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Contents What XIMAHR does _______________________________________________________________ 3 How to retain talent in India?________________________________________________________ 4 Learn HR from Harry Potter ________________________________________________________ 5 Faculty Interview with Professor E.M. Rao ____________________________________________ 7 Rendezvous with Summer Intern _____________________________________________________ 8 HR Summit – XIMAHR ____________________________________________________________ 10
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What XIMAHR does XIMAHR was set up in 1987 as a student committee with the sole purpose of serving the students interested in specializing in the HR profile. It is the hub of all HR and IR related activities at XIMB. We endeavor to provide industry interface to students of XIMB through speaker sessions, case studies, live cases, national HR conference, etc. Here is a list of activities conducted by XIMAHR: 1. Prativaada- debate competition 2. Case in Point(CIP)- Case presentation competition 3. Hr‘Xpert Magazine 4. HR Talks 5. Kshitij- summer project competition. 6. JAM (just a minute) Kshitij: Kshitij is the flagship event of XIMAHR. It was started with an objective to start a dialogue between senior HR professionals, Industry Leaders and stakeholders of today's dynamic organizations on various HR issues. Prativaada: Prativaada is an intra-college debate competition which is the introductory event of XIMAHR in XIMB. Every year Prativaada enjoys huge participation from the students. Case in Point: Case in Point (CIP) is a case study competition of XIMAHR that is held during our annual festival Xpressions. The participants have to analyze a case pertaining to certain HR issues in an organization bringing in new and not-so obvious perspectives. The event is a test of one’s analytical abilities, data interpretation skills, extrapolation skills and conceptualization. Live Projects/Workshops: XIMAHR keeps students in constant touch with latest industry trends by means of live projects and workshops which are conducted throughout the year. For this purpose, tie-ups with several imminent organizations have been formed. Immersion courses: Every year XIMAHR conducts 2 immersion courses (one each in August/November) where HR professionals come to share their insights on some of the important topics which are not covered in our course curriculum. This is a mandatory requirement set by the college for completion of the PGDM degree. HR Talks: XIMAHR together with the XIMB placement committee also invites professionals/ Ximb alumni for the purpose of giving talks to the students and setting forward opportunities for placements.
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How to retain talent in India? By Manisha Verma (PGDM HRM 2011-13) In an emerging market like ours, where labour capital is fast moving, talent retention seems to be one of the biggest problems that plague the country today. To build a succession model in place, retaining good talent is a necessary ingredient. Apart from aiding in succession planning, employee retention has several other benefits such as preventing the loss of company knowledge, cost of employee turnover (training, hiring etc.), protecting the goodwill of the company and increasing employee efficiency.
physiological and social needs are to be satisfied initially at lower levels which gradually move towards self-esteem, self-realization and selfactualization at the middle and top levels. So while at the lower levels, ‘compensation’ and ‘culture’ are the key retention factors, at the middle level ‘career development’ assumes more significance. It is not only the organizational level which determines the kind of retention strategy to be used but the geography and the industry as well.
The general notion for decades has been that in order to retain talent, compensation is the only incentive required. However, statistics suggest otherwise. In India, even though the average annual salary increase is around 12%, the attrition rate is a whopping 31%.
The realization of investing in people from the perspective of long term interventions has dawned upon top notch companies which have rolled out a gamut of initiatives. While Deloitte has introduced customized career options for employees based on their career stages, P&G follows the practice of moving every
Pay raise might be a necessary condition for employee retention, but not a sufficient one. The difference between the scenarios half a century back and today is that today, people have several options to choose from and there is a dearth of skilled employees as the economy faces more competition.
employee to a different role/function/geography every 2-3 years for greater job satisfaction and the Aditya Birla Group has introduced the deferred compensation program for young leaders. Some of the innovative initiatives that have been introduced are the ‘hours of work policy’ by Accenture, ‘adoption leave’ by giants like TCS and Wipro and flexible timings among others.
