Wednesday 1 December 2010

THF: The Coming Of Age

The Human Factor completes two years in it’s avatar as a magazine with this issue. It has been an amazing journey, in which the magazine has evolved from a toddler, trying to find its feet in the world of print journalism, to a youthful entity which takes confident strides while knowing that there is a lot left to learn and achieve. The HR fraternity has given us many reasons to celebrate our second anniversary; our readership base has grown multi-fold, HR practitioners in India and abroad has recognised The Human Factor as a key publication in the genre, and we have been awarded the “HR magazine of the year” at the Global HR excellence awards. As we have grown over the last few months, we have infused new blood into the editorial team, and our commitment and passion is stronger than ever. Our commitment is to be true to the soul of ‘The Human Factor’ and yet keep expanding our perspective of the HR landscape. We had started our journey as a human resource journal, at a time when the HR function was just about coming onto its own. The last few years have been exciting for HR practitioners as it has grown in stature and been universally recognised as a strategic business function. With recognition comes responsibility, and the future of both the HR practitioner and The Human Factor while challenging, promises to be rewarding.

Our first anniversary issue - “Hall of Fame 2009” was a great success, and so I believe will be this “Hall of Fame 2010 - The Premier League”, the second anniversary issue. You will see that we have added a few categories to last year’s list. This is in keeping with the fact that organisations across the world have come to value the importance of the Human Resource function, and most forward looking leaders recognise that every manager is, at some level, a manager of human resources. In our quest for nominees for the “Hall of Fame - The Premier League”, we realised that there are exemplary examples of HR leadership in all business functions, be it sales, marketing or finance. Dave Ulrich had said that “HR should not be defined by what it does, but by what it delivers -- results that enrich the organisation’s value to customers, investors, and employees”, and as traditionally non-HR functions embrace HR values to deliver organisational results, we also see HR managers soaking in skills of other business functions to be able to become a true business partner in the organisation’s efforts in delivering value to all stakeholders. In this issue we have profiled managers and leaders across industries, sectors and business functions, an eclectic mix, which we believe will give readers a broad perspective of success factors and people leadership.

As businesses grow, diverse, global and complex people managers will come across a steep learning curve which will require them to not only prepare themselves for the present but also prepare for a dynamic and uncertain future, while keeping in mind the important lessons learnt in the past. We hope to remain an able and supportive friend in your journey into the exciting times that lay ahead of us.

Monday 1 November 2010

What Ails Learning & Development?

The economic turmoil of the last couple of years has had a significant effect on the executive learning and development landscape. A recent Duke Corporate Education study suggests three primary forces that have changed the shape of L&D: budget cuts that meant significantly fewer available resources, travel restrictions that led to a search for new ways to learn, and improvements in technology that offered new methods for achieving learning. While the findings may not come as a surprise to professionals, it has taken the industry time, in both the supply and the demand end, to adapt to the new reality. While the tools and technology for hybrid learning models have been available, learning and development professionals had walked away because of their apparent inefficiencies. The last few years have seen dramatic improvements in technology but the fraternity still shows a certain inertia and skepticism in embracing them. In the post recession world it will be difficult for providers to survive if they fail to adapt new technologies into their design and delivery methodologies. The other area in which we have seen a lot of planning and little execution is in the aligning of business to learning objectives. Almost everyone that we spoke to regarding executive training at both the consumer end and the provider end acknowledges the importance of corporate training activities to be aligned to business needs, but a framework which would help organisations design interventions to achieve objectives seems elusive to most. In some organisations we see that there is participation from the drivers of business at the intervention design stage, but the engagement dilutes at the delivery stage.

The onus for creating a learning environment and culture that is both development and objective oriented is with the executive leadership of every organisation. That people are an organisation’s most important resource is today beyond debate, and yet when it comes to people development, more often than not we see the responsibility being abdicated to the HR or training functions. HR and training are possibly the best suited to facilitate and execute the intervention, but only business leaders can extract the best ROI on training. In this issue we have engaged with the entire spectrum of stakeholders in the learning and development space; business leaders, management consultants, service providers, trainers, and training managers, from across the globe. I believe you will find the articles and interviews to be insightful and interesting.

