Handled a session on "HR Practices for Business Growth" at the Masterclass for directors at the Radisson Hotel, Chennai. As usual we had a mixture of participants from various disciplines. We had theManaging Director, Mr. Krishnasamy Jeyabal, and Director, Mr. G. N. Nataaraj from Auto Shell Perfect Moulder, a company manufacturing grey cast iron from Coimbatore, the CMD of United India Insurance, Mr. G Srinivasan to name a few. Mr. M. A. Shahirudeen Director Training and Development from WINBRO Academy is an NLP trainer. Mrs. Ida Sathyanarayanan, Managing Director of WINBRO Logistics was also a participant.
THe day began with a one hour lecture on Company Law and Board Room issues by Mr. N R Sridharan, Former Director, Ministry of Company Affairs. He gave a brilliant talk on the various points that Directors should know.
Some nice quotes from his speech:
About himself:
I am a mediocre among the best; best among the mediocre. (Obviously humility. Belied by his brilliant speech!)
About his life:
A series of incidents without any accomplishments. (A nice quote from Graham Greene, but not applicableto NRS!)
About Company Law
The Companies Act is an instrument of corporate Governance.
About Accounting Standards
They improve the quality of quantity as well as the quantity of the quality!
During my session I spoke about HR practices. I think I argued a favourable case for
a. Designing HR practices from the Root of Conviction
b. Not adopting every new fad in HR or, what I call "flavour of the month" approaches.
c. Treating different employees differently so that the star performers feel that they are recognized.
My suggestion thet we should allow employees who are high on Enthusiasm and Performance. (i.e Character and Competence in the words of Stephen Covey) should be given the chance to define their own remuneration package did not meet the resistance I expected that it would. Shahir qualified by saying that this measure should be preceded by a comprehensive performance appraisal. I totally agreed with him. The appraisal could be a standard target or KRA (Key Result Area) based or a 360 degrees appraisal.
Mr. Daniel Anandraj, Director Vizual Business Tools Private Limited mentioned that he had actually done what I was recommending. Barring one executive out of twenty who reported to him, everyone had given a fair figure that was alittle below his own figure. One gentleman alone had expectations far above his entitlements as per Daniel. The point is the approach will work only with people who are high on both Enthusiasm and Performance. The suggested approach is to dialogue wuth this person. If no WIN/WIN emerges then it is NO Deal!
I also made the point that it is better to sack a person who is showing signs of negativity. Better it is a shock to him than to us!
Mr. Chandrasekhar said he had liked my idea of being a Chief Enabling Office. A Chief Enabling Officer does not tell his people what to do. Instead he shares with them his plan of action. Then he asks 'What can I do today/this week/month/year that will help you do your job better?" Thereafter he clearly tells the team, "What they can do to help him do his job better!" Then they actually start DOING THEIR JOBS!
On the whole it was an intellectual treat!
No comments:
Post a Comment