The Time to Create National Wealth of Knowledge and Experience

The Time to Create National Wealth of Knowledge and Experience

26, January, 2017

In the early 20 century Bahrain where there is no technology, schools, universities, TVs, smart phones and internet Bahrain as other GCC countries relay on rational economic resources like agriculture, pearl fishery, and some import products from India, by the time and with the changes happened during the two world wars Bahrain was colonized by British,  during this face the British start to bring their knowledge, technology, culture and their country products to Bahrain, this has made Bahrain to be open on new era and develop faster than other GCC countries especially after discovering oil since Bahrain was the first in GCC to produce it. The relay and import of brain, knowledge, technology from western countries continued during the 20 century and even 21 century, but a lot have changed as well with the technology advancement, internet and smart phones, Bahrain's people have now become more or less equal in knowledge, education, technology and human capability as western countries, today everything is shared and available and anyone with effort and smart thinking can create, innovate, write books and make successful stories and wealth not just in the west as before.

Importing brain and knowledge in this era is not the same as before, in today countries need to create their own wealth of brain from their own people, people understand the culture, thinking pattern, life style, people behavior, religion and customs, Bahrain's youth  are now more advanced with the available technology and knowledge, they use it in very creative way, they always update their knowledge and open to the world the only thing they miss is the chance and mentor to get to their potential. Private sector need to put more effort on creating national wealth of knowledge and experience, they need to go to university invest in students, provide programs for interns to learn from the work experience and expert people, to be in the market where the action and real life happen, the responsibility of creating national wealth of knowledge and experience is not only by the public sector since there is always a lack of resources and exposure to real action and dynamic environment that private sector have, the cost of import brains is higher than the cost of creating national wealth of knowledge and experience since national will work in the country and produce and progress more and more with time and increase their learning curve to reach high performance and achievement that will benefit the privet sector where secure fuel of brains for their business continuity, the country and themselves to have quality of life and the government that will reduce the pressure on the limited resources to support their employment and services. In addition the national wealth of knowledge and experience will create more wealth and resources for the economy, more financial resources, more value products and increase learning curve which are all important to build a solid ground for knowledge economy and be in the developed category of countries labeling.

The creation of national wealth of knowledge and experience in the long run will be the future for any country want to grow out of dependency and weak economy, the example of Singapore, Japan, China and Germany is the most obvious one on how investing in creating national wealth of knowledge and experience can payoff huge in the future, and how the private sector play the leader role in this process since they have the tools , resources, environment, culture and capabilities to do it in the right way and with effectiveness and efficient that the public sector.

In the coming future the private sector will realize the urge of having national wealth of knowledge and experience to fuel their business continuity and that importing brains is becoming more and more expensive and not that beneficiary as before, but will this happen before its too late for the private sector or they will take the initiative and do it right now to get the results in near future before its too late for them, only the time can tell.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME for human capital development

Informative Employee and Knowledgeable Employee

Informative Employee and Knowledgeable Employee 

Date: 20 Jan 2017

In the world of social media, internet, smart phone, technology, digital world and no limitation to what a person can access to since the world today is a small village, all these advancements that happened during the last 20 years has made the information easy to find and obtained, today you can read books, watch movies, ask for any kind of information and you will have it in seconds. This what the people dreamed of years ago and they achieved it, students employees, parents, scientists, lawyers, doctors, professors anal d other professionals and normal people they all use the today technology to obtain information or publish information and researches to the world. But with this advantage of obtaining information people somehow misunderstand the differences between information and knowledge.

When we say information we mean "the Facts provided or learned about something or someone". When we say knowledge we mean "the Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject". What is the important to know the differences? To answer this question we have to return to the definition of the two terminologies and then compare it with today employees and we will know why its important to differentiate.

Today we have two types of employees, the informative employee and knowledgeable employee, the definition of these two terminologies are the same as the above one, to explain the difference in more precise we will have a look on both from the inside and understand the importance of this matter.

