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I recently read a book “Employees First, Customer Second” by Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies. Is Vineet propogating that companies start treating customers as second rate citizens? Absolutely not – His book is really sending a message to the leadership in organizations telling them that, as leaders, your primary job is to enable your employees to deliver value to your customers by removing the bottle-necks and the time-consuming processes put in place by management and the support organizations such as HR, Administration & Finance. If your employee is worrying about filling a big form to get his salary tax credits for the previous years, how is he/she going to focus on your customer?
Taking the same concept to “Recognition”, where the HR organization is designing an enterprise wide recognition program, they spend most of their time worrying about how they will administer the program, the resources they will need, IT issues with the platform etc. This diverts the focus away from the managers and employees who will actually be using the recognition programs.
If I were a manager in a company, what do I really need to recognize my employees frequently and consistently?
Primary Needs:
1) A budget I can use
2) Broad guidelines on the various categories I can award my employees for
3) Other avenues to recognize my employees in larger forums beyond just my team
Secondary Needs:
1) Support in procurement of suitable awards (customization where possible)
2) A mechanism to share some notable contributions of my employees with the company at large
3) A forum where I can understand what other managers are doing from a recognition perspective
So why does the HR organization responsible for creating a mechanism to enable the managers to use recognition more effectively, focus on the secondary requirements rather than the primary ones. I have seen a number of RFPs which focus on the breadth and pricing of products a recognition service provider offers. It’s time we start looking at managers as customers and focus on the customer’s requirements.
Very valid points, Jayanth.
ReplyDeleteMy view is that: Most of these RFPs may be being drawn up largely by the Purchase / Procurement departments. And not entirely by the HR teams?
And the reason for this could be: Many firms might be looking at R&R spend as a "cost" and not an "investment" into their firm's most important resources i.e Employees. And hence the focus on product pricing in those RFPs.
To that aspect, i think Vineet Nayyar's book really shakes things up and gets firms to recognize that its Employees who are infact the most important "investment-worthy" resource and not a cost!