HRsuccessmantra

Demystify Values To Create High Performance Global Work Culture...

"Only three things happen naturally in organisations : friction, confusion & underperformance. Everything else requires Leadership" Peter Drucker.

World has moved from Era of Independence to Era of Dependence and now finally progressing towards Era of Interdependence with WTO and other mutual cooperation frameworks existing among different nations of the world. In today’s fast paced world it is imperative for the organisation's to build a strong mechanisms for demystifying value culture as it shape behaviours, and behaviours shape outcomes.

What Are Organisational Work Values?

Workplace values are subset of your beliefs and ideas or in other words, the guiding principles that are most important to you about the way that you work. There are 4 key component of Organisational & work values as outlined below :

[1] Organisational values comprise core values, which are principles that guide a company's actions and practices.

[2] Work values are conceptions of an individual of a desirable work activity.

[3] Work values are the conceptions of what is 'preferable' from among the alternative modes of conduct or end-states' with respect to one's work. In other words, these are individually held conceptions of what is desirable with respect to the individual's work activity.

[4] Work values are expected to be an integral part of the nation's ethos; as such, they need to be internalised by members of the society through socialisation, via various institutional channels, so that they become an aspect of individual personalities. A strong Value culture in organisations builds business advantage that helps generate and maintain top-level performance. This is an obvious, intuitive statement that all business leaders understand and discuss. Yet, while many try to create a high-performing culture, few succeed. Why? Is it really that difficult? Not really. The key to culture is understanding that the Organisations and work values are highly significant in shaping behaviours as the formal mechanisms.

As per Work Force Study and Wall Street Journal Ranking, The following values are very important for Global Organisations as per their order of preference:

Open Communication
Nature of the Work
Control Over work content
Job Security
Stimulating Work
Fringe Benefits
Flexible work Schedule
Advancement opportunity
Salary / Wages
Size of Organization

Given the importance of getting corporate culture right, many organisations invest heavily in shaping their cultures and enriching various values but how many organisations derive maximum value from this investment? Does the money spent on developing and communicating mission statements and corporate values really change employee behaviour? Or, are there hidden, more powerful forces at work that make this investment ineffective? And if the investment in shaping culture does bring about change, is it promoting behaviours that support performance and strategy delivery, or is it inadvertently encouraging sabotage behaviours?

Armed with an understanding of how Value Index is formed, the path to aligning culture, strategy and Values becomes clear. Leaders can invest with confidence—demystifying the concept of values and bringing the full weight of their workforce behind improving organisational performance.

[Views expressed are personal]

The Article was originally published on LinkedIn

This article has been written jointly by Raj Gupta & Dr. Arun Sachar, as a part of series of 7 Articles on Organisation Climate in Post COVID Scenario. Refer to Link below for other article from the series. They also collaborated to write the Book Titled - Go & Get Your Success - A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Models that Unshackles Usual Patterns.

About the Authors -

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sachar, An Educationist & Management Consultant with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions. Author of Many books & research articles.

You may also like to browse through the other articles that we have done together.

Top 5 Mistakes By Leaders That Leads to Deterioration of Organisational climate...

As per Jim Rohn, “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.”

At times we come across leader's who demonstrate following avoidable traits that instead of propelling the organisation forward leads to deterioration of the organisational climate.

1. Delegating the right jobs to wrong people - this is pretty common in corporate world. At times roles are given not basis meritocracy but because of association or affiliation. Leaders must avoid falling into this trap.

2. Taking Credit of every success and give away the blames to other when things goes wrong. They shout at subordinates in full public view without understanding about their own role. Great leaders learns from mistakes and encourage their teams to do so as well instead of passing on the blame to save their own skin.

3. Not Hiring A-Players - Great Companies are made by A-Players. A-Players are basically the top10 percent of the talent available. The secret is to hire and retain these individuals. But the research shows that typically very few that is in fractions of A-Players are hired. This may be because of fear of inevitable in the mind of leaders, that their position can be in danger if they hire more A- Players. There is a huge financial and career cost paid by the organization because of this mistake of not hiring sufficient A-Players in the organization. Further when the whole world is thriving on building human capital based assets, where will you land, if you commit such mistakes.

