Dear All

Thankyou all for your opinions. I have already closed the forum but I the responses are still pouring in .

As a far as the supporting sympathies are concerned I think we are all wasting time on that as so much content has gone to and fro that the respondent in question himself have apparently no idea what he is talking about so why are all of us bothering with stuff that's not nourishing and it's a mere waste of time. In case if you need any further consolation I have already given the member concerned his option to have the final word (not that it would matter- why would you care to look at a response which has no reasoning or refuses to provide reasoning? I couldn't care less but I didn't want to deprive him of the joy of having the last "invaluable" word!)

So far only a few of the over 50 responses were able to answer the actual question posed. Unless you have something to contribute to the subject itself please stop posting any further content.

Thanks

Shalini

Shipra

Thanks for your time on this topic

In response to your post addressed to me and first para in specific :

I have already addressed this in a response way up above and for your convenience I am pasting it here (it would ahve saved me the hassle if you would ahve read my posts properly):

"The reason I mentioned that I did not check your profile is to ensure the forum members and the administrator of the forum that my response is purely based on your post and nothing else. If I look at your profile and your experience then it would be assuming your capability wouldn't it? WHICH I DID NOT DO (I am not yelling but there is no provision here to underline that'swhy mentioned in caps)."

I have never question about anyone's ethics or morals but I did mention the word Integrity and I have also explained the meaning and teh context under which I used it. Again - please read the posts thouroughly.

Yes, in the past I did ask a member of the forum about their ethics which incidentally happens to be yourself for a piece of advice you gave to fake a certificate to someone on this public forum. Please note that whilst everyone came on to you correcting you publicly I was trying to help you on the background by asking the administrator to check upon those who were reprimanding you publicly but in the meantime you commented on on of my posts of that subject stating along the lines "its not taht easy to be genuine in Inida" whgich was why I had , I repeat I had to give the response about ethics. I understand your indifference but you shouldn't ahve used it here.

Nevertheless, I think in terms of the subject apart form the "supporting sympathies" you did make some useful contributions and I thank you for the time.

Hi Krishna & Charan

Thanks for stopping by.

Yea, you are right - companies would follow some and leave some. They adhere to the rules in terms of PF & ESI as they are quite evident and recorded proofs within the benefit structures and obviously linked to the finances of the company. They can't fake those!

I understand that the management may not necessarily be on board (trust me they will never be on board 100% anywhere in the world) with the respective guidelines but what I want to hear from HR Pros here is that would HR venture to advise the management that doing so and so could be in breach of the statutory guidelines and therefore could bring the company into disrepute? For example in the recent SH - Live study forum (not sure if you have gone through the details) the company has violated a statutory requirement that every harrassment/sexual harrassment claim should be investigated promptly and thoroughly. In such scenarios would HR advise managment that they are breaching the Employment Law here?

Thanks again for your time.

Rgds

Shalini

I have just told you that I did not check your profile and responded to you with the knowledge of your profession as a Lawyer given by yourself and other members in the forum. I CATEGORICALLY told you why I did not check your profile. I can say now surely that you did not read my posts properly. All I am after is a justification of your views ( if you ahve gone through critical reasoning in your profession of entrance exams you will know what I am talking about).

You are angry because you couldn't justify your answer !!I have already told you we have to agree to disagree. I think it is now getting personal and I really do not want to get into a personal debate. I have already closed the forum. If you are one of the kind who wants to ahve the last word irrespective of the quality of the answer then the rest of the space is all your's

I just want to end this profesionally, I even gave you an explanation before but your current response leads me to think you are holding a grudge - I leave it to tackle with that yourself.

Thanks for your time.

I will be ignoring all your future responses.

Shalini

Anup

I just want to clear the air here. I am not against you at all, I may disagree your point but does not mean it's a personal attack. I claedrly described what I meant by my statements.

The purpose of this forum is to get an idea of HR's (Employee Relations in particular) stand on this. Now I had no idea that you are from a non-HR background, I never checked your profile. So your statements i.e your line of approach to this issue could be alright in a court of law but not necessarily in HR. Which is why I said that you may be biased and since you are from non- HR background you completely mistook my point.When a work place issue goes to teh court the first thing any judge will check is whethet the internal i.e HR proceedings have been exhausted. So, the purpose of this topic is get the response of HR- ER pros and not to help the victim. Now others outside ER can respond but they may not answer it in line with the ER do's & don'ts.

