Successful Human Resources Manager

In the world of business, the responsibility of HR was to work on the administrative affairs of the organization and employees and carry out the routine transactions but with the development of the intensity of competition and change of organization work environment and performance, this role no longer meets the needs of the today organization and business world.

Today the responsibility of the HR manager and HR specialists is to contribute effectively to fulfilling vision, objectives and strategy of the organization, support employees and work environment and take into account external variables and internal requirements.

This shift requires HR manager and HR specialists be familiar:

- formulating and crafting vision.

- Strategic planning, managing strategy and formulation of objectives.

- Financial practices and methods of calculating the return on investment.

- The art of enterprise management in the and requirements of competitive environment .

- Change management.

- The nature of the organization's stakeholders, customers expectation, products and services and how to reflect it in HR strategy and deliverable services to support business units achieving 

- Various measurement tools, financial, quality, statistical and employment methods to support the employees and the organization.

-  Research and obtain successful methodologies and practices to support, recruit, encourage and inspire employees talents, performance and creativity at work.

HR manager and HR specialist today requires to be familiar with these various sciences and practices employed in the formulation of strategy and objectives of HR to deliver services support achieving the vision, strategy and objectives of the organization and measure the results of HR contribution in f8nancial figures and statistics showing how much HR contributiin in profit, meet customers expectation, maintain organization core competency, organization competative advantages and sustain employees talent and creativity at work. 

HR And Organization Vision

How do you know that an organization has a vision?

Vision and mission are among the most important elements of the successful organization today because it contributes to determine the course of the organization and the participation of human capital in achieving it.

Most organizations suffer from difficulties and obstacles in their strategies and objectives despite the existence of a vision and mission that negatively affect the achievement of tangible  added value results and not wasting the of organization resourcrs, talents, competencies and efforts of employees in non productive and useful work, but most organizations keep busy in solving crises and accumulated problems which stopped the cont8nues development and change.

Why organizations  face difficulties although they have with vision and a mission? To assess that the organization has the right vision or just a constructive speech, we need to verify that the vision has:

1 - Imagination / photographer: In the sense can be read to see the perception in his mind how the future will be enthusiastic and it is living today.

2 - Desirable: meaning that is what everyone wants to share it and not desire permeated.

3 - Possible: applicable to available conditions and resources, phased in with possible targets and measurements.

4 - Concentrate: Put everyone in one direction and do not distract efforts or leave room for argument.

5 - Flexible: be adjustable in the stages of application with changing conditions without loss of orientation and vision itself.

6 - Can be explained and understood within five minutes.

These are the elements for the right vision and if any of these elements missed the vision become more of speech and fancy words that is difficult to achieve than a vision, which leads to confusion and lack of success of organization in achieving, employees participation and understanding of their role in realizing the vision.

HR as strategic partner plays an important role in formulating and crafting organization vision and mission, align organizational resources, core competency, employees competencies and talents, organizational culture, organization systems, processes and architect organizational structure to fulfill the vision, since at the end realizing the vision depends on human ability to formulate and craft right vision and adopt and excute it in the right way by human abilities as well.

HR Between Yesterday And Tomorrow

Previously it was known as Personnel Department, then becames human resources, then human capital and soon intellectual capital.

Human resources vary in location, name and structure from one organization to another, some organizations are have one HR unit that provide all services, some are divided based on services, some are small units and others are large units.

Although human resources have evolved greatly and apply scientific and professional methodologies and today become aprofessional field that has it is own professional and specialized certificates for their functions, some organizations still adhere to the basic human resources services only, such as employment, training, personnel, manpower and salaries, as shown on the left of the picture 60% of Human Resource spent on operation, While the role of human resources is to be strategic partner  in the organization and the agent of change in the development, growth and continuity of success, which shows in the right picture 60% of HR spent in strategic matters.

HR have become like any other specialization when it comes to professionalism, it is no longer a place that includes non-privileged and undesirable in the organization, but is now the mastermind and thinker of the organization, which works on the activation of strategic programs such as performance management, competency based training,  succession planning, and career growth and counseling, leadership prigram, align vision, mission, strategy with business units objectives, competency and performance required, supporting employess and deliver quality services.

The best slogan leaders can adopt today and tomorrow:

Professional HR = Professional Organization.

Between Delivering Results and Value Added

Over a period of more than ten years working in developing human capital I found there is confusing between performance achievements in work and achieve value added, which affects the performance of many organizations and the failure to achieve the expected objectives.

