LET HR TAKE THE LEAD: BUILD YOUR HUMAN RESOURCES NOW
These are turbulent times.
Watching one's colleagues being shown the door all of a sudden on Friday evenings, after their access cards are taken away, could be unsettling for both those leaving and those left behind.
Such decisions to lay off are generally first made by the Finance Department.
As a responsible response to recession, with or without layoffs, those in HR need to proactively work on increasing the productivity of their staff during these times.
When organizations finally pull themselves out of recession, those with more capable staff will most certainly be the first to succeed.
Hence, even if you may not see the need to increase the productive capabilities of your staff during a slowdown in sales, moving forward and building up capabilities helps to pull the organization out of recession. And the time to do that is NOW.
BUILDING HUMAN RESOURCES: WHAT STRUCTURE TO RAISE
For a long time, we have used the metaphor of a pyramid to describe the structure of organizations. Today's business environment does not support pyramidal structures anymore.
Management gurus like Peter Senge suggest a much flatter design for the 21st Century Organization: Flat like a "level playing field".
While playing a match, each player takes up responsibility to make his/her decision instantly, without waiting for orders. Similarly, to succeed in the market, those workers/staff 'in the field' need to be trained to act with what the Fifth Discipline calls a sense of "Personal Mastery".
Training those in the lowest rung of the hierarchy to behave in a masterly fashion is an entirely new way to train, and it is much different from the traditional way of training them to obey orders.
Even if you had them trained earlier in personality development, you may do well to go beyond that, leading them towards Personal Mastery.
Personal Mastery implies the modern employee will have his/her personal development goals in place and pursue them seriously, and the Company will 'marry' the vision of the employee with that of the Company!
Taking this clue, HR could see how this recession could be utilized as an opportunity to educate and transform your field players. An enlightened set of players with a purpose in life will do better than ignorant ones in pulling the company out of recession.
STRENGTHENING THE ROOTS
We use stories and parables to make sense of this complex world. If we can think of recession as a dry spell that a farmer faces, we may gain some insight into what needs to be done by observing the farmer.
When water becomes scarce, he applies it in drops to the roots. He knows that if he takes care to preserve the moisture at the roots, the tree will look after itself.
Thus, if recession forces your production plants to be down for a few days a week or month, the HR department could use the time to nurture their workers.
INNOVATIVE CARE OF EMPLOYEES DURING RECESSION
Perhaps the best way to let your employees understand that you do care for them is to help them face the recession:
Train them to:
1. Generate income at home,
2. Cut down on expenses,
3. Prepare for better opportunities
4. Spend time usefully.
1. Generate income at home:
You may want to train your employees to beat depression by engaging themselves in hobbies that have huge income-generating potentials! Teach them to upgrade their hobbies like rearing ornamental fish, cooking and eating, rearing plants/cacti, or pets to profitable businesses... Check the links below:
- Nabard Bank has a wonderful site on scaling up your ornamental fish breeding hobby into an entrepreneurial venture... the staff who have an empty terrace or an open backyard at home might go for it: [NABARD's Model Bankable Projects](http://nabard.org)
- Here is a BBC report on how a woman's ability to make humble samosas would make her a Samosa Queen: [BBC NEWS | Business | UK curry queen has empire in her sights](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/2221003.stm)
2. Cut down on expenses:
A short course on health care - particularly on how to avoid infections, home remedies, physical exercise, etc. - could help employees achieve better health, improve their immune system, and reduce medical bills and sick leaves.
What better way could there be to inform your constituencies that the company cares, than your care for their and their families' health?
3. Prepare for better opportunities:
As much as continuous learning is essential for the survival of Companies in a fast-changing world, the staff too need to keep learning. After all, Learning Organizations can't be created by people who don't learn?
Open the doors of the world to your employees: Just spend a day surfing the Internet with your employees to inform them about what is meant by the information revolution: show them the [open coursewares of over 1800 courses taught at MIT](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm), the Yahoo/Google/Microsoft Maps of the world; the world of emails; YouTube on Safety at the Workplace... Online reservation of tickets, Online operation of personal bank accounts... communicating via chats/audio/video...
Teach them how to learn languages... new skills... like data entry... car driving...
As you enlarge the minds of your employees, their world becomes broader, and that helps them to appreciate the meaning of international competition and the need to increase the quality of products/services.
4. Spend Time Usefully:
People are under stress, fearing or suffering the loss of employment. Even those you fire could be given assistance to cope with life after the pink slip. When you see how people choose tragic ends to their lives, you will certainly appreciate the need to prepare people to be flexible in life.
Not knowing how to spend the busy days otherwise spent in the factory or office could spell disaster. Idling, while feeling depressed, drags one into habits that will harm oneself, family, and the organization.
An introduction to yoga or entrepreneurship could help redesign life during the crisis and help one to transform it into a great opportunity to create something new.
TRANSFORM CRISIS INTO OPPORTUNITY
In one sense, all businesses arise as solutions to some problems faced by people: of hunger (hotels), disease (hospitals), travels (airways, railways, buses, taxis, etc.).
What is needed is an ability to imagine or dream, an enterprising mindset, and the will to succeed.
And, to impart that wisdom to your people, this may be the opportune time.
A wise farmer once told me, if you planted a tree during dry summer days, you will take care of it, knowing it will die without your help. By the time you get tired of watering, the rainy season will set in. But, if you plant during the rainy season, you may have forgotten the tree by the time summer sets in.
If this is summer, then it is the HR Department's time to take care of the company's roots.
Training Manager
From India, Bangalore
Acknowledge(0)
Amend(0)
4These are turbulent times.
Watching one's colleagues being shown the door all of a sudden on Friday evenings, after their access cards are taken away, could be unsettling for both those leaving and those left behind.
