HR summit, hosted by weekend MBA students at IIMB, focuses on ‘Evolving Role of HR in a Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear & Incomprehensible World’
Bangalore: Students of the weekend MBA, the Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management (PGPEM) at IIM Bangalore, organized and hosted the PGPEM HR Summit 2022, today. The theme of the event was ‘Evolving role of HR in a BANI world’.
The event had HR leaders from across industries and domains sharing their views on a range of topics, including employee experience, the “great resignation” trend, technology disruption in HR, collaborative intelligence, post-pandemic response of companies, and the role of AI in HR.
BANI is an acronym for Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible – a framework that was created by Jamais Cascio, an American anthropologist, author, and futurist. Many speakers touched upon these concepts while discussing the state of HR, today.
The event started with a welcome note by Dr. Allen Ugargol, Chairperson of the PGPEM at IIMB.
In his keynote, Nathan S V, Partner and Chief Talent Officer at Deloitte, emphasized the importance of employee experience and employee engagement. “Engagement starts when the candidate applies for the role. Experience is about giving a sense of purpose to people,” he said, calling for employee engagement and experience to be added early on in the hiring process and till the time the employee exits.
Dr. Gopal Mahapatra, faculty of Organizational Behaviour & Human Resources Management at IIMB, moderated the panel discussion on ‘Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible – an insight into next ten years of HR’. The panel comprised Govindraj MK, VP-HR, Flipkart, Sunitha Lal, CHRO, Ather, Satish Venkatachaliah, Head – India Hub Operations & Innovation at H&M Group.
Sathish Venkatachaliah emphasized the need for HR leaders to become more business-savvy in the coming years. The panel discussed the value of collaboration becoming more important in the hybrid work environment post the pandemic.
Govindraj M K spoke about the last two years as a time when organizations pivoted from the earlier mindset of optimization to one of truly valuing their people. Talking about the forced experiments that the pandemic brought, he opined that it made organizations realise that working from home is feasible.
Sunitha Lal spoke about the need for re-thinking HR policies and procedures, and focusing on improving collaboration in a BANI world.
“The solution to tackle BANI is in being human-centric,” said Prashant Khullar, Sr. VP-HR, Maxlife as part of his keynote on ‘HR Strategy – from ‘operationally reactive to strategically proactive’.
A panel discussion on ‘Reinventing talent strategies for future – acquisition, development, and retention’ saw Ruben Selvadoray, Group Head, Talent Management & OD at Bajaj Finserv Limited; Sonia Kutty, Group HR Head, Quest Global; and Shubhra Bhandari, HR Leader from Texas Instruments, India, discuss various issues related to HR, from acquisition to retention. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Sourav Mukherji, OB & HRM area, IIMB.
“No discussion on BANI is complete without emphasis on Mental Health,” said Sukanya P, an alumni of PGPEM, and now Sr. VP-Technology & Group Digital Transformation, Swiss Re. In her talk on the role of ‘AI in the HR world’, she focused on the need to balance data and human intelligence for making decisions. Further, she emphasized building a culture of innovation, without compromising the psychological safety of employees to facilitate experimentation and faster failures.
A panel discussion on ‘Organizational Design for the future – a post-pandemic view’ was moderated by Prof. Dr. Abhoy K Ojha, OB & HRM area, IIMB. The panel consisted of Santosh Ghate, Managing VP-HR & Board Director, Gartner; Raghu Chandrashekar, SVP-HR, Siemens; Harish KS, Group HR Head – South Asia, Bayer Group; and Bindu Venkatesh, VP, HR & Training, Oracle. The panel discussed the realities around how the pandemic has shaped an organization’s design and structure. The structure has to be something that aligns with the vision, culture, the strategy of the company, said the panellists.
The last keynote was delivered by Yogesh Chandra Sharma, Associate Director, People Experience, at Flipkart. Yogesh, who is an alumnus of the PGPEM Class of 2015, spoke on ‘Collaborative Intelligence (humans.ai): The role of artificial intelligence in employee decision making’. ‘Human’ is not a resource, but a possibility and a potential, he said.
Prof. Allen P Ugargol, Chairperson of the PGPEM, thanked the speakers.