All in all, talent retention is a complex concept around which a customizable model needs to be built, based on the needs of various organizations. While formulating such a model, some critical factors have to be borne in mind- Compensation practices, Career development of the employee, Work-life balance, Organizational culture, recruitment of the best fit for an organization and employee engagement.
No matter how robust an organization’s recruitment plan is, if the employee retention strategy does not work in conjunction with it, the recruitment efforts are futile leading to a low survival rate and low return on investment. It is time for organizations which have not adopted retention measures as yet to learn from the success stories of corporate giants which have invested in this domain.
Different retention strategies have to be developed for employees at different levels. Taking cues from Maslow’s theory, basic 4
Learn HR from Harry Potter By Vinaya Gedam (SIBM Pune) and Satya Sree R (XIMB PGDM HRM 2011-13)- Published in MBASchool.com
Most of us have grown up with Harry Potter often dreaming about living in the mystical world of Hogwarts. Little did we know that our very own Harry would be able to provide exciting new insights to understand the nuances of HR world! Hard to believe? Well read on!
Recruitment & Selection Most HR managers lose their night’s sleep over trying to recruit the best fits in their organizations. What would they not trade for a Sorting Hat! The Sorting Hat which understands every individual’s true potential & personality and deftly places them in a House where he is a true fit. Person-job fit and personculture fit are crucial aspects to consider during selection of a candidate. It is imperative to retain talent especially in the current scenario where job-hopping is a norm. Hence, a recruiter has to bear this in mind while selecting a prospective employee. The recruiter must ensure that the values and belief system of the candidate is aligned with that of the organization. This creates a sense of belongingness in the employees much like the strong sense of attachment that each of the students have for their Houses. As HR managers do not have the Sorting Hat at their disposal, they can make do with certain techniques like Behavioral Interviews, Work Samples which help in ascertaining the personalities of the candidates and thus their culture fit. Many companies are now beginning to use Virtual Assessment Tools in addition to the routine pre-employment tests which provide a realistic job preview to the candidates helping them to understand the working environment.
Employee Engagement Employee engagement is increasingly coming in the limelight especially in the wake of the high levels of attrition. Most HR managers would love to have their employees as contented as the Hogwartians are in the Castle. Harry Potter gives interesting engagement ideas like the House Championship. For instance, the students are awarded House Points for all their achievements which motivate them to perform better. As the entire House is rewarded for a student’s accomplishments, a feeling of team spirit is instilled in all. While work itself is very important to engage an employee, team building is essential to build a foundation for trusting relationships. Results have to be woven into relationships to truly motivate and engage an employee. Making every member accountable for the entire team’s performance creates mutual dependence and drives the team towards better performance. It also leads to team cohesiveness which 5
helps in integrating the employee with the organizational culture and thus satisfies the need for psychological intimacy. Hogwartians look forward to Hogsmeade trips as it provides them a much needed exciting break from the hectic schedule. Here is another idea for engaging employee. Occasional retreats go a long way in refreshing the employees and rejuvenating them to enhance their productivity. Many organizations conduct outbound activities, adventure sports etc to engage their employees. It also provides a great boost to interpersonal relationships at workplace. Outdoor sports give an excellent break from an otherwise sedentary lifestyle at workplace not unlike Quidditch which holds the wizards and witches hooked on to the game. Nowadays, many organizations conduct inter as well as intra company sports competitions latest in the league being cricket matches on the lines of IPL!
Succession planning Dumbledore, one of the greatest wizards in the magical world, ensures that Hogwarts is protected even after he dies. He makes a perfect plan when he realises that he is going to die and hence sees to it that Professor Snape carries on after him. This serves as an excellent example for succession planning. Succession planning is essential to prepare an organization for unexpected and undesirable events. It ensures that right people are available at the right time when vacancies are created in key positions. Organizations have to be as astute as Dumbledore in placing the right people in such roles. Instead of having complex assessment criteria for selection, these criteria can be introduced gradually in the development process keeping the selection simple. Focus should be on the development process as it is crucial for honing the candidate to match the role expectations required for that critical position. Many organizations have realized the need to extend the definition of succession planning beyond management ranks with increasing decentralization in decision making and an empowered workforce. Most companies now have Talent Databases or Talent Pools in place to tap potential at every level which enable the organization to take an informed succession decision. By crafting a thoughtful approach to succession planning, organizations can ensure that they live on forever just like Hogwarts! It is amazing how various aspects of HR have been intricately woven into a tale of fiction. This shows that HR practices are reflected all around us. All we need is to look with a different eye!
