You have the job but not the money!

In any organization, higher responsiblity equates with with higher compensation. There is no other way to make people do more work except to give him more money. It is true, in fact all the times.
People talk and talk and talk. They talk back too. Not like my Compaq Proliant servers. Nor Nortel PABX systems. Nor fiber optics backbone. Yes, money could silence them and make them work. Just like camels carrying things across the desert obediently.
In this organization, you can be appointed to a higher job and actually doing the higher job functions, yet you are paid at the rate that of lower (previous) job.
You will only be paid at the rate of higher job ONCE you attend and pass the assessment.
If you do not pass the assessment, they will give you another try after one year. If you fail again, you’ll be transfered back to the previous position, but in most cases, to any available lower position within the same skill group, since the previous position has been filled up by others.
So assuming higher position in this organization is pretty risky. You may not be permanent there if you make blunder in the assessment.
It seems cruel, but the management argues that we need the driver and not the passenger to take this organization to a greater height.

Safety is everything here!

Being in an oil & gas business and running a highly hazardous operation, safety is uncompromising value in this organization. Our approach is behavior-based safety which rests on the principle that what we are seen doing reflects the value we hold. In our plant, safety shoes and safety helmet are minimum Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) requirement. You must wear them to go into non-bonded area of the plant else you are violating the Health Safety and Environment (HSE) regulations and can be severely fined. Safety is our business, in fact everyone's business, from the company's driver who holds the lowest job grade in the organization all the way up to Plant General Manager and CEO, HR people like me not excluded. Safety slogans are everywhere - at main entrance, at parking lots, at Surau, at walkways, at Cafeteria, even in meeting rooms. "Safety, Safety, Safety", " HSE is my responsibility", "We are not in manufacturing business. We are in Safety business", "No job is so urgent that we cannot take time to do it safely", "All accidents are preventable", "Drive safely. Your family is waiting at home", I wanted to think positive all the times but sometimes I cannot help the feeling that HSE is overdone in this organization. Take one example, or two. Climbing up & down the stairs requires you to establish 3 point-contact - 2 feet must firmly be planted on the ground and one hand must touch the stairs' handrail all the times during the flight of going up and down the stairs. Another example - you must always reverse park your car in the company premises. If you are spotted not adhering to the company HSE rules, a report may be lodged against you. You may be punished in some way and the reporter will get rewarded in some way.
Being an HR Manager now with a focus on safe operation I fully support the HSE programs in this organization. You never knew when a disaster will strike. Therefore you must be ready all the times. Just like you never know when you'll be hit by the other driver on the road, therefore you must wear the seat belt all times. Makes sense to me.
When I was an IT Manager, we had a technical change committee who convened regularly to deliberate proposed changes to the computer systems. Hardware upgrades or software installation on the server must go thru this committee of whom I was the Chairman. We looked at all aspects from manpower requirement, the schedule and timing and also the safety aspects. Safety, I must say, was the least important then.

Determining staff potential

In this organization, staff's ultimate potential is one of the important promotion criteria. We call it a current estimated potential or CEP in short which is represented by the the highest job grade the staff could possibly achieve by the the time he retires. Everyone in the executive position has the CEP rating.

CEP rating is determined by the qualities demonstrated by an employee in the areas such as adaptability, learning agility, drive, realistic imagination, judgement, interpersonal influence and empathy. Evidence must be cited to substantiate the rating for each quality. You must convince the panel members that your staff had done this and that and when and whats the final result were before the rating is agreed. In general three elements make up the good evidence: situation or task assigned (ST), action taken (A) and the result (R), or we call it STAR evidence.

But CEP has proponents and opponents. Will talk later about that.

By the way, CEP rating is revised every two years in this organization. For individual staff, the rating could go up or down normally by a single job grade. If the difference is higher, the management has to study why.

I think it is a good HR tool, else everybody will be fighting for the a limited places at the top of the pyramid.

