9:00 am: Arrive at office on time. I commute from Sharjah so by now I’ve usually been in the car for at least an hour and a half. Coffee waiting for me at my desk with the morning paper and lots of emails from the day before.
9:15 am: Morning meeting with the team to discuss the day’s agenda.
9:45 am: Exit interview with an employee who has accepted another offer. I go through the standard questions and make sure there is no ill feeling and that there has been no mistreatment or issues that have been ignored. I also make sure his handover is documented and complete, all necessary resignation paperwork has been completed, and keys, passes, files and insurance cards are handed back to the company.
11:00 am: Interview with a new joiner for a senior marketing position. We have been interviewing for this role for a long time using traditional headhunters as well as the leading regional online recruitment portal bayt.com – today’s candidate was sourced online. Candidate turns out to be very suitable so I immediately arrange for line manager to see her – luckily line manager is available so I walk the candidate over to his office at precisely11:45 am, my interviews typically last anywhere from30 minutes to an hour.
12:00 am: Lots of e-mails to tend to still and I need to complete reviewing the revised360 degree performance appraisal system we are proposing to implement this year. Tomorrow I will be presenting this to the board but it still needs some tweaking and a final sign-off from me.
12:30 pm: Interruption from a member of staff who is using his lunch break interval to tell me he has serious issues with his manager. I welcome him in and listen to his grievances; an important part of my job entails being an attentive listener and fair, unbiased arbitrator. Am aware that the boss has had issues with this employee’s performance, professionalism and punctuality for a while now so I make a note to talk to his boss later and see how we can best resolve this matter. In the meantime I listen and ask questions and give sound advice in the areas where I luckily know this employee is lacking. Sometimes these interruptions take me totally unawares but this time I am not surprised.
1:30 pm: Meet the CEO for lunch. I am very friendly with the CEO and sit on the company board myself and we often use lunch to chat about sensitive issues pertaining to personnel as well as company plans in general. HR is a very important function in my company and we value our people very highly here. Their welfare, loyalty and engagement is of paramount importance to us, hence the importance of the HR function.
2:30 pm: Meeting with Chief Operating Officer to discuss hiring shortfall in the sales ranks. We are considerably short of our hiring targets for the year and turnover is much higher than it should be.
3:30 pm: Meeting with research manager to discuss in-house Loyalty/Engagement survey I would like to run internally across the company to gauge the level of loyalty, satisfaction and engagement so we can adjust our HR policies around them and take corrective measures as and where needed. I have done a lot of research on best-of-breed Loyalty surveys and am very clear on my objectives from this survey so I am well prepared for our meeting.
5:00 pm: Just got out of meeting. Another employee issue to deal with this time related to compensation and benefits. I have a Compensation and Benefits Executive on my team but have been asked to handle this meeting myself as it is a complicated issue that has been pending for a while. Some of the bonus structures on the team are very complicated and we have had complaints about inconsistencies in incentive structures recently which need to be dealt with.
5:30 pm: Final draft of new Employee Manual is still on my desk and needs to be signed off today but as I still have the urgent issue to deal with in Compensation and Benefits before the end of day, I extend deadline on Employee Manual sign-off till tomorrow. We have added2 new sections and made it more sophisticated and comprehensive but I need a couple of hours at least for a final read-through.
6:00 pm: Monthly employee gathering in company cafeteria. These monthly get-togethers for employees are part of our networking and team-building strategy for employees and are organized by HR. Today we will be showing and discussing a powerful short film on team-building in a yacht racing environment and sharing pizzas and drinks.
7:00 pm: Run back to the office to grab the employee manual, a manpower succession planning document and a big bunch of CVs short-listed by my team – all the items I need to read at home urgently tonight. Answer a couple of emails, delegate a task and forward some CVs by email to different line managers while I’m at my desk.
7:30 pm: Head out the door. It’s going to be a long night!
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