An organization’s HR is the first direct / indirect interface for one of the most important stakeholders – Future Employees. The direct interface is obvious. The indirect interface refers to when a candidate applies for an opportunity via an agency. Yet, how many organizations seriously pay attention to this aspect? Do they realize it’s impact on Employer Branding and how the external stakeholders (potential employees and recruitment agencies) perceive the organization as a result of that?

When I say “seriously pay attention”, I mean are they ACTUALLY tracking the time taken by the HR to revert to a candidate who has been informed that his candidature is being evaluated? Are they ACTUALLY tracking how frequently information is being passed on to the candidate incase of delays in the interview process? These aspects have serious impact on an organization’s Employer Branding and unfortunately I have seen very few organizations pay attention to it.

CEOs and HR Heads end up giving more emphasis to marketing and other means for attracting better employees, whereas the first area they should focus on is within their own HR Department and how it engages with external stakeholders.

The disparity between the rich and the poor is never so stark as on Diwali.

I was at a traffic intersection on Diwali night in Delhi, and there was this family of four living on the pavement without any shelter on the cold night. I bought a couple of balloons and some other stuff from them so that they get some money on Diwali. At that moment, someone living in a house nearby, set off a string of 10,000 crackers. That is just criminal!

As organizations (and as individuals), we MUST do what we can to reduce this disparity. I do not believe in taking a moral high ground and lecture on what others should do. We should do what our conscience tells us is right.

As business owners and as individuals, we are at the stage where we are realizing that the work we do in these 4-5 years can potentially define our own lives over the next 40-50 yrs. This realization comes to different people at different stages of their lives. Some get it very early, some get it very late. It’s coming to us when we have entered the fourth year of our business. Thankfully it has come when there is still a lot of time left to achieve things.

Have to admit it is a very powerful realization.

An account of the triumphs and challenges of online retail in the world’s third largest internet population

In the wake of the news of Flipkart.com being valued at $1 billion and reigning in $150 million in PE funding, there is exalting from online businesses. However Indian Private Equity players are playing skeptics and are considering the possibility of there being another internet retail bubble.

With world economies stumbling, India is still a sound place in terms of investment and with online retail being in its nascent stage, there is much scope for expansion of existing operations and mature players to establish businesses. A wave of new concepts and copy-cat websites has taken over the Indian online retail scene, facilitating its growth. A brief highlight is in the figure given below.

*Source: Forbes Magazine & Wall Street Journal.

 

To play Devil’s Advocate, is the sudden surge in online retail and the excitement surrounding it premature? Scratching the glossy surface deeper, there are several challenges that need addressing.

1. The Cautious Indian Consumer: Indian consumers have shown lesser confidence in online transactions than their credit card-toting western counterparts. Although India has a large population with internet connectivity, not many use plastic money or seem at ease to do so. Plus Indians have traditionally preferred to “touch and feel” products before actually purchasing them. Websites like Flipkart.com, Homeshop18.com have adopted the Pay-on-Delivery model and many more are following suit.

2. Poor buying experience: Indian shopping portals have struggled with interface and complicated transaction process, often overwhelming customers. The range of products hosted by these sites is limited, thus not being able to fully replicate the shopping experience in a traditional brick and mortar store. Not surprisingly, the most online shopping happens in electronics, tourism and event ticketing where physically inspecting the product is not a big concern.

3. Entry of international retail giants: With Groupon already having entered India with SoSasta.com and Amazon.com making inroads, Indian retailers will have to be swift to incorporate changes, adopt newer technology, clean up the user interface, expand product range, simplify transaction processes to be able to stand up to the bigwigs.

4. Crowding of retail space: The Indian online retail scene is fraught with small copy-cat retail players with hardly one or two big players. There is no unique selling proposition that would give any of the competing portals any brand-distinguishing advantages. For example, the group buying format suddenly exploded the scene and several small Indian online shopping sites are involved in group buying. However, each is similar to the next, competing on price, each having similar deals. Consolidation and expansion by the bigger players to eliminate small, poorly run companies, gain synergies and establish a wider consumer base would enable Indian Retail to hold its own in the future.

5. Competition from the online portals of the brick and mortar shops: With brick and mortar shops having physical presence, establishing online stores, the competition and pressure only builds up. The on-ground giants have

a) Greater ad-spend

b) More consumer trust because of physical presence

c) Buffer mechanism to have an alternate way to dispose off an item that does not sell online in the physical store and vice-versa

d) Better established supply chain networks and supplier relations. Moreover, because of their volumes, the larger store can get bigger discounts as compared to small online stores.

There are several international precedents Indian Online Retailers will have to outdo to have expansive presence. They should exploit new technology, be intuitive to customer needs and do better with increasing competition to provide better user experience and in turn grab a juicy chunk of the investor pie.

 

Apeksha

EDIT: There will be a series of collective interviews with industry insiders to gain perspective. Watch this space for the next post.

 

 

Ian Clark defines Strategic Human Resource Management as being “concerned with the promotion of efficiency and profitability; centers on how organizations can improve their competitive performance by considering and utilizing their human resources more effectively”.

Despite the challenges of developing a solid partnership between other business functions and HR, we have tried to put together a few pointers that would assist you to overcome the barriers and maximize the potential of your organization.