We have an array of exciting issues coming up to mark the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. We will end the year with “The Hall of Fame 2010” where we honour leaders who have most impacted businesses and people in their area of work. This year we have expanded the scope of our Hall of Fame categories to include business driving functions like sales and finance, in recognition of the fact that in a diverse, decentralised and yet global economy, all organisational functions have significant impact on both business and human capital. As always, I look forward to receiving suggestions from you that would make your magazine more impactful and insightful. Happy Reading.

Friday 1 October 2010

Leadership @ HR

In today’s business environment, when most organisations realise that their people create the difference between success and failure, strong and strategic leadership from within the Human Resource function is an imperative. In this issue, we have tried to scope the evolution of HR and then define leadership in the context of the HR function as it stands today. While the buzz about HR has been growing across industry sectors, it is only recently that we have seen strong and charismatic leadership come from within the community. We spoke to a host of extraordinary HR leaders across industry sectors to understand what it takes to be a true HR leader in this ever-changing business climate.

Today’s dynamic marketplace requires human resource professionals to have an expanded role in the organisation due to increasing importance of social and relationship capital. The challenge today is to gain and use influence to become a better business partner, to determine the strategic direction and the short- and long-term objectives of the organisation, and to take initiative and lead from the front to use the human resources function to help achieve corporate goals. While aspiring leaders in HR need to be technically proficient in the tools of their trade, they also need to acquire management and leadership capabilities to leverage these tools to produce sustainable and measurable results on the ground. Communicating and constantly upholding the corporate culture to build a cohesive team is an important enabler for driving growth. HR leaders who have made the transition from good to great are more than messengers of corporate culture; they have transformed themselves into evangelists who promote the ethos of the organisation with a religious zeal. An interesting finding for this issue was that most organisations that had great HR leaders had taken proactive measures to deal with the downturn and, but naturally, in these organisations there were fewer drastic measures like downsizing or salary adjustments. The adverse business sentiment also separated the men from the boys, and the better leaders found innovative ways to increase productivity while keeping the workplace energised. Today, at all levels we need committed leaders and managers like them to translate strategies and frameworks into solutions on the ground.

As you may be aware, your magazine The Human Factor has been awarded “The Best HR Magazine of the Year” at the Global HR Excellence Awards. This is a proud moment for us, and I feel honoured to lead a team which transformed the fledgling magazine to a force to reckon with in a matter of two years. I would also here like to express my gratitude to the stalwarts in the HR community who gave us their unflinching support and held our hand when we needed it most. My heartfelt thanks also to you our readers, without who the entire exercise of publishing this magazine would accomplish absolutely nothing. As we move closer to our second anniversary, this award gives us even more impetus to strive harder and add more value to the community.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Managing Uncertain Futures

At The Human Factor over the last few issues we have been trying to bring to you people perspectives from a variety of spaces beyond the regular workplace, from the world of media, sports and advertising. This time the magazine turns a new page, and we bring to you perspectives from the Chief Minister of Delhi, Dr. Sheila Dikshit and from Mr. Kamal Nath, the Union Cabinet Minister for Road Transport and Highways. While discussing organisations and workplace policies we mostly restrict ourselves to the corporate sector, or at the most, the public sector; but leave aside one of the largest workforce that has an effect on our daily life; the government and the bureaucracy.

With the Commonwealth Games around the corner, the scale of operations that Dr. Dikshit is driving in addition to managing the daily turbulence of public office is incredible. Mr. Kamal Nath, on the other hand, is committed to improve the surface transport network, and targets to add 20 kilometres of roads every day, while at the same time negotiating public-private partnership deals to create world class connectivity. What makes their job even more difficult is that while they manage a structured bureaucracy at the ministerial level, they also have to, on an everyday basis, manage the political cadre which is largely unstructured, and whose goals and ambitions are not always aligned to that of the government. It was educational for us to learn how public leaders successfully manage these multiple threads, and we hope you will find their interviews of interest.

