Hridayveda Mar'15

HRidayveda

Engaging and Integrating a

Global Workforce

Editorial

HRiday is proud to present the first edition of our quarterly newsletter

for 2015.

With increased global connectivity, emergence of virtual teams, rapid

international expansions, and outsourcing, every major organization has

become an amalgamation of people from diverse nationalities and cul-

tures. As a result, it is imperative that organizations design their policies

in a manner conducive to the coherent working of a diverse workforce.

The focus must be on uniting the diverse workforce towards the accom-

plishment of a shared vision in a manner that harnesses each individu-

al’s abilities to the maximum.

Keeping this in mind, we chose to focus the content on the ’Engagement

and Integration of a Global Workforce’.

We hope you enjoy reading this volume.

Regards,

Team HRiday

Newsfeed

What do top HR executives think about the bell curve?

The normal distribution curve, which rears its head during appraisals, has been de-bated endlessly since it forces a ranking system on employees. Doing away with a bell curve in most organizational contexts assumes there is no deadwood, that every team member meets threshold performance criteria and is an equal partner to an overall impact. It also assumes talent and its operating reality is homogeneous. The reality may not be so in every environment. There are underperformers, free riders and downright rejects in many situations.

Read more.

Why should organizations focus on their First Time Man-agers?

Every organization on boards a lot of smart people as freshers and wants to groom them for larger roles. It is common knowledge that it is a better option to groom a line of middle level managers than to source them from outside laterally. But many organizations start focusing on them only when they transition from a Mid Manager role to a Senior Manager role. The point they seem to miss is that, it will be way eas-ier and economical if they plan an intervention early in the careers of these associ-ates. Read More.

Indian companies transform HR with SAP cloud

Successful companies recognize that attracting and engaging today’s talent — and

ensuring access to tomorrow’s talent — requires robust, fluid, end-to-end human capi-

tal management (HCM) solutions. And an increasing number are turning to Success-

Factors, an SAP company, to do it. Leveraging the company’s market-leading cloud-

based HCM solutions, innovative organizations in India are developing and executing

workforce strategies that enable them to drive their business today and gain ad-

vantages tomorrow .

Read More.

Counselling and Globalisation

Globalisation affects all areas of life, including ap-proaches to mental distress. Counselling and individual therapy are now almost universally accepted in West-ern cultures as effective and appropriate for emotional healing. Counselling has even been described as the new religion!

There have been many attempts to define what is meant by globalisation. Sachs (2003) while defining the process of globalisation as the ‘interconnectedness of the world through new systems of communication’, added 'Universal cultures have done immense harm’. So is counselling yet another avenue for the promotion

of cultural sameness or does it actively work to sustain and support cultural diversity and the uniqueness of every individual?

The process of socialisation in a culture provides a child with the fundamental as-sumptions by which s/he makes sense of human experience, and always includes implicit value systems, attitudes, and ways of perceiving and understanding. Each culture also provides its members with a conceptual framework for making sense of illness and emotional distress and suggesting ways of healing which make sense within that cultural framework. Thus, any understanding of emotional distress is al-ways embedded within a particular society’s ways of making sense of the world.

In Western cultures an individualistic view of 'the self' values separateness and independence, and emotional maturity is characterised by the capacity to express one’s own views and opinions. Children are socialised to think of and experience themselves as individual and separate – ‘A Child is taught that there is a self that is in control of his/her actions.’

In contrast, other cultural traditions such as ours, socialise children to priori-tise connections and interrelationship with others as the basis of psychological

well-being. Thus persons are only parts of a greater social whole and cannot be un-derstood separately from it. What dominates the entire life and world view is not the individual just there, but the community, society, family or group to which he/she be-longs. It becomes a self-evident truth that the community determines a lot of what life is, of what the individual makes of it, and the values that each individual adopts and realises. The criteria of success are community-determined.

