At the Nexstep e HR RoundTable, New Delhi on the 17^th of June 2008 about HR Playing a Strategic Role, we had eminent HR professionals sharing their insights and real-life experiences on how HR can play a strategic role.

Ms Promila Adana, who represented Artemis Hospitals (www.artemishospital.in) of Apollo Tyres (www.apollotyres.com) Group as their Head of HR, shared with us her insights on the progressive practices being adopted at Artemis.

Here’s a brief synopsis of her talk…..

“Performance Management Systems in the Context of Employee Motivation and Engagement”

Ms Adana started by emphasizing the HR challenge:

“To retain talented people and fully engage them by capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work life and align it to the organizational goal.”

In the context of performance management, she mentioned that it is critical to arrive at a framework for employee engagement practices. This allows the organization to adopt an effective performance management system.

She shared an interesting framework which can be used for working on employee engagement in a structured manner. (See diagram below, along with its description)

1. Alignment with Strategy:

It provides the link between the actions of the individual employee and their fit with overall organizational objectives.

When individuals are able to understand how their actions directly link into a broader organizational strategy, their engagement levels and performance increase.

2. Work Environment:

It is important to manage the environmental aspects that link to culture (e.g. nature of colleague interactions, office layout, and implicit ways of doing things). This includes:

• Style of leadership and how it relates to employees

• Style of communication (within the team and on a broader corporate scale)
• Expectations of employees towards management and vice versa

3. Reward & Recognition:

Rewards can be addressed better by looking at it holistically, which includes:

Base salary, which should act as a threshold payment for an individual’s competencies

• Bonus/incentives which reward achievement of targets;

• Benefits package (often where a company can pass on purchasing economies of scale to employees)
• Shares, providing a sense of ownership in the organization to some degree
• Recognition and acknowledgement (a non-financial component) of employee success through awards
• Sense of equity of reward compared to others.

4. Training & Development:

To manage T&D effectively, these aspects must be managed well:

• Career progression, giving employees a sense of growth within one organization

• Competencies, which provide structured guidance on focused incremental development.
• Succession planning, which allows proactive management of individual development plans to equip them with the skills necessary to progress in their career.
• Job/role architecture, which provides more or fewer opportunities for development and its application.
• Training/learning, demonstrating the organization's investment in the employee’s development and the provision of opportunity to apply new skills.
• Coaching/mentoring, which act as ongoing development to strengthen confidence by the provision of directional guidance and constructive feedback

5. Organizational Architecture:

This is the center-piece, within the framework of which all the other 4 aspects can be managed. This is the structural support that is required to make the other aspects work.

Key aspects of the organizational architecture that should be in place are:

• Organization design, key to the creation or stifling of employee’s opportunities
• Performance management system, which provides the linkages between other human capital management processes
• Rewards system, providing a context for each employee’s personal reward
• Decision rights, which lead to greater or lesser senses of empowerment at the team and individual level
• Work values, an implicit embodiment of the corporate brand for staff acquisition and retention.

Ms Adana emphasized the role that Nexstep has played in implementing the performance management system (See Nexstep e HR Performance Management system) at Apollo Tyres. This has helped the organization enhance employee motivation by ensuring that rewards are commensurate with performance. It has helped enforce a culture where clearly, performance is rewarded.

She mentioned that Nexstep has played the role of a key partner in helping create the architectural support for strategic HR.