Uniting communities from within

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) prides itself in helping staff achieve their potential. “Performance management at the company doesn’t only involve emphasis on what is achieved, but also how it is achieved,” says, Ciaron Murphy, Head of Business HR (Sales) East and Head of HR – APAC for NSN.

For example, the company actively supports the 70% on the job, 20% coaching and 10% classroom development scheme and rigorously enforces objectives. Merit-based hiring processes for all open positions also means that staff get fair opportunities to advance their careers in the company.

The HR department drives these initiatives in the organisation by walking the talk.

HR: Customer service champions

A key tenet that NSN aggressively pursues is customer satisfaction within HR, which is divided into two sub-units – HR Connection and HR Consulting (refer to Figure 1). “We have adopted Ron Kaufman’s service excellence approach methodology in HR. In principle, that means our account consultants are encouraged to constantly step up,” Murphy says.

One of the things they do to is to ensure every line manager knows who their dedicated account consultant is. Each line manager is then asked at the end of each half year to evaluate the account consultant on how they have acted as an educator, adviser and consultant.

“Across Asia Pacific, we have a league table. Khoo Adelene, our HR Account Consultant, is in the premier league,” Murphy added.

Radical rewards

In most companies, a big part of managing employees is rewards and recognition. However, career analyst Daniel Pink, believes that rewards only work with certain job scopes. For instance, if mechanical skills are required (like say a factory worker), the higher the pay given, the better the performance of the staff. However, if analytical skills are required, larger rewards can lead to poor performance instead. “Reward narrows our focus and restricts our possibilities,” Pink says.

In line with this, NSN did something radical with its incentives this year. The company took 90% of its staff population off individualised Managing by Objectives (MBO) plans and put them on a general profit sharing scheme, although the sales force and other senior managers and executives are still on traditional MBO plans.

“If you check out the latest research on incentives, it suggests that, with the exception of production line tasks, incentives do not yield the results we would expect, and that the key drivers for engagement/behaviour are autonomy, mastery and purpose,” Murphy says.

The move has proved rather successful for NSN. The feedback from employees has been positive on the whole, as it was felt that the bi-annual process wasted a lot of time and the incentives scheme was also too complex at times.

“I’m part of something”

NSN believes that everybody seeks to be part of something larger than themselves – be it family, community or society. “Our ‘be part of something’ campaign is a tagline for our engagement activities that seek to get employees involved in projects running within the company or in the wider community,” Murphy says.

Being a good corporate citizen is not an option, but a necessity that permeates all of NSN’s business. By practicing and communicating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities and positions to the relevant internal and external stakeholders, NSN employees are able to show that they care. “We contribute to a positive business climate for our company,” Murphy says. “We believe that ethically sound business is in the long-term interest of our company, its shareholders, employees and society at large.”

Building on the strong heritage from Nokia and Siemens in community involvement, NSN has aligned its CSR programs with the activities and targets of its core business. The company believes in taking a hands-on, long-term approach to corporate social responsibility programs, where it can make a difference with its expertise and technology.

Community involvement is important for NSN’s business and brand. “Our customers are increasingly interested in our corporate responsibility track record and in our involvement within the communities in which we operate,” Murphy says. “These activities are also important motivators for employees.”