Many employees believe that the performance of work, whether routine or required from them is an achievement in itself deserve the reward and promotion and honor and celebration and they work is not less than others ... But the fact that any work is linked to goals and strategic plans seeks to add value to work through continuous development, creativity, innovation, exploration and realization of the expectations of stakeholders, employees and other parties and achieve the vision and mission of the organization and meet competitive standards in the market.

Employee performance and completion of routine tasks and what is required of them and receive monthly salary is important but the achievement and adding value to the work, organization and stakeholders is what deserves the honor, celebration, promotion and rewards and be superior to your peers.

The performance of work and tasks must be linked with the strategic objective and related to the operational objective and thus the plans and tasks assigned to the employee because if the the tasks and performance and the use of resources of time, money, effort and materials are just for the sake of performing normal needed tasks then this will results to employee fatigue and  drowned themselves and wasting organization resources.

Value added is what makes employees and organizations distinguished and desirable and competitive in the market.

Development Tools in The Organization

The consultant and trainer of strategic human resources uses scientific methodologies to serve the interest of the institution in the development and realization of the vision and strategy, including the management of transformations.

The transitional model was created by the change adviser, William Bridges, and published in his 1991 book "Managing Transformations".

Stage 1: Finish, lose and leave

People enter this initial stage of transition when they first change. This stage is often characterized by resistance and emotional turmoil, because people have to give up something they feel comfortable with.

At this stage, people may experience these feelings:

the fear.

denial.

Anger.

Sorrow.

Confusion.

Frustration.

Uncertainty.

He felt lost.

Phase 2: Neutral Zone

At this stage, people affected by change are often confused, unclear, and impatient. Depending on how well you manage change, users may also face a greater burden as they get used to new systems and new ways of working.

Think of this as the bridge between the old and the new; in some ways, people will still be connected to the past, while trying to adapt to the new.

Here, people may face:

Discontent towards the change initiative.

Low morale and low productivity.

Concern about their role, status or identity.

Doubts about the Change Initiative.

Stage 3: The New Beginning

The final transition is the time of acceptance and energy. People began to embrace the change initiative. They build the skills they need to work successfully in the new way, and they begin to see early successes from their efforts.

At this stage, people are likely to experience:

High power.

Openness to learning.

Renew commitment or role of the group.

The transition between the stages requires skills and experience, which is not an easy process but essential for the success of the organization, which is done by the strategic human resources.

Why by strategic human resources? The reason is all these stagrs and the people going through them is all about the hurman resources servecis delivered to employees, archeticting organization to be flixable, maintain culture of change, assisst in adoption and integration, crafting strategies and initatives to cater for outside in organization tactics, developing competencies and talent, leavrage on organization and employees cabapility and many other services that make the transitional more easy and successful.

SPOTS Short for Strategy Plan on Top of Shelf

Some believe that the strategy is to compile the plans, objectives, indicators and initiatives of the main sectors of the organization and put them in the balance score card (BSC) and thus have a strategy to achieve the vision and mission.


In fact, the reality is different, because the strategy usually end up on the shelf because every sector in the organization works for itself, and the (BSC) is just the tool assembled those plans and objectives in a fancy way.


Some organizations are integrating human resources into the (BSC) adding HR strategy to the tool,  isolated from other sectors that are basically working to achieve organization goals and need human resources integration to achieve them, thus the strategy become very fancy but huge and chaos everyone is just running but no one know for what and how to work togather and being of the road of the vision and mission.


To avoid this chaos there are some suggestions for organizations to be considered in forming strategy:


1- Adopting a clear vision and mission for the organization from leaders and senior management, explaining it and convincing all employees to adopt and achieve it.


2 - Communicate the vision and mission with logos (logic), ethos (ethics), Pathos (emotion) to all employees to practoce it in daily work..


3 - The sectors translate the strategy into goals, initiatives, action plans,  and development to achieve the strategy and develop indicators for measurement.


4 - The human resources share their point of view and experience with leaders and sectors on how to achieve the strategy according to the current situation in the organization regarding competencies rediness, human capital availability, cultrual challenges, work environment, potential and expertise to achieve those goals and initiatives .


5 - Human resources translate the sector strategy into a plan of action and initiatives, improve, develop and support change in organizational culture to achieve strategy and vision.


6 -  Human resources contribute to support sectors through distinguished services, initiatives, achieve strategy.


7 - Human resources work on the continuous development on services deliverd to employees and sectors and measure the indicators to make the required change in a positive and proactive manner rather than a reaction.



This is some of strategic HR benefits for any organization in regards to fulfill strategy and achieve vision and mission.

