IIM ROHTAK H U M A N E - R CLUB P re s e n ts
H R BULLETIN VOLUME 83
humane.r@iimrohtak.ac.in
H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 83
HR BULLETIN
The impact of coaching: Why are organisations building leaders from within? In this Fireside Chat, we learn the importance of coaching and how it yields positive returns for the growth of your workforce and the organisation at large.
In conversations revolving around productivity, a key element that needs to be picked up is the rising importance of coaching and the impact it has on the organisation. When coaching is carried out with a lot of thought about the larger workplace culture, it adds tremendous value in empowering your workforce from within. It gives them courage to be vulnerable, to take big bets and to unleash their potential. With the agenda of delving into this at greater depth, at
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People Matters Workforce Productivity Conference, Aishwarya Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, PeakPerformers asks a series of insightful questions to Tanya Pallavi, Head of People Strategy & Development, Mobile Premier League. Developing your organisation's leadership pipeline: Tanya raises the very important strategy of ‘hiring people better than ourselves’ which is one of the abiding principles of MPL. And this applies to both techno-functional competencies as well as leadership qualities because this means that you’re constantly raising the bar on talent and knowledge collectively. Secondly, it also shortens the upskilling journey for a leader and thirdly, it creates a diverse talent pool within the organisation inclusive of those who have grown internally and the industry veterans hired. This ecosystem enables organisations to grow and evolve and as we all know, growth is key to every startup out there. Coming back to growth, as organisations continuously try to grow people from within their company, a number of toolkits are in place from upward manager feedback to employee help indexing to spot potential talent at MPL and the vertical leaders want to be truly invested in them. So what they do is create job opportunities through continuous coaching and even nominating people for executive coaching programs. These vertical leaders who are also the functional leaders are the ones who truly understand the DNA of the company, have immense tribal knowledge and play a fundamental role in building that high performing, leadership pipeline. On the importance of building and sustaining a strong coaching culture: Executive coaching programs can play a fundamental role in creating a space for leaders to step back, to truly be vulnerable, to find a safe space for self-discovery and unleashing their true potential. Executive coaches with a deep expertise can truly equip leaders to navigate the VUCA world. During unprecedented times such as the pandemic, even veteran leaders can struggle with empathy and maintaining productivity in a virtual workplace and an unpredictable environment. Building transparency among the leadership driving organisational growth: Maintaining autonomy in our operations as well working towards decentralization of decision making can be effective strategies. When you are transparent with your entire employee base and share more with them, it is likely that you will find greater interest among them as well. What’s essential is to make your workforce part of the company’s growth journey rather than a conduit in growth. Building growth paths within the company besides executive coaching: Spotting the potential of talent is one of the primary steps to take in this direction. This will enable you to have a targeted talent growth strategy for elevating that potential to add value to the larger business growth plan. Following this, having the right processes, the right systems, the right operating model which automatically engineers your organisational ecosystem towards growth. Lateral movements, internal job opportunities like cross-functional mentorship are some relevant contributory practices. Having a fluid set of leaders with their own unique skill sets who can act as coaches and guide while exposing your workforce to a number of leadership styles can help them pick up tents that are most aspirational to them and incorporate them in their own leadership styles. It’s a journey of learning that is critical to any professional growth path. Empowering and trusting individuals to take large bets, giving them opportunities to run large scale programs end to end is also very important. Encouraging your people to take up experimental and ambitious projects outside of their domain and regular jobs are a set of people practices that some of the greatest companies in the world such as Google follow. Although the definition of leadership varies across organisations and while every leader also takes their own time in becoming coaches for the people, nevertheless this is a journey that must be taken to pioneer the growth of individuals as well as organisations at large. Thoughtful investments in time and effort may have to be made at different junctures but it will reap results that will drive innovation and elevate the potential of everyone in your teams.
