Tuesday, September 25, 2007

We are the Champions!!!

I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I've come through

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world

I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it
I thank you all

But it's been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I ain't gonna lose

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world
- Queen

A tribute to the men in blue and all those who stood by them through the tough times

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

एक दिन मेरी जिन्दगी और लंबी हो गई

एक दिन मेरी जिन्दगी और लंबी हो गई,
जाने क्या थी चाहत जो जिन्दगी भी अदनी हो गई,
शुरुआत तो नेक थी, पर जाने कब नियत खोटी हो गई,
कुछ और, कुछ और कि चाहत में इंसानियत छोटी हो गई,
एक दिन मेरी जिन्दगी और लंबी हो गयी!

जाने यह मन क्यों हर मोड़ पर भटकता है,
बंद, टूटे जर्जर रास्तों पे भी दिल मचलता है,
क्या पता था कि जिन्दगी का एक स्याह रुप है,
सफ़र में धुंधली छांह है तो आगे कड़ी धुप है,
जाने किसकी तलाश में यह सफ़र आज और लंबी हो गई!

शायद यह प्रियजनों कि दुआओं का असर था,
या शायद, इस जिन्दगी कि खूबसूरती से मैं बेसब्र था,
कभी थे रंग, आरजू, तमन्नाएँ हमारी आंखों से जिंदा,
पर क्यों आज हर खुशियों को यह आँखें करती हैं शर्मिंदा,
शायद, आज इस सन्नाटे कि उमर उन खुशियों से लंबी हो गई!

एक दिन मेरी जिन्दगी और लंबी हो गयी!

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Human Resource Management - Professionals or Parasites

The good part of being a MBA from a premier institute is that you always have decent and multiple options to change jobs, the bad part is we tend to avail it more often that probably we like to, and the worst part is that you have to deal with people who “specialise” in this field called Human Resource Management.

I for one have always been at a loss of reason to justify professionals in these field, except for those doing clerical jobs like payroll processing, getting joining formalities done and typing out appointment, termination letter etc. The more organizations I change and the more organizations I meet, I get more and more convinced of redundancy senior personnel in HR. The best HR person is someone who keeps his focus on systems and systems alone, and keeps away from so-called core HR jobs. I guess its time for some objective reasoning:

Reason 1 – Who does HR in a b-school? Invariably the people taking up HR in a b-school are those, who are not smart enough to understand Finance or IT and are too laidback to meet the challenges that Marketing (Read Sales) poses. They want a cushy comfortable time in the b-school, to generally have a ball of a time in the b-school and cushy comfortable no-nonsense job thereafter. So basically the very pool that HR draws from is full of lazy incompetent people.

Reason 2 – What exactly do they do? They possess absolutely no skill, no specialisation, from entry level to senior most, what they do is just talk, and talk nonsense. Let’s look at their sub-functions and what exactly they are supposed to do:
  • Recruitment – How would they interview or screen a candidate, when they anyway don’t understand the requirements of the business and skill sets.
  • Training – this is the funniest, they don’t know jackshit themselves, and what will they train you on. If someone else has to come to train someone else, your role to the best of my knowledge is limited to admin and logistics work. And when you are not meeting resources on a regular basis, don’t understand business, how do high sounding things like “assessment of skill gaps” and stuff happens. Beats me. Completely
  • Compensation Management – What happens, if you give less competent people, who are supposedly “as educated” as other resources, the responsibility to decide compensation and career growth of other resources who are in the line function and obviously HR people are totally incompetent to judge that. As a result they tend to consider Human resource as a commodity, try to short-change their own prospective and incumbent employees, create discomfort and in many cases force good resources to leave. And what they do show to the management for their efforts, the pennies they save on salary, and what does go unaccounted is pounds they loose on training and creating another resource. Quiet a sorry state of affairs it is.
  • HR Systems – I think this is the only area they can really contribute, but unfortunately most lack competency to correct and set that up. ICICI is one exception, where they have managed to put up brilliant systems in place, so that inspite of lower salaries compared to multinational banks, high attrition rates and general talent crunch, they have been able to meet their recruitment targets, retain people at higher levels and grow at a heady rate. Unfortunately, most other organisations have failed there. Anyways a systems guy is better equipped to take care of that.

Reason 3 – What habits they inculcate – When line people slog and work to build their skills competencies and network which are critical to their performance, HR people are a pampered lot, who are pampered by various institutes, who are pampered by prospective candidates, and also candidates who finally get recruited. Then they get to arrange fancy training programmes at fancy locations and party when there when line people are getting trained. Man am I jealous… I guess a wee bit, but would still prefer not being there.


Reason 4 – Empty mind is a devil’s workshop – What happens to people who do not have anything productive to do and are supposed to sit on a chair all day long. Well mind doesn’t stop. So their innovative mind starts working overtime to find ways and means to make their presence felt in the organization. So then they start generating a slew of useless policies like, people who lunch for more than half an hour will be penalised, attendance should be monitored through bio-metrics. Lets start having training sessions on Saturdays to spoil people’s weekends, all off-sites and other activities should be on weekends to maximise the working hours. Bonuses should be delayed and be paid in instalments, so that the Company can save the bonus when people leave, the notice period should be increased to 3 months to make the relieving painful, the list could be endless. The problem is, all this creates a bad brand value for the organization, and employers start becoming vary of organizations like these. Result – over a period of time the Companies have to pay more to attract talent, and then they struggle to give the required growth, people quit, then same cycle repeats. This is probably the single most reason why I would never have a HR “professional” in my Company when I start one. Only HR clerks would be good enough for me. Anyways HR is too serious a business to be left to HR “professionals”.

I could have taken this opportunity to share my trysts with HR, and had initially thought so, but then realised that the pandemic is of much larger proportion and I would be doing criminal injustice to this Herculean problem, if I limited it to my own experiences. But would surely love to listen to yours…