Case Study: Shattered Dreams

Shattered Dreams

Mohan was very enthusiastic as he was joining allsold.com, a leading e-commerce organization as a head HR for the organization. E-commerce was growing big time in the country and among all e-retailers who have mushroomed in last 4-6 years, allsold.com held a special place. The company held almost 20% of the total market share by number of online shopping transactions and was very popular among young consumers owing to the speed and quality of service it provided.

About allsold.com

It was surely a matter of pride to be associated with such big name in Indian retail. Everyone today was well familiar with the name of allsold.com, thanks to their customer focus, discounted pricing and some aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns. Allsold.com was a young, dynamic and vibrant company with average age of the employees being around 27 years. Most of the senior management people were also below 30 years and had been with the company for more than 3 years. They all had a good pedigree and for most of them, it was the first job. They have built the business from scratch and have brought it to the current level. The founders also were around 30 years age bracket and had short stint in corporate before they made their entrepreneurial plunge.

The organization had around thirty percent of the population who have spent more than a year and a half in the system and almost one third of them have already got the long term tenure award as they had completed three years in the organization. Obviously for an organization just four and a half years old, this was an achievement. There has been no visible people issue in the past. It was like a small close knit family. In last one year, the population of the organization had gone up three times to around two and a half thousand employees as the business grew many folds. However, the rapid growth in number of employees never made anyone feel that there is any segmentation among employee groups based on tenure. Everyone remained busy in their own little world and kept working towards their assigned individual objectives.

As it would be for most young organizations, the place had a free work culture. Free snacks and cold drinks, a carom and foosball table in pantry, no work timings or dress code and bean bags around work stations were just some of the enablers organization had in place. People coming in shorts and t-shirt and enjoying a game of carom between the works was a common site. Office in central posh locality of the city where lot of youth hangout places were around just added further charm to the entire work environment that organization had created.

Manager- team interaction was very friendly at allsold.com. Since the team comprised of similar people in terms of pedigree and age-group, they gelled well- more like friends than manager-subordinate. In some cases it was extension of college senior-junior relationship. Most of the discussions were informal and over a tea-smoke break. Hence some of the formal serious business meetings were also very ‘cool’ in the way they were conducted, though the debated topic were often found to be a burning problem.

About Mohan

If organization was a popular name to be associated with then Mohan too was regarded as one of the most reputed HR professional of his experience level in the industry. He has worked with big IT and ITES organizations in his earlier stints. He was known for some employee friendly policies he had introduced while working with one of the IT majors. The basket of benefits he introduced helped his previous employer in retaining people as the IT company was facing stiff competition from it’s competitors. He is still basking in the glory of the job he did almost 7-8 years ago. Mohan also carried a reputation to be a great and aggressive task master and had delivered on numerous occasions for his organization. With experience of 15 years and a relevant masters’ degree from Cambridge, allsold.com could not have got a better person for the top HR job.

About the industry

The e-retail industry being young, technology focused and in innovative space, is becoming a popular choice among the young job seekers if they had to select between Indian companies. The e-commerce industry needs people to work in technology, retail, customer-support and supply chain. The new form of organization had flavour of several industries in one. Era of old world IT services companies was now over and the e-retail was all set to rule the roost as preferred employer. The rapid growth and uncertainty ahead became key points of attraction for the young brigade as their KRAs are not pre-scripted. Since the entire industry itself is going through a metamorphosis, all e-retailers need to have their employees on edge of their seats. Despite being in existence for more than six years, we can say that the industry is still in infant state as far as India is concerned. Hence, the actions need to be dynamic and real time. One has to adapt quickly to the change in strategy and focus areas of the company and this has become their selling point as an employer. Apart from a pretty volatile work environment, the new generation of job seekers surely have their preference towards a ‘cool company’ where they are free to dress their way and be independent of time schedule, unlike some IT services where clocking of minimum hours and a severe dress code were followed in stringent way.

