Inauguration of the Annual HR Conclave – Disha 2013

Mr. Raj Narayan addressing the students at TAPMI

TAPMI witnessed the opening of Disha, its Annual HR Conclave which runs from the 31^st of August till the 1^st of September. Disha (which means direction in Sanskrit) is an apt name for the two day mega conclave centered on the critical corporate function of Human Resource Management. The opening Ceremony saw Mr. Raj Narayan, Senior Vice President, Human Resource of Titan Industries gracing the occasion as Chief Guest.

The ceremony began with an invocation song, followed by lighting of the lamp by dignitaries to mark the commencement of Disha. The Director of TAPMI, Dr. R.C Natarajan delivered the welcome address and presented a bouquet to the honourable guest. Dr. Natarajan also welcomed the media, faculty and students. The official logo for Disha 2013 was formally introduced by Dr. (Col) PS James as he emphasized humanism and how humanism can affect productivity. Dr. James gave a wonderful explanation of the logo telling that the hands shown depict the lending of humanism to soft clay enabling to gel well with the hardened clay. He concluded by encouraging everybody to enjoy Disha and have great learning experience.

The guest Mr. Raj Narayan addressed and enlightened the gathering. He stressed upon recreation of human values and its need from an industry perspective. He suggested that in these times with technology ruling our lives we can create communities and thus improve human connectivity. He iterated that HR leaders need to have vision on how the organization should plan its employees’ career growth and envision where they want to be. He emphasized on educating, enabling and empowering environment and the need of HR functionaries to focus on clear review system and reward mechanism.

In conclusion Mr. Raj Narayan narrated a beautiful story with a message – that the answer lies in our hands and that the answers we get depend on questions we ask.

The ceremony ended with the President of the Student Executive Council, TAPMI delivering the vote of thanks for the inaugural ceremony.

Ms Anupama Rammohan shares her views on competency mapping

Ms Anupama Rammohan is the director of HR, IMS Health who has more than 16 years experience in HR with specialization in the areas of Talent Acquisition & Management, Talent Engagement & Management as well as Learning & Development. She was responsible, at Theorem, for steering the growth of the company from 500 employees in 2010 to 1100 in 2013 at the time of her leaving Theorem.

Ms Anupama Rammohan during her interactive session with the students of TAPMI

Ms Anupama spoke about competency mapping with the use of a few activities and practical examples. She started off by talking about the most opulent ship and what was called the acme of comfort at that time – The Titanic. She mentioned the reasons why the tragedy occurred which rooted to ignorance of safety and arrogance of the decision makers.
She used the iceberg as an analogy to explain Competency, which is defined as the skill, knowledge and behaviour to perform the job at hand. Just like the iceberg there are other traits of a person which are not visible on the surface, such as attitude, religion and physical ability. Analogically, the part of iceberg above water is known as functional competency – easy to validate and easy to access, while the part below water is behavioural competency.
Ms Anupama then went on to explain the difference between the two types of competency, after which the four steps of competency mapping were discussed along with an activity. The first step was job description, the objective of it, how to prepare one and the need for it in the company’s perspective. She quoted “without a job description, it is like going somewhere without a map”. A sample JD was circulated in the class.
The second step to competency mapping is a job element analysis, and followed by drawing a competency mapping. She demonstrated on how a competency map is drawn and the result of this was used to make competency based selections.
Ms Anupama believes and recommends conducting competency mapping for any industry and mentioned that the cost of not conducting such an activity will result in a loss 3-4 times cost to company of hiring the wrong person. This was only the monetary loss while there were other latent costs involved in it too.
The session ended with busy round of questions and answers.

An Overview of Talent Management by Mr. Sanjay Srivastava

Mr. Sanjay Srivastava starting his speech on Talent Management

Sanjay Srivastava is currently working with AstraZeneca Pharma as an Associate Director – HR and heads HR for Cardiovascular & Metabolic businesses. He is also the India head for L&D and OD. Sanjay brings in 14 years of rich experience in the IT & Pharmaceutical industry having worked in India and in the US. He has worked with companies like Cognizant, AOL, Freescale and brings expertise in the areas of Compensation & Benefits, International HRM & Strategic Business Partnering, Talent Management & Organizational Development.

Sanjay is also certified in MBTI & FIRO – B and is currently undergoing certification in Organizational Development with “Sumedhas Academy of Human Context”. He holds a graduate degree in B. Pharm. from Jadavpur University and MBA in HR from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune.

Sanjay has been involved with various B Schools like Symbiosis, ISB&M & Great lakes on varied initiatives like guest lectures, Campus to Corporate transitions, student admission process. He loves playing cricket, reading, travelling and practicing Yoga.

Sanjay started off by speaking about the evolution of HR function and the trends in HR. then he spent some time on how Talent Management is aligned to business priorities. If  the companies HR priorities are high performance, great place to work, retention, talent attraction and capability building then the company needs talent management like identification, succession, development, skill gap, performance and acceleration. Then he went into translating the talent strategy into the workforce needs.

He elaborated about the Talent Management lifecycle, and focused on the key pointers specially the “ready now ready later” and how it is done in AstraZeneca Pharma. He talked about how the process is developed, retention is done and a strong pipeline of leaders is maintained. He talked about the various models used in AstraZeneca to measure potential, productivity and if a person can deal with complex roles.

