Jakarta - human resource is plenty here

I have an Indonesian maid to help with home chores. My wife is a teacher, a real committed primary school teacher who pays more attention to her students than her kids. We let the maid go back to West Java, Indonesia for a short holiday to visit her ailing father late last year. It was a difficult decision. We were warned about strict immigration requirement on part of Indonesian government. But being a caring employer, we let her go.

The reality set in, and it was a nightmare. She could not return as scheduled. She was stranded at the Jakarta airport. With no employer's leave approval endorsed by the Indonesian Embassy in KL, she could not board the Air Asia flight to KL. She didn't carry much cash either.

The turn of the event saw us me and my wife in the city of Jakarta for the first time. Jakarta is a city of people. People are everywhere. On the road. On the microbus. On the bajaj. Under the bridges. On the train. I was thinking it must be easy to do recruitment here to fill up vacancies in my organization.

ex-IT people bring innovations to HR

I bumped into Murad, another ex-IT Manager who is now doing procurement for international operation. He was then a UNIX server specialist - we were using a number of Sun servers for some of the technical applications - and he was the system administrator. He took care of the server maintenance including capacity planning and he enjoyed the work so much, eventhough having to be in the "engine room" (what we called our data center) all the times. With him was a young ex-IT executive who is now Murad's subordinate. She was complaining about how some old-style bosses hate ex-IT people and looked at them suspiciously. She said these old-style bosses - whose authority only exists on memos and circulars circulated to line departments - are very slow. Their workstyle is paper-based. They feared IT things like XP, PowerPoints slides, emails and anything electronic. They feel threatened by the speed of how ex-IT people get things done. They feared some day they will lose their jobs to these innovated Generation X people. I must admit the truth in what she said. They are two ex-IT staff in my HR Department and they were doing very well. They moved faster than others.

"Ms Reed's favorite student is in town"

The other day I flew into KL International Airport having to attend a performance appraisal higher committee meeting. On the train into downtown KL, I sms-ed an old friend during university days in Canada. We were so close then so much so that we shared personal things together. It has been a year or two since we last met. He seemed to forget my number and was asking who was me. I sms-ed in return writing "Ms Reed's favorite student" and he instantly recognized me. We met in the IT area of KL after my meeting. We talked about life of students overseas, about high school in Guelph near Toronto in Ontario, about our English teacher Ms Reed, about Thunder Bay and Lakehead University, about Winnipeg and Brandon, about good bachelor days, about old friends, about families and works.

It was after the meeting another great encounter happened. I was speaking at the lobby of our HQ with friends when a lady asked to confirm my name. She turned out to be my study mate at the University of Manitoba and I have not met her for a long long long time. The last time I heard she was divorced with her husband, my another friend. We could not talk long as she seemed to be rushing to a something may be a lunch meeting. She asked about my wife.

Rationale: Friendship never dies. Old memories make you happier and younger.

"Middle managers did not coach enough"

This time, not over the BBQ at CEO's residence like last time they did, but they met at office, to discuss about the thing they were supposed to do well but did not do it quite well, at least as alleged by executives under them. Yes, organizational improvement people came up with the latest front line survey result. Front line survey is a quarterly survey responded by junior executives and non-executives including operators and technicians. It is a tool used by the management to check the middle and upper management's effectiveness. As expected the result was not as expected, low and not even meeting the Company's target. Middle managers were blamed again for not doing enough coaching to their staff, for not providing effective feedback to their staff. On question no. 12, "In the past month, you have been provided feedback on your performance by your superior. (Yes/No)", the score was the lowest. A couple of upper management members were present at the auditorium and all agreed it was a shared issue and something must be done in order to get good score in the next survey. Laboratory manager thought that respondents did not understand the question and they must be "guided to answer the way we want it", whatever it means. Procurement manager argued that survey result was not a big deal, why make a fuss when the business is good and Company is making tons of money. Bottomline should matter most, and not what the so-called "front line staff " said. Couple of unhappy staff do not break this organization of 500, so he said. Identify them and have a session to with them. The problem was that it was not a couple of them, it could be even more and nobody knew exactly as the survey was done online. Survey result was also reported by department, and some department managers were screaming, some leaving hall early citing he got more important meeting to attend. OI people got solution already and the mini-workshop they conducted confirmed that. In this so-called "mini-workshop" we were divided into group of four or five. Each was given a piece of yellow paper to write one suggestion on how to improve coaching in their department. Only one best solution was selected from each group, and pasted to the wall for challenge by others. Feedbacks were aplenty, among others, intensify coaching program, let the junior executives coach non-executives freeing managers to only coach executives, managers don't have skill to coach - send them to classroom first, coaching already happens at workplace but not documented, staff meeting is equivalent to coaching already - what more do you expect, executives too dependant now - let them find solutions themselves rather than being spoon-fed all the times, and many more. At the end of the workshop, nobody agreed on anything. Time was running out. Then OI people came in. We were all given a new KPI and must be included in our individual performance contract, which is going to be signed off soon in front of our CEO and of course those front line people. The ultimatum is COACHING MUST BE DONE AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH TO THEIR DIRECT REPORTS. On top of that, managers must conduct quarterly staff engagement session in their department.
OI people had already come up with a new coaching form and everytime a coaching happens it must be documented. Instrument manager complained he has eight direct staff and for him too many already. I had two, thanks God.

Performance Appraisal

In this organization, performance management is a serious matter. Employee is given a set of work objectives at the beginning of the financial year, agreed between him and his superior. Each objective is measured by a performance indicator with set target. Targets are further broken down to base and stretch. If you achieve the base target, you meet the work requirement. If you achieve the stretch target, you exceed the work requirement. Targets change every year to become more and more challenging year after year so that you will improve your performance. The pursuit to achieve stretch target is very rigorous as it ties with better monetary reward, even much better compared to meeting the requirement only. Performance management exercise begins with setting the KPIs at all level.