When Mohan joined the organization and found most of the stories heard about the organization is true. He found that there is no dearth of growth stories of individuals. Lot of people in business functions have grown very fast as the company grew exponentially in last two years. He was glad that he joined an organization which is already having a great culture and environment. From HR stand point, the only area he felt that required to be uplifted was having standard HR processes in place. Hence to begin with, he decided to focus on strengthening of key HR processes. He wanted the processes to be the DNA of the organizations. He very well knew the importance of having a process driven system in larger organizations. Allsold.com was growing to become a mid-size organization and it was important for them to adopt processes even in their HR activities, be it induction, performance management and appraisal, any development program or support in terms of travel, phone reimbursement or broadband connections. He knew that it is important to drive standard policies around these areas. He also wanted to give a formal structure to manager-subordinate interaction in order to have a serious and formal career discussion. His initial thrust and focus drew a lot of resistance from senior business managers and criticism for him stating that he is over aggressive, killing the DNA of the young company and is a non-friendly HR head. However, he was unfazed by the attack and kept progressing diligently highlighting one process gap after another. Sometimes he even got the feedback from founders to become less process oriented as HR processes are new for the organization. Hence he should bring them in slowly and shall not burden managers with HR paraphernalia. Mohan was becoming unpopular among the business leaders and a few even called him a cultural misfit for the organization. On the other hand, Mohan was toying with some other ideas altogether. He wanted the organization to be established as a brand. He wanted them to be regarded as one of the best employers. This could be done when an organization participate in such surveys and is rated well. Any such survey has several parameters like people-processes, friendly environment and growth stories.

As an experienced HR person, he knew the parameters on which such evaluations are done. He has been part of teams who were in the top quadrant as best employer during his previous stints. Friendly manager-team interaction, friendly work environment, growth stories were already there and now with some focus on processes, Mohan was sure that he will make a big bang announcement soon. With base already set up, Mohan decided to go for the final kill and go aggressive with his process drives. Mohan invited people from one of the HR institutions who perform such surveys globally to visit the office of allsold.com. The vibrant office impressed them too and some minor feedbacks were shared. Buoyant by their encouragement, Mohan registered with one of the leading business magazine too for such survey. Both the surveys were around three months apart with the business magazine having the survey later and Mohan believed that it will be consolidation of the point he wants to make.

The entry into top employer of the country club will catapult Mohan’s name in the industry and establish his authority in the organization, something he has been trying to do during last six months- since he joined. He knew that young blood organizations have the history to spoil the party for big companies when it comes to being the best employers. There were numerous examples in last five years when a young, innovative and a company with less than fifteen hundred employees has done well in such surveys. Barring some MNCs who were recognized globally for their people support, Mohan was confident of beating most of the competition.

The day came nearer. Sample population was chosen to pilot the survey tool and avoid any technical glitches. The parameters and some of the highlights about the organization were talked about through company-wide mailers from founders’ email id and posters. This was first of its kind initiative for the organization. In all possible way, Mohan and his team were trying to generate the pride in the employee while they are associated with allsold.Com. Last fifteen days before the survey witnessed the bombardment of mails. They kept sharing the growth in customer base, top line, bottom line, employee base, category wise growth to showcase all that has been achieved. Survey was opened for four days and within first day itself, around 70% of the employees took the pretty lengthy survey of around 75 odd questions. They finally ended the campaign with around 95% employee participation. Mohan was feeling proud and was keeping his fingers crossed. The results would take around three months and in the meanwhile the second survey would be done too. He thought for a moment that he would not get some time to improve the areas of concern highlighted by the survey but soon he was out of it as he was confident that there will not be many such areas. All he wanted to ensure that some of the points are reinforced.  He wanted most people to participate and that too under the ‘halo’ and ‘recency’ effect of the mailers.

The second survey also happened with the same fanfare.  Now, there was a lot of buzz on the floor as the result of the earlier survey was about to come. The surveying institution shared the survey result with Mohan a day before they were to put the list of top 100 employers and the extended list on their website. While opening the email, Mohan felt that he is opening his report card shared by his class teacher.

Mohan was shocked to see that they do not feature in top 100 at all- nowhere in the top quadrant. Most of the scores were between 60^th to 70^th percentiles. Even the absolute scores were not encouraging. Some of the major concerns highlighted by employees were communication in the organization, fairness by managers as well as management, people development, training and support from manager for development. Trust in managers and management was very low as per the response given. Surely all the informal interaction with managers and mailers from founders’ email id has not worked for Mohan and allsold.com. All the enablers like free snacks, work timings etc were merely captured by the employees during the survey. It was a significant cost for the organization but went purely unnoticed.  

Now Mohan was worried. Tomorrow the results will go public and everyone will know the fact. Today he is having meeting with management team to share the results. He is absolutely clueless about the poor show. He was almost certain of a top 100 finish if not top 50 as it was their first entry. He doesn't know how to tackle the today's meeting with top management. 