The informative employee the one who has massive about a subject or some subjects  information and sometimes like google about lots of subjects, this type of employees can answer questions about a subject very quickly and provide explanation on it and he can write a research, articles and even science prepares on it, we can see this type of employee do excellent in schools, recruitment tests and interviews, they just can keep providing information all day long and blow your mind with what they have, but when it comes to real life work this employee become like a nightmare, he know what he suppose to do and how to do it but he is always late in submission, he spend long time on preparing reports, statistics but he don’t deliver the results of the objectives or task assigned, this employee is full of information but as the definition state he only have it but not sure how to use it or have the skills to do, and this is why organization use behavioral interview, instead of IQ test and school grades day, the behavioral interview provides the employer the opportunity to test the person on how used and practiced this information in the past which is predict the future uses and practices. But informative employees are not that bad and they can be very useful for the organization but they should be first identified as informative then recruit them in back office work, consultant, advisers, auditors where information is more likely to be needed than skills and results delivery.

The knowledgeable employee the one who has the information but also have on top of it the skills, behavior and practices that needed to deliver results, mostly the knowledgeable employee does not have massive information on different subjects like informative he concentrate on few subjects by practicing, experimenting, examining, trying and doing that is why he need to be concentrating on few subjects which gave him the advantage of knowledge, skills and behavior the complete set of competency of the subject matter. Knowledgeable employees not always do excellent in written tests, traditional interview and lots of them not necessarily  get high grades in school, but they do excellent in practical tests, behavioral interviews and they provide a list of past experience in the subject matter, this employee can be recruited for front office, sales and marketing, brokers, public relation, human resources, information technology and other types of jobs that need real life work experience to deliver results of the objectives and improve the process by providing new insights and adding to the learning curve of the organization with experience and lessons learned.

The two types of employees are not favorable or counter of each other for the organization both types are needed in some percentages of the organization employees depending on the type of the organization, the size the business they are into and natures of the jobs in the organization.

They only thing that organization need to understand is that information are all around these days and its easy and affordable to everyone today, so its very important to be precise on which type the organization is looking to recruit on the position offered to pick the right type and not ending up with the wrong one.

Mohamed Alzayani

 assoc.CIPD and  assoc.IHRME for human capital management and development

Talented Employees Can They Be Made?

Talented Employees Can They Be Made?

Date: 14/01/2017

Today we hear and see a lot talking about the power of knowledge, knowledge economy knowledge is power, and we heard before a lot about hard working employees, smart employees, professional employees, experts employees and so on. Although we totally agree about the importance of all these terms and what it means but human beings  always seek and obtained knowledge even in the old centuries, craftsmen, artists,  scientist and engineers are all known before time since knowledge is always there for people to grasp and learn so what is new this time?

Today organizations are looking for talented people who possess certain knowledge, skills and behaviors that is difficult to be copy or teach mostly people are born with it or just be in extremely environment that help create it, sometimes these talents are like a diamond in the rough where people are not aware of it or not fully master it but it can be put in use once who possess it trained and develop it. This practice is known as talent management so again what is new about this subject?

Employees today are not anymore compared by their qualification, or professional certification or even performance, all these today have become available to all who seek it and even its provided in low cost sometimes, but the thing that make organization not looking for these criteria's anymore is the dynamic business environment that technology advancement brought and increase the competitiveness to its extreme that its make the critter's change for employees also.  Employees today can access knowledge by just one click on their laptop, smart phones and tablets they can find millions of information and knowledge about any subject at anytime anywhere and in any format they want it, although knowledge is power but with this huge amount of information no human being can process and save it in their mind and since its available on the net for everyone there is no point to make the effort for it, so the question now is does employees use knowledge to obtain talent that might be wanted in the market even if they are not born with it?

Leadership has the same dilemma  do leaders born or made, talent as well has the same are born with it or we can make it, if we have close look to talents there are many types of talents in the world some could be classified as born but the rest can be made. Talent in business world are a mixture of special knowledge and behaviors that produce skills so unique to be copied or teach, it’s the same as Japanese martial arts or Chinese martial arts where the master teach the student the way of being a true fighter, employees as well can learn from all these available information and knowledge on the internet and experts people and mix it with their environment, mindset, workplace, experience and experiments, knowledge and produce a unique skills in a certain field that will be competitive in the market and needed by the organizations, the secret in doing this is to have a clear vision and goal on what to direct all these mixture toward to and keep going till the skills are born and talent is made ready for use.

