HRの資格

 経理や財務に関しては、日本においては、しっかりとした資格があります。公認会計士というものです。ぜひ、人事に関してはどうでしょうか？

10年以上前に東京大学の先生が人事について話をするというので、拝聴しにでかけたのですが、人事というかHRが専門性の高い領域であるという認識をその人でさえもっていなかったので落胆した記憶があります。

現在はHRの専門性は以前よりは認められ、誰でもできるものではなくて、それなりの経験が必要だという認識に変わっていっていると期待しています。日本の企業はわかりませんが、外資系企業においては、少なくとも、この認識であり、HRで働く社員は基本的にはHRの経験をもつ候補者を採用するところが多いと思います。

ただ、経験というのは専門性を測る一つの基準ですが、かなり不明瞭な基準です。そもそも、Aさんの10年とBさんの10年を比較するのは困難です。もちろん、HRの経験が2年の候補者とHRの経験が10年の候補者では、知識や専門性に差があるのは明白ですが、HR10年の経験をおつ候補者が10名いたら、全員の経験が同じかというと、もちろん、そんなことはありません。やはり、公認会計士のような専門性を示す資格が必要です。

米国では、SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management)があり、英国ではCIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development)があります。 しかし、日本においては、そのような資格はないようです。

では、日本のHR Professionalはどうすればいいのでしょうか。

答えは簡単です。米国か英国の資格を取ればいいのです。MBAを取得するという選択肢もありますが、MBAでカバーされている人的資源管理は本当に少なすぎます。これでは、HRの専門性があるとは言えません。やはり、SHRMかCIPDの資格を取得するのが早いと思います。

そこで、次の記事では、その一つであるCIPDについて話をします。

 

新型コロナ時代に学生がしておくべきこと

 COVID-19の前と後で、学生がしておくべきことが変わるのだろうか？

 ぼくは、あまり変わらないと思う。ただ、COVID-19から派生した変化を最大限に活かせることができれば、新型コロナにうまく適応できたという証になると思う。

根本的に必要なこと

二つあると思う。一つは、自分。もう一つは他人との関係性。

まず、自分。スキルを身につける、知識を身につける、経験を身につける。ただ、COVID-19により物理的に行動が制限されている状況では、経験を身につけることは不利な点がある。たとえば、実際にどこかに旅行することで身につけることのできる体験や経験は難しい。バイトを通して、同僚や店長さんなどから学ぶことも難しい。

すると、スキルか知識ということになる。てっとり早い方法なら、本を読むというアクションがある。一年間で百冊読むという目標をたてて、それを達成すれば、本によって知識を広げることに、達成感というおまけがついてくる。

あるいは、河野大臣が言うように、英語やプログラミングというのも大切なスキルだ。この二つはともに時間が必要になる。

COVID-19の影響で時間ができた人は、その時間を自分に投資して、 英語やプログラミングというスキル、あるいは多くの本を読むことで得られる知識を身につけるといいと思う。

これと同じように大切なのは他人との関係性だ。人間はひとりでは生きていけない。大学に行けないことで、他社との接触がないことは不安定な要因だ。これに関しては正解はないと思うが、他人とどうつながるか、時間を確保して、友人を増やしたり、友人との関係を深めたりしてほしいと思う。

COVID-19だからこそ

リモートが可能になったというのがCOVID-19の最大の恩恵ではないだろうか。それを利用する方法は、オンラインでの英語やプログラミングのスキルの習得だと思う。 

他には、料理を勉強するのもいいのではないだろうか。ネットにある料理の動画を見て、自分の料理のレパートリーを広げる。そして、一回目から二回目と移ったときに、より上手にできるかどうか。ここには、会社に入って、プロフェッショナルとして重要な要素が入っている。試して、検証して、原因分析をしたうえで改善につなげるというサイクルだ。これは、プロフェッショナルとしては必要最小限のスキルだから、学生の間に身につければ、社会人になってから差を生むことができるだろう。

