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VAIM Framework
For People Practices Deployment

By O.S. Balaji,  P. Ramya

Abstract

Introduction

‘Take care of your people, for they would take care of their customers’, has been a mantra that has remained a pillar stone for many successful organizations over the years.

Right from the days of Industrial revolution to today’s people fuelled Information Technology era, it is not just the ‘King’ customer who had dictated business growth and success but the other key stakeholder in determining the success have been the Employees or people in an organization. The success or failure is the outcome of the effort and attitude of the people in the organization.

That’s the reason one could find that people and their related processes have always figured as a critical piece in any strategy framework or business excellence model.

People Management figures as a strategic quadrant in Balanced Scorecard framework and is present as a key enabler in EFQM Model (European Foundation of Quality Management).

Thinking Strategic

Every organization would admit the fact that their annual budgets and strategies always have a share for people and related initiatives. However, in most of the cases it boils down to the regular activity of - Manpower planning, Training, Performance Management and few people policies. Thus human resources initiatives   ends up in the last section of annual strategy plan with just changes in few numbers year after year, making it more perfunctory rather than strategic!

Looking at broader picture, absence of a clear framework to align people practices to Organizational business objectives and goals could be one of the reasons why people related initiatives have always taken a backseat. The scenario has been changing with lot of organizations investing heavily on people practices. Gaining acceptance of international frameworks like EFQM, MBNQA, Balanced Score card and PCMM stand testimony to this fact.

In this context, to facilitate organizations to better appreciate their people practices and gain rich dividends a people practice deployment framework is discussed below.

My Employee is my Internal Customer!!

The framework is built upon the basic assumption that every employee becomes an internal customer for the Human Resources function of the organization. Like any business, understanding the customer’s requirements and satisfying the customers is the fundamental essence of business success. It remains the same when it comes to People practices definition and deployment.

This clearly sends the message ‘Managing People’ indeed is a serious business.

VAIM Framework

VAIM (could be stated as V-AIM) is a four phased framework, which helps organization to lay down a strong foundation for people practices, align them to business objectives, implement the processes and measuring them to sustain, improve and innovate. ...

The complete article is available in pdf-format here

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