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Faculty Interview with Professor E.M.Rao By Abhishek Khanna and Raghvesh Pandey Q: In the recent past there have been many mergers & acquisitions. How important is the role of an HR in such scenarios?
A: Suppose there are two units X and Y which need to be merged. Now, these entities have to be merged so much so that they lose their individual identities and have a combined identity. An HR manager’s job is to integrate these comprehensive entities under one common banner and then decide the compensation, working environment etc so that there is least friction between the employees. This forms a critical challenge for HR managers. The modifications made in the process of integration should not affect any party adversely. Thus in the process nobody loses & it becomes a win-win situation.
Q: What’s your take on the HR curriculum being taught at B schools in India? Is it commensurate with the industry needs?
A: It basically depends upon the needs of individual companies. If a company is looking for an out and out HR manager then it looks for a student who has completed a dedicated 2 year HR MBA programme wherein 35-40 subjects are covered and barring 6-7 subjects which are in the marketing, finance domains, all other subjects focus on HR. In a 2 year HR programme, students are grilled deeply so that they develop in depth and comprehensive knowledge about the subject.
Q: What is your message to students who wish to pursue HR as a profession? A: First of all, I would like to clarify that HR and IR are not separate. IR is an extremely important part of HR. Next thing that I would like to highlight is that the focus of students has to shift from marks and grades to learning. Once learning is the focus marks will follow. Since it is a professional course, whatever you learn should be learned thoroughly as you cannot afford to forget it. Each word should be torn to pieces and analysed. Every MBA student should realize that getting a job is not difficult, but retaining it is. Once you get a job, you should not be complacent as this will lead to disillusionment. Students should come prepared to class & ask questions. A cakewalk class is not a compliment to the teacher. Thus a student should be proactive & expand his knowledge base as much as possible.
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Rendezvous with Summer Intern Interview by Satya Sree R
Surbhi Gupta (PGDMHRM) is an IT engineer and has a prior work experience of 22 months at Infosys Technologies Ltd as an Intellectual Property Associate. She has got a PPI from Madura Fashion and Lifestyle. Let’s hear what she has got to say about her remarkable performance during her summers.
Q1: What was your project? A: My project was based on Designing and Developing a Workforce Planning Model on HRIS to optimise manpower hiring and cost. Apart from this I was assigned to work on various other projects as well. These required me to draft Shrinkage Policy to minimise pilferage in retail stores and PMS Policy for the retail employees. I also had to design Shift roster for various retail stores of MFL to regulate the working hours of the employees. I was also given a project two months prior to my internship on “Wellness Benchmarking” which required me to collect and analyse information about the employee wellness and engagement initiatives in various organisations.
Q2. How would you describe your internship experience at MFL? A: Systematic and methodical are the first words that come to my mind about my
experience with MFL. The entire process was meticulously planned and the best part was that our profiles were mapped with the projects given to us. This kept us engaged in the project and gave us a scope to put our potential to test. Even during the project our deliverables were clearly specified along with deadlines which made our work a lot easier. The people there, especially the HR team, were quite friendly and ever willing to help me. My mentor always had time for me. My mentor guided me at every stage of my project. She never kept me idle. She always gave me something to work on which greatly helped me to enhance my knowledge. Even if my mentor was busy, I tried to find work for myself or asked her for work, which kept me involved and engaged.
Q3. What were the challenges you faced? A: The greatest challenge I faced was in understanding the entire information system. As a part of my project, I had to integrate various other systems in the organisations like SAP etc with my model. Also dealing with the technical team in getting the whole model designed was a challenge due to limited resources. While drafting shrinkage and PMS policies and shift roster I had to travel around and interact with various brand heads and retail employees in the stores. Since each brand has unique criteria for selection and other related processes, the policies had to be standardised across all the brands, keeping in mind requirements of each brand.