Few months later

Mohan has decided to put down his papers. The second survey results were worse than the first. All his plans and ‘BHAG’ came down crumbling. The attrition in the organization has been on upward trend only since the survey happened. Few people blamed him for triggering a chain reaction of resignations by starting such surveys. In his illustrious career, this was perhaps the only black spot and his decision led to his shortest stint with any organization. There is no buzz about the best employer survey now. Neither anyone is talking about the survey nor there are any plans to focus on next year’s surveys. The show was over for Mohan, allsold.com and employees- Curtains !!

Some open ended questions related to the subject

• What makes Google the best employer? Most of the surveys have Google as best employer (2014) in India.
• In 2013, an old world industry like NTPC with 25000+ employees and a new age venture Make my trip with 1500 employees featured in top 10 as per Great Place to Work (GPTW). Is there a common practice between the two contrasting organizations?
• In 2014, all of top 10 employers as per GPTW, had an employee base less than 9000. Is it a coincidence?
• Is it right to segment employers as per employee strength during such rankings?
• Below is the list of best employers ranked by business today magazine. Do we see a trend?

References

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/business-today-peoplestrong-best-companies-to-work-for-2013/1/208130.html

http://www.greatplacetowork.in/publications/blog-posts-articles-and-news/771-indias-best-retail-companies-to-work-for-2014

http://www.greatplacetowork.in/best-companies/indias-best-companies-to-work-for/740-2013

HR in an Organization Part- 3: HR and ROI

Introduction

Human Resources is a key enabling function for any organization. You may call it a support function or even a cost center. This means, that the function is not directly contributing towards the revenue or profit for the organization but surely adds to the overall running cost. Obviously, no organization will be foolish to incur a cost without any returns coming from it. Most of the times, HR in an organization is not valued as they are termed as very subjective function without any objective measure. Hence, HR needs to create a system where some of the key HR functions are able to show value addition to the entire organization. The return may be tangible or intangible but a definite measure will surely make the case stronger for HR to partner strategically with the business and demonstrate their value and interventions.  

Scorecard approach

Scorecard is best way to show the progress over a period of time if the parameters are correctly captured and measured. The scorecard for HR shall be strategically aligned to business strategy. This means, that HR shall be supporting the vision an organization has chartered for itself for the given period. However, we often make a mistake of not aligning the two. The non congruence of business and HR scorecard causes friction between the two functions and thus the required benefit of the scorecard implementation is not reaped.

Any HR scorecard at the time of development shall consider four major areas of impact

Financial impact: At the end of the day, any function shall be able to give a considerable value to the organization, either in terms of revenue or in terms of savings and it is going to be no different for HR. some of the measures can be

• Revenue per employee which also reflects the correct skill identified for the job and hired
• Cost or percentage cost of employees underutilized 
• Employee cost for pipeline projects

Value for customer: the HR processes shall be able to deliver value to internal as well as external customers. The HR interventions can mean some direct output for external customers if they see

• The organization has thought leaders who are respected in the competitive space 
• People engaged in their project are competent and skilled
• They see their job going as per schedule and skillfully done

Development of people and retention: The scorecard shall measure the association people are having with the organization. The association determines the productivity at the work. Frequent turnover of teams or disengaged employee always causes loss of productivity. Some of the measures can be 

• Intellectual property
• Proportion of people progressed internally
• Number of upward movement an employee sees during his tenure
• Average growth rate of an employee
• Tenure in organization

Efficiency of internal processes: The internal processes shall always improve and facilitate the desirable outcome. From a process standpoint, it can be considered effective if there is 

• Quality assurance at every process
•  The process is helping in reducing the number of transactions
• Reduction in turnaround time
• Compliance

Approach towards Scorecard: DMAIC and Pareto

While coming to scorecard and it’s implementation, it is important to have a systematic quality approach. DMAIC and Pareto principle put together can help in creating one scorecard for the organization. There could be N variables while we are creating the problem equation from an HR standpoint. We cannot approach all the problems simultaneously. Without understanding the impact, reasons and the measure of the problem area, any approach will be similar to shooting in the dark. To have a proper solution, we need to go for the most systematic process. Pareto principle gives us the most impactful problem area(s) and DMAIC gives a definite measure and steps to improve.

The first step is to make a complete laundry list of problem areas in purview of HR with their respective reasons and impacts. Problem can be in areas of talent acquisition, talent development, talent engagement or the process part. Within every area, there can be different sub areas to improve. For instance, talent acquisition may have problems in sourcing effectiveness, sourcing channel, turnaround time or candidate experience. Similarly, the talent development can have problems areas as identification of competency at each level, required training skills in organization, succession planning etc. Hence it is important to make complete list of areas that can be worked upon.