Four ways to help managers perform better – by being more human

マネジャーたちのパフォーマンスを助ける方法というのがCIPDの記事にありました。よくある「四つの方法」とかいうタイトルです。タイトルとしてはマーケティングかぶれしていますが、興味深い内容でしたので、エッセンスをかいつまんで紹介したいと思います。

1. Be more human, not less 

正直わかりにくい。そもそも、「human」というのが日本語に訳しにくい。「人間らしく」とかやっちゃうとなんのことを言っているのかポイントがずれてしまいます。そもそも、「人間らしさ」の定義が人によって異なる上に、何を念頭に「人間らしさ」を考えているか不明だから、余計にわかりにくいです。
ただ。記事を読んでみると、自分もミスを犯すということを認めることを「人間らしさ」として定義しています。ということは、人間臭くていいよということなのでしょう。

上司をやっていると、メンバーから聞かれたら、答えを用意してないといけない、完璧に振る舞わないといけない、弱みは見せられないという強迫観念に駆られがちです。何を聞いてもわからないという上司よりは、何を聞いても的確な答えが返ってくる上司は頼りがいがあるのですが、これって、弊害もあります。上司が偉大すぎて、反論ができなくなるのです。

でも、上司でさえミスをしたことを認めると、チームのメンバーもミスをしたことを認めやすくなる、ひいては、psychological safetyが増えます。やはり、血の通った上司と仕事をするのが一番。  

2. Improve managers’ coaching skills 

ベストなマネジャーはパフォーマンスのコーチが上手だそうです。コーチングのうまい上司についた部下は、エンゲージメントが40％高いのだとか。

ここで言うコーチングとは、すぐに指示や回答を出すことではなく、フィードバックを通して考えさせることでメンバーが回答を見つけることです。しかし、常にフィードバックを与えるマネジャーは部下には重たい存在。逆にパフォーマンスが下がってしまいます。

Connector managersというのが理想だといいます。すなわち、部下が煮詰まりそうなときにコーチングをするというマネジャーのことです。この場合はパフォーマンスが26％も上昇するそうです。

でも、これって、新しいことじゃないですよ。まだ昭和の時代にも、すばらしい上司は、静かに見守っていて、ここぞという時に、手助けすることができる人だったように思います。

3. Make one-to-ones more meaningful
 
一対一の会話が苦手だと答えるマネジャーが多いそうです。なんと、67％のマネジャーがコミュニケーションが苦手だと回答。37％はパフォーマンスに関するフィードバックを伝えるのが苦手だと回答。パフォーマンスに関するフィードバックを伝えることのほうが苦手だと考えるマネジャーが少ないのは意外です。

4. Embed personal development in everyday life
 
研修ではなく、日々、育成を散りばめるほうがいいよというアドバイスです。研修だと、インテンシブな時間を過ごすことができますが、そこで習ったことは忘却曲線に沿って、どんどん脳裏から離れていってしまいます。

一方、小さなことを日々リマインドしてあげれば、忘却曲線に逆らって部下は成長していくというのです。これは外国語の習得などはまさにそうですので、Behaviourを変えたいときにはぜひ利用したいアプローチですね。

Foundation of HR work

In the 21st century, being HR professional means understanding and translating the following foundation into practice.

1. People Plan vs HR Plan
2. Principles-led
3. Evidence-based
4. Outcome-driven

People Plan vs HR Plan

If you have read a few books by David Ulrich, you should be familiar with these words. A People Plan is a plan to develop organisation capabilities. An HR Plan is a plan for Human Resources department.

For instance, completing a payroll migration in time is a good example of Human Resources department. This will never be part of People Plan because payroll vendor does not contribute to people capabilities of an organsation.

Building agility, however, is a good example of People Plan.

Principles-led

Principles are in opposition to rules. If HR professionals are led by rules, they may end up creating rules of the sake of rules and will undermine agility of the organisation.

Rules can create boundaries and cause unintended results. Rules are not fast enough to cope with changes. If you look at the regulations developed by the government, you tend to see delay. This is because rules and laws are not agile / adaptive to fast changes.

