HR practices : quality standards

Hr practices vary significantly across sectors within Industry even though they all are having a common scope to cover organised labour. Sectoral(business) priorities are often seen to over ride the people  priorities in many cases;  unlike say for e.g. with Finance or other resources.  Unfair practices with own employees exposed recently in sectors like IT and Realty.

The disturbing fact was that such unethical practices were being done by Industry leaders with the connivance and unethical stand by their own HR fraternity.

Few areas that got exposed that too in Industry leaders :

1. Rampant outsourcing of hiring actions resulting in unscrupulous agents and third parties exploiting prospective talents; demanding upfront service charges, fraud employment offers, fake interviews, fraud email communications to attract and trap.
2. Unsafe onboarding practices with scant regard to statutory obligations, social security coverages, no background checks, no medicals, no orientation, training not even for safety and occupational risks.
3. Blurred payment norms, lack of communications, neglect to living conditions of employee/family.
4. Unethical performance assessments, imposing of non-negotiable work standards, unfairly stretched   objectives for performance etc
5. Retrenchment without giving reason nor reasonable time and without proper communication or regard to employees families/dependents.
6. Unfair replacement hiring practices without exploring training and development options of existing talent.
7. Coaxing employees to adopt unfair trade practices to push business gains; that too often at employees own risk of exposure to violation/punitive actions within laws.
8. Abysmal Industry quality standards on employee engagement standards.

There is a strong case for regulation through legal options in all above. Unfortunately the present labour laws are unable to prevent above instances.

basic game..

In any organisation, especially commercial ones, business strategies to capitalise opportunities are often leveraged on two basic resources, though there are more than two as you know. Finance and People. HR is a function that carries the potential to synergise. Recognising that formally, focusing on interfaces, valuing the 'influencing' elements, evolving metrics and measurements to monitor are all part of game.

emerging options for candidate screening

With rising human value replacement costs, health of employees handling key portfolios has gained significant concern these days. While there are limited safeguards for covering costs in the event of any unfortunate event or detection of any critical illness requiring hospitalisation and prolonged absence the vacuum such an absence creates in operating environment, be it shop floor or service field, could be catastrophic. Performance pause is a real gap. It then becomes all the more critical to pre-empt such situations as best one can by scientific screening tools.

Currently the recruitment industry in India is ill equipped for conducting such screenings. nor there are any credible tools available too. The most common method followed is a pre-employment third party general medical health check up report which will just produce a health report based on current health condition.

Predictive diagnosis is an emerging medical field and in that molecular science is showing some promising in roads. There is a need to tap this method for effective medical screening of prospective candidates identified for key positions so as to gain insight into their likelihood of staying healthy for long term career. Genomics shows us the way.

Hiring Quality Index

Given the diversity of recruitment practices prevalent in industries, for corporates especially , there is a need for a hiring quality index to preserve integrity of people management practices. It will also add accountability to hiring managers, making them responsible  from unethical hiring practices.

Some key factors that need to be taken into consideration:

The Stage:

• external hiring points available across hierarchy.
• prevailing attrition rates and causes.
• Exit interview data management
• Referal scheme for employees.
• Availability of Job Descriptions.
• Availability of a standardised candidate profile input data tool; for candidates
• Company brochure exclusively tailored for new comers.
• Availability of tests for preliminary screening.
• Availability of Hiring Quality Index
• Participation in any study during last one year.
• Availability of candidate data bank.

The Process:

• disclosure levels of employment details; extant and coverage.
• disclosure levels of Job description.
• disclosure levels of contract terms and conditions including salary bands etc.
• disclosure levels of hiring ethics, practices and equitable measurements.
• adoption of free recruitment practices.
• communication to disqualified/rejected candidates.
• Weightage to Interview within overall measurement index. 
• F2F Interview panel composition and intrinsic scales applied.
• application of psychometric tests.
• medical and physical health screening.
• verification of antecedents, social behaviour verifications.
• verification from previous employers
• verification of qualification certificates
• verification of social networks
• verification of volunteering, charitable, social service works undertaken.
• on-boarding support and facilities extended.
• Collection of family details of the selected candidate.

Hiring Quality Index need to be developed to cover all the above, at Industry level, for employment markets can then be defined based on Industry's HQI, duly benchmarked.

Recruitment Industry ethics

Recently a youngster was complaining the approach taken by many Job portals for squeezing job aspirants as cash cows for their revenues. These infamous Job portals initially collects CVs and mobile contact numbers from internet sources. They then call up these job seekers directly to confirm the information validity of the CV they have procured and also to check the veracity, and proclaim themselves as 'Job opportunity service providers', and that such a 'service' has charges upfront. Candidates are then asked to pay certain amount through net immediately to register on the assurance that their CV will be forwarded to the company. IN many cases they then will organise an Interview session with all those candidates who have paid up as some preliminary screening. Company representatives may or may not be present and in any case such interviews are held as preliminary in nature. Their obligation they say ends with providing so called 'opportunity' not necessarily meaning that the opportunity leads to any actual 'Job' per se.The level of unemployment in particular industries, disciplines and regions are measured and tapped to garner maximum revenue through registrations.

It is important for Industries and Companies to isolate such Job portals or the CVs which they submit from any consideration for the unethical and corrupt practices they breed exploiting the aspirations of youngsters and employment seekers. It is unfortunate that such practices prevailing in India is yet to get the attention of Labour ministry for taking effective deterrent actions against those involved. It is also equally important for all such candidates to refuse to pay up any registration amount on demand by such unscrupulous Job portals who are only interested in exploiting the aspirations for cash flows.

Leadership quality drives mergers..

Mergers often throw up some interesting scenarios. 

There are companies where the leadership grope in dark , not able to give directions, nor a road map for execution of a merger decision taken for business synergy. This exposes several inherent weaknesses within a company most evident being its inability to steer performance during merger phase. Often such companies puts a freeze on fresh talent sourcing, rely on old guards, even if they have lost interest, and even put a freeze on performance rewards etc. 

The failure to develop teams to lead and perform during the merger phase will result in uneven patches of staffing levels and duplication of core operational activities across disciplines. Post merger, it could lead to fire fighting and juggling over many operational parameters, for the failure in developing unique parameters for controls over post-merged entity.  The merger thus often falters in achieving any synergy in such cases rather will only add operational  costs and risks during merger with long term damages. 

One essential step to trigger a successful road map to merger, is to install a new leadership team at the helm to oversee the new entity in development. They should be new faces, with sufficient innate talent to take innovative decisions in close coordination with share holders interests and objectives envisaged for the new organism in the offing. Having old leaders from existing entities will be like carrying existing blinkers on to the new entity. 

Leadership is an art, where business knowledge gets consistently applied with courage of conviction, professionally, ethically. Its quality gets tested during chaotic phases like a merger phase. Weakness gets exposed when existing leaders try to retain to known faces to support them to cross the phase. Perhaps thats why successful mergers happen through top-down approach for an effective integration at bottom levels of business activities.