First day at office and I am welcomed into a new setup by my
manager, also the head of Human resources for the organization.
My first assignment was to compare the existing policy framework of the organization and map it with the policies prevalent
in the acquiring group. I was to judge the better of two policies,
understand the gaps that were there and give a number that company would need to shell out for switching to the better policy.
Herein was my first learning. The group had decided that in order
to make the transformation a smooth one, the company would
switch to policies which were better for the employees, even if it
meant incurring additional costs. An employee might think that
the switch to new policy costed the company just 50 odd bucks
but when we look from the company point of view, the numbers
suddenly get multiplied and
turn into a mind boggling figure. The challenge for the company was not that they had to
deliver the better of the policies
but they had to do so by reducing the hit that was borne in the
process. I worked on lot of policy
comparison charts, finding lot of
alternatives and drafting them
into flashy presentations. None
of them saw the light of the day.
Still, some of the policy changes
that were implemented such as
introduction of weekend offs
and carrying forward a lot of
existing policies although they were not in the present system of
affairs made people believe that management was 1. Working 2.
Working for them.
was supposed to do. On the face of it, it was a failure. But the masterstroke was still to come. I might not have made the JD documents but I gave my boss the idea that would get JD documents
in place within a month. As a part of my internship I was working
on a similar project where the methodology we followed was that
we conducted Captive group sessions - A highly decorated term
for board room meetings that we conducted for incumbents. The
idea was rather than going to each person one by one, understand the job and then draft it, we call the incumbents department wise, make them understand what JD documents were and
asked them to create one right there and mail it to us.
The HR team at the office was virtually non-existent. Primarily
because the previous team had formed a clout and decided not
to join the new employers. As an outcome, a lot of projects were
thrown at me and consequently I was thrown out of a lot of cabins
while working on them. One such project was drafting the Job
Description documents for the entire organization. This was supposed to be my flagship project. Job description documents are
basically supposed to tell an incumbent what a job requires out of
them. Apart from this, they