XLRI organised 7th National HR Conference

January 14: XLRI- Xavier School of Management, one of India's premier B-Schools, hosted the 7th National HR Conference on 10th and 11th January, 2015 at XLRI Campus, Jamshedpur.

The event was inaugurated by Mr. T. V. Narendran, Chairman, Board of Governors at XLRI & MD - Tata Steel India and South East Asia in presence of Dr. Pranabesh Ray, Dean [Academics] at XLRI and other dignitaries.

On the occasion, he also unveiled results of the 2nd National HR Survey- a first-of-its-kind endeavor by an Indian B-school.

Mr. Narendran, who was the chief guest of the conference talked about the reducing distance gap with the help of communication and the role that it plays in saving time and money in his inaugural address.

He also cited the above using some examples from his personal experiences and Tata Steel and focused on the importance of technology in Training and Development, Learning, Knowledge Generation, Securing Knowledge that is about to retire.

"Social HR and its application jn technology is an emerging field and is very relevant to be discussed at this point of time," he remarked.

The 2-days long conference organised by the flagship HR committee at XLRI - SAPPHIRE was on the theme - "Social HR and Technological Applications in HR".

The Day 1 also witnessed other eminent speakers like Mr. T. Shivaram (Director- HR - SAP Labs India), Mr. Pankaj Bansal (CEO, People Strong), Mr. Suresh Dutt Tripathi of Tata Steel and Mr. Sujoy Banerjee of McNally Bharat provide a kaleidoscope of ideas and thoughts.

Mr. T Shivaram gave insights into the world of SAP HR analytics. "Through SAP Jam, an internal social platform for its employees, HR in SAP can have a hold on the pulse of the organization. Analytics in SAP has become an empowering tool to make right decisions as well as an eye opener to many problems in employee engagement, diversity, performance appraisals which might have gone un-noticed otherwise," he said.

Structuring his presentation on data, hindsight, insight and foresight Mr. Pankaj Bansal said, "HR in India still makes a lot of decisions in hindsight".

He told us how HR analytics and workforce analytics are not synonymous and emphasized on companies and HR to create an HR control room, where they can have info graphics i.e. charts, data representation, etc. to aid in better policies, interventions and decision making.

It is not just about metrics but also about using appropriate metrics and asking relevant questions which will make HR analytics valuable.

Mr. Suresh Dutt Tripathi of Tata Steel discussed about the increasing connectivity of future customers and their reliance on technology and the flexibility that can be attributed to technological advancement.

He said, "With the advent of technology there are multiple pipelines going into multiple directions for each customer and organisations must leverage that by using Facebook, IM, Whatsapp, etc."

Sujoy Banerjee of McNally Bharat spoke about the extent to which Gen Y and the social media world are embedded. He discussed the transformation of HR Analytics from manual to excel sheets in its first stage and from excel sheets to ERP in its later stage and talked about the way some people adapt to technology first because the rest of the world is doing so and later consider the implications of this change.

He also gave his views on the shift of HR from a Data Enabler to a Decision Maker and discussed reasons for moving away from online appraisals and performance management.

The Day-2 continued with panel discussion on the relevance of technology in driving cultural change. Mr. Gautam Ghosh (Talent Branding Director, Flipkart) talked about how one can overestimate technology's impact in the short run and underestimate it in the long run and how social, mobile and cloud are the major drivers of change today in the technology and business sphere.

He also mentioned the consumerisation of technology and the move from systems of record to systems of engagement. He was joined by Mr. Prem Kumar Aparanji of Cognizant.

The day's event also witnessed presentations of data and research-backed papers by students of different B-Schools and industry experts. Noha Sinha of the XIM, Bhubaneswar talked about the current trends and implications in HR Analytics and using those to bridge the gap between the organizational goals and workforce interests while Adwitiya Tiwari and Anusha Mittal of XLRI focused on using social media for recruitment, measuring the online presence of top employers and using tools like Klout. At the session, Mr. Krishna Chaitanya of ITC talked about how technology can make work life as exciting and satisfying as the personal life.

The conference drew to a close with a special session by eminent HR personnel and renowned Violinist Mrs. Sunita Bhuyan.

About XLRI
XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur is a premier, private management institute in India founded in 1949 by Fr Quinn Enright, S.J. in the ‘steel city' of Jamshedpur www.xlri.ac.in