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Encouraging Quality and Customer focus
Today’s corporate culture needs to actively support quality and
customer orientation. With globalization and rapid technological
change, quality is of utmost importance for the Indian companies,
which earn most of their revenues through exports. Hence, the HR
professional as a strategic partner needs to encourage a culture
of superior quality to ensure customer satisfaction–the only real
measure of quality of a product or service.
To be competitive today, an organization needs to be customer
responsive. Responsiveness includes innovation, quick
decision-making, leading an industry in price or value, and
effectively linking with suppliers and vendors to build a value
chain for customers. Employee attitudes correlate highly with
customer attitude. The shift to a customer focus redirects
attention from the firm to the value chain in which it is
embedded. HR practices within a firm should consequently be
extended to suppliers and customers outside the firm.
Up-gradation of Skills through Re-training
Rapid and unpredictable technological changes, and the increased
emphasis on quality of services are compelling software businesses
to recruit adaptable and competent employees. Software
professionals themselves expect their employers provide them with
all the training they may need in order to perform not only in
their current projects, but also in related ones that they may
subsequently hold within the organization. As observed by Watts
Humphrey, Fellow of the Carnegie Mellon University, "…as software
professionals gain competence, they do not necessarily gain
motivation. This is because a creative engineer or scientist who
has learned how to accomplish something has little interest in
doing it again. Once they have satisfied their curiosity, they may
abruptly lose interest and seek an immediate change". And when the
rate of technological change is high–may be higher than the time
required to acquire competence in one area–professionals could
undergo psychological turbulence owing to the need to work in a
new technology throughout their career. They want to gain new
knowledge, which will be utilized by their organization. On the
basis of the new learning they want to work in higher segments of
software value chain. Therefore, constant up-gradation of employee
skills poses yet another challenge for HR personnel.
In Conclusion
With the advent of a work situation where more and more companies
are having to concede that their valued employees are leaving
them, a new concept of career and human resource management is
bound to emerge. The focus of this new paradigm should not only be
to attract, motivate and retain key 'knowledge workers', but also
on how to reinvent careers when the loyalty of the employees is to
their 'brain ware' rather than to the organization.
With lifetime employment in one company not on the agenda of most
employees, jobs will become short term. Today's high-tech
employees desire a continuous up-gradation of skills, and want
work to be exciting and entertaining–a trend that requires
designing work systems that fulfill such expectations. As
employees gain greater expertise and control over their careers,
they would reinvest their gain back into their work.
HR practitioners must also play a proactive role in software
industry. As business partners, they need to be aware of business
strategies, and the opportunities and threats facing the
organization. As strategists, HR professionals require to achieve
integration and fit to an organization's business strategy. As
interventionists, they need to adopt an all-embracing approach to
understanding organizational issues, and their effect on people.
Finally, as innovators, they should introduce new processes and
procedures, which they believe will increase organizational
effectiveness.
Some of the information in this article is based on the work of Dr
N S Rathi, Asst. Placement Officer, IIT Bombay.
Contact: meena@hss.iitb.ac.in
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Editorial