In terms of ensuring that employees are business literate and have a good view of organizational performance, there seems to be little variation across the geographical regions. Even so, Asia-Pacific sits at the bottom of the pack on these important issues related to providing clarity and building a sense of connection.

The second issue I spotted was related to Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Given the nature of the talent race in Asia, I think it’s quite a hot issues these days. And interestingly, a higher percentage of Asia-Pacific companies report that they have a clearly defined EVP. However, when it comes to having a segmented EVP approach (e.g. for high performers, high potentials etc.), these companies fare a bit badly. Also, the bigger question is how effectively is the EVP winning mind-share in the talent market.

And as social media powers the new world of communications, there is a fair distance that companies in Asia-Pacific have to go. Only about 30% of the organizations report that they have a documented social media policy in place, the corresponding number for the USA is 77%! Moreover, only a handful of Asia-Pacific companies report that they have the right tools to measure the effectiveness of social media. So, first there is an adoption issue and then, if measurement is not effective, then establishing a clear business case for social media will be a challenge for companies. As for me, I am more interested in finding out how Asia Pacific companies are leveraging these channels for building an open, transparent and collaborative workplace.

All graphs and data credits to Towers Watson

I would like to propose a some key analytical skills for the HR professionals of tomorrow:

• Research / Hypothesis Design: HR needs to understand how it can design experiments to validate hypotheses or come up with alternative explanations to organizational phenomena. At the same time, knowledge about effective sample design techniques can come in handy as well. It can help HR design research studies which can be administered to statistically representative samples, instead of the entire workforce. This could help generalize findings and help save on precious time & efforts.
• Correlations & Regressions: I cannot count how many times I have seen these two key techniques completely misinterpreted or used senselessly. Most importantly, we need to distinguish between the two. Correlation is, simply, two variables moving in the same direction. For instance, employee engagement and financial performance might be positively correlated implying that both generally, move in the same direction. However, we cannot say that one causes the other for sure. On the other hand, regressions help us to form models to explain causality i.e. variables moving in the same direction because one causes the other to happen. For instance, among an employee engagement survey of 50 questions, you can use this to analyze what factors have the largest influence on engagement levels.
• Financial Analysis Techniques: Now, this is a potentially long list, but there are a few key things that help in working out the business case for key initiatives / decisions. Firstly, there has to be a fine appreciation of costs – fixed costs, recurring costs, and variable costs. Secondly, skills around conducting cost-benefits or break-even analysis would be extremely helpful. And speaking of that, if HR professionals can master concepts around “the time value of money”, they can really start demonstrating the rigour of their analyses.

On the other hand, there is some data (though limited to the USA) from a mobile analytics firm, Flurry, to suggest that mobile app usage is not only increasing over time, but is also actually ahead of the traditional web consumption. This reinforces the strength of the mobile medium.

Combining the two trends above, I feel that the most ubiquitous, available, connected and engaging screen is the screen of a smart-phone. It is always with the individual, it is always on and one can push content on it. While a number of companies are using this screen for engaging their customers, I have not come across companies with a mobile strategy for engaging their employees. The possibilities are endless. It could be an enterprise social networking app to keep up with other colleagues or the latest news about the company or to check out what is the next product being developed by the team on the 18th floor! It could be a video app where people could listen to senior leaders articulating the purpose of the company or the new strategy. It could be an app that provides e-learning. It could be an intelligent recommendation engine app that looks across all your enterprise web activities and recommends books for professional development. Or it could all come together in an integrated app. I could go on, but I am sure that we can conjure up even greater possibilities with this.

I think having a mobile strategy for engaging employees is very important already, though it may not be widely recognized as a need. I think this is a powerful medium to connect and engage with employees. If you have any ideas on how to bring a “mobile employee engagement strategy” to life, do write in!

Enjoy the infographic! And do share your best ideas on gamification.

I was at a conference last week, where I was a part of a panel discussion. One of the questions posed to me was “How does having a flexible benefits system affect the engagement levels of employees?”

Typically, research shows that pay / benefits do not feature as a top driver of engagement – they affect engagement, but other factors assume higher priority when it comes to engagement. However, pay / benefits are critical drivers of talent attraction and retention. But, I do feel that a flexible benefits system, as opposed to a traditional benefits plan, would also affect engagement.

In a flexi-benefits programs, the role of employees evolves. From being passive recipients of a standardized, mundane plan, employees become active decision-makers in a flexi-benefits system. It helps to build that sense of autonomy, of empowerment, of ownership. And that does have a positive rub-off effect on engagement, attraction and retention. Overall, I feel that a flexi-benefits system is a great way to differentiate your employee value proposition and compete better in the marketplace for talent.

Have you implemented a flexi-benefits system? What has been your experience?

