People Matters: Winning the war for talent - October 2019

VOL X / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2019

BIG Interview Nhlamu Dlomu

Global Head of People for KPMG International

Interview Allan Taylor CEO, Boost, Singapore

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T

his is the new world of talent. Scouting for top talent today is more difficult than ever. So much so that globally, across all regions, attracting and retaining top talent ranks as the top internal concern for CEOs, according to a new global survey of 2019 by New York based research organization, The Conference Board.

Gone are the days when hiring was all about credentials. The candidates were judged solely on their certificates, work experience, and other tangible things they could obtain. Today, things have changed completely and talent acquisition has become one of the most technology-driven areas of HR. The variety of tools for job placement, advertising, candidate relationship management, pre-hire screening, assessment, scheduling, and onboarding have reinvented talent acquisition.

A company’s competitiveness, the ability to manage business performance and execute strategy increasingly depends on its finesse to manage workforce strategically. It has moved completely away from the unstructured and traditional way to a competency-based structured function.

With the rise in unemployment and scarcity of niche talent, organizations are also exploring new approaches to drive their talent acquisition mandate. One of

| October 2019

THE COVER STORY (BEHIND THE SCENE)

I love it! But I don’t like the colours...

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VOL X / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2019

FFrroom m tth h e E d i t o r ’’ss DDeesskk 4

Fighting the war for talent

the things organizations end up pursuing is increasingly engaging themselves in enhancing the employer brand, having an understanding as to how the external stakeholders perceive their organizations. On the other hand, in a world where millennials already are the largest segment in the workplace, organizations need to offer the right opportunities to millennials and have strategies to retain the alwaysmoving workforce. The digitally savvy generation is demanding and managing their expectations is a challenge in itself.

The cover story in this issue takes a look at organizational strategies for hiring and retaining the best talent, including how they plan to reinvent recruitment and hiring by harnessing technologies and how they overcome the hiring challenges.

For the big interview, we have Nhlamu Dlomu, the Global Head of People for KPMG International, who shares her thoughts on talent acquisition and reskilling, how culture can actually be a competitive advantage for organizations, and her vision for the future of work.

For the rapid-fire interview, we have Sheela Parakkal, EVP & CHRO, Prudential Assurance Company Singapore. We also have an interview with Sondang Saktion, Director of Talent and Culture at the OLX Group in Indonesia, who shares insights on leadership she has learned on the go, and the steps she is taking to develop a leadership culture in OLX. The issue features a detailed piece on the cultural pillars of digital transformation which takes a look at the four founding cultural pillars upon which you can create a strong digitally-focused workplace of tomorrow.

We have Isabelle Hasleder, a trainer and a coach at HQ Leadership India, who shares insights on ‘HorseDream’ concept of training which offers leadership training to corporates and individuals with the help of horses.

Also featured is an exclusive interview with Yeoh Sai Yew, Group Director, People Department at VietJet Air, who takes you through the developments in the aviation sector and what this means for the future of work.

As always, we would be happy to hear your views, comments, and suggestions regarding our stories.

BIG Interview Nhlamu Dlomu Global Head of People for KPMG International

Happy Reading!

Esther Martinez Hernandez Editor-in-Chief follow

M > @Ester_Matters F > estermartinez > ester.martinez@peoplematters.in

Interview Allan Taylor CEO, Boost, Singapore

YAYE!

contents

O ctober 2 0 1 9 volu m e x issue 1 0

cover story

expert views

40

42 Tracy Keogh, Chief Human Resource Officer of HP

44 Amy Goldfinger, SVP, Global Talent Acquisition, Walmart

46 Carmel Galvin, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Autodesk 48

Tom Browne, APJ Talent Acquisition Director at VMware

50 Angelina Chua, the Group Head of Human Resource at Yeo Hiap Seng (Yeo's)

52 Vasudevan Parthasarathy, Head, Talent Acquisition Asia Pacific & Japan of Micro Focus

By Mastufa Ahmed

C O N TE N TS

54 Protima Achaya, Director, APAC Talent Acquisition & People Operations, NetApp

56 Abhijit Bhaduri, One of the most followed writers on all things talent

58 Clinton Wingrove, Director of www.WantToBeGreat Manager.com

the big Interview

Upskill your workforce for the digital age Nhlamu Dlomu, Global Head of KPMG International

28

34 Boost CEO Allan Taylor on using tech to empower workforce in hospitality Worktech

People for

By Mastufa Ahmed

Allan Taylor, CEO, Boost, Singapore

By Drishti Pant

Editor-in-Chief

Features Writers

Senior Editor

Assistant Managers, Content

Esther Martinez Hernandez Yasmin Taj

Anushree Sharma | Bhavna Sarin

Associate Editor, Print & Online

Mastufa Ahmed

Manager, design, photography, and production

Marta Martinez

Drishti Pant Neelanjana Mazumdar Design & Production

Digital Head

Jerry Moses

Prakash Shahi

Associate Editor

General Manager, Sales

Abid Hasan

Senior Features Writer

6

Senior Associates, Content

Shinto Kallattu

Manager, Content

Shweta Modgil

Manav Seth | Vallari Gupte

Rubi Taj rubi.taj@peoplematters.in +91 (124) 4148102

| October 2019

Manager, Sales

Saloni Gulati saloni.gulati@peoplematters.in +91 (124) 4148102 Manager, SUBSCRIPTION

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This issue of People matters contains 92 pages including cover

contents

Managing political talks at workplace

By Manav Seth 20 The future of talent in

By Jerry Moses

Why the future belongs to curious leaders

By Stacey Kennedy, President of South and Southeast Asia for Philip Morris International

19 Ne w s Feature

digital banking

77 L ea d ers h i p

62 R esearc h

AI in recruitment: Balancing the speed and quality of hires

78 I N T E R V I E W

For our people to learn and grow, we need to create an environment

Sondang Saktion, Director of Talent and Culture, OLX Group, Indonesia

By Shweta Modgil

By Anushree Sharma

66 I N T E R V I E W

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to drive the digital future

Yeoh Sai Yew, Group Director, People Department at VietJet Air

By Anushree Sharma

68 Di g ital tra n s f or m atio n

C O N TE N TS

The cultural pillars of Digital Transformation

By Vallari Gupte & Bhavna Sarin 22 Old is gold: Is it time to scrap

the employee retirement age?

By Drishti Pant 24 Taking a stand on social

issues

By Manav Seth

72 I N T E R V I E W

How horses can train leaders in this coming-ofage role reversal

Isabelle Hasleder, A trainer and a coach at HQ Leadership India

By Bhavna Sarin

26 Preparing the workforce

By Bhavna Sarin

By Visty Banaji, Founder and CEO of Banner Global Consulting (BGC)

Featured In this issue

A Hippocratic Oath for HR

Leadership is about helping other people succeed

Indrajeet Sengupta, Executive Director and Chief Human Resources Officer at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages

By Abid Hasan 8

74 Me n tal Healt h The threats to a mentally healthy workforce

36 T h e roa d less travelle d

60 I N T E R V I E W

| October 2019

83 L ear n i n g & Develo p m e n t

32 Job B ur n out Burnout at work: Before you

By Y Shekar, A PhD in Management and researches on middle management roles.

Currently associated with a leading IIM to put up a program in Enterprise Digital Management

Importance of soft skills in learning and development

84 I N T E R V I E W

By Drishti Pant

think ‘it won't happen to me’

Digital world: Emergence and relevance of new skills

By Shivangi Gupta, Assistant Director of English India at British Council

for the next global economic recession

By Leela Bassi, UK based multilingual keynote speaker & Transformational Coach

80 L esso n s f ro m C ric k et

Allan Taylor Amy Goldfinger Angelina Chua Carmel Galvin Indrajeet Sengupta Isabelle Hasleder Nhlamu Dlomu Protima Achaya

Suraj Chettri, Head of Human Resource, Airbus

By Jerry Moses

regulars

04 From the Editor’s Desk Sheela Parakkal Sondang Saktion Suraj Chettri Tom Browne Tracy Keogh Vasudevan Parthasarathy Yeoh Sai Yew

CONTRIBUTORS to this issue Abhijit Bhaduri Clinton Wingrove Leela Bassi Shivangi Gupta

I see a talent cost chaos in the market for advanced digital skills

Stacey Kennedy Visty Banaji Y Shekar

10 Letters of the month 12 Quick Reads 16

Rapid Fire

86 Knowledge + Networking 88 Blogosphere

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Letters of the month The Digital Leader

The cover story in the September issue talks about a critical, yet under-represented, challenge facing the business world today. While most businesses are aware of the urgency to re-skill their employees, I believe not many are adequately focusing on developing the next generation of leaders. Organizations need to prioritize cultivating digital leaders that know how to leverage the immense power and possibilities that come with modern technologies. There is no doubt in my mind that we will need new leadership frameworks and models to manage a digitally-oriented work, workplace, and workforce. However, we need the right environment, culture, training, and process to identify and hone leaders who are ready to take on the challenges of tomorrow. As the experts rightly suggest, this might require us to consider non-traditional methodologies and change the way we have viewed leadership thus far. In an uncertain future, having a set of authentic, reliable, and knowledgeable leaders can help businesses ride through disruptions and adapt better.

- Tavishi Malhotra

Indian auto industry hits rough road The Indian auto industry is experiencing one of the sharpest slowdowns in history, and nearly one million jobs are at risk. Most manufacturers are scaling down production and have been laying off staff to ride through the challenge.

While several complex factors are at play here, it is important to remember that the industry is an essential part of the economy and provides a livelihood to lakhs of families all over the country. In addition

to formulating policies that regulate the transition to electric vehicles and BS-VI emissions compliant vehicles, the government should definitely consider offering immediate stimulus to the industry and avert the crisis. Furthermore, automakers should also update their production cycles to ensure that a high volume of inventory doesn’t pile up again. I am hoping that the upcoming festive season will initiate the recovery process, but the government and the industry must work together to ensure that the momentum sustains.

- Santosh Yadav

The Are You in the List Award Winners 2019 The Are You in the List Awards is a fantastic initiative that provides a great platform to young and emerging HR leaders to showcase their vision for the future.

The 2019 award winners come from diverse industries and are ambitious, driven, and in-tune with expectations of the business and the workforce. It was really interesting to learn the different perspective and priorities of all the winners and how they want to help the HR function evolve. Finally, it was also really heartening to see familiar names and faces being recognized as future HR leaders, which in addition to increasing the relatability, also serves a motivation. I extend my best wishes to all of them, and I am sure that we can expect many more great things from them in the future.

- Samiksha Bansal

10

| October 2019

september 2019 issue

In the digital age, a company’s most important source of competitive advantage is its people Ellyn Shook’s interview touched upon all relevant facets for modern-day HR leaders and employees. I agree with her that we must look at challenges in terms of opportunities to build a thriving future of work. Most organizations indeed fail to identify their people as the most important resource and rely excessively on technology to deliver results. However, the advancements made in technology also mean that we need to stay connected to each other more than ever. Her message to CHROs and people managers about personalization, transparency, and communication is very valuable and insightful. It was also fascinating to read about Accenture’s culture and re-skilling programs, and the fact that the organization has skilled over 3, 00,000 employees is commendable.

- Shraddha Patil

Interact with People Matters

How to tackle unconscious bias at the workplace I really enjoyed reading Adrienne Anderson’s article on eradicating unconscious bias at the workplace.

Humans are rather subjective and judgmental in nature, and most people form biases based on their field of experience. Whether we like it or not, these biases also creep into the workplace and are also at play when recruiters and hiring managers are evaluating candidates. However, today’s progressive and inclusive workplaces are working hard to identify and remove these biases –conscious and unconscious. In addition to HR personnel and recruiters, I believe that managers must also realize the importance of identifying and removing their personal biases to be more effective leaders. Adrienne is correct to point out that the opportunity cost of unconscious bias is too high to ignore and that we must attempt to build a culture that mitigates these prejudices in the workplace.

People Matters values your feedback.

Write to us with your suggestions and ideas at editorial@peoplematters.in

Working in the era of the dark triads I thoroughly enjoyed reading Girish Kohli’s excellent article on bosses who deliver results and are simultaneously narcissistic, manipulative, and psychopathic. We’ve all come across a boss who is downright impossible to work under and yet, are also recognized for their achievements. An overly difficult boss can prove to be detrimental for the careers of young professionals, especially if they are in their first or second job, and are not well-versed with the range of managers.

However, kudos to the writer for providing a helpful and practical guide on how to work with such ‘dark triad’ bosses and not let them impact personal goals and passions. His advice on introspecting and seeking feedback from multiple sources before letting a tyrannical boss affect your self-worth is also constructive.

- Paresh Nayyar

- Dimple Kaushik

HR’s business should be happiness raising Visty Banaji has raised a very relevant issue by talking about the factors that influence the compensation of HR leaders and employees. He is correct when he says that despite the rise of titles ‘Chief Happiness Officers’, HR leaders rarely account for the happiness of their employees. Having worked in the industry for over two decades, I can attest to the fact that most organizations fail to realize that until they genuinely commit and invest in people wellbeing and happiness, their engagement, retention, and targets will remain dismal. I agree with him on the argument that linking financial and share performance of a company with the remuneration of CHROs and HR personnel contaminates the goal of the very goal of Human Resources. We have a long road ahead of us before we can proclaim that happiness is a corporate purpose for organizations, and employee happiness is the measure of a job well done by HR. - Amrit Singh

How to hold on to great people at the workplace Farzana Suri’s article on how to retain top talent mentions some great suggestions on how to identify great people and how organizations can proactively engage their best performers and also avoid common mistakes while managing them. I believe that we all seek acknowledgment and recognition for our achievements and inequitable treatment, or even a perception of the same works as a great de-motivator.

Organizations are still struggling to build a fair, inclusive, and open culture that allows employees to their productive best. As aptly stated by Farzana, businesses grow on the back of their people, and it is vital to retain the best ones not only because they positively contribute to the bottomline, but also because they act as the most effective brand endorsers for their employers.

- Aparna Sengupta

PeopleStrong @peoplestrong “Even though the landscape of #talentmanagement continues to change dynamically, the basic tenets of creating a #sustainable model of people management remain the same.” A glimpse of recent @People Matters2 & PeopleStrong Roundtable discussion-Mumbai. Visit bit.ly/2keUrC7 Oracle India @Oracle_India The #workforce is one of the most important resources for an organization. @chinamkry, VP Global HCM Solution Marketing, Oracle, in conversation with @PeopleMatters2 discusses the future of the workforce in this digital age. Catch the interview here: youtube.com/watch?v=dDlzL2…

Digvijay Singh @digvijaysden1 @PeopleMatters2 #TechHR Startup Program 2019 aims at identifying and recognizing upcoming HR technology startups in #India! More power to such initiatives that bring a confluence of right synergies in the #startup ecosystem.

Rasika Thapa @rasika_thapa ‘Failure is a wonderful starting point - Giving employees the environment where it is safe to fail should be the culture’ @mercer Asia #HR Conference #MercerAsiaHRC @mercerinasia @PeopleMatters2 @Ester_Matters @PuneetSwani @latimerp @LewisGarrad Amitabh Kant @amitabhk87 How GE transportation created a workforce for its Bihar plant. This flagship ‘Make in India’ project was India’s first big-ticket foreign direct investment in railways. Once operational, the factory would have an integrated eco-system of about 4000 workers.

PwC India @PwC IN Upskilling our talent, building leadership capabilities and driving diversity are some of the key focus areas of our organisation, conveys Padmaja Alaganandan, Chief People Officer, PwC India, in a candid conversation with @PeopleMatters2 bit.ly/2m2MMX follow

M > @PeopleMatters2

{WRITE TO US NOW BY SCANNING THIS CODE} October 2019 |

11

JOBS

HIRING

Infosys to hire 1,000 locals for its Arizona Technology Innovation Center

India Inc is on CXO hiring spree: Report

JOBS

Mid-level hiring set to rise in India: Report As per a report by job portal Shine.com, increased hiring will be witnessed in various sectors including IT/software, education, healthcare, and FMCG. While India grapples with a slowdown, a survey of recruiters in the country by job portal Shine.com has revealed that mid-level hiring is set to witness a significant surge in the coming months.

As per the report, increased hiring will be witnessed in various sectors including IT/software, education, healthcare, FMCG, etc. Nearly 54 percent of the recruiters surveyed mentioned that they are looking to hire mid-level professionals. This brings some whiff of hope for professionals with 3-6 years of experience who are looking for better opportunities in terms of skill utilization and remuneration.

12

Cognizant, Accenture and Caspex face lawsuits The Forum Against Corruption and three Hyderabad-based employees have filed a case against Cognizant, Accenture, and Caspex Corporation claiming that these IT giants bring about an enhancement in the work culture and bring an end to employees’ exploitation. The PIL claims that the companies provide poor incentives, bad leave policy and long working hours. IT sector employees have historically been the ones who have had to deal with global clients and put in extra shifts. In some cities, the commute can go up to 4-5 hours long.

HIRING

q u ic k

r e a d s

Infosys recently inaugurated

its Technology and Innovation Center in Arizona for which it plans to hire 1,000 locals by 2023. The Arizona Technology and Innovation Center, temporarily located at The Arizona State University (ASU) Scottsdale Innovation Center, has a special focus on autonomous technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), full-stack engineering,

data science, and cybersecurity.

Infosys’ investment in Arizona will help increase the top local talent to shrink the IT skills gap in the state.

Hiring is currently in progress at the center which will move to its permanent location, a 60,000-square-foot facility, in the ASU Novus Innovation Corridor by 2020, accommodating up to 500 employees.

Infosys has surpassed its Spring 2017 commitment to hire 10,000 American workers as part of its ongoing efforts to accelerate the pace of innovation for US enterprises. The changes in the US visa process under Trump administration in the US has led to IT companies with offices in the US to reframe their hiring strategy. With this localization drive, Infosys will have once again shown its commitment to workforce development and resolving the STEM skills gap in the US.

| October 2019

Senior professionals with over 20 years of work experience recorded 17 percent growth in M-o-M comparison of talent demand in August 2019. Amid the fear of economic slowdown and speculations about the return of recession, hiring for senior professionals with 20+ years of experience has noted a double-digit growth (17 percent), reveals TimesJobs RecruiteX. In Y-o-Y comparison, senior executives in this experience bracket recorded 28% growth.

CXOs in demand: Senior professionals with 20+ work experience noted 17 percent growth in M-o-M comparison of talent demand in August 2019. The breakdown of the rise in demand includes the following:

Companies cannot ask employees to work for more than eight hours a day and over time can be taken up to six hours a day, according to the Telangana Shops and Establishments Act, 1988. The Telangana High Court has directed the IT firms to reply to the PIL within a month. The Telangana state government can only fine the IT companies up to Rs. 100 if they were to break a law. As Cognizant undergoes a widespread restructuring program under the new CEO Brian Humphries, the company is getting ready for another round of layoffs which is expected to go up to a few hundred. The firm had also offered 300 top executives voluntary separation to keep its pyramid lean.

Professionals with 20+ work experience - 17 percent, professionals with 10-20 years of work experience - six percent, and professionals with less than two years of work experience - three percent.

The study highlights the increased momentum in hiring for CXO positions can be due to two reasons, either India Inc is replacing the old ‘non-performers’ or creating new positions citing business expansion/growth/new technology.

TECHNOLOGY

Tech advances lead to job losses at Zomato The food tech unicorn has laid off 540 employees at the head office in Gurugram across its customer, merchant, and delivery partner support teams.

The job cuts became necessary as tech adoption made a few roles redundant. In the last few months, improvement in its technology interface across functions led to a reduction in support-related queries, making several roles redundant, and prompting the company to lay off employees.

While this is the first time Zomato has laid off so many employees, it had done a similar drill last month, where 60 employ-

The upward trend in job creation continues in Malaysia from Q1. The private sector in Malaysia recorded an increase of 82,000 positions in the first quarter of the

year compared to the first quarter of 2018, as per the Department of Statistics. After the significant increase in the first quarter, the second quarter was also expected to exhibit positive growth, which it has, showing that the country’s economy will continue to grow. Malaysian economy continues to expand at a steady and promising pace, and the country’s main economic sectors are expected to record positive growth, with the service and manufacturing sectors projected to grow by 5.7% and 4.8% respectively. As per Malaysian Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin, the number of jobs in the private sector increased by 145,000 in the second quarter this year to 8.6 million posts compared with 8.5 million in the corresponding period last year.

WORK AND WELLNESS

Starbucks to boost workers’ mental health benefits As per the annual survey by employer branding firm Universum, on average, IT graduates expected an annual salary of $53,721.

The salary expectation of IT grads works out to be about $4,500 per month, 20 percent higher than the expected salary among business and engineering students.

Business/Commerce students expect an annual salary of $44,459, and engineering/ natural sciences students expect an annual salary of $44,661. The demand for a higher

salary among IT grads highlights the scarcity of talent in this sector. It echoes the increased demand for a very low supply of technical and digital talent in Singapore.

The survey also reveals the most preferred sector of graduates and the type of company they want to work in with banking being the most preferred followed by MNCs that offer flexible working hours.

r e a d s

Jobs & skills mismatch in Singapore declines

ees in its customer support department were asked to leave. Hence, in two months, Zomato has laid off about 600 employees from its customer support department.

After the job cuts, the company's employee strength is an estimated 5,000 people across the organization.

The state-run telecom giant plans to fire about 30 percent of their contractual employees as BSNL looks for new funds and a way forward for its revival.

If the Voluntary Retirement Scheme is duly implemented, about 50 percent of the total employees are likely to lose their jobs, in the Pune division of BSNL. As the competition to enter the 4G spectrum continues to hit BSNL, a lack of government-approved revival plan has increased the pressure on the telecom company. One way to stay afloat is to cut down on the operational costs

q u ic k

ECONOMY

ECONOMY

50% of BSNL employees to lose jobs to VRS

and resort to outsourcing the work on monthly contractual basis. Reducing losses and expanding revenues is the goal right now.

February 2019 was the first time when BSNL defaulted on distributing salaries among its employees and the government intervened with an emergency fund of Rs. 171 crore in order to ensure that employees received salaries at least before the Holi festival. About 80,000 i.e. 50 percent of the BSNL employees will be asked to take a compulsory VRS and exit the company, according to the Bharatiya Telecom Employees Union BSNL in Pune.

Cutting down on operational costs and focusing on increasing the revenues could help the company in reducing the financial stress, however, the employees need to be prepared for major restructuring in the telecom sector.

October 2019 |

13

newsmaker of the month

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 Mission

A temporary failure, not a permanent setback ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission highlights how sometimes even the small missteps lead to a giant leap

q u ic k

r e a d s

This story of ISRO will forever inspire leaders, working professionals and businesses across the globe and remind them to learn from their failures, face adversities courageously and never give up in the face of temporary failures

‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.’

- Winston Churchill

I

SRO’s determination and hours of hard work came to a standstill, as their hopes shattered on 7th September 2019, when they lost communication with Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander. Their mission to soft-land it on the lunar surface did not go as per plan. In those difficult hours, the team’s dream was crippled for a brief time, but they did not end there. Not just a nation but almost the entire world came together to watch the spectacle.

There were tears, messages and tweets of comfort, and many people from across the globe came out in ISRO’s support.

Amidst all this chaos, there was also a simple lesson hiding in ISRO’s setback, it experienced that day. How to manage failure? Had the mission been successful, the nation would have celebrated

14

| October 2019

and the world would have applauded them. But now that the mission had been challenged, it was upon the leader and the team on how they manage the setback. Fortunately, the world united in their support and they did not have to deal with much criticism but the team at ISRO also kept a strong will and after grieving for a while they got back to their jobs, with the same determination as before.

