<div>As an HR practitioner, <strong>Ratish Jha </strong> has worked in a variety of industries, be it direct marketing, manufacturing or power. Whether traditional business or MNC, he found every organisation to be unique with distinct challenges and varied solutions. At present, Jha is <strong>Head HR, Raychem RPG</strong>, a 50:50 JV between Tyco Electronics, USA and RPG Group, India. Despite being a recipient of the Global HR Excellence Award on HR Leadership,' Jha still finds hiring people as the toughest part of HR as many hiring managers go by gut instinct rather than specific tools and tecniques. He also feels HR should understand the end customer, analyse the business environment and competition before attempting to create HR processes and systems. Finally, Jha believes a gap exists in the capability of majority of the human resource professionals and this is not getting completely addressed even by the B-schools.<br /><br /><em>Excerpts:</em><br /><strong>What made you choose HR as a profession? </strong><br />Even when I was a little boy, solving puzzles or tricky stuff tickled my interest. In a similar fashion, understanding human behaviour at work seemed a continuous puzzle which developed in me an interest in opting for HR as a profession!<br /><br /><strong>What has been the biggest achievement of your career? </strong></div><ul><li>The merger of Jindal Iron and Steel Company Ltd and Jindal Vijayanagar Steel Ltd; which was all about people and process integration.</li><li>The RPG Cables employee engagement turnaround story which covered all employees irrespective of whether they were white or blue collar. Harmonising the management and labour relationships on the Industrial relations front transformed the company from a group of indifferent performers to a team of highly productive individuals.</li><li>At RPG Lifesciences; the recognition of the “Great Places to Work – Best Companies” was a significant one.</li><li>Contribution acknowledged with the “Global HR Excellence Award on HR Leadership” by the “Asia Pacific HRM Congress” for 2010.</li><li>Currently in Raychem RPG; it is sustaining and reenergising the “Self-Managed Teams” i.e SMT initiative</li></ul><div><br /><strong>What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position? </strong><br />The last few years has been a great experience for me as I have had a chance to work across various industries be it direct marketing, manufacturing, power etc. It has been quite a journey across large traditional business or multinationals, and what I have observed is that every organisation is unique, their challenges are distinctive and so the solutions are also typical. Consequently, there cannot be a single similar solution for all situations. Since every organisation is different, it is initially better to observe and study that business, the environment in detail and effectively listen to people before planning and implementing any HR solutions. Adhering to this elementary approach has basically helped me in attaining my present position.<br /><br /><strong>What are the challenges you are facing in your organisation? </strong></div><ul><li>Since our business is such that requires continuous change resulting from dynamic research and development; the challenge is capability building for the purpose of collaborative innovation</li><li>Managing the aspirations of GEN Y and creating a collaborative harmonious relationship with GEN X.</li></ul><div><strong>What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?<br /></strong>As an initial stage, the leadership and HR is always on the lookout for promising young talent displaying leadership attributes. Once spotted, one has to invest in terms of time, fund and energy in</div><ul><li>first, identifying the right challenging profile for the individual</li><li>second, consistently evaluate through continuous close connect</li><li>third, demonstrate the leadership’s belief in their capability</li></ul><div><strong> What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it? </strong><br />The rate of attrition is between 12 and 14 per cent range. Attrition is a symptom of low engagement levels. Every year, the Employee Engagement Survey provides us with employee feedback. This is followed up by focused group discussions which help us to evolve suitable action plans to be implemented against the concerned engagement driver.<br /><br /><strong>How do you retain talent in your company? </strong><br />Addressing the engagement drivers takes care of the attrition for the entire population of the organisation. We as a rule do not focus on retention of the entire employee base but pay special consideration to the mapped critical talent, who are managed through a Talent Dashboard. <br /><br /><strong>What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?</strong><br />At Raychem RPG, the work culture is based on ongoing innovation, responsiveness and speedy execution<br /><br /><strong>What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people? </strong><br />Selection is more often impacted by the “gut feel”, personality and mood of the hiring manager. A normal selection interview does not necessarily reflect the whole person or their performance. A more accurate assessment of potential can be attained using specific tools and techniques to refine the choice and to minimise subjectivity. For me this is the toughest piece of HR and getting cent percent sure about the candidate to be hired is an easier said than done job!<br /><br /><strong>How do you track employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction in your company?</strong><br />There are various ways by which employee satisfaction is measured on Raychem RPG</div><ul><li>At all locations, there is a board titled “Glad-Mad-Sad” put up which allows for an open forum for employees to express themselves.</li><li>Online Grievance forum which is monitored by Sr. Vice President HR to keep in touch with the employees’ pulse.</li><li>Lead Indicator, a quarterly webcast taken by the company CEO. Before the webcast, employees send in their queries signaling their dissatisfaction or comments of appreciation.</li></ul><div><br /><strong>How important is HR to the bottom line of a company? </strong><br />HR is extremely important to the company’s bottom line. The theory that a company as long as it can produce and sell its products or services is a strong organisation is today a defunct statement. The only differentiator in an organisation’s culture is to build a competitive mindset, which then gives it a competitive advantage. This then translates into a sustainable bottom line for the business. HR plays a very significant role in creating this desirable and vibrant culture.<br /><strong><br />How has the downturn affected HR? </strong><br />Like any other function, HR was also impacted during the downturn. Today, on one hand you have high manning costs and on the other you have the challenge of maintaining people’s morale, confidence, engagement and stress levels. Today the test is in finding innovative ways for hiring, retaining and rewarding people through non-monetary ways. The key “mantra” in handling downturn is “communication”, “staying connected” and remaining invested for long term development of people.<br /><br /><strong>How should HR be integrated with the core line of business? </strong><br />HR has to develop the mastery in understanding the business before attempting the integration of HR with the core line of business. It has to understand the end customer, analyse the business environment and competition before it attempts to create HR processes and systems to finally assist in building value for the customer.<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 />Whenever HR has been questioned for not contributing effectively to the bottom-line of the company, it could be due to two reasons:</div><ul><li>HR has really failed to deliver in every way in that organisation.</li><li>Management has failed to understand and leverage HR for a profitable and sustainable company growth.</li></ul><div>Expecting any short term returns from HR initiatives is unrealistic as HR initiative and contribution is always linked to the long-term strategic goal of the organisation. For example, at RPG Life sciences it took nearly 2 and half years to transform the company into a ‘Great Places to Work’ organisation. Having achieved this milestone, we have now developed a culture which has a competitive advantage and is delivering profitable growth. Besides this, managing the high level of engagement, low level of attrition, talent acquisition and key talent retention have become much easier. <br /><br /><strong>If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?</strong></div><ul><li>Adopting any HR Best practices blindly is dangerous game! One should avoid it!</li><li>Handling IR issue with a traditional IR mindset! It should be dealt with long term perspective with HR/ER approach!</li></ul><div><br />Gap exists in capability of majority HR professionals. This is not getting completely addressed by even B-schools. Any organisation’s HR policy should also focus on enhancing the HR capability of HR professionals <br /><br /><br /> </div>
