The 2nd HR summit of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur titled “Emerging Challenges for HR: VUCA Perspectives” and International Conference 2015 commenced here on Friday.
The summit was mainly aimed to act as a platform of information exchange between industry and academia with pertaining challenges of diversity at work place, also dealing with changes in business environment, use of HR Analytics and competency management.
The programme was inaugurated by lighting of lamps accompanied by Saraswati Vandana by students of IIM Raipur.
Anupam Anand in his key-note address spoke about the “complexities that are multi-layered and required out of box thinking in order to dwell into reality and address uncertainty by unconventional techniques.”
The Chief Guest of the Summit Narendra Kothari, CMD, NMDC limited urged the young managers of IIM Raipur to proactively learn about practical aspects from the lives of one’s professors and try to excel by improving upon it.
Ganatantra Ojha, visiting professor to IIM Raipur and Former Director (Personnel) SAIl shared his insights on the ability to understand the context of a situation, mainly on recognising and seizing the opportunities.
The welcome address by Professor B.S. Sahay, Director IIM Raipur was started with a quote of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change, you wish to see.”
He said that “analysis of VUCA perspectives provides a leader with new ways and approaches to winning opportunities.”
The topic of the first panel discussion “leveraging Diversity” was introduced by Prashant Srivastava, President (Group HR and People Excellence), Reliance ADA Group.
He dealt with the topic on how a mix of traits, gender, race, religion and culture in the workforce contributes to the success of an organisation and later the panelists shared their own experiences.
Murali Padmanabhan described diversity with the help of an example on how American Universities prefer students with value and generational diversity and the effect of diverse workforce on effective solutions to problems.
A different perspective was proposed by Shantanu Das, VP-HR at Emami ltd, said that enhancing gender diversity and unity cater to problem solving.
Kumaar Priyaranjan, Head, Human Capital at Hikal, explained diversity with reference to electoral diversity and how the development of a State is relied upon non-discrimination of diverse groups of people.
In order to introduce the audience the various facets of diversity at workplace, Kavitha Kulkarni, VP and Head HR at Infosys, categorised diversity on the basis of gender, race, culture, religion and orientation. The views of Ranji Abraham, Director HR at Delphi Automotive India were, “diversity breaks the inertia in the company and sets a good environment for business.
The discussion also saw participation from Muthiah.M Muthiah, Senior VP-HR at Carborundum Universal limited, Murugappa Group. This was followed by an interactive session with the audience comprising students of IIM Raipur and visiting delegates.
The questions ranged from the reason behind focus on gender diversity to issues of maintaining quality of workforce and fair evaluation of employees.
The second panel discussion was on the topic of “leadership in the VUCA world.” The moderator Dayanand Allapur, VP & Head of HR at Capgemini Business Services, India, introduced the members and substantiated the meaning of VUCA with a personal example of uncertainties he faced while catching a flight.
He stressed importance of VUCA in uncertainties and complexities faced in businesses, organisations at national and international levels.
The discussion held through a video presentation by panellist Nivedita Nanda, Head People Office, Future Retail ltd, stressed upon “how relevant was the term VUCA in the context of the retail market.
She indicated towards the volatility in the consumer market due to the rise of e-commerce.” The discussion was taken ahead by Sriram S.R., Head, Human Capital.
Sunil Ranjan, Group Head HR, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Apolllo Tyres, talked about the skill sets that one requires to survive in the present world.
Talking about economic crises in the early 1990s, he highlighted the phenomenon of frequent economic downturns in recent times. “While we were hearing about an economic crisis once in 7-8 years then, now every 2-3 years, we are affected by an economic crisis,”he told.
Renu Bohara, Director HR, Schenker India, started her speech asking the audience to name some leaders who dealt with VUCA situations well.
Her views about dealing with VUCA times were the ability to think out of the box, beyond what one could see or do. “And all this could be done through effective communication; no matter in what form has to fulfil the purpose”, she opined.
Murali Padmanabhan, VP, l&D Virtusa said that the new workforce has to be innovative as they will have to face unprecedented impediments today. “Mindful courage and calculated risk will only define the leaders of tomorrow and learning agility is what the leaders of tomorrow should focus on”.
The floor was then open to the audience for questions which ranged from importance of specialisation in a given field to the ability to anticipate change in an organisation. The experts enlightened the visiting delegates and students with the answers on how to act on changes.
Further presenters from different institutions like IIT Kharagpur, NIMS etc presented their research papers which dealt with topics like Social Capital and Job Performance: the moderating role of HR practises; Diverse Workforce: the new challenge for the organisation to Employee engagement in the new business Horizon.