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/executive-coaching/theimpact-of-coaching-why-are-organizations-building-leaders-from-within32678#no_thanks
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Rise of an Asian HR tech unicorn: The Darwinbox growth story How did Darwinbox emerge as Asia’s fastest growing cloud-based HR tech platform? In an exclusive LinkedIn Live session hosted by People Matters, co-founder Chaitanya Peddi and venture capitalist Jessica Neal shared perspectives on what made the platform such a runaway success. Darwinbox has blazed a spectacular trail in the last 6 years, starting with a simple mission to help organizations unlock the true potential of their workforce and ambition for global leadership, hitting multiple monumental milestones since its founding in 2015. Their Series D round, with a valuation of $1B+ marks the dawn of a bright new phase of growth for Darwinbox and, more fundamentally, HR tech as an ecosystem. And what a lot of observers have been asking is: what was their big ? Following Darwinbox's announcement, People Matters hosted a special online conversation with Darwinbox cofounder and product head, Chaitanya Peddi, on the company's big achievement and its next steps. Equity investor Jessica Neal, the former CHRO of Netflix, also joined the discussion to give a double-barrelled perspective both as an investor and a HR professional using products like Darwinbox's. A groundbreaking notion from the beginning The concepts of employee empowerment and customised applications are buzzwords today, but back in 2015, when Darwinbox first got started, it came across as so novel, agile, and sophisticated that Jessica, encountering the platform…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/hr-technology/rise-of-anasian-hr-tech-unicorn-the-darwinbox-growth-story-32672
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 83
The Age of AI calls for honing your ‘meta skills’ In the 21st Century, leadership is not about a title like president/vice president/general manager, etc. It is not about power and authority. It is more of a verb - an act. The cover of my recently-released book ‘What The Heck Do I Do With My Life?’ has a picture of a dinosaur on it. This T-Rex is a metaphor for what Charles Darwin once famously said: ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.’ Sixty-five million years ago, when an asteroid struck the earth, it unleashed such an extraordinary amount of change in such a short period of time, that seventy-five per cent of all living things were unable to adapt and became extinct, including dinosaurs. However, some creatures were able to adapt to the new conditions - the new normal - and they flourished. Amongst these were our ancestors, the early mammals. Such periods of extreme change pose what is called an ‘adaptation challenge’ for us. And they result in Darwinian binary outcomes: those who can adapt, flourish; those who cannot, perish. We are living through a period of similar intense change right now. The world will change more in this century. However, this time, the change is driven not by an asteroid, but by us. There are so many forces at play: technology, climate change or rather the backlash of all our unsustainable behaviour, extreme inequality, polarisation, loss of trust... I could go on, but essentially, all this is combining to create an extremely turbulent world… a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous or VUCA world. We saw this very vividly during the COVID-19 pandemic – where, those who were able to adapt, flourished; those who couldn’t, suffered…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/skilling/the-age-of-ai-callsforhoning-your-meta-skills-32695
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Managerial skills in 2022
2022 will be another year of digitalisation, deeply affecting managerial roles. What skills do budding and growing managers need to stay relevant through this year and beyond? It is that time of the year when new resolutions have to be made and new plans for accomplishing them. Welcome 2022 – hopefully it will be different from its immediately preceding two years! The question for budding and growing managers is, what skills will help one stay relevant in 2022 and beyond? Does one need to reskill, upskill or change the track completely – move from an established organisation to a start-up? Will acquiring skills in fintech pay higher dividends to one’s talent? Let’s explore – let’s gaze into the crystal ball and see what it has to offer for career development at the management level. 2022 will see a stronger adoption of digitalisation, and knowledge of technology will become core to all managerial roles. Business strategies, operational efficiencies and people management will leverage the power of technology and therefore, not knowing about relevant technologies or delegating it to the traditional IT folks, will not be a safe option. Business knowledge (domain) along with technology awareness (digital skill) will become a manager’s core capability, like use of analytics – marketing analytics, financial analytics, HR analytics, supply chain analytics, etc. will become essential skills. In the context of digitalisation, four skills/capabilities that managers must have are elicited below. •Problem Solving capability, •People Management Skills,…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/skilling/managerial-skills-in2022-32637
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H U M A N E - R | V O L U M E 83
The big shift from HR Tech to WorkTech
Access to a global talent pool and an increasing shift towards a remote work environment is redefining productivity at the workplace.
In the first week of December last year, something very interesting slipped out of sight in the midst of the global online outrage over the manner and timing of en masse firing by the CEO of an online mortgage company in the US. Enough has been said and written about the moral vacuum at the very top of the organisation to a firing-squad style of sacking that led to a global PR disaster. The company's CEO, among other things, cited the poor productivity of many of the employees as the reason for the drastic steps he had to take. His language may not merit being repeated here. Still, it was also about the larger issue of managing workforce productivity when remote working has become a norm for millions worldwide. Workforce productivity is as old, persistent, and an all-industry challenge for as long as we can remember. Since F W Tylor's 'time and motion study' created in the early years of the previous century to today's Kaizen, business leaders and industrial scholars have dealt with this challenge with varying degrees of success. In fact, contemporary tech companies consider 'revenue per employee' as one of the key measures of their growth. Even within the startup space, funding deals are sealed based on 'operations efficiency', often a euphemism for customers or revenue per employee. So if there is any apparent anxiety over productivity, particularly among managers and leaders in an 'open office' environment, it is quite understandable…
Read more at: https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/the-big-shiftfrom-hr-tech-to-worktech-32656
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