I have been wanting to use this tool in my organisation for 3-4 years now particularly for knowledge management, collaboration and engagement. So far I have got a few eager ears but not much interest and excitement. And yet during the same time I have seen organisations embrace it and be quite excited about it. So today when there were speakers on this subject at the Chennai SHRM learning forum meeting I decided I should discover. Interesting sessions by the way, particularly Kiruba Shankar. You can see what he does by clicking here

I later on did some good old google research on the scope of social media and whether all this hype that is now being formed around it is really worth it. Realities don’t deserve the hype as is often the case. Its often a mixture of fad and fact. Various research indicate that the internet penetration in India stands at about 6-7% of the population. Thats about 71 million users. Now this figure includes people who access internet at least once every month! I would therefore assume that a significant chunk of this number are not serious internet browsers. Of these users about 13 million people use facebook. These are the set of people who use social media and are likely to be the serious web 2 netizens. Thats about 1% of the population. About 50% of facebook users are below the age of 24. In US, on the other hand, the average facebook age is about 38 years (Surprised?). Incidentally there is a very fast growth reported in the above 35 yrs segment in India as well.

A total of approximately 520 million people are employed in India. Of this population about 50 million alone would be employed in the organised sector. At least 50% of the facebook users in India would be in the employable ages and of these most would be joining the organised sector. Thats an estimated 5-7 million users out of 50-60 million in organised sector. I could be off the mark here in terms of accuracy but assuming that the above figures are indicative, we have nearly 10% of the workforce in the organised sector active on social media. Users on social media are actually growing so this makes a lot of sense now for organisations to consider how they can use social media to manage their human resources.

So is this sufficient for the hype? I don’t think so. I think organisations still need to see their internal demographics and geographical spread before looking into using social media to better manage their employees. Social media used for employer branding and hiring is another thought out decision based on where the target segment lies.  Jumping on to the social media bandwagon without a cultural understanding of the organisation is likely to bomb the project. Its only another communication channel to reach out to your target segment.

Recession has hit many companies and put severe demands on the leadership at various levels in the company. Tough decisions might have been made by some leaders. Other leaders would have had to lead the survivors through difficult times. Even though we might have turned the corner, the memories of the recent past don’t fade away so easily. Each of us carries the burden of this past as a collar around our necks. Most of us would be leading some teams or people in our teams and we are responsible for the leadership that we can provide in our teams. These weighty collars of the past make our shoulders droop and with droopy shoulders we can not lead our teams.

The important aspect for leaders to focus on now is to break away from this collar and run, enthuse and excite ourselves into running teams as how you would wish they were run. That is the essence of the expression ‘Start as you mean to go on’. Leaders should consider that they have already reached where they wish to be and use that enthusiastic spirit to start your team work today. I have seen that this builds resilience within yourself and within your team and when you break out, you run faster than others towards your goal. It’s important for leaders to give themselves these placebo injections of positivism if need be.

And where we don’t lead teams, we still lead ourselves. Here too it’s important to think of your desired state of happiness and fulfilment and act in the present with the awareness of that desired state being already there or just around the corner. It’s important to believe in your success.

It is not at all easy for recession hit teams to feel the positivism again but let’s vow to get back to office tomorrow and lead our teams out of the weights of the past. Let’s huddle together to do our bits to lead and start as we mean to go on!

Recession has hit many companies and put severe demands on the leadership at various levels in the company. Tough decisions might have been made by some leaders. Other leaders would have had to lead the survivors through difficult times. Even though we might have turned the corner, the memories of the recent past don’t fade away so easily. Each of us carries the burden of this past as a collar around our necks. Most of us would be leading some teams or people in our teams and we are responsible for the leadership that we can provide in our teams. These weighty collars of the past make our shoulders droop and with droopy shoulders we can not lead our teams.

The important aspect for leaders to focus on now is to break away from this collar and run, enthuse and excite ourselves into running teams as how you would wish they were run. That is the essence of the expression ‘Start as you mean to go on’. Leaders should consider that they have already reached where they wish to be and use that enthusiastic spirit to start your team work today. I have seen that this builds resilience within yourself and within your team and when you break out, you run faster than others towards your goal. It’s important for leaders to give themselves these placebo injections of positivism if need be.

And where we don’t lead teams, we still lead ourselves. Here too it’s important to think of your desired state of happiness and fulfilment and act in the present with the awareness of that desired state being already there or just around the corner. It’s important to believe in your success.

It is not at all easy for recession hit teams to feel the positivism again but let’s vow to get back to office tomorrow and lead our teams out of the weights of the past. Let’s huddle together to do our bits to lead and start as we mean to go on!

tags [leadership, recession, leaders]

Pre recession there was this optimism baloon in which most organisations and its people were floating blissfully. Not to say there were no challenges. But there was optimism around and that helped in a way to address these challenges. But then this post is not about the challenges really. Its about the changing perceptions at workplace.