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Q4: What was your take away from this internship? A: Well I finally got an answer to “Why MBA after engineering?” Engineering teaches you logic which aided me in my project. And Logic is what every human being understands and this helped me in drafting policies which were pro employee and pro company too at the same time. Moreover since my project was based on information systems, my IT knowledge did give me an edge. I always believed in what Steve Jobs said “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” During my Summer Internship, I could connect the dots and find the link between what I learnt in the past and what I am doing at present. Another important take away is that I learnt about the nuances of retail industry. It is quite dynamic and keeps on changing with fashion trends. The challenge is to keep up with these changes and still adhere to customer preferences, which requires thoughtful planning.
Q5: What subjects in HR did you find to be particularly significant in your summers that you would advise the juniors to brush up?
A: I found that everything we had learnt so far in our first year was being applied here. I felt knowledge of performance management and labour law was useful especially in drafting policies. I would advise juniors to go with an open mind. Since we would not have covered many subjects in the first year, there is a large scope for learning. You might be given a project in a domain which you are unaware of. I would like to disprove the notion that HR and IR are mutually exclusive and that labour law is only useful if one seeks a career in IR. It is good to be aware about labour laws governing our system. There can be situations which warrant the application of these laws other than IR. For instance, I had to take Shops and establishments Act into account while designing shift rosters. Also other non HR subjects like Operations Management, Marketing were being applied intensively by other interns, which helped in deeper understanding of the Retail Industry.
Q6: What would you like to say to our juniors? A: I would mainly ask them to gain a holistic perspective of the organisation. Understand the business processes of your organisation thoroughly. Try to understand the nitty gritties involved in various functions. Do not restrict yourself to your project alone. Interact with people around you. This is a unique opportunity for you to learn. Interact with your fellow interns and understand their domains. Motivate people and try to bring the best out of everyone while working in a team. I would finally advise you to be open to learning. Your right attitude and approach towards things will be the key to success wherever you go.
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HR Summit - XIMAHR Topic: “Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition” XIMAHR- the HR Association of XIMB in collaboration with the Placement Committee organized an HR Summit on ‘Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition’ on 11th August 2012. The Summit aimed to start a dialogue among Senior HR professionals to understand the relatively new concept of talent acquisition and various issues related to it. The summit was moderated by Prof. S. S. Ganesh with additional inputs from Prof. E. M. Rao, The event was also graced by eminent members from our faculty – Prof. Saveeta Mohanty, Prof. Banikant Mishra and Prof. Shridhar Dash. Prof. S.S Ganesh was the moderator of the summit. During the course of discussion he kept the audience alive with his anecdotes related to corporate world and quotes from the management consultant Peter Drucker. In one of his anecdotes he talked about dreaming. Once he asked his son about what he wanted to be and his son gave a quick reply that he wanted to be a ‘truck driver’. He was amused by his reply and later he researched about the profession of truck drivers. He found that in our country there is acute shortage of skilled truck drivers and they do earn a fancy salary. His son must have not known about these facts and must have been driven just by the excitement of driving huge vehicles but it turns out it could be a suitable profession though not that much respected one. He further observed that humans are a pool of talent and relationship between two people cannot be same. Two parties in employment invariantly do influence each other. He made a point that talent management is a vaporous concept. He did raise a question that was subsequently answered by the speakers that ‘Is talent management’ just a fancy term or is it going to stay in 21st century in the long run like Taylor’s scientific management.