Define: Out of the laundry list, it is important to segregate the problem areas which are impactful. Not every step of process can be worked upon simultaneously as it may be biting more than that can be chewed. For instance, in talent management area, attrition, employee satisfaction, development of people and succession planning can be areas to consider. They all may be related but the source could be one or two. Defining of the problem statement accurately will help in bringing the correct focus while targeting the areas.

Measure: Performance measure for the parameter needs to be defined correctly to ensure the right tracking of data. The defining of measure also ensures consistency of measure over a period of time. For instance, an organization may select to target attrition and define it as voluntary attrition over an employee base. The other definition can be overall attrition over employee base. Both the definitions are accurate and organization can adapt one as per the need but they need to be consistent over a considerable period to track the changes.

Analyze: After defining the problem and how/ what to measure, it is important for HR to do industry benchmarking of the parameter and set the standard for itself. Setting the standard for self can be dependent on lot of other areas apart from industry benchmark. An organization having compensation bracket much higher to others in the market would like to see a better standard than industry benchmark for attrition. The organization is incurring extra salary cost and hence would like to see greater returns compared to peer organizations. Apart from setting up the performance goals, this step shall also identify sources of variation.

Improve: After identification of parameter, process, standard and measure, the job ahead of HR is to improve the score by taking certain measures around people and process practices. The intervention has to be definite, time bound and target driven. A vague improvement plan without target and timeline may not give us the required result. Accurate design of operating limits and interdependency of variables shall be considered while making any improvement plans.

Control: No race is won till finish line is crossed. A good start if not sustained, will never give organization the desired result. Most of the HR initiatives die as they are unable to give long term sustenance to their ideas.  HR shall do any course correction if required to ensure that defined end results and timeline remain unaltered.

Some of the metrics for different function can be as below,

Talent Acquisition

It is important for talent acquisition to show the return of their initiatives and team structure. Recruitment system, use of placement consultants or any other sourcing channel and resources are cost for recruitment. Some of the desirable outputs for recruitment to showcase can be 

• Turnaround time
• Cost per hire over a period of time
• Breakeven period for capital investments

Talent Management

Any step taken by talent management team can mean huge financial impact depending on the population of the business unit. Fairness and differentiation needs to be carefully balanced for the desired output which is engaged and efficient workforce.Some of the measures for talent management team can be 

• Attrition- critical and otherwise
• ESAT
• Average tenure
• Performance data
• Percentage of open position closed through internal movements (horizontal as well as vertical)

Leadership and Development

Leadership and development is important function of HR and is responsible for development and capability of employees in the organization. This function is not in visible action on a daily basis and hence for this function it might be difficult to prove it's worth. A permanent capability building team as well as external trainers, both are sizable cost. To give a proper return, the function can measure some of the below parameters

• People out of eligible population being promoted to next level
• People having concerns about training
• Number of vacancies at senior leadership filled internally

Compensation and Benefits

This team has lot of competitive benchmarking to do. The team while defining the compensation plan has to ensure that company gets the benefit of incurred cost. The success measure can be

• Attrition due to compensation and to competition
• Mix of long term and short term incentive
• Differentiating package or component introduced

Shared Services

Shared services have lot of supporting roles to all the other functions of HR. Any lapse from their end can impact the effectiveness of other areas and overall cost for the organization. 

• Lapse in background verification
• Lapse in salary processing like PF, gratuity, ESIC etc.

Sample Scorecard

Function	Parameter	Description	Industry standard	Target	Actual achieved	Score out of 10	Weightage %	Weighted Score	Trend / Change from last period
Talent Acquisition	Turn around time	Average time to close a position	45 days	30 days	39	7	10%	0.7	Up
Talent Acquisition	Cost per hire	Total expenses/ number of hires	INR 3000	INR 3000	INR 2000	10	15%	1.5	Up
Talent Acquisition	Percentage sourcing through referral	Profiles hred through internal reference/ Total no. of hires	40%	40%	33%	10	8%	0.8	Up
Talent Management	Infant attrition	No. of people leaving in first 90 days/ total no. of hires during the period	<5%	5%	9%	6	8%	0.48	Down
Talent Management	Critical Attrition	No. of people with ratings 1/ No. of employees in rating 1	<5%	<5%	7%	7	15%	1.05	Down
Talent Management	ESAT	Score as per survey	4	4.2	4	9	8%	0.72	Up
Leadership and development	Leadership position filled internally	Positions filled internally above a certain level	NA	4 No	2	5	10%	0.5	Down
Leadership and development	Number of training mandays per employee	No. of people attending the no. of days of training/ total no. of employees	4	6	3	5	10%	0.5	Up
Shared services	Payrolling	Errors in payroll	0	0	1	8	10%	0.8	Same
Shared services	Non compliance	Adherence to required norms	0 Non compliance	0	1	7	6%	0.42	Same
							100%	7.47