In the campus-recruitment space, the industry and professional schools have just concluded a full cycle of pre-placement talks, assessments and interviews, offers, acceptance, and onboarding. Before the next cycle started, we wanted to have a 360° view of what students, industry and institutions, that is, the most important stakeholders, perceived to be important success factors for institutions to able to churn the right kind of talent. We reached out to students, faculty members and administrators in professional institutes, specifically business schools, engineering schools and schools of medicine, and to recruiters who are veterans in campus recruitment. While most stakeholders stressed on quality of curriculum, and industry readiness as important factors, the industry particularly stressed upon the placement process at the institution to be streamlined better. With the number of institutions mushrooming across India, the recruiters have a difficult time identifying the better schools from the masses. The tier two institutions at this point would do well to concentrate on building a brand that would differentiate them from the rest, if they want to come out as winners in the placements sweepstakes. While branding activities would help build perception, it is also important to build the brand around the core factors like curriculum, faculty, teaching methodology and industry exposure. It would probably also make sense, if instead of trying to copy the top schools and become another me too, these institutions try and create their own niche in terms of curriculum and industry specialisation. India certainly needs many more professional institutes, but it is not enough to just churn out graduates by the hundreds, what we need is employable talent in large numbers.

Thursday 1 July 2010

Engagement Is Strategy

In recent years many senior executives have iterated that more than strategy or vision, managing or engaging employees is their foremost priority and is probably a much tougher job than charting out a strategy for the business. There is also a school of thought which claims that if an organisation can get its ‘people’ act together, the business would take care of itself. Vineet Nayar’s new book Employees First, Customers Second has once more brought employee engagement issues to the fore. There is a certain romance in putting employees above all else in our scheme of things and we HR professionals feel vindicated when the industry acknowledges the truth that we had always believed in. We however need to ask the tough questions – is it possible to put employees first at all times? At what cost? Will we be able to convince non-employee stakeholders about the sound business logic of our employee engagement initiatives? We have seen some research lately suggesting direct linkages between employee engagement and company profits, but the industry and financial markets need more empirical evidence and standardised measurement tools before we can go full-steam ahead with an ‘employee first’ strategy.

In today’s fast changing business climate where employee loyalty can no longer be taken for granted, the new school of thought says that leaders and managers should focus on managing the relationships among people rather than managing individuals. This philosophy does bear reason; there is hardly a single piece of organisational work that an individual employee can today perform without the help of a team. In Robert Putnam’s seminal work Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, Putnam defined social capital as “the connection between individuals-social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trust worthiness that arises from them,” and claimed that social capital was so important to an organisation that it defined the difference between stagnancy and dynamism. Creation of this social capital or interpersonal relationship between employees and the organisation as well as between individual employees and employee networks is the goal of employee engagement initiatives. In essence a good leader is one who is to able to create and leverage these emotional bonds to produce business results whose sum is greater than the value of the parts put together. When the direction, objective, and values of individual employees, their networks, and that of the organisation are synchronised, leaders can expect a resonance effect in terms of productivity and profitability from the social equity that is created.

In this edition, you will be surprised to see that we have interacted with and interviewed stalwarts of marketing. We have always been intrigued by these individuals who have stood apart through their knowledge, deep consumer insights, and creativity; individuals who have created a niche for themselves beyond their organisations. While we wanted to know about their success stories and creative triggers, we also wanted to understand their views on success factors in the workplace. What was interesting is that they all stressed on the basics and fundamentals of management like meticulous planning, teamwork, communication, and ethics. As Jack Trout said, the best advice that he has received is “Solutions are Easy”. As we start our various initiatives it would be wise to keep this thought in the background.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Adapt. Change. Innovate. Excel.

Recent years have seen rapid change in the internal and external environment of organisations. Whichever industry we look at: consumer goods, education, communications, pharmaceuticals, software, electronics, industrial supply, construction, hospitality or banking, every industry has been impacted by massive and sweeping changes, in terms of product and process innovation, customer profile and their changing expectations, new business models, and expanding markets. Some of these have been mere change to adapt and survive in the competitive globalised economy of the day, but a significant section has been organisational innovation in terms of process, product and culture with the objective of achieving a vision that is far beyond mere survival of the fittest. Because the word innovation has been used in a variety of contexts it probably is useful to put together a broad definition of what we at The Human Factor have looked for when we went to a variety of organisations and experts over the last month or so in search of excellence in organisational innovation. Our idea was to look for organisations who took the lead in new means of doing tasks in a variety of processes; processes which set the organisation apart in its own environment.

It has been an eye-opening experience for the team as we found organisations in every industry and environment, be it heavy engineering or software, entrepreneur-driven or PSE behemoth making significant efforts in process innovation in every function, be it recruitment or sales, finance or production, training or marketing. Innovation, wherever it happens, necessitates change, and traditional wisdom has it that human beings are naturally resistant to change. Our experience though has been a little different in that all the people that we have spoken to have made their peace with change being the only constant, and are welcoming positive change with a smile if not with open arms. It would be possibly be too early to generalise that all organisations are changing, because certainly some are changing too fast for the rest, some are merely adapting to survive, and some are falling apart by the wayside unable to keep pace with the innovative organisations.

