All Managers are HR Managers

Yes, IT Managers, Finance Managers, Operation Managers, even the CEO, in fact more so, the CEO, all of you who carry the title and responsibilities are HR managers. While organizations assign this title to a particular person, it does not remove the big responsibility of managing human resources from other managers. In my opinion, to think that HR management is the sole province of the title holder is the cause of many human resource management dilemma.

Be patient as I show you that I'm not overly stretching my imagination.

"It's an HR job" is how many managers dismiss HR-related issues that they think HR should take care of. "Let HR worry about it" is another phrase that to me looks like managers are putting too much power on the HR managers to manage the most important and most complex of all organizational resources- the people.

People are so critical to business success that managers who will engage their services should be in the thick of human resource management activities as HR planning, recruitment, training, performance management, compensation and benefits administration, policy creation, implementation and reinforcement. If these are all jobs for managers to do, what is the official HR Manager to do? They should serve as internal consultants, a support unit and strategic partner to the managers. The HR Department researches, puts together all the necessary mechanism in partnership with other managers so that they can manage their people better. I am giving emphasis on the term partnership because I believe that HR must not work alone in creating these mechanisms lest they render much of what they do useless.

It is easy to see when HR and line managers' partnership is working. Managers are trained to appreciate what those recruitment reports mean and are able to distinguish between a potentially good hire from bad ones using some of the best screening techniques used out there. The managers are thoroughly involved in identification of their employees learning needs and sees to it that the training being offered are the right ones. They also follow through on learning because they know its importance in the employees' performance success. They have complete appreciation of the performance management concept and use this to enhance employee performance. The uninitiated manager have no appreciation of the concept and sees performance appraisal activities as meaningless chores that they have to comply with because they're linked to salary adjustments. Effective managers appreciate their responsibility in championing company policies and take necessary action when these are violated. In contrast, other managers tend to mock these policies by criticizing and ignoring them.

I believe that the sooner all managers embrace their human resource management responsibility, the better it will be for them and the organization. The sooner they identify the gaps between what they know and what they should know in order to manage their human resources, the sooner it will be for the organization to address this gaps.
Building HR and Line Strategic Partnership Overview
If you need help addressing these gaps, you know who to call :)

Formulating Performance-Based Incentive Scheme

I was talking about motivation in my recent training assignment and the issue of salary and cash incentives as motivational factors was brought up. This is what I said, if you want your employees to be motivated to stay, then salary matters. If you want people to be motivated to perform better, then you should look at how you reward high performance.

There are a number of ways to design your performance incentive scheme. I don't know all of them but I am sharing with you some of my experiences in implementing two of them.

When I was HR Director in a data processing company, I had the opportunity of implementing several incentive schemes. Too bad I left my data showing the impact of these incentive schemes but I remember a lot about them and I'd like to share them with you. The first one used performance bell curve as basis for rewarding. The top 10% performers received the highest fixed amount incentive. The next 10% got less, and the next 10%, even less. The plus point of using this incentive scheme is that the amount the company gives away for incentives is fixed and manageable. The minus point, it did not improve individual performance. My observation is this. By using this scheme, we succeeded in rewarding those who performed well. These are the same people who performed well whether they are given incentives or not. These are achievement oriented, competitive and naturally hard working individuals. Did the incentive scheme further improve their performance? The answer is no. One reason could be the amount we assigned to give at each level of performance. We paid a decent amount for the top 10% but the amount for the next levels are almost laughable... No, they are laughable. The amount did not entice those who, just like I do, found the amounts laughable.

After the terrible failure of the scheme to encourage higher performance, we devised a new incentive scheme that rewarded every unit of over production from daily target while working within time. The principle is to share cost savings and additional revenue produced because of over production. The share is divided among those involved in the production from the front-line workers to their supervisors. After implementation, we saw performance surge. We saw some of our top performers increase their already high performance go up to 300 % . We also saw some new stars rising. Some employees started to go home with incentives that are as high if not higher than their salaries. The best news is the company increased its production capacity without increasing manpower. If we will use the bell curve to determine performance after the implementation of the new scheme, I will bet that there will be small difference in who are occupying the top spot but the numbers will be different. If we overlay the new curve from before the implementation of the new scheme, we will see that overall performance improved.

Looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs might explain this. In my opinion, most Filipino front line workers are still at basic physiological and safety needs stages. They are most likely to work hard to satisfy these needs that's why the performance-based cash rewards attract them. In my previous company, those who were not naturally hard working and not concerned about their finances did not care about the incentive scheme and did not show much improvement because of it. They are a minority compared to those who could think of several things to do with the extra income. My other observation is that many people do not like moving targets. People like their targets to be predictable and achievable. This is likely the reason why a lot of people responded to our second incentive scheme.

I hope you picked up something from this. Let me know if you wish to discuss your plans on rewarding high performance for your team.

Slum Dog Millionaire, Karate Kid, Gladwell, 10,000 Hours, Francis Kong and Training

If you've seen the movie "Slum Dog Millionaire," you'll know what I mean. The main protagonist in the movie have witnessed so many things in his life that seemed to be all casual incidents. In the end these seemingly random puzzle pieces fell into place and were meant to make him an instant millionaire and reunite with the love of his life.

