Having recently retired from a large U.S. MNC, I decided to set up my own consulting firm and have now started to experience the interaction with HR practitioners in organizations from the other side of the table. And I am saddened by what I have so far experienced, in some cases from senior most HR "Professionals" in some of these organizations.
Lest I may be mistaken and misunderstood to have branded all HR prople with the same brush, I want to hasten to add that these instances are not many, but it is important that I highlight them as they involve senior HR professionals from the Organised sector. Two examples :
I was summoned by a HR person from a software organization in Bangalore to help them set up a Competency Framework, Career Progression and ladders for their Engineering staff and to review their Salary Structures. As the Head of HR told me the objective was to ensure (as his CEO had mentioned to him ) "whether every person in the organization will know what the future has in store for him, whether he will know how to progress there and and what he needs to do to achieve success in the future". As agreed with the Head of HR, I sent him a proposal of the work as outlined in our discussion. After two or three calls to follow up as to what he thought of my proposal it became evident that he had not budgetted enough for the work to be done. After further discussions the original proposal was revised on the commercials and then resubmitted. I have not heard anything from them since. Absolute silence. Three days later when I called up the Head of HR to ask what happened to the resubmitted proposal, he promised to revert to me by noon that day. I don't know which time zone he exists in but it appears that his noon is yet to arrive!
On another occasion, I was asked to design and deliver a Development Center for another company in Bangalore in the education testing industry. It was done after understanding their requirements and also within their budget limits, as was mentioned by their email to me. I later learnt that they had given the contract to some other firm since they were cost effective than my proposal. Nothing wrong with that. I would have done the same thing and I laud them for thinking in the best interest of what is most cost effective for the company. However two things were out of sync - (1) they did not even call me for a second round of discussions to see whether I could revise my cost estimates down and (2) no feedback that they had awarded it to somebody else.
I am wondering whether this is the behavior expected from professional HR people? Is this how they behave with potential external vendors? If so, how can they be expected to behave differently with their employees? What prevents them from picking up their telephones or asking their juniors ( if they are too busy ) to communicate with their vendors that their proposal has not been successful. Even if they do not give any reason for the rejection, it would be a "human" gesture.
No wonder HR gets written about in blogs as a function that is void of human emotions. The latest article on "Putting Human back into HR" is relevant in this regard.
And for those who want to read a tongue-in-cheek account about his (mis)adventures with "inHuman Resources" here is another link...
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