It wasn't a personal attack on you I think it was the confusion that you were appraoching this from your line of work and I was approaching from mine. Now we have to accept the fact that those appraoches may conflict and will not be preferred if swapped. Obviously you were offended when I asked you to justify. See an ER person would know what I am hitting at but those who
are not in ER may not get my point.

I just have to say we may have to agree to disagree!

Shalini



Dear all

This Forum Is now CLOSED.

Thanks

Hi Harish

Yes, I am not liking the way this debate is going either. All I am after is to justify their answer that's all I am after. I am willing to take the same micro-examination from others as I am being done here!!

I note all your comments - including the below:

"My statement "Yes I agree that using words like that may not be appropriate at this juncture of the investigation,....." itself should have told you that I wasn’t taken anybody’s side, neither yours nor his. "

I was referring this in order to state the participants that there is more than one here on this forum who thinks it's inappropriate to use those words and referred to your statement. This was not out of context was it and neither was this used as a base for the word "Support" !

In terms of keeping track of votes it just appeared on the HR Activity thingy so I really don't have to do much work on it's there and I needed to make sure you ahve done either of those (voting me down or votinf for Anup) in order to use the word "support". Besides there is nothing wrong in voting up or down it's everybody's opinion. I am totally on board with it. But I am being branded as I have encraoched somebody's personal space which I did not! All my statements were within the scope of the responses and the meaning they relayed.

I wasn't dragging you - I was referring your statement. Please refer to my response in teh feedback post to RK (upon his request in response to my email sent over the weekend) asking for changes in the Forums being drafted - hope that will put you at ease.

RK

One more. Is teher anyway HRLink can have an option to take a poll? I know we can do it on Outlook but it's out f question for me to gather the emial addresses.

Subject for the poll:

Following on from my recent heated debate , the heated conversations apart I realised whilst follwoing the case that there are actually stricter guidelines laid by the supreme court on various work place issues. So I wanted to ask all the members of the forum to vote (yes or no) if they feel that they are using the statutory legal (HR) guidelines in their day-to-day duties. If they are not in HR do they think that their HR policies are in line with the statutory guidelines.

Let me know if this is possible.

Ta

RK

AS requested I am posting the stuff discussed here:

1. Numbering:

Is there anyway a number is generated for each response when a forum is posted? I have just noticed that in one of my recent forums I had to repeatedly refer to some previous responses and it would have been much easier if there is a numer assigned to each response.

2. Editing Tools ( Underline, font, save etc like on MS Word)

Is there anyway there are editing tools added to the window when you start to draft a new post on the forum? It's just that more so often I had to compose a lengthy subject or response and it's a bit inconvenient to draft something so legthy in one sitting. If we have the editing tools as suggested above I can save the draft come back and do it at my own convenience. Also if you ahve checked my recent forum I had to use some phrases in CAPS because I didn't have an option to put them in bold or underline or change the colour of the font.

2. Forum (Start & Finish)

Is there anyway you can give an option - "Close the Forum" so that the initiator of the forum if feels necessary to close the forum can actually close it?

All the above have been just a few passing thoughts , not sure how they fit into your website's design/purpose. Please ignore these if they happen to conflict with your ideas.

Ta

Harish, Shipra & Members

First of all (Harish)

I believe you voted me down or voted for Anup (again not that it would bother me as told earlier ) either of these actions means you are in support of Aunp's response, which is fine that's your right which is why I have mentioned to Anup that "one of your supporters" and again if you want to remind me of reviewing the posts perhaps I can now ask you to explain your statement -

Harish - "Yes I agree that using words like that may not be appropriate at this juncture of the investigation,....."

I just referred to your statement, I didn’t made that up and to refer to this I don’t have to read it 100 times do I?

Secondly

I don’t understand why everyone is saying that it’s a personal allegation (by myself )? It’s infact the otherway round here! I am still responding to the content of this post/forum, aren’t I? I have never brought anyone’s personal ability into disrepute and if anyone feels so feel free to bring it to my attention. I did make a clarification of the words used along with the definitions. I did clarify that my opinion of male HR blah..blah was yes myopic but true based on the responses of the cross section of males’ responses. And we had our exchange of responses. I am sure I wasn’t dragging you back but just referring to your statement to Mr Anup here. I wish I could have used the numbers (if a number has been generated for each response) instead of names when referring to a response but there is no such facility here (this has already been taken to the administrator’s attention by myself during the weekend). You were not being dragged, your post was referred to I ahve never asked anyone to contact you!!!

Thirdly (& importantly) – to everyone.

