Greetings, everybody! I’d like to thank Network HR magazine for the opportunity through this column to have an ongoing dialog with you about all things related to human resources. Please send me any question you may have about any HR problem or issue. Your questions can be related to HR functions and processes, such as recruiting, pay, training, performance management, etc. Or, it can be about strategic HR, such as being a business partner, talent management, organizational alignment, etc. I’ll try my best to give you helpful answers. You may not always agree with some of my answers, but I hope always to challenge your thinking. I am absolutely convinced that HR is the best and most important job in the world, and companies need HR solutions today more than ever before. The work you do is important!

Just a word or two to introduce myself. I’m an American. I have been living, studying and working in Shanghai for the last 4 years. I regularly publish articles in several Chinese business and HR magazines, and speak at events. I am the Vice Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai Education & Training Industry Committee. In my current work with the consulting firm of Process Improvement Asia, we support companies in China trying to achieve world-class status in various aspects of the management of the workforce. Prior to this, I lived in Europe and the US. I have about 20 years in my HR career, most of which has been global in nature.

Let’s jump into our first topic.

Q: What does it mean to be an HR business partner?

Over the years, I’ve seen so many HR fads come and go. I’ve learned to be somewhat skeptical about the labels that HR people put on HR people. Maybe it would be easier to just use a sequence of numbers to represent the latest HR upgrade. Let’s see, we started with HR 1.0, went quickly through HR 2.0 and HR 3.0. Now that we all are HR business partners, perhaps we are HR 4.0.

Maybe this time, though, the label is a good one. At least, it has the potential to be an appropriate term for HR if—special emphasis on the word “if”—HR can show itself to be contributing to business goals. So, here is a self-assessment to determine your own personal level of readiness to be an HR business partner. For each item, give yourself a score between 0% and 100%; 100% means you are absolutely great, 0% means you don’t even understand the question. Ready?

1. I am highly efficient: _____%

2. I use best practices: _____%

3. I enforce the rules of the employee manual in a fair

4. I hold managers accountable for doing performance reviews of their employees:_____%

5. I complete all hiring requisitions within 180 days:_____%

Now, add up all of your percentages and divide by 6, this is your average percentage. Go ahead and do this now. I will wait.

Here’s how to interpret your score:

Any score between 0% and 100% means you are not an HR business partner. Wow! That was easy!

Ok, I played a trick. None of the above self-assessment items have anything to do with being an HR business partner. I just did that so that when you take the next self-assessment below you can see the difference. Same thing, rate yourself from 0% to 100%. Ready?

1. My suggestion for how to increase customer loyalty and profitability was accepted, and resulted in a significant increase to our operating margins:_____%

2. I worked with our Marketing department to identify a previously unknown market opportunity, then I re-organized the sales department to make sure we could be the first company to build up sales in that market:_____%

3. I saw that our main competitor was faster than us at innovation (creating new products with better features at lower cost). So, I identified our competitor’s key product leaders and recruited them to work with us, with the explicit purpose to slow-down our competitor’s innovation capabilities. Of course, these product leaders now are innovating for us and more than 50% of our product offerings this year will be new to our product catalog:_____%

4. I regularly meet with my “2 levels above me” boss, he/she trusts my advice:_____%

5. I created the first-ever business association for our industry to improve our company’s reputation as industry leaders and to improve our ability to attract top-talent:_____%

6. I obtained new government funding to support training of our workforce:_____%

As you read this second list of items, doesn’t it feel very different from the first list? If HR is thinking about and proactively solving issues related to markets, customers, profitability, competition, reputation, aligning the organization to seize opportunity, building relationships with government, and transforming talent, then HR is acting as a business partner.

If, at this moment, you feel strongly that HR should never be held accountable for doing this kind of work, then congratulations—you are not an HR business partner. But you owe it to yourself to find out if your CEO feels the same way as do you. If your CEO doesn’t want HR to do this kind of work, then fine. I understand. If that is the case, you can still be a proud, effective and efficient HR functional expert. That is essential and important work, desperately needed by organizations. But it is not business partner work. Just so you know, more and more, CEO’s want HR to be business partners.