The characteristics that we found common in organisations that have been successful in innovation are that the culture of innovation is not restricted to a division or strata of hierarchy but permeates across the length and breadth of the organisation. These organisations also look at all difficult situations as an opportunity to innovate and improve, keep an open mind and culture, and are open to suggestions, experimenting and more importantly failure. These organisations kept innovating in stressful times of the last economic crisis, and looked at innovation as a solution out of the downturn. Cross-generational and cross-functional collaboration also seemed to be a common factor, with both the young guns and the experienced hands willing to listen and learn from each other. Possibly as an extension of the culture of openness these organisations also came across as nimble and agile, always ready to jump on the next big idea.

I am sure our readers belong to innovative organisations or want to build sustainable innovative organisations, and I would like to share one more important lesson learnt in our journey. It is important to be able to conceive an innovation, but it is far more useful and important to be able to implement it.

Saturday 1 May 2010

Leadership And Learning

Over the last month or so we have talked with scores of high performance organisations, training providers and trainers to understand their philosophy of training and how they are adapting their programmes to the rapidly changing business dynamics. Organisations that are successful have always known that to remain competitive they need to keep adapting and innovating with their training format to keep employees at the leading edge of performance. Training managers are using a plethora of delivery mechanisms and pedagogy to provide training, coaching, and assessment services, which include internet-based product training modules, interactive classroom-based training, outdoor activities, group and peer knowledge sharing sessions, blended learning, and collaborative talent management programmes.

Over the last 30 years, the corporate training world has gone through many phases. In the 80s and 90s, traditional instructor-led training (which still makes up more than 60% of all training delivery today), was the primary form of training, and was complimented by various forms of technology (CD ROMs, VHS, video broadcasts) with a goal of increasing reach and reducing cost. In 1998 the term “e-learning” caught on, and the training world fundamentally changed. There was a mad rush to put everything online. Things went a little overboard with people talking about shutting down physical corporate universities and taking everything virtual. In the early 2000s the realisation struck that “e-learning” was not providing the results that pundits had promised and organisations went back and reinvested in classroom and instructor-led programmes. Today it seems training as a form has attained a certain equilibrium, with organisations taking a hybrid approach, taking the best of both the physical and virtual in the right proportions.

We have also observed large investments being made in leadership development across organisations. Like so much in the field of leadership studies, the issue of leadership development programmes (LDP) and their effectiveness remains highly contentious. While experts believe that enhancing leadership capability is central to improved performance across industries, others question the value of leadership training. A significant part of leadership training still remains individual centric, and many argue that more important than the leadership qualities of a number of individuals are the underlying processes that improve organisational effectiveness. In the more inclusive leadership models that are gaining traction, charismatic leadership is taking a back seat with Lao Tzu in 600 BC (“To lead people, walk beside them.. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence ....When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’”) and Henry Mintzberg in 1999 (Indeed, the best managing of all may well be silent. That way people can say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ Because we did.) converging on the same concept of silent leadership benefitting the organisation most. When we look at ROI on training, it becomes incumbent on organisations and LDP providers to take a hard look at the mix of individual-focussed and organisation-centred content, and design programmes that make an impact on organisational performance.

L&D has a come a long way in-terms of impact on performance, but we still need to travel far to make leadership development a process with a fair degree of predictability.

Thursday 1 April 2010

Calling Curtains On The Slowdown

While taking stock of our editorial work for the last financial year what struck the team was that in every single issue, either we or our contributors had brought about the topic of global economic slowdown and its impact. As the economy picks up, it was therefore imperative that we, for one more time, look back at the causes, effects and learning’s from the slowdown, before calling curtains on the recession. We went back to our eminent contributors to understand the impact of the phenomenon, and the almost common refrain across functions and industries was that the slowdown was a necessary evil if not outright good for the economy. The slowdown healed the economy from unrealistic developments and unsustainable bubbles, the weak got bankrupt, and the strong had to come up with better products and more efficient services.

