Shilputsi Consultants

Shilputsi in the News
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Shared Vision: How Effective Is It In Tata Telecom? - The Financial Express: February 7, 2003
by Tarun Narayan

As a departure from conceptualising HR practices at the boardroom and imposing them across the organisational spectrum, corporates are now looking at sharing the vision of HR right from the top management to the line functions. And in sync with this approach, Tata Telecom Ltd has now deployed an employee engagement initiative. The objective behind the move is to gain voluntary acceptance of professionals from the company’s regional level offices before introducing any practices in Human Resource Management (HRM).

However, consultants opine that such endeavours may not necessarily be easy to implement. Says Ernst & Young partner Arvind Mishra: “The challenge will be in aligning departmental vision with career and developmental vision of individual employees. For, the biggest question confronting professionals in such vision-sharing endeavours is: “If I achieve this plan as set out in the vision then what is there in it for me?”

The other major challenge could be misalignment between the line and the HR function’s expectations from each other. Informs Mr Mishra: “The vision for the HR department should match the needs of the line department and the two should be able to deliver it together with clear understanding of their respective roles.” However, some consultants believe that this is often not the case in several corporate establishments.

As part of its HR initiatives, Tata Telecom has initiated the practice to tide the challenge of buy-in that any HR function would confront along with institutionalising a rigour in its implementation of systems in people management.

Says Tata Telecom Ltd director (people excellence) BN Jha: “There are several new HR interventions that we undertake from time to time. And implementing practices across the various regions of the organisation may consume enormous cycle time if we were to deploy any programme by merely sending a circular to the respective regions.”

The company affirms that an approach of shared vision also aids the organisation in being able to do away with any resistance that it may encounter from employees while deploying a certain programme in people management.

For instance, as part of the reward management programmes the company has evolved an incentive scheme. This scheme is aligned to the Performance Management Systems (PMS) in the enterprise. Adds Mr Jha: “Any employee who is unable to align to our performance expectations may not be entitled to all such rewards and incentives.”

Accordingly, professionals from the HR function deliberate with the quality council that comprises the top management on any HR initiative that the organisation is planning to deploy. The company then incorporates the necessary inputs from these professionals. And based on these inputs the organisation evolves an action plan. This plan is further taken up for another round of discussion with professionals at the regional-level, before the company goes for a final roll-out of these initiatives.

HR experts opine that the task for HR even in these cases is also to create a climate of trust in the process along with evolving an appropriate means of deployment and judgement so that the organisation can successfully cascade the vision right from the level of CEO to individual employees in the line functions.

According to the company, before deploying any such initiatives HR professionals would, therefore, evolve an action plan and conduct deliberations with professionals at the regional level. “The employees are empowered to take up any issue and even provide inputs on how this can be implemented with a lot more of rigour.”

Further, to map the aspirations of its employees the company conducts open house sessions and internal customer satisfaction surveys and accordingly charts out self-development plans along with other training and development initiatives.

Says Change Consultants Ltd’s Rithwik Rajadhyaksha: “The major drawback for HR today is the inability to implement initiatives in people management with the much-needed speed and precision.”

Says Ma Foi Management Consultants managing director Pandia Rajan: “With strategic planning falling to a period of less than three years vision sharing may not be a very practical proposition.”

Adds Shilputsi Consultants’ Purvi Sheth: “Such initiatives can successfully take off only in those companies where HR as a function is already well structured and certain regional structures are in place.”

According to Ms Sheth, vision sharing may not be practical across industries and it is unfeasible in those industries where decision-making in critical businesses needs to be speedier.