Competencies You Need to Have or Develop for the Future Workforce (Author's personal view)

I was too lazy to create a new article and so this new blog post I made is more of a personal opinion.  So please excuse me for expressing on the first person.

Our country (Philippines) has a new president who promotes change (Pres. Duterte).  The newly elected U.S. president, Mr. Trump is also different from the usual profiles of the previews U.S. presidents.  Changes that somehow rattles the nerves of half of the country's population. Now, with them sitting on the government, we wonder what would be the future of the workforce?  What would be the future of the economy?  That is what we have to watch closely.

As I have mentioned, I am too lazy and so I just captured this presentation from one of the blogs that I read - found at "fivestarsandamoon" website.  This is a print screen of the skills needed for the current and future workforce.

Above are the top 10 skills discussed or were presented in the World Economic Forum.  I wanted to share it with fellow HR practitioners and suggest that we post it on our board to remind us constantly of the skills we need to develop for our human resources.  These competencies are not common and usually the same sets of skills we look for our supervisors, and managers.  These skills are well-developed for those who have gained wisdom from their work experience. 

If you look at our current workforce, many organization are experiencing difficulties in maintaining and sustaining their talents.  We tend to lose them because of the high demand for employees having these competencies.  Not only the competition, but also the interest of the current workforce are so diverse.  Information is so high and wide-spread that consistency of functions performed also present a challenge - "boredom".  HR Managers are now constantly on high-gear thinking creatively of programs that would keep the employees entertained in their job.

Most developmental programs for employees are anchored on Competencies.  Thus, before you go further with your programs, it is best to define first the competency-requirements of your organization.  Doing so, you will have a guide for recruitment, training and with your management program.

Now, looking at the above top 10 skills list, I noticed that there are missing ingredients that we as HR managers always hope to find among the workforce.  What I am pointing at are the softskills we need, particularly in the co-op sector.  These are few of the traits or characters that we need to sustain the culture of "cooperativism":

• Integrity and Honesty
• Commitment
• Loyalty
• Members-centered or customer focused
• Compassion

I know that the above soft-skills are hard to find and determine during recruitment. Only time can tell if we are able to capture the heart of our employees.  And also, you may want to add more to the list I have given above.

The next thing that now comes into my mind is how to develop the soft skills among our employees.  I will try to share my experiences from the interventions I will be making.  You see, most of the consultancy requirements I have now are mostly on how to improve the employee relations and the employees' morale.  These are factors related to the organizational culture.  Hopefully, I'll be able to document it.  I will try to write some small articles as I develop a documentation on the culture and climate of Philippine Cooperatives.

Until my next blog... Please feel free to share your opinions on this matter.  Have a great day ahead!!!

When Does Employee Benefits Becomes a Motivator?

Many cooperatives have lower compensations and benefits packages compared to other financial institutions.  So employees seldom feel that they are receiving enough for the work they do.

But considering the work requirements and the culture of cooperatives, there are benefits that are not well communicated to them.  For example, the training and travel opportunities that they get for attending seminars given by federations are not much valued as a benefit.  Other employees in the corporations have to earn their training opportunity and some even have to spend out of their own pocket to be able to improve their competencies. But in the cooperative sector, training are abundant (except for some cases of front liner employees like cashiers, who finds it hard to leave their post).

HR of cooperatives should be able to communicate the monetary equivalent of all the benefits they give to employees, to help their employees realize the value of their work.  As I have read in an article of "employeebenefits.excellenceessentials.com" (written by Lynn Lievonenn),  "Communicating effectively and regularly about the benefits of benefits plans provides a better understanding and higher adoption rate by your employees. It helps build employee engagement and a more loyal workforce that takes less sick time."

By communicating the benefit plans to the employees, they will see that the organization is not neglecting their basic needs and the plan tells them how the organization understands their needs.  If there's no schedule of increases due to the organizational performance, at least the employees would also know that if they work together and try to achieve the targets, there's a big chance that they will reap the fruit of their labor in the future.  Employees need to understand that they are stewards and partners of the cooperative, and valuing their members and being able to serve the members well, will be rewarded too.

Some cooperatives even offer opportunities for the family members of the employees to find employment in the organization.  Some cooperatives allow relatives to work at the same organization, provided that the internal control is not sacrificed.  Some co-ops also provide scholarships for the employees' children, and some give scholarship for the employees as well. 