Kanchana Manyam Additional General Manager - Human Resources at Shapoorji Pallonji & Co. Ltd. Kanchana Manyam has 14 years of human resource experience with strategic HR experience of over 9 years. Her experience ranges across industries such as manufacturing, IT, HR consulting, Indian conglomerates across various aspects of Human Resource Management and Organizational leadership. She has worked in companies such as Godrej, Citicorp, Accenture and Cerebrus Consulting. She currently is part of the senior team in the Shapoorji Pallonji Group Centre. Her focus areas here continue to be Leadership Development across group companies, Key Talent Management and special HR initiatives. Ms. Kanchana Manyam underlined the four trends in talent acquisition namely employment trends, recruitment trends, selection challenge and role of recruitment. She mentioned that apart from IT and ITeS sector, sectors like Pharma (17%), Real Estate and Construction (13%) etc are experiencing double digit growth. As a result, there is a pressing need for redefining the source of talent pool and employability. Jobs in free organizations, for instance part time work arrangement, have become lucrative in today’s market. 10
Apart from gender diversity, organizations are laying emphasis on diversity in terms of skills, talent, regions (representation from Tier I, II and III cities). She also touched up on the fact that with the advent of technology, recruitment process has become a scalable process. IT/ ITeS sector has huge manpower targets and in the last 10-15 years, the sector has helped in legitimizing the talent acquisition process. She pointed out that in sectors like Real Estate and Construction, instead of quantity organizations look for quality in terms of fitment to the organization. She said that the role of HR has become very important in today’s context. The traditional trait based approach of selection is replaced by competency based approach. There is an increasing reliance on psychometric tools for assessment at all levels.
Dilep Misra President & Head Group HR at JK Group Mr. Dilep, Head, Group Human resource has worked as HR Head of various companies and has exposure to HR practices of most business verticals. He is an XIMB (PGDM (HR)) alumnus of batch of 1993-1995. Being a Human Resource generalist, he has championed the development & articulation of Human Resources strategy. His role includes Advising top management team on all people related issues, providing a Human Resource dossier to the Group Companies, Developing HR Strategy & HR Policy for the Group Companies at Corporate level, identifying Talent at Sr. Level and developing them for succession planning and career growth at the Corporate level. He during his course of discussion highlighted the fact that his organization pays due emphasis on retaining employees and hence the attrition rate of their organization is in single digit. He further said that his organization adopted CCl model and practices job rotation for employees. On further elaborating about the recruitment policies of his company, he said that they hire people at top level through social media like twitter and LinkedIn whereas for the frontline job they go for direct recruitment.
In order to ensure good quality of the employees, they do go for strong reference checks. It is a time consuming process but ensures an efficient and effective results at the same time. He also emphasized that HR professionals should be able to judge what employee wants in their career and one way of doing this is through asking oneself if ‘they want to retire as HR professionals’. Through this, he highlighted the fact that people in due course of their profession do want to change their line of profession. They as an organization emphasize a lot on employee referrals as it is a more reliable method. Also, existing employees understand the culture of organization and act as brand ambassadors while referring a candidate. In the end, he observed that we as a country do not lack talent but we as HR professionals should recruit right talent for the right job. If we do not recruit right kind of people then either company’s performance 11
goes down or the person gets frustrated resulting in high turnover rate. He also mentioned about use of full day assessment for recruitment, which helps to get a better idea of the candidate.
Saurabh Nigam Vice President — HR, IT & Admin Saurabh heads the HR, IT and Admin functions at Beroe. He is responsible for establishing world-class HR practices, a robust IT infrastructure and best in class admin facilities at Beroe. Saurabh plays a pivotal role in formulating and executing HR strategies in line with the company’s vision and goal. Prior to this he was the AGM-HR at Aditya Birla Group in the domain Rewards & Benefits (Corporate HR) and also headed Talent Acquisition & Sales HR at (BSDL & ASCIL) and Compensation & Benefits at (Birla Sunlife Distribution). He started as a Software Consultant at Kanbay Software Pvt Ltd. (Now Capgemini). He is an XLRI (PM & IR) alumnus of batch of 2005-2007. Mr. Saurabh Nigam spoke on attracting and retaining the Gen Y – The new age employee. The Gen Y is characterized by their self-direction and put more weight age on non-financial incentives than financial incentives. Some vital statistics on Gen Y representation in total work force is as follows: 50% of the present workforce 64% of the high performing employees 55% of the middle management By 2015, they would form the majority of the workforce. Gen Y is much more connected and networked and hence works faster and more efficiently. From organizations, they demand robust rewards system, skill development, strong values, work-life balance and opportunities for career growth. In return, organizations expects them to thrive in challenging environment, be willing to go to an extra mile to succeed, ability to adopt quickly, inquisitiveness and right attitude to learn. He emphasized on nurturing a corporate culture, creating challenging work environment, provide job flexibility and building recognition and entrepreneurship programs. Gen Y being ambitious and outgoing, look for freedom, explicit career path and clear roadmap to success.