4. Not Promoting Talent - In today’s fast paced world, another mistake you commit as a leader, if you don’t promote right talent in your division or organization. Some times leaders or superiors don’t allow highly efficient and intelligent employees to come forward again because of fear of inevitable that this can hamper their progress or can affect their job security. They ignore this fact that highly efficient and intelligent employees are the best bet in the events of crisis because with their ideas and aptitude they may drive organization in to fast paced growth. Here, again it is the organization who suffers because of the leaders actions.

5. Not creating environment of Trust and always creating crisis and then solving it - Another common mistake, leaders commit is not creating environment of Trust. If you create this, organizations start functioning in Auto Mode, where even with less supervision and interference, a high growth oriented environment comes in to function. Leaders who are not creating environment of Trust normally try to create crisis environment and last minute jobs to be completed in hurry, try to exercise element of control and interference, with their subordinates.

[Views expressed are personal]

This article has been written jointly by Raj Gupta & Dr. Arun Sachar, as a part of series of 7 Articles on Organisation Climate in Post COVID Scenario. Refer to Link below for other article from the series. They also collaborated to write the Book Titled - Go & Get Your Success - A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Models that Unshackles Usual Patterns.

About the Author -

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sachar, An Educationist & Management Consultant with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions. Author of Many books & research articles.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn

You may also like to browse through the other articles that we have done together.

3 Golden C's of HR - Future of HRM in Post COVID Scenario...

Shifting Workforce Engagement Dynamics - 5 Evolutionary Principles Leaders MUST Follow in Post COVID Scenario...

7 Success Factors - How 2 Stay on Top Amidst VOLATILITY AND DISRUPTION

Time to Crack Open, Reframe & Rebuild The Top 6 Factors Affecting Organisational Culture in Post COVID Scenario...

7 Factors Of Managerial Effectiveness That Drives Growth in Organisations [in Post Covid Scenario]

7 Factors Of Managerial Effectiveness That Drives Growth in Organisations [in Post Covid Scenario]

There are multiple Culture definition that exists aligned to individual organisation construct, underlying beliefs, assumptions, shared values and ways of navigating through organisation interpersonal dynamics.

Peter Drucker Quote - The Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast essentially means that it does not matter how strong your strategy is, its execution depends on the engagement, passion of the people who will execute it and if they are not aligned to the core, it will not work.

The question that confronts us is

How Effectively Organization Are Coping with Managerial Effectiveness

Challenges in Post Covid Scenario?

We have attempted below 7 Important Organisation Climate Factors that Affects People Effectiveness in organisations that we must check on or evaluate : -

[1] Support Mechanisms - Check whether support factor is in place or not. Any person, working in any organization already or has joined newly, needs support of the colleagues, superiors and even subordinates. Support includes help of others in case of any difficulty, help by superiors and trust in each other and is highly significant in post covid scenario.

[2] Conflict Resolution - In present remote working scenario, Conflict may arise owing to difference in ideas, views or methods of working. They can be minimised, if there is clarity about responsibilities, healthy competition and freedom for giving opinions. Make sure that your conflict resolution strategy is optimum.

[3] Leadership and Communication: In present scenario the most relevant definition of Leadership may be defined in terms of loyalty of functions performed by executives as individuals and as a group in organisations, irrespective of the toughest existence of various scenarios. The function of an executive may inspire his subordinates and they may find a role model in superiors and may depend totally on seniors, depending upon their ability as effective leaders also they need to maintain effective communication. 'Communication' includes free and frank exchange of ideas in meetings, free opinion for taking decisions, information-sharing by people about policies and programs of the organization. Organizations must check how many role models with effective communication they have in their senior leadership ?

[4] Human Relations - Human relations has gained great significance in present changed scenario and refer to the interactions of people employed in any business firm or an individual unit across the world. They includes mutual confidence among members of various departments, confidence in management about welfare and growth, interaction at all levels in the organization. Check your organization for Strong human relations to make it favorable amongst employees.