As officials at ISRO have noted that even given the bleak prospects of establishing contact with the crash-landed Vikram, the fact that the orbiter is working fine means that up to 95 percent of the mission objectives have been achieved. The orbiter is said to be functional for a year or more, and the payloads onboard are sending back reams of data.

Later, after the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter located the Vikram lunar lander, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is expected to spend the next year returning excellent signals. This was not the first time there were challenges in a space mission. From NASA to ISRO, many have failed but no one has ever given up.

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission highlights how sometimes even the small missteps lead to a giant leap. This story of ISRO will forever inspire leaders, working professionals and businesses across the globe and remind them to learn from their failures, face adversities courageously and never give up in the face of temporary failures.

Jack Ma steps down as Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma turned 55 on September 10th and with that comes his exit from as the Chairman of the US$460 Bn-plus e-commerce behemoth Alibaba that he co-founded. While Ma will hand over the baton to successor Daniel Zhang, leaving Alibaba thriving, he will be on the board until his current term expires in 2020.

LATAM Airlines CEO resigns after 25 years LATAM Airlines Group announced that its CEO, Enrique Cueto Plaza, will step down from his role after 25 years. The position will be assumed by the group’s current Chief Commercial Officer, Roberto Alvo Milosawlewitsch.

Disney CEO Bob Iger quits from Apple board Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger has resigned from Apple's board of directors as the two companies are preparing to launch competing streaming services. As per a filing by Apple to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Iger quit on September 10, the day Apple announced price and release date of its streaming service.

Duluth Trading CEO resigns & joins Under Armour as President, North America Stephanie Pugliese has resigned as president, CEO and board member from American workwear and accessories company, Duluth Trading, after heading the firm for almost four years. In less than 24 hours of Pugliese had left, Under Armour announced that it had appointed Pugliese as president, North America.

Mozilla Corporation CEO to resign by the end of the year Chris Beard, who joined Mozilla Corporation in 2004 has now decided to move on from the company. He plans to step down from his position of CEO by the end of 2019. Beard became the interim CEO for Mozilla in April 2014, and soon in July same year, he became the full-time chief executive.

Publicis Sapient appoints new Global Chief Talent Officer Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, has announced the appointment of Kristi Erickson as Global Chief Talent Officer. Kristi will be working directly with Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz to build a successful foundation for future generations of leadership and ensure the creation of a high-performing talent function that will drive strategic outcomes at the company.

BuzzFeed's Chief Marketing Officer to resign Ben Kaufman will soon cease to be the Chief Marketing Officer of BuzzFeed. He will now move into an advisory role at the company with the planned expansion of Kaufman’s Camp retail stores. According to CEO Jonah Peretti, Kaufman will shift into an active advisory role from January, next year, as Camp continues to expand and require more of his day-to-day attention.

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Cathay Pacific's Chairman John Slosar retires After working with corporates for nearly four decades, John Slosar is now retiring from his recent role as Cathay Pacific’s Chairman.

Cathay Pacific Airways is one of the companies worst affected by the pro-democracy demonstrations currently sweeping Hong Kong. The airline faced pressure online after China's state-run press fuelled a #BoycottCathayPacific hashtag, which trended on Chinese social media.

WellBiz Brands appoints new CEO WellBiz Brands, a franchise portfolio company operating three distinct wellness, fitness and beauty brands, Elements Massage, Fitness Together and Amazing Lash Studio, announced that Stephanie Hu will be joining Fitness Together Franchise, LLC as Chief Executive Officer. Stephanie brings over 20 years of consumer products and health and fitness experience to the Fitness Together brand, most recently serving as the President of Life Time Sport.

q u ic k

Yum China CFO Jacky Lo to step down Yum China which operates KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in China announced that Jacky Lo, who has served as the Company's Chief Financial Officer since June 2017, intends to leave the company to pursue professional opportunities in Hong Kong to be closer to his family. Jacky will step down as the company's CFO effective October 16, 2019.

Dentsu Aegis elevates Ashish Bhasin as CEO APAC After leading the business in India, making it the second-largest advertising and media organization by revenue in the market, Ashish Bhasin will now head the entire APAC cluster as CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific. Bhasin will be based in Singapore and work on enabling the markets, focusing on client needs and growth opportunities while delivering operational rigor for the business.

PepsiCo's HR Head to join Colt Tech as Country Head, India & HR Head, Global Operations After working with PepsiCo for more than thirteen years, Suchitra Rajendra, CHRO and VP Human Resources India Region of PepsiCo will be joining COLT Tech as Country Head, India and HR Head, Global Operations (Europe and Asia).

KNOLSKAPE appoints Vijayaraghavan Pisharody as Vice President and CHRO Simulation-based learning company KNOLSKAPE has appointed Vijayaraghavan Pisharody as its Vice President and CHRO. Vijay will be responsible for leading KNOLSKAPE’s capability building and capacity enhancement, including Talent Management, Leadership Development, and Learning. He has previously served across numerous organizations, including the TATA group, The Oberoi Group, and Manipal Education.

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Rapid-Fire

TWELVE Q u e s t ion s

in t e r v i e w

Sheela Parakkal

EVP & CHRO, Prudential Assurance Company Singapore

By Neelanjana Mazumdar

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One thing that makes you passionate about HR?

Things HR professionals must keep in mind while implementing tech in any HR process?

Every day I am given the opportunity to live my purpose - to help people become better versions of themselves.

HR professionals must know that technology exists to serve a specific purpose, and it cannot substitute the role they play.

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What was the turning point of your life as an HR professional?

Making the choice to become an HR professional. Up until then, I was building a promising career in auditing with a big 4. It was when I realized that my strongest skills and passion lay in a career in HR that I decided to make the switch.

I haven’t looked back since.

3

Gig Workers or Permanent Employees?

In our dynamic times, we need to be able to adopt a risk-based approach and try out new things

One tech/innovation that will transform HR? The use of AI, especially in the recruitment process.

4

One perception you wish to change about the HR function?

That HR is simply about “resourcing” and people are just “resources”.

People are valuable capital, and HR is about leveraging people to the best of their capabilities so that both their aspirations, and that of the organization’s are fulfilled.

5

One leader you closely follow and one hallmark of that leader

Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are two leaders I look up to because they created a future that did not exist.

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Gig workers, because the concept of gig working is more a mentality and less of a work arrangement.

Gig working is about entrusting employees with the autonomy to work how they like as long as they achieve agreed outcomes at the end of the day.

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Flexi work or 9 to 5

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Flexi working without a doubt.

This is something we implemented at Prudential.

I believe that learning is like scaling a topless mountain – it never ends, because every time you think you have learned it all, you discover that there is something new you can master.

In the fast-paced world full of disruptions and challenges, what keeps you going?

What's your learning mantra?

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3 key talent priorities for Prudential Assurance Company Singapore, currently?

1. Creating a workforce that is aligned to our purpose of innovating to help everyone live well.

2. At the same time, we want to continue being an inclusive employer.

3. And lastly, our sights are set to the future – we want to build a futureready Prudential workforce.

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My family. They keep me centered and give me the perspective I need to be able to come to work every day and deliver in my role.

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One question you ask in every interview?

Two actually - I always ask my interviewees to tell me how their friends would describe them, and then I ask them to describe their friends.

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Managing political talks at workplace Should employers encourage or discourage political discussions in the workplace?

By Manav Seth

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n a widely reported and discussed development, Google recently updated its workplace community guidelines to prevent employees from engaging in discussions related to politics and news events. As we scrutinize this update that marks a monumental shift in the company’s otherwise open culture and policies, let us also attempt to understand the room that political discussion has in the modern workplace.

The latest from Google In August, Google issued new workplace guidelines that, in no ambiguous terms, told employees to focus on their work and not hold discussions on politics, news, and other non-work related topics. “Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics,” the guidelines read1. Further, they stated, “While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a 18

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Thirty-one percent of the respondents surveyed in a 2017 American survey stated that their productivity has decreased as a result of political expression at work raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not.”

These new guidelines took the world by shock because Google has traditionally championed a free and open workplace culture wherein employees are encouraged to speak their minds. The stronglyworded guidelines reflect a change in the company’s history and culture, which made free expression, creativity, and thinking outside the box a norm in the workplace. Jenn Kaiser, a company spokesperson, explained2 that the guidelines are a response to “increased incivility” on the company’s internal platforms and demands from employees to have clearer rules on what’s acceptable and unacceptable to say. Google also announced3 that a team of dedicated moderators was being hired to regulate internal employee discussion forums, which have witnessed an

uptick in political debates and discussions.

However, commentators are pointing out4 that this is yet another attempt to keep employees in check after a turbulent year that was marred with employee walkouts, citizen backlash, and bad press. On the one hand, Google has been under pressure from its employees and citizens for working on defense projects5 and mishandling sexual harassment claims6; on the other, it has been under fire from the US government for allegedly being unfair to conservative employees and digital platforms7.

Critics say that this near-reversal of the company’s policies reflect Google’s effort to ensure that employee expression and activism does not impact the company’s bottom line.

Discussing politics at work Google isn’t the first company to regulate

Political ideologies, leaders, and decisions are integral to modern society, and most individuals have some sort of an opinion on the same. So, should an organization have a policy specifically regulating political discussions and debates? One school of thought15 says that employees should have

the freedom to be as political or apolitical as they please, and policies must only aim to regulate such topics, rather than ban them altogether. Others argue16 that since an employer has a responsibility to make every employee feel comfortable, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, organizations must clearly spell out that employees must avoid political talk to prevent harassment and discrimination.

While both these approaches have their own pros and cons, there is no denying that a blanket ban on all political dialogue will be notoriously challenging to implement.

For instance, how will managers prevent employees from discussing politics during breaks? How will those who violate the policy be penalized? On the other hand, if organizations want to regulate political discussions, where do they draw the line?

While having a well-defined and comprehensive policy that helps employees understand what topics are off-limits can be helpful, the challenge is to strike the delicate balance between defining what constitutes

‘objectionable’ and ‘unacceptable’ in the workplace, while upholding a person’s right to freedom of speech.

On the other hand, employees need to identify their role in the discourse.

While an increasing number of millennials prefer to work with organizations with strong moral, social and environmental consciousness17, they also need to be mindful of the fact that they are a representative of their organization, even outside of work. Most social media platforms allow people to display where they are employed, which means even passive ‘sharing’ or ‘liking’ is warranting increased scrutiny. There have been some instances18 of employees expressing, or even endorsing, racist, misogynistic or sexist views on social media being reprimanded, or even being fired, in the last few years. Organizations are also looking at social media activity for hiring and engagement19, which means that even personal views expressed outside the domain of work are also under surveillance.

To sum up, we need to discuss and debate the place for political discussion in the workplace to ensure that differences in opinions and beliefs are managed respectfully. While Google’s reversal on its stance will set a precedent for others, experts suggest that the most effective strategy is to help employees realize the boundary on their own. It can be tough to formulate policies that regulate employee beliefs and thoughts without coming across as attacking their personal or political ideologies.

However, Preetha S and Vikram Shroff suggest, “Policies should be clear enough to state that anything intimidating, discriminating or harassing or anything that interferes with workplace productivity shall not be tolerated. It is also important that the guidelines regarding freedom of expression be carefully crafted and uniformly enforced so that all employees are treated equally and fairly.”

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Policing the political talk

The challenge is to strike the delicate balance between defining what constitutes ‘objectionable’ and ‘unacceptable’ in the workplace while upholding a person’s right to freedom of speech

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political discussion in the workplace, and it certainly won’t be the last. While organizations might not single out politics or news events as topics of conversation and outright ban it, most organizations have guidelines that prevent employees from political campaigning and activism; and more importantly from discriminating or harassing those who hold different beliefs or identities. Traditionally, talking about politics, religion, and sex has been discouraged in the workplace8 and in today’s politically turbulent times, there is no telling when a politically-charged conversation turns into bullying or name-calling, or other forms of discrimination.

Even in the USA, the First Amendment, that guarantees the right to free speech, doesn’t specifically apply to political expression in the workplace, especially in the private sector9. This has led to many states and employers following drastically different policies on the discussion of politics in the workplace, which range from strict laws advocating political expression to no laws at all10. If the law in the region so allows, organizations can ban political expression, including discussions, citing an adverse impact on productivity11. There might be some truth to this argument as 31 percent of the respondents surveyed in a 2017 Clutch survey12 in America stated that their productivity has decreased as a result of political expression at work. Another 2018 Indeed survey13 found that 20 percent of Americans wanted political discussions censored at their workplace and 60 percent of those who feel silenced identified their peers as the biggest source of pressure.

In India as well, there is no absolute clarity on what is acceptable to discuss in the workplace and what is not, and more importantly, to what extent does the freedom of speech and expression apply in the workplace. In a publication for International Bar Association, Preetha S and Vikram Shroff of Nishith Desai Associates say14, “In India, several fundamental questions pertaining to the extent and manner of controlling employees’ rights to speech and expression remain a grey area in the absence of specific legislation governing the subject. The issue becomes murkier due to the complex interplay between constitutional laws, tort law, contract law, employment laws, and technology laws.”

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The future of talent in digital banking At a time when fintech is transforming the banking sector and customer expectations are going up, here is an account of how talent priorities are changing in the banking sector

By Jerry Moses

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tunities it also creates new challenges. The BFSI sector, like many other sectors, faces a number of challenges – which include an evolving regulatory landscape, balancing changing customer preferences and delivering top-notch “secure and privacy compliant” services. As the sector realigns itself to changing technologies and intelligent automation, what are some of the top talent challenges? And how are leading banks preparing for the change?

In a conversation with People Matters as part of a series in partnership with Oracle, talent leaders from Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra and RBS India shared their perspectives on the changing ecosystem and the talent imperatives.

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Retraining & retaining a digital workforce

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igital technologies are radically transforming the world of banking. The growth in digital technologies has been phenomenal. In just the last five years, according to data from the RBI, the volume of digital payments has moved from 6.09 million in 2013 to 24.33 million in 2018. There is an increase in the penetration of banking and digital services in not just the urban/metro areas, rural and semi-urban areas of the country, but also globally. In fact, India ranks on the top of the list with the highest number of global bank branches, closely followed by China.

But the expansion of the scope and breadth of operations doesn’t necessary mean more jobs, research by McKinsey shows that 43 percent of all banking work hours can be automated using current technologies. And about 50 roles drive 80 percent of business value in Banking. As technology based digital disruption creates new oppor-

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Among the top challenges that the sector faces is the need to retrain the talent to meet the needs of the business at a time when there is continuous change and disruption.

The need for specialized digital skills is changing the demand for skills. Sukhjit Pasricha, Group CHRO, Kotak Mahindra Bank calls the recruitment and retention of quality digital talent as a “key strategic challenge in the financial services industry”.

Speaking of upskilling talent, Inderpreet Kaur, Director HR – Technology, RBS India said, “How you deliver the present needs of core banking systems through technologies like mainframes, yet reskill and poly-skill this employee base to cater to Cloud Computing and Big Data is a key to success.”

Once banks have identified skilled employees, and/or retrained their workforce, the key challenge then is to retain this talent. Deodutta

The recruitment and retention of quality digital talent is a key strategic challenge in the financial services industry" - Sukhjit Pasricha, Group CHRO, Kotak Mahindra Bank

How you deliver the present needs of core banking systems through technologies like mainframes, yet reskill and poly-skill this employee base to cater to Cloud Computing and Big Data is the key to success

Another key determiner for the success in navigating the digital world is the leadership mindset. As one saying goes, “In a calm sea, every ship has a good captain. Banking needs leaders who have a strategy to deal with the change agenda as well as the vision and ability to drive transformation and manage the change effectively” Kurane said. He also noted the importance of the need to demonstrate ambidextrous leadership to lead the core business while also thinking about innovation and how the world is transforming.

From an HR leader’s perspective, managing human capital responsible for overseeing these shifts will be critical. The solution, according to Sukhjit, is to move away from a fragmented digital approach that is not aligned to an organization wide digital transformation. If banks want to successfully navigate this era of change, they need to have a “cohesive digital roadmap”. This ensures that companies are cognizant of the long-term vision while also thinking about the digital initiatives that are to be implemented from a project-toproject basis, he added. These shifts also indicate a need to move away from a strictly hierarchical structure to more towards a fluid organization.

- Deodutta Kurane, Group- President, Human Capital Management

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Leadership and the need for a cohesive digital strategy

In a calm sea, every ship has a good captain. Banking needs leaders who have a strategy to deal with the change agenda as well as the vision and ability to drive transformation and manage the change effectively"

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Kurane, Group- President, Human Capital Management said, “The biggest challenge facing the banking industry (and also one of its biggest governors of success) is the ability to bring in the right mix of technically skilled people, integrate them into the business and keep them engaged enough to be retained.”

“Banks will need to have a different mindset in the way they treat employees. It is not just money that today’s talent is after—it is meaningful work, flexible methodologies (like letting them work in smaller groups and across groups), and being challenged by working with more agile teams,” Kurane said.

To succeed in the marketplace of talent, banks will need to get better at not just identifying and reskilling, they need to build an organizational culture of continuous learning. In essence, they need to be an employer brand that is perceived as a great place to work.

Leverage the power of data One of the key advantages of operating in the digital age is the amount of data that banks have access to. “The Future of Talent in Banking” report by McKinsey states that companies need to leverage data to make people decisions – instead of making decisions on subjective biases or customary practices. Some areas where companies need to leverage data to: Recruit, Retain, Motivate and Promote talent.

In order to successfully navigate the digital era, Banks will need to reinforce their skills strategy in a way that continuously updates with the changing needs of the market. In addition to leading the change management due to shifts based on digital transformation, they also need to invest in their leadership and human capital in a way that supports the long term digital vision. As talent strategies get more robust and agile, banks will also need to make the most out of recent research – whether that’s to do with diversity and inclusion or leveraging technology, in addition to enabling a workplace culture that takes into account a new generation of digital native employees.

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With more number of older persons in the world, economies and companies have to come up with more opportunities for the aging population to protect their financial, mental and well-being

Old is gold

Is it time to scrap the employee retirement age?

As we move towards the era of 100-year lives, it is time to relook at the centuries old concept of retiring from work after a certain age

By Drishti Pant

H

aving a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture that our idea of retirement simply doesn’t exist there," writes Hector García; Francesc Miralles, in a book named Ikigai.

The book that talks about living a happy, purposeful and long life sold more than one million copies and is one of the top-rated books. The growing popularity of the book and the concept of living a long life highlights how the population across the world wants to age differently.

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According to data from World Population Prospects: the 2017 Revision, the number of older persons — those aged 60 years or over — are expected to rise globally from 962 million in 2017 to 2.1 billion in 2050 and 3.1 billion in 2100.

As we move towards the era of 100-year lives, it is time to relook at the centuriesold concepts of retiring from work after a certain age. With more number of older persons in the world, economies and companies have to come up with more opportunities for the aging population to protect their financial and mental wellbeing. Further, the population itself would have to continuously invest in their skills and knowledge to be more prepared to work for a longer time.

While all companies and economies across the globe are figuring out how they can face the era of 100-year lives, there are some progressive companies paving

the way. For instance, last year, the insurance company, Prudential Singapore removed the retirement age of 62 from its manpower policy.

Prudential Singapore's Chief Executive, Wilf Blackburn noted, “People who stop working at 62 could be looking at nearly 40 years of retirement if they live to 100. A long retirement could pose financial challenges should they outlive their savings and a prolonged period of inactivity could lead to health and social problems."

The points, Blackburn makes here are not only true but relevant and makes us ask: Is it time to scrap retirement age from HR policy?

Empowering employees to decide when they want to retire, instead of controlling, who retires when on the basis of age, can be a stepping stone to prepare both organizations and employees for the era of 100-year lives.

“As context evolves, some legacy concepts need to evolve with them. While a lot of youngsters are looking to go the fast burner route to try to retire by 40s, there are those who are looking to value add till their body permits. Hence organizations need to relook where and how retirement fits in their context,” said People Matters RUL winner, Girish Kohli, DGM - HR at Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd. (Times Group). The popular opinion is that organizations, in general, have to now stop putting people in boxes and graphs. Similarly, defining when should employees retire on the basis of their age is also a practice that needs to be reconceived.

But how can organizations just give away the centuries-old practice? What

QuEST Global’s Global Head, People Function, Niketh Sundar said, “In the context of the knowledge and technology industry, age is just a number. What matters the most today is the ‘value’ an employee brings to the table and how efficiently they fulfill their duties.”

Scrapping the retirement age could hence be considered as an option but it must be done keeping in mind the business needs. Also, companies should be prepared enough to take such a decision.

opportunities and challenges does scrapping retirement age entail?

The benefits

While there are many benefits of not having defined retirement age at workplaces, there are some challenges its absences may cause as well.

Navnit Singh, Chairman, and Regional Managing Director India at Korn/ Ferry International, believes “A defined retirement age helps individuals plan their lives and future better and allows the company to create a succession plan for the growth of younger employees.”

The absence of a specific retirement age in the HR policy will lead to a lack of structure and may hamper the succession planning for companies. After a certain time, it becomes important that leaders at the top move to a different role or retire and provide opportunities to other emerging leaders.

Therefore, before organizations act onto the idea of scrapping the retirement age, they should weigh the pros and cons of the

While the debate around scrapping the retirement age continues, an aging population remains a challenge for companies.

The reality can no longer be ignored and both the organizations and the nations have to now prepare for the era of 100-year lives decision, keeping in mind the nature of the job and their business needs. For instance, for less labor-intensive jobs, companies can have older employees working till until they are able to and wish to work.

Kohli suggests, “Typically new age and services industry where physical labor is not a prime contributor could actively look at evaluating its relevance in their context.”

“Mental alertness, work stress could be other parameters that they may need to keep in mind while evaluating this,” he adds.

Singh agrees and says, “Companies first must weigh the criticality and the complexity of the job.”

Take the case of Prudential Singapore, which was more prepared for scrapping the retirement age because it already had several policies and programs in place to prepare their employees, irrespective of age, to be future-ready. These ranged from encouraging employees to take up courses in innovation, entrepreneurship, and data analytics to allow them to choose to move within the company in different roles.

Also, the option and autonomy to work from anywhere acts as an added benefit.

Prudential Singapore, in an email interaction with People Matters, shared, “We are also developing a program to help people past 50 or those beyond retirement age find new work opportunities at Prudential. The intent is to help them extend their careers with flexi-work options.”

The insurance company is holding proactive discussions with staff above 50 to explore how they can help them remain engaged, equipped and excited about their extended careers at Prudential.

HR and business leaders can learn from how Prudential Singapore is preparing their older workforce and preparing itself for the era of 100-year lives and incorporate similar practices, as per their own context.

While the debate around scrapping the retirement age continues, an aging population remains a challenge for companies. The reality can no longer be ignored and both the organizations and the nations have to now prepare for the era of 100-year lives.

To manage the aging population, organizations have to create ways for people to have meaningful, productive multi-stage and multi-dimensional careers. If they don’t seize the opportunity to engage workers across generations, they might lag behind and face potential liability concerns and skill gaps.

As someone aptly said, “You can't retire from being great!”

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The challenges

Some lessons from Prudential Singapore

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Blackburn believes that there is a lot that businesses can gain by tapping into the experience and knowledge of the more mature employees.

