Do More than Lip Service- Women at Work

Glass Ceiling , less opportunities as you move up the ladder, Frequent breaks for Family, health, Gestation, Bullying, Harassment - Phew and what not. So many Barriers too less solutions.

Companies do a lot during the week of International women's day - and then sleepiness through out the year on this topic. Will this be called as Empowering women or creating awareness about Gender Bias, more diversity and Harassment related issues.

Points to ponder - Company Creating hullabaloo for an entire week of IWD and if you dig deep they lack providing basic facilities like Insurance coverage, Maternity Benefit, Growth opportunities, flexi timings, tele commuting facility.

Why run away from reality and create a dream sequence for people while selling the job, or promoting Women Empowerment events Once in a year, the employees will get to know this is false advertising in the coming months/years.

Since, I have started working in Corporate sector, evidently have seen changes in all these years where actually Companies are opening up to hiring more and more women who have their identities beyond Mothers, wives and Homemakers.

But are the Companies giving proper training on "treatment to women employees" - "Gender Bias" - "women friendly work atmosphere" "Sensitization of workplace"

Until this gets implemented or taken seriously by employers, the reality will take many more years to change - Here are some thought provoking facts

• Females hold only 14.6% of executive positions at Fortune 500 Companies
• Only 34% Companies have Gender training development opportunities for men
• Only 8% of women in Delhi are earning member (Source - TOI)

Dramatization of how we "EMPOWER" women should stop,really! it is high time to work out on concrete solutions.

Do issues related to women need to be discussed In the Month of March or more specifically just for a week or a day. Get real, and let's work towards making our Organisation's environment more women friendly.

Ding Ding Ding...Get u and ring the bell. 

Train- Not Drain Them!

Real Life scenario

HR department in XYZ ltd had a separate Training Division to cater to the needs of the training and development of such a large work force. Under the supervision of their HR Director, the Sr. Manager Training started doing the Training need identification for all the managers, as at that point they just wanted to cover the Manager level only, which itself had more than 60 managers for a 2500 workforce.

The Sr. Manager who was working with the organization for the past 7 years once asked the Director HR that, what was the need of TNA, they could just go through the appraisal forms of the previous year and plan the training calendar accordingly, which was not such a bad idea but while going through the forms they all realized that it was a waste of time, the better option was to get the questionnaire filled from the Managers and their seniors for TNA.

That is how all the steps were followed properly to organize the training for the managers for that particular year.

During the process, the newly appointed Director HR faced a lot of problems and aversions from many people, including the training division. And the reason was, that the trainings will be planned and delivered, but the requirement need not matter…

This is the situation in many organization now, training for them is just a status function, which means that if a competitor is providing training, so even we should do it and more so from the same vendor… amusing, isn’t it?

And if this is not enough, most organizations have nothing to do with calculating ROI on training and finding out how effective the training had been for their employees. It is just a way to utilize the budget not really investing.

And if you speak to the employees in such organizations, most of them like to attend trainings as it saves them from day to day work, some attend to pass their time and for the food they get, some don’t attend at all and take leaves, some make excuses that training is just a formality, their work is more important. But have you guys as an HR professional ever thought why people think like that for trainings?

Reason lies in the paragraphs narrated above, yes; we actually do not train them but Drain them to never come back again.

Training being such an important function needs to be taken very seriously, it is one function which if methodically done can bring lot of benefits not only in productivity/performance but also in a person’s outlook and attitude. What can be done to make training more effective and employee friendly? read on….

Training can be effectively measured and the ROI can be calculated with just a little bit more time by the HR department and the line managers in coordination.

Evaluating training can make it more fruitful and yes you can design better programs in future for the employees, once you know how much they have benefited from such programs already.

# Obtain a feedback session after at least 3 weeks from the date of finishing the training program. Bring them back, ask questions, evaluate their performance and always tell their Line Managers to send their pre training performance ratings and post training. No, no, my dear friends, the results will not show so early but the symptoms will. :)

# Give them a clear cut action plan while in training so that they all can learn about their own shortcomings and how to overcome them after returning to their jobs. The action plan will showcase to them their future course of action which can be discussed with their immediate superiors and who can help them in initiating the changes and make the training worth.

# May be for the next 6 months to one year depending upon what kind of training is being provided, the review meetings at regular intervals need to be organized with the Immediate Senior, Trainer and the Department Head to achieve the desired results accompanied by the supervisor’s observation.

# Compare the findings of training need analysis and identification and the effectiveness, and this actually works as a factual report not just for the candidate who attended the training but also for the trainer, who can boast of his/her achievements in the next program.

