Summarize the case study to 10-15 points in brief.

Ashim Vaid had a pen in his hand but didn t know what to write. He wanted to list the attributes of the person he needed to head the human resources (HR) department of Belnoir India, the Indian arm of a large multinational company (MNC) Vaid had recently left Delton India to join Belnoir as its country head. Belnoir s director (new markets) had left it to him to form his team, but Vaid was finding it virtually impossible to define the kind of person he wanted as the chief.. For Vaid, heading Belnoir was both a heady and an awesome development. Every move he would make hereafter would chart the course of Belnoir India, and his own career. But when he met Arun Kamat, an ex- colleague from Delton and now the CEO of Teffer India, a consumer durables MNC, Vaid experienced his first paradigm shock. Don t hire the operating heads first, advised Kamat. Hire your HR man first and everything will eventually fall in place. It did not make sense to Vaid. There was so much spadework to be done in distribution, market planning, product evaluation, he felt. What would an HR man do before all that was in place, he wondered. At Delton, Vaid had seen HR play a very limited role. It merely looked after payrolls and promotions. Increments happened on time, job rotations happened naturally, appraisals took place every year, career progression took place naturally. At a fixed time every year, management trainees were inducted into Delton and put through the mill. Everything happened as a matter of course. In short, there was a certain predictability about what would happen next. Once this very predictability had annoyed Vaid, even frustrated him. And because everything was so predictable, his impression of HR was that it was a backroom operation that merely kept the organisational machine working, a department that ran the lives of managers and made it comfortable. Kamat s view was diametrically opposite. Today, the HR function has become crucial because the employee market has become very competitive and the demands have become very speclalised, he said. Kamat felt that Indian industry and business had evolved to a stage where it was acknowledged that only an HR person could have a holistic perspective of the organisation. An HR person is immune to technology or capital, he explained. He is also supposed to be neutral across functions. Therefore, he will give the same weightage to marketing, finance, sales and accounting because he is equally concerned with all the employees who perform these functions. Kamat had come to realise that HR played a very visible role. At Teffer, for instance, the six top people came from vastly different backgrounds: one was from a chocolate company, another from foods company, yet another from a cigarette company, while two had worked for a soaps company. Two of these companies were British, one was American and another Dutch. Each of these six people came with conditioned mindsets and exerted subtle pressures to impose their culture on the organisation. However, the HR department of Teffer was vested with the role of integrating all of them into a totally new culture of the company. Vaid listened to Kamat s experiences but felt that he was in a different situation. He knew that he had set up a company from the first stapler to the last stockist; from furniture and fittings, to creating a work environment. More important, Belnoir had to nurture the critical relationship with its suppliers and vendors and Vaid needed someone who understood relationship building. He could hire an administration manager later to oversee the nitty-gritty, but at the start-up stage, Belnoir needed an HR man in place to design the organisation structure, the reporting relationships and the job gradation. But he wondered whether the HR skills available were capable of handling the changed needs of today s business environment. How would an HR professional from a 30-year-old toothpaste company cope in the dynamic environment of a company like Reebok? That HR professional has grown with a certain mindset about managing people. He comes from an era of protectionism where his role was very limited. Training programmes, job rotation and crisis management were all he ever did in his company. But today, when the demands are skills building and cultural integration, how can he cope? asked V aid. Kamat would not agree. He felt that even protectionist India had posed ample opportunities for diverse HR prescriptions. Protectionism had its own complications which needed HR intervention. For instance, the mindsets of workers in ITC s Munger and Parel factories were vastly different. The factories produced the same Capstan cigarette but the HR initiative that motivated the Munger worker was very different from what motivated the Mumbai worker. Also, different parts of the same company are often in different time zones. What the Mumbai factory encountered in the seventies and eighties, the Munger factory encountered in the eighties and nineties. The HR department was expected to bridge that time difference, he said. Kamat felt that there was no formula which prescribed different skill sets for different periods. Circumstances and external pressures varied from year to year and it was for the HR professionals to adapt to the change. It s not as if the country is tasting liberalisation for the first time. India in the fifties and sixties was very liberalised. Protectionism really came only in the seventies, he added. However, Vaid who was entering a liberalised environment, felt that Belnoir needed an HR person who had experienced global competition. Today my needs at Belnoir are much more than mere poll administration and grade structuring. From what you are saying, I can see myself faced with specific issues like cultural