Principles help you to act with speed and consitency.

If HR professionals are led by principles, their decisiong-making will become more consistent, and this will help HR professionals to influence the people managers in decision-making.

Evidence-based

Evidence is a powerful tool to give HR professionals an ability to influence decision-making. 

HR professionals have a good understanding of theory around people management and behaviour psychology and this is reinforced by their experience with working with People Managers, and this forms an insight. However, not all People Managers take the advice as it is. Evidence such as people analytics or bench marking data supplements the insight of HR professionals.

Evidence helps HR professionals to develop a compelling story to tell.

Outcome-driven

Many people are happy to claim what they have achieved, and they try to prove this through showing the actions they have completed. Here is a list of actions that were agreed, and this list shows the completion status of all the actions. 100% completion, super!

But is it really super?

Let's take a diet as an example. You decide to lose weight by 5 kg. To do this, you bring restriction to your way of eating and you agreed to set three actions with a due date. You have completed all the actions. Can you claim that you have made accomplishment?

Yes you can only if you have successfully lost your weight. The outcome is 5 kg loss. The three actions were supposed to achieve this. If you cannot get the desired outcome, what is the pont of being happy with the completion of all the actions?

This applies to all professional work including HR work. Let's set a metric to measure the outcome or impact of the actions agreed.

Summary

HR profession is a journey and there is probably no end. So I will not make any conclusion here. However, what I can add here is that People Plan shows where (a direction) while the other three values show how.

Development or growth?

I recently attended a seminar around Human Resources. This was organized by Hays Consulting inviting a guest speaker. It was interesting to see how Japan is ranked in terms of talent resources. For instance, Hays Consulting claim that Japan is worst ranked in Asia Pacific in terms of the mismatch of the talents. If I remember my old days at a Japanese company, this claim does not sound surprising at all. But, I am not sure if this is true because I am not aware how the data has been obtained and collated.

Having said that, I have found the report quite interesting. I do not intend to argue the credibility of the data. My point is actually related to the presentation made by the guest speaker. Piotre Feliks Grzywacz is an HR professional. He was Regional Head of People Development APAC at Google. He has already written a book: 0秒リーダーシップ:「これからの世界」で圧倒的な成果を上げる仕事術

He mentioned that the current organizations are based on promotion but that the future organization should be based on growth. Gen Y values personal growth more than promotion (https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/services/consulting/documents/millennials-at-work.pdf). This is when the term ‘growth’ started to resonate in my mind.

HR professionals know that development has to be discussed when the line manager conducts performance evaluation. Let’s review what the employee has achieved and let’s see what they need to achieve. The Line Manager is supposed to assess the employee from talent and potential perspective and discuss development needs. But this has a fundamental impediment. When the term ‘development’ is used, the employees tend to expect that their employer offers development opportunities and interventions. This typically means off-the-job training. Is this the right thing to do?

If you are a football fan, you must have heard young players interviewed after a match. All the talented young players say that they enjoy very much here because they feel that they are growing. They learn a lot from their coach, from the other players and from the games they play. Their joy refers to an environment supporting growth. But at the same time, their words confirm that they are responsible and committed to their own growth. They never expect others to take the lead to develop their skills. They know that they are the one who owns their development leveraging on the environment and their own passion for growth. This is possibly influenced by the highly competitive situation and the pride they take in the job they perform.

Let’s apply this to our business context. Let’s use the term ‘grow’ to the business persons. Let’s discuss growth rather than development. Let’s start to review the growth the employee has achieved. Then let’s discuss the growth the employee wishes to achieve. Let’s see what the line manager can do to help the employee grow. When I say all of this, I can pleasantly feel the sense of ownership and the coaching approach. This is a huge difference compared to the case where the term ‘development’ is used.

This may be just a matter of terminology. But we know that words are powerful. I think growth is a powerful word from HR perspective and management perspective.