Strategic HR in Economic & Financial Crisis

Normally after profitable organization sense of economic or financial crisis or hit by one they tend to use the quick easy fix solution to the crisis that was practiced for decades now to reduce costs, we are not questioning this logic and rational thinking in economic and financial crisis so the organization can sustain its exixting and continue performing and delivering to its stakeholder and survive the competition in the market, but we are questioning what organization consider as cost to be cut and reduced and the answer for decades now is people.

Often organization resort in economic and financial crises to calculate costs and cut what they consider as high cost and threat for organization exixting in crisis time, but who make the decision about what count as cost and analyse based on numbers and figures only to make the cut in cost and reduced it often Chief Financial Officer and leaders focus on profit and share price, they identify and analyse the figures and point out to organization leader where, what and when to do the cut in cost, mostly the decision includs the layoff employees which is the golden pieces for quick fix to solve the problem.

What the leaders  and the Chief Financial Officer do not see is that the organization has invested in these employees during their working period and acquired the expertise, skills and appropriate behavior of the work. Most of them are able to contribute to provid solutions to overcome the crisis. The company can exploit their ideas, talents and competencies to reduce costs and persuade them to participate by abandoning certain privileges to overcome the crisis and transfer some of them to work in projects according to their talents and competencies, that will deliver innovative and creative solutions that surpass competitors.

The story of  Honeywell Furloughs struggle is a good example, wither to layof employees or provide unpaid leaves, the employees and leaders decided on unpaid leaves, regardless of some mistakes, the plan worked well for Honeywell and they overcome the crisis and not losing their most valuebale assessts employees.

The difference between the two approaches depends on wither the organization has strategic human resources that establish organization architect structure enabling to change with circumstances and is not rigid, install a system to capture the talents and competencies of employees in different layers of the organization and their potentials, invest and develop them, activate the role of leaders for inspiration, leadership and setting a clear vision and strategy and communicate it to all employees. This is what successful global organization do, leavrage on opportunities in crisis and not shrinking with the threats and miss as other organizations do.

Financial Statement The Blind Spot

One day I run into an executive of a profit organization and talked about the company's latest developments. He said  "we are currently reviewing financial statements such as income statement, balance sheet, financial offecir analysis , marketing and sales managers anaylsis to build future outlook and strategy". I said "well that is good but its not enough". He sat down moderately and looked at me and said "explain to me your point of view".

I told him the financial statements and information collected from the dealers directly from the market and customers is necessary and important to build a future strategic plan but it is not everything, for example If you put a program for new products, marketing and sales plan for the employees and managers to implement it and use the budget and resources required according to information and data as your measure, and you find out at the end of the year that sales are not as expected although everyone has implemented the program very carefully, how  you can explain the faults? The executive said maybe the product was defected or the marketing plan was not appropriate or the staff were not efficient in sale there are many variables to look for.

I said what if I told you that the plan was implemented as required but the customers have a negative experience with the staff of the product department because of system failure, they do not respond directly and quickly with the customers requirements and there are  delays in serving  the customer at the branches. The  executive replied how this could happen? I explain to him, because the system used by the staff is old, number of employees few compared to the size of the workload and the staff did not get proper training they just been briefed with the program and how to implement it, the executive said how I did not know about all that?

I said to him because this information was with the human resources that participated in the strategy as an executor and not as a strategic partner and decision maker like the financial offecir and marketing and sales manager who both provided you with previous information regarding only numbers and statisitcs but not the human the most important assessts in the organization to successed, the work environment and conidtions, the staff competency readiness. The executive start thinking does the human resources who is responsible for salaries, pensions and labor laws have this impact on strategy and oraganization?

This story is similar with many organization leaders who still see human resources as the function of processing employees welfare and benefits and following orders of leaders to adjust what they need in policies, procedures to fit organization need and strategy, but the reality today state that human resources is the heart of the company and part of its mind too to balance and rationlize the decision making and solving problems as well as facing challenges and leavragin on core competency of the organization to overcome competitors and grow in the market to sustain organization growth.

Human resources today consider as strategic partner, not only focus on outcomes but also on adding value to the organization's strategy, fullfiling vision and mission of the organization and work on enabling  implementation in the organization by making sure employees have the right competencies, maintaing positive organizational culture, communicating vision and mission and strategy to all levels making sure they addopt it and accepted, supporting employees development and career growth, algining organization with external environment, all these and more human resources can and will do by becoming strategic partner in the organization.  

Techniques for Professional Trainers Part II

With today advance technology and scene human mind and Neurology research and studies reveals many facts and corrected some ideas on how human mind work and learn.

