Do HR managers abandon their roles as career builders and developers once they

are in an organisation, and work more to sustain the company? - Meera Seth

Leonard Coelho felt restless. The words of Tara, Akhil and Jai rang in his head. Last night
at a reunion party, the verdict over Akhil’s departure from Kimro India had squarely
condemned HR as being ineffective. Although Leonard had convinced them about the
changing profile of HR’s role, he also knew that some of those allegations were true.

When Akhil left Kimro five years ago, Leonard had been a relevant HR resource, yet not
relevant enough to make a difference. Today, he was heading training, a position that
came with the subtle responsibilities of trust and faith, higher than if he was just a generic
HR man. For he dealt with management staff, he spoke words of encouragement and
organisational philosophy, he converted line management needs into mindsets in his
trainees whom he presented back as ‘value- added resources’.

This morning, his mind raced back to the words spoken by his friends, which said plainly
that Kimro’s HR was ineffective. Lenny, as he was known to friends, did not delude
himself with the thought that making Kimro’s HR effective was his responsibility, yet the
fact that he represented HR every time he stood on that dais and spoke to the managers he
trained, drove home the truth: they trusted him.

When the week’s batch assembled after lunch for the Managing Effectiveness module,
Lenny asked: “Is effectiveness to be led from microcosm upwards to the macro or should
it be exerted at the macro from where it can permeate downwards?” Kaustubh ‘Kosty’
Dave, a marketing man, said: “Talk in English, Lenny!” Lenny ignored that with a smile
that he reserved for the marketing mavericks and urged a response from Amit Shenoy
(sales).

Said Amit: “Those who have ‘helicopter vision’ sitting in the head office should also
spend time in markets, while those on the ground need to be made aware of the big
picture. HR can facilitate this by organising visits to HO for sales guys and field trips for
HO honchos. That’s all you need for effectiveness!” Adil Sahu (commercial) said, “I
would prefer the macro route — effectiveness initiatives must begin with top
management, as they control the budget. But let me add, nothing can work if HR does not
immerse itself into it.”

Amit: I agree 100 per cent. Effectiveness is an attitudinal thing, it requires building the
mindset. Line cannot spend time on it. This is clearly HR’s forte.What is HR’s role in
effectiveness?

Lenny: Good take! Let us discuss effectiveness management in HR. And why not!

Kosty: In that case, define HR’s role. What is it? To be organisation-led? Or employee
focused? Foster organisation’s growth through people development, or people’s evolution
via organisation growth? Is HR management about developing and shepherding people
and careers so that people evolve, or so that the organisation grows? Or, is HR
organisation-led, whereby careers and individuals are secondary?

Amit:This is so much like B-school classroom rhetoric! In B-school you are taught that
HR is a people developer; but organisations don’t pay you to develop people. HR can
never be a people’s mentor. It is always organisational — this is what we have seen. Let
there be a situation where a manager wants to leave because he has found the job of his
dreams, then you will see HR being so difficult — behaviour that is completely
organisation driven and not employee driven.

Vivek: What is HR’s role? To develop people or to save the organisation? I have been on
both sides of the fence in my last job at Benitt India. We had set up Painting Services as a
profit centre, but it was fraught with severe attrition problems. HR suggested a business
model that removed the dependence on individuals . So, we outsourced painting services
supported by a small staff of our own. But then people development got sidelined; what
was meant to be just an interim measure came to be a way of life at Benitt.

The issue was that I had developed tremendous intelligence (five years in the field) in the
painting services business, which was very unique those days. Although I designed this
model, I believed we must continue training our people simultaneously. But HR said
training was its forte. I felt my business-specific behavioural insights better equipped me
to train them. But HR dug in its heels. As you can see, we missed the wood for the trees.
Cost effectiveness became the issue. People growth, which was critical to the
organisation’s growth in this case, was sacrificed over this silly technicality.

I saw my evolution in training, felt strongly about my skills and wanted to apply it in the
business. All I was saying was, ‘We need to train our people, let me do it, I have the skills
and the market knowledge.’ But no sir! Finally, I got hired by our competitor as sales
trainer. Suddenly, the very people who were gracious became difficult. Here, we
encounter a new face of HR. HR stuck spokes in my wheels, and refused to relieve me on
one pretext or another. They said I was leaving for the money. Sure, my new employer
was paying me more, but it is so difficult to explain that there are motivations beyond
money and titles.

