Requisite Organization Helps Develop an Effective and Efficient Human Resources System

Speaker A My name is Robin Picoyk and I've been working at Nova since February, middle of February 2009. I'm the HR director, and that's a level four. And I report into Sabrina Hamilton. Who's? The global vice president. She's a level five of HR. There's nine people in the department, including me. I have four direct reports that are level threes, and then there's a few people that are on the level two and one level one. When I first came to Novus, it definitely was different for me with the management system and learning it. I've been in HR at various companies over the last 20 years, working my way up through different organizations. And I have to say that I was very impressed when I got here. After being here for a few weeks and learning about the system and how it worked, probably the thing that I found to be the most refreshing had to do with that. People who came here when they were trained in the system, they understood that their career development was done by their manager once removed and that their performance was managed by their direct manager. And I think that gave them it gives in the organization a very clear message about where they have to go concerning what what concerns they might have that they did have some contact beyond and above their manager. So that they could get some mentoring and that they could get some guidance on their career and what they felt that they needed to do to improve, to go to the next level. So I think that was probably one of the things that I really actually like the most, because it really does give that clear message where a lot of other organizations are just not that transparent about that the relationship is usually just with your manager. And so I think that was a really good thing that I noticed about it. I think the thing that I found that was very different when I came to Novus and learned about Requisite organization that was different than the typical HR traditional way that things were done has mostly to do with how you manage your people and that there's a very clear message here. So some of the things that I feel maybe that I didn't need here anymore is some of the complicated performance appraisal systems that I have dealt with in the past, where you're going on and on about competencies and people really struggle with understanding what that means. I think that's probably the most difficult thing that companies try to put their arms around to make sure that they are addressing their employees performance. And it just seems that that always just got more and more complicated as the years went on. In my experience in HR here, with the time span element that that's how you judge a person's capabilities for the role that they're in, it's very not simplistic, but it does help you really understand it pretty quickly. What's not simplistic about it is actually learning how to judge that in another person and whether their capabilities are for what time span and what role level. So that takes some time, and I think that's new to me and I'm learning it and I'm learning how to work with it. But I do have to say it's a lot less complicated and makes a lot more sense than some of these other performance management systems and appraisal systems that I've seen. I think learning about time span and how to judge that in an individual and whether they fit into their role does take some time to learn. I've only been here four months. I do feel like I'm progressing with it. I do spend a lot of time with my manager, and being that she's the global VP of HR and has been doing this for 18 years, she really does have a very good grasp of it. So I feel that I'm very lucky in this situation because I do get a lot of time with her and I've learned a lot from her just in how to do that and judge it. It's not that it's hard, it's just that you have to keep working at it and not fall back into your old habits. I would say that the most impressive thing that I have seen with the Requisite organization is the fact that in HR departments in the past, HR has a role where they've spent a lot of time with managers and getting involved in a lot of times with employee relation problems or issues. The thing about Requisite is that it requires a manager to be accountable for their reports, for their subordinates, and you really stick with that here in this organization. It's not HR being the shepherd and having to always be the one that's involved and almost being police like in some of the actions that go on with these employee relations. You really do coach them and they but they are accountable and that is a very big difference, I think, that I've seen here with Requisite.