HRBP AMA

Manager is a designation, business partner is a role. Most companies have diluted HRBP role these days by disguising it under a line HR role. HRBPs are supposed to be enablers and partners of business. They are expected to deal with Business Managers, Employees and Management and strike a balance in driving the organisation strategy forward. Limited roles exist in the market where you get to work on good stuff.

As an HRBP of 3 years work ex, I stand by this. We don’t deal in administration, talent acquisition or creating engagement activities. We facilitate, create and drive strategic interventions ranging from attrition control to learning and development.

Lots of them. Here's a partial list of what I've dealt with: 1. Male employees harrassing women 2. Male employees falsely implicated by women 3. Employees getting caught up in court cases like dowry, anti-social stuff etc 4. Employees caught with drugs in office premises 5. Employees turning up drunk to office 6. Employees harrassing women on MS Teams 7. Employees committing suicides within and outside office premises 8. Employees misbehaving during offsites or office parties 9. Employees who joined through fake interviews through impersonation 10. BGV failures 11. Employees committing fraud 12. Employees with psychological issues

Wow, that's a lot to be going through. Do any of these end up affecting you personally?

Better answered by the CFO. With whatever budget is allotted, we create different scenarios of how the budget can be utilised better. Every appraisal cycle has a theme where we try to address some issues. Lot of simulation happens in utilising the available budget. We create lot of presentations too for which the data needs to be very very accurate.

This has actually been happening in many companies including Big-Tech..One fine day they discover that they are stuck with overpriced, unproductive and entitled employees who are not adding real value. Then they let go thousands and the cycle continues..

Yes but mostly experienced roles. We just wrapped up our internship program and converting a few interns to permanent.

I got like 3 years of experience 2 in social media management and 1 in HR Any chances or anything you got for me? Sorry if this is ruining ur AMA vibe tho

Strictly no. It is all how strong your negotiation skills are. Do a good research about the role & ask a valid hike.

HRBPs are not involved in the offer negotiation. Recruiters don't get any incentive for negotiating an offer. It's their job to hire within the prescribed range. The only negotiation HRBPs do is when retaining an employee and that has to be supporting by a strong business case. In case of services organisation, the bill rate and margins are checked. In product organizations it's ad-hoc.

Have seen boutique firms creating fake id for review. I don't think it is anything related to paying anything to Glassdoor or any other company in general.

No, Glassdoor does not allow any admin access to make changes to the reviews. However, we always do have an option to respond to the negative/ positive reviews. One subtle way we can and sometimes do influence these is reaching out to employees who have been given a big raise/ promotion and tell them casually to rate the organisation honestly on Glassdoor as per their experience. This does not impact the score much in reality but yeah sometimes we do take an advantage of something we did good to the employee. Being brutally honest here.

+1

Yes, we strive to provide a great employee experience. HR is like a customer facing role where your employees are your customers. Lot of organization keep the HR workforce to a minimum which hampers the bandwidth to do so. A great employee experience means employee trust in organisation and thr HR increases. We are just an extension of the organisation we work in. A great employee experience has got to do more with the talent engagement rather than controlling the attrition. Attrition would automatically stabilise if done correctly.

This is an almost impossible scenario. Firstly, there are defined whistleblower policies defined to safeguard the employee from retaliation. Next, any sensible organisation would not conflict the employee if his accusations have merit. Lastly, such issues are handled at the leadership level and the board wouldn't get involved until unless it is an issue of large magnitude.

Organizations have policies defined around relationships in workplace but they are largely limited to spousal relationships which define some checks and balances like an employee should not report to his/her spouse, both should work in different teams and it should not influence the performance of the employee. Some organisations make it mandatory to disclose workplace relationships but this is not followed much in India. There is still lot of stigma associated with relationships outside of marriage in India. Policies are defined keeping in mind the cultural context of the country. Organizations have a little control on what employees do outside of workplace. If there's a complaint against either of the employees in question with respect to PDA or favouritism at workplace, there's no merit for the organisation to take any action.

The fact that one is reporting to the other is an issue. Most companies would take a serious view unless one of them formally declares and / or seeks to move to another role to ensure there is no conflict of interest within the larger team. The fact that they are married but not to each other is less of a problem. Most progressive organisations would not care unless one of the spouses shows up in office or generally creates a ruckus which disturbs the functioning of the workplace..

Yes, employee grievances and ethics issues are taken seriously. In larger organizations there are dedicated employee relations and ethics teams.. In a normal case scenario, an investigation is done and appropriate feedback is provided. If any issues are found, the manager is given a verbal/ written warning. In dire cases of discrimination, it leads to termination too.