[5] Check your Climate for Standards - Present scenario of Work from home or Trans National Teams working, all these need fixation and follow, some standards at the individual level, in order to achieve the organisational goals and maintain efficiency. These standards may includes more work expectations, pressure to improve performance and beat the competition. Thus, It is essential to have strict compliance with standards or there should be only a permissible limit of variations.

[6] Grievance Handling - A grievance is a spoken or written dissatisfaction which is brought to the notice of the management. The Managers should go into details of a grievance and find out the best possible method of settling it. The employees must be encouraged to tell the grievances . If grievances are brought in to light in time and attended to well in time, people feel satisfied with grievance handling procedure and methods.

[7] Decision-Making Mechanism - A Manager has to take many decisions, while dealing with the day-to-day matters of an organization. The factor 'decision-making' includes whether views are obtained at different levels of employees before taking important decisions or not; if decisions are taken by management, then implemented properly or not; and whether proper system of keeping information is maintained. Check whether your decision making mechanisms are well in place.

[Views expressed are personal]

About the Author -

This article has been written jointly by Raj Gupta & Dr. Arun Sachar, who also collaborated to write the Book Titled - Go & Get Your Success - A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Models that Unshackles Usual Patterns.

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sachar, An Educationist & Management Consultant with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions. Author of Many books & research articles.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn

Time to Crack Open, Reframe & Rebuild The Top 6 Factors Affecting Organisational Culture in Post COVID Scenario...

"Starbucks was founded around the experience and the environment of their stores. Starbucks was about a space with comfortable chairs, lots of power outlets, tables, and desks at which we could work and the option to spend as much time in their stores as we wanted without any pressure to buy. The coffee was incidental"— Simon Sinek

We all applaud examples of organization culture when we see them however, defining the idea isn’t as obvious & stimulating. It is far easier to experience than to describe company culture which is not just a single aspect of the game but the game in itself.

We normally shy away from discussing things at an organizational or cultural level as we are instead big believers of actionable change at various levels. But it is seen in Post COVID Scenario that a large number of organizations across the world are mercifully discussing not only the need for "psychological safety" of people at the workplace but also other topics like ‘Resilience’ and ‘Effective Engagement’. Thus giving absolute weightage to Organisational climate that carries great significance in this changed scenario for maximizing utilization of human relations and resources at all levels to drive enhanced productivity and profitability.

At the root of any organization’s climate is a set of core characteristics that is valued collectively by members of an organization. The climate of an organization can be understood by checking the organizational behavior system around the spectrum of nuggets as outlined below.

It is imperative for Leaders & organisations to check whether these below mentioned 6 elements are in place or not?

Top 6 Factors Affacting Organisational ClimateAdd

Organization Structure
As Organizational structure is the established pattern of relationships among components or parts of the organization. Thus a thorough check is required about extent of presence or absence of red-tapism and bureaucracy, departmentalism, a delegation of authority, identification of activities, and grouping of activities, .

Responsibility Patterns
Responsibility is defined as the obligation of an individual to perform activities or duties which are assigned to him. Responsibility arises from the superior-subordinate relationship. It includes questions like who is responsible to whom, who set guidelines, and who solves the problems. It is very important to check whether all responsibility patterns are at a place and working effectively.

Reward System
Reward a thing given in recognition of service, effort, or achievement and it puts a psychological pressure on people to improve performance on the job. In the present scenario, where people are already facing a lot of psychological pressures, it becomes imperative that Rewards may be given in a positive way like encouragement, promotion, appreciation, and negative terms like threats and criticism must be avoided.

Elements of Initiative & Risk
The initiative increases zeal and energy and develops in human beings the habit of taking risks. The factor tells that calculated risk is appreciated in an organization and sometimes big risks have to be taken in case of competition. It is to be seen whether seniors take the chance or juniors are also given the opportunity of taking initiative and risk. In the present scenario, we must encourage balance of elements of initiative and risk amongst our people.

Warmth
Each individual in the organization is related to others and his functions affect others, too. Warmth is concerned with the human relations in any organization. It is to be observed whether people have knowledge about others, the atmosphere is easy and relaxed, the relationship is warm, friendly, and healthy among seniors and others. Organizations must ensure that elements of Warmth should be at a place.