No, nothing that dramatic happened to me but the falling of the puzzle pieces happened as I sit here at Jollibee enjoying my longganisa meal by my lonesome.

I watched the movie Karate Kid (which should be called kungfu kid instead) the other week. In that movie, Jackie Chan's character Mr. Han made Dre (Jaden Smith) take off his jacket, hang it, drop it to the ground, pick it up, wear it and do everything all over again so many times that Dre thought he did over a thousand times. What he thought was Mr. Han's brand of punishment for his undisciplined ways was actually a kungfu technique that he was able to use skillfully in the end. Fascinating and entertaining as it was, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. Hey, I love the Transporter series so, I don't really care much about sense when I'm watching a movie. :-)

Last Saturday, I sat in one of those annual training for Toastmasters Officers. Francis Kong was a keynote speaker. Mr. Kong delivered an engaging talk as expected which to my opinion made this round of training beat all the past officers' training I've attended. As he delivered his speech, Mr. Kong mentioned that practice makes... Permanent. The crowd of course said perfect but when he said the word permanent, it just made more sense. It was just a teeny winnie segment of his speech but it must have found its way into my already crowded subconscious.

Last year, I had a chance to read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." I'm a big fan of Gladwell and that book only enhanced my admiration for his powerful story telling skills. In one part of the book he wrote that many individuals who are considered very good and hence, successful at what they do spent about 10, 000 hours honing their skills. He showed some overwhelming evidence that it is true. After I finished reading the book I looked for more evidence that it is true. I looked at my training experience in 7-Eleven where I conducted training everyday for three straight years. Was it 10, 000 hours? I didn't count. I think by now, I must have gathered more than that... not that I'm very old or anything. I looked for other evidences and found myself agreeing with Gladwell's observation more and more. I don't know if I am right but you know what they say, we tend to see what we intend to see.

This morning as I sip my hot chocolate, I find all these to be connected. Do you see it? The karate kid routine was a form of programming that helped Smith's character respond accordingly when triggered. The repetition as in Gladwell's 10, 000 hours is important to turn the knowledge into a skill, a permanence just like what Francis Kong said. "Practice Makes Permanent."

Turning knowledge into skills takes practice. It takes many repetitions to enable us to turn a wobbly performance in a virtuosity. When training does not allow for just one practice of the knowledge, it is hard to make that knowledge stick. Without practice, it rests momentarily in our short term memory bank only to be overwritten when new knowledge come along. The lesson in all this, I believe is if we want to develop a new skill, we need to acquire a new knowledge and practice it right away. If we want to turn skill into something the world will be willing to pay big money for, we need to put in the time and turn it into our own Kungfu.

Hiyaaah!!!

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Change Management in New Philippine Government

In view of the inaugural speech delivered by President Aquino, I propose that the whole government look into adopting a change management mechanism.

Am I veering away from my usual topics again? I don't think so, because we are talking about running an organization here. We can all agree that the government is an organization run by people. Contrary to typical views, I believe that governmental organizations and private organizations are more similar than different. In fact, I believe it's the different handling of it that's causing us all these problems. If we can make the government as accountable for results as the people running private organizations are, we'll see more useful changes.

Every so often, we Filipinos are treated to campaign promises, embellishments of "accomplishments" and some generalized vision that in the end make us realize they are all empty rhetoric and promises. We've had so much, no, too much of it that we as a people become even less committed to change as the government is.

The changes being envisioned by the newly elected President if they are pushed will cause some great deal of discomfort to a lot of people. I can already foresee the very people who are ranting about the lack of changes to be the same people who will complain about the them.

The government is a large organization. We all know that the larger the organization is, the more difficult it is to institute change. This government needs to recognize this fact and take action by establishing mechanism for planning, effecting, evaluating and improving all the promised changes in government practice. The one thing that comes to my mind is the establishment of a commission with a presidential mandate who will make all the government agencies accountable for initiating and institutionalizing change. This same commission should regularly submit a report to the people (after all, the President said we are the boss) so we know how changes are happening and know how we should respond. This commission should also look into effective implementation of change so as to minimize discomfort. I've seen some very well meaning government officials lost the last election because of their failure to manage the change. For example, one local government official, in her bid to stop environmental destruction, displaced a lot of people which left them with little or no alternative, not to mention angry. Change have to be managed and there has to be a mechanism for it.

You might think that it is very convenient for me to just throw the responsibility to the government. Or you may say that the president or the government can't do it alone without the people also committing to change. Having grown and lived in the slums of brgy commonwealth and Payatas most of my life, I can say with conviction that I believe the Filipino masses will not do it on their own because of most us don't know how to. We have to be led out of the muck we are in.

This country has not had a leader who will capture our imagination and inspire us to change for ages. We've had some promising ones but they ran their campaign as if they don't want to win so some competencies are missing. This is of course not to say that this President has everything, but I believe that if he plays his cards right, he can lead our people out of mediocrity and into the first world. If he wants all his promises fulfilled, he has to manage the changes.