He said, “At Prudential, we see this group of employees as valuable assets and are committed to supporting them in extending their productive years by offering them re-skilling opportunities and flexible work schedules as we scrap the retirement age.”

Removing the retirement age from HR policy could be beneficial for corporations as they would be able to retain employees who are more engaged, skilled and purpose-driven, irrespective of their age.

As skills become more relevant than age in the VUCA world we live in, whether an employee should work or not should be purely based on their merit, performance and their capabilities.

Further, by scrapping the retirement age companies can make a larger impact and economies, globally, can benefit from it. The aging population poses a threat to nations’ GDP, HDI, and overall development and growth. With aging populations’ present more secured, their financial, mental and health well-being taken care of, the burden on the overall nation gets reduced.

But it can’t be ignored that in the coming decades countries would have to face fiscal and political pressures in relation to public systems of health care, pensions and social protection for a growing older population.

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Taking a stand on social issues A closer look at the rise of social consciousness in the corporate world and the future of organizations as social enterprises

By Manav Seth

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few weeks ago, a Zomato user canceled his order because the delivery person was a ‘non-Hindu’ and made his complaint public by tweeting to the company’s official Twitter handle.

What followed was a rare instance of an Indian organization taking a clear public stand on an issue fraught with controversy in today’s politically-charged times.

Zomato stood its ground and stated that “food has no religion”1; Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal went a step further to express pride in India’s diversity and added, “...we aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.”2 The episode went viral and was widely covered by media platforms, eliciting a

polarized response from the public. While on the one hand people lauded the restaurant aggregator for promoting inclusion and diversity, others sided with the complainant and responded by posting screenshots of uninstalling the app and giving it one-star ratings (a reminder to the 2015 incident involving Aamir Khan and Snapdeal). Let us take a closer look at the rise of social consciousness in the corporate world and the future of organizations as social enterprises.

When brands get vocal India is considered a deeply-religious and largely-conservative nation, which explains the fact that why most organizations prefer not to take political sides or

Forty-four percent millennials feel increased loyalty toward their CEO if he/she takes a stand on a relevant contemporary issue, and 47 percent believed that their CEO should take active stances on social issues

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run advertisement campaigns with social commentary and continue to play it safe.

However, corporate organizations taking a public stand on social, political or environmental issues has become a common practice in the US and Europe, particularly in the last few years. Many times, organizations design their marketing and promotion strategies based on deeply-contested social and political issues. However, how they handle the subject usually deciphers the reception they receive. So, on the one hand, Nike received a polarized reaction3 to onboarding Colin Kaepernick (who protested racial injustice in the US by kneeling during the national anthem) as their brand ambassador; on the other, the likes of Gillette4 and Pepsi5 got unanimous backlash for mishandling a sensitive and relevant issue.

There have also been several instances in the US where industry leaders have called out on the Trump administration’s discriminatory policies; last year more than 50 organizations, including Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon took a stand6 against the government’s attempt to limit the definition of gender by birth and in 2017 a similar group denounced7 the President’s ban on citizens of seven Middle Eastern and African nations from entering the US. Airbnb aired an ad as a direct response to the ban in the Superbowl championship that followed the week after the band was implemented. Last year Volkswagen and Siemens also forcefully denounced8 discrimination and xenophobia when violent protests that rocked Germany took a racist turn.

There have also been instances of organizations penalizing their employees for racist behavior and comments; last year Starbucks closed more than 8,0009 stores for several hours to train all their employ-

The impact and motivation of taking a stand Call it what you want, but there is no denying the fact that these episodes create an impression and garner attention. While many may brush off these incidents as opportunities for publicity or carefullycrafted PR, the truth is that organizations all over the world are finding it tougher to demarcate business from the values that they stand for. While there is limited data that studies the impact of organizations taking a public stand on social issues on bottom-line or employer ranking, most experts11 believe that people respond better to brands that demonstrate corporate responsibility and go beyond offering just a product or service. Globally, while organizations might not be entirely comfortable stepping into this role, but their increasing influence of societal changes has necessitated them to clarify their positions on social or political issues to ensure that ‘belief-driven’ customers continue to identify with their brand.

Apart from creating goodwill in existing customers and cementing brand

loyalty, there is another dimension to big corporate names taking a public stand on divisive issues. In today’s competitive labor market, organizations are working hard to create a unique and attractive employer brand that resonates with millennials and Gen Z workers. Organizations realize that company values play a much higher role in millennial job choices today and understand the importance of cultivating loyalty as a brand and as an employer.

A 2017 American survey12 found that 44 percent millennials feel increased loyalty toward their CEO if he/she takes a stand on a relevant contemporary issue and 47 percent believed that their CEO should take active stances on social issues. While this data cannot be directly applied to the Indian millennial demographic, one can consider the general trend in the Indian millennial workforce to be on similar lines.

It all ties in neatly with the trend wherein organizations are increasingly viewing their employees as the first customer and catering to their needs and aspirations in a similar fashion. It is also worth noting that in most cases, digital and social platforms are smartly leveraged to garner positive publicity and ensure that the message reaches the intended audience.

Organizations as social influencers The recently-published 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends13 report, which surveyed approximately 10,000 respondents from 119 countries, also

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ees on unconscious bias when one of their baristas phoned the police to remove two men of color who hadn’t bought anything while they were waiting. Similarly, Disneyowned ABC canceled10 a popular revived show Roseanne after the show’s lead actor tweeted racist and derogatory remarks about President Obama’s advisor.

noted that organizations need to reinvent themselves as ‘social enterprises’ with a human focus. The CEOs who participated in the study stated that the top measure for success is no longer just revenues or profit, but the “impact on society, including income inequality, diversity, and the environment.” It is important to note that leading a social enterprise should not be mistaken for practicing corporate social responsibility or running a social impact program, but recalibrating existing models of work to respond to pressing social and environmental challenges.

Given the fact that businesses have shaped consumption patterns and trends for decades, it is not entirely unimaginable for them to effectively influence societal norms and cultures as well. As we march into an unknown future, the vision, values and actions of enterprises will hold even greater significance for the world and how we work and live. However, for any discernible impact, organizations will have to go beyond lip-service. Experts14 suggest that businesses and leaders should take actions that support their public stance, and progressive business voices must promote inclusion and integration. Thus, the reaction elicited by a cleverly-worded tweet from Zomato shows the immense power and influence that publiclyrecognized brands command. Going ahead, organizations will find it tougher to stay silent on contemporary social issues and might as well be forced to clarify their position in order to retain customer and employee trust. The increasing number of industry leaders breaking their silence will eventually encourage other medium and small players to follow suit and if not increase the role of businesses in shaping acceptable societal values, norms and cultures, at least initiate dialogue and debate regarding the same.

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The reaction elicited by a cleverlyworded tweet from Zomato shows the immense power and influence that publicly-recognized brands command

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Preparing the workforce for the next global economic recession As the world fears for a global economic recession, the current and the emerging workforce seeks to protect their jobs while the companies want to safeguard themselves from the crippling effects of the recession on earnings

By Drishti Pant

T

he escalating US-China tariff war, the slowing growth in countries like the US and Germany, the Chinese debt crisis and the controversial Brexit are only some of the many trends creating a fear that global economic recession might be just around the corner.

Economies globally are showing signs of acute weakness; the biggest of the industries are slowing down and if we are to believe Morgan Stanley, the global economy will be entering into recession in three quarters.

US China trade war & its impact on the global economy The International Monetary Fund has shared that the trade war between the United States and China is already triggering a global economic slowdown.

According to the group, the US-China tariffs, including those implemented and announced, could potentially reduce the level of global gross domestic product 26

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(GDP) by 0.8 percent in 2020, with additional losses in future years.

In fact, the GDP of the world's largest economy, US, slowed to 2.1 percent annualized growth in the second quarter.

The US-China trade tensions put pressure on the Southeast Asian economies as well. According to reports, five of the region's six major economies – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, saw slower growth than in January to March. Thailand and Singapore are the most to suffer as they face falling demand for their key manufacturing exports, such as electronics.

The Indonesian economy, expanded by just five percent, the Thai economy by 2.3 percent and Singapore's by 0.1 percent.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry cited, "The Singapore economy is likely to continue to face strong headwinds for the rest of the year."

The central banks in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia have already cut interest rates in a bid to bolster

their economies. But are these measures enough? And how far they can help in mitigating the impact economic slowdown is creating on the labor market?

Rumbles of the footsteps of approaching global recession Banks across the globe have announced more than 48,500 job cuts this year. While Deutsche Bank tops the list with 18,000 job cuts by the end of 2022, others like Spain’s Banco Santander SA, HSBC Holdings Plc and Barclays Plc in the UK, and France’s Societe Generale SA are slashing thousands of jobs as well.

There have been layoffs in other industries as well. General Motors announced its plan of cutting around 350 jobs in Thailand. Investment banking company UBS has eliminated more than 150 support jobs around the globe in the last few months.

Most recently, Internet media company Rooster Teeth laid off 13 percent of its staff, the first big round of layoffs in the company’s history.

In India, a few sectors like the automobile industry are dangerously close to recession. Approximately two lakh jobs have been cut across automobile dealerships in India in the last three months as vehicle retailers take to reducing manpower to tide over the impact of the sales slump, as per the industry body, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA).

Further, Parle Products, one of the largest biscuit makers in India, shared its plan to cut 10,000 jobs across the functions amid slowing economic growth and falling demand in the rural belts of the country.

Preparing for global recession With the escalating fears of global economic recession, the current and the emerging workforce seeks to protect their jobs, while the companies want to safeguard themselves from the crippling effects of the recession on earnings. There are

consistent performance track record or have been lacking in demonstrating learnability is always at risk - more so when there is an anticipated downturn,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, President, Indian Staffing Federation.

Develop or harness adversity quotient: Adversity Quotient (AQ), coined

by Paul Stoltz in 1997, measures the ability of a person to deal with adversities in his or her life. The world of work has always been unpredictable and the only ones who have been able to face and fight these complexities and found opportunities amidst challenges have been able to thrive.

Many often give up before the crisis even approaches, while others put up a fight till the end. “It is crucial to have a winning mindset,” said Rohit Kumar, Director HR, Kellogg South Asia.

The workforce and the corporates of today can take a page from the journey of

by 57 percent. Netflix had then latched onto the opportunity and provided less costly mode of entertainment to consumers.

While the cable and satellite TV services, which were far more expensive, were struggling to maintain their consumer base, Netflix innovated and changed its strategy to acquire more customers. Its innovative approach was also paired with a strong knowledge of its consumers, competitors and the entire market.

Scope of gig economy in the times of recession With most organizations looking to cut costs, permanent jobs might be slashed but there might be an emergence of more contractual work. Also, contingent and alternative employment might become more of a necessity for workers, increasing

some of the companies which have actually thrived during a recession.

For instance, Lego, which witnessed a profit growth of more than 63 percent, reaching an all-time high of profitability.

What it did differently was, it expanded its visions and while Americans were facing the worst of the recession, Lego expanded into Asia and made concentrated efforts to build sales in Europe.

Be Innovative: Innovation or out of the box approach has worked for many in previous phases of recession. In fact, innovation is something that will help the workforce as well as the corporates in the future, irrespective of whether global economic recession occurs or not.

“In my view rather than latching onto the narrative of potential job losses we should focus on innovation,” exclaimed Chakraborty.

Let’s take the example of Netflix, now the streaming powerhouse of the world.

When recession hit in 2008, many companies in the entertainment space struggled to survive. But Netflix had managed to attract three million more subscribers by the end of 2009, with its stock price rising

F e a t u r e

no guaranteed ways for the workforce to protect their jobs during a recession; however, there are a few common practices that might be helpful to face the troubled times looming ahead.

Continuous learning: Irrespective of which sector one belongs to, it is important to build awareness and knowledge of the trends shaping the entire global economy.

To ensure that they are not caught in a rather unpleasant surprise, the workforce should be familiar with how the economy is shaping. Further, they should deliberate as to how these trends will impact their sector and change the demand for the skills and capabilities. With an awareness of the world, their own sector and their own capabilities and interests, they should then identify their shortcomings and develop a learning path for themselves.

As the world of work become more complex and the economy further slows down, organizations will have to take some harsh decisions to reduce costs. The ones who are more adept and agile will be preferred over others.

“I feel irrespective of economic fluctuations an employee who doesn’t have

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Irrespective of sectors, it is important to build awareness of the trends shaping the entire global economy. To ensure that they are not caught in a rather unpleasant surprise, the workforce should be familiar with how the economy is shaping

the supply of people willing and wanting to take these jobs. But while recession could leave more people looking for the gig work, it could also deflate the gig economy.

Advance Partners, a company that supports staffing agencies, warns that during recession, often the first to get affected are contingent workers. So, possibly how the gig workforce will suffer could be in terms of low wages and poor salary arrangements, but the supply and demand of such employees might continue to bolster the gig economy even amidst global recession. Although a global economic recession is not guaranteed, but even if it arrives, it does not have to be the end.

The economies, the businesses and the workforce can build on their strengths, learn from each other and continue their endeavor to survive and excel.

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Elbert Hubbard October 2019 |

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Upskill your workforce for the digital age -KPMG’s Nhlamu Dlomu

Nhlamu Dlomu, the Global Head of People for KPMG International, in an exclusive interaction with People Matters, shares her thoughts on talent acquisition and reskilling, how culture can actually be a competitive advantage for organizations, and her vision for the future of work

By Mastufa Ahmed

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hlamu Dlomu is the Global Head of People for KPMG International. She’s responsible for leading the execution of a Global People Strategy for over 200,000 KPMG people in over 150 countries and territories.

With over 19 years’ of experience in management consulting and strategic human resources across various industry sectors, Nhlamu’s experience spans culture transformation, change management consulting, leadership development and other strategic people management practices.

Prior to her current role, Nhlamu was the CEO of KPMG's South African firm, and more recently served as KPMG's Head of Global Culture and Organizational Development. She’s also a former HR and organizational development executive for one of South Africa’s largest banks.

Here are the excerpts of our interview with Nhlamu.

You have extensive experience in management consulting and strategic human resources across various industry sectors. Tell us how your career journey has evolved over the years.

My journey started during my Master’s program where I specialized in Psychology. I finished school at a young age and by 21, I was enrolled in a post-graduate program which gave me invaluable insights on behavioral psychology which I’ve been able to leverage throughout my career. After school, I had the option to start my own practice, but I was offered an opportunity to join a niche consulting firm and that’s where my career began.

Since then, I’ve worked in Management Consulting and Human Resources and advised Financial Services, Mining and Professional Services clients on a range of topics, but mainly focused around organizational development.

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I rejoined KPMG’s South African firm in 2012 to transform the People and Change division within the Management Consulting team. I then took on the role of Head of People and sat on the KPMG in South Africa Board before being appointed CEO of KPMG in South Africa at a time it was undergoing a significant transformation.

I’m now the Global Head of People for KPMG International and sit on the Global Management Team with responsibility for leading the execution of our Global People Strategy.

With companies struggling to anticipate the needs and expectations of future generations of the workforce, how should organizations gear up to face the future challenge from a people perspective in a world where uncertainty is the new normal as the KPMG 2019 Global CEO Outlook identified?

Resilience in today’s dynamic marketplace is about the ability to constantly evolve and adapt to fast-paced change. The KPMG 2019 Global CEO

Employees want to feel a sense of belonging and autonomy in their roles, so the nature of how we, as HR professionals, design and structure jobs impacts employee engagement and well-being

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Outlook found that to master resilience, CEOs need to drive an organization-wide digital reinvention.

This means masterminding a fundamental reboot of skills and technology, accelerating the adoption of advanced technologies and undertaking wholesale upskilling of the workforce. 84 percent of CEOs are actively transforming their leadership teams to build resilience.

Disruptive technologies, from Artificial Intelligence to virtual reality are transforming the world of work. To drive this ambitious remodeling of both systems and personnel, CEOs must give their learning and development teams the strategic backing and resources required. They also need to put in place effective governance so that the resources and investment are focused on areas where they will have the greatest impact.

CEOs recognize that this trend is accelerating and requires them to focus. Four in ten (44 percent) are intending to upskill more than half of their current workforce in new digital capabilities over the next three years. Organizations also need to prepare for other factors like managing multiple

As an HR community, we can futureproof our organizations by upskilling ourselves on critical industry skills. For that, we need to enable people-related innovations in technology that support our people’s way of working generations in the workplace, the changing nature of macro-dynamics like family structures, and embracing the concept of career customization.

There’s also a stronger focus than ever on inclusion and diversity in the broadest sense; organizations are increasingly looking at how neurodiversity and social diversity impact workplace culture, and this has initiated some wonderful conversations on how we all think differently and how that can be best leveraged to drive innovative solutions for clients.

As the Global Head of People for KPMG International responsible for leading the execution of a people strategy for over 200,000 KPMG people in more than 150 countries and territories, what is your talent acquisition and reskilling mantra?

Any specific initiative that you have in mind and plan to implement in the coming times?

At KPMG, we have strong People teams which are made up of senior HR executives from across the KPMG global network who work collaboratively to identify key global HR trends both internally and externally. Our mantra is to develop a listening strategy to keep up with marketplace trends and research, so we can stay on top of the pulse of what’s important to our people and the 30

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people we need to attract. That way, we can attract top talent and retain our best people.

This kind of data has helped us tailor our learning programs and embed a mindset of lifelong learning into our culture. We are rolling out new global learning and people technology platforms that enhance our ability to understand the skills our people need and match them to a learning curriculum that allows them to grow and thrive in their roles. We’re investing heavily in digital skills training as well as human-centered skills like design thinking and leadership capability.

We’re also shifting our talent acquisition approach through global programs like our KPMG Ideation Challenge that brings STEM and business students together in a hackathon format to develop creative ideas to business challenges. They compete in their country and then globally, eventually collaborating with our digital and data specialists to develop prototype solutions they can use to gain seed funding. It’s helping shift the perception among the top talent that KPMG firms are made up of ‘just accountants’.

With organizations shifting their culture to become more focused on building capabilities for innovation, and the ability to act like owners, do you think culture can actually be a competitive advantage?

Most definitely! As an example, digital transformation is as much about culture as it is about technology. Research shows that implementing digital tools are not enough in their own right. If you don’t address culture in parallel, the potential of these new tools is never realized.

Digital culture is instead built through how employees interact with the technology at a cognitive, emotional and behavioral level. If a new technology enables employees to work more effectively, gives them a sense of control and mastery over their roles, it’ll be more likely to shift their day-today behavior.

What’s your vision for the future of work now that business dynamics are changing and new age technologies are emerging? What skills do the global HR managers of the future need to acquire?

Employees are increasingly looking to their workplace to provide purpose and meaning in their lives. Employees want to feel a sense of belonging and autonomy in their roles, so the nature of how we, as HR professionals, design and structure jobs impacts employee engagement and well-being.

As an HR community, we can future-proof our organizations by upskilling ourselves on critical industry skills. First, we need to enable people-related innovations in technology that support our people’s way of working. We need to manage workforce demographics in line with organizational needs and keep people costs in control, while at the same time ensuring market competitiveness. And lastly, we need to support our organizations to build the right culture and build resilience.

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Leela Bassi

Burnout at work

Before you think ‘it won't happen to me’ Burnout occurs over a long period of time and the consequences can be life-altering, which is why it's important to spot the signs early

B j ob

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urnout - a feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion that touches us all, when least expected, mainly due to stress, working in demanding conditions. Burnout occurs over a long period of time, but the consequences can be life-altering, which is why it's important to spot the signs early.

Anna spent over two years building her own coaching business from scratch working days and nights, constantly looking for improvements and ideas. Passion, enthusiasm and grit were her allies enabling her to thrive. However, six months later, Anna felt constantly exhausted, stressed & frustrated.

Married with two young kids she struggled to find quality time with them. Her husband Pete was becoming concerned about her health as well as the family’s wellbeing: since she had become such high profile, she had become anxious about minor issues and her sleep deprivation prevented her from focusing for long period at once.

Pete spotted the signs of burnout almost immediately: chronic fatigue, short-tempered, suspicious, and susceptible to colds, and headaches.

There are five stages of burnouts.

Stage 1: Enthusiasm Anna had set her personal goal high and invested a great deal of energy into her business, developing workshops, creating social events, expanding further marketing projects, investing in future client’s retreats. Anna was extremely excited about "making it happen" and motivated about her future. Nothing could have stopped her.

Stage 2: Stagnation Anna's work had become such a fixation everything else was now secondary and her family and personal priority suffered. She was only doing things that she described as "non-negotiable" such as taking the kids to school, making excuses, avoiding people or commitments that required her time and ultimately becoming a recluse.

Instead, she would rather network & attend workshops to meet like-minded people. Spending a lot of time and money travelling hoping to meet future clients. The fact is, trying harder might not change anything or lead to success and that's when disappointment sets in. Anna focused on

Stress diaries can be illuminating, if you keep up with them for a reasonable time. Once you discover the root causes of your burnout, look at what you can do to resolve it 32

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Exercise improves oxygen flow to the brain. Essentially, when you start exercising, you feel better because your brain and body can do more. Exercising makes you feel happier and increase your energy levels a specific routine and began to shift to autopilot which brought her to where she was.

Stage 3: Frustration

Despair took place and Anna saw no way out of her situation that's when she became resigned and indifferent: finding it difficult to feel excitement, motivation, or passion in anything she did.

Instead, she blamed everyone for not giving her space and the time she needed, everyone around her became a nuisance and didn't seem to understand anything! She found herself procrastinating about minor details that were not related to her work and found herself short-tempered, irritated and angry all the time.

Stage 5: Intervention This culminated in 2018 when a feeling of helplessness came over her, Anna was physically and mentally ill. Her immune system was shattered and unable to cope with what was coming next. Anna developed multiple back to back chest infections, whooping cough, pleurisy, pneumonia, broken ribs with excessive coughing which ultimately led to depression. Her mind and body switched off and for four months she was unable to function on a normal basic level. She couldn't work, prepare meals, do housework, drive, concentrate, or even hold a conversation. At this point Anna realized this could no longer go on, every-

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Stage 4: Apathy

thing was becoming a weight and it was now time to intervene and provide a step by step plan.

Here are some ways of recovering from burnout: Keep a stress diary: Each day write down what causes you stress and record why the event stressed you. Stress diaries can be illuminating, if you keep up with them for a reasonable time.

Once you discover the root causes of your burnout, look at what you can do to resolve it.

Get plenty of exercises: Exercise improves oxygen flow to the brain. Essentially, when you start exercising, you feel better because your brain and body can do more. Exercising makes you feel happier and increase your energy levels.

Re-evaluate, revamp and revive your goals: Get realistic with your time management.

Set yourself a schedule and stay on track by having a buddy with whom you can share your thoughts.

Burnout can happen to anyone, at any stages of our lives, when least expected. Anna had always been very healthy with no underlying health issues (never smoked, or drink) and yet she hit rock bottom. Anna still has to battle daily to take time out, but she is on the right track to reprogram her brain.

So, before you think "it won't happen to me" watch out for the signs and think again.

j ob

Anna experienced a sense of powerlessness as her efforts did not visibly pay off.

She then fell into the trap of not leaving her home office, not exercising, not meeting up with friends and ignoring her family.

She used all these things to try and justify 'how busy she was' and in turn, she became agitated, stressed, uptight, annoyed, frustrated and confused.

Of course, this led to a downward spiral of negative emotions which she pushed to the side and continued telling people it's "just a busy time and things will settle down shortly".

About the author

Leela Bassi is a UK based multilingual keynote speaker and Transformational Coach.

