Magnetic power at places of worship

Visited Andherichya Raja (Ganpati Pandal) on the auspicious festival days. It is always said that the sanctum sanctorium of a temple or a place of worship has some magnetic field , some powers which we can't really explain.

The wait in the queue was close to an hour and i was quite bored. The approach was mired by uneven platforms to walk on. My mind was wandering. However as soon as i reached the place of worship, i closed my eyes to offer prayers and went into a deep trance like focus. I could feel some power over there. I can surely say that if that kind of focus can be retained for whole day every day, we can achieve whatever we put our mind to. It was an amazing experience

Chess Title received

I have now received the chess title of "Candidate Master" from FIDE (the world chess federation).

Eye Power - well done Patanjali !

Today i had a eye power checkup. The basic intention was to actually switch from an anti glare lens to a special lens which will also block rays from smart phones and keep eyes cool.

To my surprise my power has actually gone down from -1.25 to -1 in one eye and from -1 to - 0.5 in the other. Not sure whether such a thing happens frequently with all. I attribute this to Patanjali agurvedic Mahatriphaladi Ghrit which i was testing for a few days and the immense trust i place in the brand.

Sales incentive and minimum wage

Every few months i see new notifications of rise in minimum wages across states in India.  While this does hit businesses, the hardest it hits is the section of sales force - the feet on street.

Sales force thrives on incentives, within the ambit of incremental revenues and affordability. Just imagine a sales executive with base salary of INR 10 k per month and the opportunity to earn incentives upto 60% of the base pay...so another -INR 6k per month.

Now you get a notification that the minimum wage for the particular category has been increase from 10k to 13k. Fine, you implement that. What happens of the sales incentive potential? Are businesses growing so fast? No. So what then happens is that the potential is to be either reduced from INR 6k to INR 3k or reduce the sales force to keep similar incentive earning potential as earlier.  Decide where to jump - on one side is a well and the other side is a deep gorge. This remains an interesting challenge for sales incentive professionals - to draw a balance

Social reformer - Vijay Mallya

We have had great social reformers in India-those who tirelessly fought against the evils plaguing our society and made it a better place. If i have to identify someone who has had the greatest impact on society in the last few years- it would be undoubtedly Vijay Mallya. He is in the news for all the wrong reasons. But he has delivered one amazing punch by highlighting the inhuman state of Indian jails. It has become an international talking point and Indian government finally has to answer and laboriously explain the state of jails to someone.

This is a landmark phase and i believe will awaken the babus from their deep anti-society slumber. You may even wonder how we have managed to keep the jails so bad for so long. What the hell was govt. doing all these years? In this context, i hail Vijay Mallya as a social reformer.

HR: Centers of excellence and leaders

Having worked in HR CoEs in many organizations, i have realized one cardinal mistake which companies do in anointing the leaders for the CoEs.

CoEs should always be led by specialists. Plain and simple. There is no 2 ways about it. People who dedicate many many years of their life first in struggling to get an opportunity in their field of interest and then sticking to that area through organizational and personal transitions, are best suited to lead the verticals. So for instance an L&OD professional or a C&B professional should be heading that particular vertical. They come in with a particular lens and see the organization through those glasses. They have a long term vision. They are then able to identify the gaps and the opportunity areas and then deliver benefit to the organisation.

Unfortunately, with the quality of HR Heads running the show going down day by day, hare brained ideas come into being. I mention deteriorating quality to signify that most have now stopped thinking and keep following what they have seen earlier in their careers. One of such ludicrous ideas is to consider the CoE head position as a transit role for gaining experience in that particular vertical so that HR professionals can become well rounded HR Heads. This is only a temporary stint for them. Without the wherewithal to lead the function, these are the people who do maximum damage  to the credibility of the function. In such organisations, for years employees feel that nothing good is coming out of the HR CoEs. This is the sole reason and the earlier the CEO and Head HR understand that, the less damage will the CoEs and the organization need to bear.

Job Match (in Job Evaluation): Insights

Job Match is a pretty complicated affair when it comes to identifying the correct job family, discipline code, career level, nature of role (IC/Manager) and aligning the employees to the right job family. The complication doesn't arise because it is an esoteric or a specialized skill. It arises because of the subjectivity and requirement for interpretation. The impact is that if one HR / C&B manager is doing the job evaluation/match and another does the JE/Match for the same set, the difference in the result might leave you surprised. There would be a difference of 30-40% job matches or may be more.

Does this mean then that the method is not reliable?

Over the years, after working on several Global Grading System/ Job Evaluation methodologies, experience has taught me to look at Job Matches in three steps, which i have self-termed below for ease of expression:

1. "Weighted" Match:  There is a Job Family for say Finance or HR or Sales and further categorization. Let us take a case of a sales manager. The sales model for the manager might be predominantly channel sales, with a little bit of direct sales to named accounts. So 80:20 ratio for channel (indirect) sales: Direct Sales.

The job family dictionary wouldn't have a role as a mix of both. Since the weight for the role is more towards indirect sales, we will match it in indirect sales category within sales job family.

For some positions it might be a 100% match, but that is a rare phenomenon in today's work culture. For instance, a Compensation & Benefits Manager handling statutory compliance or HRIS portfolio is quite common. In such a case the focus should be to see where the key focus of the role lies.

2. "Close" Match: Let's take an example of a payroll role. In Towers Watson GGS, payroll is shown under Finance Job Family. It should ideally be under HR Job family and that is what several companies follow. Payroll is about employees' salary and emolument payments. It is a strictly confidential area and since it is related to people placement, fitment and people cost, it should be under HR and not Finance.  Even within HR, not everyone has access to this data. The Head-HR and C&B Manager would.

Now imagine the requirement to do a job match for a payroll person in the HR team. In such a case, since we cannot place payroll in Finance Job Family, you will have to find something within the HR Job Family. Depending on the nature of activities, you look for the closest match and decide to place it under, say, "HR Operations".

3. "Range" Match: Suppose, both the above situations aren't possible...i.e neither there is a direct job match nor a close match, then what is the line of approach?

We will then see what is the nature of the activities under the role and what is the purpose of the exercise. If the purpose is to do a compensation survey and get a compensation range data for all positions, then after understanding the role, i will look for a similar role in maybe a different "general" function and place it over there.

Suppose in a Freight Forwarding industry, we are looking at the role of a Carrier booking associate. The role essential would be to ensure slotting of space for goods in carriers + dispute resolution. If say there is no direct match or a close match, we will then look at a general function like Operations and see if it can be slotted in a role of similar complexity. As a validity check, we can also see the range of the alternate role and basis market compensation sense of the original role, we can see if it would fit it.

These three steps would ensure that the purpose of the exercise is met.