My departure date was delayed by seven months. I did not want to leave on a sour,
unhappy note. HR shilly-shallied that my replacement had not arrived. I suppose Benitt
was in an insecure mode — its growth was zilch, it would not develop its people fearing
loss of training investment, it would not allow people to evolve and HR had no solution!

Sharan: I empathise with Vivek. There are three broad types of HR professionals: People-
oriented HR implements in the spirit of things with the understanding that people are
important. Organisation-oriented HR implements to ensure that the organisation benefits,
even at the cost of employee growth. HR-oriented professionals consider HR by itself as
God. Business needs and people needs are secondary.

This non-clarity of HR’s role persists because the IR (industrial relations) hangover is
still not over. In the IR era, the individual was an extension of the machine. The
emergence of unions was to protect people against this de-humanising. However, with
unions emerging, their power wielders were the only recognisable faces. Therefore, from
the organisation’s perspective, it became them versus us because it ended with a couple of
people negotiating the life of hundreds and thousands across a table. The ‘mass’, which
empowered the union, was actually lost in the process.

But now we have a knowledge economy, and this cannot be sustainable because
knowledge is individual-based, and processes and systems can never fully capture
knowledge. So, HR has to work with individuals’ aspirations, egos and quirks. This is a
challenge for professionals who are conditioned to treat employees as a mass without any
clue of individual customisation. So, policies reflect this and end up frustrating
individuals who are giving more than average. When they question this, it is seen as an
affront as the HR mindset has not evolved to recognise individuals.

Compare this to the recent marketing orientation. Today, marketing persons need to be
representatives of the customer, failing which customers will choose to spend their
money elsewhere. Similarly, HR needs to be representatives of the people in the
organisation else they will choose to earn their money elsewhere. Fundamentally, service
cannot be manufactured and stored. So, this is inexorably linked to the provider who is a
person. An unhappy person gives poor service. Therefore, HR has to be people focused.

Lenny: Very deep insight there. But where do you feel the attitude fails as people
developer?

Amit: Simple. When an employee wants to leave how he is perceived and the treatment
meted out. I have experienced both ends of treatment. While leaving M&J, my colleagues
were almost mourning my departure, while officially not even a farewell was organised.
The HR guy was also a personal friend and he confessed that there was huge animosity
over my leaving M&J to join Kimro, and denying me a farewell was a sort of
‘punishment’! His words were: ‘It would not be perceived as a neutral HR thing!’

Adil: HR hangs up its gloves the moment they find that an individual wants to pursue
other options. Let me give you an example right here in Kimro. When I was in Chennai,
Prateek was heading southern region IT and he was on the Systems steering committee.
Everything was hunky dory till the new regional head came in. He wanted an all new
system for sales reporting, which was working in Mumbai. But Prateek felt different
regions cannot have different systems. The system we had in Chennai — the one we have
even now — was tested in Chennai and replicated in Kolkata. But the new head was
uncomfortable. They clashed severely on this.

HR sensed the tension between the two and advised Prateek to leave! Fifteen years’
knowledge lost! HR did nothing to retain him. What became clear then is that HR prefers
to toe the party line. Isn’t retention an important HR activity? So, it is not even
organisation-driven, let alone people-driven. It is ‘which end is the bread buttered’
driven!

Kosty: You know, that is actually so true, Lenny. Please don’t feel alienated. Besides, we
agreed this is off the record. I hear we are about to unleash some new madness called
VRS where a lot of good people are going to be summarily retired.

I know how hard the feelings are going to be. My older brother lost his job two years ago.
Lemur India, where he worked for 22 years, decided to retire people above 50. HR did
this most clinically, without any feeling for how this was disrupting lives. Lemur was an
old-world babu company with old school values and loyalty. Lemur had been taken over
by Gatewayz UK and there was immense pressure to make the company ‘young’. You
can make the company young, but how do you salvage years of intelligence? HR could
have played a different role...but they toed the line and even toed the indifference with
which they did it.