1: Collaboration on Key Business Issues and Integrating of HR into the Strategic Planning Process

It is clear that communication plays a very major role in the success of an organization. All business functions should have a clear understanding of other functions in order to facilitate deeper understanding and coordination of tasks. Marketing should understand Sales, Sales should understand Finance, HR should understand Operations. Without this executive collaboration, HR and other business functions can become strategically misaligned, especially in light of their company’s overall goals and objectives.

2: Development of Additional Skills

Another barrier to strategic partnership that both HR and other business function executives identified was the level and mix of skills within the HR function. Whether it is the result of better hiring or better training, it was found that Strategic Partner organizations perceived a higher level of HR skills across the board than their Support Function peers did. This discrepancy was most pronounced in areas such as analysis, leadership and general business acumen.

3: Clearly Drawing Boundaries for Each Department:

While intersectionality is essential for an organization, it is necessary to have well-established boundaries for each department so that there is no overstepping of duties. Each department’s responsibilities and duties should be well defined in order to avoid duplication of efforts, miscommunication and to ensure every aspect of work and strategy comes to fruition.

The prominent areas where the Human Resource Manager can play a strategic role:

1. Providing Purposeful Direction: The upper echelons in the organization frame policies and define Vision, Mission and Goals. However, it must be the task of the HR Manager to ensure that the mission and goals of an organization have been internalized by each individual working in the organization.

2. Building Human Resource as a Core Competency: The core competency of an organization is a unique strength of an organization which may not be shared by others. While it may be possible to replicate other core competencies such as superior technology, marketing, industrial relations, etc. organizational culture & superior work force often remain unique.

3. Being Change Agents: In a strategically integrated organization, the HR Manager will facilitate change through greater involvement in environmental scanning and development planning.

Finding the opportunity to take the partnership to the next level is a barrier in itself and most organisations find it a little difficult to integrate what may have been considered as a support function into the core machinations of the organization. While we may expect other organizational functions to make way for such integration, it is equally important to internally transform HR staff and structure and enhance administrative efficiencies. Once such a system is in place, organizations will find greater synergies arise due to a better inter-functionality.

Traditionally Human Resource personnel have found themselves in stifling roles, where their province within the organisation was restricted to being functionally operative, supportive, reactive and internally focused. This underrated position of HR within organisations limited firms from enjoying the benefits of HR that could have been proactive by shifting focus from being an entity that was policing to partnering, short-term to long-term, administrative to consultative and functionally oriented to business oriented.

Good talent in today’s fast emerging marketplace is a tactical advantage. Human Resource executives all over the world have strived towards creating significant strategic alliances with other business functions inside their companies. A perfect blend of important business partners and the competitive world eventually recognize the quantifiable financial value that is created by these alliances.

Although establishing a strategic partnership between HR and other business functions in an organization may seem like a distant goal, it is achievable and very vital. By employing the best practices of successful partnerships and using fundamental customer-centric strategies, HR can become an effective business partner with other business functions and a strategic asset in the revenue-generating function of a company. When successful, these alliances elevate the HR stature in the organization to that of a critical and indispensible business asset – an asset worthy of constant investment and appreciation.

A very generic survey on LinkedIn, conducted to support our views showed fundamentally divergent perceptions about this undermined relationship.

• More than 70 percent of the HR executives interviewed believed they had achieved a solid strategic partnership with other departments.
• In contrast, only 45 percent of other department executives shared the same upbeat assessment.
• Even more disconcerting, five times more business executives than HR executives rated HR in their companies as essentially a basic support function.

It is essential we point out, that either HR is not providing ample value to other business functions, or that the other functions simply do not care enough to notice it.

Out of sheer curiosity and amazement, we further asked this question on LinkedIn’s Question and Answers section and a variety of business professionals responded.

Mr. Ashutosh Bose, Business Analyst-Product Management at Cognizant Technology Solutions, is of the opinion that the HR department is the backbone behind the important assets of an organization. HR is just not about recruitment anymore, there are lot more dimensions to it including training and development, compensation and benefits, organization culture etc. In fact, employee retention and attrition is an important facet of HR policies.

The same line of thought was continued by Mr. Jeffrey Huff, HR Manager, Background Check Program at NC State University who said that this topic will hold two opinions in the way that good HR Directors will say it’s an important one and those who are in HR simply because it is a job, say a supplementary one. He says that those who are passionate about HR work with all levels of management to make HR a viable source for all employees and make sure they know what skills the different departments need and recruit for those skills and not just filling a position.

Dave Ulrich, in an endeavour to redefine the traditional role and positioning of HR as a support function, defined a model to integrate HR roles in building a competitive organization where Human Resource Management entailed the following roles:

Effective Human Resources Management is a key differentiator in today’s corporate performance and good HR people are catalysts in successful organizations, according to Hareeni Shree, Founder & CEO, Corporate Chimes.

Apart from this, with an integrated HR with representation and authority at the decision making level, challenging scenarios such as a global workforce, inorganic growth through mergers and acquisitions, rapid evolution of skills, technological advancements etc. become easier to transition through.

Thus, in our opinion every business organization and their other functions should start realizing the true essence of their undermined HR Department and take steps to ensure that HR is treated as a vital division of every organization.