Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai organizes 1st Great Lakes Human Resource

[Great_Laker]

Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai organized its first Human Resource Conclave on the 2nd of September 2008 at the Royal Le Meridien Hotel in Chennai. The theme of the event was “Managing Human Capital in the Globalized Business Environment”. The 1 day event was inaugurated by Dr.Bala Balachandran - Founder and Honorary Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Dr.T.V Rao - Chairman, T.V Rao Learning Systems Pvt Ltd and Mr. R. Chandrasekharan - President and MD, Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt Ltd.

Dr. Bala gave the welcome address in which he mentioned that “India is standing tall because of its HR practices”. Dr. Bala said that the times are changing very rapidly and talked about the changes in the next 3 to five years. Some of the changes he mentioned were “The change will be accelerating. The number of knowledge workers will outnumber the companies.
The money value of time will replace Time value of money. In the times to come, jogging may not be enough, companies will have to sprint to compete and sustain their current levels of growth.” He also talked about the importance of cross cultural and global hiring.

Dr. T.V. Rao, who is also the founder President of the National HRD Network and former President of the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Science (ISABS), said, “HR today is termed as people whose work is recruitment and negotiates on salaries. In 1980s technology was a strategic variable for an organization. The focus on the variable changed to finance then marketing and in today’s world and future the variable is Human resource. Human resource has become a strategic variable for a company’s success.” About the Current and future state of HR, he said “Short term priorities like recruitment play a more important role than the overall objective of talent management. HR in future has to be focused on cultural related issues. Professional bodies have to play an important role in this regard. They have to evolve in handling cultural related issues. And HR bodies have to understand what is it to hire from diverse cultures and retaining them.”

Mr. R. Chandrasekharan said, “Globalization is no more by choice but embedded in the growth strategy.” He talked about the importance of cost and intellectual arbitrage. Elaborating on intellectual arbitrage, he said “It is important to understand the DNA of Organization because the strategy has to be defined based on DNA. If DNA is not understood in the right spirit further processes may not be effective and put to best use. In the global sourcing of employees from different countries it’s important to source talent at different locations. A key competence of the organization is ability to source talent from different countries. A key issue is keeping the different cultures motivated to work for the organization. Organization puts a global and open mindset in its HR policies. HR facilitates different teams interacting among in a virtual environment. With different cultures and value systems in place, it’s important to ensure uniform performance standards across subsidiaries of the Organization.”

The inaugural session was followed by keynote addresses on the theme “Integration of Corporate Cultures, and People Management Post-Merger". The panel for this session included Dr. Chandrasekhar Sripada - President HR, Capgemini Consulting India Pvt. Ltd., Mr. Allen Sequeira - Sr. VP HR, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Anuj Kumar - Associate Director HR, CSC, Dr. K. Prabakar - VP Corporate HR, Apollo Hospitals. The session was chaired by Mr. Ganesh Chella – Founder and CEO, Totus Consulting.

Mr. Ganesh Chella, while talking about the challenges in M & A’s, mentioned that the prime Challenge in successfully achieving M & A’s is of Cultural Integration. The challenges differ on the scale at which the M & A happen. Talking about the diversity within the companies being merged, he said that Diversity is good and that the challenge is not to erase it but to manage it.

Mr. Allen Sequeira started off by highlighting the fact that Great Lakes has established a name for itself. Talking about M & As, he said, “We’re building a world where no intellectual barriers exist. The process of globalization is recent (1990). Indian companies are learning quickly and have handled mergers much better than others.” He suggested, “Rules of engagement deployed for one country may not be applicable in another, taking into account local realities. Diversity issues can result out of culture, demographics, statutory requirements, leadership styles, management practices, values, relationships, workforce composition and operating philosophies.”

Dr. Anuj Kumar explained 10 critical factors for a successful M&A that includes Clear intent Perseverance, Leadership and Accountability. Talking about CSC’s acquisition of Covansys, he mentioned the challenges that they faced, a few of which were:
1. Inclusion – Employees need to be informed of all happenings before the press. Teams must include people from both companies.
2. Alignment – Identification of the strengths of CSC and Covansys, and finding out which ones will co-exist, cross-pollinate and crossover.


