Get an insight into the corporate changing needs in the HR sector and the advantage a company can gain by leveraging technology..........

Mr Sudheesh Venkatesh, Head -HR ,Tesco HSC speaking on the benefits of technology highlighted that this is all about "Entropy "as technology has now come a full circle in the effectiveness of HR delivery systems and it has greatly standardized the systems especially when the geographic operations are spread across wide covering over continents.

Ms Nandita Gurjar, VP and Head HRD Infosys BPO made a very interesting point in leveraging available technology to take employment and talent management activities to the villages and rural sector of India. There are large talent pools that are yet to be harnessed in the rural areas and they are a very strong antidote to the high attrition that the metros are facing.

Prof Sourav Mukherji of IIMB was very vocal on the fact that India has a very high productive population as compared to China and Technology is an enabler with sustenance and intent to bring change in education sector.

Its very important to note that before implementing or adopting to technology the HR department should already have a robust HR process in place to seamlessly adopt to the change .In the absence of such a process the technology will perhaps cause reverse effect to the delivery systems.

A few points that differentiate the HR systems of today

The factors driving changes in HR and a bonding on technology.

* Eternal Market change

* Internal factors

* Employee perceptions

* Corporate branding

* Legal issues, Compliances and data privacy

The last one is of great significance as when businesses are spread across large geographical space then there is the issue of multilingual data that needs to be integrated Ex : China and some European countries prefer multilingual systems and therefore data management in the right way becomes a core issue and also its privacy.

Speaking of Employment Verification in the presence of runaway wages Mr. Sri Raju - CEO-Workscan highlighted some very startling facts that by 2020 India will have 47 million surplus work force with the replacement rate of 2.1% per annum. (Source : Tassu Shervani - SNU)
This will create socio economic imbalance and generate a volatile labor market if we are not able to deal with this kind of work force with proper education and skill sets . This in turn will have a negative impact on the industry

High Turnover - Increases HR cost and ability to deliver HR services with a runaway wage inflation. Therefore the background checking market has jumped to Rs 250 crore and is growing at a very fast pace in the last few months in order to meet the requirement of qualitative workforce with authentic experience. NASSCOM also has introduced NSR (National Skill Registry) to weed out the unscrupulous and mediocre elements of the workforce and create the standard recognized pool of talent.

Technology has played a vital role in making all this happen while seamlessly integrating the database indexing and profiling candidates thereby reducing the time and money spent on this effort with solutions available at the click of the button.

* It has enhanced efficiency of process.

* Connect people.

* It also can be innovative other than automate.

Mr. Muralidhar - Director of Meritrac

Mr. Muralidhar of Meritrac spoke about interviews being done on VOIP online assessment. Interviews can be stored for assessment later.

Some of the concepts can be used in multiple ways

* Drag and drop option.

* 3D image option.

* Performance test where coding test can be done with people taking the test in large numbers simultaneously at multiple locations geographically. There was a similar incident where for a prominent brand in IT 22 locations were managed online across the country with 800 people taking test simultaneously at the same time . Few years ago this was thought to be an impossible task. Another Premier IT giant did evaluation of around 30.000 profiles in 15 days and called some 6,000 for interviews and assessment and by the end of the month had hired 1,300 people all in one single month with just 30 HR professionals on the job.

* Simulating gaming tests.

* Computer adapting testing using IRT.

* Automated online testing.

* Using PPT in video conferencing.

Employer engagement Vs technology

* Web based platform to connect.

* Candidates get trained.

* Candidates develop codes online.

* More meaningful than just contact.

* Integrates teams to work on HR challenges.

* Update on new technologies yourself.

* Adopt technology anyway.

* Its very important to define the problem and processes before one automates the business.

* One should not go by the hype of the product.

* Adopt the process first and automate.

Don't automate beyond certain extent of human touch point - Anant Koppar CEO - Ktwo Technologies LTD emphasised He recalled the system of "Pot Lunch" - Human touch programme at Mphasis where senior management people used to have lunch with the lower management once in fortnight to build direct contact as the technology part takes away the human essence thereby building connectivity between the virtual vs real world.

Conclusion

The world is becoming highly robust and flatter therefore the connective point is technology and it has to be leveraged in the right way to get the right result. It is no longer a regional issue in talent management but has taken global prospective where organizations thrive on multi ethnic, multilingual and diversified workforce working in different time zones ; therefore HR adapting to technology has become indispensable.

These were excerpts from the annual HR summit organized by IHRD. 

Kishor Jagirdar is a practicing Strategic Consultant. Founder of Infopace Management Pvt Ltd . Feedback at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it \n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it "

Issue BG84 Mar 08

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