The Four-Way Test of excellence in HR management
I have just arrived from a 20-day hectic but very fulfilling lecture tour in 10 ASEAN member countries, and I am pleased to share with you the template for global and world-class excellence in leading people and managing organizations.
First, we don’t call workers employees anymore, much less laborers. They’re no longer called human resources but human capital. As resources, they can be abused, exploited, and bargained away. As human capital, they’re investments in a value-creating and value-adding engagement experience. They aren’t means of production anymore. They’re the creators of products, innovative, creative, flexible, agile, and purpose-driven, and passionate. We don’t impose on them our paradigms. We let them navigate their ways to achieve a set of mutually-agreed goals and outputs.
The first test of excellent people management is world-class talent acquisition. We ARM (Attract, Retain and Motivate) our new human capital. Each employer competes with all others for the best talent with at least three C's: Competence, Character, and Conscientiousness. Bringing in the best talents is the first crucial test of excellence in HR. If we recruit the wrong people, we are bound to suffer, and the organization will carry him as a burden until retirement, resignation, dismissal, or death. The original sin in HR is in hiring. It’s like choosing the wrong husband or the wrong wife. Ours may be the wrong company for the right human capital.
The second test is Total Rewards, that which we peremptorily call Compensation and Benefits. It is wrong to assume that all an employee is looking for is money. There are many non-monetary intangibles that will make people stay and feel fulfilled in the organization. For even if you pay them the highest wages in the industry, if you don’t show respect and care, they will leave. The third test is Learning and Development, that we downgrade with a name called Training. There are many vehicles for learning and development outside the training room, like mentoring, counselling, coaching, and other nurturing platforms for developing potential.
The fourth test is the most controversial and often most dreaded, but it is my favorite, and my area of specialization since 1980 when my career shifted to HR from pure law. It is called by others various unexplained names like ER, LR, or IR, and people do not even know the difference. Employee Relations is the proactive intervention which are non-adversarial, like outing, sports, and employee parties. Labor Relations includes the structured administrative discipline and investigations, and grievance handling, CBA negotiations with the unions, and managing strikes. Industrial Relations includes litigation and handling cases in DOLE, NLRC, and the courts.
Why am I being trusted to teach all the HR professionals in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Brunei, aside from our own? I even lectured in San Francisco, New York, Geneva, UK and the Netherlands. Well, I immersed myself for no less than 35 years practicing what I preach. I have written 24 books and I obtained academic degrees in ASEAN comparative labor laws and human behavior. Perhaps, I have earned the right to share what I have learned through hard work and focus.
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