紳士靴と会社

紳士靴と会社って似ている点があるなと思うことがあります。新しい会社に入るのはウキウキします。新しい靴を履くのもウキウキします。
憧れの靴を買っただけでもうれしいものですが、それを履くのはさらにうれしい。もちろん、そこで終わりではありません。靴が自分に慣れる、または自分が靴に慣れるまでは、しっくり来ません。時間とともに、靴と自分の相性がよくなって履き心地がよくなる。
新しい会社に入ったら、新しい環境に慣れる必要があります。人々、部署、決まり、そして仕事のやり方が文化を形成すると思うのですが、それに順応していって、居心地がよくなるのではないでしょうか。

Code de Travail japonais - (労働基準法第1条)

第1条

労働条件は、労働者が人たるに値する生活を営むための必要を充たすべきものでなければならない。

2. この法律で定める労働条件の基準は最低のものであるから、労働関係の当事者は、この基準を理由として労働条件を低下させてはならないことはもとより、その向上を図るように努めなければならない。

Article 1 (Le principe des conditions de travail)

1. Les conditions de travail doivent satisfaire les besoins d’un employé qui mérite la vie humaine.
2. Les conditions de travail définies par cette loi constituent un niveau minimal. Ceux et celles qui sont engagés dans les emplois doivent non seulement éviter de réduire les conditions de travail sous prétexte de cette loi mais aussi s’efforcer d’améliorer les conditions de travail.

Cet article affirme que la loi est définie pour que les employés puissent mener une vie que les êtres humains doivent mériter. Le devoir des employeurs est d’assurer que les conditions de travail qu’ils offrent soient pareilles ou meilleures que les conditions de travail qui sont définies par cette loi.

Leadership styles in UK mysteries

I am an avid fan of UK mysteries. Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are the classic of UK mysteries. I feel very secured when I watch these classi UK mysteries, but I also enjoy watching more recent dramas: Inspector Barnaby, Inspector Morse, A touch of Frost, Georges Gently and so on. One of the things which attract me is the leadership style of the main character.

For instance, Foyle’s War is a UK drama written by Anthony Horowitz. The story takes place in the 1940’s when UK was threatened by the growing power of Nazis. Foyle sets a highest standard to his conduct and always behaves with integrity. In one of the episodes, a bomb by a German bomber devastated the city where Foyle lives. Anemosity against German rises and a German lady gets killed. Foyle says that it does not matter whether a killed person is British or German. It is a murder. If we behaved differently simply because the victim is German, we would be similar Nazis, Foyle says.

I think this is the leadership quality that is really difficult to demonstrate because this is a matter of human quality and human quality is not something you can acquire quickly. You may be able to think ahead and form a powerful vision in 2 - 3 years; you may be able to learn to influence people through your passion in 2 - 3 years; however, this quality will take at least 10 years of conscoius and unconscious behaviours over integrity.

Inspector Barnaby is also interesting in that the hero, Mr. Barnaby, behaves with respect and uses his intelligence as a weapon rather than power or intimidation. Detectives tend to speak loud or aggressively and intimidates suspects so that hopefully they start to tell the truth. In other words, old fashioned detectives use physical power as persuasion. However, Mr. Barnaby speaks gently and shows respect to suspects. When suspects see Mr. Barnaby getting to the truth with just a glimpse of sign or a fragment of facts, suspects feel unable to resist and tell the truth. He pushes suspects to the corner and compels them to tell the truth by using his developed ability to deduce a integrated story from the isolated pieces of facts. Is this also an interesting leadership quality?

I know that it may be absurd to discuss characters in a fiction, but it makes sense because I am talking about the value the author cares and promotes.

Apply sports to Human Resources

Do you like sports? If so, what kind of sports do you like? I love watching football games. For avoidance of doubt, I refer to football in the global context rather than North American context. Football is a game played by two teams of 11 players.

I am interested in football for 2 reasons. First, I am purely a football fan. I love watching beautiful goals. Secondly, I recognise lots in common between football management and business management. A football team plays differently with the same squad but with a different manager on top. It is exciting to imagine how the football manager engages and inspires the players so that they play as a team and achieve better results.

One thing I have learnt recently is that football managers tend to give exercise to players so that they are used to specific fundamental movements. The football managers repeat these exercises until the players can replicate a desired pattern of collective actions with ease.

Then, here comes a question: can we apply this to the business?

Suppose you have a new HR Business Partner onboard. There are a lot for your HR Business Partner to learn so that they can be operational. They have got to be familiar with the HR system, the shared drive and the folders in there, the organisation and its key members, etc. Usually, we take it for granted that as time goes by the new staff member will master all of this. But is this a reasonable expectation? Is this achievable independently from the new staff member’s ability?