integration, team building as well as routine tasks like training and job rotations. How am I going to find an HR man who can handle all that? he asked. HR is a very experiential field, said Kamat. There is no theory here, unlike marketing or finance. There may be patterns of employee behaviour, but these are not standardised patterns like in physics or mathematics. I would look for someone with HR management experience, but what his academic background is does not matter. You could hire a generalist who can administer as well as work towards organisational development. For specialist tasks like team building, you can retain a consultant for that purpose only, he said. Vaid s whole perception of HR was undergoing a change. As an employee at Delton, he had seen only the maintenance function of HR. But now that he was to carry the can for failure, Vaid wanted to ensure that he hired the right people. I need a guy who can hire the right people, who can keep them integrated, who can keep their skills upgraded, who can watch over their stresses and herd them towards the vision of the company so that they feel enthused. Teams have to be built, a unified vision has to be crafted. Where will I find the time if I am out of the country 15 days a month? The kind of person I need must be able to build teams, manage change and ensure that the departments and people in the organisation move in union towards its goal. He must be able to change these caps as the circumstances demand, he said to Kamat. Firstly, I don t these are watertight compartments, said Kamat. Also, a person s outlook evolves over time. The HR professional from a company like Delton does not leave behind his learning when he moves to another company. He carries that along with him. The role of HR has enhanced to scope today but we must appreciate that some of the roles HR professionals are called upon to perform today were not required earlier, he said. Like what? asked Vaid. Take a new company setting up shop in India. There will be multi-cultural people joining; new brands, even new products like pagers, will be entering the market. You need to carry your employees with those brands and make sure they carry the brands with them. While building brand equity, you must simultaneously build people equity. If a company like Hindustan Lever launches a new soap today, there will be no major tremor. Even if it launches 10 new soaps, nothing will change for the company because it has been doing the same thing for decades. But if you have people and products that are new, you need to get them all into a cohesive movement, in sync with one another, explained Kamat. Vaid was listening intently. You might have a former marketing executive from a cigarette company pushing pagers in the market, or an oil buying manager heading a firm manufacturing bubble gums. Just think of the diversity in functions. At the first level, you will need to integrate your products and your people so that the employees begin to think your product, said Kamat. But aligning our people with Belnoir brands and its global equity will be a long haul, said Vaid. You can t get away with that plea anymore. warned Kamat. For how long can we remain different? If not immediately, the parent company will expect you to be aligned with its brands five years. Hence, it will say: just do in Delhi what we do in Detroit. So, you need to start that alignment process today and for that, you need to get your HR act in place, said Kamat. In a protected environment, companies tend to be lethargic when it comes to taking proactive initiatives. They are willing to go only this far and no more because the returns do not justify the inputs. But in the cut- throat market of today, where employee turnover is very high, companies have to be more careful while managing their resources. The way a company manages its employees salaries, promotions and growth charts today is a far cry from the way these areas were handed in the past. So, the kind of HR skills you will hire will be more focused. Even more important was the HR department s role in upgrading and evolving the mindsets of the workforce and managers. These are people who have also worked in a protected environment, where they had safety nets to buffer mistakes. Today, the same people are going to face a tougher environment. If you remember, at Delton everyone usually sent copies of their notes to the legal head. If anything went wrong, they had someone to fall back upon. That risk aversion was perpetuated over the years in the company. People became precedent conscious and began to justify conformity to past practices, simply so that there were not too many departures from the HR manual, Kamat said. Vaid did not have any HR manual to go by. The simple rule was to carry the people along with the brand. It appeared difficult to him because both the brand and the people were new to him. The concept of a democratic corporate, which was by the people, of the people and for the people was new to him. How do I do it? he asked. Let s look at what the drivers are, said Kamat. The advantage of the old setup was that the brand equity was already established. So, employees could easily be enthused to associate themselves with names like Hindustan Lever and ITC. In that association, they found recognition and developed self worth. So, there is a pull factor for those big, respected names. Belnoir is a great brand, outside India but it still has to earn a saliency in India as a marketer of successful products, as caring employer and as a company where one can grow. You don t have the pull so you must project the right image to attract and retain talent, continued Kamat. When I recruited or interviewed a person at Delton, I knew I was in a buyer s market. I had something to offer which I knew he was willing