Problems vary with organization lifecycle

We cannot use same scorecard for every organization. As an organization grows and the competitive space changes for the organization, the parameters and measure of the scorecard has to change accordingly. A young organization may focus more on parameters like talent acquisition while a matured organization’s focus area can be development of individuals and creation of brand value for the organization. Change of competitive space can also lead to change in approach. A sudden spring up of competitors may force organization to have attrition as focus area. In an industry which highly research oriented, creation of intellectual property can be critical component of scorecard. The scorecard needs constant customization as the situation for organization changes, both internally and externally.

Conclusion

We need to understand that not every problem can be solved. We need to prioritize the problem areas and act. Some of the problems may be miniscule in impact but will require a lot of effort to bring in the required change. Hence, it is important to prioritize not only in terms of impact but also to segregate the low hanging fruits from far-fetched dreams. Hence scorecard should be impactful and precise instead of laundry list. Most of the times organizations make the mistake of putting lot of action items in the scorecard and thus as a result, the impact attached to any parameter has to be reduced to accommodate more line items. If the number of factors remain finite, realistic and impactful, due impact number can be accordingly attached.

HR in an Organization Part- 2: One HR, Many Roles

One HR: Many Roles

Objective

We always come down with heavy bashing of HR pointing out what they don’t do or do incorrectly. However, it is time to acknowledge and give them some credit this time. HR people are often specialists in one area but they need to also be jack of most other areas within the purview of HR. As they need to don many hats during their stint, this small write up is a small attempt to clear the perception many people carry about HR. This article may also help people who would like to create their career in HR as they may be better prepared for the reality.

It is always good to have deeper and diverse knowledge. One should be in constant strive to gain the expertize especially in the professional space to get the competitive edge. But sometimes the required knowledge for one function is so deep and complex, getting into other domains becomes practically very difficult. Yet, HR cannot escape that. There are many reasons for the HR function to be complex. Firstly let us understand the structure of Human Resource and the involvement of various functions of HR.

Figure 1: Functions of HR

Figure 2: Employee Lifecycle and HR Functions in Action

If HR functions are so clearly defined then what makes the function so complex or why there is a need to multitask? The reasons are as below

•  Human Resource as a function is often involved in lot of internal cross team work.
• Generally people are not able to differentiate between two different functions of HR and they reach out to any HR for any HR related query.
• There is lot of overlap between two functions during employee life cycle. Output of one function is input for another which increases the need to understand the complete HR process flow.  
• The function is very delicate in terms of data and process sensitivity. Incorrect information to any internal or external stake holder could be detrimental.
• Lot of legal angles are involved like employment laws, immigration etc.
• Cases may have a similar background, but each case needs to be treated as individual case and there cannot be one sieve for all.

The complexity for HR does not end here. There are certain questions which will always loom in front of HR function. There will always be a dilemma in front of HR. Balancing these tricky situations is no different from walking on a razor edge. Yet, day in and day out, HR has to face at least one such situation.

•       Is an employee a cell in excel or we need to always have empathy towards the employees?

•       Shall we stick to policy or make an exception and if we make an exception then to whom or whom all and how many?

•       Shall we focus on retention or promote healthy attrition?

•       Shall compliances be given prime importance or we can compromise on few for business’ speed and agility?

•        Shall we stick to ethics or have a way out considering the situation or urgency? After all the objective is to help business grow.

•       Shall we focus on budget or quality of manpower? What is the optimum point?

•       How to avoid a situation where Just In Time (JIT) becomes Some How In Time?