In the Indian context, what has also helped is that the actual effect of the global slowdown on the Indian economy was not as devastating as some in the media made it out to be. We had the luxury to observe and learn from the cause and effects of lapses in regulation, corporate governance and fiscal adventurism in the United States and other developed economies.

For many Indian companies, which were on an exponential growth trajectory, the slowdown helped them take stock and consolidate. While in the heady times of the bull-run, chasing quarterly targets and analyst briefings took centre stage, the slowdown gave leadership the much required breathing space to sit back and take a holistic long-term view. The focus shifted from growth at any cost, to sustainable growth. Corporate governance became more than a buzzword and compliance and ethical business practices gained centre stage. Existing business practices were questioned and in certain cases found redundant or inefficient. Wasteful resources and deadwood were done away with. There were significant efforts in people and leadership development. Both process and people productivity increased by leaps. In the HR space, there was renewed commitment on transparency, communication, employee engagement and empowerment. HR leaders took a strategic view of training and development as an instrument to develop multiple competencies and skills for the future. Large monolithic organisations started the process of transforming themselves into flexible and agile units that are ready to adapt to the unpredictable future.

For a large section of the employees in India, this was their first tryst with a slowdown. They were not here during the last one, and without the benefit of hindsight, they were more focussed on the ‘how to overcome’ rather than the abstract concept of what a recession or a downturn was. An economic downturn became a rough and unconquered terrain, something to be explored, something to be understood, something to be overcome, and something to be conquered in the company of fellow travellers.

Some say, that “The Great Depression” which started in 1929 famously shaped, and in some cases nurtured the “Greatest Generation.” As we slowly but surely emerge out of the slowdown that had shaken the economy, there are signals that the lessons from the downturn may shape the “Greatest Organisations” of corporate India.

Monday 1 March 2010

Ready For The Corner Office?

Over the years we have seen organisations taking concrete steps towards becoming more people-centric. Phrases like “employee engagement” and “employer branding” have become as oft-repeated words in business seminars and Boardrooms as “operational excellence” and “stakeholder value”. And yet, as we look at the careers of most CEOs, we see that their trajectories have originated in Finance, Operations or Marketing. It is rare for a CEO to have a background in HR, though not unprecedented. In India and abroad we have seen some Human Resource professionals make a successful transition to the corner office. At The Human Factor this phenomenon intrigued us; was this indication that HR had truly become strategic and HR professionals were as business-driven as their counterparts in other functions like Operations and Finance, or was it a case of a few extraordinary people who could make it happen no matter what? Opinions and insights varied, but there was consensus that HR today is more business-driven than ever and that in some industries it was a major contributor to business results. Most, however, think that it is individual brilliance that has propelled some HR professionals to the top job.

It is an unassailable truth that neither can the CEO do everything at any stage, nor does the board expect him to be an expert in every area. What contributes to the success of a CEO is his or her ability to bring out the best from his managers and experts, which in turn depends on his or her ability to build a high performance team. Selection and people development being key functions in Human Resources, this is a skill that HR can carry to a CEO role. There is no reason that the head of Human Resources of a large company cannot step into the role of CEO, if he or she has that good an understanding of the business and the customer. Being an HR practitioner becomes an advantage in understanding the nuances of a CEO role because of the knowledge gained around how the people in the organisation function and the processes that grow around people. With these inherent advantages if an HR manager is able to become commercially capable, build confidence, raise business credibility, and make an effort to learn all aspects of the business as well as know the customers, he or she will be well equipped to make the transition to the top job. The more we look at this issue it however becomes apparent that this transition depends more on the individual rather than the industry or organisation; though earning the trust and respect of senior management and industry peers would always remain important regardless of the background.

Nonetheless, the status on HR becoming strategic has garnered little currency across the Board, with a large section of senior managers thinking that HR still does not take part in the planning stage and comes to the game only once the ball has been served. This, I believe, is a mix of perception and reality, and there is a need for proactive and collective effort on the part of the HR community to be more relevant and business oriented before other line functions perceive HR to be strategic.

Is HR ready to step up to the plate?

Friday 1 January 2010

HR 2010: The Year Of Value Creation

I thank you dear readers for the overwhelming success of the 1st Annual Issue of the The Human Factor. We received the largest number of Letters To The Editor ever, mostly appreciating our efforts and some critical, but all most helpful. Your feedback is deeply appreciated and encourages us to work harder to make the magazine even more contemporary, actionable and cutting-edge.

