The two-day-long first HR Summit of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Raipur titled ‘Aligning HR with Business Strategy commenced here at Hotel Gateway on Friday.
The inauguration ceremony was attended by the who’s who of the India’s Corporate community. The Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of NMDC, Narendra Kothari marked his presence as the chief guest on the occasion.
The Executive Director of ICICI, K Ramkumar was present as the key-note speaker while guest of honour of the programme was the Chief Executive Officer of Bhilai Steel Plant (SAIl), S Chandrasekaran.
More than 50 HR professionals from across industry verticals explore and exchange ideas about various aspects related to “Aligning HR with Business Strategy”. On first day of the summit, three panel discussions followed by question and answer sessions were held.
In his inaugural address, the NMDC CMD Narendra Kothari ascertained that better HR policies are the best way of motivating people to work.He stressed on the need for proper performance differentiation during appraisal. “But for this to work transparency of the system has to be ensured”, he said .Regarding hiring, he felt that it was important to go into the details. ‘While hiring a new employee one must try to align the job requirements with the personal requirements.’
Professor BS Sahay, Director IIM Raipur, explained in his welcome address why the subject was of vital significance to IIM Raipur. “IIM Raipur was envisioned as an institute that would give a lot of emphasis to research. Keeping this in mind it was important for us to hire the right faculty who could help the institute accomplish this objective”, said Dr Sahay.
The Key-note Speaker, K Ramkumar said that business professional should stop identifying themselves according to their specialisation. ‘One should not refer to oneself as an HR professional or a Marketing Professional, but as a business leader who is capable of transforming the organisation by performing any duty that is demanded of him.’
In his address, S Chandrashekharan described how HR could play a very important role in forming business strategy. The HR Department of a company should take the necessary steps to attract and retain talent so that the pipeline never gets short. “The success of HR lies in being fast, forward, fearless and flexible” he said.
The first panel dealt with the importance of connecting with employees–the internal customers of an organisation.
A Thirunavukkarasu, President (Corp. Develop.), Vedanta Group played the role of Moderator in the first panel discussion while Ravindra Dharkar, VP (Talent Acquisition and l &D), lafarge India Pvt. ltd., Tojo Jose, EVP (HR), Bluestar, Yogesh Misra, Head (India Ops.), People Metrics, Faisal Nadeem Saiyed, Director HR (India), Expedia Inc, A K Munjal, EVP (HR), Suzuki Motorcycle and Vinay Deshpande, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Finance were panel members.
The second panel highlighted the need to build organizational capabilities in turbulent times by creating a learning and performance based culture, planning for learning, promoting a feedback system, focusing on health, well-being and treating people with respect and dignity.
Rabindra Singh, Director (Personnel), NMDC who moderated the session with the panel members including Dr Dewakar Goel, GM (HR), Airports Authority of India, H R Choudhury, GM (Personnel), Bhilai Steel Plant, Ranjan Kumar, VP (Research & Info), DION Global, Madhvi Arora, Senior Director, Yodlee and Srikanth Sundaram, Chief (HR), CMI FPE ltd.
The final panel of the day discussed the ways in which an HR professional acts as a strategic business partner, critically evaluating the current contributions of HR to organisational objectives, thus paving the way for HR, fulfilling its strategic objectives.
Dr. Santosh Bhave, Sr. VP (HR, IR & Admin.) Bharat Forge ltd. introduced the panel as moderator and shared his experiences as an HR manager. The panel members were Raghavendra K,VP & Head (HRD) Infosys BPO, Nirmala Garg, Senior VP (HR), VSoft Corporation, Sonali Dua,VP (HR), Deloitte, Sreenivasan, Consultant (Strategic HR), Hetero Drugs, SPS Jaggi, GM (Business Planning),Bhilai Steel Plant and Shaikh Umar Ali, Director, ATOS India HR.