to buy. The job-seeker, had to do the selling and to decide whether he would fit in. Would he contribute, would he be an asset? So, all I looked for was his competence and his adaptability. I was neither anxious about whether he would be choosy about joining the organisation, nor concerned whether he would find our products and brands competitive. In those days, the question of the candidate carrying the brands with him did not arise at all. The brand flag was already flying high. Even if we were planning to bring in new brands, we were not dependent on the people to sustain those brands. The systems were already strong, the momentum was already there, and the equity of the existing brands was strong enough to carry every subsequent brand. So, even when a brand bombed in the market, it was not attributed to a brand manager s failure to nurture it. All that had changed today and Vaid knew it only too well To build equity, you need a sound human resource base, a base that you align with your brand and organisation. Finally, your own equity as a sound business leader depends on all that. So, get your HR man first and everything will fall into place, ended Kamat. Vaid was a bundle of confusion. What kind of person do I want to head HR at Belnoir, he asked himself. Should he be a person who can bring in stability and soundness to the practices in the company, which gives rise to faith in people that the new company is well structured? Or would he be a person who is very intuitive, very analytical, and has implemented innovative ideas? Vaid had no answer. = And how is an HR head, who has been in a toothpaste company or a steel company, now going to achieve that? Vaid wanted to know. Look, it is not as if it s a new skill to be learnt, said Kamat. In India, even in the seventies and eighties, HR initiatives were very much there. Only in the nineties was it realised that the ability of an organisation to perform consistently is no longer a function of the capital or technology it employs. That sustained performance is only going to come from people. Having realised that, organisations are now saying we need sound HR skills. Kamat felt that the boundaries of specialism were rapidly disappearing. As knowledge became more accessible, it was better to use high-powered generalists, he felt. Does that mean a line functionary can be made responsible for the HR function? asked Vaid. Why not? asked Kamat. The holder of the skill set need not be an HR professional. He could be a line manager who has spent significant time in HR. At the same time, one must not confuse the issues here. Transiting through HR is a viable growth need for any line manager, but what this function needs is much more. You are going to manage and develop a resource base of about 5,000 employees which, at a Rs. 1.51 lakh average annual cost, is an asset base of Rs. 75 crore ! said Kamat. You need to have a person who can manage that asset. Yet, Kamat would not undermine the role of the line functionary in HR. As Teffer s CEO, he had defined the line management function to include organisation skills and people management skills As a result, his HR department was executing only the specialist functions of HR. It the line manager s duty to deliver culture, to build efficient teams. The HR functionary, whether he is within the organisation or outside, is available to me as a resource to make this happen. But maintenance and development of this culture is no longer the sole responsibility of the HR department. It s the responsibility of the line functionaries, said Kamat. This was happening in a number of existing and newcomer MNCs. We started off our HR function at a basic level to layout the bare infrastructural needs. We had to get the office in place, hire people, find homes, cars and drivers for them. We had to manage the complex issues of expatriate and their compensation, some amount of government liaison, and so on, said Kamat. Once all that was in place, the HR function evolved to encompass bigger issues like business strategy and organisational goals. That s when the HR function starts looking at the kind of skills needed by the company. For instance, what are the competencies required if the company is launching fuzzy logic washing machines, or four-door refrigerators and. other, household goods? How does it ensure that a person who has been selling toothpaste until now, can develop the skills and mindset to sell washing machines? Can it put together a cross-functional team? Can it share knowledge and learning? That is the stage where HR becomes proactive, explained Kamat. The last stage, Kamat went on was visionary HR. This was the stage where the owner, the promoter or the CEO put together a vision for the organisation and HR put together a set of processes to achieve that vision. So the company is no longer strategic, it becomes visionary, he said. In the visionary stage, the HR function bridges the gap between what the company is and what it wants to be. At Teffer, we view people management skills as an important factor of leadership, he said. How does HR ensure the integration of brands and people? asked Vaid. Kamat cited the example of the service industry. The systems that ensure that the McDonald s brand is perceived as a friendly, efficient, quick-service product, is a function of HR management. McDonald s employees are not sloppy: they look smart, they are friendly. The HR department ensures that the company has the right systems for recruiting the right kind of people and it ensures that they are getting the right training. That s the backroom work done by HR and is part of the product delivery. That s how it created the right brand image by building in all those attitudes to quality and efficiency. You have to get your people aligned to the brand s equity, said Kamat.