By just looking to people around us we all have certain level of talent in some filed because we keep going on in gathering information and knowledge and experience and experiment in it but without being  aware that we are building a talent we could not go till the end to make it a talent ready to be used in the market as competitive advantage among other employees, and that is the difference between talented business people and employs the way of using knowledge and information available and obtained in today world of technology.

Mohamed Alzayani

 assoc.CIPD and  assoc.IHRME for human capital management and development

If Your Human Capital Unit a Cost Save Your Organization Now

If your human capital unit a cost save your organization now

Date: 06/01/2017

Human resources management has been practiced for many centuries now, and the more human developed in their culture, science, civilization, education, technology and social the more demand for developing human resources concepts and practices. Managing resources has always two sides Investment and returns like investing money returned profit and interests, corporation shares returned dividends, land returned harvest natural resources and so on, all this are known for centuries ago but the question now is managing human resources does it make returns? The world today has shifted dramatically towards more technology, science, social media, globalization knowledge economy and advanced education, this lead the world of business to be shifted as well towards more scientific approaches when it comes to business management, leadership, production, finance and even human resources, which it transmitted today to human capital management (HCM). M The paradigm shift that shake that shake the world of yesterday facts and science added many concepts and approaches for human capital management like, talent management, succession management and planning, performance management, coaching and mentoring and so on, all these concepts and approaches added value to human capital practices and models and it has been now more understanding the importance o the human capital in any organization, but since these organization are profit driven they are still been derived towards other units and functions that make profit such as marketing and sales, finance and production and consider human capital management cost unit, these units are important no doubts of that without them the organization cant work or even exist today, but does human capital management considered as cost unit for real?

The answer for this question can be found in an article wrote by Dr. John Sullivan "Transform HR into a Revenue-Impact Function to Increase Your Strategic Impact" in 2012, in this article you can clearly see if human capital management is a cost or profit unit, an example quoted from the article to demonstrate it,  "If the new process hired salespeople that sold on average 10% more (than those hired under the previous recruiting process), you could (with the CFO’s blessing), publicly state that this HR action had improved sales revenue by X dollars (i.e. the actual amount would be the 10% improvement in the average salesperson’s yearly sales revenue, multiplied by the number of new salespeople who were hired under the improved process)". From this example we can see the following:

1.       All units incurred cost to operate wither they make profit or not.

2.       All units even the profit one except human capital management unit need to be developed individually to improve and make profit.

3.       Improving human capital management unit mean you have improved all other units.

4.       Improving human capital unit is much less costly than improving and investing in other units even the profit one, as the above article example stated.

Let us take one more example to see the result of considering human capital unit as not a cost unit, if you think of succession management or talent management the unit who will establish the program, make the policies and procedures, prepare the model and guidelines and prepare the training and development need programs are all done by human capital unit, so no matter how much you invest in making marketing and sales successor, finance successor or CEO successor the rerun depends on how well you invest in human capital unit that prepared all the infrastructure for implementing the program, if you want to increase sales, make more profit or maximize share price by new product line or innovation and creativity its much less cost if the human capital unit recruitment process and people are talented to identify and attract the people who has these skills already than investing more in the existing people, even investing in the existing people if you have talented human capital unit it will be less cost and better result outcome to identify the need and the development needed for achieving it.

Investing in human capital unit not just related in reducing the cost but also to making profit, for example to incorporate organizational culture, strategy, values and objectives with employee engagement for better, safe and productive work environment, motivating, leadership practice, employee loyalty and discipline, reduced turnover, promote innovating and creativity and implement human capital programs efficiently that will enhance and improve organizational performance towards more profit, share price maximization and competitive advantage in the market, by just having talented effective and efficient human capital unit.

Once an organization improve human capital unit it will affect the organization as a whole and just the unit as the other function do, so the question is now do you still think human capital unit is cost for your organization? Think about it again.

 

Mohamed Alzayani

Acc.CIPD and Acc.IHRME for human capital management

References:

·         ERE Media. 2012. Transform HR Into a Revenue-Impact Function to Increase Your Strategic Impact | ERE . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.eremedia.com/ere/transform-hr-into-a-revenue-impact-function-to-increase-your-strategic-impact/.