Until now that growth was built largely on being a workshop to the world, providing cheaper products to seemingly insatiable Western consumers. But that was Asia 1.0–and that engine is losing steam. Now the demands of Asian consumers, with unique and increasingly sophisticated needs, are changing the way companies create, design and market products. They are bringing about a new growth model that we call Asia 2.0.

And, goes on to talk about the kind of leadership styles suitable for these two worlds:

We found that the leaders who best met the Asia 1.0 challenges were highly directive, task-driven and productive, or else logical, serious and data-driven, with strong attention to detail.

In Asia 2.0, leaders’ success will depend on their abilities to handle multiplicity, diversity and cultural differences across their workforces and markets. The leaders most likely to succeed in Asia 2.0 will be those who use openness, informality, humor and adaptability to lead, and who are inquisitive, collaborative, involving and patient in their leadership.

I have myself worked with several organisations in Asia and do agree with some of these points. As I read the article, I thought about the leadership’s role in the context of an evolving, changing Asia. Organisations here are re-inventing themselves, repositioning themselves and are in the middle of constant change. This definitely affects the workforce in these organisations. In such a scenario, communication becomes a very important part of the change management process.

More than simple communication, I believe “selling” of change is critical. Leaders need to be adept at creating dissatisfaction with the present, painting a compelling vision for the future and charting a clear path to move from one point to another. Leaders need to passionately articulate the journey and its impact on the organisation and the individual. And in the process, rally people around the cause. Leaders need to ensure that their people “buy” the change; are completely sold out on it.

But, this does not work out so well when the leadership style is directive or overly serious. Leaders need to reinvent themselves as they map out the great change journey for their organisations. And organisations need to think about how they select and develop leaders for Asia 2.0.

I am putting together a small list of hacks and stories which I found most interesting on the forum:

• Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School writes a thought-provoking piece on “What is Your Management Model?” We have all talked about business models, but not much about the management model. How are we going to make choices about people, effort coordination, objectives etc.? How will we balance a traditional vs. a new-age management practice? Ultimately, what’s more important – the business model or the management model? Must Read.

• Jordan Cohen of Pfizer tells a great story about how to make people more efficient by taking out the routine work out of their work. Fascinating example of outsourcing low value-adding tasks.

• Matt Sholsberg asks us to reinvent the wheel. And for a reason – the wheel itself is over 5000 years old!

• So many organizations are still contemplating about social media. How to adopt? How to ingrain? How to measure success? Srinivas Koushik of Nationwide shares the story of how they built the social web into the very fabric of the organization.

• Chris Grams shares his experiences and ideas on how can organizations become “open” and engage their employees. Great ideas if you want to build an organization based on trust, transparency, openness and collaboration.

What are your ideas? Or if you like, “hacks” to re-invent management?

Often I find that “information” is the key. It is one of the most powerful sources of individual competitive advantages in an organizational context. In most cases, we find that the higher  you are in the hierarchy, the more information you have. Authority is the mirror image of the information one has. In a way, how much should you know is dependent on where you sit across a range of job grades! And, we are not just talking about sensitive information like detailed financials or diversity reports (though I don’t feel these are sensitive!). We are talking the essentials – information about product / services, procedures, systems, repository of innovative ideas, best practices, customer insights or even people – as to who specializes in what or who is the “go-to” person for a particular issue. And, all this information is usually sitting pretty somewhere “up” there! Far away from people, who might need it the most!

If this issue is unchecked, often I see cases of “information hoarding”. As humans, we like to “own” things – put a seal on them – “mine”! It appears we sometimes do the same with information. Especially, when organization structures / practices / culture does not place enough emphasis (I am not talking about mere lip service) on sharing. Worst of all, the whole system sometimes ends up rewarding the ones who hoard information. After all, information is power and one can succeed with the right information. So, that becomes the norm. The message is out. “Hold on to the information. You are better off keeping it to yourself, rather than sharing it with everyone. You can get things done. Win that big bonus. Become a star. And you can outpace others in office.”

What does this lead to? Sooner, rather than later – poor enterprise performance. Let me give some examples, which you might be able to relate to:

• You call your bank’s phone-banking line because you have a wrong transaction in your account – nothing very major. The phone-banking rep puts you on hold to look into the manual on how to address the problem. Doesn’t find the right information and transfers your call to the “relevant” department. Again, no resolution. Looks like something is missing in the manual. Or maybe, some one sat there up in the corner office and designed it without knowing the ground realities. Finally, the call is transferred to the “manager”, who is able to reverse the transaction and closes out the issue. You look at your watch and realize that was 20 minutes of your time for a $10 transaction!