Office Politics and Lack of Purpose
In the present scenario, If toxic environment clique-behavior, lack of collaboration, and lack of purpose in a group or organization emerge, it will result in sharp drops in performances over a period of time. Thus, special attention is to be paid to avoid office politics and lack of purpose.

This is the time to dig deep and take the opportunity to crack open these heavy themes and elements of organizational climate and work on them now. It has become imperative for organisations to regroup, reframe and rebuild for better future as an organisation is nothing but a combined capacity of its people who create value.

[Views expressed are personal]

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sachar, An Educationist & Management Consultant with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions. Author of Many books & research articles.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn

You may also like to browse through the other articles that we have done together.

3 Golden C's of HR - Future of HRM in Post COVID Scenario...

Shifting Workforce Engagement Dynamics - 5 Evolutionary Principles Leaders MUST Follow in Post COVID Scenario...

7 Success Factors - How 2 Stay on Top Amidst VOLATILITY AND DISRUPTION

7 Success Factors - How 2 Stay on Top Amidst VOLATILITY AND DISRUPTION

Success was never permanent, but never more so than today. Life has transformed for everybody. People live and work differently than what they were used to. Online platforms have become not only central to work-life but also to education making students to align themselves with new normal, as is the idea of work from home. The pandemic is restructuring social interactions and metamorphosing social bonds. Businesses are no exception and going cataclysmic shifts.

A latest study by researches quantifies just how quickly high-flying companies fall back into the pack, with some plunging to the depths of their industry sector in record time. However, with the right mind-set and strategic approaches, the competitive advantage of only few companies persists.

A major Question that arises in front of us is

Why only few companies shows right mind-set, Strategic approaches and Competitive advantage?

Terms such as ‘volatility’ and ‘disruption’ are often used to describe a world in which competitive advantage is increasingly difficult to maintain. The extent of such volatility and disruption is quantified ina Boston Consulting Group study that examined the performance record, relative to their competitors, of 20,000 companies over a period of 40 years. The researchers looked specifically at the decay rate of sector leaders - that is, how quickly top performers lost their advantage over the average performers in their industry.

Let’s take the example of a company whose annual total shareholder return (TSR) reaches a level that is 20% higher than the sector average. However, in the following years, the company’s advantage has a 50% decay rate. In other words, the company watches its advantage decrease by 50% every year: the 20% TSR advantage is cut in half the first year to 10%, cut in half again the following year to 5%, and cut in half to 2.5% the year after that. With a 50% decay rage, the company’s TSR falls in three years to barely above the average TSR for the sector.

Several decades ago, the decay rate for leading performers in a sector (that is, those in the top 20% of the industry) was not as dramatic as 50%. From 1980 to 1985, for example, the decay rate for the best performers was approximately 15%, which meant that high performing companies might slowly, over a number of years, lose their advantage over the average performers.

For the past 15 years, the ability of companies to sustain their performance advance is dramatically different. On average, top performers have shown a 100% decay rate in TSR. The BCG researchers also confirmed that the shareholder metric, which could be influenced by such factors as changing shareholder expectations, is not skewing the results. Companies fail to maintain their advantage over the sector average on other metrics such as revenue growth, EBIT margin and return on assets.

In an age when competitive advantage was built on nearly immovable assets, including size and capital, sector leaders sustained their advantage. With dynamic competitive factors such as innovation and new technologies making the difference today, no competitive advantage is safe for long.

BUSINESS APPLICATION : Of the companies whose performance results over five years (2008-2013) put them in the top quartile of their sector, an astounding 83% would tumble from their perch in the following five years (2014 – 2019), showing a 100% decay rate. However, the remaining 17% would only suffer a meagre 5% decay rate during those same years.

Given the almost frenetic volatility of the digital age, how can some companies maintain such an advantage?

We firmly believe that the companies who constantly search for new sources of competitive advantage are the only ones who can maintain such an advantage for example : Apple and Google.

Further companies can defy, “the gravity of average performance”, by taking care of following factors in account :

Agile & Growth Mindset
No competitive advantage, no matter how strong it may seem, is immune to sudden industry disruption. Don’t sit back and wait to be knocked down; pre-emptively look for the next best thing.