To deal with so many challenges in everyday life, any HR professional has to assume many roles which we normally do not associate with HR but to perform their job effectively, Human Resource function need to assume one or more of the below roles which may change as per situation. The roles can be

1. Statistician or data miner:  Any HR function requires lot of data orientation. Fulfillment of open position, headcount, top performers, attrition or employee satisfaction; all are numbers to be tracked on a regular basis. These numbers collectively gives us the health of organization and the problem areas. The problem can be accurately diagnosed only if the correct data is rightly captured, sliced and diced, represented in comprehendible manner and correctly interpreted. Any corrective course can be put on to action after problem and it’s source is diagnosed.  Hence, HR people do lot data oriented work.
2. External stakeholder managers The very first thought which comes to our mind is that recruitment team deals with external stakeholder. But apart from that there are many other external dealings where HR comes into action. Employer branding, immigration, dealing with government agencies and participation in forums for discussion or best employers are just few examples. Some of these activities are must for the creation of brand value for the organization.
3. Finance expert: Yes. It is finance. Generally HR people are perceived to be weak in finance but HR act as financial controller as well accountant. HR people have sufficient command on budgeting and structuring. They need to get the right optimization of compensation structure to have a win-win situation for employee and employer. Employee would like to have maximum take home component out of given cost to company while any organization would like to minimize the cost to company while offering maximum benefits to the employee. We all have experienced the fine art of getting compensation explained when we had taken up the offer. That consolidates my point that HR is adept to understand the details of finances. We also know that HR is responsible for changes in compensation during performance cycle. What we do not know that HR plays a significant role while deciding this huge budgetary impact to the organization. A control over salary cost and with sufficient differentiation in hikes and payouts with respect to performance needs to be carefully balanced and HR does that only.
4. Legal expert: Adherence to complex central and state employment laws, manpower transfer (within and across countries) laws and compliance laws are mandatory for any organization. The onus is on HR to ensure compliance on PF and gratuity act, ESIC act, local people hiring and required documentation during movement of manpower. There can be a legal team to guide and support but the core responsibilities always lies with HR
5. Market researchers: HR people need to be constantly updated with market trends in terms of hiring trend, competitor analysis, competitive or differentiating benefits, positioning of salary band with respect to market trend etc.  HR are aggressive with market research in order to give that differentiating factor to the organization. The source of data can be an in house team or external agencies.  
6. Consultant: HR is an enabling function and plays a vital role in giving inputs to the business. Availability of skills in a particular area, optimum manpower requirement, partnering for development of internal resources, HR has to bring in their experience and expertise at a regular interval. These suggestions are vital for planning of business and HR assume the role of external consultants.
7. Inspectors: As custodians of many processes, HR needs to safeguard lot of processes. Mandatory checks at the time of recruitment, one’s development process, PF filing, non-competitive agreement or no hire clauses, examples are many. These processes are like traffic signals telling the organization or traffic to move or stop and HR ensures that signaling system is working fine without any collisions.
8. Agony Aunt: Yes, we all know whom to reach out when we have any concerns. Be it trouble with manager, wrong salary, medical emergency or planning a long term break.  

Below table will help in clearing any leftover misconception or wrong perception about HR’s capability

Function of HR	What People perceive HR’s role to be	What HR actually does
Talent Acquisition	Schedule Interviews           Source Resume	Compensation fitment Maintain parity Track fulfillment of open positions vis-à-vis targets Competitor analysis
Talent Management	Arrange parties and fun events	Grievance handling            Performance management            Identifying key resources            Attrition management            Employee Satisfaction            Employee Utilization
Compensation and Benefits	Give arbitrary hike	Compensation benchmarking Budget control of overall salary cost Differentiation of performance  Benefits programs like insurance, food coupons, car lease etc.
Programs	Send mails on health, surveys etc	Running campaigns like anti sexual harassment or safety programs, participating in external surveys, centrally driven objectives like induction
Leadership and Development	Conduct training which often infringes into our delivery schedules	Identifying skill gaps of individual and make them ready for next level with relevant interferences.
Payroll and shared services	Send salaries every month	Maintaining the uniqueness of every salary Legal compliance and related filings with respect to PF, gratuity, income tax etc.

To conclude, HR is perhaps one of the trickiest and potentially most impact creating enabling function. There are paradoxes and fuzzy logic or I may even get away by saying hazy logic here. There is no binary approach and many a times, HR needs to behave like an octopus, having his hands spread in all possible direction. In such situation, HR has to create their followers within business, which will help in some faster results. There is lot of misconceptions about role of HR as they do a lot of transactional work too. Hence, HR needs to do one more job effectively which they often fail at; perception management about what they do and what they can do to create an impact for the business. Not an easy task but surely doable !!