Increasingly, with the migration to the globalised cities, the concurrent decline in tradi-tional social structures, and education curricula which are dominated by European/North American understanding of phenomena and omit traditional history and cultural language, we simultaneously psychologically inhabit ‘two worlds’, i.e. hold both the Western and traditional sets of cultural assumptions about ‘the self’. Socialisation in the two very different notions of self can create a great deal of internal psycho-logical conflict in terms of identity, which we then have to find ways to recon-cile.

This might help some of you understand the conflict you may experience while consid-ering your strong individual wants and desires and the equally strong need for familial acceptance and fulfillment of social expectations. And should you need help dealing with this conflict you know where to find me!

Gayathri Rao Konkar (Student Counsellor)

Engaging & Integrating a Global Workforce

Why would Intel, one of the world’s largest organizations in-

vest a huge fortune of $300 million to build a more diverse

workforce? The reason is simple, i.e., Intel knows the secret

to success. It is that, you might remodel your manufacturing

processes or change your suppliers or marketing strategies

but you still might not succeed as you might be overlooking

the most important aspect of your company – people.

What does diversity bring to the workplace? Why is there a

need for a global workforce in companies? Customer bases

are becoming more diverse and our workforce needs to evolve accordingly. True di-

versity helps organisations gain power as the organization can recruit a variety of out-

standing people with diverse backgrounds, ideas, skills and cultures. Thus, business-

es can effectively market to consumer of different ethnicities and increase their mar-

ket share. The potential offered by these groups of individuals is limitless as the com-

pany can choose from the best of the best. Diversity fosters an empowering environ-

ment of creativity and innovation. According to a Forbes study, 272 companies out of

321 (worth $500 million) agreed that diversity is critical to create and innovate. En-

gaging and integrating a global workforce is one of the most difficult jobs for HR exec-

utives. Although there are many advantages of having diversity in the workforce, it is

tough to substantiate the pros over the cons of language barrier, difference in atti-

tudes, beliefs and their culture. Various companies are thus implementing exhaus-

tive strategies to ensure diverse workforce’s inclusion.

TCS, one of the largest companies in India with 183 offices across 42 countries,

250,000 employees representing 113 different nationalities, has an 8 percent non-

Indian workforce — Americans, Europeans, Latin Americans, Chinese citizens and

others. Since TCS is continuously expanding globally, it is hiring experts locally in

most of the countries it operates. TCS launched ‘Culture Meter’ in 2008 on its intra-

net which talks about the country, its culture, do’s and don’ts, and TCS’s business in-

formation about that country. About 10 years ago, the company also launched

‘Maitree’, a global platform for employees and their family members to join the ‘caring

and sharing culture’ of TCS. TCS also has a Foreign Language Initiatives (FLI)

group which focuses on cultural integration and language training. The essence of

TCS’ diversity integrity is constant cultural sensitisation. Also, TCS ensures that the

employees, who are to be posted abroad, undergo ‘relocation training’, which partic-

ularly focuses on training in various aspects of the culture of the country where they

are going.

Infosys has recognized the need for diversity and inclusion of different genders, na-

tionalities and people of different age and physical abilities and they implement it via

‘ACTION’ which stands for-

Auditing inclusivity and diversity levels

Creating change agents

Training managers

Initiating and implementing work models

Organizing and implementing work models

Organizing and assisting affinity groups

Networking with external bodies to benchmark practices

They also have Employee resource groups that address the needs of the workforce

and organize peer to peer forums, leader speak series, conferences and special

events.

Morgan Stanley, in December 2014, introduced a new program ‘Multicultural Pro-

fessional Development Series’ focusing towards junior multicultural talent like an-

alysts and associate new hires to interact with senior leaders so that they can hone

their skills and grow faster. According to Susan Reid, Global Head of Diversity

and Inclusion at Morgan Stanley “Professional development and peer engage-

ment are crucial building blocks to a career’s strong foundation,” It also holds

the Multicultural Leadership Summit for diverse Financial Advisors, offering

them peer mentoring, business development and networking opportunities.

These are just few names which come to mind while we talk about integration.