October 2019 |

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Boost CEO Allan Taylor on using tech to empower workforce in hospitality Allan Taylor, CEO, Boost, Singapore discusses

how technology can be used to empower hotel employees to ensure a great hotel guest satisfaction

w o r k t e c h

By Drishti Pant

A

llan Taylor, the CEO of Boost had more than 25 years of experience in technology, specializing in hospitality, healthcare, and telecommunications and internet industries. Back in the 1990s, he worked as Managing Director Southeast Asia in MICROS Systems Inc, then as President and CEO Asia Pacific, Bartech Systems International.

He also worked with other companies like IDeaS, Healthe Care Australia, FCS Computer Systems and Qooco.

In 2018, he co-founded Singapore-based hospitality learning platform Boost. Currently, as the Chief Executive Officer at Boost he manages a team across Asia and strives to provide best-in-class talent selection, training, engagement, and motivation for hotel employees to deliver higher hotel guest satisfaction and financial performance.

In a recent interaction with People Matters, Taylor shares why he started Boost and discusses how technology can be used to empower hotel employees to ensure a great hotel guest satisfaction.

Here is an excerpt from the interview.

What inspired you to start Boost? Skilling is a global challenge across functions and industry.

Why did you choose to focus only on the hospitality industry?

I come from a hospitality background and I’ve spent the initial years of my career managing hospitality technology, and property management systems. In my experience, I have seen hiring staff who speak the relevant languages being a key challenge for employers in the hospitality industry.

General Managers wished to train their employees

For hotels and other employers in the hospitality industry, great customer experience is their biggest reward 34

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in these languages. Owing to the demand for more language training in the sector and lack of availability of such tools, we incepted Boost. Through mobile spoken language assessment, learning and vocational skills training, we now aim to empower employees to provide better service, resulting in happier and more loyal guests.

Language is enough to make future interactions easier. It gives you more confidence and helps you in approaching more foreign guests.

How do you plan to help the workforce in the hospitality sector with their learning needs? Can you share more about how Boost's mobile learning solution works?

Ever since its launch in 2018, how has the traction been for Boost?

We have expanded diversely. In October 2018 we opened an office in Singapore. Then we also have direct offices in Thailand and Indonesia. We also expanded our operations in Tokyo, Japan, and China, particularly in Shanghai and Beijing. We are also present in Ukraine and Vietnam.

Boost is currently used by over 227 hotels throughout Asia, teaching over 20,000 hotel employees the skills needed to enhance guest service and grow their careers.

How do you plan to further develop the current solutions? Are you looking to bring in

The major hotel chains, globally, fear that technologies might affect their business negatively. But while there will be major changes and we will see more automation, hospitality is a sector where people and human interaction lie at the core

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Boost is a mobile learning platform, powered by a proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Analytics system, with interactive animations and gamified content to make learning fun and engaging. We provide a range of training solutions through five different mobile applications, each designed to address different learning requirements in the hospitality industry.

For instance, Boost Voice, enhances staff ’s comprehension, speaking and vocabulary skills in Mandarin and/or English with course content developed by hoteliers themselves. It enables employees to speak a language that is most relevant to their workplace.

Then there is Boost Skills, a vocational training solution that features more than 130 practical lessons that simulate real-life service scenarios in food and beverage (F&B) service and housekeeping. The app provides self-paced lesson plans designed to improve service delivery standards and consistency across both disciplines.

We also have a situational upselling training tool named Boost Upsell. It enables hotel staff to position and capture additional revenues in-hotel or on-property, through food and beverage upsells, room upgrades, and promotional specials.

Improved communication leads to better service and helps the hotel staff give a good experience to the guests. For hotels and other employers in the hospitality industry, great customer experience is their biggest reward. Additionally, when employees’ language skills are increased, and vocational skills are enhanced, they become more confident and happy.

more innovation and new solutions? Can you also share your expansion plans?

We are striving for global recognition, so expansion will always be a priority. We are also working towards building a voice recognition software.

Going forward, two-step verification will become standard and it will be much more interactive.

We will further improve the vocational skills and training services.

As a veteran in the hospitality sector, how do you predict the industry landscape to evolve in the future? How do you think companies and workforce can prepare for these changes?

Technology has bolstered the hospitality industry. However as the technology keeps on advancing, the industry continues to get its head around it. Given the pace at which the industry is changing, businesses and the workforce have to take more ownership. The major hotel chains, globally, fear that technologies might affect their business negatively. But while there will be major changes and we will see more automation, hospitality is a sector where people and human interaction lie at the core. Great guest experience is incomplete without a human factor.

The companies in the hospitality sector, hence, have to figure out how to balance tech and human touch for maximum success.

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Visty Banaji

A Hippocratic Oath for HR Making a public commitment to uphold high standards

The road less travelled

For HR, an oath of professional conduct could be administered at the time students pass out from an HR post-graduation program. The convocation is perhaps the most convenient vehicle for a collective administration of the oath

O

aths are almost as old as human language. According to some experts they have "been traced to a pre-religious, indeed, pre-animistic period of culture. Supernatural beings were unknown, and man believed that he possessed magic power which could produce any desired result. A vehicle of this power was the curse, which could kill as effectively as physical force...

Thus, by use of a particular curse, man could determine both disaster and victim. Indeed, that victim could be himself. The oath was a self-curse, uttered in conditional form, operating irrevocably upon occurrence of the condition. Thus the selfcurse could be utilized as a means of guaranteeing that a promise would be performed."1 Starting from such a hoary past, oaths have been sworn through the ages and continue to be used around the world, for example, to commit holders of high office and military personnel to loyalty and high standards of conduct. They are testament to the power of the publicly spoken word to bind the speaker to what s/he has affirmed. I will pick oaths of a more recent origin (a mere 2,300 years ago) as a model for designing an oath

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to be sworn by those entering the HR profession. I am referring to the Hippocratic Oath2 which "has endured not because of its specific guidelines and proscriptions but because it represents one’s commitment to the Hippocratic tradition – a tradition based upon sound scientific investigation combined with patient-oriented care."3 Perhaps there can be no better starting point for building an HR credo than to have its foundations rest upon robust behavioural science principles (rather than current fashions or pressures) and an overriding people centricity (instead of sacrificing it at the altar of Mammon or Management).

Professional Oaths Before crystallizing the oath that I have proposed below for HR, I reviewed several extant instances, though some of them go by a different nomenclature. Several of these do not meet the three requirements that are necessary for making an effective public avowal and abiding by it. What are these requirements?

In the first place, the oath should be brief to the point of being memorizable. Of course, professional affirmations (such as the Hippocratic oath) can be lengthier than the oaths to high office or bodies like the Boy Scouts, but not by much.

Secondly, these commitments must be general enough to apply to most people and situations faced in these professions. At the same time, they need to be specific enough to proscribe certain actions while enjoining or encouraging others.

Lastly, the oath must indicate, either explicitly or through the sequence it adopts, an order of priority between the stakeholders that are mentioned. Obviously, this applies only in cases where there is more than one stakeholder which, for instance, is not the case when ministers take their oaths. In the absence of such prioritization, it is always possible for practitioners to weasel out of the observance of one injunction by quoting a conflicting demand from another. Of course, this does not mean that practical compromises and trade-offs cannot be made. It’s just that the balance must be weighed in favour of the higher priorities.

The HR professional’s oath

Here is the oath I propose: I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I shall treat all the people for whose HR I am responsible (regardless of their level, background, nature of contract and whether I am an internal HR professional or consultant to the organization) as ends in themselves4 and seek to maximize the aggregate happiness of people in the organization as my primary goal.5 I shall live, guard and disseminate the values of the organization as well as a robust code of fairness6 and actively oppose and root out dishonesty, disrespect, discrimination and differentials that are unjustified or excessive. Should it be necessary, I shall sacrifice my career (or consulting assignment) and tenure in defence of these principles.

At the same time, I shall adopt the most creative means I can to design work to be intrinsically exciting for all individuals, find ways to allow them to develop to their full potential and act affirmatively for those who are disadvantaged.

I shall go all-out to surpass the expectations of the organization, its top management and my business partners (or clients) to aid in their decisionmaking about people and to provide them with a skilled, productive and committed workforce that can deliver the firm’s strategic requirements and

All effective oaths, whether for high state office, military service or entry to medical practice are administered by a very respected personage in public, at solemn ceremonies held just when the person is about to enter that profession or role

October 2019 |

The road less travelled

There can be many variations to the oath an HR professional can take. As mentioned earlier, I reviewed several affirmations or codes of conduct used by professional HR bodies and educational institutes. I found none of them fully satisfactory, partly because they didn’t meet one or more of the criteria listed above but even more because their people concerns seemed to be side shows rather than occupying front-centre stage. How does a code add value if it enjoins the taker to do something that is already in her or his annual goal-sheet?

I have attempted to remedy these handicaps in the oath I have proposed. I am sure this too can be improved further but I hope it starts a debate on what the unshakable principles to which our profession must be committed should be.

thus satisfy key stakeholders, including customers and shareholders. Prizing my credibility and the trust I enjoy above all rewards, I shall remain conscious and careful about the means I adopt in attaining organizational and personal goals, avoiding manipulative politicking, sycophancy or misuse of the confidential information I possess and the confidences shared with me.7 I shall not be ashamed to admit my ignorance, seek the guidance of more knowledgeable individuals and learn with humility from whoever can teach me (no matter how junior the person). I shall not forget the debt and respect I owe to those who have taught me and freely pass on the best of my learnings to those who work with me as well as through professional bodies, educational institutes or other means of dissemination. I shall continue the process of learning as well as developing myself and others throughout my professional career.

I shall retain a scientific temper towards my discipline and tailor innovative and appropriate solutions for the organization’s needs without falling prey to fashions and fads, regardless of how senior a person in the organization or profession champions them.8

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The road less travelled

I shall maintain a balance between over-hasty decision-making and indecisiveness. When my decisions or recommendations go wrong, I shall own my mistakes at the earliest and seek to learn from them while guiding others to prevent repeating them.

In sum, I shall always try to act so as to preserve the finest traditions of our profession that I have observed in the great HR torchbearers it has been my good fortune to learn from and seek to be a model (even if not on such a lofty scale as these predecessors) for the generations that follow.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy my work and the relations I build throughout my career, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter.

Hippocratic – not hypocritical – Oath

If one of the noblest professions in the world (though it too has its quacks and exploiters) has found it worthwhile to retain such a tradition for well over two millennia, shouldn’t HR at least give it a sincere try?

Start at the beginning Regardless of whether the oath precisely as I have proposed it or some modified variant of it finds general acceptance, the question remains about how it is to be embedded into the psyche of HR practitioners. All effective oaths, whether for high state office, military service or entry to medical practice are administered by a very respected personage in public, at solemn ceremonies held just when the person is about to enter that profession or role.

For HR too, an oath of professional conduct could be administered at the time students pass out from an HR post-graduation programme. The convocation is perhaps the most convenient vehicle for a collective administration of the oath.

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We must remember, however, that a significant proportion of HR practitioners (yours truly included) do not possess a formal qualification in HR. This is where the professional HR associations can play a major role. Most of them have some kind of code which they routinely mumble before their regular meetings. As already mentioned, most of these oaths are inadequate for providing clear guidance in taking real-life decisions and overemphasize business deliverables. To me that is like a Hippocratic oath that put the hospital and its profits rather than the care of the patient first (I know that too happens in the practice of medicine nowadays but surely that is counter to the Hippocratic spirit). I, therefore, feel a common overarching oath that gives pride of place to people should be administered to new members at the time they join or are initiated into any professional HR association. Perhaps, at a future date, HR associations may also consider setting up committees to review cases of complaints against association members who have transgressed the oath in a major way.

Even before educational institutes and professional associations gear themselves up to put the oath into place, progressive business enterprises could introduce it as part of their induction for entrants into HR.

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There is a real problem with the idea of an oath for HR professionals and I will not attempt to minimize it. The problem is whether the oath will be credible, particularly to employees9 who are its main object. Admittedly, at least some of us have not set great records of believability and peoplecentricity. For examples, see the description of 'The Duplicitous Dodger Asterisk' in my earlier column on detestable CHROs.10 The only response I can provide is that that public affirmations (and re-affirmations) of an HR oath are likely to reduce even if it does not eliminate behaviours that lose us employee trust. Once again, I take encouragement from the medical profession. "David Warriner, a clinical fellow at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, regards the oath as 'a moral compass…It helps you with circumstances you face where you’re not sure what to do,' he says. 'It also gives you a sense of pride and purpose in terms of the wider scope of medical practice and the importance of putting patients at the heart of decisions you make, which we can forget sometimes.' For Warriner, the original oath still resonates, particularly the phrase: 'I will utterly reject harm and mischief…' "11 The solemnly spoken word expressed through a public oath does have an impact on standards the speaker will live up to. If one of the noblest professions in the world (though it too has its quacks and exploiters) has found it worthwhile to retain such a tradition for well over two millennia, shouldn’t HR at least give it a sincere try?

About the author

Visty Banaji is the Founder and CEO of Banner Global Consulting (BGC)

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With most companies embracing a sweeping program of digital transformation, businesses increasingly need to access a new generation of workforce that can exploit new technology and drive this change

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October 2019 |

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alent acquisition has never been fiercer with advanced organizations coming to recognize “talent” as a critical element of growth. With the increasing skill shortages and low employment rates, the talent acquisition process has become harder. Seventy percent of respondents to the Global Human Capital Trends 2019 survey done by Deloitte cited recruitment as an important issue, and 16 percent said it was one of the three most urgent issues their organization would face in 2019.

Winning the war for talent for organizations today calls for more than conventional approaches of recruitment. Today, it’s nearly impossible to operate a scalable recruitment function without a variety of tools for job placement, advertising, candidate relationship management, pre-hire screening, assessment, scheduling, and onboarding. Each of these processes are complex and almost all are being reinvented with AI. While the recruiter is still central to all great recruiting, companies now realize that without a strong technology infrastructure, they can’t scale or measure their results. As the economy slows and technology continues to mature, it’s important for TA teams to stay current on the tools market and make sure they select vendors that have proven solutions that scale to their needs.

Experts say companies that make more informed decisions about hiring, skilling and retaining talent will be the ones that survive the future of work. But how do organizations go about it? Plus, in a candidate-driven market right now, with candidates having multiple offers to choose from, how would companies reinforce that their employees are committed and engaged?

The cover story delves deep into strategies organizations follow to hire and retain best talent, how they plan to harness technology to reinvent recruitment and hiring, aspects of talent acquisition they plan to improve in the coming year, and the hiring challenges HR organizations face.

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By Mastufa Ahmed

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Organizations should embrace agile approach to transform lengthy recruiting processes into efficient ones

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Moving from requisition-based hiring to pipeline hiring will be more agile and effective in bringing the best talent to the table, says Tracy Keogh, Chief Human Resource Officer of HP, in an interaction with People Matters

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Think outside the box with hiring, educate managers to be great talent scouts, teach them how to identify talent, stress the importance of hiring for growth mindset and aligning with the culture

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racy Keogh has worldwide responsibility for HP's strategic human resources activities, employee communications and social responsibility initiatives. She leads all aspects of HR, including workforce development and organization effectiveness, benefits and compensation, staffing, global inclusion and diversity, and HR processes and information management.

Prior to joining HP in 2011, Tracy was the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Hewitt Associates, the world’s largest provider of human resources consulting services. Her accomplishments included creating an award-winning virtual learning and development network, implementing a disciplined global succession planning process, and designing a

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the reality of having to prepare their employees with new skill sets. With unemployment rates at an all-time low, and niche skill sets on the rise, companies will be competing more fiercely for talent, particularly in the hottest marketplaces across the globe.

The key will be staying ahead of what skills are needed for your company going forward. It starts with understanding the skillsets of your current employee base to determine whether they are the right ones for the company’s path forward. And then, the next step is to develop accelerated training programs to help employees learn these skills, supplementing that with hiring external talent to fill the skill gaps.

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comprehensive and successful employee engagement program.

Previously, Tracy held the top HR job at Bloomberg LP, the financial data, news, and analytics provider. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Tracy was Vice President of Human Resources for Analog Devices. In addition to her human resources background, Tracy has a wide range of leadership experience in operations, sales, marketing, and consulting for a number of organizations.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you view the current talent acquisition landscape? Do you think recruiting is tougher in 2019?

With the rapid acceleration of technology advancements in all industries, pretty much every company is being faced with

From an external talent view, it is critical to build and maintain a strong pipeline of active and passive talent so that recruiters can easily tap this network at any time.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide possibilities for automation and efficiency by helping streamline the process and enable recruiters to spend more time selling the company and providing a strong candidate and hiring manager experience.

At the same time, you must also keep an eye out to make sure that the algorithm itself is not biased and doesn’t inadvertently exclude entire pools of talent. The key here is balancing AI with human review and constantly fine-tuning.

What are the top strategies that you follow to win the war for top talent?

At HP, we believe in hiring leaders at all levels and we embrace a talent mindset of developing our own employees first, with external hiring focused on high potential and niche skilled talent. We enable recruiters to become true talent consultants and we educate managers to embrace a talent scout culture.

Ultimately, we strive to build an employer value proposition that makes both internal and external talent see our company as a best place to work. It is also about creating a personal journey and an emotional connection with our employer brand. Having a well-articulated EVP that is shared by internal brand ambassadors and communicated in a way that resonates with different candidate personas helps us differentiate ourselves in the market.

Agile isn't just for tech anymore, it's transforming how organizations hire, develop and manage their people. How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring?

Here’s the key thing that everyone in the company should understand: hiring is a community effort. It is not just part of your DNA, and each employee should understand and be committed to hire great people into the company. Good talent brings good results, great talent brings extraordinary results.

Think outside the box with hiring, educate managers to be great talent scouts, teach them how to identify talent, stress the importance of hiring for growth mindset and aligning with the culture. Hold them accountable for the quality of talent they hire and how that talent progresses

At HP, throughout our recruiting lifecycle we are assessing candidate soft skills.

We have built an assessment tool which is aligned with our company culture, highlighting key attributes on the talent we want to hire and who will be successful at HP. This tool enables recruiters and the interview team to delve further into the individual’s softer skills, helping determine whether this is the right fit. In addition, we assess talent for a growth mindset, this assessment helps us determine those candidates who have an aptitude and curiosity to continuous learning.

With unemployment rates at an all-time low and niche skill sets on the rise, companies will be competing more fiercely for talent across the globe. The key will be staying ahead of what skills are needed for your company going forward With Artificial Intelligence set to impact every aspect of HR and talent acquisition in particular, how do you see the rise of next-gen technologies and its role on recruitment in general?

Artificial Intelligence and its impact on the recruitment of women and minorities is currently a topic of high concern in the HR community. In the US, software development continues to be dominated by white men: only 25 percent computer scientists are women in the US and minorities are in the single digits. Hence, the algorithms that are supposed to be more impartial than humans, in fact perpetuate the same biases. And that is causing, among others, automatic rejections for job applications due to racialized names.

Algorithms for online job ads sometimes inadvertently omit entire populations, including the very pool of diverse talent companies are trying to tap into. The engineers and scientists who are developing AI technology must do a better job of building inclusion and diversity into AI design by using the right data to train AI systems to be inclusive.

At HP, we are aware that algorithms can perpetuate human bias and we take a balanced approach to recruitment with an emphasis on human interaction.

What’s the future of talent acquisition?

What are the top challenges HR organizations face when it comes to talent acquisition and recruitment?

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What can business leaders do to ensure that their recruiting processes are truly maximizing their organization’s ability to attract and retain the best possible talent as they grow?

What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at HP to identify soft skills?

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Agile recruiting and hiring practices can have many benefits to the company and the employees. All efficiencies will maximize the work your team does, saving time and money, and enabling for both scalability and growth. An agile approach can help transform lengthy recruiting processes into highly efficient ones. The key is having recruiters do frequent checkpoints in the hiring lifecycle providing clear communication among stakeholders to identify any changes. This way, the recruitment team can modify the different processes based on the feedback.

This allows the recruiters to adapt the modifications so that the next candidate cycle can move more quickly to identify and qualify top talent.

and reward the ones who are importers and exporters of talent.

The future of talent acquisition revolves around the ability to identify and attract the right talent, faster.

In order to this, moving from requisitionbased hiring to pipeline hiring will be more agile and effective in bringing the best talent to the table. It is also critical to remove time-consuming administrative tasks and invest in AI to empower recruiters to focus on building relationships both with qualified talent and hiring managers.

HR organizations will be most prepared if they are keeping their own on the latest trends in AI, but as I said earlier, it is critical to constantly review tools and fine-tune algorithms with an eye on ensuring diversity in the pipeline.

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At Walmart, we are engaged in a significant transformation of talent acquisition Amy Goldfinger, SVP, Global Talent Acquisition, Walmart, in an interaction with People Matters, shares her take on new-age talent acquisition, strategies they follow at Walmart, and how HR organizations can leverage the power of agile practices in hiring

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my leads the effort to attract market-making talent to Walmart, the Fortune #1 company. Previously, she led the Global Human Resources Advisory Practice at Heidrick & Struggles, where she focused on senior level searches across industry and advised clients in the areas of HR transformation, talent management program strategy and execution, and onboarding.

Prior to joining the Firm, Amy was a Product Director at Dun & Bradstreet, managing a portfolio of risk management products and services. Earlier, Amy spent six years at Booz Allen Hamilton, specializing in the design and implementation of leadership development programs and

competency-based human capital systems, including selection and recruitment, and post-merger integrations for both public and private organizations.

Amy earned her MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Psychology with a minor in Business from the University of Rochester. She is a Certified Professional in Human Resources Management and has a certificate in executive coaching.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

Do you think the demands on HR leaders from the CEOs have shifted from support to being truly anchored in the business?

HR has become a true unlock to the strategy of organizations. This is not new, but it’s become more widely accepted by CEOs and Boards alike that the people function is a critical enabler to achieving company objectives. As a result, the demands on HR leaders have shifted from support to being truly anchored in the business. The commercial mindset of an HR leader is not discretionary; it’s a musthave.

Do you think attracting and hiring talent in a candidate-driven job market is tougher than ever?

There are always companies with great jobs out there, and so the more difficult activity is retaining great talent, particularly in today’s competitive labor market, where the most talented people have a lot of choices. In some ways, with the use of technology, recruiting is easier. But you can only systematize so much – it is still about the personal touch. I would say that hasn’t changed, but some of the tools have made our jobs easier. Also, generally, people prioritize a company’s purpose and culture with family, health concerns, and financial needs, more than they used to. That means we are constantly asking ourselves how we can tell our story and share our purpose.

What are the top strategies that you follow at Walmart to win the war for top talent?

We always strive for consistency. When we hire candidates we’re really clear about what we stand for—we communicate our values, hiring goals and keep candidates informed during the hiring process. We encourage slates of diverse candidates and encourage managers to hire people who are different to them because diverse perspectives help make us stronger. We have certainly seen the benefits of inclusion and diversity at Walmart. We also

There are always companies with great jobs out there, and so the more difficult activity is retaining great talent, particularly in today’s competitive labor market, where the most talented people have a lot of choices 44

| October 2019

Walmart is keenly focused on building an agile mindset throughout the company, in every function, including HR. I think the test and learn mentality and the agile mindset in HR are where we can become more product enabled, move faster and infuse our function with innovation. In our TA team, we created a test-and-learn function to pilot innovation before rolling it out to our hiring of tens of thousands of individuals.

What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at Walmart to identify soft skills?

