When is Training NOT a Waste of Time?

I was tempted to write "when is training a waste of time?" but decided it isn't constructive so I got this instead. The truth is a lot of training intervention, important as they are fail to add value to the organization because they are not set up right. Here are a few suggestions that will help you get your training money's worth:

First, make sure that your training programs run parallel with company improvement initiatives. For example, sending your employees to customer service training won't improve the quality of your customer service if it is not attached to a service enhancement program. I've seen this too many times. It pains me to see employees inspired by attending a program and ready to adapt to the enhancements on the floor but nothing happens, leaving them frustrated and cynical about future training.

Second, make sure managers are on board. HRDs often produce separate development programs for managers and their staffs. When the latter attend training that their bossess did not attend or appreciate fully, follow through is difficult if not impossible. Some insecure managers might even resist some of the changes the employees want to bring in as a result of the training. I suggest that whoever is in charge of training brief the managers at the very least to make sure they know what to expect and take the necessary action to support the learning. The best thing of course is for them to attend the same training ahead of their staff. Nothing beats that.

Third, institutionalize follow through. Make learning a part of the organization's culture. Make the following a default management action towards training:

- identification of training needs and determination of competencies to be demonstrated after training

- Make managers fully aware of training content so they can support it

-Make training return on investment not just HRD's responsibility but everyone else's, specially the supervisors and managers. If that won't make managers follow through, I don't know what will.

Fourth, if you intend to seek a training provider, find one who is willing to partner with you and go the whole nine yards in in helping you make everything I mentioned possible. Here's the contact nuumber of that training provider - (63)9189399294 or landline (632)8933199 . That's shameless self promotion right there. I hope you don't mind.

Because five is my favorite number, here's my fifth, don't be afraid of change. These things that I say here scare the wits out of many managers. In fact, I suspect that some of the people I talk to are afraid of effective training programs because they require so much. Because of this, for many managers, HR included, the training becomes the end rather than a means. For them, people trained is mission accomplished. When managers think like this, training time and money is wasted.

HR Is not a Department

"It's HR's job"is the excuse I often hear whenever line managers refuse to cooperate with Human Resource Department activities and initiatives.

Proof? Lack of management participation in many HR activities like recruitment, training, performance management, employee relations and the likes. More proof; partially completed manpower requisition forms that leave HRD guessing and often wasting their time finding people using partial data; poor participation in training needs analysis or failure to send people to right training; doing performance appraisals for compliance purposes; relegating discipline to HRD and nonattendance in events aimed to improve management and employee relations.


This is all because they think these things are all HRD's job, not theirs. Theirs is to produce business results by making people work their asses off. The funny thing is, many HR Managers think this is true, and this is why many HR managers take it upon themselves to hire people with as little input from the line as possible, dictate training needs, discuss performance and discipline issues directly with employees and taking full ownership of employee relations activities.

As a result, HRD often fails to meet expectations of both managers and employees. It also results to wrong hires, non attendance in training or poor or non-followthrough on learning, ineffective performance management systems, toleration by managers of employees violating company policies. I would even go to the extent of saying that most of HR's problem is rooted in this mindset that these things are the sole province of HRD.

The truth is, HR is human resources, in other words people. To say that HR is not the line managers' business is to say that people are not their business. Line managers are not managers of processes and machines, they are managers of people who are in charge of these processes and machines. HRD, the department is in charge of HELPING line managers, manage their human resources, not manage their human resources for them. HRD is not a surrogate parent, it's not a nanny, it's the doctor that supports the employees' health. It's the school teacher that helps in the employees' education. It's the congressman that drafts rules in consultation with the managers so managers can set clear work-related guidelines. You get the metaphors? The line managers are the persons responsible for managing their people, not the department. The department is there to;

Support the managers in finding the right people for the job;
Support the managers in training their employees;
Support the managers in managing their employees' performance;
Support the managers in building better relationships with their employees; and
Support the managers in their efforts to retain the right talents.

HR is everyone's job but moreso the Line Managers'. HRD, the department is, I repeat a support group. I believe that if both line managers and HRD play their roles right, the employees and the organization at large will benefit from it. In a company with the right cooperation between HRD and the line, These happen:

Managers hire the right people with HRD's help
Managers get their employees trained with HRD's help
Managers manage their employees' performance with HRD's help
Managers build relationship with their employees with HRD's help
Managers make their employees accountable for their behavior with HRD's help.

Truth be told, I was tempted to say "with or without" HRD's help but I realized I'd be out of the job if I say that...hehehe.

Seriously, managing human resources is not easy. With managers in charge of business results, they need all the help they can get in managing their most complex resource - People. HRD should be there to help, not to take over.

Suggestions on How to Make Your HR Life Easier

I was reviewing my Personal Effectiveness Workshop in preparation for a series of run a few weeks from now when it dawned on me that a lot of these stuff I'm talking about can make some people's lives easier, particularly the HR People. Here are some of them.