Yes, organisations try to be diverse and inclusive. There are challenges in achieving the actuals. Unfortunately, people confuse diversity only with the number of women in the organisation. There are more facets to it when the organisation tries to be inclusive. Take this example, an mnc in Hyderabad would normally have a large % of Telugu speaking population, so does Tamil in Chennai. The organisation can be inclusive in sensitising the native employees not to communicate in the official meetings in the local language but when it comes to implementation, it largely depends on the team. Tl;dr Organisation can provide an environment and policy framework but diversity and inclusion happens when employees are open to it. Pay disparity is treated more seriously in US than in India however, an organisation would never discriminate against a woman. The benchmarks we get from industry are gender agnostic so are the compensation frameworks. Pay disparity largely arises due to different points of salary at hire. Again, during appraisals these are subject to manager biases though we always compare the possibility of disparity before rolling out increments. At grassroot levels, your visibility will be limited to the team you're working on. Some men in your team might feel a woman is compensated more and will blame the manager to favouring women. Some women in your team might feel they are at a disadvantage just because she's a woman. I'm not denying the disparity that exists in pockets but an organization level, we do not discriminate between gender and always try to maintain parity with the same bands as well as new and existing hires. P.S. Current generation of workforce (gen z) doesn't stick for very long in the companies to see these changes happening. Ask anyone who spent a fair deal of time in the corporate, say 10-15 years and you'd realise how much have we moved forward.

So how do you make sure that the managers are fairly appraising their employees irrespective of one's caste, creed or gender ? Just having these policies at organization levels don't help much unless people at all levels are enforced to ! What's the point of a general organisational belief then if their own employees don't feel a change ? I am more than a decade old industry veteran ( not a gen Z) and trust me things haven't changed much unfortunately! People Managers still have their own discriminate prejudices and use their unconscious biases during appraisal or hiring time. And if you being from corporate HR can't still see it , that's unfortunate !

I'm sorry but I'm not really the right person to answer about what kind of profile would interest a recruiter. I have never screened a resume in my life. Hiring happens when there is a job requirement which can arise either due to new business/ product/ strategy. If it is within the allocated budget for the year, hiring is done else organization creates a plan around the pipeline There are defined salary ranges within which hiring is done. There are always exceptions though.

Typically they can't. Anyone in HR/People Operations cannot really date within the org (or with strict rules relating to role associations/relations)

Organizations have policies defined around relationships in workplace but they are limited to spousal relationships which define some checks and balances like an employee should not report to his/her spouse, both should work in different teams and it should not influence the performance of the employee. HRBP would be in a position to influence the pay of an employee and hence it is a No-No. In short, as long as it is consensual and does not impact the workplace environment/ performance of the employees it shouldn't be an issue.

What even is this?

Golden Handshake is the corporate lingo. They do, mostly at senior or executive levels where the board or ceo conveys the message and HR facilitates the exit smoothly. The conversations are very straightforward and the employee being asked to leave would mostly knows this is coming.

HRBPs do not get involved in salary negotiations. Recruiters try to roll out the offers within the defined salary ranges for the role. The goal is always to keep the cost within the approved budget, not to cut it by lowballing the employee. Some hiring managers and recruiters try to lowball the offers but it does bite them in the longer run. In fact, this becomes a pain for us because the onus of salary correction comes upon the HRBP to accomodate in the next year budget which they would already be constrained with many requests.

To be honest, nobody can predict this. In the coming future, following things are expected to happen: 1. Hybrid models will be the norm. You won't be expected in the office everyday but don't expect permanent wfh either 2. Gig economy has a long way to go when it comes to Indian corporate. Our legal system makes it extra more difficult to employ freelancers and dual employment is banned. Add to that, the NDAs of your company and clients. 3. Pay is getting normalised. Gone are the days of 100% hikes. Plus with high cost, the margins are solidly down. One of the advantages India had as an outsourcing hub was the lower cost. I'm not saying the pay will go down but be prepared for stagnation. 4. Firing is temporary. Companies do it mostly to boost immediate margins or when shelving projects with a very long roi. Companies spend more money after firing to hire people. The same isn't applicable in FAANG cases where they are looking at business strategy shift and hence firing.

Wow thanks for that amazing answer. Very insightful

Largely depends on the person but if an employee were to ask me something where i can help him (apart from asking for a compensation raise), following would be some cues: - what's the progression for my role in this organisation - are the skillsets I'm working on relevant for the organisation in the short and long term - what is the organisation outlook in the future - which are the areas the organisation is planning to grow in the future - coaching on providing feedback to team members - where do i stand in the market. Am i overpaid or underpaid - what is expected of me to progress to the next role Some of the questions may seem more pointed at your reporting manager but trust me, it does help when you ask them to an HRBP because he/she gets asked on these questions very frequently and this becomes a topic of discussion with the mangers

@Chanakya i feel I should be asking such questions to my skip level manager or someone with position of influence. From my experience I feel that my trajectory within org is decided by some VP and my manager. Do hrbp hood any influence in promo/hike?