'Attach A Revenue Number To HR Function'

<div><strong>Ashit Ranjan</strong> is currently Vice-President Human Resources at Tecnova India Pvt&nbsp; Ltd, an international management consulting firm, which draws up and helps to deliver India strategy to global luxury brands. Before this, he headed an entrepreneurial venture in business, HR consulting and training &amp; development. He has worked on consulting projects on restructuring, transition, organisational change management with both government agencies (Development Aid funded) and private companies in India, Bangladesh and Bhutan.<br /><br />Ranjan believes HR can be integrated into the core line of business only when HR folks start understanding their business better. He would prefer if HR was considered more than a support function and to do that HR employees should be made to work in other business functions like marketing, sales etc.<br /><br />Excerpts: <br /><strong>What made you to choose HR as a profession?</strong><br />My interest in human resources began early as I was fascinated by Organisational Development as a subject in my MBA days. My conviction got further reinforced over the years as I worked on various assignments.&nbsp; The dynamics of human behaviour and human relations continues to fascinate me and there is always a new complexity to learn from. <br /><br /><strong>What has been the biggest achievement in your career?</strong><br />Transitioning a government department into a professionally managed corporation where HR formed the backbone of a sustained and successful transformation.&nbsp; The department which was a loss-making one was transitioned to a profitable business enterprise in a very short period of time.&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?</strong><br />Three things. First of all, truly and really understanding business. When I say understanding business, it is not just superficial knowledge but a deep nut and bolts knowledge cutting across the organisation.&nbsp; Secondly, I have a deep fascination and affection for people and an inner sense for helping them. And third, having the patience to listen without any bias or prejudice.&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>What are the challenges you are facing in your organisation?</strong><br />Currently, our main challenge is to build a strong and high performing team and creating a pool of leaders who can take the business into the future<br /><br /><strong>What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?</strong><br />Having a clear defined leadership path is critical. In addition, it is important that identified potential leaders are tested and mentored regularly through a sustained effort. This is to be done by regularly assigning higher responsibility to the individuals, training and an organisational support at the highest levels.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?</strong><br />At present, our attrition rate is about 3-4 per cent.&nbsp; We regularly engage with our people to help understand their problems and issues and try and create a participative environment in which people get together to solve their issues. This participation helps employees become true owners within the business.&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>How do you retain talent in your company?</strong><br />Our success in retaining talent has primarily been driven by having a very open and participative culture which fosters collaboration.&nbsp; People draw on each other&rsquo;s strength to help deliver an exceptional performance, experience and service to our clients.&nbsp; We also constantly engage them in leadership and training initiatives which helps them build skills and competency.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?</strong><br />Openness, participative and collaborative culture is what sets up apart.&nbsp; We also believe in assigning responsibility pretty early in peoples&rsquo; careers which helps in their capacity and capability building. <br /><br /><strong>What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?</strong><br />Finding the right talent at the right time is critical and we face challenges sometimes when we are not able to get the right talent. We try and address this by going to a lot of campuses and hiring.&nbsp; These freshers form a pool of our future leaders and we give them a well defined programme to build their skills and competency over the years. <br /><br /><strong>How do you track of employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction?</strong><br />Our participative and open culture allows an employee to walk up and share his/her grievance with the confidence that it will be addressed at the right forum and in the right manner.&nbsp; We also have formal and informal sessions where we take employee feedback on what is working right and where are we going wrong.&nbsp; Accordingly, corrective measures are put into place. <br /><br /><strong>How HR has been important to the bottom line of the company?</strong><br />I believe that HR has a significant role to play in the bottom line of the company.&nbsp; If HR cannot contribute to the bottom line, its existence will be in question.&nbsp; Each activity that we engage in, is measured in terms of ROI.&nbsp; True HR business partnering happens when there is a revenue number attached to the HR function. <br /><br /><strong>How has the downturn affected HR?</strong><br />Downturn has affected HR. On one side, good resources are cautious to leave their present organisation and hence there is a shortage of talent pool.&nbsp; Further, the spends on employee activities has been curtailed.&nbsp; It is a challenge for every HR Manager to keep their employees motivated and encouraged to deliver superior performance in tough times. <br /><br /><strong>How should HR be integrated with the core line of business?</strong><br />HR can only be integrated into the core line of business when HR folks start understanding their business better.&nbsp; It is important for the HR function and its practitioners to be knowledgeable and also to a large extent, direct contributors in all other functions of the business.&nbsp; <br /><br /><strong>A recent survey has questioned HR's actual contribution in an organisation. Would you like to comment on it with particular reference to your organisation?</strong><br />It is true that at times HR&rsquo;s contribution has been questioned and that has primarily been because of the over focus and dependence of HR on softer sides of the business and employee engagement activities.&nbsp; Not that they are not important, in the current time it is critical that HR evolves itself into a direct contributor to business results.&nbsp; HR is rightly positioned within an organisation to address the business results as it has influence over all other functions of the organisation. It, however, requires that HR starts a business engagement process with other functions in the organisation and focuses on how it can help them achieve bottom line results. <br /><br /><strong>If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?</strong><br />Three things I would like to change in HR practices are;</div><ul><li>Focus on random training without measurement of ROI</li><li>Making HR employees work in other functions of the business like marketing, sales etc</li><li>Stop calling HR a support function.&nbsp;</li></ul><div><br />(<strong>As told to Poonam Kumar</strong>)</div>