HR personnel should take the responsibility to identify and understand the reasons for the failure of any initiative and suggest and implement corrective action, writes Nivedan Prakash It is understood that the role and responsibilities of HR is always well-defined in any organization. They are the ones, who frame policies, look after the training and development of the employees, listen to the grievances, measure performances, and formulate ideas for the benefit of all. One of the key responsibilities amongst these is giving direction to any initiative taken up by the organization at large. We will first try to understand as to where do the role of HR really falls in the whole process of any initiative. Since an initiative involves the process of conceptualization till implementation, a simple answer here could be that HR has a saying at both the conception as well as execution level. In most cases, HR's involvement is at the initiation level but if they are involved at each and every step, then they can be given credit for the whole project. It all depends on whether they are making the framework only or running the entire show. Some of the key factors that is responsible for the success of any initiative includes right sourcing, competency development, performance management, employee engagement, and finally, putting in place an option incentive structure to ensure alignment. HR plays a key role in all these areas, throughout the life of the initiative. “HR has traditionally played mostly a support role in most organizations and the general perception remains that HR is just the execution wing of the senior management's decisions or initiatives. However, recent developments show that HR is gradually moving to a more strategic role in organizations, wherein HR advises the management on the initiatives to introduce and/or prioritize based on either the industry norms/benchmarks or feedback received from the employees. Hence, HR is now actively involved in all the stages of the initiative, right from planning to execution,” opined Partha Patnaik, GM–HR and Admin, Four Soft. Here, we can say that the HR department is an integral part of any initiative that involves the employees at the organization level. It is the responsibility of the HR function to make sure that there is a smooth end-to-end execution of all the initiatives. The risk factor "The general perception remains that HR is just the execution wing of the senior management's decisions or initiatives. But the recent developments show that HR is now actively involved in all the stages of the initiative, right from planning to execution" - Partha Patnaik "The success of an initiative can be inter-dependent on the performance of multiple functions and locations or teams, but the ultimate blame or glory belongs to the owner of the initiative" - S J Raj As mentioned above, HR acts as a custodian of all kinds of initiatives that are focused towards employee satisfaction and engagement, policies, practices, work culture, core values, and organizational branding, amongst others. But a critical question arises here—can the HR personnel be held accountable for any initiative that goes wrong in an organization? One faction of the industry believes that HR personnel together with the senior management are jointly responsible for creating all employee related initiatives. However, the charge of properly communicating and executing the same remains primarily with HR. Hence, even if HR personnel are not directly responsible for an initiative going wrong, they definitely remain accountable for it. Iti Kumar, VP-People Development, GlobalLogic is of the view that generally the initiatives in any organization are either initiated or supported by HR. Involvement of people in such initiatives is also equally important. As a whole, initiatives are driven under participative culture mode but it is important for HR to have complete ownership of such initiatives. This also includes their accountability if any initiative goes wrong in the organization. This reflects bad planning on the part of the HR department. The other faction thinks that in any business, the accountability for a process rests with the department or function which is managing or owning the same. Any initiative taken within the process areas that are owned or managed by HR, or any initiative that is directly related to the workforce, is therefore the accountability of HR personnel. S J Raj, Senior VP-HR, Newgen Software, said, “The success of an initiative can be inter-dependent on the performance of multiple functions and locations or teams, but the ultimate blame or glory belongs to the owner of the initiative. When an HR process initiative goes awry, the ultimate accountability rests with HR, irrespective of the involvement of other functions in the process.” “HR can be held responsible only when any initiative is related to their department. Any initiative has two phases—the conceptual phase and the implementation phase. HR will be involved in these phases if the work is related workforce or employee related,” added M S Shivakumar, Principle Consultant, Expertus. Giving a different perspective, Mamta Wasan, VP-HR and Training, Fidelity National Information Services, said that they do measure every initiative and its success but do not hold anyone responsible. “We learn from our mistakes and move on. However, feedback is given and processes enhanced from the learning,” added Wasan. Taking the onus When an initiative does not materialize as planned, questions are asked and fingers are pointed towards the HR department. Apparently, it affects the entire department's goal sheet. However, it is always a good idea to take the responsibility and come up with corrective and preventive measures to ensure that such incidents do not recur. HR personnel should do a root cause analysis and find out the reasons for the failure of the initiative, have a corrective action plan in order to remove root cause, do the periodic reviews and follow-ups, and also update all the stakeholders about the initiative and its progress or the effect. Ajit Varwandkar, MD of aglakadam.com is of the opinion that once any such initiative going wrong has been identified, immediate action needs to originate from the related function. HR can interrogate the stakeholders of the wrong decisions or failed initiative and if required a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) can be proposed. Since HR has to take the responsibility for the failure of implementing a policy or non acceptance, industry experts believe that communication is the best key to resolve this, as it is important to communicate to employees about any new policy or changes in old policies. The other steps that HR can take to ensure that such a failure does not happen again include understanding the pulse of the people working in the company, seeking feedback from employees on their expectations from the organization, and before launching any new policy, a thread can be opened in a discussion forum and suggestions can be invited. “HR influences company initiatives through institutionalized processes as well as through tactical response to situations. When processes fail to produce the expected results, HR responds by reviewing the process and making changes as required,” commented Amrita Basu, VP-HR, TechProcess Solutions. In others words, for ensuring a successful initiative, HR has to do gap analysis for possible gaps in the process prior to the launch, and have alternate action plans ready to plug those gaps. HR personnel should also keep lines of communication open with employees to preempt the spreading of rumors and panic. A few instances Here we would like to give a few examples of the initiatives that had been taken up by various organizations and how have they had handled it. To begin with, with the economic meltdown and recession hitting the industry, GlobalLogic had to take few initiatives involving cost-cutting measures, which is certainly not positive and could have had adverse impact on the mindset of employees. The company adopted a simple and straight strategy to communicate and has kept its employees informed about such steps through various communication channels. They ensured that they should spread positivity by bringing in new initiatives, which have low cost or no cost to ensure that people do not feel low. Fidelity National Information Services had initiated background checks for all in the organization and all those joining. It did ask those people to leave who did not meet the guidelines. It could have caused problems but because the company created a communication plan and shared this in detail with everyone with the objective, importance, steps and time lines. Though Four Soft does not have initiatives that have failed, they had cases where corrections were made for policies/initiatives. The company devised a new method of salary increment, which comprised of a unique combination of variable and incentive based pay linking the individual and the overall organization's performance. The critical part was then about communicating it in a proper manner to all staff so that there was a collective agreement that the process was fair and transparent. Similarly, Newgen Software had taken an initiative to establish a system of identifying key performers. Initially there were a lot of roadblocks in executing this activity, as there was very little cooperation from the line managers. However, the HR personnel came out with a list of performance criteria which was aligned with the nature of work of each group. The HR team members had detailed discussion with their line managers and department heads, where the merit of those performance criteria was established. The buy-in of the managers was received, and the new performance measurement criteria were put into practice. Here we could clearly see that the HR personnel of companies having varied businesses had to face problems related to one initiative or the other. But the positive aspect is that they have taken onus for it and have come up with an effective solution that could benefit all. |
