The Hindu Business Line : Growing by the day

Gone are the days when HR simply meant `Hire and Rehire.' Today, it has grown from labour relations to industrial relations to personnel management to human resources to human capital management. eWorld sounds out seasoned professionals for t heir take.

FROM personnel management to people management, HR has come a long way. Much of this change has come about through managing the knowledge worker.

The tremors of challenges, such as attrition, retention, motivation and career development, originated in the IT sector, but are now being felt in all new-economy sectors.

Although employee welfare has been the underlying philosophy of this people-based discipline, over the years, some priorities changed, some new ones got added, and most important, the role of the HR manager has now been recognised by the boardroom as strategic to business decisions.

And thanks to IT outsourcing, new entrepreneurial opportunities in the area have sprung up, making HR a much-sought-after career option today.

Here, four seasoned practitioners in the IT-HR area share their insights on the gathering force in management.

`No soft option but career choice'

THE early 1990s was the turning point for the Indian economy.

Apart from realising the early fruits of liberalisation, the growth of the IT industry saw the making of many millionaires in the country.

`Infosys, ESOPs and millionaires' were words that cropped up in conversations very often.

Hema Ravichandar

One of the key persons working behind the scene at Infosys during the period was Hema Ravichandar, who recently quit as Group Head and Senior Vice-President (HR).

She's now Strategic HR Advisor at Mercer Consulting.

Which is more challenging in today's business environment: getting the right people or keeping the talent that is already hired?

It's very difficult to say. Both attracting and retaining talent are critical. Both these are important and are intertwined. And organisations that have followed only one or the other practice have had a tough time.

If you just recruit good people and cannot retain them, then the organisation will be like a bottomless pit.

On the other hand, companies that are not aggressive in hiring good talent will end up promoting talent from within and this is not a healthy practice.

Can you trace the evolution of the HR function in the last two decades?

There has been a lot of emphasis on the developmental dimension. Ironically, this was triggered off in the public sector.

This came into the services sector also as we grew in numbers and had to handle knowledge workers.

Though all sectors are making these changes in their people practices, it's the IT and ITES (IT-enabled services) sectors that took to them in a big way.

Another change is that HR has now become an equal partner in business. The HR department is now involved in new initiatives and innovations that the company makes.

Can you list some career areas for HR professionals in an organisation?

Functionally, there is work in areas such as recruitment, compensation and benefit, learning and development, organisational effectiveness exercises such as competency surveys, employee engagement, work-life balance and internal communication.

Has HR education in the country changed enough to take on new-age challenges?

There should be a larger number of HR graduates coming out of B-schools. In fact, Tier 1 schools such as the IIMs and XLRI should increase their output.

They have to focus more on HR education. I find that tier 2 and tier 3 schools have also widened their scope considerably.

Most important, students should realise that this is not a soft option but more a career choice.

Wanna cheer up? Come to work

Gautam Sinha

AS a recruitment specialist at Wipro, Gautam Sinha, an XLRI graduate, had everything going for him.

So why did he throw it away to launch TVA Infotech, an IT recruitment company, in 1994? His reasons are in the company statistics:

TVA Infotech is today a Rs 6.5-crore recruitment company that specialises in facilitating the hiring of software professionals across technologies and experience levels. It works with 52 customers in the IT space and closes approximately 250 IT positions every month across all major locations in the country.

Can you list some entrepreneurship opportunity areas for IT-HR professionals?

Let me talk about HR on a more generic basis rather than only IT-HR professionals.

There are two types of entrepreneurship opportunities available for HR professionals: one is for people who want to work on their own, i.e. they want to form a single-person company (or a one-person company with some support staff) and venture into the field of HR consultancy.

This can be in the form of setting up HR processes for a new company, training and development or helping a company on a particular aspect, such as performanc appraisal, recruitment, etc.

The other is for people who want to create an HR organisation.

This will be a full-fledged HR company and can offer services in the areas of recruitment, organisational development training, performance/assessment systems etc.

Why did you decide to give up a rising HR career in Wipro to start a venture? What were your aspirations, ambitions, then?

At that time I was 25, and there was a fierce desire to become rich, very rich.

At the same time, there was a strong belief in one's own ability and dreams, which were at a scale that no job could ever give. I was working in the IT industry and to me it was on a tremendous growth path and I could see possibilities of creating a large enterprise.

I was also very passionate in being able to create an enterprise where people would love to come to work as there would be so much excitement in working there.

In fact, my dream used to be that if a person fell sick or felt depressed, he would still like to come to work as it was at the workplace that he/she would feel better.

Looking back, do you think it was a good decision?

Absolutely. I think people in their twenties need to start companies, i.e. when they have the energy and risk-taking abilities. I feel that people who postpone their decision end up not starting one.

Do you think the current status of HR education prepares students to take up entrepreneurship in the area?

No MBA education in India today prepares a student for entrepreneurship. MBA education creates `job takers' and not `job creators' (which is what entrepreneurs do). In fact this is one of the biggest lacunae in our education system.