I think I know where the chaos began here. The response which raised a heated debate here was actually posted by a non-HR professional which I wasn’t aware of until after I responded to him swiftly(you don’t check the profiles of everyone who responds to a forum unless it’s exceptionally good – do you?) So I proceeded with an assumption that he was a HR pro and said what I said but I still stand with all I said). Now again I am not saying non-HR Pros should not be here but all I am saying their opinion may not fit with the way HR proceeds in terms of work place issues.

So, in future if a non- HR Pro wants to respond (to an ER/IR subject like this) it would be better for them to include a phrase that from their "........" back ground they believe so and so otherwise it would dilute the seriousness of the topic and may not be in the spirit of HR. The same principle should apply for HR Pros who don not have ER/IR background like those in payroll, recruitment etc. Only because they may not have come across such a situation in a HR -ER/IR prespective and when asked to justify they may not actually take it in the right sense but a HR Pro- from ER/IR background would know what I am talking about !!


Fourthly

It is my understanding that in a HR Forum as this the subjects discussed need some level of critical analysis, if the members participating here are not able to justify their answers then I think they should be quiet rather than coming up with bizarre controversial opinions. All members are expected to have gone through the critical analysis in their job interviews and their workplaces so they should be able to stand up for scrutiny. Again may I state that I have never undermined anyone’s capability in making the above statement? All my responses were within the arena of this subject and in this forum!! I cannot emphasize this anymore than I have already done.

Fifth and Final

A request has been made to the administrator before everyone one else to close this forum!

Before I leave let’s look at the stats of the responses who actually ARE NOT IN FAVOUR OF MY RESPONSES (can’t underline hence the CAPS):

Male HR Prof – more than 20
Male Non-HR Pro= 1
Female HR (non-employee relations background) -1
Female HR (Employee & Industrial Relations Background) – NONE.
Draw your own conclusions. I think I am done explaining over and over again.

I have only stated that Sexual Harrassment casesa re not taken seriously by (corporates) HR here (as everyone seem to say that it's very sensitive topic) but this was twisted and produced as if Indian HR blah..blah...by the members - I really don't want to micro - analyse every statement.

Thanks all for your time. Silence is Golden from now for me on this!

Shalini

P.S I still don’t get what’s wrong in saying to the person (irespective of the background) that he is wrong who feels that it’ may be ok for a male member of staff to misbehave with a female member and shouldn’t be punished! Albeit hypothetical – the opinion is a violation of safety at work! I said it’s wrong and everybody is crying Foul!!! GEE!

Hi Diana

I would measure competency with the number of years of experience, depth of that experience against the business goals.For example a HR manager who has worked for the public sector may have all the relevant technical knowledge but may not be the right fit for a HR Managerial role in a Shared Services set up. This why it is preferable to have a Job Description with 2 sections - First the Job Description (itself describing the role) and second the Person Specification (description of the profile of teh person the company is looking for clearly specifying the essential & desirable qualities).

So, if you are to develop a HR Function from the scratch the heirarchical structure depends on the nature of the business, number of employees, the departments you have in your company etc.

For example if you are a Publishing Company the departments consist of Finance/IT/Marketing/Administration (proof readers, copying assistants etc) the HR department could comprise HR Manager (Highest cadre in the HR function but in bigger companies HR Director is the highest in cadre) reporting to the CEO/COO, followed by HR Advisers (Sr HR Executives) [again the HRA/Es could be many depending on the size of the company reporting to a Team Leader specialising in advisory, training &development,>HR Administration staff usually carrying out payroll, recruitment administration etc> HR Assistants for filing and public enquiries.

I recommend this as a model structure for firms that come under the category of medium to bigger size organisations.

But for shared services set up i.e. companies that provide operations services like HR, Finance, call centre etc to other companies you may use the same structure but the dimension of HR role differs significantly. In such cases (especially the shared Services are providing HR services to clients then ) the HR Manager is required to have understanding of the client's HR policies and the company's HR policies so the JD could be more complex.


Now, what if an employee is technically strong and very weak in people skills? I think the answer to this question depends on how important is this for this person to manage poeple. If his/her JD is 60% technical and 40% management obviously the job holder should be undoubtedly technically strong but the company might train him on people managment skills (depending on the level of his weakness, if he is too weak don't bother but if you think the person can be brought upto speed by brushing up then yes). So the strengths and weaknesses should be assessed against the JD (proportion of the duties) in line with the business goals.

Not sure if any of the above made sense - feel free to come back to me if you have any doubts.

Shalini