To say HR is the conscience of an organisation’s vision and intent sounds nice. But living
it is a challenge. How do you divest the HR mind of the influence of multiple egos and
personal agendas? The UK bosses wanted a particular outcome, HR was bending
backwards to meet that expectation and worse, justifying their action! It is when such
things happen that you wonder ‘what is HR supposed to be?’ That act was not about
managing resources. It was about demolishing them. Now think before you repeat that
here in Kimro. Yes, business is for profit, but running parallel is the need to sustain the
credibility of the family ethos in an organisation. Golden handshakes don’t wipe tears of
humiliation that forced retirement brings.

Vivek: This may be because the best talent do NOT join the HR function. The best brains
take up marketing, brand management, IT, finance etc., because HR is one function
where you can neither be organisation-driven nor people-driven. You have to toe the line.
HR becomes an emotional activity — if the Boss does not like someone, HR will dump
him. If Boss likes someone, HR will try and protect him.

Lenny: That is worth evaluating. It will be worth my while to get feedback during
campus interviews. Anyway, coming back to your last remark, what makes you say HR is
vindictive?

Vivek: Let me stick my neck out on this one. Remember Kritika Dayal? Accounts, middle
management. She married this guy who is a vice-president at our competitor Nylac. Saha
was the head of corporate accounts then. Suddenly, he developed visions that she was
trading cost data; baseless suspicions. But Saha was clear he wanted her out. HR’s Homi
did not want to step in. He said: “There’s nothing I can do; it is a top level matter.” The
stink still pervades the corridors of the commercial department!

Adil:I was witness to all that happened to Kritika. But currently, some good retention
practices are in place for the lower rungs of management. But the world over, it is senior
management that has to always fend for itself. Take Victor Kamat, the head of supply
chain. He was toying with idea of accepting an offer from another company. His boss got
annoyed and the situation between them reached a stalemate.

Now, this is a very crucial example, and I want you to help me understand the dynamics.
I am seeing the situation from Victor’s standpoint. He was on the fence. He was not
exactly unhappy in his job, but maybe he was getting jaded? Maybe he needed a
challenge? Maybe he found something that seemed like it would put the pace back in his
life? At 45, the issues that provoke you from within are multiple. You see, people at the
top are ‘lonely’. They need a wall to bounce off their thoughts on their career, advice,
counselling, interaction. Just because a person is senior, does not mean that he needs no
advice.
I feel Victor’s boss Arya, too, was facing a similar crisis and Victor’s toying with a new
job perhaps annoyed him? This was where HR could have stepped in to arbitrate and save
the loss of a good resource.

Arya fretted and told Victor he could go! My take is, Victor needed a little hand holding,
a little encouragement that he was critical to Kimro. He needed to be renewed, refreshed.
C’mon, after 17 years in an organisation, it happens! But no! Victor was summarily asked
to go. No professionalism regarding retention strategy, no exit interviews, no counselling,
nothing! The organisation is really suffering, as the most experienced supply chain man is
gone.

Devina: Almost identical was the case of the premature retirement of Tulsi Iyer and Oscar
D’Souza at the behest of our new managing director. He called it ‘load shedding’ in
finance and accounts, whereas he actually went and put his own man there. Two stellar
men just packed and sent back to stores. No doubt, it was discussed and all that. But I
ask, was this a move to appease the organisation or to develop people? The talk was that
there were younger people who had to move up and it was necessary for the old order to
move on. Adil? Am I wrong?

Adil: It is a very delicate topic. Whatever the reason, Lenny, those two men were stars!
To retire them to save cost or whatever is silly. Oscar and Tulsi carried huge wealth of
learning, which cannot be passed down in a simple handover note. These were people
who flowed with the numbers, they were the numbers, they were the profits, they were
the strategy, they were the revenues... they knew how Kimro’s numbers behaved, how to
make them behave and work for the company. Such was Oscar’s brilliance. You could
call him in the middle of the night and ask about line 33 on page 47 in the printed balance
sheet and he would know. No, we are not talking about memory. We are talking about
being the king and the numbers being his subjects. Such a man they threw out with the
bath water. With him went the sanctity of numbers. Numbers crumbled after he left. They
gave him a farewell and the numbers wept with him.That brilliance has not been
replaceable...need I say more, Devina?

