John Linton ......what 'value' could an HR 'function' add to such an activity?
Exetel is not a very big company in any terms including personnel numbers (a little over 100 people). In general measurements we are an efficient company in terms of number of personnel/customer revenue and even more efficient in terms of personnel and other costs/customer revenue. We have achieved those ratios without ever employing any form of HR person/function and only in the last two years used a 'recruitment agency' to find suitable candidates - and that has been restricted to our Australian sales trainee program - in Sri Lanka and in Australia for other position types we simply use the IT advertisement on line functions which are similar similar in both countries. We use a simple hiring process of checking that the applicant's education standards matches our requirements and that their transcripts show a credit average or better and then we conduct one 30 minute or so interview mainly aimed at 'selling' the applicant on taking the job - already having decided to hire the person based on their resume before wasting the applicants time.
Whether this is a sensible method of acquiring additional personnel or not can be judged by the results over time - in this case some seven years. In terms of retention/longevity it appears to be in that Exetel has a very, very low personnel turnover in any of the past seven years. In terms of meeting Exetel's growing needs - all supervisory and management positions within the company have been filled by current employees with the exception of the GM position in Sri Lanka and the Sales Director position in Australia. So a combination of those two facts tend to speak for themselves in simple terms. Sure - some HR centric person would say we could have done much better by using better and more sophisticated people/processes but my, observational, experiences and what I hear from acquaintances or read in the media doesn't seem to support such a view.
Along with all my other old fashioned prejudices I have never seen any point in Exetel developing any sort of HR function - simply because, no matter who I have talked to no-one has ever been able to demonstrate what value HR adds to any company I have ever been associated with - let alone a start up company such as Exetel was, has continued to be and is currently. As far as I can see HR adds nothing to any company other than expense, poor judgment and time delays in getting anything done and encourages management abrogation in the key function of any growing company of delegating the most important activity of any growing company, hiring additional people, to one or more people who have no responsibility for the effectiveness of their decision making.
Against that long held personal prejudice is the fact that virtually every company that operates around the world has an HR function so my personal view cannot really be correct.....except that it has delivered very good results for as long as I have held it and been in a position to make it happen. I could say this situation only works because of my personal abilities and insight when it comes to selecting people - but would be totally untrue. Some 50 plus people in Sri Lanka have been hired by the Sri Lankan GM, all programmers, accounting personnel and engineers have been hired by the various different managers directly responsible for those functions - all from advertising in the appropriate on line sites in both countries. What is it Exetel is missing out on by not having an HR department other than the expense and time delays of having one?
If the most ambitious of our current plans becomes reality then Exetel will hire an additional 200 plus people over the coming two years. The only change that we will make to our hiring processes is that we will stop using recruitment agencies in Australia to find suitable sales trainees as the cost of doing that would become far too high for us to absorb comfortably so we will now start doing our own advertising in Australia for sales trainees and support engineers and see if that produces suitable applicants in the required numbers.
Never a dull moment in operating a business of Exetel's size in the Australian communications industry.
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