Stop Tolerating What You Shouldn't be Tolerating
Us HR people are stickler for making rules and procedures but are probably the most problematic in implementing them. Cases in point. We prepare staffing requisition forms and procedures but when requesting managers don't fill them up or folllow the procedure, we tolerate them. As result, we are left guessing about the details of the vacancies and end up recommending the wrong people. Don't tolerate noncompliance. When you say the cut-off for submitting time records, leave availment and overtime payment requests falls on a particular date of the pay period, be firm about it. Don't extend the deadline for people who make up a lot of excuses to submit them one or two days after the deadline that leaves you working through the night because the employees will raise hell if you pay them late. If people don't submit in time include whatever adjustments they need on the next payroll. Make sure though that you made proper announcements. This goes with all the other cut-offs and procedures that you've been very lenient on in the past. Be accountable by making others accountable for them. It will definitely make your life easier and help others realize that HR is to be taken seriously.

Take All Those Obsolete Policies Into the Garbage Bin
Times change, policies you or management thought were good sometime ago might not be applicable anymore. Don't waste your energy trying to defend them or worse penalize people for violating them. Review them and make the necessary changes. Case in point, office uniforms are on their way out. Bill Gates and his cohorts changed the rule a long time ago. If you want to hire young, creative people, you might want to rethink those office uniform policies and come up with a dress code that is more attuned to the time. Let me get a cowards way out on this by saying, this of course does not apply to everyone...hehehe. Another point, the availability of new technologies and media is changing the way people work. If you are preventing people from accessing them, it will only work to your disadvantage. You won't be able to enjoy their benefits and people who want them will shy away from your company. So, in the advent of web 2.0, Facebook, Twitter and the likes, how do you manage to keep people productive and not turn into cyber loafers without shutting them out of these technologies? My answer, make their performance goals clear and make them accountable for it. I believe that if these are clear, people will have the discipline to use these tools for productivity more than entertainment. These are just some of the few in my mind. As this does not apply to all, it is fair to say that HR together with the other managers agree on what is applicable for their companies. Some of the policies out there have been handed down from one HR generation to another. It's time to retire those policies that do not make any contribution to organizational effectiveness. Rule of thumb, if no body can explain why a particular company policy is important, throw it out.

Stop Acting Like the Corporate Police, Judge and Executioner
Many people have this perception of HR. In fact a lot HR people have this perception of the role of HR. I believe that this is not our role. HR is responsible for equipping the organization with the right people, with the right set of knowledge, skills, attitude and add to that; discipline to do the right things for the company. It is every manager's job to make sure that everyone is aligned with the company's goals and directions and to make everyone accountable for it. By making managers realize their HR roles (Please see my previous post on this topic by clicking here) HR wouldn't have to take this role that makes it look like the scum of the universe.

Stop Making the Hiring and Firing Decisions
If you are still doing this, you must be in the receiving end of plenty of blames. Managers need to learn that they should be making final hiring decisions and again be accountable for them by not passing on the hatchet job to HR. In most companies I've served as HR, I sold this policy to managers. As a result managers became accountable for their hires by making sure they perform or else they will carry the responsibility of firing them before the probationary period ends. Since they know that regularizing the employment of a poor performer is a bad idea, the only way to not fire an employee is to see to it that they perform well. Of course, if all else fail, they have to face the music. It made my job easy and helped the managers become more effective because they can't run behind HR to fire people for them.

Plan
Define your role in the organization, come up with strategies on how to fulfill them and act on them. Even more important than the idea of planning is involving others in the planning and implementation process. It's not enough that you clarify your role, it's important that you clarify the other people's role as well. Why will this make your life easy? When people have complete buy-in on the things you want to implement and they are able to contribute enough information so you can customize your program to make it useful for them, it will save you the time of redoing it and the frustration of making things that people don't want to use.

I'm sure there are so many other things you can do and decide on today in order to stop you from feeling that you are doing a thankless job. Identify them and work on them now.

HR Briefing for New Managers

I'm happy to note that I'm still learning things every day. I realized lately that there are things I could have done or done better when I was an HR Manager. I'm sharing them with those of you who haven't thought about them in the hope that you can pick up where I left off. For those of you who have a good program already running, I'll really appreciate you sharing your experiences in the comment section below.

A lot of line managers fail to appreciate their hr management role because no body really formally gave them a good orientation. They learn things mostly on-the-fly. They learn when a situation confronts them and they don't know what to do. They run to HR for help or worse, they guess and at times guess wrongly. This is why many managers have very low appreciation of their hr roles or worse, they have poor appreciation of hr.

In order to play their hr roles right, new managers, whether newly promoted or hired should be given thorough orientation and training regarding what they need to do related to human resource management. Here are some of the things that should be given to them:

Recruitment
Managers should have a complete appreciation of their recruitment role and the process. They need to understand those documents we produce after we administer our tests. They need to understand what they mean and how they can use these results to make decisions. HR should walk them through the process and let them ask their questions. This should help them make more informed recruitment decisions.

Training
Let your line managers know what available tools and options are available to them regarding training. Let them appreciate their responsibilities and make them accountable for them. Training is a big but worthy investment only if managers will make good on following through.