On the other hand, I offer my congratulations to you if you do have the ambition to be an HR business partner—if, at this moment, you are thinking of ways to improve your organization’s market opportunity, speed up the achievement of business plans, and maximize profitability. In a future edition of this magazine, we’ll talk about HR business partner skills and how you can develop them. The good news is, any HR person can be an HR business partner—yes, YOU!

Q: Our Company is thinking about setting up an internal mentoring program. What should we include in our design of the program?

Mentoring refers to a process of transferring the lessons of greater experience in a workforce competency to improve the capability of other individuals or workgroups. Mentoring should only be considered for workforce competencies in which less-capable individuals could benefit from the guidance and experience of more-capable individuals. Mentoring activities may be targeted to specific individuals, such as those new to the organization or novices in a workforce competency.

Purposes for mentoring could include:

• orientation and adjustment to the organization

• development of specific knowledge and skills

• learning how to perform processes within the organization

• preparation of specific management or executive skills

• improved group effectiveness

• career advice and development

• counseling and advice concerning problems

Mentors provide timely feedback and guidance to those they mentor. Examples of issues that might be addressed when providing feedback and guidance could include:

• evaluation of/advice about work performance

• use of time and setting priorities

• interpersonal styles and skills

• decision making

• knowledge, skills, or process abilities needing development

• barriers to job performance or career growth

• understanding the organization

You’ll need to prepare your mentors with the right techniques and skills to accomplish their mentoring objectives. Preparation could include:

• how to accomplish mentoring program objectives

• how to conduct a mentoring relationship

• interviewing and active listening

• providing guidance and advice

• being a role model

• problem solving

• performance improvement methods

• principles of knowledge and skill development

• advising workgroups

• team building

• how to evaluate mentoring success

And you’ll need some appropriate criteria for selecting both mentors and those who will receive mentoring. Mentors need to be volunteers, committed to developing and guiding others, and have strong listening skills, trust-worthiness, business and organizational judgment, etc. Those on the receiving end of mentoring should be equally committed to engage the process and be willing to be changed by the process and be held responsible for showing improved capabilities.

Also, you’ll want to have clear goals for the mentoring program, and means to see if the goals are being achieved.

Q: How can we improve motivation of Generation Y employees?

There are 4 basic kinds of motivation, and 3 of these don’t work with GenY. Unfortunately, these 3 wrong approaches are the ones used most often by organizations.

The 4 kinds of motivation are made possible by combining two motivational dimensions; a positive/negative dimension and an internal/external dimension (see diagram).

Positive motivation is defined as action taken toward a desired goal. Negative motivation is defined as action taken to avoid an undesired punishment. Internal motivation is defined as action taken to please you. External motivation is defined as action taken to please someone else.

Now let’s combine these dimensions to make our 4 motivations. The 3 motivations that don’t work with GenY are:

1. External plus Negative: Boss says, “do this or you are fired.”

2. External plus Positive: Boss says, “do this and you get a bonus.”

3. Internal plus Negative: Employee says, “I am willing to do this so I don’t get fired.”

These first 2 motivations are transactional in nature – do this, get that. It is a form of manipulation and people feel controlled, even when the transaction features a reward not a punishment. Remember, GenY doesn’t like to feel like they are being exploited or controlled. They prefer to be in an environment conducive to exploration, learning and progress. Moreover, external motivators have more fundamental deficiencies. First, they are not sustainable; as soon as you withdraw the punishment or reward the motivation disappears. Second, you get diminishing returns; if the punishment or reward stays at the same level, motivation slowly drops off (to get the same motivation next time requires a bigger reward). Third, it hurts internal motivation and internal motivation is where you get real employee engagement with excellence and productivity. Motivation 3 doesn’t work because it doesn’t create engagement, only resentment. Motivation 4 does work:

4. Internal plus Positive: here, the employee motivates them self, because they seek a goal that is desirable to them. The attitude is, “I really want to do this because I can learn and develop, it is meaningful to me, it helps me to define who I am, it is about my potential, it is about me.”

If you really want to engage and motivate GenY employees, then present to them their work assignments with lots of Motivation 4.

Until next time!