By R. Anand, Head Organizational
Effectiveness Verticle at HCL Technologies.
A good theory is nothing but condensed practice is a
wise old phrase. The HR profession too is a practice,
much like medicine.
In the world of medicine, there is foundational stuff
that one learns at school, followed by lots of
apprenticeship and supervised work before one sets up an
independent practice. It is expected that good medical
practitioners draw upon advances in the theory of
medicine and bring it to the practice of medicine.
Does this happen in HR?
Exploring this question is the purpose of this article.
Firstly, what are the theoretical underpinnings of HR,
the practice?
Human Psychology – Cognitive, behavioral, developmental;
Group Psychology; Sociology; Micro-economic theory; Game
Theory are foundational to the HR practice. What are
some of the advances in these fields and how do they
inform the practice of HR? Do we decide differently,
work differently and communicate differently as a result
of these insights?
Here are some opportunity areas in my view.
Human Psychology
What moves me as an individual, (the way I comprehend or
learn) is different from someone else is the basic
discovery of human psychologists. “Different strokes for
different folks” is a cliché, in psychology. The good
news is that they can be ascertained for an individual.
Also, being formed in early childhood are constant. In
the practice of HR, however, very little attempt has
been made to incorporate the phenomena in talent
development frameworks – whether learning management or
career management. We simply have one single process.
You will notice, on the contrary, the practitioner of
medicine carefully avoiding prescriptions that cause
allergic reactions, giving a dosage proportionate to
body mass, carefully calibrating medical history in the
treatment course
Group Dynamics
Meetings, brainstorming, deciding in a group setting are
the first images of an office to anyone. The theory of
group psychology lists some definitive aspects that
characterize groups and make them fulfilling or
unfulfilling places. Norms, the unwritten rules of group
functioning are powerful drivers of group culture,
decision making and output. Very innocent events and
group leaders’ visible response to these events are norm
setters. The immediate aftermath of group formation is
also an opportunity to set the right norms. In my view,
we do not seize this moment as HR to set the norms. In
fact, our time allocation to a group is much the same
whether the group is in the stage of formation or if the
group is functioning for a long time. Grave errors have
happened due to “group think” and “freeze think”
phenomena in groups.
Observe, how the doctor is sensitive to if it is early
stage fever and how it can be infection prone; how she
observes what happened if you did this and notes them
down for effective intervention
Sociology, Behavioral Economics
The field of sociology is central to understanding and
exploring the human condition. Our identities, the
prisms through which we see ourselves and the world are
so socially constructed. Social norms are powerful
forces that can help me give much more than what
monetary incentives can give. I will quote two
experiments, one natural and another “a lab” situation
from two popular economic books.
A day care center in New Jersey was pretty annoyed that
parents are not coming on time to pick up their
children. The staff had to wait till all children have
been picked up and then only can go home. They were
determined to find a solution to this. The parents, of
course are quite apologetic when they arrive late, blame
the traffic, the boss, the workload and promise to be on
time. The center in their wisdom began to impose a
dollars’ fine for every 5 minutes of delay. Much to
their surprise, the late coming increased.
In a “lab” in MIT, volunteers were asked to drag circles
on the screen into a box, which then vanish. The game
was how many circles they will be able to drag into the
box in 5 minutes. Group 1 was paid 10 USD for this
effort; group 2 was paid 50 cents. Group 1 on an average
dragged 158, group 2 not surprisingly dragged 105. The
surprise was group 3, who were just asked to participate
in the experiment, no money was paid. They dragged 163.
Why did they happen?
Behavioral economics is a new interdisciplinary field
whose central thesis is that human beings are not
rational, but irrational, however their irrationality is
predictable. For example, even though 10 dollar is
better than 50 cents and that is the reason why the
average points were higher; social requests for a favor
are very powerful indeed to harness human effort. When,
inadvertently your incentive system (like in the first
example), destroys the social currency and substitutes
with a poor monetary incentive, productivity falls. I
have known, heard of innumerable instances where the HR
professional feels smart about allocating 2% and 5% of a
variable pay to the so many behaviors one must make
happen in the system that nothing works.
Like the practitioner of medicine, who is sensitive to
the mind-body interaction in health, or the phenomenon
of psycho-somatic disorders, the professional of human
resources practice must similarly comprehend the
different worlds that move the human person and consider
their interactions.
Like medicine, let us make our practice as robust that
we will both leverage and add to the theory behind HR.