Training is such vast topic that it may need many more articles to complete the entire procedure, process and methodology and of course the effectiveness…but for starters or for people finding difficulty in evaluating training, this write up can help.

So guys…HAPPY TRAINING AND HAPPY LEARNING

more at http://www.citeman.com/14137-train-not-drain-them.html#ixzz2kp6GV3w2

Are core values really valued?

Integrity, Respect, Consistency, quality and so on… Are these the same set of core values adapted by your company? Really!! What a coincidence! Millions of companies have the similar ones.

And even then #Entrepreneurs do not dig out time to evaluate to know what the actual core values of their organization are.
 It’s kind of “In Vogue” to set values in company, so they all do it without realizing its worth, impact on culture and implementation.

Very often we get confused between the goals, culture and core values in an organization, there is an organization where one of the Core value was "Swiftness” and everyone accept the top Management actually was adhering to the values. But it didn't work that ways for too long, how could it? 

Core values are top to down approach (I read one article, where the author mentioned that in many Fortune companies, CEO’s one of the responsibility is to teach or coach on Values to their employees) or at least some walking the talk should have been there. Demands from team on Speedy results, but when it comes to Decisions/communications from Top Management everything used to get jammed.

 This is precisely why it started confusing all other employees also and they actually stopped believing in their CORE VALUES, as they saw that the implementation of these so called values is not there at all or its just conditional use of values - to corner an employee Management start singing the saga of Core Values, but when leadership team has to show, then response comes promptly – “Oh! We have so many things to take care of, why can’t we bend it “little” for ourselves”

And then this story is of another company where everything was totally centralized (as in every decision was taken by or with the involvement of the MD, who ideally should be involved in making only important and not day to day decisions).

One of their core values was ‘Ownership’  and this word was given a perspective for the company  “taking their own decisions and stand by it”. Such was the hypocrisy and how do you think employees working in such companies would ever respect their core values leave aside travel value along them?

One of my Mentor used to say, “to breathe the core values of the companies” and believe me we all used to do the same. The values became an integral part of our daily work that we hardly could get rid of them even after leaving that organisation. 

It is not just by designing the Mugs or diaries with the core values but also taking ownership of each decision or action taken keeping in mind the core value of the organisation. No matter how thorny the path may look initially but once foundation is laid by believing in them, they can bring back success and more success, and that’s how he started getting it done, by collaborative leadership and preparing the leadership team by walking the talk.

If we have to make the values successful then we have to take some real time actions, such as:

Define: what one word or a statement means for company needs to be defined, and let each person owns the definition by virtue of its implementation.

Be true: Yes, to have a set of intelligent core values the company has to be true to itself  or even if it is an “Aspiration Value” they can actually imbibe them in their culture by making it clear to the employees the difference between the two, so that their trust can be held and they also believe in the similar authentic set of values.

Just avoid situations where senior management says something else and the core values goes a separate way; All have to be persistent for their values.

Own it: Serious trouble starts in companies when the senior management or leaders of the companies do not own these set of core values. They pass it on as the work of employee relation or HR department, which is not true. HR can only help in proper communication, awareness, and ideas for implementation etc but the ownership of such things remains with the leadership Team/Core team only. 

They cannot pass the buck by saying that HR is responsible for maintenance and adherence to the core values. No, it’s completely unrealistic and so the authenticity of such values is just not on HR alone. In such cases its better not to have any core values for the companies than to have the wrong ones.

Breathe them: live them, read them, believe in them and as one of my Mentor used to say breathe them, which is what makes them successful. Do not compromise on the core values no matter what. Lead by example, if as a leader you own them and start showing each one of them in all the areas of work, your team members will surely do the same. If you have a core value such as “PROFESSIONALISM” make sure you show such an outlook in everything you do, no conciliation allowed which may mean decent attire, no gossips, no nonsense.

Measurement: Include it as a measurement tool: Though it may look very subjective to some, but categorizing Values as one of the parameters of performance assessment will surely make it.

If “INNOVATION” is your Core value adapt it everywhere, give incentives for any new innovation or creativity, and distribute rewards in order to build the trust of your people in these values. Do not cheat or deceive in the name of Values. If creating a learning culture is a belief, then open all doors for mentoring and coaching.

So go ahead, find out your core values and let your company be the proud owner of some Intelligent Core values.

more at http://www.citeman.com/14433-are-core-values-really-valued-in-companies.html#ixzz2kpAlqIFR