When Indonesian companies desire to overhaul their equipment, systems or processes nowadays in their quest for greater capacity, output, efficiency, quality, speed or seamlessness they appear to want the best. Those seeking first mover advantage or sector dominance appear to be prepared for big spending and even those adopting a "fast follower" or "niche player" strategy are at least abreast of technological developments and keen to narrow the gap with their stronger rivals.
And yet when it comes to employees it is quite another and rather sorry story. On the one hand, the expectations of organizations from employees has increased manifold. Research by IndonesiaWISE shows there are on average 20 competency expectations of employees in a majority of middle- and large-sized companies.
These can be grouped in five categories - leadership (vision, integrity and ethics, strategy development, decision making), people management (inspiring others, mentoring and coaching, teamwork, interpersonal skills), business target focus (planning and organizing skills, performance management, customer service, new business development), technical skills (specific sector and job expertise, innovation, efficiency, product and service quality) and self development (managing change, emotional intelligence, communication skills, energy and discipline). And 20 competencies is just the start!
At some companies, competencies can exceed even 50. Some multinationals have even introduced "HR gobble-de-gook" like "aligned critical thinking" or "collective customer oriented ideology" or "entrepreneurial change agents" or "self driven multitasking". These might sound nice on paper and no doubt are well intentioned but to the legion of Indonesian employees emerging from a rudimentary education system and with a cultural preference for avoiding unnecessary complexity (very rightly so), the organization's laundry list of competencies can appear daunting, even unnerving. But for the most part, employees realize that the contemporary reality of business is that it is cutthroat, job security is scarce and dwindling, smarter and better trained youngsters are joining the workforce each year and performance is benchmarked with other emerging economies like China, India, Vietnam and others.
There is acceptance that the competency bar will keep getting higher and there is a willingness to improve. But then comes the big corporate letdown. Just how exactly does an employee develop the competency of communication skills that, if elaborated, would include listening, speaking, business presentation, internal communication, customer related communication, writing, language proficiency and so on? Or how does an employee enhance decision-making ability? Is new business development a skill for the front line only or can a support function employee also contribute? Is innovation an inborn talent or can people learn to think creatively and take initiatives? How does one mentor a subordinate? Can a professional be entrepreneurial?
Many employees in Indonesia wrestle with these questions and look around for answers. Naturally they turn to their HR and training departments but often they find training to be a set of uninspiring, largely product or service knowledge related programs. Automakers provide training on technical features but few have good programs on negotiation skills. At their training centers (some euphemistically called "universities"), banks provide training on trade or corporate finance but not on practical intelligence or team integration as a consequence of which thousands of customers routinely experience disjointed departments and inflexible procedures. Telecom companies always appear to be in a growth frenzy but few employees are taught about the fine line between change and chaos and how to manage it.
And what of all the corporate leaders in the plush top floors and cozy corner office suites? How many have actually been trained on vision-values development, the ability to create a culture of innovation or what it takes to inspire in the context of an eager, cooperative but semi-developed workforce? Do they really understand how to build and sustain these 20, 30 or even 50 competencies that exist on the employee performance appraisal forms, learning and development systems, promotions criteria and so on? And can they explain the disconnect on why the organization finds it easy to upgrade machines, IT and work environments but seems to be reluctant or casual about upgrading people? Somehow employees are either assumed to inherently possess a large number of competencies or they are expected to miraculously imbibe these with experience, seniority or by just being in the presence of bosses.
At the other end of the spectrum are companies caught up in the imbalance of the wrongly termed "hard" (for technical) and "soft" (for managerial) competencies. So a manufacturing company can excessively focus on engineering skills and pay lip service to teamwork and cross functional alignment.
Or a securities house that can train staff to be adept at analyzing stock performance and producing broker reports but fail to inculcate the application of business ethics resulting in self-serving advice to unsuspecting investors (a trend infamously perpetrated on Wall Street with several dubious examples of highly rated but ethically compromised executives). The substantial gap between pre- and post-sales service is also attributable to an over emphasis on numbers and targets at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction.
Competency development for employees is a critical investment in building the inherent strength of an organization. At the very core of its building blocks of morale, motivation, fair performance management, talent development, retention and succession planning.
It is not discretionary spending, "one time only" whim, a "HR issue" or a box-ticking exercise. It has to be a serious long-term commitment and in contemporary Indonesia an urgent and topmost priority.
The columnist is CEO of the international management consulting firm IndonesiaWISE. In the second part of the article, best practices from some progressive local companies will be shared. He can be contacted at amoltitus@IndonesiaWISE.com.