Culture change

Culture change is one of the most important agendas in HR and Management. This also makes your CV brilliant if you have a successful case around culture change as HR Business Partner.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/hr-cant-change-company-culture-by-itself

This article was written to argue the ownership of culture change. The article claims that culture change does not work if it is solely owned by HR. The business leaders have to own culture change in order to drive the change successfully.

I could not agree more. But I want to introduce this article because the article summarises what a culture is. Let me give you an extract:

True culture change means altering the way the organization lives and breathes. It shapes the way people make decisions, get their work done, what they prioritize, and how they interact with colleagues, clients, and customers.

To summarise, a culture shapes behaviours around

• The way people make decisions
• The way people get their work done
• What people prioritize
• How people interact with colleagues, clients and customers.

This is why work around culture change is difficult. Let’s look at decision making. Decision making is influenced by a few factors. The major factors are 1) decision making quality of leaders 2) approval process of an organization. You can influence or alter decision making quality of leaders possibly through offsite training and/or on-the-job experience. This is a classic product of HR. However, approval process lies in the field of Organizational Development and most of HR Business Partners are not trained as OD specialist. It will be much better to combine interventions on the above two factors, but the second factor can easily be ignored because of the above limitation. As a result, the impact will be likely to be undermined.

So what do we need? I think that an internal workshop around OD for HR Business Partners will do. Any thought on this?

How to retain the talents

There are questions that compel an answer. For instance, you will get a unamious Yes from the participants if you ask: “Does retention of the talents matter to your organisation?” “Does it matter to your organisation to get away from high employee turnover?”

I read the following article with anticipation and curiosity:

http://blog.achievers.com/2016/11/how-to-protect-your-company-from-high-employee-turnover/

However, I lost the interest soon. Why? Because the article talks about what seems to be techniques to retain employees rather than the principle around retention. Besides, it is written assuming that there is no problem or issue with the line managers. But who has confirmed that the line managers have nothing to do with employee turnover? Actually, the turnover has very much to do with the line managers.

We all agree that employees leave their organisation usually for more than one reason. Occasionally, employees leave their organisation 100% due to their family reason (the employee’s father passed away and the employee has to take over the family business). In this case, there is only one reason the employee leaves the organisation. But this is rather rare and usually people have a few reasons to leave the organisation.

I have always thought that the following model can apply: there are three factors affecting the decision to leave or not unless force majeure (the case above is included in the force majeure):

• Job or assignment
• Compensation
• People

Job or assignment

If you find the current job or assignment interesting or exciting, or if you learn a lot from the current job, this serves as retention. On the other hand, if you are bored by the current job, this forms one of the good reasons to leave the organization.

Compensation

If you are satisfied with the current compensation, this serves as retention. You do not have to be well paid, but you have to feel that you are paid in a fair manner. But if you feel that you are not paid enough for what you do, or if you discover that your pay is significantly below the market standard, this forms one of the good reasons to leave the organization.

People

If you can respect some of the people you work with, or if you learn a lot from the people you work with, this serves as retention. But if the workplace is full of people you cannot respect, or if the people you work with are far from role model and actually an anti these, you do not want to stay with the organization.

The beauty of the above model is that the three factors can function as a barometre. If you are unhappy with all the three factors, there is no reason for you to stay with the organisation. But if you are happy with all the three factors, you are embracing your professional life. Here is how the barometre works:

• Green: None of the three factors show concern. There is no reason for the employee to consider leaving the organization.
• Amber: One or two of the three factors show concern. I am assuming that many people have one of the three factors show concern.
• Red: All the three factors show concern. Under this state, there is no reason to stay with the organization.

Let me add a final touch to the above model. I think that the most influencing factor is people. Working is a human interaction. If you have to work with disgusting people, you are highly likely to consider leaving the organization; job or assignment can change and the compensation can increase or can be compromised. But it is difficult to compromise the people you work with.

Even if the onboarding process is excellent, and your colleagues are friendly, you will eventually consider leaving the organization if your boss is utterly disgusting. If we want to discuss retention, we need to discuss the leadership quality and management capabilities. More specifically, we should ask if our managers are people that deserve trust.