We use behavioral interviews to understand how people lead and manage through change and transformation, which are constants at Walmart. We also use assessments to understand a candidate’s strengths so we can tap into that when they come on board. By using data and technology, our goal is to mitigate against unconscious bias. In fact, we are very focused on ensuring that whatever we do does not have

any adverse impact on candidates or infuse bias into the process.

Do you have a plan on transforming your talent acquisition strategy to improve the overall hiring experience for the candidates?

successful talent acquisition. At the same time, the humanity of recruiting will not be replaced. The biggest challenges are in keeping the bar really high in all the ways in which we interact with people – making sure we are always reinforcing our employer and customer brand.

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How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring?

Talent Acquisition in the future will be a highly data-driven, more proactive function than it is today. We already see the benefits of using all types of data to make a difference

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ask about real-life experiences and dig deep into what candidates have done and how they did it. We also identify and hire for key personality traits. For example, at Walmart altruism is a key trait that managers look for. Many of our officers score high in altruism. It is core to our culture of customer service. As I mentioned earlier, we also strive to tell our story well. Candidates will be more inclined to apply if they’ve heard about what Walmart is doing.

We are engaged in a significant transformation of talent acquisition that will focus on the candidate experience, similar to how we focus on the customer experience. We also want to make sure we are delivering for today’s business needs and, at the same time, hiring for the future of retail. It’s exciting to be at the Fortune #1 company that is reshaping the retail landscape. Talent Acquisition is working lockstep with the business in that rapid evolution of how we meet our customers where they are today and in the future.

How do you see the future of talent acquisition?

Talent Acquisition in the future will be a highly data-driven, more proactive function than it is today. We already see the benefits of using all types of data to make a difference. It’s including the data and hard analysis together with the human, unquantifiable approach that drives October 2019 |

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At Autodesk, we place significant focus on employee experience In an exclusive interaction with People Matters, Carmel Galvin, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Autodesk shares her views on how recruiting has become more challenging in recent years and how organizations can leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring

tive function to playing a more strategic role internally. HR professionals have increasingly shifted into a coaching and advisory role and have become, in many respects, the guardians of the culture and the employee experience. What is new and exciting is the increased role HR is playing both internally and at the board level, not just as it relates to governance but as a key player in defining and creating long term shareholder value.

Do you think recruiting is tougher in 2019?

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Recruiting globally has become more challenging over the last several years.

And while drivers can shift from region to region, two key factors include the amount of available talent and the evolving expectations of the multi-generational talent pool. We have also entered an era of continuous change where the skills needed for individuals and companies to succeed are constantly evolving making it harder to target your recruiting efforts.

What are the top strategies that you follow at Autodesk to win the war for top talent?

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armel Galvin is Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Autodesk, Inc. and is responsible for leading the company’s efforts to attract, develop and retain the best talent. In addition, Galvin oversees Corporate Real Estate, Travel, Safety and Security (CREFTS).

Prior to joining Autodesk in 2018, Galvin was the Chief Human Resources Officer of Glassdoor where she led all people functions of the company, including human resources planning, learning & development, talent acquisition, employee relations and engagement, and more.

Galvin brings 25 years of human resources experience at global companies including Deloitte, Advent Software and MSCI Barra Inc. where she developed a particular focus on leadership coaching, developing organizational culture and employee engagement programs.

A native of Ireland, Galvin received her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Business from Trinity College Dublin and

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HR professionals have increasingly shifted into a coaching and advisory role and have become, in many respects, the guardians of the culture and the employee experience Master’s Degree in Business Studies from the University College Dublin’s Smurfit School of Business.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you think HR has evolved over the years and how do you see the role of HR as a business partner?

In many organizations, HR has already moved from being a purely administra-

We are very fortunate at Autodesk to be a purpose-driven company, and our number one strategy for hiring great people is to ensure prospective employees understand that joining Autodesk is a real opportunity to make a direct and positive impact on the world. In fact, it was this vision that first drew me to Autodesk eighteen months ago when I decided to join the company. Another key element of our strategy for attracting and retaining top talent is the strength of our corporate culture. To provide some background, with Autodesk’s significant growth over the last few years, we saw an opportunity to influence the company’s culture – shifting it in a new and more purposeful direction.

The goal of this cultural transformation has been to evolve and be intentional in setting the behaviors needed to be successful as an organization. I’m convinced that our culture transformation has made us a more desirable employer. We leverage our culture to help our employees see what’s possible when we work together and align around our mission.

And finally, we place significant focus on creating a great employee experience across the entire organization so that our employees know that Autodesk is a place

where they are valued and can do their best work.

Agile isn't just for tech anymore, it's transforming how organizations hire, develop and manage their people. How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring?

I referenced earlier how we have been intentional about evolving our culture.

There are many ways disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning will influence HR and talent acquisition. AI, for example, can be used to better screen and understand

AI, can be used to better screen and understand large numbers of job applications and other input sources to identify and provide richer profiles of prospective candidates

large numbers of job applications and other input sources to identify and provide richer profiles of prospective candidates.

Another example is using automated interview scheduling tools, which will free-up recruiters to spend more time with candidates. At Autodesk, we’ve already experienced the power of AI first-hand as it relates to our employee engagement survey tool, which enables us to better analyze the comments submitted by our employees and move much more quickly into targeted conversations and responses. In addition, leveraging AI and machine learning to generate data driven insights from our wealth of employee data can be hugely helpful in predicting turnover trends and shaping our HR strategy.

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What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at Autodesk to identify soft skills?

With Artificial Intelligence set to impact every aspect of HR and talent acquisition in particular, how do you see the rise of next-gen technologies and its role on HR in general?

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We have embraced the spirit of Agile in terms of how we approach our talent practices, including recruitment and hiring.

We use this approach when building our key talent programs with an emphasis on experimentation, testing, learning and iterating. A specific example of this was the recent creation of our Hiring Manager Bootcamp, which was a program developed in response to a specific hiring surge that required us to not only move fast but also avail of this moment as a key opportunity to bring in new talent that would be positive, cultural “adds”, to the company. We followed an agile approach when developing this program, complete with multiple focus groups with tight feedback loops and iterations over a 3-month window. This resulted in an impactful new approach to hiring that not only helped Autodesk hire the talent we needed quickly but also transformed how our hiring managers think about their role in the hiring process, while at the same time significantly improving our candidate experience.

Our culture framework, or what we call our Culture Code, includes a defined set of values, and we have integrated interview questions tied to these values as a way of identifying a candidate’s alignment to our culture. So beyond evaluating a candidate’s skill set and work experience, we strive to determine if they will be a “culture add” for the organization. Not only does this help us test their critical soft skills, but it also makes for a richer interview experience for the candidate.

What aspects of talent acquisition do you plan to improve or implement in the coming year?

One key area we are exploring is the idea of taking a more personalized approach to total rewards, to ensure that we are “meeting people where they are” in relation to compensation and benefits.

The days of having a simple generic suite of offerings are quickly fading. We recognize that having a more flexible approach will help us differentiate ourselves in the market. We are also investing in developing our employment brand, recognizing that prospective employees research us and inform themselves on what we have to offer. We want them to understand who we are and why they should join us.

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Employer branding has a very significant impact on hiring HR must now focus on how their companies show up digitally to potential employees, says Tom Browne, APJ Talent Acquisition Director at VMware, in an interaction with People Matters

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om Browne, based in Singapore, has been leading the Talent Acquisition function for VMware in APJ since 2017. This was following five years at Cisco in various Talent Acquisition Leadership roles and almost a decade on the Agency/ Executive Search side.

Tom, hails originally from the UK though, has spent most of his career in Asia Pacific between Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo experiencing the rapid transformation of the Talent Acquisition function across the Asia Pacific region.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you see the changing role of HR in the age of Artificial Intelligence?

We’re starting to see HR partner closely with the c-suite and other business functions to actively, directly and collectively enhance the employee experience. That’s because the employee experience is now recognized as one of the major factors impacting an organization’s bottom line due to productivity, engagement, collaboration and workplace flexibility.

The mobile and digital revolutions of the past decade have meant that executive leadership has increasingly looked to HR and IT to transform the employee experience – from recruitment to onboarding, and from day two all the way to off-boarding.

This trend is reinforced by findings from a recently commissioned survey by VMware, which found that 90 percent of employees in the Asia-Pacific region believe that their organizations struggle with delivering the optimal digital employee experience. The biggest issue cited is a lack of understanding of what employees want.

And it is good news for HR leaders that 86 percent of employees agree that the department should have more responsibility for the digital employee experience.

Here at VMware, the role of HR has undergone significant transformation in recent years. The main purpose of our HR team today is to act as a business partner

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The main purpose of our HR team today is to act as a business partner and drive business transformation and change projects through a consultant’s lens

and drive business transformation and change projects through a ‘consultant’s’ lens. We have therefore spun off the role of “building manager capability” into a specialist group – or center of excellence – to double down on our efforts in this important space. This strategy then frees up HR from much of the tactical day to day execution that comes from the manager capability portfolio and enables our function to help run and progress much broader business initiatives.

With organizations being disrupted from every angle – from emerging technologies to changing demands of customers, do you think conventional talent acquisition models must change?

In the technology sector, conventional talent acquisition models are certainly long gone. As they compete for the best talent, HR must now pay attention to how their companies show up digitally to potential employees. To put their best foot forward to

candidates, firms need to re-evaluate their candidates’ recruitment experience. Can a job application be made via a smartphone?

Can the log-in process be easier for video interviews? After a candidate has accepted an offer, are they engaging with the candidate during the time before they start the job?

HR must also go beyond hiring and consider models for retention. For example, all employees expect to have the right tools to get their work done. However, new employees, especially those who are digitally native, often have better experiences in their personal lives – the latest devices, better internet access, new gadgets, and are used to being logged in automatically to their apps. 80 percent of the employees in the region would like to see improvements in having access to applications for their three most important work tasks using their smartphone or tablet.

How do you view the current recruitment and hiring landscape? What has changed?

This is all a matter of perspective. There have never been more digital tools and channels to reach candidates and the information accessible to recruiters increases every day. When I started out as a recruiter in 2003, there was just a fraction of the information available and very few avenues to access talent. But with this new norm comes an ever-increasing complexity that talent acquisition needs to work within.

Staying current is critical for success.

What are the top strategies that you follow at VMware to win the war for top talent?

At VMware, we are highly optimistic about the future. We have the right leadership, vision, and strategy that are then all underpinned by our EPIC2 values – Execution, Passion, Integrity, Customers, and Community. As we continue to scale, bringing the best talent that resonates with these values and to execute on our vision and strategy is imperative to our success. We, therefore, ensure a highly interconnected partnership between talent acquisition, our business leaders and other functions like IT. For example, for several years now, we have realigned our organization to our employees’ expectations of flexibility and work-life balance.

By implementing our own Workspace ONE technology and having the relevant HR policies in place, our employees can securely access the information and applications they need to do their jobs anytime and anywhere – and not necessarily in the office.

A second strategy that is particularly key in this region is localization. While we are a Silicon Valley based company and that’s very much a part of our DNA, we operate globally and think locally. Many organizations make the mistake of trying to plug and play global talent acquisition processes in Asia and expect the same results. Balancing global processes alongside processes and platforms tailored for each country is key.

How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment?

A structured interview process that enables a streamlined, unbiased, and

Most experts agree that AI and robots will help workforces become more efficient, but they won’t replace the human component. The role that algorithms can play in increasing diversity in hiring is a good example. Removing unintended bias, utilizing language neutral verbiage and broadening the talent pools is indispensable in enabling diversity of thought in the talent channel.

With its ability to analyze and process data at scale and deliver highly relevant

Employees who believe their organizations offer a good digital experience are more likely to claim that their organization is a top place to work and has a progressive culture candidate recommendations, AI has the potential to help talent acquisition teams identify and target skilled individuals from historically underrepresented minorities.

While AI can increase efficiencies in some areas, the recruitment process will still be reliant on human interaction and there are some things that humans will always be better at – such as negotiation, consultation and interviewing.

Given the widening skills gap, there seems to be a lot of focus on employer branding for organizations to persuade qualified candidates. What’s your take on this?

Employer branding has a very significant impact on hiring but it would be ineffective without authenticity and localization. An interconnected digital and social media strategy – based on company values – is also essential for reaching qualified candidates. The VMware culture, for example, is not only defined but also lived and breathed every day. Not only do they drive company policy, but they are used to empower employees. We pressed ahead to achieve carbon neutrality and have policies that allow employees paid time off to pursue projects that benefit the community. Many of these – and other – examples are then captured and shared in our annual Global Impact Report or on our Radius blog. We also honor extraordinary employees through our EPIC2 Achievement Awards program.

A good example of employer branding at a local level is our decision to have a different version of our career site in Japan.

Channeling Japanese talent to a US-centric site would give significantly less insight into the heart and soul of our Tokyo office as compared to a localized site for Japanese candidates.

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Among the top HR trends that LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2019 report identified are soft skills and work flexibility. What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at VMware to identify soft skills?

How can technologies such as artificial intelligence reshape recruitment, and what it means for the future of jobs?

While there’s no substitute for regular communication and engagement with employees, AI can also be a supplementary tool to aid retention. At VMware, we use a machine learning tool that pools company data on employee promotions, relocations, hiring, managerial decisions, and compensation and satisfaction surveys with information on the regional standard of living, workforce demand for specific skills and industry changes. The tool can then spot patterns that indicate if an employee might be thinking about leaving and sends notifications to managers so they can intervene.

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I believe that agility is a mindset and skillset that can be applied to any project.

From an HR standpoint, agility is also an acknowledgment that there is no single or one-size-fits-all approach to effectively engaging prospective candidates or delivering a good employee experience. This is especially true today where workforces have a diverse mix of cultures, age groups and ethnicities.

Put it this way, if the majority of your workforce spends most their day away from their desks traveling to and from meetings and your policies and tools are only useful if they are at their desks all day, you greatly limit not only their ability to meet your business goals, but you also drive them to your competitors.

One way to ensure you’re thinking in favor of your employees is to remember the acronym “DEED,” or Delightful Employee Experience by Design. When setting out to define what’s possible for your employees, continuously ask yourself two things: “what would make this job/role delightful to do every day?” and “how is our digital workspace able to help our company attract and retain top talent?”

Agility means thinking about each role in the company and then tuning into the human element, focusing on why, what and how employees do what they do each day. At this point, you’ll be better placed to respond by designing policies and tools that address these needs.

comprehensive candidate evaluation leads to an increased quality of hire. We’ve ensured our hiring managers have both the tools and the training to help identify the right talent for the right roles.

Finally, our research also revealed that employees who believe their organizations offer a good digital experience are more likely to claim that their organization is a top place to work and has a progressive culture.

An organization’s commitment to social purpose matters more than ever to its customers, employees, and communities.

Prospective candidates also want to know that an organization’s individuals, managers and leaders are transparent with, care for and value one another. Positive actions like investing in the employee experience, being a force for good and employer branding go hand in hand.

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Employers today need to employ a variety of techniques and tools to attract and retain the best talents Angelina Chua, the Group Head of Human Resource at Yeo Hiap Seng (Yeo's), throws light on the evolution of talent acquisition models and mantras, recruitment and hiring in the age of AI, and strategies they follow at Yeo's

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ngelina Chua is First Vice President & Group Head of Human Resource at Yeo Hiap Seng, a Singapore listed food & beverage conglomerate with a global network. Angelina leads its Group Human Resource, General Insurance and Data Protection functions for the Group. She has been instrumental in leading the people transformation at Yeo's.

Under her leadership, Yeo's was named Top 100 Asia's Best Employer Brands 2019 and had won several HR awards and mentions at the Singapore HR Awards.

Angelina was conferred the Leading HR Leader at the Singapore HR Award 2019.

Before Yeo's, Angelina was the Asia Pacific Head of Human Resource & Administration for Oshkosh Corporation, a Fortune 500 MNC. In an interaction with People Matters, Angelina, throws light on the evolution of talent acquisition models and mantras, recruitment and hiring in the age of AI, and strategies they follow at Yeo's.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you think has HR evolved over the years and how do you see the role of HR as a business partner?

Over the years, I see HR as having evolved into a multi-faceted function where it is no longer adequate to be a subject matter expert within the HR domain. With businesses getting disrupted and technology playing an increasingly huge role in peoples' lives, the People function has never been more critical than ever. HR could only partner the business well by gaining insights and a good understanding of the disruptors impacting the industry and the people in the business. In essence, HR professionals need to continually broaden our skills and knowledge beyond human resource to elevate the function to be able to bring value to the business.

I also see HR progressing from a backend 50

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While hiring complements the existing talent pool and strengthen talent pipelines, building talents from within offers a more integrative approach where talents progress in the organization support function to not only just a business partner but an agile business partner to the business leaders in driving business growth. For instance, in our organization, our Group CEO is a firm believer that people are our greatest assets, and he attributes the success of our organization to our employees. I too believe in this, and the value multi-skills HR can bring to the business in today's highly competitive business environment. In a strong partnership, HR's role will be to partner the business in tandem to drive and deliver business successes with the business leaders together.

Do you think companies need to address outdated talent acquisition strategies and focus on training, automation, upskilling and nurturing existing talent?

Traditional talent acquisition strategies were passive. In today's highly connected digital world, candidates are much savvier

and they know how to leverage on technology with regard to job searches. Data availability has also increased significantly.

The levels of engagement with prospective candidates need to be much higher as compared to the past. Besides focusing on keeping up to date with the talent market trends and creating a mobile engagement platform, the nurturing of existing talents is pertinent to the success of the organization too. To ensure a sustainable talent pool, both hiring from external sources and building from within are equally important. While hiring complements the existing talent pool and strengthens our talent pipelines, building talents from within offer a more integrative approach where our talents progress in the organization. In this region where most countries are facing an aging workforce, there are opportunities in the capitalization of the strengths of our mature workforce. Automation provides training opportunities for

talents to focus on higher skills function, and thereby creating higher value to the entire ecosystem.

How do you see the evolution of recruitment and hiring? What has changed over the years?

Much has changed and it will only get more competitive. With the new generation Z entering the workforce, HR needs to keep innovating on recruiting strategies. HR also needs to be apt in the adaptation of recruiting strategy for the diverse workforce, particularly in the utilization of technology and social media for generation Z. For the first time, we have all five generations of employees working together in the workforce. Employers have to employ a variety of techniques to reach out to the different candidates' pools. From the broader perspective, this presents the challenge of not only in recruiting but more critically in the retention of the talents we bring on-board.

How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring?

What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at Yeo’s to identify soft skills?

Currently, we use an insights tool to identify the skills our existing employees have. To predict what skills for the future, we also analyze industry data. The tool provides excellent insights into talent trends and movements in the industry in terms of the soft skills of prospective employees. Besides looking at the industry trends as a predictor of future skills, we also use behavioral interviewing techniques to identify soft skills.

With Artificial Intelligence set to impact every aspect of HR and talent acquisition in particular, how do you see the rise of next-gen technologies and its role in recruitment?

Organizations have embarked on artificial intelligence and data to enhance and streamline the talent acquisition processes resulting in quicker turnaround time in generating the shortlists to hiring managers and shorter decision-making time.

While this is improving the talent acquisition processes, organizations need to upskill not only their HR function but also the hiring managers in understanding how artificial intelligence and data can impact their work daily. These technologies are

What aspects of talent acquisition do you plan to improve or implement in the coming year?

Talent acquisition success is synonymous with good employer branding. We first started running employer branding campaigns last year and have so far seen success in these campaigns. These success stories have been truly inspiring, and we will be continuing works in this area. Now that we have built a strong foundation, we see ourselves moving to a series of innovative campaigns and are excited to roll these out in the coming months. We will continue to build on our brand visibility, focus on branding efforts and actively engaging talents. Besides, we are currently looking at predictive talent analytics which will see the talent acquisition function leveraging on the availability of data acquired through technology advances.

To progress in talent acquisition, this involves the transformation of the talent acquisition function from traditionally passive responding to requests type of role to a proactive function and thereby increasing its influence on what the business needs.

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The ultimate goal is to achieve a win-win partnership for both the organization and our prospective employees. The care and attention we put into each hiring process are immense. Each candidate's potential successes in the organization is an integral part of our hiring process. Talent mapping ranks high on our talent agenda.

Our consideration encompasses our hiring managers and recruiters having a solid grasp of the candidate's motivation to join the organization as well as their potential career development. The potentials/suitability in the longer term is an important consideration. To win in the talent war, we go beyond the facet of talent acquisition and attraction. From the minute we know that the candidate is going to be an excellent hire for the organization, we are already thinking of how the organization can add value to the candidate's career/ portfolio. We see value creation and investing in our employees' career growth as an integral part of our offerings. We define the critical success factor in today's rapidly changing workforce as recognizing that the success of the organization and our people as closely interlinked and mutually beneficial. Our employees' value proposition and employer branding architecture are continually refined to sharpen our focus on hiring the most suitable talent and is a vital part of our overall people strategy.

With all five generations of employees working together in the workforce, employers have to employ a variety of techniques to reach out to different candidate pools

new to many people, and there is a need to explain and allow people to understand how these new technologies can help to create more efficient processes and in turn, free up their time for more strategic work. The intent and impact of artificial intelligence and automation on work and jobs are for the better but is best understood when explained without assuming.

This allows the organization to advance together and create synergies in the adoption of technology.

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What are the top strategies that you follow at Yeo’s to win the war for top talent?

Skills are indeed fast-becoming the new professional currency, and agility tops the currency list. More specifically, learning agility is one of the crucial benchmarks when evaluating candidates. In our practices in recruitment and hiring, HR leverage the principles of agile recruiting and work on a sprint cycle to fill the requisition with more frequent touchpoints to achieve faster and greater success in recruiting.

HR and the hiring managers work closely to refine the processes and fine-tune the searches. Close collaborations between HR and the hiring managers would define the success of hiring.

What’s the future of talent acquisition?

With technological advancement fastchanging every workplace, the future of work, along with the future of HR and recruiting skills, will continually evolve.

The recruiting function will be a dynamic one with changing models for work and work structure impacting the future of talent acquisition. While AI and data aid in the initial short-listing stage and can save time, it could only be as robust as the quality of the source data. Therefore, recognizing that there are still values in evaluating the candidates in an interactive setting is essential. The gig economy might also be a supplementary source of talents for organizations. Besides thinking about the talent pool and innovating our talent acquisitions processes, the social media engagement with the talent pools would be a trend. It could be as frequent and intense as how our marketing peers would be engaging with consumers.

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Organizations need to leverage tools, focus on employer branding, and bet on data for hiring You don’t pick talent anymore, talents pick you, says Vasudevan Parthasarathy, Head, Talent Acquisition Asia Pacific & Japan of Micro Focus, in an interaction with People Matters

organization moving towards COE model differentiating the transactional related tasks of a traditional HR v/s business partnering, HR Business Partner role has evolved into being strategic relationships between business, people & organization, based on achieving best practice and sustainable competitive advantage.

Have talent acquisition practices and hiring models changed in 2019 with the rise of emerging technologies and changing demands of businesses?

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I would not restrict my response only to emerging technologies. Hiring being in the forefront for any organization, identifying the right talent has become a critical step especially when we see a significant gap in demand v/s supply of talent. With this said, continuous innovation in hiring is the need of the hour. Making the right

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asudevan Parthasarathy is a talent acquisition leader and management professional with two decades of industry experience with a track record of designing and implementing talent acquisition plans and to effectively contribute to Organizational goals with an in-depth understanding of the Offshore - Onsite Software Delivery Model.