Watch Out Your Success Metrics
Growth and market share figures help for the present but don’t prepare you for the future. A better metric: how much of current revenues are based on recently developed offerings vs. offerings that were developed further in the past? If the ratio favours recently developed offerings, the company has a better chance of maintaining its success.

Use Two Sets of Strategies

Strategies focused on the present, such as fine-tuning the delivery of offerings, should cohabitate with strategies focused on the long term, such as the development of new offerings based on emerging technologies.

Develop New Organisational Capabilities
Organizational capabilities that support collaboration, diversity and organizational learning are required for the experimentation and development of innovating offerings that build future success.

Shorten Product Life Cycle
As the product life cycle duration has been shortened in the digital age thus Pace is the most important P for organizations apart from Other P’s like Product, Place, Price and Promotion.

Opt for Planned Change than Forced Change
Companies should anticipate about the changing business environment and accordingly keeping in mind the future needs must opt for planned change rather than sitting idle and waiting for changing business environment to largely impact them and then go for forced change. Education Industry is one such example which is undergoing forced change - a monumental shift in conventional Education, re-examining the architecture & eco-system of education where EdTech is taking a centre stage and revolutionising the whole learning landscape.

Be Smart About Your Exit Strategy
It is imperative for businesses to pay renewed attention on their businesses / Offerings exit strategies. There is no point throwing good money after bad.

[Views expressed are personal]

This article has been written jointly by Raj Gupta & Dr. Arun Sachar, who also collaborated to write the Book Titled - Go & Get Your Success - A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Models that Unshackles Usual Patterns.

About the Author -

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience
Dr. Arun Sacher, An Educationist & Management Consultant with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions. Author of Many books & research articles.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn.

Shifting Workforce Engagement Dynamics - 5 Evolutionary Principles Leaders MUST Follow in Post COVID Scenario...

“To win the marketplace, you must first win the workplace.” -Doug Conant

While the industry was grappling and coming to terms with technological disruptions revolutionising the global economic firmament and planning their strategies to leapfrog, the pandemic has created a unique challenge that is unpredictable and the highly complex, accelerating pace of shift and taking it to a new stratosphere.

Time has come for Leadership to rethink their workforce engagement strategies. It is incumbent on Leadership to re-assess existing workforce engagement paradigms in the midst of mammoth shift in business landscape in post COVID Scenario. Workplaces existed to drive collaboration, camaraderie & engagement. Now the challenge is to replicate the similar experience in the virtual world.

Challenges & Emerging New Rules...

Challenge 1

[Remote Work]

Decentralized teams face a number of challenges that can have damaging consequences if unaddressed - but they can be overcome.

Rule 1- Remote work, once a rare and innovative strategy reserved for tech companies, is no longer a fringe business practice. The IWG 2019 Global Work-Place Survey found that 3 out of 4 workers around the globe consider flexible working to be “the new normal.” This was before the coronavirus pandemic spurred even more organizations to implement remote work policies. The remote work model offers many obvious advantages, from lower overhead and flexible schedules to reductions in employee commuting and an increase in productivity along with low attrition rates.

Challenge 2

[Low-Bandwidth Communication]

Face-to-face communication is considered high bandwidth because you can transmit and receive the greatest amount of information in a given time period. This is possible thanks to all the nonverbal cues and supplementary information those cues convey in a conversation. High-bandwidth communication results in more work getting done. For example, one HBR study found that a face to face request is 34 times more successful than an email. One of the biggest downsides of remote work, then, is the loss of face-to-face communication as companies turn more heavily toward low-bandwidth communication methods like email and chat.

Although written communication can accomplish a lot, it falls short compared with the information exchange and personal connection of face-to-face conversations. Additionally, it is asynchronous, meaning conversations aren’t necessarily happening in real-time. The real-time benefits of face-to-face interaction are lost in the delayed replies and other interruptions sprinkled in between.

Rule 2 : To compensate, video meetings have become the standard alternative for business communication.

Challenge 3

[Unproductive Meetings]

One common mistake leaders make when trying to increase face-to-face communication among remote team members is overcompensating by scheduling more meetings. In fact, a study from OWL labs found that remote workers attend more meetings per week overall, with 14% of remote workers dedicating time to more than 10 meetings per week.

