The Hindu Business Line : Will the HR profession please speak up?

THE SECURITY departments, transport departments, the police, the taxi drivers, the CEOs, Nasscom, the various labour unions, the public at large — they all had something to say. As for the HR (human resource) community, we have all been conspicuous by our silence. The context — the unfortunate rape and murder of a young employee in a BPO in Bangalore.

As an HR professional, I feel quite troubled about our silence. Troubled, because the issue at hand has to do with employee relations, which lie at the foundation of HR work and it is as much our responsibility to search for answers to secure the future of this and other related industries that have similar challenges. I would have liked to see ourselves engaging in debate, dialogue, reflection, action research and a variety of other mechanisms to search for future possibilities and choices.

I would like to start by saying that the range of actions that has emerged in response to this specific unfortunate incident signals a good beginning. The dialogue between the State administration and the community of organisations is a good sign of collaborative efforts and must be encouraged. I am not intending to critique or add to the list. I present for reflection, four double-loop learning opportunities for the future.

The concept of double-loop learning was conceptualised by Argyris and Schön in 1974. When something went wrong, they felt that many people looked for another strategy that would address and work within the governing variables. In other words, given goals and plans were operationalised and optimised rather than questioned. They called this single-loop learning.

An alternative response is to question the governing variables themselves, to subject them to critical scrutiny, they felt. They called this double-loop learning. Such learning, they believed, would lead to an alteration in the governing variables and, thus, a shift in the way in which strategies and consequences are framed.

Why is this important?

Before presenting the learnings, it would be important to articulate why this discussion is important.

Too big, too visible

At no other time in the history of industrial activity have we seen so much at stake (or the fear about so much being at stake) for an entire industry because of every isolated action. There is global attention about how India will fare in the BPO space.

There are people (in the countries from which work is migrating) whose anger is palpable.

Most important, there is a wide population within the country curious, intrigued, angered or just plain envious about their inability to participate in what they think is "too much of a good thing", happening to a new generation of young Indians.

This makes the industry very vulnerable to quick blame and "I told you so" kind of allegations.

Added to this is the challenge of the image problem. It is not helping employees in this industry hold with pride their identity.

There have been a series of events and media reports that have only added to the problem.

What will help is serious thought on ways in which we can make this new window of career opportunities sustainable.

For this reason, some double-loop learning is useful.

Four double-loop learning ideas

HR has to be the champion

In this industry more than in any other, HR has a very strong champion's role to play. HR has to lead from the front. This will mean that all important employee touch points need to be owned and managed by HR. While you may have a resourcing department, a training department, a transport department, a security department, a facilities department and a catering department, ensuring that they deliver what employees want is the responsibility of ER/HR.

Similarly, HR has to serve as the watch dog in ensuring that the demands placed on employees are balanced and fair and reasonable and do not compromise their interests. If HR does not play this role or is not seen as playing this role, employees may be forced to look elsewhere.

Many of us who started our careers in factories will recollect the time we spent playing the welfare role. This not only gave us the opportunity to understand employees and their needs but also escalate potential imbalances and conflict points.

The current outsourcing arrangements for many of these facilities should not lead HR to feel absolved from securing their effectiveness.

Employee connect is the starting point

There is one question I ask every HR professional I meet — "on an average day, how long do you spend in front of the computer?" The answer I receive worries me.

Most say it is about 60-80 per cent of their time. For most young HR professionals today, an employee is no longer a person to relate with but another e-mail to respond to.

The first argument posed to me in defence is that when organisations look at scaling up, it is impractical to expect things like connect, identity and employee relationships.

I disagree. I believe that HR has to ensure that scale and size do not make our employees faceless and devoid of identity.

Somewhere, someone should know every employee. Scale at the cost of employee connect may not be sustainable.

The second argument posed to me is "attrition". Is attrition the "problem" or the "cause", I wonder. There is enough research to indicate that employees who feel connected tend to offer greater tenure.

In fact, it is the faceless identity that hastens the process of attrition.

The final argument seems to be that "connect" is the manager's responsibility. I disagree again. With little experience and preparation to play the managerial role, a huge span of control and number pressures that are every challenging, "connect" can be the last thing on the manager's mind.

HR has to step in and play a strong line role here even as we invest in developing the "people manager".

Time for industry-specific framework to govern working conditions

The IT and ITeS industry will soon be the largest employers in the country. They are already the largest in terms of net addition.

Would it be useful for the industry to evolve a comprehensive framework of rules to govern the working conditions of its employees in lieu of the Shops and Establishments Act that is now the only reference document?

Instead of responding with guidelines each time there is a problem, it may be useful to explore the value of coming up with comprehensive guidelines that cover all aspects of employee working conditions, bearing every unique need. This will ensure that the right benchmarks are set and progressive Organisations are not bunched along with those that violate.

The framework could incorporate policies and practices that already exist in areas like sexual harassment, night working, data integrity, employee security checks, occupational safety and health and so on.

What is, of course, most urgent is the education of today's HR professionals about our existing labour laws. Most will tell you that the Bare Act is an indecent incident!

HR has a role in job design

Decades of research has taught us that job design has a significant impact on the personal outcomes for the employee and work outcomes for the Organisation.

In fact, the notion of the socio-technical system was created in the context of studies by the Tavistock Institute in London in the 1950s. The concept of the socio-technical system was established to stress the reciprocal interrelationship between humans and machines and to foster the programme of shaping both the technical and the social conditions of work, in such a way that efficiency and humanity would not contradict each other any longer.

So, the idea of socio-technical systems was designed to cope with the problems of working conditions in industry.

Today, businesses want more and more flexibility to be able to respond to competitive market pressures. Sometimes these are likely to have an impact on employee welfare, if not supported and prepared well. In fact there is a lot of research about the call centre industry and ways to enhance its social technical system.

HR needs to engage with these ideas, share success stories and build new insights. In fact, there is no better place for HR to add business and industry value.

In closing, I would like to say that a lot can be done to make the industry both profitable and humane and HR can show the way.

Can we pledge to dedicate all the HR conferences and conclaves in the year 2006 exclusively to this theme and collectively make a difference?

(The author is founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and process for organisations across diverse industries. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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