Expert at building and executing full life cycle recruitment and staffing strategies for large scale and complex organizations across IT services, consulting and product organizations, supporting high volume and niche hiring complemented with employer branding, university relations and contingent workforce across different geographies in a multi-cultural environment.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you think has HR evolved over the years and how do you see the role of HR as a business partner?

HR as a function has been a critical and an integral part of any organization.

Over the years with the industry changing dynamically, HR has been through a transformation journey of needing to understand in-depth of the business. With 52

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investments in tools, focus on employer branding, candidate experience, data driven hiring practices, etc. will make a positive impact on hiring models

Do you think recruiting is tougher in 2019? What are the top strategies that you follow to win the war for top talent?

In short, recruiting can never be an easy game. There are many approaches that can be considered to win talent however to me what stands out is Inbound Recruiting. This is a recruitment marketing strategy where you proactively and continually attract candidates with the goal to make them choose you as their next employer.

Do you think the conventional process of pre-hire screening, assessment, scheduling, and onboarding has changed? How

Companies with a bad reputation not only struggle to attract candidates, but they also struggle to retain employees. This is why employer branding is one of the top recruitment trends of 2019

can organizations ensure they hire the right people with the right skills sets?

As a first step, it’s important that the hiring manager does invest time on building the right profile for the role and create a job description for each of the roles which do call out the relevant soft skills that are required to be demonstrated in the role. The use of problem solving questions/scenarios will do bring out the right attributes of soft skills.

With Artificial Intelligence set to impact every aspect of HR and talent acquisition in particular, how do you see the rise of next-gen technologies and its role on recruitment in general?

We are already witnessing shades of AI in HR space. The idea is to increase productivity and eliminate rudimentary steps, which possibly would make our jobs much more effective. AI just not helps assessing talent decisions, but also enables predicting hiring outcomes. It’s a myth that AI will take away jobs instead AI is acting as enablers in our day-to-day activities.

How important is employer branding for organizations to persuade qualified candidates?

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Among the top HR trends that LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2019 report identified are soft skills and work flexibility. What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow to identify soft skills?

Identifying the right talent has become critical for organizations especially when we see a significant gap in demand v/s supply of talent. Hence, continuous innovation in hiring is the need of the hour

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Candidate evaluation has had many iterations but there is tremendous scope to improve in this space. Organizations should look towards hiring for “Fit for Purpose” and not keeping in mind, only the role.

In the current industry scenario, being an engaged employer is of utmost importance.

75 Percent of job seekers research about a company’s reputation and employer brand before applying. Companies with a bad reputation not only struggle to attract candidates, but they also struggle to retain employees.

This is why employer branding is one of the top recruitment trends of 2019. You don’t pick talent anymore. Talent picks you.

What’s the future of talent acquisition?

What are the top challenges HR organizations face when it comes to talent acquisition and recruitment?

Innovation, Simplification, Out of the box way to hire talent will continue to be the drivers. Key critical challenges that organization could face if they a. Are not aligned and do not understand the business landscape, b. Do not partner & collaborate with stakeholders c. Not making strategic investments on the right tools and system and not able to use data effectively d. Are not able to maintain a fine balance between speed of hiring v/s quality of hiring and lastly October 2019 |

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New-age talent acquisition lean on people ready to learn new skills, adapt to new technologies We are now in a world where technology shifts are so dynamic that skills are becoming obsolete at an unprecedented pace and hence organizations need to look at newer ways of approaching talent acquisition, says Protima Achaya, Director, APAC Talent Acquisition & People Operations, NetApp, in an interaction with People Matters

tegic business partners driven by these insights from real-time data. Technology has created a shift in how Human Resource teams use analytics to discover insights into talent readiness and leadership skills.

It is an empowered function working along with business to define the talent strategy for the company. Today its agenda is to create a unique culture, a competitive work-environment and a robust strategic talent acquisition program.

Do you think companies need to address outdated talent acquisition strategies and focus on training, automation, upskilling and nurturing existing talent?

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We are now in a world where technology shifts are so dynamic that skills are becoming obsolete at an unprecedented pace.

Organizations need to look at newer ways of approaching talent acquisition. It has to be holistic and forward-looking: A blend of sourcing new talent, with a strong leaning on hiring people who have the ability to learn new skills and adapt to new technologies which may not even be defined today, mobilizing internal talent and also leverag-

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rotima Achaya comes with around 20 years of experience in HR. Her primary focus has been in Talent Acquisition with experience in translating business strategy into Talent Acquisition plans and process innovation. She manages teams in multiple locations in India and APAC. In her current role, she heads the Talent Acquisition and People Operations functions for the APAC region in NetApp. As the Talent Acquisition leader, she develops and drives the hiring strategies for the APAC region and also manages the Global Mobility and Alternative Workforce programs. As part of the People Operations function, she plays a critical role in building a delivery model that provides global, scalable and consistent operations and processes to employees and managers.

In her past roles, (Cisco, Sasken) she also has played roles in L&D, C&B and as a client facing HR business partner.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

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An important trend that can’t be missed is the use of social media for talent acquisition. It is no longer optional to use social media and networking sites for sourcing candidates; it’s a great opportunity How do you think has HR evolved over the years and how do you see the role of HR as a business partner?

With technology permeating every corner of organizations, the field of HR has also been undergoing constant reinvention. From an operations standpoint, HR was viewed as a process centric function focused primarily on keeping employee records, keeping track of regulations and compliance, defining salary ranges and benefits. Fast forward to today when HR is expected to move in step with business, focus on employee experience and culture.

HR teams have evolved to become stra-

ing the alternative workforce. Lightningfast innovation has led to the evolution of roles and workplaces. Therefore, reskilling/upskilling and training of existing talent must be an integral part of the hiring strategy.

With organizations being disrupted from every angle –from emerging technologies, economic uncertainty, to changing demands of customers, do you think conventional talent acquisition and hiring models have to change to meet the changing needs of businesses?

We live in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncer-

management – in manners responsive to the continuous changes in culture and work environment. Ongoing planning, leveraging data and analytics to address possible bottlenecks and pain points towards predicting the success factors, constitute the new approach to agility. In HR, we “test” each step to validate that the progress is in the right direction (this is similar to the “sprints” in the agile process) and that the hiring manager is in agreement that we are finding good enough candidates.

Do you think recruiting is tougher in 2019? Or is it easier with new technologies and hiring solutions?

What are some of the hiring strategies that you follow at NetApp to identify soft skills?

Shifting applicant pools, constantly changing the technological landscape, and a talent-driven job market are a few challenges facing the recruitment space in 2019. Becoming data-driven to stay competent is more important now than ever to attract top talent. Companies also need to be vigilant about their employer brand, especially in the age of social media.

Today, every candidate invariably googles you before applying for the job.

The need to assess soft skills is as important as the right experience and technical skills when hiring a new candidate.

NetApp places a lot of importance on this and it is an integral part of the interview framework that we provide to the hiring managers. As we look for mindsets that can adapt to change, open to learning new

What are the top strategies that you follow at NetApp to win the war for top talent?

Agile isn't just for tech anymore, it's transforming how organizations hire, develop and manage their people. How can HR organizations leverage the power of agile practices in recruitment and hiring?

Agile methodology is very much a part of the talent acquisition approach to support business strategy. Agility in HR translates to providing the same services – hiring, development, performance

What Aspects of talent acquisition do you plan to improve or implement in the coming year?

The focus is going to be on the experience of the candidate. How can this be made top-notch at every touchpoint. The

The need to assess soft skills is as important as the right experience and technical skills when hiring a new candidate. NetApp places a lot of importance on this and it is an integral part of the interview framework that we provide to the hiring managers technologies, collaborating across teams … assessing soft skills becomes extremely important. We have a detailed articulation of the Leadership framework and the soft skills that NetApp regards as crucial for success which is line with the business roadmap as also the culture and values that NetApp stands for. A guide with sample questions to lead the interviewer on how to probe for these attributes in a conversation with the candidate, is also provided. NetApp also takes new hiring managers through an interviewing skills program … this ensures that we do have a consistent approach and understanding of the soft skills that would make a candidate successful in NetApp

With Artificial Intelligence set to impact every aspect of HR and talent acquisition in particular, how do you see the rise of next-gen technologies and its role on HR in general?

AI and next-gen technologies are moving from just automating transactional activities to now using the data and analyt-

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A close partnership of Talent Acquisition with business, as one high performing team, drives the whole approach to hiring.

Understanding business and keeping in touch with where the business is headed and hence the kind of talent that would be needed to achieve those goals. Talent Acquisition is proactively searching for the talent not just for today but talent that would be relevant three years later. The Talent Acquisition team keeps in touch with what are the shifting needs of the jobseeker, what excites them and what is that they look for in a fulfilling career.

Business leaders work in step with Talent Acquisition, talking to candidates and defining the charter of the role, tying in their skills and experience directly to the goals and vision of the department and the company. Thus, showing the direct impact they can make.

ics to be able to predict the best fit talent - something that has been traditionally a subjective process relying on the interviewer’s judgment/instinct when talking to a candidate. Right from sourcing the right candidate, providing useful insights in the selection process, to gamified approaches to candidate engagement, unbiased decision-making and autonomous execution, the next-gen technologies can help in empowering the recruiters. AI can never truly replace the human element in HR and Talent Acquisition, but it can help build efficiencies; the focus needs to be on optimizing the combination of human and automated work. The power lies in how we make the best use of new technologies whilst building out the strategy.

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tain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. As a response to changing economic climate and customer environments, HR ought to tailor its talent acquisition strategies to optimize the hiring processes. HR needs to think analytics, automation and trending technologies. An important trend that can’t be missed is the use of social media for talent acquisition. It is no longer optional to use social media and networking sites for sourcing candidates; it’s a great opportunity because your prospective employees frequent these media.

way we engage with them at the initial conversation right up to the day they onboard.

What’s the future of talent acquisition?

What are the top challenges HR organizations face when it comes to talent acquisition and recruitment?

Talent acquisition in the future would be a mix of retaining/reskilling existing employees and balancing that with creative approaches to their engagement with the ever-shrinking external pool to be able to stand out in the job market as an aspirational employer. Talent Acquisition should look at embracing technology judiciously to automate transactional and repetitive processes and allowing the recruiter to use their time in candidate engagement and spending time with the business to understand the business better. Finally, technology can help leverage data and analytics in planning the hiring. Talent strategies would need to be able to flex and respond real-time to engage the job seeker better.

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Talent acquisition in the Gig Economy This is the new world of talent. Organizations have to get used to dealing with the gig workforce

By Abhijit Bhaduri

Talent Acquisition for gig workers While sourcing for full-time work is done through career sites and employee referrals, gig workers are sourced either through a platform like TapChief or through referrals. With over $800,000 in funding, TapChief has more than 75,000 gig workers listed. They have delivered more than 20,000 gigs for startups as well as large MNCs like Unilever and Deloitte.

Hiring full-time employees with in-demand skills like Data Visualization often takes time. Unilever used TapChief to hire an expert gig worker to guide their team of 20 employees.

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spectrum talent market. Even in blue-collar workforces like Urban Clap, it becomes a one-stop shop to find all kinds of skills from plumbers to beauticians. Now we are seeing phase 2. Talent Markets are going vertical.

Expect to see a specialized marketplace for the most in-demand skills like beauticians.3

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ig workers are nothing new in the restaurant world. Every day, contractors on bikes and scooters deliver food for Uber Eats and DoorDash.

But in a growing number of kitchens, contract workers now make the food, too.

Pared, Instawork are providing gig workers to restaurants. Founded in San Francisco in 2015, Pared has more than 100,000 people signed up on its platform. A little under half a million people have signed up with Instawork. Pared has raised $13 million in venture capital, while Instawork has raised $28 million. Every sector is getting its equivalent of LinkedIn. Wonolo is used by retail and hospitality for on-demand expertise.1 A report by BetterPlace reveals that about 21 lakh blue-collared jobs will be created in India within the next 12 months because of the emergence of gigs and freelance assignments. About 14 lakh jobs out of the total projected job growth are expected to be in the gig economy. The logistics sector is likely to see an addition of about four lakh jobs while the demand for drivers in the transportation sector continues to rise with an expectation of six lakh jobs in the next year.2 When LinkedIn started becoming a place for talent to gather, they triggered phase 1 of the talent market. It was a wide-

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Talent is going boundaryless. Human Resources teams have to accept that most in-demand skills may not be on their payroll but in the cloud “Organizations must have a dedicated team of TA professionals to hire gig workers.” Founder and CEO of TapChief, Shashank Murali explains, “It is different from hiring a full-time employee because a gig platform may list the skills of the gig worker, but their availability is not known.”

Matching the gig to the worker 1. The gig workers list their skills and portfolio on the platform. The organizations list their gigs.

2. The organizations interview the gig worker to see if they have worked on similar projects or have the context of the industry. In some cases, the organization asks the gig worker to do a “sample” paid project to evaluate fit for the gig. Eg the gig worker may be asked to design a single screen of the app to evaluate the User Experience designer.

3. The gig worker sends a proposal and fee

which is evaluated by the organization.

The timeline, cost and milestones are agreed upon.

4. The organization initiates the legal contract and a fee advance. The gig workers often have a sliding scale of payments. Payments for gig workers are made based on milestones met. For every week or month of waiting for the payment, the organization pays an extra premium/ penalty to the gig worker.

5. The gig worker is onboarded with the organization’s internal tools, processes and stakeholders as needed. The functional head and HR must together onboard the gig worker.

Gig workers may be a new phenomenon in the organized sector, but many sectors have worked with gig workers. Manu Wadhwa, CHRO - Sony Pictures Networks India speaks of the gig workforce of almost 200,000 people in media and entertainment.

Everything from their payment systems to confidentiality clauses is different.

The gig workforce is growing especially in the white-collar jobs. A 2019 report by NobleHouse, a platform that connects businesses with skilled human resources talent, found that 73% of its respondents wanted to opt for freelance work over a conventional full-time job. A 2017 EY study on the “Future of Jobs in India” found that 24% of the world’s gig workers come from India.4 Digital transformation of organizations is often viewed as an overhaul of technology. Yet, the first step of the transformation lies in the leaders coming together and redesigning the organization while keeping the customer and the employees at the center. Keeping the employee at the center is a new behavior, organizations have not been used to. The gig workforce is going to change that because the lifespan of organizations is shrinking. Humans are living longer. Lifetime employment is already a thing of the past. Working with open-talent system of gig workers will need specialized talent acquisition teams. New processes in every department from legal contracts to accounts payable will be needed. New technology that makes it possible for the gig worker to give his or her best need to be created. Experts already find that they make more money through gig work while having the flexibility of hours and the freedom to choose the projects they wish to work on.

Talent is going boundaryless. Human Resources teams have to accept that most in-demand skills may not be on their payroll but in the cloud.

About the author

Abhijit Bhaduri is one of the most followed writers on all things talent. You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri

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Redefining talent acquisition in a constantly changing world of work There are six strategic contributions that HR must make to an organization and every one of these contributions depends in some way on effective and efficient talent acquisition

By Clinton Wingrove

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he availability of talent goes through cycles, largely driven by, and slightly behind, the economic cycles. There are growing doubts about the world’s ability to sustain a business model predicated on continuous growth. But, we are likely to experience the cycles (downturns, each followed by larger upturns) for the foreseeable future... each cycle generating greater demand for new talent.

So, Talent Acquisition is a hot item on the HR agenda. But, we cannot think of talent acquisition solely as a tactical issue. There are six strategic contributions that HR must make to an organization and every one of these contributions depends in some way on effective and efficient talent acquisition. Those contributions are:

Update the organization's strategy, not merely support it Talent acquisition must be treated as a strategic issue, not merely a tactical one.

Focusing solely on tactics can only create talent crisis after crisis talent. Each organization must use the availability of talent (current staff plus the potential to attract and recruit new staff) as an input into its business strategy. There are many strategies that can be followed but only one or two are likely to be optimal for each organization. Examples include: • We will develop from within versus recruit trained and experienced candidates; • We will deskill our business to enable us to employee low skilled talent; • We will attract using upper quartile pay and benefits; • We will position ourselves as the most ethical and environmentally sound employer in our market; • We will attract overseas candidates, targeting countries we know have surplus talent of the type we need; • We will outsource or offshore all work other than that which requires our differentiating core skills; • We will recruit the best by working

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Talent acquisition must be treated as a strategic issue, not merely a tactical one. Focusing solely on tactics can only create talent crisis after crisis talent with schools and universities to excite, educate, and attract top talent to us; • We will drive innovation in the business based to capitalise on the core skills that we already have.

Each organization has to balance “setting a business strategy and then determining how to resource it” with “identifying its core and differentiating talent capabilities and setting a business strategy to capitalise on those.”

Ensure a sustainable talent pipeline The real challenge for HR is to develop a comprehensive talent management strategy and set of processes, of which talent acquisition is one: • Workforce Planning – identifying what knowledge and skills we need now and will need in the future, and determining how these needs will be met; • Talent Acquisition – identifying potential sources of talent, attracting a suitable pool of candidates, and making robust selections. Note: this can include identifying potential “boomerang employees” i.e., those who thought that

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“the grass was greener on the other side of the fence,” left but might now appreciate what they had and could rejoin; On-boarding – rapidly engaging the recruits into the organization’s family, to achieve loyalty, commitment, and desired contributions; Development Management – continually focusing on the training and development that is needed for long-term success not merely short-term performance; Organization Development – frequently reviewing the organization’s vision, mission, and strategy to identify where changes to the organization’s structure would be appropriate; Career Management – ensuring support for each individual’s career aspirations, as appropriate; Succession Planning – planning to ensure that critical roles can always be filled; Retention Management – taking steps to ensure that critical and top talent is retained and suitably motivated; Deployment Management – using vacancies, new roles, and position changes to increase the capability of individuals and the organization; Exiting – managing the exiting of individuals to ensure optimal resourcing whilst treating each individual with dignity and sustaining the organization’s employer branding.

Increase individual, team, and organizational capability Many organizations limit their potential by recruiting staff based solely on the jobspecific skills needed for the positions to be filled. Paying too little attention to the candidates’ desire, willingness, or even ability to grow may mean that you never experience their true capability or even know what it is.

Virtually all roles in organizations now face continuous change. If individuals are to remain valuable to their employers, they need to develop, preferably ahead of the need, not merely in response to it. This demands highly effective development strategies. But, it also demands a Talent Acquisition process that finds and recruits those with the motivation, willingness, and adaptability to use their skills and to keep growing them.

Much has been written about the importance of “organizational fit.” This is key to tapping into each individual’s motivations.

Outsourcing talent acquisition can reduce the ease of filtering candidates based on how well the organization may meet their needs and aspirations and so unleash their potential.

Increase productivity with prevailing capability

Over the past few years, we have seen an explosion in the number of organizations seeking to be “Employers of choice”.

Whilst well-intentioned, the practical applications of this concept have been widely flawed, especially in relation to talent acquisition. Many organizations have attracted large pools of candidates and paid the price! Talent acquisition is also, and more importantly, about: • Candidate quality; • Efficiency of acquisition; • Quality selection – the calibre of the actual recruits.

One way to minimise HR costs is to attract just enough suitably talented candidates from which to make a selection. Attract too many, and we:

• Increase the cost of shortlisting; • Risk creating a negative market image by rejecting too many and so have to spend more to attract the next pool; • Delay recruitment and possibly lose great candidates; • Increase costs due to poor on-job performance or recruits and reduced productivity of recruiting managers during the process.

There is even an argument that discouraging unsuitable candidates from applying is a positive strategy – it uses the concept of scarcity to attract the best and reduces the cost of short-listing.

We can also reduce HR costs through the selection process. We must make robust recruitment decisions with speed.

These decisions must validly and reliably identify the candidates who truly meet the needs (short and longer-term). And, we must identify the candidates who are likely to accept an offer, should one be made.

Failure to address both issues can lead to a serious waste of resources and loss of suitable candidates.

Ensure regulatory and statutory compliance Selection is still one the most hazardous processes, opening organizations to negative publicity and, at worst, litigation.

These risks are heightened during periods of surplus talent - those applying become more and more frustrated by rejections.

The metaphor of a Talent Pipeline is used in most organizations. This is because, as can be seen above, we need a: - Well (talent source) - Primary pump (attract, select, recruit the right “raw materials” to ensure a sustainable and diverse pipeline) - Refinery (train and develop) - Secondary pump (reward, recognition, … to drive productivity) - Storage (entry level and individual contributor roles, retention strategies … to sustain supply) - Distribution systems (on-boarding, career management, deployment management … to respond to fluctuations and overall changes in demand) - Maintenance (management, exiting … to keep the system working and fluid).

ST O RY

Reduce the overall cost of Human Resources

The real challenge for HR is to develop a comprehensive talent management strategy and set of processes, of which talent acquisition is one

C O VER

Organizations have struggled with increasing productivity (units of valuable output delivered, per unit of total cost) ever since organised labour was introduced. In the developed world, despite massive advances in automation and communications, productivity has been plateaued for the last decade.

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that, “The differentiating factor in sustainably successful organizations is the quality of their leadership and management.” This is a combined talent acquisition and deployment management issue.

When recruiting into an organization, we must review continuously the pool of people we have to feed into the management cadre. Propagation of, “Promote those who are best at what they do into management positions, as a reward,” never did work, rarely would work, and collectively fails to work.

Talent acquisition has to source sufficient individuals with the potential, willingness and aspiration to become great managers and leaders. Deployment management must only appoint those to people-management positions who have the capability, willingness, and aspiration to excel at management and leadership. Compromises are now proven to be immensely costly.

It is also heightened by the ever-increasing awareness of the negative impacts of unconscious bias on diversity and inclusion.

Talent Acquisition processes must be examined for potential systemic bias and those applying them must be trained in how to identify and address any biases that they might introduce.

In simple terms, every time we trigger talent acquisition we should: • Step back and define precisely what we need for the short, medium and longterm; • Check whether re-organization, work redesign, redeployment, and/or recruitment are needed – avoid unnecessary; • Attract only potentially excellent candidates - the smallest suitable pool, large enough to allow for likely variations in their actual suitability; • Apply the most efficient process for validly and reliably assessing candidates to enable a robust decision with speed.

And, like oil pipelines, it doesn’t matter how good the processes are, the quality of the final product depends on the quality of the raw material fed into them – talent acquisition.

So, talent acquisition cannot be viewed as filling merely vacancies. In our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, we must continually assess our talent pool; review our short, medium and long-term needs; identify the gaps and apply talent acquisition processes that address them all.

About the author

Clinton Wingrove is Director of www.

WantToBeGreatManager.com. He may be contacted via: clinton.wingrove@ WantToBeGreat.com or connected with on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clintonwingrove October 2019 |

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I N TERV I EW

Leadership is about helping other people succeed Indrajeet Sengupta, the

Executive Director and Chief Human Resources Officer at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, in an interaction with People Matters, shares insights on leadership in the digital era and role of women in leadership

By Abid Hasan

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| October 2019

I

ndrajeet Sengupta joined Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages as Chief Human Resource a year back.

According to him, the last year has been great for him and the team has worked closely to strive towards becoming a great workplace, a place where everyone can bring their best selves to work.

His primary role is to focus on transforming the Human Resources and Facilities Management functions and collaborate with the business to evolve HCCB into a company of significant scale and size. In this interaction with People Matters, he talks about traditional leadership vs digital leadership, the role of HR emerging in the future and the most effective leader he has ever known personally.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How do you see the role of HR transforming? And what is driving the change?