Performance management

Many managers see this as a chore that they need to comply with because this is often tied with compensation. When there's no proper training managers try to get away with as little of it as possible. They fill up the appraisal sheets and make their recommendations to HR. There's no real effort to manage performance because there's no full appreciation of it and worse no skill to carry it out.

Implementation of HR Policies
HR is often seen as the school principal, the corporate police, judge and executioner, in short all around bad guy because line managers are not giving their share of seeing to it that hr policies are fully implemented. Implementation and administration of hr policies requires partnership between hr and other managers. They need to fully appreciate the use of these policies and what they need to do to maintain compliance. They should also know that if a policy is not working to anyone's advantage anymore, they have the power and responsibility to talk to hr about making the necessary changes.

You may include more in your orientation as you please. These here top my own list. I recommend that you start putting together your manager orientation program today. Include as much written instructions, charts and templates as necessary. I believe it will help enhance the partnership between hr and the line and should enhance hr's strategic contribution to the organization.

Automating HR Processes

If HR is to play a strategic business partner role in the organization, it needs to streamline its activities so it can find time to handle the rigors of strategic HR Management and Development.

When HR Transforms into a strategic partner, it cannot shed off it transactional activities like pre-employment screening and administration, personnel administration and others. As it embarks on taking a bigger role in Strategic recruitment, training, performance management, career and succession planning and others, new daunting tasks of information gathering and management also arise. It is easy to be caught in these tasks that there will be little or no time left to look at the HR situation and carry out strategies to better it. There are only two options for HR to take on the job and do it effectively. The first one is to have enough complement to address the organization's HR needs. The other one is to invest in IT to automate the mundane and repetitive tasks that get in the way of tackling HR's more strategic roles. I choose automation over increasing the HR population unnecessarily.

what should be automated?

Human Resource Information System (HRIS)
When I worked at a large data processing company employing thousands of people, we had a 201 file room that could house my current company. The 201 files were in brown folders so they get misplaced and or lost and had to be rebuilt again. We also had about three people managing personnel records. Imagine the cost of that versus buying a decent HRIS that can be managed so that people have different access levels.
Some good HRIS cover a wide range of HR services. Here are some Philippine HRIS vendors that I was able to Google:
http://www.aclt-computing.com
http://www.sigmasoft.com.ph/index.php

Time-keeping and payroll.
If you have between one to 50 employees, you can probably still work with excel sheets and paper time log, but as you grow bigger as an organization, these tasks will require more and more time. When I was a young HR Manager, I computed the amount I need to spend for automating this process and the amount I will pay someone to do the timekeeping and payroll for 100 employees and found that the cheapest system is worth 3 months the salary of the person I'm going to hire. I showed this to management and had my very first Timekeeping and payroll system. Let me also add that the use of biometric system also helps reduce the need for manual inputting and prevents fraud.Below are some local vendors:
http://www.supremosoft.com/
http://www.jeonsoft.com/JeonsoftPayroll.html

Performance Management System
A good performance management system should allow a line manager to set his employee's performance goals, monitor his performance, provide timely feedback for capacity and capability building, evaluate performance of the employee for a period, and reward performance accordingly. it should also give higher management an opportunity to look at the collective performance of the employees look for exploitable strengths, identify gaps and address these gap. If you have more than 50 employees this process can get pretty daunting. A good automated system should allow both manager and employee to set performance goals online, track performance against goals, record feedbacking sessions and developmental interventions, evaluate performance and then complete the cycle by setting new goals. A good automated system should also allow the manager to compare the employee's performance with others or against past performance to determine if there is growth or if there is a gap that needs to be addressed. The link below is from Storm Consulting. They have a very good system.
http://stormconsulting.com.ph/prodservices/performance-management/

Training Management
Identifying training needs, coming up with a training plan, managing the training events, evaluating training and ensuring follow through are some of the challenging tasks in managing training. A lot of these can be automated. If these activities can be automated, HR will have more time looking at the soundness of the training plans, effectiveness of training delivery and strategizing for future training. Some very good HRIS have training management as a component.

Benefits Management
Benefits management is normally a part of a typical HRIS. It's fairly simple and easy to manage. If you are looking at the possibility of coming up with a cafeteria type benefits management program, you'll do well to automate it or even outsource the management of it. The cafeteria style of benefits management can help a company customize it's benefits package to suit the needs and wants of the employees but managing it is quite complicated. Without automation, can be fairly difficult to manage and quite resource hungry. It helps to have a good system in place.
http://stormconsulting.com.ph/

Intranet
Communicating HR policies and events is one of the biggest challenge of HR. an Intranet will help them make sure that employees can access needed HR related information via the intranet. It also relieves HR of the need to repeatedly explain things to employees. A good intranet program should be interactive and allows employees not only to access soft copies of company policies and memos, but also transact with HR using forms and templates available through the system.

Parallel Run
Keep in mind that automation seldom work well right away. It's always a good decision to run the old new system simultaneously until you are confident that the new system is working well.

Back Up
You know what Murphy said, Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is even more true with computers and software. They crash, conk out, attacked by viruses, etc. It is always safer to back up your data and have them stored in several locations.

If you know of good vendors, and other HR activities that can be automated, please feel free to share them by commenting below.