Thursday, March 09, 2006

Main, meri naukri aur WOH

One of my HR friend's reaction when I told him I work in the outsourcing space was 'so you are the guys who are after our jobs'. This friend did not mean it seriously but one gets this reaction many a times. My friend asked me to write about how HR guys can ensure that their jobs don't get outsourced. I only want to tell you my friend that you have already begun the journey of outsouring by asking me to do this thinking on your behalf :)).

I made a promise that I am going to put my thoughts around how HR guys can ensure that their jobs don't get outsourced, now its a bad business decision, but a promise is a promise.

In one simple sentence how an HR guy can ensure that his / her job does not get outsourced is by doing what HR is supposed to do. Now one can argue that this is just a play of words. So let me explain my thinking behind this statement.

HR is supposed to help attract the right talent, motivate them to give their best and help retain the right kind of skills in the organisation. HR is supposed to ensure that there is alignment between the business requirements and how people deliver against the requirements. HR is supposed to help nurture current talent and build future capabilities to ensure the organisation can continuously meet ever changing business realities. HR is suppposed to understand the everchanging needs of the employees in the organisation and bringing about an alignment between these needs and organisation needs. If you are in the space of doing any of these or similar kind of things, then in my opinion your jobs are not getting outsourced in the near future.

But if your work is in the area of liasoning with recruiting agencies, shortlisting bio-ds, co-ordinating interview schedules, ensuring people attend training, organising training schedules, ensure people comply to policies, ensuring performance forms are filled by everyone and so on, then in the first place you need to realise that you are involved not in an HR job but an admin job. Administrative and repetitive and in consoolt-speak 'non-value adding activities' are best managed either by technology or by processes.

So here I rest my case and hope that my dear fellow HR friends will live in peace that their jobs are not getting outsourced in the near future at least.

3 comments:

Gautam Ghosh said...

thanks for keeping the promise !

Have linked to the post !

Ajit Chouhan said...

I feel HR has to be to serve internal coustomers,stakeholders the same way as the organisations caters to its customers and client.

We must come up with innovative solutions,products and processes which will enhance the HR experience for our stakeholders.

I strongly feel that we HR folks need to be agreesive with marketing and brading ourselves , also ensuring a better CRM with internal partners.

Kapil said...

well said...i would like like to add the responisibility of identifying and nurturing high potential talent within organization and ensuring best fit wrt skillset...even Piyush Pandey way a middle level account manager till he was discovered and put into copy deptt...
Also it is important for HR to recruit right,keeping temprament and aptitude in focus and not get swayed by qualifications..Something like Warren Buffet..who makes investments with a 10 yr perspective..

I have to make a choice between a graduate Ram Kumar and a matriculate Bhola Nath for the post of a lift operator...plain logic would say that I pick the Ram Kumar (graduate)since he is better qualified .Alas this would be a myopic choice..This is a dead end job and moreover Ram Kumars aspirations vis a vis job requirements are not in alignment..he would get frustated after a while and quit.
However the creative choice would be tochoose the matriculate Bhola Nath even though he is less qualified.....Bhola Nath with limited options and aspirations would be more durable..

btw it may seem slightly unconnected with the post ....but i wanted to make the point coz i m Ram Kumar the Lift Operator :)