The Asian HR practices series - prelude

 There is a lot of talk about the shifting of center of economic gravity to Asia which will change the business context we operate on. How much of this does translate into shift in "HRonomics"?, a word i would like to coin for the shift of thoughts and practices around HR in Asia. There are a lot of great HR thought and industry leaders in Asia and across the world who have touched upon this subject, however my effort as an HR practitioner is to look at some key areas that we need to focus.

 Transformation .

 Ok now you might have heard this word like 100 times in the last 2 - 3 years from setting up shared services to getting HR to boardroom etc. All that is right , but for me it's what my current company's ex CEO told me during my interviews with him. Bring back the "H in HR". All others can come in only if we transform this mindset and bring in the "Human " factor back. In the second series of Asian HR practices i would be dwelling more into some background of evolution of HR practices in Asia and what we need to do bring back the "H" in HR.

 Leadership Development

 If you have worked in some of the "emerged" and emerging economies in asia and especially that in central and south Asia you must have heard a lot of stories about local losing their jobs to overseas talents. The word expat has become synonymous with some kind of evil out there to snatch local jobs. Though this is sometimes overstated there is a certain amount of truth in this. I would explore how as HR practitioners/ people managers in Asia we have a responsibility to build capable leaders.

 Influencing social change 

 Most of the time people managers and HR folks ( not all) think that their work is related to just the organisation they work in. This could be partly an organizational culture, local culture or an individuals belief system. In this part we would look at how people managers and HR folks can change this paradigm and create a new social influence for the better of the community around them. I will speak of my own experience of how i felt humbled by managing this change in a group of circa 85 K employees and their families.

 Think globally , Act locally 

 This is something which i have heard business leaders using very often, but seen very rarely being used by many. It all goes wrong when the rubber hits the road especially when it comes to managing emerging economies. A good read is the book written by Anil K Gupta and Haiyan Wang titled " Getting China and India Right". When it comes to HR thinking and practices ( i hate the word policies and processes) it becomes even more worse. Here we will look at a few things that i have learned through experience and from some other well known leaders on how we need to rethink and really execute the "glocal" concept".

Please look out for the 1st part of the series which will be on HR transformation.