Most of the initiatives launched by these and other companies are based on the

4Ts i.e. diversity Training, Transparency in the way that employees are able to

express their thoughts about diversity and transparency in information distribu-

tion when dealing with diversity related issues, Time as a heterogeneous group

requires much more time to adapt and most importantly, Togetherness i.e. ca-

maraderie between the employees and their dedication to a shared vision.

We can move forward only if we move together!

Aakanksha Tanwar

References:

http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-pledges-300m-to-build-a-more-diverse-work-force/

http://www.multiculturaladvantage.com/recruit/diversity/diversity-in-the-workplace-

benefits-challenges-solutions.asp

http://www.diversityjournal.com/4238-four-ts-to-deal-with-diversity/

http://www.tata.com/careers/articlesinside

http://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/professional-development-series-for-junior-

multicultural-talent/

www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/innovation_diversity

http://www.infosys.com/sustainability/diversity/

It’s a new world!

“Companies that learn to leverage global talent markets while localizing their

HR strategies will be poised for strong perfor-

mance”

Globalization has got various organisations ventur-

ing and setting their bases in different countries. We

can see companies competing aggressively for new

markets, seeking to develop and sustain a competi-

tive advantage in the new global arena. To win this

game, human resources like all other resources

have to be managed well.

Mergers and acquisitions have been a common fea-

ture in the newspapers today, clearly hinting the need for the organisations to widen

their geographic reach and gain better prospects. These mergers and acquisitions

pose a greater set of challenges for the HR professionals as they now deal with a

workforce of different demographics, different demands and different expectations.

Our new world of business has a changed workforce. The 21st century workforce has

ambitious, youthful tech-savvy people with high expectations. Workforce is diverse

with old workers as well as the millennials. Demographic shifts have created the most

multicultural and multigenerational workforce in history.

Companies are therefore finding ways to develop innovative means to engage and in-

tegrate their global workforce.

Three keys to an engaged workforce

According to the 2014 Global Human Capital Trends report, focus should be laid on

three important areas.

Lead and develop: The report says that Leadership is the top priority in developed

and growing economies. The new world needs different kinds of leadership. The

challenges faced by a 21st century leader are different. There is a demand to meet

global flexibility and fluency as well as the need to build the ability to inspire subor-

dinates and colleagues to learn the rapidly changing technologies, to break the

barriers of domain, disciplines and field and be ready to tread an unknown terrain.

A leader should have the ability to lead in uncertain situations, ability to build relation-

ships with clients and customers of different nationalities and cultures, to imbibe

global cultural agility and to train and build a leadership pipeline.

Attract and engage

The 21st century workforce is working on a new battlefield and therefore it should

be equipped with new skills of warfare. The traditional methods of recruiting for

the job needs to be changed. The 21st century workforce should be agile, active

and passionate. They should be active and ready to go places. They should be

ready to learn and yearn to learn more each day.

HR executives face the challenge of infusing passion and purpose in the millenni-

als. The focus should move beyond retention to employee engagement and in-

clusion. Greater focus should be laid on simplifying the work environment and

preventing the new recruit from getting overwhelmed.

The use of social networks to post job openings, though a popular medium, should

not be the only channel. There is a need to go beyond Facebook and LinkedIn.

One can leverage big data to source candidates from around the globe. These

tools can help locate the candidates that are “just-the-right -fit” for the organisa-

tions.

Transform and reinvent

Flexibility to adapt to local needs, exploiting cloud technology to integrate talent,

HR and business and the agility and balance to handle both global and local

HR functions are extremely important areas to be focussed on.

The use of Cloud technology would provide a fulcrum to lift the organisations above

the hassles of managing the global workforce. Greater focus on emerging busi-

ness-critical skills and establishing a professional development team could be

useful in bringing about the change in management.

I believe Bill Pelster, Principal, Deloitte Consulting when he says “It’s an interesting

transformation that is going on, it is not about incremental change anymore. It is

about taking steps that are big, bold and innovative”

Neha Sharma

Refererece: http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/

human-capital-trends-2014.html

Events

Thank You for reading!

For feedback/suggestions, please

contact

Mayank Kalia (+917838854980)

Pooja Raina (+919561534052)

Or write to us at [email protected]