The People Productivity Puzzle

Jan 15th 2011

By Visty Banaji

Is HR a help or a hindrance in solving it?

There are clearly steps HR has taken in the past that have grown productivity, while some other HR
actions have stunted it. The ten inquiries raised here are prescriptions for some of the things we need to
do differently to make productivity breakthroughs

India has had a patchy productivity improvement record. It is tempting for us in HR to blame this on the
Governments neglect of labor reform, unions carelessness with the life of the goose that lays the
golden egg, the inadequacy of vocational skill-building and even the fortuitous economic happenstance
that permits Indian businesses to substitute wage arbitrage for more sustainable sources of competitive
advantage. It may be more useful, however, for us to avoid such a conveniently externalized locus of
control and instead turn the focus inwards. While productivity has complex causes, management and
HRs contribution to it can best be understood if we ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions about
what we, as leaders and HR professionals, do that helps or hurts people productivity the most.
Here are 10 question-sets, which should help the HR fraternity introspect about its role in resolving the
people productivity predicament in which we find ourselves. The first and most general of the questions
is:

Q1: Do we in HR own people productivity as the support function responsible for measuring it, crusading
for its importance and catalyzing its increase? In other words, do we champion productivity as one of
the prime reasons for HRs existence in an increasingly competitive world?
The other nine question-sets are grouped into what HR can do for the productivity of managers, of
people at the bottom of the pyramid and of the service sector.

Managerial Productivity
Q2: Have we helped our organizations to encash Indias demographic dividend? Have we championed
the cause of untried sources of recruitment (which are not certified plug-and-play and, therefore, make
a genuine demand on HRs developmental capabilities)? Or do we continue to demand (and over-pay
for) ever-higher degrees for ever-more-fragmented jobs? Great talent building programs mould strong
leadership teams out of a mix of diverse backgrounds, the majority of whom make up in eagerness and
the need to continually prove themselves what they lack by way of ready-packed management theory
and elite institution-tags.
Q3: Have we designed our PMS to be a Productivity Maximizing System or followed neutron Jacks
forced hanging blue-print and created a People Maddening System? As I am never tired of repeating,
inappropriately or poorly implemented Bell Curves become Hell Curves, which make the annual
review the most dreaded moment in many managers working lives. Productivity-building innovations
cannot flow freely when performance evaluations result in humiliation and take the joy out of learning
and innovation for at least half the population. The quote, of course, is from Deming the father of the
quality and productivity movement that defines modern manufacturing!
Q4: Are we making the most of our experienced, productivity-catalyzing managers and experts to groom
and upskill the next generation of business and functional leaders? Or do we cling to anachronistic
retirement rules that are wasteful of managerial manpower. Evaluation and retirement policies that
penalize age were evolved during the Scramble for Jobs. They are exactly the opposite of what is
needed to fight the War for Talent.

Productivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Q5: Have we the capability, confidence and concentration to make productivity gains from permanent
employees on our rolls? In several large manufacturing organizations, there is so much reliance on
contract labor and so little attention paid to the relatively few permanent operatives directly employed,
that it appears that the prerogative to manage, which used to be so jealously guarded and gripped, has
slipped (or been fearfully passed) into the hands of run-of-the-mill labor contractors.
Q6: Do we respect, resource and reward manual and craft skills as well the people who use them? Few
developed societies maintain the hierarchical distance (verging on deference), between managers at the
top and manual workers at the bottom of the organizational pyramid, that we do. Have some of our
otherwise modern industrial organizations atavistically replicated a twisted version of Indias caste
system, with its low regard for manual work?
Q7: Jugaad is a uniquely Indian answer to the challenge of spontaneous, incremental improvement. Are
we able to shape it by the twin toroidal guides of discipline and shared corporate values? The
consequences of unrestrained jugaad were only too well demonstrated for us in the run-up to the CWG
debacle!

Service Sector Productivity
Q8: How well-empowered are the customer facing arms of our service organizations? Quite apart from
the productivity gains, even customers with grievances can acquire lifelong loyalty when empowered
employees take remedial decisions on the spot. On the other hand, Moments of Truth, can become
Eternities of Furious Frustration when employees need to check back with some invisible supervisor or
central authority before taking a single helpful step.
Q9: How substantive is the investment we have made to conceptualize and institutionalize a Lean
Service model, the way Toyota did for the manufacturing sector? Do we have dedicated structures and
full-time resources for Service Engineering? Or is our process improvement model still an imported one
that is used for bolstering marketing claims rather than for raising productivity-reinforced barriers to
competitive entry?
Q10: Do we have the strategic competency to manage an innovation ecology through partnering with a
host of other organizations? As service organizations in India move up the value chain, productivity gains
will increasingly come out of collaborators organizations and networking efficiencies rather than from a
directly supervised entity, where a single CEOs writ is law.

Can HR Take the Lead?
There are clearly steps HR has taken in the past that have grown productivity, while some other HR
actions have stunted it. The ten inquiries raised here are prescriptions for some of the things we need to
do differently to make productivity breakthroughs. They may not be easily palatable medicine for those
of us who have become successful with a certain way of doing HR. However, for the bright generation of
young talent that has started flowing into HR, the logic of these suggestions will be obvious. With their
commitment, HR can take the pole position for India to win the productivity race.





10 WAYS IN WHICH HR CAN KILL PRODUCTIVITY

1. Ignoring productivity improvement
2. Recruiting overqualified people
3. PMS = People Maddening System
4. Exiting the experienced
5. Abdicating supervision to contractors
6. Looking down on manual work
7. Missing or uncontrolled jugaad
8. Disempowered customer-facing employees
9. Lack of Lean Service investment
10. Inability to gain from partners productivity

Visty Banaji is CEO of Banner Global Consulting