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H R BULLETIN VOLUME 58
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HUMANE-R|VOLUME58
HR BULLETIN
Leadership learning for the hybrid era – Lessons from action learning Equiniti India launched an action learning based leadership program for executives to boost learning retention and to create a bias for action. Here are key insights from the company’s initiative. The world of work has changed. Companies are navigating new business terrains and workplace models. In this new context, there’s a need to reimagine learning. For far too long, executive leadership programs were skewed towards classroom sessions. But that may not be true in the future. As companies navigate a hybrid future, they need to develop their leaders even if they work remotely. In this article, we look at one such initiative in Equiniti India. “Horizon 2.0”, a coaching initiative at Equiniti India was designed to align the SLDP (Skillsoft Leadership Development Program), with the goal of developing leaders as well as to realize better return on investment for learning. This program leveraged action learning methods to create a collaborative, team-driven learning approach throughout the employee lifecycle. The action learning approach “There is no action without learning & there is no learning without action," Professor Reginald Revans once said. Action learning emphasizes the relationship between questioning and knowledge. And learning (L) is maximised if programmed knowledge (P) is combined with questioning (Q).
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In the action learning formula, “L=P+Q”, questioning insight is more important than knowledge acquisition. This aligns with the fact that questioning is the base of any coaching; coaching is not about consulting, it is about questioning i.e. deepening thoughts through self-exploration and then applying the solutions to problems. This process is initiated by sharing questions that can help get people started on the coaching path, such as: •What are we trying to do? •What is stopping us from doing it? •What can we do about it? Based on the response to these and more questions, learning coaches can then oversee the quality of team processes and learning through the use of effective communication, collective decision making, problem solving, and conflict management tools and techniques. Why action learning for coaching? Action learning was selected as the preferred technique for coaching and mentoring conversations due to the following advantages: •Effectiveness: Action learning revolves around a problem to maximise the effectiveness of learning. •Competency development: Participants enhance their competencies both in content knowledge (know how) and process skills (using various problem solving tools). •Explicit and tacit knowledge: Participants learn both explicit and tacit knowledge that are required to solve problems. •Specialization: Because of the team work element, participants also learn the various techniques for communication, decision making, problem solving, and conflict management as well as for leadership skills. •Transformational: Action learning encourages questioning, reflection, and feedback to generate transformational learning and effective solutions in the problem solving process. •Team based: Action learning projects are team-based and difficult to solve alone. If one wants to truly reap its benefits of action learning, the baseline for success is to approach action learning as ‘team-work’. The stakeholders The mentoring program was designed to share experiences, and encourage scenario-based learning. It involved four key participants: •Executives participate in the process by sharing their team related problems. •Learning coaches i.e. heads of business functions who would challenge the leadership skills of executives and act as their mentors or coaches. They were asked to go through at least 2 channels from the 3 SLDP modules i.e. leading the team, leading people, and leading yourself. •L&D team as the process owners and program managers. •Digital academy that helps build core competencies and enables skill upliftment through content creation. The basic idea was to ask people to bring up their problems and solve them through mentoring/coaching & SLDP. Insights from Equiniti’s approach The idea of Equiniti’s extensive coaching/mentoring program was to “Go beyond the horizon”, and enable participants to choose any two channels competency buckets from the three defined competency modules ones i.e. ‘Leading the business’, ‘Leading yourself’ and ‘Leading your team’. The team defined a well-outlined approach to achieve the learning outcomes it had set out with. Here’s how: •Identify executives from the team and form teams with a team size of 5-6. •Arrive at a minimum of two problem statements or activities which should demand the skills that executives should improve on in the learning journey. •Explore three subjects and different channels in them along with the executives, choosing a minimum of four channels. •Complete the problem solving and decision making videos. The idea here is to first complete viewing the videos, and then follow up with actual conversations. •L&D to report to the learning coach or a ‘Head of the department’ on the completion status…
Read more: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/leadership/leadership-learningfor-the-hybrid-era-lessons-from-action-learning-30379
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Trentar hires Dhruv Arora as CEO for newly launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Division Dhruv’s appointment is a move to address the rising need of good quality and safe drone hardware. Dorf Ketal's Group Company, Trentar Pvt Ltd, has announced the appointment of Dhruv Arora as the CEO of the newly launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) division. This move comes after the recent acquisition of GarudaUAV, a drone based services and platform company. Dhruv Arora is a veteran and has been part of the evolution of the UAV industry for the past 18 years. He is well known in the Global Drone Industry for his innovation, design, and technical capabilities. He is a specialist in designing VTOL fixed-wing UAVs. Under his leadership, Trentar will be able to create the complete Drone EcoSystem under one roof. Commenting on this development, Subodh Menon, Founder, Dorf Ketal, shared, "Trentar plans to invest Rs. 100 Cr in the next 3 years to design and build specialized Drones for Defence and Civil purposes along with subsystems like AutoPilot, Communication Systems. This will help in India being "Atmanirbhar" and at the same time build world-class drones on Indian Soil. Dhruv joining us will surely help us realize our dreams and vision to put India on the Global Drone map through the Global Presence & Goodwill of Dorf Ketal/Trentar. “ He also added that the company is planning to acquire companies with complimenting and cutting-edge technologies to augment the Trentar stable.