Dr. K. Prabakar said, “In the healthcare sector we need not only operations but also talent to address the boom in healthcare.”
Major challenges,” he said, “for sustainability are now more on people’s minds.
a. Talent management: Doctors, nurses and paramedical staffs and other support groups, all have to be managed well. Reverse brain drain have started in this sector. Various doctors from UK have started coming back
b. Digital backbone: need to focus on technology
c. Employee engagement and incentive realignment: Tackling stress is very important and has to make sure that employees perform efficiently.
d. Quality and safety standards: Apollo is credited with ISO, JCIA, NABH, NABL.
e. Strategic resource development: Ward as an unit. Ward has its own administrative and focus on good serve to the patient. Feedback, customer surveys have to be in place. We are focusing on lean management in the wards. For example every employee
f. Adaptable delivery roles and structure: flexible care settings and expanded clinical roles
g. Climate of innovation: innovation, technology and process changes are a means to continuously improve treatment efficiency and outcome.
Quest for communication: A vision and strategy is needed to balance public versus private interests in building the organization.”
In the post-lunch session, Shri Prem Chand Gupta, Hon’ble Union Minister for Corporate Affairs, talked about India being a young nation with large cultural diversity and a diverse talent base, which is difficult to find anywhere else. He said that a country rich in natural resources may not be prosperous financially and it may be possible otherwise quoting Japan as a case. Such countries have good human capital base. Economic development in these countries has been preceded by the Human capital development.
He opined, “Companies today have the capabilities to source human capital in which India has an advantage because of its large Human capital base.”
Talking about the software industry and commending the growth the industry has shown in the past few years, the minister said that as of now we are primarily BPO and Support based industry which is at a very low level of the value chain. Huge shortage of the skilled manpower, he said, is a constraint and is something which needs to be addressed to maintain the competitive edge. Training and development is the key.

Talking about the Inclusive growth the minister said that the IT has brought prosperity to the country but to a very smaller section of the society. So there’s need to nurture the other millions of young and energetic youth and help them channelize their energies in the right direction.

He also mentioned that the Development is just not a matter of quantitative growth but also of qualitative growth, this comprises emotional and social development also.

This was followed by a session that had Industry-specific insights from representatives belonging to various sectors of the industry. The panel for this session included Mr. B. Venkatramana - Sr. VP HR, Reliance Retail Ltd., Mr. Steve D. Rich - Shared Services Manager Indian & ASEAN HR, Caterpillar, Mr. Lancelot Cutinha - VP HR, Big FM, and Mr. Boddapati Balaji - Director, ADP Private Ltd. Mr. C. Mahalingam - Executive VP & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services, chaired the session.

Mr. C. Mahalingam opened the session. He mentioned the fierce war for talented workforce. He emphasized the importance of right promises to be delivered by HR. “Expectations of employees,” he said, “are beyond good money and position”. Innovation and creativity are the keys to success. It’s not only media and entertainment sector which requires employees to continuously innovate but across the industry domain, innovation is a necessary competence to have an edge. HR can’t mandate creativity but unleash the creativity and innovation through right leadership. He said that sooner rather than later, companies may have a new job profile for CFO (Chief Fun officer) for entertaining its workforce.
He talked about issues related to unorganized sector like bureaucratic influence, exploitation of labor, poor supply chain and fragmented markets.

Mr. B. Venkataramana, while talking about ‘Organizing the Unorganized Sector – opportunity for HRM’, said “There is immense opportunity for HR in the unorganized sector”. He spoke about the opportunities as well as the issues in the unorganized sector which engages 90% of the workforce in India and contributes 45% of the national income. He touched upon challenges faced by this sector, including lack of minimum wages and social security, abysmal working conditions and work hours which often exceed 70 hours per week. He also spoke about the HR challenges in the unorganized sector like the difficulty in attracting skilled manpower, cross cultural adaptability issues etc. He concluded the informative session by highlighting the role of trade unions and the government in bringing about positive transformation in this sector.

Mr. Steve Rich gave insights on ‘Employee Brand Building across Geographies’. He said, “It is important to listen to your employees, particularly new hires to know why they joined us and why are they staying with us. This helps to formulate key employee strategies.” He suggested that time should be taken to analyze employees’ feedback and steps should be taken to address their issues and concerns.

‘In a world where change is the only constant, encouraging creativity in the workplace will give organizations the edge to keep ahead in an environment of heavy competition’, said Mr. Lancelot Cutinha, who talked about ‘Challenges the Industry faces in nurturing employee creativity’. Mr.Cutinha spoke about how one can bring about dramatic changes in ones performance by activating the right brain which is the seat of creativity and imagination. He gave very pragmatic tips on improving creativity in ones personal life. He spoke from his professional experience and highlighted that, measures like establishing an environment of respect and trust, doing away with horizontal and vertical boundaries and nipping office politics in the bud would go a long way in nurturing creativity at the workplace.

Mr. Boddapati Balaji gave his views on the topic ‘Employee Retention as a key strategy for Optimization and Business Transformation’. He said employee retention is most important for transformation. He narrated the Golden Buddha story and said, “People are born ‘golden’, but over the years fear and diffidence develop. Organizations need to be able to remove this fear and discover the golden part again.”

In the last session of the day, the distinguished guest of the event Mr. B Muthuraman -
Managing Director, Tata Steel addressed the gathering. He said, “Industrial organizations are only babies in the context of human evolution.” According to him, “HR function is not as well developed as other disciplines because we have paid less attention to it in comparison with other disciplines. In HR the world is moving towards measurements and CVs instead of creating the ambience and the right work culture.” He suggested that people in the senior management should have a mix of some visionaries (theorists) and some executioners. The challenge for HR, he said, is how people with both these qualities can be developed, and more importantly how we can measure this.
All in all, it was an event that was thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated by the elite audience gathered and hence it lived up to its billing.