• You are attending an exhibition where companies are demonstrating some fancy manufacturing machinery. It’s a big event. You set your eyes on a piece of work, and you reckon it can improve your plant’s productivity by 10-15%. But, you are worried about energy consumption and ask the company’s reps “I know this machinery can be customized to a customer’s needs. Which specific components are most customizable from the point of reducing energy consumption, while maintaining productivity?” The rep looks at you, looks at his colleagues. Smiles. “I will have to get back to you.” Wonders to himself “Boss knows!”. And, you move on to talk to some of the other stalls at the exhibition.

• A customer calls you and asks you to come over to make a sales pitch on a specific subject, say business continuity services. Given the customer’s industry, you know that your colleague in another team had made a similar pitch a few years back. You go to her, ask for some materials that you can re-use. She says, “I am a bit busy. Getting on a plane soon. Will try to send something in the next 1 week”. Oh! The customer wanted the presentation tomorrow. And you get back to your desk and spend the rest of the day (and part of the night) in re-inventing something that already exists in a fine form. Talk about putting in productive hours at work!

The list is endless. And, the potential for productivity gains by addressing this area is endless too. I feel very passionately for this issue, since I have seen hundreds of people, including myself, being affected by this. And even more so, because now we really seem to have enabling technology to support information sharing like never before. And that is a very important development. But, technology in itself can never ever be the ultimate solution. It’s a tool, not an outcome. More importantly, it will have to be about imbibing the value of sharing, building a culture which supports and disproportionately rewards “information disseminators”.

We need to free up information. What has been your experience? How can we hack companies’ management practices and liberate the information to reach where it truly belongs – the people? How can we bust these islands of information? How can we build this component of “the ideal enterprise”. How can we do that? Tell me now!

When it comes to job titles, we live in an age of rampant inflation. Everybody you come across seems to be a chief or president of some variety. Title inflation is producing its own vocabulary: “uptitling” and “title-fluffing”.

And, it appears that title-inflation is particularly acute for titles which are a subset of  “president” (vice president, assistant vice president etc.) as compared to “chief”. Here is an outstanding piece of statistics:

The number of members of LinkedIn, a professional network, with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. The inflation rate for presidents was 312% and for chiefs a mere 275%.

So, what’s happening? What are the reasons?

What is going on here? The most immediate explanation is the economic downturn: bosses are doling out ever fancier titles as a substitute for pay raises and bonuses. But there are also structural reasons for the trend. The most basic is the growing complexity of businesses. Many not only have presidents and vice-presidents for this or that product line, but also presidents and vice-presidents for various regions. Put the two together and you have a recipe for ever-longer business cards: vice-president for photocopiers Asia-Pacific, for example.

The cult of flexibility is also inflationary. The fashion for flattening hierarchies has had the paradoxical effect of multiplying meaningless job titles. Workers crave important-sounding titles to give them the illusion of ascending the ranks. Managers who no longer have anyone to manage are fobbed off with inflated titles.

Leadership in title inflation, as in so much else, is passing to the developing world, particularly India and China. Both countries have a longstanding obsession with hierarchy (fancy job titles can be the key to getting a bride as well as the admiration of your friends). They also have tight labour markets. The result is an explosion of titles. Companies have taken to creating baffling jobs such as “outbound specialist”. They have also taken to staging public celebrations of promotions from, say, assistant deputy director to principal assistant deputy director.

And, what are some of the possible implications of title inflation:

The snag is that the familiar problems of monetary inflation apply to job-title inflation as well. The benefits of giving people a fancy new title are usually short-lived. The harm is long-lasting. People become cynical about their monikers (particularly when they are given in lieu of pay rises). Organisations become more Ruritanian. The job market becomes more opaque…

And, far from providing people with more security, fancy titles can often make them more expendable. Companies might hesitate before sacking an IT adviser. But what about a chief scrum master? The essence of inflation, after all, is that it devalues everything that it touches.

What do you think are the implications of title-inflation? Is it worth it?

Too often we are in search of an easy answer. We hire experts to tell us what to do. We need to engage the question. Let us sit with the questions, voice our questions, and generate a range of responses rather than a simplistic easy answer to the complexity of employee engagement. I encourage you to read this wonderful collection of questions offered by 96 members of the employee engagement network. Engage the questions, generate responses, and create greater employee engagement for the benefit of all.

The book contains questions – questions for leaders and managers – questions that organizations need to think about. Provocative. Deep. Meaningful. Soul-stirring. A lot of credit goes to David Zinger for hosting the network and facilitating this great piece of work. You can read the book below or click here.

This is the third collaborative e-book I have contributed to (earlier ones are here and here). And I did have a few questions for leaders:

• When it comes to your company, what are the stories that come to your employees’ minds?

• What might be the top 3 unanswered questions in the minds of your people?

• If you are really serious, how would you prove that employee engagement is more than “lip service”?

What is your question? What do you want to ask your leaders, managers and organizations?