Read more: https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruitment/trentarhires-dhruv-arora-as-ceo-for-its-newly-launched-unmanned-aerialvehicle-division-30366
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Hiring grew by 11% in July’21 vs June’21: Naukri JobSpeak The Indian job market has witnessed sequential growth for the second month in a row, with a 15% rise in June’21, after a pandemic-linked decline in April and May’21. Hiring activity in India has touched an all-time high in July 2021, indicating a strong revival of economic growth and a sustained recovery from the impact of COVID-19 on business, according to the latest Naukri JobSpeak report. The country’s premier index on hiring trends grew by 11% in July’21 vs June’21, to touch 2,625, the highest it has ever been, including the pre-COVID timeline. The Indian job market has witnessed sequential growth for the second month in a row, with a 15% rise in June’21, after a pandemiclinked decline in April and May’21. Jobs in the IT sector grow by 18% As businesses continue to ride the wave of digitization, the IT-Software/Software Services sector maintained its steady, upward growth with an 18% increase in July’21 when compared to June 21. This demonstrates that enterprises are actively leading their recovery efforts and driving growth with digital transformation at the centre. In June’21, this sector had grown past the pre-pandemic levels in June’19 by as much as 52%. The month-on-month (MOM) sequential growth of jobs in the IT-Software / Software Services sector has been very encouraging at 11% in June’21 and 14% in May’21...
Read more: https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruitment/hiringgrew-by-11-in-july21-vs-june21-naukri-jobspeak-30347
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Edtech platform BlueLearn raises Rs 3.25 cr in pre-seed funding round The community driven edtech startup plans to add more talent to their existing team of 13 members spread across India. Edtech platform BlueLearn has announced that they have raised Rs 3.25 crore ($450,000) in a pre-seed funding led by Lightspeed, Titan Capital and 2am VC. This investment is in addition to the first round which was led by 100X.VC. Commenting on their investment, Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC said,“We at 100X.VC are elated to see our portfolio companies growing and making an impact in the industry and the entire ecosystem. Bluelearn’s concept is unconventional and that’s what interested us the most. We are confident that BlueLearn will scale rapidly in the coming future”. BlueLearn was founded earlier this year by Harish Uthayakumar and Shreyans Sancheti who are currently in their final year of electrical engineering at BITS Pilani. The duo’s entrepreneurial style caught the eyes of angel investors such as Rahul Mathur, Gaurav Mandlecha, and Surabhi Randev, who also participated in the funding round. “We started building the BlueLearn community in August 2020. In our conversations with them, we realised there was a huge gap in the industry exposure and opportunities students in tier-2/3 colleges received. Through BlueLearn, we want to democratise access to knowledge and bring back the ‘human’ element in the age of virtual learning”, shared Harish Uthayakumar, Co-founder, BlueLearn. The community driven edtech startup plans to use the raised funds to build their core team, hire new talent, and further develop their product to cater to their growing community of users which includes students and professionals alike…
Read more: https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruitment/edtechplatform-bluelearn-raises-rs-25-cr-in-pre-seed-funding
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Unnati to hire 300 plus employees by FY22 across verticals The company will be hiring at least 50 staff members in the technology division at various ranks while also onboarding senior members in the Finance, Business & Sales, and Agronomy verticals. Unnati, a FinTech-driven agriculture ecosystem, has announced plans to expand its team size by hiring 300 additional employees to its current 199-strong team by FY22 to further drive its growth journey. The platform will be hiring at least 50 staff in the technology division at various ranks while also onboarding senior members in the Finance, Business & Sales, and Agronomy verticals. The company will be using platforms such as LinkedIn, The Hirist, and Naukri.com, along with referrals for the hiring. He also added that the idea behind the policy update is to protect and support employees through the toughest of situations, as the company firmly believes that happy and satisfied employees can automatically alleviate the organisation's performance. He further stated that The COVID-19 has disrupted the way everyone used to see & approach challenges and keep pace with the rapidly evolving times. Unnati has reformed its recruitment policies, including conducting interviews through virtual mediums. With this, the company has successfully shifted all internal communications online, which has helped work efficiency & on-time deliverables and has opened doors for several talented professionals seeking new opportunities. The Agritech brand claims to have a strong growth rate through innovation. The platform has clocked 10X revenue growth in the last six months and has already established a wide-ranging network of over 15,000 uStores in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, and Haryana. With the hiring of additional employees, the brand plans to inaugurate new uStores in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Punjab in FY22, increasing the existing number up to 1,00,000 uStores across India to strengthen its foothold in the cutting-edge agritech sector.
Read more : https://www.peoplematters.in/news/recruitment/unnati-to-hire300-plus-employees-by-fy22-across-verticals-30349 7