The tier II challenges

The world's attention is On India thanks to our demographic advantage and the young population. It also brings its fair share of challenges which needs to be addressed by the HR community.

A major change is going to be the number of first generation population graduating from colleges who may need peer support and guidances on handling various office relationships and moving to new urban areas.The y may need people to hand hold and lead them through some tough personal and official relationships.

Another curious but important challenge would be curious parents, a problem that has often propped was the case of parents visiting to their children in office regularly and another strange case was narrated by Shahikanth Jayaraman who was addressing us.

This was the case of a curious parent in the Interior part of Karnataka where his company was conducting an induction program for new joinees in the sales positions and there was a parent who was insisting that he would sit through the induction at any cost while the company's policy dint allow that and thus the parent had to be forcibly removed which would have disturbed the individual and his impression about the company.

Another challenge is that many of the are simple and honest who could be easily tricked by others and thus may not be get the due attention they want thus laying key emphasis on the Line Managers to notice about individual performances and the effort and not just the ratio of work which gets completed.

A key piece of advice which was shared was that it is essential regardless of whatever transpires in the office if there has been an bad moment for thge individual would be calling and encouraging the individual "Before he hits the sack" as a person who takes grudge to sleep never has a good opinion about the person.

A very interesting thought to ponder on

Cheers

Arvind !!

The long awaited C-Suite

"Yasho Verma was the head of HR, who also oversaw the product diversification strategy at LG Electronics. Recently , he moved into the role of the company’s chief operating officer (COO). Santrupt Misra , in addition to being director of group HR at Aditya Birla group, was also recently given the reins of the group’s Carbon Black business as a CEO.

Just two of the many stories in executive hiring which are pointing to a growing trend of HR people being picked for key CXO roles like CEO and COO, a role till now reserved for chief technology officers or the number crunching chief financial officers.

During the mid-nineties to early 2000s period, technology was perceived to be the main driver and technology personnel dominated the higher management . Techies like Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and closer home, S Ramadorai of TCS, were in the saddle.

Recently, during the economic slowdown, companies were forced to cut back and this marked the emergence of chief financial officers (CFOs) as the commanders-in-chief . Lean and mean were the buzzwords and the CFOs made every dollar count.

But with Indian companies growing bigger and going global , people management and leadership skills are much in demand. So Pranesh Anthapur, who had earlier served as vicepresident (Global HR) and more recently vice-president (International HR and M&A ) for Yahoo Inc, was made the COO of Yahoo India R&D in 2006.

In some other places, even though the official designation might not represent it, HR managers are increasingly playing a more dominant role in the running of the company.

It all started with large public sector undertakings (PSUs). S K Chaturvedi, who served in senior HR functions in companies like SAIL, NTPC and PowerGrid among others, was made the chairman and managing director of PowerGrid in 2008. Arun Balakrishnan, who was earlier the director (HR) at Hindustan Petroleum, took over as the CMD in 2007.
“Unlike earlier, HR is no longer just a human resources function but a business function that affects bottomlines,” says Deepak Kaistha, director and managing partner of Planman HR , an HR consulting firm. “HR managers are now getting a chance to lead organisations because they spend a lot of time in the organisation and understand the business and its processes very well, know the employees and their ways of working from the grassroots level.”
And it’s not only just attrition that organisations are looking to reduce. Companies are paying greater attention to overall organisational culture and employee engagement which can have a big impact on productivity.

“Around 70% of a CEO’s role relates to people management . So companies look for either someone with an HR background or a strong HR talent ,” says J K Agrawal, consulting director and head of BTI Consultants , an executive hiring firm. “Today, no CEO takes a major decision without consulting the HR.”

But this trend also depends on the work culture at companies . “An HR manager should also be aware of other departments ’ function to make a good CXO. So, only companies which have a good functional rotation policy can go for such changes,” says D Rajiv Krishnan , managing director of Development Dimensions International (DDI), an executive hiring firm."


Though there have been past instance of people like Bhaskar das of Sutherland who have oved from an HR to the Management team it is important to note that even in sectors which were considered core industries and not knowledge oriented. The only thing which has elevated them is their desire to go outside of the function and focus on the organization to be more efficient.

Hope this adds fuel to the dreams of HR student

Cheers !!

Arvind