While meetings can bring a team together for knowledge sharing and decision-making, if the only purpose of a meeting is to clock some face-to-face time, it’s probably not worth doing it. Unnecessary meetings are frustrating and costly. Employee time is an organizations most valuable resource, yet 71% of senior managers report that meetings are unproductive and inefficient, and subpar meetings cost billions of dollars in annual losses.

Rule 3: To stem the tide of remote work meetings, try adopting catchphrases like “No meetings without an agenda,” “No unnecessary meetings,” or, an old favorite, “Could this meeting have been an email?” Leaders can also limit the number of internal meeting hours allotted per week, which makes meeting time more valuable and worth conserving. Attendees will likely be more engaged, alert, and motivated to use their precious time wisely.

Challenge 4

[Loss of Passive Knowledge Sharing]

Finally, remote work generally threatens the informal information sharing and open communication lines facilitated by shared physical spaces. Informal information sharing like this is tricky, but not impossible, to replicate remotely. Set aside the perception that informal conversations are tangential, nonessential, or unrelated to the organization’s goals.

Rule 4 - Teams can also benefit from virtual gatherings and chats with no formal conversational structure or agenda. Think “watercooler chat room,” where team members can engage in non-work-related conversation as they would at the office. These unstructured conversations can reveal experiences and ideas that otherwise would have remained unexpressed — and keep team members connected on a personal level. There is great value in knowing how team members think, what they’re working on, and what their challenges are.

5 Evolutionary Principles Every

Leader Must Remember

Maintain Transparent & Consistent Communication.

When employees work from home, they can feel disconnected from their organisations. It has been determined that most effective communication has 5 characteristics: It’s frequent, transparent, part of a two-way dialogue, easy to navigate, and consistent. These communication principles are useful in general, but they’re crucial when a company’s workforce is distributed.

Provide support for Physical &

Mental Health

In the midst of a global pandemic, it’s not surprising that many employees pointed to company-sponsored COVID-19 tests, masks, and flu vaccines as positive actions. Large number of employees praised the steps to foster mental wellness and help them combat social isolation.

Social isolation among remote workers is not a new challenge — in fact, 6 of every 10 remote workers reported that they felt isolated before COVID-19 — but the pandemic has helped bring the issue into focus. The most effective step to battle isolation is regular check-ins by managers to see how their employees are doing personally and professionally.

Help Distributed Employees Stay

Productive & Engaged

Remote work can boost productivity, particularly on stand-alone tasks that require minimal coordination with colleagues. When employees need to collaborate with other teams, however, working from home may decrease productivity. One effective short-term step is for leaders to acknowledge that productivity may dip during the lockdown and to let employees know that it is acceptable.

Frequent, short meetings can boost productivity. Employees might grumble about meetings under normal circumstances, but many COVID-19 Pulse of HR respondents said that daily team huddles helped them remain focused and engaged while working remotely. Structured mechanisms to share best practices and tips on remote work were also popular.

Executives and board members at one company used their twice-per-week all-hands meetings to share examples of what was working (and not working) while remote, and another company collected and relayed employees’ success stories on its intranet.

Manage the Paradox of Remote

Work-Life Balance.

When it comes to work-life balance, remote work poses a paradox. On the one hand, working from home cuts down on commuting and allows people to adjust their schedules and spend more time with their families. On the other hand, remote work can leave employees feeling like they must be available 24-7 and work more hours, and it can blur the boundary between their professional and personal lives.

Various Research has consistently shown that remote workers log more hours than their onsite counterparts. A Gallup poll conducted before the COVID-19 outbreak found that U.S. employees worked an extra hour per day when working remotely, but a study by NordVPN found that remote workers have been logged on for two to three more hours per day during the quarantine than they were before the lockdown. When remote work is mandatory and children’s schools and daycare facilities are closed, it is, of course, even harder to maintain the boundary between work and professional life.

The most popular way to help employees manage work-life balance is making allowances for them to adjust their schedules to accommodate personal obligations.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your Strategic Priorities

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 70% of S&P 500 companies published strategic priorities - forward-looking objectives that focus an organisation’s attention on the handful of choices that matters most to success in the future. Common strategic priorities included improving products and services, accelerating innovation, making operations more efficient, developing talent, and executing a digital transformation, among others.