These facts and discoveries also changed and affected training and trainers way of delivering, therefore knowing about human mind today for trainers has become the second techniques needed for professional trainers so they can deliver successful and beneficiary training experience. 

Scientists have discover that human mind has short-term memory and long-term memory like computer which previously known as conscious and unconscious mind.

The second technique depends on the research of the science of mind and Neurology.

Scientists divide the mind into sections, the logic mind, the emotional mind, the reptilian mind.

The logic mind is responsible for thinking, analyzing through the reception of information from the five senses and the emotional mind responsible for the translation of emotions, feelings and sensibilities, the reptilian mind responsible for protecting the human from the risks, survival, self-defense and take the place of logic mind at a glance in case of danger, that explain why a person get angry, aggressive and defensive.

The scientists discovered that the three minds are linked through neurons and the more the neurons get stronger through practicing and experience relating it to emotional the ability of a person to remember the information and skills increase and vise versa  the weaker the neurons it will decrease the ability of a person to remember information and skills.

Therefore, when we target the logic mind and emotional mind, we target is short-term memory which needs repeatedly to create a strong neurons to remember and relate to emotions.

When the experience is severe and dangerous, the reptilian mind takes the leadership from the logic mind and create a strong neuron with the emotional mind that is why painful and frightening, and great pleasure experiences  are easily remembered.

Trainer  in the training room needs to make the participants comfortable and relax state to make them ready for learning and apply  the of adult learning in his training delivery keeping in mind that participants need to make their own experience to in training room by practicing the knowledge and skills repeatedly to create a strong neuron experience and relate both logic and emotional mind with the learning experience, as well encouraging the participants to practice it after the training to make the neurons  stronger with more experience of logic and emotional mind.

When the trainer uses tools to create a nice atmosphere, but it is difficult for participants to understand how to link a game or fun exercise or funny material with training and learning objectives it will distract the logic mind from benefiting form the training experience because the it will only target the emotional mind which will create a neurons that only remember good funny memory.

Conversely, if the trainer focuses only on the logic mind and make the session dull and painful, the emotional mind will not work and thus will create or strengthen the neurons to remember information related to pain which will be hard to retract it since the pain will always be attached to it.

If the session becomes a muddle and sharp it will trigger the reptilian mind which will turn the participant into a defense and anger  this will increase the conflict and argument and turn the training room into battle field which will make the other participants not comfortable as well and make the training experience for all painful and loss the benefit.

Trainers today has huge responsibility to prepare and equip themselves with the right and proper trainer competencies and experience than what was known before.

Techniques for Professional Trainers Part I

Training become very fashion today, it becomes very hot filed for different people from different background, in this blog I will provide some techniques of how training and trainers should perform today using both science and art of interpersonal skills since we have passed the basic of train the train regarding the voice and tune used, the colors and dressing, to more focus on how actually human learn and train and benefit form what they learn and how the mind work with the emotion so we can really make the training experience beneficiary.  

The first techniques is "The adult Learning Theory":

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997) was an American educator well known for the use of the term Andragogy as synonymous to adult education. According to Malcolm Knowles, andragogy is the art and science of adult learning, thus andragogy refers to any form of adult learning.

Knowles’ 5 Assumptions Of Adult Learners:

The 5 assumptions is describing how the adult learning is different from child learning and by using these assumptions by trainer in his training he can trigger the experience of training and make it beneficiary. 

1. Self-Concept.
   
   
2. Adult Learner Experience.
   
   
3. Readiness to Learn.
   
   
4. Orientation to Learning.
   
   
5. Motivation to Learn.

Trainer should think and incorporate their training with these assumptions so the training experience for the participants can cater for their need to gain knowledge, skills, behavior and attitude so they can reflect it on their life.

To apply the adult learning Knowles has suggested 4 principles:

1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for the learning activities.
3. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.
4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

The point here is that trainers are dealing with adult either employees, entrepreneurs, CEOs, leaders all those are adults and the way adult learn is more or less as Knowles suggested, but if the trainer is using the old concept of training where he is the star of the stage, Mr. know it all talking all the day and other they just listen or they just follow his thoughts this will be sad bad experience for those adults that will end with disaster or worse they will hate training and see it as waste of time and money.

Trainers must also today focus on specialization, today world are developing in all fields so fast than we can follow, and by the time we learn new knowledge, skills, or transmitting to new behavior a new and developed one come out faster than before, also trainer need to build up his experience and application to come out with his results and lessons learned so he can share it with others while he is training them since who is does not have it he cannot give it.