Mr. Sanjay Srivastava enlightening the students on the evolution of the HR function

Then he talked about their USP which is their IDP – Individual development plan that is a personalized development plan which is tailor made for each person. The plan can be education based, relationship based or experience based. He made every one think by saying we should always be ourselves because only then there will be an organization culture to person fit. He finished by talking about Talent Management outcomes and examples of what the companies outside are doing in Talent Management. He signed off with a quote “It is impossible to take part in the adventure if you are a spectator on the side-lines. Taking part in the Adventure is about getting in the game and having a stake in the game. We need each one of you to help create a World Class Institution.”

ONIMIA – Panel Discussion

Onimia, the official Panel discussion event, was moderated by Prof. Siva Kumar. Prof Siva Kumar stressed the growing importance of HR in today’s corporate world where internal marketing and employee satisfaction is becoming as vital as external marketing and customer satisfaction.

Mr. Ajaybir Bakshi, HR Head of Prudential Process Management Services talked about how post recession, planning for sustainability of businesses has become extremely important. He focused on how Prudential utilized the recession as an opportunity to improve its operations by developing employees with cross functional skills, developing in-house capability in training, redeploying employees across geographical areas, enhancing productivity through right sizing, learning what could have been done better in the organization, and developing higher transparency in communication.

Dr. Asit Mohapatra, Director HR-Textiles at Raymond explained how big names do not necessarily mean great cultures and said that there is a need for greater investment in employees because Human Resource is the only resource which appreciates over time, while all other resources depreciate. Dr Asit focused his talks on employee management post recession and said that people management is very critical for the growth of any organization. Any organization should know how to manage people-skills. The role of HR is to nurture and identify the talent pool in the organization. “All employees cannot be qualified as a Talent Pool”, he explained. It’s the people in the organization that make the difference.

Mr. Girinarayanan, Director–HR for Lineage Power India, who was visiting TAPMI for the 4^th time, brought forth a very interesting viewpoint of how important social perception is to the employee.  Mr. Girinarayanan spoke in detail about the significance of innovation in an organization’s progress, and how Organizational Culture is a major factor in contributing to speed and frequency of innovation.

Mr. GVRK Raju, HR (South) from Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd­ expressed how recession actually helped Coca Cola to draw in more talent. Coca Cola took recession as an opportunity, rather than a threat. They used this opportunity to manage and acquire more talent and control cost. Mr. Raju said that Coke managed to do this by recruiting talent available due to the slump in the job market due to recession, and by re-negotiating wage terms with the unions in bottling plants. To reach this goal, the company followed the ABC framework for human resource management (A-Assess, B- Build, Buy, Borrow, Bind and Bounce, and C- Coach and continue).

Mr. Hari AP, Talent Engagement Head at Aircel explained how post recession, 60% of current employees are actively trying to move out of their respective organizations, while 25% of the remaining 40% would do so if a good opportunity comes by. Under these difficult circumstances, internal employee satisfaction is much more important than external agency certifications.  He said that post recession, the rules of game have changed, and that talent search is on for new skills and competence. He also explained that Aircel is focusing only on the next three years’ plan, because technology changes very fast and nobody knows what type of market conditions will be prevalent in times to come.

Mr. Mannatham Perumal, Manager, Corporate resources for Wadhwan Holdings Pvt. Ltd stated how employees are the biggest assets of the company, as the company is an entity only in the legal perspective. He also stressed on Employer branding as a function of Business practices, and that the dynamics of every business requires different approaches.

Mr. Mukund Menon, Vice President, Human Resource, Mahindra Satyam differentiated between the approaches that companies followed pre and post recession. He explained how the approach of capacity building and quick fixes has been replaced by cost consideration and resource optimization. He also pointed out the fact that for an organization like Mahindra Satyam which does not manufacture products, the employees were the real brand.

Mr. Pramod Fernandes, Director-Human Resources, Logica, concluded the discussion by explaining how HR has gone beyond simply managing human resources. He mentioned that today, it is more about knowing the competitors’ business, the customers’ customers, and all the aspects of the business that add value to the organization. He also said that due to rapid expansion, the companies hire people who may be overqualified for their allocated jobs. This expectation misfit creates job dissatisfaction and is a major cause of attrition. The other main reasons for attrition, according to him, were breaking of psychological contract, perceived inequity and unfairness, lack of learning and growth and manager quality.

DISHA’10 Opening Ceremony

‘DISHA’ – which means ‘direction’ in Sanskrit, stands apt for the one of the major events – the HR conclave at TAPMI where industry experience meets academic rigour. DISHA which began in 2009 has been able to capture the interests of students and the industry even this year. The theme of DISHA 2010 was “Human Resource Management – Recession and Beyond”.  It was a leap from last year, with the event coming up with insights which proved useful for management students and for the corporate world alike to handle complex situations facing the ever dynamic field of Human Resource Management.

The event was graced by the presence of eminent HR heads of major companies – Mr. Ajaybir Bakshi, HR Head of Prudential Process Management Services, Mr. GVRK Raju, HR (South) from Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd­, Mr. Mukund Menon, Vice President, Human Resource, Mahindra Satyam, Mr. Hari AP, Talent Engagement Head at Aircel to name a few. The conclave started with the ceremonious lighting of the lamp. Prof. Vijaya, senior HR faculty of TAPMI spoke on the theme of the HR-Conclave 2010. She said that in the growing global economy, there is a need to move from good to great and that the economic downturn has made companies rethink its strategies. Also, employee retention has become very important. She spoke how organizational citizenship behaviour and organizational development are inter-related and one leads to other.

The inauguration ceremony was followed by SOPHOS – interaction sessions and other events like VRONDI – Mock Press, EXPOSITUS – Paper Presentations, ONIMIA – Panel Discussion among industry guests, faculty and students ,  which held audiences’ interest till the end.