The new year has arrived in the midst of positive economic activity and key indicators show that we are slowly but certainly on the road to recovery. The last couple of years of economic downturn, job cuts and salary freezes were bad news for all concerned but especially so for the HR community, as we faced the immense challenge of keeping the morale up in trying times. While the downturn brought distress, it also pushed us to develop new and innovative tools and techniques to enhance productivity and engage employees within a tight budget. The industry and employment landscape has inescapably changed, as happens with any major economic event, and to deal with the new realities Human Resource departments will have to be flexible, adaptable and innovative in even their day-to-day activities. I have a feeling we will have a lot to thank for the lessons learnt during the slowdown, to deal with challenges arising in the years of economic growth that will follow. What the slowdown has definitely taught us is that we cannot rest on our haunches, and need to keep augmenting
I thank you dear readers for the overwhelming success of the 1st Annual Issue of the The Human Factor. We received the largest number of Letters To The Editor ever, mostly appreciating our efforts and some critical, but all most helpful. Your feedback is deeply appreciated and encourages us to work harder to make the magazine even more contemporary, actionable and cutting-edge.

The new year has arrived in the midst of positive economic activity and key indicators show that we are slowly but certainly on the road to recovery. The last couple of years of economic downturn, job cuts and salary freezes were bad news for all concerned but especially so for the HR community, as we faced the immense challenge of keeping the morale up in trying times. While the downturn brought distress, it also pushed us to develop new and innovative tools and techniques to enhance productivity and engage employees within a tight budget. The industry and employment landscape has inescapably changed, as happens with any major economic event, and to deal with the new realities Human Resource departments will have to be flexible, adaptable and innovative in even their day-to-day activities. I have a feeling we will have a lot to thank for the lessons learnt during the slowdown, to deal with challenges arising in the years of economic growth that will follow. What the slowdown has definitely taught us is that we cannot rest on our haunches, and need to keep augmenting technical, functional and behavioural skills to survive.

Writing my first editorial for 2010 I could not avoid the temptation of writing about what should be our New Year resolution as a community of HR professionals. I can hear readers groan about the futility of New Year resolutions, but humour me a little, let us give this a shot.

At every meeting and conference on Human Resources we keep hearing about strategic HR and aligning HR with business, and how HR can transform business. The reason we keep talking about this is because while we have achieved some measure of success in certain industries and forward-looking organisations, we have not as yet as a community of professionals been able to take positive steps to achieve what we aspire to become. We should possibly work towards transforming HR as a whole before HR can transform business. This would mean becoming a proactive function that understands the business and the management direction for the future, and plans activities whose outcomes would positively impact the bottomline while increasing capabilities to be competitive and ahead of the competition in the future. A key to achieving this would be to attract and retain the right talent to the Human Resource function; talent that is eager to keep learning and is open to new ideas. We need to move on this year and concentrate on improving HR talent and creating the behaviours and insight needed to add value to business. Let 2010 be the defining year where we renew our journey of HR excellence through creation of value for our businesses. The Human Factor’s New Year resolution is to push the agenda for value creation through HR in 2010, and as always we need you with us to achieve our goal.
technical, functional and behavioural skills to survive.

Writing my first editorial for 2010 I could not avoid the temptation of writing about what should be our New Year resolution as a community of HR professionals. I can hear readers groan about the futility of New Year resolutions, but humour me a little, let us give this a shot.

At every meeting and conference on Human Resources we keep hearing about strategic HR and aligning HR with business, and how HR can transform business. The reason we keep talking about this is because while we have achieved some measure of success in certain industries and forward-looking organisations, we have not as yet as a community of professionals been able to take positive steps to achieve what we aspire to become. We should possibly work towards transforming HR as a whole before HR can transform business. This would mean becoming a proactive function that understands the business and the management direction for the future, and plans activities whose outcomes would positively impact the bottomline while increasing capabilities to be competitive and ahead of the competition in the future. A key to achieving this would be to attract and retain the right talent to the Human Resource function; talent that is eager to keep learning and is open to new ideas. We need to move on this year and concentrate on improving HR talent and creating the behaviours and insight needed to add value to business. Let 2010 be the defining year where we renew our journey of HR excellence through creation of value for our businesses. The Human Factor’s New Year resolution is to push the agenda for value creation through HR in 2010, and as always we need you with us to achieve our goal.