Whose side is HR on?

Often employees and sometimes senior management (if not in large organizations, in small organizations) pose this question to the HRD people - Whose side are you on? At least I've come across that question quite a few times from both the sides in an organization. Daily experiences make many a employee question that.

• HRD is a Strategic partner for the management - which means it's a member in the chief board that makes strategic decisions.
• HRD is a Communication Driver - taking things across the organization top-down and bottom-up to get people heard, management decisions communicated.
• HRD is an Employee Champion - to champion the employees' needs and causes.
• HRD is The Performance Enabler - to ensure the organizational productivity is maintained to meet the customer demands.
• HRD is The Facilitator - which ensures and facilitates the daily issues of employees and management alike; a constant dialogue between employees and management; needful action thereon.
• HRD is an Inventor - It invents and ensures the evolution of new and best practices that are mutually beneficial to the management and employees in the organization.

HRD is all those roles in one. To ask such a question is immaturity - It's but obvious.

Version control for People

Whoever is involved in close interaction with the Quality teams, ISO practices, Six Sigma among others would certainly know what version control is. Else, even the net savvy would know what versions are - every new update of windows is a new version, we have many other software and now Web 2.0 as well.

I imagine that soon people will be called by their versions at work or in corporate at large by their terms in an office / role / experience in an organization. O yes, and a unique reference code to identify each :) And there follows the Version history.. 1.0 was this, approved by so so..

Manohar Lazarus 8.2.0 referring XYZ 10.3.1, ABC 1.0.. LoL
Would certainly be fun to see this coming up..

Bond with your boss..

Though I'm of an opinion that each should bond with their bosses, what I've generally experienced is what is shared below-

Bonding over a period of time leads to cohesiveness; and cohesiveness leads to things happening on a very personal level. Trust me when I say then, bonding crosses the professional limitations.. if not, I'd suggest it's not bonding at all. But then, "Survival of the fittest" operates strongly in the corporate jungle. Well, when it comes to survival, any bond comes after 'ME', even for one's boss. Leaving apart the exceptions who go the extra mile, bonding, in my experience has failed to work in the corporate world, where it's all about cut-throat wars.

And yes, there's always a chance where bonding may somewhere also divert focus from work deliveries. Bosses can't really can't talk hard for results, deliveries on time etc. because of the personal touch (or who knows, some even do). So, bonding, in it's sanctity, is actually not done!

But, yes, as a fashionable and another wasteful word that can be used by management to adorn their hollow practices... and they call for team bonding activities, and a few also allocate budgets for team-building exercised and outing to encourage bonding among colleagues. But, that bonding as I already said is with a non-connecting emotional distance, which is like, I'm not doing this cos I wanna do it, but I'm doing this cos I have to.

I hope somebody would be able to see some reality in these words. Don't take it for a pessimistic POV, it's just experiences..

Employee Value Proposition or Capitalist's Value Proposition...

Visiting D-75, Malviya Nagar (The VADHMN den) always results in some post of mine... We're a bunch of professionals from Sales, Operations, Finance & HR from Banking, IT-ITeS, Manufacturing industries and we caught up chatting on various trends across our respective organizations and sundry..

I got to know of a leading bank where an Manager committed suicide due to work stress, another manager who's psychic behaviour gets all his juniors go bonkers; Companies where benefits being provided earlier are being withdrawn, and new leaders taking over at the top and not taking employee-friendly decisions... and many more...

The question here is: Do companies really mean to assess the value proposition in their decisions or the impact their decisions might make for employees at all?

Maybe, it's just another HR tool to sugarcoat the bitter truth. But, does HR too own those decisions? Questionable. Well, the matter of the fact is, without any doubt, that the first assessment of any initiative is to know what's the value proposition for the shareholders? If that's good enough, everything else is overridden. If, as a byproduct employees benefit out of it, the companies encash it as a 'EVP offered at XYZ Inc.,' Way to go guys, what say?!

So, next time you hear that 'EVP thing', ask yourself, if it is EVP or CVP?