HR must tap available talent

NHRDN reflections: Listen, internalise and implement

Speaking on the session, CEO of babajob.com Sean Blagsveadt said meeting the aspirations of the informal workforce comprising of building securities, housekeepers electricians etc would help maintain the skills at the lower strata.

“Even the informal workers need careers and sustainable jobs at bigger companies and the money to enhance their status,” he said, highlighting the need for their skills in an economy where high value skills alone are coveted.

Working women

Founder and CEO of Chennai-based Avtaar Career Creators Soundarya Rajesh said despite qualification, knowledge and education, women form the larger chunk of job quitters in the country for personal reasons.

“Despite passing out in large numbers, there are merely 28 per cent of women at workplaces today and just 3 per cent of them are represented at the board level,” Soundarya said, whose company helps a large number of women leaving the workforce for marriage and child birth find opportunities at IT and other sunrise industries, said.

“However, instead of helping women who have taken the investment to educate and have a good understanding of corporate work culture are left without any consideration.”

Second careers

Babajobs.com, over the last few years, has become the platform to connect informal job seekers with their employers, while Avataar has nearly 23,000 women seeking second careers in its database.

The session is one of many at the conference that showed how the focus of Human Resources has changed over the years from mere “drudgery, process creation and servicing” to career development and mentoring that would provide value addition.
Professor of HR at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Dave Ulrich, while speaking on a session titled “Securing the future of the HR profession and the HR professional”, said the sector must change their approach from “inside-out” to “outside-in”.

While it is usual for the HR department to create processes around ‘customers delight’, ‘employee integrity’ etc, they should create workforce that caters to customer requirements, Ulrich said.

Earlier, the event began on Thursday evening with a keynote by Sam Pitroda who said that technology advancement is unlikely to take the focus away from people, their needs and development. NHRDN Founder President T V Rao traced back the history and progress of the biggest HRD network in the country.

“This conference, which is into its 15th edition, is the watershed in HR practices,” said President of NHRDN Bangalore chapter C Mahalingam. “While we have laid our focus on the salient trends and the way the sector would grow, we have also brought in several innovative aspects such as collecting an SMS feedback on the sessions and giving an instant reaction of audience to speeches,” Mahalingam said.

“Instead of giving mementos to the speakers, we have made them donate the money for the education of an orphan child in SOS Village,” he added.

The organisers reflected that the three-day event is not just to listen and leave, but listen, internalise and implement.

The conference concludes on Saturday with a release of NHRDN study on career development and into different sectors.

Close to a hundred sessions including students, thirty senior corporate leaders would be addressing the session.