Supply demand favoured employees. There were more options for employees and employee behaviour often tended to become arrogant. Quite justified too as most were coming out of years of restrictions on their lives. It was a freedom that many were looking forward to after putting a lot of hardwork in the past. True some were arrogant to have more faith in their abilities than perhaps correct. Employers on the other hand would go to large extents to satisfy some of this arrogance.

Post recession, most employers would tend to agree that its much easier managing people’s expectations now than it was before. Employees have become a lot more tolerant as the supply demand swings around to favour employers. Employers are more cautious about deviating from policies for employees. We suddenly read more about no star policies, horizontal versus vertical structures etc.

HR is not independent of business, and economy shapes your HR spend be it in the form of budgets, headcounts, layoffs etc. However there is a part of me that wishes organisations could be more consistent in their approach and go back to their core values to guide them whether in high or in a low. I attempt to tread the path with this thought as a guide and I truly admire organisations who demonstrate this consistency.

There is a learning for us employees too to be a tolerant and to demonstrate some patience, especially Gen Y, who are really the apple of all eyes, but also a little wobbly because of the choices available for them today.

While the above is true, there is also an underlying reason not talked about so often and this time the fault is with the employee. Fundamentally people leave jobs in hope. Hope for a resolution of existing set of problems. They move in to another job and face another set of problems. Sometimes on the wedding night and sometimes when the honeymooning is over. And then the search starts all over again till the time they find something manageable or their acceptance level of reality increases. This is similar to the death of romanticism in some arranged marriages when the dreams and reality don’t meet.

It is this hope of seeking happiness, of addressing problems, of a better financial situation, of exceeding the expectations of others from him. A search for meaning might also play a part in this hope.

Unless we realise this important facet of employee behaviour, our other efforts will only be partly successful. Since this differs from individual to individual systemic interventions can go only half the way. We need to spend more time with employees to understand their hopes, aspirations etc. and attempt to provide those opportunities in our companies.

Some companies have HR interventions where they try to make the managers spend non-work time with their teams. Often this is merely socialise for team building but some also attempt to get a hang of their pulse. Only when we do this can we be comprehensive in our understanding of why people leave jobs.

They understand the pent up feelings in the job seekers and perhaps sense that they would all be now looking at taking up these kind of services and that the market is on a brink of a Tsunami of resumes. I do not know if job market is back to where it was as earlier. Nor do I know if these services are known to provide any additional help to the job seekers. Economists would say that the labour market usually trails economic recovery by at least a couple of months.  To be fair Business World and TOI have been talking about this ‘jobs are back’ phenomenon since Oct-Nov so we should be there now for sure…staring in to a sea of job options. This also shows in our company as we have started hiring for sure but very cautiously. It will be the same most places so while there will be jobs, it wont be the same as in mid 2008.

Nevertheless, I am quite impressed with the marketing team at naukri.com and I am sure they may be looking at a favourable ROI for their campaign.

Organisations now face two opposite forces internally, and these are today magnified expectations from the employees as well as the employers. Having burnt their fingers last year and witnessing the turnaround with reduced salaries and many austerity measures, employers will want to continue the trend to the extent possible. They would like to run the organisations at same or better efficiencies that they have got used to, provided of course that these organisations have witnessed a turnaround.

Employees have been waiting for some sense of normalcy back in terms of pay cut reversals, salary increases, bonuses etc. Many might not have seen compensation change over nearly 2 years. Besides with things turning around, there will be an expectation among employees that they may be rewarded handsomely.

If communication was critical during recession to survive, it is critical today to sustain. Having said that organisations need to avoid the tendency to impose last year’s cost model on this year. If recovery continues this could be disastrous with a reduced workforce and lack of bench strength.

Social events, fun at work etc lose meaning if they can not be supported by a larger business context in which everyone is striving to grow. In the absence of growth and positivism, the social events are quite lackluster. When they lose engagement they also get detached from the organisation and when organisations reach this level, you need to bring back the other elements that drive engagement. The most being positivism, growth and a sense of control over ones future.

Only the business leadership can help drive this through ‘talking’ positivism into the organisation. They need to be able to show a future that has opportunities and growth. Leadership today is more critical than even for organisational sustenance and growth.

Fun at work can catalyze engagement only when the engagement is already at a certain level. Nothing is more important for employee engagement than growth opportunities and progress. Fun at work is fun only when there is fun to work.

Leadership plays this very important role of engaging people today by talking continuously about growth and future. Of possibilities and new horizons. When growth – of people, their careers, the company, its products gets truncated, the organisation becomes endangered and so do its people. It seems the purpose of organisations is growth and motion. And when this is provided to people, they will see the spirit again.

Unchecked across the organisation this can lead to a culture of sycophancy among those who stay back in the company. Ofcourse a lot depends on the reporting managers and how they handle their teams, but reporting managers are also likely to bask in this new found glory.

This recession is teaching us totally new things. Another challenge for HR folks!