`Performance is ability multiplied by motivation'

Ranjan Acharya

RANJAN Acharya is Vice-President, Corporate Human Resources Development and Convenor, Strategic Leadership Development Council, Wipro.

In his over 20-year stint at Wipro, he has seen the company grow from about a dozen people to nearly 44,000 now. During the same period, the people management practice has also widened its scope to include competency development, training, strategic leadership development, etc. Acharya talks of the key role being played by people from the HR fraternity.

What are the critical issues an HR manager faces in people-based sectors?

In knowledge-dominated industries, the major assets of the organisation lie between the ears of its employees.

The difference between the average and the best is not in terms of degree but in orders of magnitude.

So the first challenge is in terms of attracting the right talent. The second is in creating the right connect with the talent so that they feel engaged enough to give their best.

Performance is ability multiplied by motivation. Creating the right leadership talent that can motivate is another huge challenge.

Retention is also a challenge but it is more an effect. The trick is to get the other things right.

Did your HR education prepare you for the kind of changes that the HR role has undergone in recent times?

In my own case, I moved into HR after a stint in many other functions, including production, sales, training and education, etc.

But I did find subjects such as Organisational Behaviour we learnt in our MBA very useful.

But most of my learning in specialised areas such as competencies, assessment and development centres, Hay's job evaluation, People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM), which are on the frontiers of HR requirements today, was after joining the HR function in Wipro.

On the evolution of the HR function since the time you started your career...

I can only say that it helps a lot to have the user perspective in HR because the HR function has become a lot closer to the business functions today than what it used to be.

Is the country's HR education gearing up to meet the needs of the industry?

There are a lot of initiatives that are happening today to make this happen. There is greater interaction between academia and industry.

I am personally involved as a member of the team put together by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and National HRD Network (NHRD) to identify a list of HR Competencies. We call these competencies COMPMODE.

It is hoped that they will form the basis of HR education in a number of management institutes, including the leading ones.

`Best time to be in HR'

Rajagopalan Vidyasagar

RAJAGOPALAN Vidyasagar is the HR Director, Philips Innovation Campus. Vidyasagar has seen and been part of the evolution of the IT industry.

He started his career with the manufacturing industry, but IT and the software industry are now part of his DNA.

An alumnus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, `Viddhi' is perceived as futuristic in his approach and is professionally active, having anchored path-breaking HR initiatives for CII and NHRD. He has worked with Wipro Infotech, Motorola, i-flex and is now with Philips Innovation Campus as Director-HR.

Some comments on the changing role of the HR manager in people-based sectors...

Contrary to what many may think, the job of an HR manager in IT is quite tough — more so in the nascent ITES space.

Some of the critical issues are:

On the strategic side: Ability to understand and truly partner with business. I do not mean it as a cliched term. Today's HR is all about the value proposition that one brings to the table. This is one of the major differentiators for the HR manager.

Typically, our role is to contribute to enhance the capability of the organisation.

Through the value proposition, how does one position the company's brand and thereby attract and retain the best-in-class talent all the time.

On how companies can continue to `engage' their talent: Engagement of employees becomes the key to retention.

Ability to scale up quickly: What types of structures/processes to be put in place to take care of the current and future needs of the organisation?

In effect, the HR manager has to be very futuristic in thinking and acting. In a way, how does one help to future-proof the organisation ? How does one contribute as a master change-facilitator? HR in the current context in the IT/software industry, especially at the senior levels, has become far more strategic.

How well did your HR education prepare you for the challenges thrown by the sector?

I had done my Masters in HR more than two decades ago. It did prepare us for the times that we were in. However, we have gone through a sea change in the requirements of the job over the years.

For example, in the last 5-6 years, the number of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) taking place out of India, and that too large deals, require a special M&A skill set.

It is through a constant process of self-renewal, regular reading and professional networking through conferences/seminars and sharing that we have kept up to the requirements of the times.

On the maturity of the industry and its relevance to business now...

More than two decades ago, many of us started in a manufacturing environment — dealing with labour, militant unions, et al. In fact, the function has moved from labour relations to industrial relations to personnel management to human resources to human capital management.

In fact, this is the best time to be in HR since the function has matured tremendously over the years.

In the past, many times, our jobs were of a maintenance nature/status-quo management. After I moved over to IT/software, now almost two decades ago, it has been continuously challenging.

Our ability to stretch, constantly innovate and create are some of the major precepts that the field has gone through.

In fact, many progressive organisations have put HR in the forefront since it is knowledge and capital-intensive.

Is the country's HR education today gearing up to meet the needs of the industry?

Yes, to quite an extent. Some examples: The CII/National HRD Network's initiative in coming up with an HR competency model which some of us were part of. This is further taken for implementation across the country, along with leading B-schools.

This will not only significantly add value to enhance the competencies of the current set of professionals but also influence the HR curriculum in the years to come.

NHRD has collaborated this time with MDI, Gurgaon, to start a full-time MBA in HR.

Many of the above are signal developments that will qualitatively enhance inputs at the academic level — on a par with any other B-school known for HR around the world.

anjali@thehindu.co.in

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