It’s understandable that a once-in-a-lifetime crisis would distract leaders from their existing priorities, but it’s also a mistake. In many cases, strategic objectives set before COVID-19 will remain as important or even more critical in the future. The shift to remote work, however, creates new challenges to achieving these objectives. Gaining market share is hard under the best of circumstances, let alone when market demand is collapsing.

Leaders must figure out how to build and sustain a healthy corporate culture when most employees are working from home.

Remote work is here to stay and will bring new challenges and opportunities. Organizations and leaders around the world are experimenting with novel management practices to manage the transition to a more distributed workforce. We are still in the early days, and it’s not yet clear which of these approaches will endure.

This article has been written in collaboration with Dr. Arun Sacher, my co-author of Book Titled - Go & Get Your Success - A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Models that Unshackles Usual Patterns.

[Views expressed are personal]

About the Author -

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sacher, An Educationist with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn.

3 Golden C's of HR - Future of HRM in Post COVID Scenario...

When the SARS virus hit China in early 2000, a small e-commerce company called ‘Alibaba’ came into existence. It is now firmly established as a leading retailer in Asia. The most innovative ideas and solutions sometimes take birth in times of crisis or when we face great constraints. The current pandemic has crippled the way businesses operate and has forced people to think of new ideas and bring fresh perspectives on the table.

In Present times the Key Questions in front of HR are:

1] How can HR professionals contribute to the highest value?

2] How can they create and deliver people strategies that upkeep the achievement of business strategy?

3] How can they turn people management into a differentiating advantage, a core competence that drives superior performance?

4] How can work from home (WFH) be equally effective as regular work from the office?

5] How can HR move from being seen as just an implementer of decisions already taken by business leaders to be a source of capability and competence that enables ever more ambitious strategies to be accomplished?

Current crisis has also laid down the need for pre-requisite of thorough expert education and background for HR professionals that can prepare them to be analytical and strategic, ready to face challenges, thoughtful communicators, skilled negotiators, savvy business professionals, astute Change Agents, and Expert HR generalist or Specialist.

Human Resource Professionals today are supposed to manage business interruption, Re-invent Work From Home strategies, Redesign jobs to suit the need of the present environment and manage productivity. They are also supposed to manage New age performance management system, New Career models, and a new model of leadership.

As the transactional spectrum of HR is largely getting outsourced, the role of HR can be broadly defined in 3 categories.

CONSULTANT

As a consultant, HR will play a multifaceted role - develop contextual strategic people intervention, facilitate skill development amongst managerial teams to solve complex human differences, improve business performance through enhanced employee morale, help Managers in managing change and at the same time, consulting them on how to become people leaders who command respect, not because of their position but a disposition, thereby, enhancing overall organization profile. Business Acumen, Ability to anticipate trends, Change Management, Research orientation are the few skills that will play a critical role in making HR Consultant a success.

CONSCIOUS KEEPER

As a Conscious Keeper, HR will celebrate vision, mission and value and ensure that same is weaved into organization culture. The employee will imbibe these in their code of conduct across the level. While working across the level, HR will also need to ensure that they do not hesitate in being conscience keeper of the leadership team who may have their line of sight on short term performance metrics keeping in view ever-evolving business landscape amidst gigantic technological shifts. HR will help Leadership to navigate through the change while remaining a torchbearer of value system in the organization ensuring that behaviuors of its leaders never transgress the bounds of decency irrespective of their hierarchical positioning.

CUSTODIAN

As a custodian, HR will not only ensure compliance with global regulations that govern employment relationships worldwide to avoid any potential harm to organization reputation but also act as a custodian of "people experiences" as progressive organizations are quickly shifting away from the idea of "people as assets" to "people as the fuel" driving organisational growth.

About the Authors --

Raj Gupta, Author of Multiple Books & Award-Winning HR Leader with 25+ Years of Experience

Dr. Arun Sacher, An Educationist with 30 years of experience with Top multinationals and premium academic institutions.

The article was originally published on LinkedIn