So my advice to HR of cooperatives is to review what compensation and benefits' packages that you have and try to monetize it.  This will give you an understanding of what you can offer for recruitment and what you can tell your employees should they decide to find greener pastures. 

Conducting Job Evaluation to Improve Manpower Efficiency

Most of the time, when we visit cooperatives and ask what were the common issues in HR management, one of the prevailing concerns is the number of employees and the efficiency of their current workforce.

When it comes to efficiency, the usual answer of the management is to send their people to training offered by the federation and other providers.  But training is not always the answer.  Efficiency may be rooted from the time of job design, recruitment and to identifying employees for job functions.

Job designs, effective recruitment and performance management may be addressed if we have conducted job evaluations.  Job evaluations identifies the job functions, competencies required for a specific functions and even the criteria & key result area or objective setting for performance evaluation.  In the long run, it also determines the training needs and how an HR can setup the career path program for each employee.

Job evaluation also determines the job levels and market rate for a specific job functions.  Conducting job evaluation is not done just once but the HR unit should have a system in place for this activity.  From time to time, it helps to be always updated in the market value of the different positions in the company or organization.

Right job pricing is determined by the importance of the job function to the operations.  A back-end post may also be rated high in terms of salary if the support needed is necessary to enable the operations employees perform their function.  Specialized skills are usually rated high since expertise may be well in demand in the market.  To determine this, job analysis and job evaluation must be conducted by the HR.

It is also important to conduct job evaluation when we are designing job descriptions.  If we just copy and paste what is available over the net, there is a likely error to include some activities that is not actually performed by an employee on the post.  Also, internal control may be neglected if conflicting functions are given to one post.  For example, a bookkeeper handling cash releases may loosen internal control.

So as an HR, we suggest that you determine and include in your HR process manual the Job Evaluation and set-up policies on its conduct.

It's About Time for Quarterly Business Plan Review

Every end of the year, organizations gather their supervisors, managers and executives to review strategic plans and develop next year's business plan, along with its budget plan.  The plans will remain a plan if it just placed in a binder and put in a shelve.   That business plan should not remain in the shelve but should be regularly visited and consulted as you do your usual business activity.  The best thing to do is to post it on the board and make it visible to your team.

After three (3) months, HR as a strategic management partner, should conduct or facilitate and gather once again the organization's champions to revisit the business plan by conducting a quarterly business activity review or evaluation.  This will provide the managers a view of how they are performing compared to set targets.  How should it be done?  It's not a breeze but it's not the difficult.  Here's how we do it:

• Data gathering and processing  -  A week before the set meeting, we ask all branches and unit heads to prepare a monthly performance review for the past 3 months.  These covers the financial performance, which is usually prepared by the finance and accounting department; the activity report by the HR department for the employees development plans, as well as the organizational development projects status; and lastly for the operations, the area or branch conducted activities aligned to their targets, what strategies they have implemented and marketing strategies.

 

• During the set meeting schedule for the quarterly evaluation  -  We usually take two (2) days to complete this activity.  Thus, meetings were set every Friday and Saturday so that there were lesser disruption when we take our managers out from the daily operations.  
  
  
  The program starts with the usual opening like mission-vision statement recitation, pledge, prayer and opening remarks.  Then we review and revisit the "focus objectives" per unit as shown in the table.
  
  
  
  
  After the target review, each unit will then present what they have done and have accomplished in relations to their targets.
  
  
•  Activity SWOT  -  During the presentations, allow some time for questioning from the members of the participants.  Make sure that the line of questioning and reaction is in the line that each may be able to provide help in the improvements of strategies.  They are all members of the management and they should work as a team.  This is what team leadership means.
  
  
  During this activity, our focus is usually with the strategies, asking the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats encountered during the implementation of activities.  The focus is more on the strategies evaluation and not on the target performance.  The target performance is just an indicator of the strategy's effectiveness.
  
  
  During this activity, you will surely encounter very good performers among the branches and there are those who are not doing well.  Allow them to share practices that are effective as well as challenges encountered.  Best practices may be duplicated while the challenges shared will provide a view of what to avoid and to think of a new approach should strategy is not working.  As early as possible, these challenges will be addressed when you conduct a quarterly review.

I hope this article is some help to you.  Thanks for the opportunity to share... thanks for reading.