User talk:Tackyon123

Economic turnaround presents newer challenges for HR Professionals!

New age HR issues need out of box thinking on the part of HR Professionals

Hyderabad, February 21, 2010: The Human Excellence Network hosted the Unitedworld Business School’s The Indian HR Convention – 2010 on ‘The Human Resource Management in Current Economic Scenario’ at The Marriot Hyderabad, today.

The Corporate world has seen a major Paradigm shift after the Global Meltdown, HR Departments of different organizations had a major role in all the downsizing or rightsizing of the organizations. Numerous job losses were seen in the past few months across the globe. In this entire process a major role has to be played by the Human Resource Professionals.

According to Mr. Talees Rizvi, Director, Human Resource Services, Tackyon IT Consulting Pvt Ltd., the layoffs have inculcated a sense of fear and anxiety in the social circles resulting in loss in the productivity. To address issues facing HR professionals in such scenario, senior Human Resource Professionals came on a platform and shared their views on:

•	How the companies are trying to overcome the Global Meltdown and also addressed the upcoming issues followed by remedial measures to utilize the available Human Resource.

•	Fears and apprehensions among the employees and suggested measures to overcome and bring in maximum productivity in turbulent times.

•	HR Strategies and Employment generation for different industries – IT, Banking, Pharmaceutical, PSUs, Education, Constructions, Consulting were the core topic of discussion.

Several Speakers at the Convention focused on the necessity of Strategic Human Resource Plan and Positioning the HR Function in the post recession economy. During this crucial economic slowdown, human resource departments have helped the companies not only with restructuring, downsizing and reducing benefits, but by backing the survivors and figuring out how to get the work done with fewer employees and resources.

Now it’s time for companies to move to the next level by again relying on human resource staff. As the economy turns around, businesses are likely to experience their highest employee turnover rate in decades, and HR staff has the most critical responsibility of retaining the cream, says Former Head - HR & Training, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Dean, Unitedworld School of Business, Prof. Anamitra Chatterjee. . “A lot of people will look to change jobs because of the perception that they were mistreated, and HR’s job is to make sure that companies retain the good people and be the employer of choice” adds Prof. Chatterjee.

Although economic turnaround spells good tidings for business operations, marketing and sales professionals, it poses new challenges for human capital, says Mr. TS Babu, Sr. Vice President Human Resource, SEW Infrastructures Ltd. Businesses would no longer run on the old rules, but new out-of-the-box solutions, more comprehensive efforts, innovative thinking, and new skills and competencies would be required to grow and prosper. Needless to say, the demand for both the quantity and the quality of talented employees will grow worldwide. Companies that have fired employees in the past are already feeling the pinch, as they do not have enough bandwidth to execute.

The law of demand and supply mercilessly applies to human resources also. During the economic downturn, companies were able to downsize by getting rid of redundant work force and dead wood. They also restructured the employee compensation (mostly by decreasing) to stave off financial losses. Only those employees were retained who proved their worth. The employees had to accept all kinds of compensation-related compromises while maintaining the same or even higher level of efficiency and productivity and could thus survive the financial slowdown. It’s pertinent for HR professional to find solutions to new age HR issues and address them effectively, opines Mr. Talees Rizvi

These survivors got the opportunity to handle a variety of tasks that further sharpened their skills and made them multi-skilled. Thus, overall quality of talent has improved, adds Prof. M Habeeb Ghatala, Dean – Apollo Hospitals Education & Research Foundation. At the same time, those who were out of job lost this opportunity to hone their skills in a new challenging environment. Adding to the woes, slashing of training and development budgets has led to a depletion of the number of skilled employees within the companies.

The Convention was attended by prominent figures from HR fraternity and HR Professionals from distinguished organizations from across India.