Bijay Sahoo President - H R, Retail & 4G Infotel at Reliance Industries ltd Bijay is currently the President – HR responsible for RIL’s new businesses such as Reliance Retail and 4G Infotel. He is a Board Member of Reliance Fresh, Reliance Trends, Reliance Digital & Reliance Footprint. He is part of the Central Leadership Team and an “Executive Council Member” of Reliance Retail, Value Format. Bijay has over 24 years of experience in leadership positions in leading National and Global corporations. He was for over 5 years the Chairman of Conference Board’s HR Council in India. He also served SHRM India in its “Advisory Board”. Mr. Bijay Sahoo gave valuable insights on the strategies and challenges faced by him during his 23 years of work experience in HR strategies, processes, technology, change management and leadership 12
development across sectors. He opined that colleges provide the pool of talent that can be groomed for taking future leadership roles. He mentioned that there is no fundamental change in the talent acquisition per se but he sees many emerging trends. He pointed that the importance of recruiting through employee referral, social media et al and how the technology has changed over time, starting from the job portals in 1990’s to social media in 2006-07 and now the mobile platform applications. Hiring through social media has made the role of intermediary redundant. Organizations should stress on building brands since young professionals are looking for avenues to learn and grow. He talked about HR Kalpavriksha that entails all aspects of Talent management like Planning, Recruiting, Training, Retaining, Sustaining etc. “Intelligence + Humility=Successful Individual”
Anish Singh HR Director, Reckitt Benckiser
Mr. Anish Singh has over 13 years of experience in HR and has worked in reputed organizations like HUL, ITC, ICICI Prudential, Essar. Through his diverse roles, his rich learning has come through in area of Change Management, Talent Management, Organization Development / Culture building, Re-structuring, Employee Relations, Training & Development, Recruitment & Selection, Reward & Recognition. He is a SIBM alumnus of batch of 1996-98. He emphasized that there is no war for talent; talent has already won this war. He observed that in today’s scenario employer branding is very important and it plays a very vital role in attracting the right talent. He pointed out that Gen Y wants to be self-dependent and as an organization if we are not close to our employees how can we be close to our customers. He highlighted about the fact that age of consultants is gone and today social media drives recruitment policies of the company. All the active job seekers take the help of social media to get them employed. He also observed that poaching of talent does not help any organization in the long run. In his organization they put lot of importance on ‘diversity’, in terms of gender, nationality, region etc. He said “Great talent attracts great talent” that is when a good manager leaves he is likely to take other good employees as well. Like Dilep Misra he too emphasized on the fact that employee referrals programs are the most effective method for recruitment because it is a very reliable and cost effective method of recruitment.
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Conclusion Talent acquisition takes a long term view of not only filling positions of today, but also identifying talent for future openings. Talent acquisition professionals need to be skilled not only in sourcing tactics, candidate assessment, compliance and hiring standards, but also in employment branding practices. Also, talent retention (an important aspect of talent acquisition) assumes importance to build a succession model in place. In an emerging market like ours, where labor capital is fast moving, talent acquisition and retention seems to be one of the biggest problems that plague the country today so talent acquisition is not just a fancy term, it is here to stay in this 21st century. The event ended with the final round of the national level paper presentation competition, wherein 3 teams were shortlisted from 71 teams that sent their entries. The three teams were from MDI Gurgaon, XIM Bhuwaneshwar and IIM Shillong. IIM Shillong bagged the first prize and XIM Bhuwaneshwar stood second.
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