Such decisions to lay off are generally first made by the Finance Department.
As a responsible response to recession, with or without layoffs, those in HR need to proactively work on increasing the productivity of their staff during these times.
When organizations finally pull themselves out of recession, those with more capable staff will most certainly be the first to succeed.
Hence, even if you may not see the need to increase the productive capabilities of your staff during a slowdown in sales, moving forward and building up capabilities helps to pull the organization out of recession. And the time to do that is NOW.
BUILDING HUMAN RESOURCES: WHAT STRUCTURE TO RAISE
For a long time, we have used the metaphor of a pyramid to describe the structure of organizations. Today's business environment does not support pyramidal structures anymore.
Management gurus like Peter Senge suggest a much flatter design for the 21st Century Organization: Flat like a "level playing field".
While playing a match, each player takes up responsibility to make his/her decision instantly, without waiting for orders. Similarly, to succeed in the market, those workers/staff 'in the field' need to be trained to act with what the Fifth Discipline calls a sense of "Personal Mastery".
Training those in the lowest rung of the hierarchy to behave in a masterly fashion is an entirely new way to train, and it is much different from the traditional way of training them to obey orders.
Even if you had them trained earlier in personality development, you may do well to go beyond that, leading them towards Personal Mastery.
Personal Mastery implies the modern employee will have his/her personal development goals in place and pursue them seriously, and the Company will 'marry' the vision of the employee with that of the Company!
Taking this clue, HR could see how this recession could be utilized as an opportunity to educate and transform your field players. An enlightened set of players with a purpose in life will do better than ignorant ones in pulling the company out of recession.
STRENGTHENING THE ROOTS
We use stories and parables to make sense of this complex world. If we can think of recession as a dry spell that a farmer faces, we may gain some insight into what needs to be done by observing the farmer.
When water becomes scarce, he applies it in drops to the roots. He knows that if he takes care to preserve the moisture at the roots, the tree will look after itself.
Thus, if recession forces your production plants to be down for a few days a week or month, the HR department could use the time to nurture their workers.
INNOVATIVE CARE OF EMPLOYEES DURING RECESSION
Perhaps the best way to let your employees understand that you do care for them is to help them face the recession:
Train them to:
1. Generate income at home,
2. Cut down on expenses,
3. Prepare for better opportunities
4. Spend time usefully.
1. Generate income at home:
You may want to train your employees to beat depression by engaging themselves in hobbies that have huge income-generating potentials! Teach them to upgrade their hobbies like rearing ornamental fish, cooking and eating, rearing plants/cacti, or pets to profitable businesses... Check the links below:
- Nabard Bank has a wonderful site on scaling up your ornamental fish breeding hobby into an entrepreneurial venture... the staff who have an empty terrace or an open backyard at home might go for it: [NABARD's Model Bankable Projects](http://nabard.org)
- Here is a BBC report on how a woman's ability to make humble samosas would make her a Samosa Queen: [BBC NEWS | Business | UK curry queen has empire in her sights](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/2221003.stm)
2. Cut down on expenses:
A short course on health care - particularly on how to avoid infections, home remedies, physical exercise, etc. - could help employees achieve better health, improve their immune system, and reduce medical bills and sick leaves.
What better way could there be to inform your constituencies that the company cares, than your care for their and their families' health?
3. Prepare for better opportunities:
As much as continuous learning is essential for the survival of Companies in a fast-changing world, the staff too need to keep learning. After all, Learning Organizations can't be created by people who don't learn?
Open the doors of the world to your employees: Just spend a day surfing the Internet with your employees to inform them about what is meant by the information revolution: show them the [open coursewares of over 1800 courses taught at MIT](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm), the Yahoo/Google/Microsoft Maps of the world; the world of emails; YouTube on Safety at the Workplace... Online reservation of tickets, Online operation of personal bank accounts... communicating via chats/audio/video...
Teach them how to learn languages... new skills... like data entry... car driving...
As you enlarge the minds of your employees, their world becomes broader, and that helps them to appreciate the meaning of international competition and the need to increase the quality of products/services.
4. Spend Time Usefully:
People are under stress, fearing or suffering the loss of employment. Even those you fire could be given assistance to cope with life after the pink slip. When you see how people choose tragic ends to their lives, you will certainly appreciate the need to prepare people to be flexible in life.
Not knowing how to spend the busy days otherwise spent in the factory or office could spell disaster. Idling, while feeling depressed, drags one into habits that will harm oneself, family, and the organization.
An introduction to yoga or entrepreneurship could help redesign life during the crisis and help one to transform it into a great opportunity to create something new.
TRANSFORM CRISIS INTO OPPORTUNITY
In one sense, all businesses arise as solutions to some problems faced by people: of hunger (hotels), disease (hospitals), travels (airways, railways, buses, taxis, etc.).
What is needed is an ability to imagine or dream, an enterprising mindset, and the will to succeed.
And, to impart that wisdom to your people, this may be the opportune time.
A wise farmer once told me, if you planted a tree during dry summer days, you will take care of it, knowing it will die without your help. By the time you get tired of watering, the rainy season will set in. But, if you plant during the rainy season, you may have forgotten the tree by the time summer sets in.
If this is summer, then it is the HR Department's time to take care of the company's roots.
Training Manager
From India, Bangalore
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)
Hi everyone, my name is Raksha Sangani. I'm doing my MBA in HR. I have a topic called "How to run a business effectively during a downtime." I need to explain it with the help of a case study. If anyone has any material on the same, please forward it to raksha84@gmail.com.
From India, Mumbai
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)
From India, Mumbai
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)Looking for something specific? - Join & Be Part Of Our Community and get connected with the right people who can help. Our AI-powered platform provides real-time fact-checking, peer-reviewed insights, and a vast historical knowledge base to support your search.