Devina: What is HR? I believe it is the unifying, harmonising principle in any

organisation. To the extent that I would say HR is the one that holds the culture and
values of an organisation, and when a new leader is brought in, it is HR that helps to
harmonise his vision with the culture and tradition of the organisation. When a new
leader comes in, often he comes with a new broom and a false belief that to stamp the
organisation with his brand of success he must have his own people in place. In one
company, the man had the arrogance to call a meeting of the senior management and tell
them like a school marm : ‘I am here to set things right, those of you who I find not good
enough based on your past performance, I will sack without mercy.’ Some were so hurt,
they resigned without a job! Does HR recognise ordinary human anxieties?

When a new leader comes in, HR feels renewed and refreshed by the power of being
needed by a new leader. It was in such a situation that the HR of this organisation helped
track people who had to be weeded out. It was painful.

In Prateek’s case, too, a similar situation played out. The new regional head did not wait
even a week to examine if the man wanting to leave should not be retained, whether he
would, in fact, strengthen his kingdom. Since he already had a list of people he wanted to
hire from his old stint (including the new regional head), he was only too quick to ask the
man who had resigned to go by the weekend!

Actually, I am peeved with the HR function. Does anyone here remember Akhil Davar?
(See ‘On The Fence With HR’, BW, 6 November 2006) The chap who used to sing those
Elton John songs? Lenny, you should know him, he was your batch. How they played
ball with his career — HR on one side and line on the other. Five years that man took it in
his stride and then he quit. HR may think these are professional moves and decisions. But
the personal stories behind these moves are not captured by HR because it does not seem
to recognise the human in its resources!

Lenny, if you are serious about wanting to rehabilitate our HR, go and meet every man
and woman who has left Kimro for a ‘no holds barred’ discussion — the truth will
liberate you!

Kosty: And not just Kimro, Lenny, in many organisations the refrain is common: HR
does not ‘practise’ HR management. HR’s functions, roles and responsibilities are
‘managing’ human resources. And a significant part of that is damage control. How many
times Akhil’s career moves were thwarted! Did HR make one move to control the
damage? OK, Akhil’s case came up on your radar now after five years. But there is
Prateek, recently. The essence is the same.

Amit: Why do organisations get upset if a manager wants to find his future elsewhere?
Or, should it be so that only HR has the right to decide what is good for a manager’s
career? In Akhil’s case, did anyone sit to evaluate what damage was done to his career?
He virtually missed a whole promotion between the bickering and games that various
departments were playing. And even at that late stage, when he did not get his level, did
not get Algeria, did not get China…and worse, because he was not part of the high
intensity sales pool! I mean, is that fair? He is your resource, isn’t he?

This brings me to a serious question: who is HR’s master? Local management or global
management? Subsidiary and parent relationships are okay for running businesses up to a
point. Beyond that point, where local culture, tradition, values and strengths are involved,
the parent should rein in its demands and local HR should be empowered to think local.
That is true global management. So, was Akhil fed to a nebulous global management to
play ball? And then that chap Deeyen says, ‘ International postings are mercifully not my
headache.’ C’mon, is this nice?

In many parts of the world, being asked to leave a company does not make the manager
unemployable. Other companies pick him up for his training, his inherent managerial
skills. This is true of Europe and US. But in India, a kind of stigma is left stuck on the
manager, probably because Indians are judgemental and intrusive by nature. And they
search for personal reasons behind professional decisions probably because that is how
Indian managers are — their personal biases stain their professional decisions, too.
Hence, in a country like India if you ask a manager to go, you have axed his career too.
Now, think of what we did to Kritika.

And so it went on and on. Lenny could not deny these people their perceptions. In their
world these perceptions held true for it guided their beliefs and acts. So, was it true after
all that HR managers abandon their roles as career builders and developers, and work
more to sustain the organisation? Or was HR being made to straddle two stools and was
helplessly falling in between?