HR managers hauled over the goals

MUMBAI: Once the quiet guys in the shadows, measuring their candidates through afternoons and coffespoons, the HR managers of today are being asked to act like the hustlers in the marketing and sales department.

Blame it all on the rise of services behemoths like Infosys, Wipro and a cavalcade of BPO companies. These companies hire tens of thousands of employees every year and then try all the tricks in the book to retain them.

It is only fair then that the company judge the HR manager’s performance in strictly goal-oriented terms. Reeta Nathwani of Penna, a UK-based HR consultancy, says, “This is a global phenomenon.

If there is a downturn in the marketplace or sales figures are not meeting expectations, the first few things the management team will say are: “How much is remaining in the marketing budget?” or “Let’s have a recruitment freeze and stop any training programmes within a given period” and “anything above the line marketing activity be put on hold.” That’s because HR has traditionally been seen as a cost centre and a support function.

So, more and more HR managers want to convince their boards their function directly drives profitability. Emphasising the importance of measurability in HR, Hari T, head-HR, Satyam, says HR can’t be operating on feelings.

“While 58% of our revenue goes in wages and benefits and 75-80% of our expenses are people-related, it’s essential to have a measurability tool. We have an associate delight index that measures happiness among employees on a scale of five. Of the 66% associates who responded, they gave 4.33 points,” explains Mr Hari.

HR managers also realise they have to deliver on targets in pretty much the same way that sales managers have to. “Imagine a marketing manager enter the boardroom and tell his chief there are too many products in the market with a few buyers and thus he can’t meet the sales target. I think HR managers will experience something similar,” says SK Dutt, head-HR, Larsen & Toubro.

If HR and marketing are compared in their entirety and the traditional 4PS of marketing are equated to HR, it starts another debate. Anjani Koomar, chairperson, Group HRM, IIM, Lucknow compares products to incentive plans, price to cost of employee, place refers to local or organisation-wide changes and promotion is basically the same as that of marketing: giving the idea enough publicity.

Govind Iyer of Egon Zehnder International doesn’t think the process is as cut and dried. “People development is time consuming, so it requires specialists. One has to understand people motivation, what drives people dimension and why is it important to have them. Number is not as great as the values that are generated in the organisation,” explains Iyer who is also former VP, marketing, Heinz India.

Unfortunately, in today’s talent crunch, both quantity and quality and are needed. Some companies like HLL are, therefore, looking at using the “market development” approach — something that a marketer would use — to hirings. D Harish, VP (HR) says the most critical element is to anticipate the opportunities for an organisation and then build key capabilities around it.

“At HLL, about two years ago modern sales were 5% of the total sales. In the next 3-4 years this will be about 25%. We need to do capability of gaps analysis, train people on different capabilities for which they will have to go to developed countries and trainers from there will come here.”

Richard Mosley, managing director, People Business, points to one difference between the functions — they tend to attract different types of people. “They speak a different language. HR people are more focused on best practice and benchmarking; marketing people are more focused on ‘next’ practice and innovation,” adds Mosley. The way things are going, it isn’t a far-fetched idea to see them converge to a happy equilibrium.