The evils of HR!!!

Thought id write about something which i have come very close to and become very passionate about in the last years. Human resources as a field happened to me by chance when i worked in AIESEC. it was more of an interest rather then a huge academic background which drew me towards it and now i am really into it.

No matter what industry you work in, big or small, you will always encounter HR.

HR as an idea is in a transitionary phase from purely an admin department - doing things like payroll, employee records etc etc to being more strategic - thought provoking, adding value and reducing costs.

In the last years i have met many people who have 'seen it all', when it comes to HR and are completely aware of all the 'evils' HR brings. There arguments being:

• Human resources is a management term that should strike fear into the heart of every self-respecting entrepreneur.
• HR does not have a clue what the business does - they come at 9, leave at 5 and to be honest we also don't have a clue what they do in that time
• HR could and should be outsourced
• what value does it create anyways?
• HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers.They don’t sell or produce: they consume.
• HR is a self rewarding department - as a good friend of mine puts it

Read more about the "evils" of HR here:)

Thats certainly one way of looking at it and i can already picture some of you, nodding your heads in affirmation of the above comments and yes you actually might be right because of three things:

• Thats how HR is in your company
• You have no clue what effective hr can bring
• You are just not interested in this area

so basically you are ignorant:)

I have come to think of it a little differently. its a matter of point of view and how you position things and what the ultimate objective is.

When i was in AIESEC, the typical profile of a HR person was that he/she should be a people's person, reason being - if they are in HR they have to make people happy -> whatever the fuck that means:)
Not just in AIESEC you could come across companies where this is the case

In my opinion, its how you position the HR department,what makes the difference.of course HR will have an admin side to it, because you need someone to do it, though what i am more interested in is the strategic side of it. i believe:

• If HR does not force its way into the heart of strategic planning in organizations, it will default to a technical and transactional dead end.
• HR professionals should apply human capital data and information – on par with what the CFO would expect in Finance – to drive business decisions.
• The 'elusive' Data: Without accurate and reliable human capital data and information, strategic HR professionals cannot make fact based decisions that provide insights to their business.
• The people who work in HR: In a lot of cases the HR people, hands down,are the biggest challenge. They like what they are doing(doing some data entry here and there, always smiling etc etc) but they don't like numbers. They don't like seeing the organization as their client…They aren't open to change…and they aren't very analytical.
• HR has to have key performance indicators and clear goals to meet - either it should Add Value to the business or reduce costs for the business
• HR has to work on its image - its clearly very bad:)

Whatever said and done - i do think that the time for HR has come, with so much shortage of talent only effective HR strategies can make the company go forward...

Indians - Hypocrisy at its best!!!

Whenever i go back to India, it throws my life into rather harsh perspective.

On one hand living in the comforting and convenient life which Europe offers is good but on the other seeing the misery of the 'have-nots' in India is very disheartening.so much for the talks of India developing and incredible India, it doesn't show for a lot of people. India is developing, but there is so much which is left to be desired.

What i want to write about though is not the misery, but how in my opinion Indians are topping the charts in hypocrisies. if there was a hypocrisy index, we certainly would be numero uno.

1. before i moved to Europe, i heard a lot about racism here, and how the world is racist against 'brown skin'. fair enough, i have experienced it here. But looking back at my own country... it gives us no right to cry foul, as we are racist too

- The Caste System which is very much existent today is the biggest example of this.
- People from one state are racist against people in other states. recently in Maharastra, a certain gentleman launched a campaign to drive all north Indians from the state
- we love white people... white is always right, and thus we go to every extent to make sure when we advertise weddings, we clearly specify "looking for a fair person"
- we are extremely racist against Africans and Asians in India. Even within India - the north east state of India which is near the china border is still technically not integrated into India, not because they don't want to but because we see them as 'Chinese' owning to their eye shapes and color

2. Most Indians would give an impression that they are very patriotic. we are, but for a lot of us this is superficial. for instance, we hate speaking our own language - Hindi, and thats because speaking in English is so much more cooler. its unbelievable how many Indians these days cannot speak and /or understand Hindi.

3. In Europe we love to be clean and not litter, but the same people, when in India, don't bother at all using the bin. we will say thank you for everything here... but would not do so in India, even for the cheap/free service available.

4. Whenever an Indian sees other Indian at the airport, or in another country, the first reaction is not to smile but "How the hell did you reach here" or "they must be a Punjabi". its a reaction of competition. Indians behave more sophisticated at the airport than they actually are.and yes they will never speak to you in Hindi.

5. At the airport in India, the immigration officer asked me, "so what is your qualification" and i said MBA, and he seemingly looked satisfied, then i said i am kidding, i have a masters in economics, and that was followed with a 10 minute Q&A round. his point was "how can you work abroad without an MBA..."

6.Indians who have been abroad, or live abroad, upon coming back start disliking India. its dirty, its smelly, bad traffic etc. question to be asked... what have they done to change it?

7. Working as a little shop owner in India is uncool, but in england.. most corner shops are owned by Indians and the same people when they go back to India pretend as if they are in diamond trade. pound rules but its still the same job.

8. Often in India, people talk about how culturally rich/religious and India is. but we don't really care for it too much, it is just to defend the country and show how proud we are as Indians. An Eiffel tower is always cooler than Qutub Minar, a random fort in UK is always better than 5000 year old gems in India...

I can go on, the list is endless. India is a great country, but greatness lies in appreciating what we have and valuing it, and sometimes i feel we are loosing that touch.