Blog: Creating Yin-Yang in Human Resources

Strategic HR

Creating Yin-Yang in Human Resources

Creating a balance between working towards improving profitability and working towards being the employee champion and protecting the employee welfare is a continuous process
Creating Yin-Yang in Human Resources

With the era of dynamism and cost optimization, the HR also needs to shift gears — from being an administrative partner to being a strategic partner and an enabler along with aligning itself to the organization’s vision.

It is time to infuse innovation into Human Resources Teams and address questions like, Will Human Resources be the ‘Good Cop’ and implement innovative rewards & incentives, training & development activities, employee welfare activities etc.; or Will it be the ‘Bad Cop’ analyzing the stringent performance management, Feedbacks, Performance improvement plans, cutbacks  layoffs, etc.?

Creating a balance between working towards improving profitability and working towards being the employee champion and protecting the employee welfare is a continuous process that the HR needs to delve in. Hence, we can take some inspiration from the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. Yin is the black side; Yang is white side. According to the concept of Yin and Yang; opposite and contrary forces need to exist for the right balance. These forces are inherently interconnected and interdependent, and also support each other. Similarly, HR can apply this concept for a whole and balanced growth in the organisation.

So, how can we infuse the concept of Yin & Yang in our Human Resources Team?

One place to start is by creating sub teams: 

The Yin Team: The Key Result Areas of this team has to focus on:

· Enhancing performance of the employees, creating stretched annual goals, analyze both competency and goals related performance and tracking it

· Creating and implementing performance improvement and engagement initiatives

· Look for ways to work at enhanced productivity levels through minimized manpower

· Conceptualizing intelligent cost optimization methods

· Giving inputs for development, providing high potential & succession planning data to the Yang team

Yin Team’s effectiveness can be measured through upward movement in employee ratings, profitability metrics of the organisation, increase in productivity per employee, percentage of cost savings, stakeholders feedback and the quality of data fed to Yang Team.

The Yang Team: The Key Result Areas of this team has to focus on:

· Working on the data given by Yin Team and create developmental inputs

· Employee welfare activities through learning, knowledge sharing initiatives, incentives, rewards & recognition

· Ensuring proper support and mentoring of low performers

· Relationship of manager to the employee

Yang Team’s effectiveness can be measured through employee surveys, feedback on activities conducted, training effectiveness data, Employee Happiness Index and so on.

Striking a Balance

The Yin and Yang should each help in addressing their own set of stakeholder concerns and act as gate keepers to strike a balance. This is when the role of CHRO/HR Leader becomes extremely critical. She/he has to carefully ensure both teams should not be absolute and should be co-dependent. This is how balance can be maintained:

· The expectations of the teams should be clearly laid down, i.e. though they are working on different set of KRAs their ultimate goal is same; organisation growth.

· The teams should also be appraised on how they acted as gatekeepers to each other and not overpowered the other.

· HR Leader has to ensure each initiative will be a beginning or end point for other’s initiatives. 

This sort of innovation and restructuring within HR teams would aid the organisation to be future ready and strike a wholesome balance between the top management profitability, growth aspiration and employee happiness. It helps to keep in check that organisation is not going overboard with one of the two aspects.

Disclaimer: This is a contributed post. The statements, opinions and data contained are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of People Matters and the editor(s).

 

 

 

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Topics: Strategic HR, Employee Relations

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