Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Consequences of Errors done by HR

In my earlier post Bharat requested me to write on "Consequences of Errors done by HR". This is something the HR professionals face and experience every day. We are Human and errors are common... However, In one word HR Errors can cause a consequence of "Business". I have experienced the cost of consequences as a job holder and worked for a company and more so impact while running a business. We do experience many such errors but we learn and ensure do not repeat the mistake.  More importantly look for any potential mistakes in every other action or activity that HR handles.

Here, is a simple experience : In one of my experience I received a letter to be signed for a an Offer to a prospective Hire prepared by one of my associate. The associate was well educated(MBA), technologically savvy and  doing job for many years by then.  I would not sign any letter unless I review/scan.  I asked the Associate to change the letter and bring it again as we have not promised what was mentioned in the letter.  The associate have gone through the letter and said it is perfect. I asked him to check and comeback. After 5 minutes he came back and said everything was okay.  Then I pointed that there is an excess of "0" zero in the salary figure.  The additional zero we could have not afforded for the job role and experience and impact on our company by that individual.  But it was impacting because of the letter drafted.  The salary offered was 1 Lac per annum and its mentioned as 10 lacs( Rs.100000 to Rs.1000000). In this case Technology was helping us to do our job better but the impact of what you feed is important.  That talks about the attention to the details by HR is very important. This error even if we have issued the letter still would have been rectified by going back and informing the New Hire about the error, however go through my next experience.....

2nd Experience : Here is a company who were growing more than 40% of annual rate of growth while the industry was growing at a rate of 30%+( 30+% is a sign of growth in the industry characterized as sun rising). The Management decided to hire a new CEO instead of the founder owners who have built this organisation. This entire process of decision making and implementation would have not been possible without the involvement of senior hr professionals. The new CEO was with great credentials from a very well known and successful Multinational conglomerates... Within one year of his take over, there has been many changes in the organisation... To name few - New Organisational structure, New and different hiring, New business models, change in product lines and many others. None of these seems to have worked in one year of time and the management were forced to take a decision to counsel the CEO (In this case definition of Counseling is helping him to take decision to leave) as it was impacting the whole existence of business. In this case HR worked hard to help in getting back to normalcy with the help of people again.

I have taken two different examples to illustrate the impact that the Business can have with HR.  I could write hundreds and thousands of examples but time is essence.  We discuss more in future as need arises or as our readers request for specific inputs. However, HR is the function more and more prominent as the businesses are becoming Knowledge based and People become only the Differentiators to compete in the Global Business scenario.

The Business of HR has become more Profit / Impact oriented than ever before and the Required Qualities/skills/competencies of HR are defined to next level every day...

Please read more on the qualities of HR in this blog.  Also for all People Differentiators experiences read : www.hrsme.blogspot.com