reflects the larger economic & political map of the region. While GDP growth and inflation rates influenced 'Value addition' based compensation trends in Japanese industries in early 80's; the later Quality focussed managerial interventions, for export earnings, brought in a need for fresh look at internal compensation packages.
Following recent wall street episodes, excessive risk taking culture is getting tempered down through Government interventions to put in place financial stability policies and corresponding compensation practices across sectors.
However even now there are many geographical zones, and economic islands controlled by monopoly powers, telescopic vision, where Industries perspectives towards Compensation & Benefits remains focussed to basic needs for hiring and extrinsic needs influenced by demographic factors like gender, race, colour, creed etc..
Need for value based approaches, equity principles, performance based rewards or higher level elements like ESOPs, adoption of equity principles across all employees open to governance are not getting triggered..

The existing trends in such regions are heavily influenced by larger governance principles and ability to resource talent.