What I mentione above is a basic foundation. It is so basic that it seems that you do not need to pay attention to it. But, I believe that there is a lovely opportunity to bring improvement. The learning can be easily accelerated. Suppose you ask the new staff member to find you specific files in the shared drive. You exercise this drill for 30 minutes every day. I am convinced that at the end of five business days, your new staff member will master the file structure of the shared drive and will never lose time in trying to figure out where to find a specific file or information. 

These days we call learning function L&D or Learning & Development as opposed to training. I have no objection about this and I am supportive of the way this is called Learning & Development because this shows a right focus on people’s ability  and opportunities to learn , and people’s needs to develop themselves and organisation’s needs to develop their specific capabilities.

Having said that, there is still an element where training is the most appropriate intervention. Mastering the shared drive, learning to be operational in a specific system or technology platform, and remembering the key stakeholders in the context of the organisation is a typical area that can be resolved quickly by training. Yet, I think that we are missing opportunities.

Let’s start to identify the fundamental systems and the fundamental behaviours which lay out the foundation of success.

Attractive incentive award for Japanese companies

If I were asked to design a reward system for a Japanese manufacturer wishing to promote and reward revolutionary innovation, I would implement an incentive bonus system. When an employee's innovation generates a large profit, a bonus of JPY100 million will be awarded.

From a Japanese company perspective, the amount of bonus award may look gorgeous because many of the board members are not entitled to an annual total compensation of JPY100 million. Hence, the amount should serve as a visible recognition and eventually serve as a retention.

However, I will also pay attention to how to design the distribution. A large amount of bonus in a year will cause a large amount of resident taxes in the following year. If JPY100 million is awarded in a single year, the incumbent will need to pay JPY10 million of resident taxes. Besides, this will put the incumbent to the highest tax bracket. More importantly, once the payment has been made, there will be no further way to retain the incumbent.

One of the ways to distribute this incentive is to defer the payments in several times and in a few forms. Here is an example: 8% each will be paid as bonus allowance through monthly payroll for 5 years thus the total payment representing 40% of the award; 20% will be added to the retirement allowance as a special contribution, fully payable in 10 years from the award; 40% will be paid as bonus, deferred over five years from the second year. Suppose an engineer is entitled to a base salary of 10 million yen, their annual income could reach JPY 26 million without seasonal bonuses for four years and JPY 18 million for another two years.

This will allow the company to retain the talent for probably 5 - 10 years. This will prevent their competitors from stealing the talent and creating competitive advantage from the stolen talent for 10 years.

How to develop an effective HR Business Partner

Many of us tend to agree that it is exciting to work in a fast-pace industry. You have a larger chance to obtain feedback from your clients much faster in a fast-pace industry. Agility is one of the positive attributes to your behaviour on a professional level and you can build agility through putting yourself in a fast-pace working environment.

However, everything has two sides. The flip side of this is that you sacrifice depth in your thought and action and will eventually find youself as a very speedy batelor. But did anybody tell you that HR is a field of reflex like badmington or kendo?

What can be done to help your HR Business Partners to escape from this easy trap? This is through assigning a task and a project. When you consolidate a people strategy as Head of Human Resources, you can ask your Business Partners to draft a people strategy. This is not an easy task. If your Business Partner finds the challenge too hard, you can organise a 1-hour meeting to go through the business strategy and jointly translate the business strategy into people strategy. If the industry moves fast, you may wish to run this exercise twice a year. You may wish to ask them to review their people strategy 3 months after to see if there is any significant gap between the strategy that was built and the situation surrounding the business. If your Business Partner spends 3 years with you, they will be able to perform people strategy review twelve times.

HR Business Partner = HR Sales

I recently started look at HR Business Partners as HR Sales. This is not a new concept because many HR professionals call their internal customers « my client ». However, do we see our clients through this lens to the end? If they are our clients, it makes sense to understand their needs, their business and their profile. There is nothing new about this. However, do we prepare a note about a specific client? Taking a summary note for the past conversation will surely help not only to seize their needs but also to forecast their future needs and moves. This will also help to strengthen relationship with the client and to select a best possible strategy when offering solution or advice. In other words, this activity will make an HR Business Partner more effective.

Seeing HR Business Partners as HR Sales will give you a different perspective and a new way to frame the activities. A salesperson typically sells a product. But they also sell an excellent user experience and a service through the product. This applies to HR Business Partners as well. An HR Business Partner sells HR products such as performance review, succession planning and executive management development programmes. By doing so, an HR Business Partner sells HR consultancy and HR service. To be an effective HR Business Partner, it is important to acquire robust knowledge about HR products. But it is equally important to learn how to sell the product and service based on the understanding of their client’s needs. Many people have claimed that HR Business Partners are internal consultants. I believe they are also internal salespersons. They will need to create folders per client in their PC to record the needs of their respective clients and the past record of services so that they can improve their skills and service. Is an HR Business Partner seeing their clients regularly and often enough? Do they understand the HR products well? What selling strategy have they got? What selling strategy works better for some clients, and not for others? Is there any pattern in the needs of the clients?