Human Resources (HR) has significantly evolved over the years owing to the changing demographics of the workforce globally. India is currently home to the youngest workforce and is adopting cutting edge technology, flexible work patterns, remote working and cross-functional learning to remain relevant with today’s employees. The shift will primarily comprise of managing a thriving ecosystem of talent and technology while addressing both demographic and regulatory challenges.

How has your journey been so far at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages? What has changed in the last twelve months of your work with the company?

As a company, we have moved forward in our digital transformation journey incorporated cutting-edge technologies into our transport management systems and distribution systems to enable our employees to function at optimum levels.

From a policy standpoint, we have removed redundant policies and replaced them with newer, more flexible policies to position HCCB as an equal opportunity employer.

We wish to have a considerable part of our workforce to include women. Therefore we have a renewed focus on diversity and inclusion. This has helped us increase our women workforce by two percent over last year and shall remain a core focus area in the upcoming years.

CHROs have transformed from being business partners to a leader in the business who tackles significant issues arising out of business transformation. Do you see a spike in interest from business leaders at par with this?

How do you see the rise of digital leadership? What are the fundamental structural changes that are reshaping leadership in the digital age?

Globally we are witnessing the rise of digital leadership by strategically leveraging the company’s digital assets to achieve business goals. It is finding new ways in which data and insights get translated into doing business – faster, simpler and benefiting the consumers with choices. Organizations that value digital leadership, often place value on communication, creativity and a willingness to explore new ways that technology and digital information can be used to successfully address outwardfacing business projects. With effective digital leadership, an organization can create workflows and business processes

With this disruption of technology, is it correct to say that traditional leadership will be a thing of the past or the leaders are upbeat on enhancing the old-style under the technology umbrella?

The basic tenets of leadership remain the same irrespective of the era you are operating in. The infiltration of technology has been a blessing in disguise as it has helped in saving time, and enhancing efficiency, but sometimes adding to the madness of redundant systems. Maybe 20 years ago, leaders used to talk, orders were executed, and information was hoarded. There was relatively more stability in organization. Communication today has become a key because no one has all the solutions given the complexity

Connecting with peers and friends across the board, and practicing empathy and humility are core to defining yourselves we now find ourselves in. Technology has engaged data availability and forced two-way communication. This is enabling collaboration and making horizontal working easier. This means that the crux of leadership is essentially still the same.

However, the attributes that make leaders humane and relatable have heightened.

What work still needs to be done to level the playing field in the C-suite and boardroom? How do you see the future of women leadership?

I believe the field is gender agnostic.

There is room for leaders to thrive irrespective of them being a woman or a man, provided they bring their best attributes and business acumen to the table. Our CEO, Christina Ruggiero, is an apt example of an excellent woman leader.

She’s an outstanding executive and an equally loving wife and mother. In many ways, she has also helped raise awareness

of the challenges that women face in their careers. Her perspectives also help us frame our policies on developing women in the workplace. We are fortunate. We still feel that a lot of work is left to be done in this area and that’s why we have such a big focus on our diversity and inclusion agenda.

If you could rewind the clock to when you first joined the industry, what path would you have followed about being an effective leader?

I was fortunate to have kick-started my career at GE in the early 90s. Back then, it was one of the first multinational companies to set up shop in India post liberalization. The company’s scale, innovation, technology, and people development initiatives were far ahead of its time. If I had to go back in time and change one thing, it would be gathering additional cross-functional experiences to further strengthen my knowledge and ways of working with other functions.

Who is the most effective leader you have ever known personally, and why?

My father. I come from a family of doctors and my father is a surgeon himself. For over fifty-five years now, my father has practiced surgery and has worked with fellow doctors, nurses and patients, who hold him in great regard. He is in the business of saving lives which require a sense of urgency, precision and understanding implications of actions. Decision making is at a different level altogether.

I have seen how he has been practicing empathy, patience, resilience, servant leadership and the ability to keep your curiosity alive – all the hallmarks of a true leader.

I N TERV I EW

Increasingly businesses are viewing HR differently and do not necessarily expect CHROs to be partners; that’s a base level expectation already. How can CHROs become an equal business contributor? Once you are a part of the senior leadership team, there is direct accountability to happen outside HR also. The shift has already happened.

CHROs are equally involved in tackling business challenges and outcomes. We are also witnessing CHROs moving into more business-centric roles. At a senior leadership level, you are expected to don multiple hats and jump roles as and when required to solve complex challenges.

Working in silos is a thing of the past, CHROs are here to create collaborative and well-coordinated ecosystems and solve for customers.

that allow new applications, products, and services to be rolled out quickly and scaled up faster.

What is one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring leader?

For me there are three simple rules.

To open yourself up to holistic business experiences in areas outside of your expertise while building and developing deep expertise in your own function. It helps in having more informed conversations with peers. Second is to be open to learning something new on an everyday basis by recognizing how one can make a difference and third is to never lose sight of ethics. There is never a right way of doing a wrong. At the same time, connecting with peers and friends across the board, and practicing empathy and humility are core to defining yourselves.

Leadership is always about helping someone else solve their biggest problems and challenges.

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AI in recruitment Balancing the speed and quality of hires

To understand how TA community perceives AI adoption in the recruitment space, People Matters in association with ABC Consultants surveyed employers in India and studied the maturity level of AI in recruitment

r e s e a r c h

By Anushree Sharma

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| October 2019

H

Balancing the speed and quality of hiring Talent acquisition is under a lot of pressure to hire the best candidates in an increasingly tight job market. But within an organization’s HR or recruitment team, there is an added pressure of quality versus efficiency. This means, there is the struggle to find the highest quality candidate, while balancing the potential cost of an unfilled position and extended recruitment efforts.

Balancing the speed and quality of hires emerges as the top priority of TA professionals (55 percent). Improving efficiency of the recruitment process (49 percent) and enhancing the candidate experience (26 percent) completes the suite of top three priorities of the TA function.

Interestingly, these priorities have also emerged as challenges for organizations as time to hire (55 percent) and measuring the performance of a candidate (50 percent) are amongst the top difficulties faced by TA professionals.

“Unavailability of skills” tops the list of challenges faced by TA professionals. There is a huge gap between the desired skill sets and the skills possessed by candidates. The challenge for businesses today is to get industry ready candidates who can be directly plugged into the jobs.

AI for recruitment: The future Artificial intelligence is a machine’s ability to have human-like intelligence. Computers can be programed to learn with data in order to perform a task, and improve at the task as more data pours in. AI is the powerful force behind new technolo-

gies from self-driving cars to search engines, and it’s on its way to revolutionizing the talent industry.

Induction of AI in hiring is a watershed moment in the staffing industry. The decisive technology is loaded with tons of amazing features such as Big Data and Predictive Analysis that are making disruptions in the recruitment processes for both corporates and startups.

Recruitment is no more a monotonous process for HR professionals as activities like making phone calls to potential customers, shortlisting of the resumes and replying to the applicants through emails are switched to a AI software in digitally transformed organizations.

According to our study, “unavailability of skills” tops the list of challenges faced by TA professionals. There is a huge gap between the desired skill sets and the skills possessed by candidates According to our research, most organizations feel AI can help in recruitment by:

46%

Improving efficiency during the recruitment process

39%

Optimizing the search process

39 %

Enhancing human decision making

r e s e a r c h

it by gigantic shifts in business models in the digital era, organizations are finding themselves competing for talent. And organizations that are facing the scarcity of key skills and the rapidly evolving talent demands are likely to fail at attracting talent if they do not adapt to the changing needs of times.

Adopting technology can be seen as the panacea for their challenges. Technology implementation across the HR value chain is helping firms with selecting the right candidate, enabling pre- and post-employee engagement and personalization of the recruitment process.

One of the game changers in HR technology today is Artificial Intelligence (AI) which can greatly help build the future workforce for organizations.

People Matters and ABC consultants recently conducted a study on AI in recruitment with the objective of understanding how Indian companies are using technology in their Talent Acquisition function. This involved understanding the recruitment priorities and challenges, the kind of technologies organizations are embracing in different phases of recruitment –sourcing, screening, interviewing, and selection. The research delves deep into how the TA community perceives AI technology in the recruitment space, how mature they are to adopt the technology and whether AI will replace recruiter.

39%

Balancing speed and quality

These activities form the list of priorities and challenges that the recruitment function primarily focuses on.

However, the current adoption rate is still early, but, is expected to mature in the coming years.

TA readiness quotient As the world of work evolves, TA practitioners will need to evolve their hiring strategy too. With the evolving business priorities, the talent has progressed and hence, companies would have to rethink about the adoption of technology to maximize the efforts.

Amit Das, Director-HR & CHRO, Bennett, Coleman & Co. shares, “Recruiters just need to be aware of the changes that follow and hone their skills in areas that Artificial Intelligence can’t easily take over, i.e. work that requires a high degree of imagination, creative analysis, and strategic thinking. For recruiters, the key skills would include empathy, creativity, relationships October 2019 |

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Top 3 hiring priorities for the year 2019-20

53%

49%

26%

The top 5 metrics that organizations said TA professionals should track

78%

Quality of hire

71%

Candidate Experience Balancing speed and quality

Improving efficiency of the recruitment process

Enhancing the candidate experience

56%

Time to fill

54%

Time to hire ROI

49%

Top 5 hiring challenges for the year 2019-20 Sourcing (On a scale of 5) 1.7

Current Adoption Rate Desired Adoption Rate

75%

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Availability of skills

43%

55%

Time to hire

Hiring for diversity

50%

Measuring performance of a candidate

42%

Efficiency during the recruitment process

and persuasion. Thus, in future when AI becomes an integral part of recruitment, we may not see recruiters competing with machines for jobs, but rather, they will be more free to unleash their imagination, creativity, strategic and relationship building abilities to connect and influence the candidates.�

While reskilling and upskilling is one of the ways to empower recruiters to be ready for the future, various studies and experts believe it is also imperative to offer recruiters access to the right recruitment tools and technologies to create impact on recruitment activities. The study reveals that 34 percent of companies do not have the right technology for the hiring process. The good news is that 61 percent of the organizations have revealed that their investment in TA tools and technologies is going up this year.

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Screening (On a scale of 5) 1.6

Current Adoption Rate Desired Adoption Rate

| October 2019

3.7

Interview & Selection (On a scale of 5) Current Adoption Rate 2.0 Desired Adoption Rate 3.5 TA function from the lens of leadership and managers Leaders

To stay relevant professionally, you have to embrace technology.

Let Artificial Intelligence do your tedious tasks so you can focus on building relationships with candidates and managers

3.7

Managers

TA is a tactical support to the business

40%

51%

TA is absolutely central to organizational strategy

54%

28%

TA is a protocol that has to be run

5%

19%

TA is not the focus area

1%

2%

Further, understanding the perception about TA function from the lens of leadership and managers, it was found that while the leaders understand that the function of TA is absolutely imperative to achieving the business goals, mindset shift is required at the managerial level as for them TA is still a tactical support to the business.

AI is a huge step forward for talent acquisition, but it will never fully automate it. Companies still need people —to persuade and negotiate, to understand candidate needs, and to build communities and cultures.

Today’s hiring trends are making transactional recruiters redundant. To stay relevant professionally, you have to embrace technology. Let Artificial Intelligence do your tedious tasks so you can focus on building relationships with candidates and managers.

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to drive the digital future Yeoh Sai Yew, Group Director, People Department at

VietJet Air, in an interaction with People Matters, shares some intriguing developments in aviation sector and what this will mean for the future of work

I N TERV I EW

By Anushree Sharma

A

s technology develops at an accelerated pace, cognitive abilities and tasks that were once thought to be reserved for humans are increasingly being carried out by machines, causing growing concern about the impact on jobs and the subsequent risks for business and people.

In addition, globalization, demographics, climate change and geopolitical transformations are already making a significant impact on the work landscape.

There is a window of opportunity now for individuals and businesses to understand and proactively manage the transition to a new future.

To understand this and more, we have Yeoh Sai Yew, Group Director, People Department at VietJet Air, who shares about the changing world of work in Southeast Asia in an interaction with People Matters.

Here are the excerpts of the interview.

How would you describe your view of the future of work? How it is going to be different for Southeast Asia from the rest of the world?

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Growing digital companies such as Grab, Lazada, Traveloka, etc. is proof that Southeast Asia will be one of the leading nations in the era of digital By looking at the trend of industrialization from “Steam Engine” to “Electricity”, it roughly took 100 years from one phase to another. However, from Industrialization 3.0 with the introduction of computer programing, it took only 40 years to move to Industrialization 4.0 where Artificial Intelligence and Big Data are the driving force.

Digital and Big Data will be the trend now and in the future. Growing digital companies such as Grab, Lazada, Traveloka, etc. is proof that Southeast Asia (SEA) will be one of the leading nations in the era of digital. Further, the digital economy of SEA will take a slingshot towards growth due to its dominating millennial population who are also known as “digital natives”. If we look at ASEAN as a single economy, it’s the 5th largest economy in the world and more than 50 percent of the population are under 30 years old. With the growth of digital technology and the young workforce in ASEAN, we can foresee that the adaptation rate on Industrialization 4.0 might be faster than the other parts of the world.

What are some talent and business changes you are observing in the aviation industry?

How the future of work will redefine talent management policies and rules?

AI and Digital have made the world virtually become borderless. As such, the organization can no longer able to work in a silo or with single culture mentality. Any organizational planning or direction it should not be run away from diversity inclusiveness. For company’s that’s from countries where English is not widely used, they should prepare their staff with the English adequate proficiency as whether we like it or not, English is still the Global language besides the local or regional language of certain countries.

What are some of the talent challenges Southeast Asia is facing with future of work? How it is different for the aviation industry?

As the world is gearing towards digitization, talent with digital know-how is very important. In general, besides more developed country such as Singapore, where there is a pool of digital and big data-savvy workforce, most of the countries in SEA

The number of jobs which required human monitoring will reduce with the advancement of AI. However, that doesn’t mean that there will be a rise in the unemployment rate. We will require more programmer or big data analyst in future are still lack of this talent. There are not much differences between Aviation or other businesses where understanding customers via big data is a necessity. As such, talent war in this sector is inevitable. It’s like the talent war on IT personnel in the 90s. This is where the private sector and government need to work together to churn out sufficient workforce to cater to future demands and cross-country talent transfer is something that will be ongoing.

I N TERV I EW

We can also see a lot of rapid changes in the aviation industry, such as Self Check-In Kiosk, Self Check-In Luggage and Facial ID Recognition Check-In at Immigration are becoming more common.

From the recent Paris Air Show, Airbus had announced that they had the technology to fly passenger jets without pilots. However, there’s a need for interaction with the regulators and the perception in the traveling public. However, this might just be a matter of time before we can see this is becoming a reality.

With all these developments, we can see that jobs which required human monitoring will become less as this will be taken over by AI. However, that doesn’t mean that there will be a rise in the unemployment rate. It’s just shifting the job from one sector to another. In this case, more programmer or big data analyst may require.

We can see the same trend when we moved from one Industrialization era to another. Productivity increased, but there’s no increase in the unemployment rate, in fact, it had improved the unemployment rate in certain countries.

How VietJet Air is preparing for the future of work? What are your top priorities in the context of future of work?

To keep up with the changing demands of work, our immediate priorities would be to ensure that we have the talent to fit our demand. To achieve it, VietJet is working on mapping the Job Competencies (current and future) against the Individual Competencies. We also have a special training program to either move the talent to the right field where he/she deems fit or coach or train them to close the competency gap.

Continuous learning and upgrading ourselves for the future is a priority for us and at VietJet we always believe that learning is a never-ending journey. As such, we always encourage our employees to seek new or enhanced knowledge. We also encourage them to explore new area out of their comfort zone to realize their full potential.

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The cultural pillars of Digital Transformation

Organizational culture is an indispensable element of digital transformation. Here’s a look at the four founding cultural pillars upon which you can create a strong digitally-focused workplace of tomorrow

Di gital transfo rmation

By Vallari Gupte and Bhavna Sarin

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A

s organizations gear up and work through a digital transformation, it’s crucial to create a culture where everyone is tech-savvy and risk is everyone’s business. The digital transformation drive calls for more than staying up to date with technology. Organizations that fail to align the effort with employee values and behaviors face additional risks.

Culture is one of the driving pillars of digital transformation. Without a robust and trustworthy organizational culture, employees and systems cannot move forward in their journey of gearing up for the digital future of work.

Digital transformation includes the four key cultural elements that help shape up the demands of changes in the economy and technology: People-focus, Agility, Creativity, and Transparency (P.A.C.T).

“The biggest thing that HR leaders can do is to slow down and take a pulse of what is really going on in the organization. Listening to the employees about what they need, what they want and then serving them in an appropriate way is essential,” said Ryan Ross, Managing Partner, Hogan Assessment Systems.

Often during conversations with friends, family, and within professional networks, people refer to the organization they are working for as “My Company”.

This reference of “my” comes from a sense of belonging, not yet from a sense of ownership. With this sense of belonging, however, the job is half done. If organizations can go that extra mile for their people, they can bridge the gap between feeling connected and feeling accountable, thus, empowering employees to feel as responsible and accountable as they feel connected. A people-focused culture goes way beyond having fun at work Friday or 24/7 lavish open cafeterias. In an endeavor to build a people-focused culture, you need to personalize the employee experience by providing the right mix of culture, work, and technology. What technology will mean for your business to thrive is the same as what culture would mean to your employees. Understand what motivates each employee across demographics, be flexible, and adaptable to change.

Today, employees across career stages strive for the fulfillment, beyond working entirely for monetary rewards. They recognize a sense of purpose to be accomplished; they identify a lot more with value than merely with the delivery of tasks and assignments. Aligning what motivates

fundamental changes to its core identity.

Organizational agility enables companies to adjust, shift, head into an impending challenge alone or build partnerships, and basically be flexible enough in the face of change. Agility is not just a nice-to-have anymore. It has become a necessity.

As a part of a Gallup research, about 5,500 American and 4,000 European workers were asked a few questions in order to understand their perceptions about the agility of their organizations. Respondents were asked whether A: they believed that they had the right tools and processes required to quickly react to business needs and B: they believed that they themselves had the right mindset in the company to respond rapidly to business requirements.

The research found that those who said “YES” to both these questions usually also had the eight-core cultural characteristics of agility embedded within their organiza-

Aligning what motivates an employee with the responsibilities assigned to them has the power to create a ripple effect in the value they deliver in their work and to your customers Make your people aware of the impact they create and equip them with the required knowledge to succeed in all their endeavors, and your work is done. With technology being the driving force behind all current and foreseeable changes, organizations need to put their people at the center of these changes. David Green, Managing Director, The People Analytics Program, Insight 222, shared the three cultural traits that he believes are crucial for digital transformation.

“Employee-centric - put the employee at the center of what you're doing. Datadriven –which allows using data to make our decisions or at least inform our decisions. Third, it is not just about blindly implementing the technology. It is about the mindset and aligning that to the strategy of the organization and what you want to achieve. People need to be at the center of this because ultimately, an organization's success depends on how successful are its people.”

Agility An agile culture is one that can adapt to a variety of factors without having to make

tional culture. Agility covers all attributes ranging from an eagerness to share knowledge to make decisions quickly.

For an organization to become truly agile it must inculcate these eight attributes within its culture: cooperation, decision-making speed, trial tolerance, empowerment, technology adoption, simplicity, knowledge sharing, and a focus on innovation, according to Gallup.

As per the Agility Index, which measures how agile the culture of a company is, about 18 percent of the companies in the US have an agile culture, France is at about 16 percent, followed by Spain at 15 percent and UK and Germany at 13 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Even though many companies end up boarding the bandwagon of agility and introduce processes such as Scrum Teams and Work Sprints, these cannot exist in a vacuum. A conducive environment wherein these processes will thrive and yield efficiency is crucial.

Tapping into the individual employee's expertise not only for the subject matter but also in terms of their intuitions about the market, customer needs, the product October 2019 |

Di gital transfo rmation

People-focus

an employee with the responsibilities assigned to them has the power to create a ripple effect in the value they deliver in their work and to your customers.

At a time when every organization is looking to bring in the best technology (often being used by their competitors as well), the single differential advantage you have is your PEOPLE. To ensure you don’t lose out on your high-performing talent, you need to ensure you are creating a workplace that people want to be a part of. There needs to be a lot more than only meeting targets and providing competitive compensation. There needs to be a value system in place as well. Some of the ways to create a people-focused culture are: • Treat employees as partners • Continuous investment in learning and development • Acknowledging personal lives and goals

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Di gital transfo rmation

can go a long way in building a culture that encourages taking ownership and this feedback can be incorporated in the fast-changing strategy.

Now, as HR leaders, how can you know whether your teams are truly agile?

Some traits are common to agile organizations, according to Torben Rick, an international senior executive experienced in change management.

• An agile culture motivates employees to always look for ways to improve even though they’ve become successful by the leaders’ standards.

• Alignment and clarity about the company’s mission, vision, and values.

• Employees look at failure as a chance to learn something new.

• The level of ownership and accountability is exceptionally high.

• Employees and leaders are unafraid of working cross-functionally and look at it as a way to upskill themselves.

In an economy wherein market forces transform rapidly and employees have to adapt to newer technologies, learn, unlearn, upskill, and reskill at an unprecedented speed, an agile culture and environment come to the rescue! An agile culture is not just about embracing newer technology faster. It is about efficiently embracing the right technology in a way that helps the organization achieve its end goal. It is about working with multiple iterations. It

An agile culture is one that is able to adapt to a variety of factors without having to make fundamental changes to its core identity

is about celebrating successes. It is about holding yourself and your team members accountable.

It is about pushing the boundaries of your own comfort zones and challenging yourselves and your departments to do better work.

Creativity Creativity is the bedrock of innovation. By its very definition, creativity symbolizes the ability to create. The ability to create is a science in itself, the science of creativity! Robert Epstein, a renowned psychologist and visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego laid down four guiding principles to foster creativity as a value. If you are looking to build or restore a culture of creativity in your organization, these guiding principles will help you evolve as a creative organization. The four guiding principles are: • • • •

Capture your new ideas Seek out challenging tasks Broaden your knowledge Surround yourself with interesting things and people

By investing in creativity workshops based on Epstein’s guiding principles, a CA-based firm was able to generate additional revenue of $6,00,000 and also save $3.5 Mn, through innovative practices developed by employees post the workshop, with a 55 percent increase in the rate of new idea generation among the employees.

Creativity is crucial not just from an organization’s perspective of receiving fresh ideas but is equally relevant for an individual to be able to generate ideas. Stress and time constraints are major creativity killers (Epstein also agrees on this!). To help an employee remain efficient and healthy, creativity also serves as a break from the monotonous loop of work and life. Happy employees who either have or develop the ability to creatively manage their time and life can successfully make their way through similar conflicts at her/his workplace and also help their colleagues to figure their way out of similar or different circumstances. In fact, by exercising creativity, an individual can integrate his work life and personal life, creating a healthy and efficient way of working and living with work-life integration.

To ensure the entire organization moves forward with the changing times, processes and technologies, leaders need to empower employees to not only survive but thrive amidst the transformation. By building a culture of creativity, organizations can enable each and every employee to think beyond the ordinary, innovate and evolve.

In times of tech-enabled processes and functions, humans need to build on their human element to sustain. What makes us human? What skills do we have that cannot be replaced? Think. Think creatively. Think CREATIVITY.