Breaking bad news is part of HR people's job

In this organization, assessment is "a way of life" to get ahead, to differentiate your position and salary and other things men (and women too) are after from others. If you pass the assessment, whatever it is, you feel as if at the top of the world. With it comes all good things such as appointment to the higher positions and promotions.
Today is a busy day for me. The task is to communicate assessment results for four of our direct hire contract staff. They have attended three stages of assessment before they can qualify for permanent employment. The first one is a written test to check their profile. The second is software literacy (SL) test to check their IT skill. The last one is the competency-based interview (CBI). Since this organization is technology-enabled business, SL is very important. It carries higher weightage, almost one half from the total three. I was informed SL is not easy. You are required to draw various types of charts based on the given data on the spreadsheet software.
The candidates were 2 young ladies in the early 30’s and 2 old men nearing 50’s. The first 2 made it, but not the latter 2, one of them was an ex-company driver now doing general admin. He flunked badly, very badly rather, in SL test and screwed up with the CBI. What do you expect from a hard-core driver in term of IT knowledge - writing 1-2-3 macros and creating databases? He was engaged to sit behind the wheel and not to sit in the front of the PC. He was fit for the original work he was assigned. Things changed. The organization outsourced drivers function and he found himself doing things other than ‘driving’.
Just like me, he has to acquire a new skillset to survive in the corporate jungle. I felt pity to him. He was a bread winner in the family of 5. The wife was doing odd works - washing, sewing and taking care of neighbor’s small kids. Sometimes I wish this is my company or my parent’s company where I can offer him work despite his failure in the assessment.
I had no problem breaking good news to the ladies.
I had a big problems with these breadwinners. They looked hopeful and innocent.
I had no choice but to immediately gave him 2 months notice of termination plus some monetary compensation. I knew he had small kids, but I had job to do. He cried in front of me, begging. Yes, a 50 years old man was in tears, sobbing. I never saw that. Had I been an IT Manager, I would not have been in this scenario!

Back to the old passion tonight.

Tonight the kids and wife went to bed early. Had sometimes for myself.
Found myself staring at HTML codes of this blog. I wanted to add a link to my other website, www.bumisepi.com. The website was about traveling rather, my favorite's pastimes in the past but unfortunately could not do much these days. Life as a Human Resource person was rather too taxing. Too many initiatives. 500 people to manage! I was planning to convert this website into blogging style with simple template. Current Word-based site seems too laborous to manage. Adding an entry takes so many steps. See what I can do to improve the site. Also managed to surf www.lelong.com.my and placed a bid for an MP4 player as a birthday gift for Nabilah.
I must admit I am an IT person at heart. Codes and debugging are part of me, despite my title now is HR Planning Manager. Yes! I was an IT Manager, am IT Manager and will be an IT Manager.

"60% of sponsored scholars are female. Don’t be choosy."

Group HR Planners met on the last day of July and the first day of August for 2 days at the ‘horseful’ hotel - Palace of the Golden Horses - near our HQ in KL. For 2 nights I slept with two green horses guarding me at both sides. There were even more horses at the lawn, lobby, cafe and washroom. I took water taxi one evening to the nearby shopping mall to dine at Nandoz.
It was just like being in Mecca or Damascus or somewhere middleastern when you were at this hotel. In fact my secondary goal to befriend Arab women or men -- plenty of them in the hotel -- somehow was not achieved.
This was my second time here at this Berjaya Group signature hotel.
Lets talk HR because I am n HR guy now.
The General Manager of Group HR delivered an opening speech on the outset of Day 1. His message was clear - HR planners must change the way they do manpower planning. We have got a nice HR Plan but not followed thru. Our plan was not connected to the business. Nobody refered to HR Plan. Few understood it. And many other negative things which only to me indicated that HR planners are not effective. We listened and nodded.
I remembered when I was IT Manager in my previous organization when the management accused us as doing things in isolation, not supporting business objectives and goals. We were good at spending only, investing into technology which could be obselete the next day it was installed. We were cost center rather than profit center.
Well, almost a similar and familiar message for services managers. I had to swallow it again.
He also talked about staff leaving the organization. Mainly for a greener pastures in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Attrition rate in the Group was expected higher possibly reaching 7% to 9%. Majority of our sponsored scholars were mainly females. History of female engineers working in the plant environment was not that encouraging in this organization. They left the plant for administrative jobs once they got married and had babies. They cited OSHA Act 1994 which forbids pregnant female employees from hazardous plant environment. They had Laws and Acts on their side. The management could not do a thing. Line managers wanted capable male staff. HQ people forced HR Planners to consider abundant females. HR peoples like me were trapped in the middle.
The reality set in. HR Planners got big task ahead.

