HR Conclave

Changing HR Landscape: Hidden Roles and Evolving Responsibilities

Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi, hosted Horizon ’17, the annual HR conclave with the morning session focusing on the theme “Changing HR Landscape: Hidden Roles and Evolving Responsibilities”. The following were the eminent members of the panel from the industry who dived deep into the depths of the topic emphasising on its broader scope.

The panel was headed by Dr Shuchi Sinha, Assistant Professor, DMS, IIT Delhi. She introduced the topic and asked all the panellists to give their valuable insights on the topic. The discussion was started by Ms Singh who explained how change is happening in the roles of HR. She emphasised that HR role is not a traditional role like it was few years back. Rather, they have the potential to become good business leaders.

The discussion was taken forward by Mr Kumar. He started by expressing the importance of HR leaders in an organisation and highlighted the fact about how HR professionals are included in the board of directors for decision making. He also predicted about the time when HR leaders will go on to become company heads and provided the audience with examples to support his statements.

Mr Anand elucidated about the requirements and working of HR professionals in different countries, owing to different cultures & government policies. He also explained how shareholders need to go with the need of employees. He highlighted that HR professionals are required to have strong understanding of the business for the better growth of the organisation.

Adding to the discussion, Mr Khosla elaborated how business plans are made nowadays taking HR professionals into consideration. He took examples of E-commerce companies who have not yet seen the downside of their business and hence are competing with themselves as their period of operation is quite small.

Mr Rizvi further explained the economic perspectives and challenges which HR professionals face. He emphasised on HR’s different roles & strategies and the roles they play in different areas. Also, he beautifully explained about the shift in the scenario of business partnering. He took examples to explain about the imploding of HR profession, which was believed to be exploding few years back and tried to explain the importance of HR professionals by explaining their roles in discussion which they have with the marketing, finance & operations heads.

Mr Kapoor provided some great points to explain the multiple roles HR manager plays in today’s scenario. He emphasised that the HR manager requires analytical skills to analyse data else they will fail. HR professionals also plays a role of social activists too as he/she needs to support the society and the business of the organisation.

Finally, Mr Dobriyal, stated some statistics to show how technology has advanced over the years. He linked how HR professional needs to do prediction in today’s scenario and explained that in coming future, HR professionals will be working from anywhere across the globe due to vast internet connectivity. Also, they will tend to prefer being a freelancer or a part time worker rather than a full time employee of an organisation.

Along with putting forth different perspectives, the panel was open to questions from students, who displayed a great deal of enthusiasm as the panel members answered all their questions and also provided live examples to prove their point.

The afternoon session was focussed on the theme “Talent Acquisition: Changing dynamics & surfacing challenges”. Following were the eminent panellists from the industry who not only covered broad scope but also dived into depths of the topic

The panel was headed by Ms. Renu Bohra who initiated the panel discussion by introducing the industry definition of talent acquisition and touch based on its importance for an organization. Each of the panel members shared their views and opinions on talent acquisition and explained how important it is. Mr. Nargolwala asked students where they want to be in future and suggested students question everything in their learning to get a clear understanding of the concepts which would help them get a clarity on their short-term and long-term goals. Ms. Sakhuja brought in a completely different perspective to the discussion by pointing out how goals of the organization and talent acquisition are aligned with each other. Mr. Mukherjee came up with a diversified view of talent acquisition and its dynamics by citing examples from the public sector. He demystified quite a few myths about the public sector and substantiated his explanation with examples from the industry.

Mr. Narendra carried the discussion forward by explaining to students how it feels to be on the other side of talent acquisition. He stressed on how difficult it is for an organization to choose the right talent from a small pool of employable resources. Moving forward, panel illustrated on how the industry handles the attrition rate and how important is employee satisfaction for the organization. Discussion continued with students questioning about the importance of internal talent in the organization. Panel members shared their experiences and aligned them to the discussion.

Questions and tips were asked by the students on how to approach the interviews and what should be the mindset before attending an interview. Panel members answered the questions patiently and elucidated the key points one needs to remember while giving an interview. The importance of soft skills was stressed a lot. Further, panel members cited the quote,”First impression is the best impression” and substantiated this quote by telling students how the first 30-40 seconds are important to make a positive impact.

Handling rejection of an interview, importance of feedback after an interview and how important confidence is for an interview are some of the areas in which students sought the panels’ insights. The discussion touch-based most of the aspects of talent acquisition, hiring process and importance of training.

HR Conclave 2013 14th & 15th September 2013 – List Of Speakers

• Mandatory CSR
• Employer Branding Fad
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Human Capital Management