HR people slower than turtle!

Old close friend Ahmad called from HQ in KL. Talked about so many things including family, new workplace, The Tan Sri President’s wife and even HR matters. He sought clarification on why he was not chosen to receive long service award. One things led to another, all about HR services not living up to his expectations, not only about his unit’s HR but the HR people everywhere in the Group. Being close friend, for so many years, he knew his feedbacks or criticisms rather were safe with me. I was like him before, criticizing HR peoples as slower than turtle and ignorant about operation and business. "My boss never appreciate my work. We work hard for the Company but the performance rating is always average. HR bosses are good at managing CEOs but not their staff who are running here and there". There are some truths. The first statement was quite right. He was a manager in materials department and the boss is a senior manager in Finance. One thing the SM did like about him is his outspokenness. He bulldozed into things to get results sometimes hurting people feelings.
One thing I liked about him - he’s a professional with vision. He substantiated all claims with evidence. He is also a fundamentalist who held Islam dear to heart.
I did not promise anything. I am a good listener now, though, having been an HR guy for about a year and a half now.

You must assess people!

Being an HR guy, you must assess and pass judgement whether you like it or not. You must provide feedbacks be it positive or negative. In other words, you must take side, cannot sit on the fence and become a Mr Nice Guy all the way. In this organization, assessments are part of people development process. In April 2005 I was assigned to assess a group of so-called potential scholars who will be sponsored by this organization. These were best students from best schools in the countries who scored well in their SPM trial exam. One of the group is in the photo. My assignment was to keep them in a very controlled environment for 3 days and saw how they interacted, mingled, discussed and solved problems among themselves. I must note their leadership, teamwork and communication skills. At the end of the confinement, there was one-to-one interview which wrapped up the whole thing and eventually sealed their fate whether they could be part on this organization. 

"Turkmenistan is somewhere near Sudan"

In this organization, employee recruitment is a serious business. A series of assessments in form of suitability, eligibility and finally interview will turn off the impatient. Today I interviewed direct hires on contract term for possible absorption in permanent scheme. It was a behavior-based interview where past experiences were used to gauge future potential. Some were really matured answering questions confidently on their working experience, some were not. The beautiful ones normally fell in the latter category. One of them was a secretary to a senior manager in charge of overseas operation. She was doing secreatrial things, managing boss's appointments and meetings, processing invoices and staff traveling overseas. " Your boss traveled frequently to Turkmenistan, right? Tell us how do you plan his trip. By the way, where this Turkmenistan is?", so the question went. She said, "Near Sudan I guess". She was young and beautiful and just married to an engineer in her department. "Tell us why we should hire? We met more than 20 people today. Why you are so special from thre rest". Blank response.

Lesson Learnt: Male employees with family responsibilities are more committed. They are more matured. Take them in.

Managing those nearing the end

I attended Group HR Managers meeting today at the Headquarters. The main agenda was to discuss staff movement. In this organization, those who have spent more than 6 years must should be transfered to other subsidiaries or sister companies for exposures and development purposes.
The list was projected to the big screen and the Company HR Manager would table plan for his staff. The session was as busy as the fish market where the whole transaction started with a short presentation followed by a negotiation and then closing of deals. Some of the 'fishes' are nearing retirement age of 55. Unfortunately for them there are no takers due to old age which is rightly associated with high medical cost. Even worst is the fact that there is no specific development for them. Comments like " to retire in the Company", "to conduct training and learning to young ones" , "send to the Virtual Room" are heard. No positive words heard.

LESSSON LEARNT: Do not differentiate your staff based on age. The older worked harder. The younger may not be loyal. But they are all you have to run your plant and process invoices. Be close to them.