Transparency Now that we’ve looked at the three major cultural pillars of digital transformation, let’s learn how 70

| October 2019

With the scale of impact of digital transformation across functions and roles, it becomes even more crucial to ensure that culture is in place, to support the journey and provide the right experience through the change In the absence of a transparent culture, chances are that employees might start feeling disengaged and that could lead to a high turnover rate, attrition, and an eventual loss of coveted top talent.

During this journey that is going to be marked by successes and failures, celebrating the successes with your employees and walking with them through turbulent times is not only going to make the leaders and employees stronger but also ensure that the company has a stable, sustainable, and scalable work culture to face the demands of the future of work.

“We need to inculcate a culture for employees to be bold, to be honest, to come forward and talk to the management, share their thoughts so that any solutions that we design--we are co-designing it and we are clearly seeing that our workplace through the lens of the employees,” said Varsha Kotdiya, Country Head, Compensation & Benefits, Capgemini.

Digital transformation is increasingly becoming a reality for many organizations across the globe and every leader is trying to find the right way to navigate this labyrinth. Organizational culture is the backbone of any company-wide transformation. With the scale of impact of digital transformation across functions and roles, it becomes even more crucial to ensure that culture is in place, to support the journey and provide the right experience through the change.

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Di gital transfo rmation

transparency can propel companies towards a successful future. Corporate leaders of companies at various stages of digital transformation are beginning to realize the major role that building a transparent culture plays in the overall employee experience, productivity, and growth of the company. A transparent culture is based on trust between managers and employees. It inculcates an openness wherein employees feel safe to voice their concerns and/or ideas.

It promotes innovation, creativity, and makes employees open to experimenting. In a digitalready culture, it is important to be transparent about the data being gathered, future plans of the organization, and the impact that leadership’s decisions will have on the employees. Transparency is a two-way street that works both ways between the managers and the employees.

It begins with a willingness to share information and extends into trusting employees to make their own decisions, sharing relevant results of plans once they’ve been implemented successfully or not so successfully. In order for a culture to be transparent, it is essential to put active communication channels in place that would facilitate conversations. Breaking down the hierarchical barriers and reaching across silos into cross-functional teams can go a long way when it comes to changing for the digital age as a team.

Accountability is another crucial component of transparent work culture. Once the culture is open and robust communication channels are in place, every stakeholder becomes the owner for her or his own work. Each employee takes pride in her or his work and assumes responsibility for their part of the job. As a whole, the entire team becomes more productive and efficiently works towards the team goals. A transparent workplace fosters professional relationships based on trust. HR leaders can begin by ensuring that the job description, roles, and responsibilities are easily accessible and open for all.

A simple activity such as holding a town hall meeting, ensuring timely dissemination of new information on employee channels, and making room for receiving feedback creates a healthy flow of information.

Being transparent about the new technologies entering the workplace and changes that are imminent can build a regular flow of information.

Many times, when a company is going through a large scale change there is a lot of apprehension among the employees. Restructuring of company resources, movement of key leaders, and the impact of macroeconomic changes on the employees’ job security are all factors that contribute to the chaos and confusion in a company. If a company has to succeed in its journey of digital transformation, a culture that is absent of fear is the foundation.

This foundation can be strengthened by keeping the employees informed, creating a safe environment where employee feedback is received and acted upon in a constructive manner and even external members/freelancers are kept in the loop.

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I N TERV I EW

How horses can train leaders in this coming-ofage role reversal

Isabelle Hasleder, a trainer and a coach at HQ Leadership

India, shares insights on ‘HorseDream’ concept of training which offers leadership training to corporates and individuals with the help of horses

By Bhavna Sarin

I

n an exclusive interaction with People Matters, Isabelle Hasleder, trainer and coach at HQ Leadership India shared her insights on ‘HorseDream’ concept of training, that was developed in Germany over 20 years ago.

HQ Leadership offers leadership training to corporates and individuals with the help of Horses.

Prior to taking up the role of a fulltime coach with HQ Leadership, Hasleder worked in supply chain and logistics with BMW India and Liebherr Group, among other organizations.

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Read on to find out the pulse of global leaders when it comes to recognizing the relevance of soft skills, the recurring challenges when it comes to training leaders and how horses can help you build confidence and trust again.

In your career, what sparked the shift from leading logistics to becoming a leadership coach?

As an Engineer working for one of the most advanced automobile brand BMW it's all about efficiency, making things faster and better. The biggest potential

for improvement I discovered is the leadership skills of the managers and teamleaders who are in direct contact with the shop floor staff. We are talking of savings somewhere between 30-50 percent which can be achieved through effective leadership.

The whole team was made up of engineers, they did not see leadership as their prime focus and never received an education on managing people. My challenge was on how I could impact the team and inspire them to become better leaders, this is where the journey really began. I was drawing from my learnings from Robin Sharma's Personal Mastery Academy and other leadership experts. Then I came across "Leadership Training with Horses" in Germany - as an accomplished horse rider, I knew about the impact horses can have on one's mindset - then I learned more about this special methodology and training exercises. The

feedback from my team and other business professionals to this unique training with horses was amazing. As I got more and more requests for conducting these workshops I decided to focus full time on these programs.

Animals have proven themselves to be wonderful companions and pack leaders, especially when trained for specific purposes, be it horses on battlefields or dogs in the armed forces. What inspired the idea to reverse the process and bring in horses to train leaders?

What can leaders learn from horses and how can they implement these in their leadership styles on a daily basis? Please list some specific qualities.

We work a lot with situational leadership, emotional intelligence and change management - the difference to any other program is that participants receive an instant and unbiased feedback from the horses on their individual strengths and shortcomings. The learnings range from "Becoming a better role model, and more effective leader" to "I have learned how to delegate" or "Now, I know how to build trust with others.'' Implementation is the key to success: Participants first implement the strategies with the horses and work on refining their skills in this environment. Later they define strategies on transferring their learnings to the business environment. Horses can teach us how to build better relationships between humans.

How diverse is the experience and background of the leaders you have trained under your program?

What are some of the recurring challenges you face as you try to train leaders?

Typical challenges range from delegation to leading by example and stepping out of their comfort zone. Trust is a major point. A lot of leaders lost the skill of

Where do global leaders stand with respect to their awareness and acceptance of the relevance of soft skills and its indispensable role to build the future workforce?

Global leaders are acutely aware of the importance of soft-skills and usually they are on the lookout for ways and strategies to build these skills among their teams. In many companies, the trend is to move away from strict hierarchies and build expertteams instead. Enabling high performing individuals and teams means that integrity, ownership and self-development is even more important than in traditional roles.

With leaders across the globe focused on ‘digital transformation’, ‘future of work’ and ‘upskilling’, what do you think is the need of the hour?

In every company you find some “peopleleaders" who are amazing in their way

Teams, in general, are task-driven, they lack the focus on leadership, with a high probability of their leaders never having received a formal education on managing people. This is where the journey of HorseDream concept began, to create impactful leaders and inspire them to become better building trust somewhere on their way, so when they interact with the horses they (re)discover the importance of trust in a relationship. "Do what you say and say what you do" - that is a principle which we reinforce. In our modern business life leaders have advanced in their technical knowledge - but if you look at the softskills one cannot see a similar improvement over the past 20 years.

What are some of the most common development areas that leaders look for?

Many leaders who join our program are already very good at what they do. At the same time they look to become more effective in their leadership strategies and build high performing teams. Some of them are intrigued what the horse will "tell" them about themselves. At the end of the day self-reflection is a key takeaway.

I N TERV I EW

Yes, it’s true that horses as well as dogs have served people for thousands of years.

We use these animals for their special skills, like dogs for identifying illegal substances in the luggage at the airport. We are doing so much with artificial intelligence and all kinds of advanced control mechanisms, but in specific areas dogs are far advanced compared to technologies.

In nature horses live in a social community with hierarchies similar to our corporate organizations. These big animals are flight animals and not hunters like dogs. We use their natural instincts and sensitivity to energy and body language, to coach business professionals. Horses need to feel safe in order to follow a leader - quite similar to a relationship between a manager and his team. If the team or team-members do not feel safe to talk to their supervisor or share their concerns, they will not tap into their full potential. That psychological safety is a very important characteristic in our business is underlined by Google's study on high performing teams.

We are working with international top-managers from India, US, Europe and other parts of the world - some of them touch a horse for the first time when they join our program. At the same time we also offer specific workshops for first time managers. Their background might be in the field of IT, manufacturing or hospitality. Probably the largest group of participants are the mid-level managers, who come with specific challenge of full-filling high expectations from the top management and overcoming their daily struggles with their teams.

they interact with others and who receive support from others across the organization. We need more of these people-leaders who are honest and deeply motivated to create a positive impact for others, and not only for themselves. For me the need of the hour is to inspire people to become better “people-leaders" rather than tech leaders.

The underlying principle for me is about building trust, and understanding the impact a leader can have on others with his energy, intention and focus.

What would your advice be for leaders across the globe in the age of disruption?

Develop the confidence and trust of your teams and encourage every employee to actively participate in leadership challenges. In times of change and disruption, situational leadership skills increase the value of the person for the company. It's about creating a culture which embraces change.

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h e a l t h m e n t a l

The threats to a mentally healthy workforce Mental health among other disabilities is among the most neglected issues in the global community, more so at workplaces

Study finds that depression and anxiety result in loss of productivity amounting to $1 Tn every year. Here's a look at how organizations can address these mental health threats

By Bhavna Sarin

O

n average, an individual spends a quarter of his life at work. Adding to that, on a daily basis, they spend more waking hours at their workplace than their home. This essentially means they spend more time with colleagues than their family. Considering the amount of time spent at their workplace, colleagues/supervisor/workplace environment can have a significant impact on an individual’s well-being, both physical and psychological.

Mental health illness interferes with an individual’s capacity to work productively, live up to their potential and their ability to contribute to the community. Mental health among other disabilities is among the most neglected issues in the global community, more so at workplaces.

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Statistics suggest that 20 percent of employees in any organization today suffer from one or the other form of a mental health condition, and while investing in mental health services might appear as an additional cost to organizations, they do not realize leaving such health conditions untreated, costs them much more in terms of productivity and revenue. In fact, as per a recent WHO report, for every US$1 invested in the treatment of mental disorders, the return is equivalent to US$4 in improved health and productivity.

Speaking of the state of mental health affairs in the U.S., Wayne W. Lindstrom, Ph.D., Former President and CEO, Mental Health America said, “Our mental and general health are inextricably linked. For almost 20 years, stress-related issues in the workplace have been on the rise.” He further

added that these conditions tend to strike during an individual’s most productive working years.

Stress-related issues along with mental illness and substance use are among America’s most disabling conditions costing employers an estimated $80 to $100 Bn in direct costs annually.

Workplace threats to mental health People related

Work related

Organization related

Harassment

Inflexible working hours / Unrelenting workload

Inadequate health & safety practices

Bullying

Limited/low control over one's area of work

Poor management practices

Lack of team cohesion or social support

Mismatch in competencies and tasks

Negative working environment

Global mental health statistics

Unsafe work environment culminating out of unhealthy, unethical practices at workplaces causes stress and burnout, eventually impacting the mental health of employees negatively. Workplace related factors that play a role in affecting mental health also as a consequence impact productivity, increase absenteeism and turnover rate. These factors can broadly be categorized under people, work and organization as below:

h e a l t h

How workplaces impact mental health

Addressing the gathering at the 22nd convocation of National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, President of India, Ram Nath Kovind said, “Despite the vast number of those diagnosed as suffering from mental health conditions, few receive treatment”

m e n t a l

Mental health concerns are resulting in significant costs to employers not only in US, but across the globe. As per a Mental Health report released by WHO in May 2019, globally nearly 264 Mn people suffer from depression (often accompanied by anxiety). Together, depression and anxiety result in loss of productivity amounting to $1 Tn every year as per the report.

Hong Kong: Despite depression and anxiety being commonly cited mental health problems in Hong Kong, only 51 percent individuals seek help.

These are the statistics despite 92 percent respondents considering mental health a serious issue. On an organizational level, 87 percent employees agree mental health should be covered by insurance and nine out of ten agree that employees should be entitled to medical leave for mental health issues.

India: Addressing the gathering at the 22nd convocation of National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans) in Jan 2018, President of India, Ram Nath Kovind said, “Despite the vast number of those diagnosed as suffering from mental health conditions, few receive treatment. Nearly ninety percent of Indians suffering from mental health issues do not receive any kind of healthcare for the condition.” He further added that he believes if mental health issues are left untreated, India will be subject to a mental health epidemic in years to come.

Singapore: As per a survey conducted by YouGov in May 2019, depression (72 percent) and anxiety (52 percent) are the most commonly experienced mental issues with a third of Singaporeans (34 percent) having experienced suicidal thoughts.

With age playing a role, younger Singaporeans (aged 18 to 24) are three times more likely (20 percent vs 7 percent) to state they have had mental health issues compared to older Singaporeans (aged 55 and above).

“Many people with mental health issues suffer in silence, as seen by the significant amount of people who choose not to seek help. An alarming number of Singaporeans experience damaging behavior like suicidal thoughts and self-harm, particularly prevalent among young adults,” said Jake Gammon, Head of Omnibus APAC, YouGov Omnibus.

The need of the hour Work Health Survey 2019 conducted by Mental Health America (MHA), formerly the National Mental Health Association, has brought to light workplace disparities that impact the psychological needs of the workforce. Let’s take a look at some alarming statistics on how employees feel: • 55 percent employees stated they were afraid to take a day off to attend to their mental health • 54 percent employees did not feel comfortable reporting dishonest or unfair practices to human resources or management • 69 percent employees felt it was safer to remain silent about their workplace stress Supervisor communication style: Only 50 percent employees felt they received the necessary guidance from their supervisors to deliver October 2019 |

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Healthy workplace practices recommended by WHO

Implementation and enforcement of health and safety policies and practices

Establishing a trustworthy channel of communication to reach for help

Flexible working hours

Comprehensive Health Insurance Programs (covering mental health, substance abuse, etc,)

Healthy work-life balance

Discouraging negative work dynamics

Recognizing and rewarding employee contribution

h e a l t h

Empowering employees in their roles, instilling a sense of control and ownership

Communication of availability and accessibility to support

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work efficiently and that brought down their confidence/morale and motivation. Supervisor communication style lays the very foundation of approach and contact for any employee to reach out to the supervisor for conversations related to deliverables, work environment, capabilities and factors impacting work. If an employee does not sense a level of comfort, he/she will refrain from speaking up about any ethical issues or opening up about personal issues that might be impacting his/ her work.

Culture of safe and open communication: A disturbing 66 percent employees stated that workplace issues negatively affect their sleep, with over 50 percent admitting they engage in unhealthy behaviours (drugs, drinking, etc.) to

Although several organizations around the globe have initiated programs to promote mental health, more work needs to be put in creating a culture that fosters trust and provides a safe space for individuals to openly share how they feel/what they are going through 76

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cope with workplace stress. If employees feel the need to remain silent about issues (professional/personal), it can lead to creation of an unhealthy and unsafe work environment with a negative impact on productivity and a rise in turnover.

Article 27 of The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) lays down a legally-binding global framework for safeguarding and promoting the rights of people with disabilities (including psychosocial disabilities). It specifies that every individual with a disability has the right to work, right to be treated equally, should not be discriminated against, and should be provided with needed support in the workplace. However, despite several efforts made to highlight the criticality of such health concerns, any individual who openly speaks up about fighting a mental illness becomes exposed to face discrimination in his/ her personal, professional and social circle.

Given the right treatment, individuals suffering from mental health disorders, have a high chance of recovery and can get back to their full potential. Although several organizations around the globe have initiated programs to promote mental health, more work needs to be put in creating a culture that fosters trust and provides a safe space for individuals to openly share how they feel/what they are going through. It is time to prioritize mental health and actively engage with individuals enabling them to revive their mental strength.

Stacey Kennedy

Why the future belongs to curious leaders Present-day CEOs engage less in conversation than ever. Yet I’m convinced that listening is the one skill that in business, makes by far the greatest difference. Understanding the world from other perspectives allows you— and your company—to grow

I

Interna-tional’s history, and it’s one we can’t undertake without listening attentively to consumers, stakeholders, and shareholders. I’ve personally experienced being a single different perspective. When I was made the company’s first woman vice president of sales at the age of 32, the lack of dif-ferent points of view at the top level was glaring to me. My male peers and superi-ors all looked alike, talked alike.

I made the mistake, at first, of trying to be like them—when difference should be our greatest asset in business, the starting point of all conversations.

Now Philip Morris International is committed to having 40 percent of women in management roles by 2022; we were recently awarded global EQUAL-SALARY certification, the first multinational company to receive it. Once again, this drive toward equality can only happen through dialogue and listening. On International Women’s Day this year, we flipped the script by engaging our male colleagues at a special conference—to discuss the problem of unconscious biases in preventing everyone in the workplace getting their “fair share.” Many were surprised to hear about basic practices that inhibit inclusive conversation. Like talking over women colleagues in decision-making situations; not having the courage, in other words, to learn from others.

These days, it’s exciting to see that more people are willing to enter into conversation with us—not for our sake, but for the sake of the estimated more than one billion people who smoke. The World Health

Organization predicts that almost as many will still be smoking in five years. However controversial Philip Morris In-ternational’s business has been perceived by others, no forward progress can be made without exploring the perspectives on every side of the smoking debate.

Committing to this transformation has meant using our listening skills to their full-est. Paradoxically, though, listening to others helps build one’s own sense of worth. Realizing where one fits into the bigger picture gives clarity about how to have the highest impact in the workplace and beyond. Surrounded by alpha-male executive colleagues when I first became vice president, I finally realized that the best thing I could be was myself. That freed me up to undertake leadership as it should be—a constant searching and pushing of our boundaries outward, rather than retreating inward.

Wherever I am in the world, when I call home to speak to my daughters, I always try and find a cool, interesting backdrop for our Facetime calls. I’m trying to im-part the same values to my children that I’ve learned over time, to encourage them to be curious about other cultures and ask questions. That way, when the moment comes, I hope they will already have the confidence to open up and say with curi-osity and humility: “Tell me more, please.”

L e a d e r s h i p

t is not a boom time for listeners. Our attention span is yanked about by the pace of modern life, trapped within our “filter bubbles” on social media, convinced our point of view is right.

There seems to be less incentive than ever for us to truly hear others, and certainly not to engage with them regularly. Presentday CEOs are engaging less in conversation than ever. Yet I’m convinced that listening is the one skill that in business, makes by far the greatest difference. Understanding the world from other perspectives allows you—and your company—to grow.

In a workplace exchange, I am convinced that the most powerful thing one can say is: “Tell me more.” It invites the other to engage in conversation and signals a genuine desire to hear.

“Tell me more” was something I said plenty when I started as President, South and Southeast Asia for Philip Morris International (PMI) in January 2018. The region consists of over 12 culturally diverse markets, driven by a mind-blowing pace of change and entrepreneurial energy – especially in the tech sectors that PMI is look-ing to in its transition to smoke-free products. So, seeking to understand this dizzy-ing environment rather than dictate to it, I found myself consistently telling myself that what I don’t know is what I need to learn. Nearly 25 years traveling the world with the company has taught me that a dose of humility is the best first step to suc-cess—and the only one able to open all doors.

This spirit of receptiveness and reciprocity is what Philip Morris International is looking to take on board as it evolves for the future. Historically, the cigarette in-dustry is a controversial one—but we are looking to move away from the past, to-ward providing smokers with better alternatives to continued smoking with our “smoke-free” products. This is the biggest transformation in Philip Morris

About the author

Stacey Kennedy is the President of South and Southeast Asia for Philip Morris International.

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For our people to learn and grow, we need to create an environment:

Sondang Saktion, Director of Talent and Culture, OLX Group, Indonesia

I N TERV I EW

In an exclusive interaction with People Matters, Sondang Saktion, Director of Talent and Culture at the OLX Group in Indonesia, shares with us the leadership lessons, she has learnt on the go, the one thing that leaders should do to make a difference, and the steps she is taking to develop a leadership culture in OLX

By Shweta Modgil

S

ondang Saktion is the Director of Talent and Culture at the OLX Group in Indonesia. An experienced HR executive, she was earlier responsible for driving the global leadership program at OLX, when she initially joined the online classifieds platform in 2014. Prior to OLX, she worked as the Head of HR Consumer Banking in ANZ. She has also worked with organizations such as Merck and Arthur Andersen Business Consulting in Indonesia.

In an exclusive interaction with People Matters, Sondang shares with us the leadership lessons, she has learnt on the go, the one thing that leaders should do to make a difference, and the steps she is taking to develop a leadership culture in OLX.

Who is the one leader you look up to?

I would say it is our President Joko Widodo because he is a good example of leadership who has brought about revolutionary changes in the lives of Indonesian people with his very down to earth approach.

Even as a President, he is a man of simplicity. He doesn’t have a background of being a politician-he was actually a carpenter from a village in central Java. Even as a President, he makes sure to go down to the traditional market to speak with the people and understand their problems. So I think he is a good example of what good leadership should be like.

What is the one leadership lesson that you learned on the go as a People Leader?

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I would say I have learned two most important lessons-both for me personally as well as a people manager from my team members. From my personal experience I have learnt that as a people manager or leader, for our people to learn and grow, we need to create an environment. And this is not easy because we are talking about creating an environment and different factors come in that. The kind of input or the hire you make or the kind of people who leave you or if someone is demotivated in the team-it all affects the environment. So constantly keeping a check it, having constant conversations with team members and genuinely checking with them as to are they learning enough helps.

Secondly, based on my observation as a business partner for the country leader, that no matter how much you talk about leadership concept and theory, but if you don’t act it out and your decisions do not reflect what you say, the expected result won’t be happy. You employees won’t believe you unless the leadership practices what it preaches.

I would say it would be between 9 to 10 because now I feel being a technology company, though may not think of us as perfect but we are a part of the Naspers group who invest immensely in tech and tool to ease our employees.

Which was the last book you read on leadership?

The last book I read was Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell. It is a tribute to Bill Campbell, who coached, among others, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. What I learnt from that book was that coach only the coachable. Not all people want to be coached and are coachable. They might say they want to be coached but do not spend time on them.

The book is very practical in terms of giving mentoring/ coaching tips for leadership.

What is the one thing leaders should do to make a difference?

Making decisions and moving forward - which is not easy especially that we are often faced with uncertainty and ambiguity. As a leader, sometimes even you don’t know what the best choice is because of the large and complex dependencies. And many times you can't rely on your past experience. So that is the beauty. How you

What is the one step that you are taking to develop a leadership culture in your organization?

I prefer to start from the top. I believe in having a great leader at the top and then surround them with a team of good leaders who would act as multipliers. Of course, there is no one perfect leader. But the basic qualifications needs to be there-they need to have the growth mindset, they should take risks, communicate and bring the team together towards the goals setting clarity of expectations as to how they can create the company as a place where people can choose.

What is the one thing that you consider as your strength and one thing that you would like to improve on?

I am very passionate, I drive things on the ground and make things happen, and

by a strong foundation. How does this reflect in my daily work? In the past one year we have adopted Quarterly OKR model which I am very comfortable with because it brings a focus and guide the team prioritization. I personally track it every week to see where we are. Why we are behind, what is the issue and how we can solve. Of course my aim is to hit 80% minimum of the OKR!

What is the one key learning that you have picked from your team?

I have learnt that sometimes I am quite tough to my team. While I joke around with them, when it comes to work or deliverables, I demand very high. If I have to get feedback, I don’t wait to give it. And in Indonesian culture especially, I come across as very candid and straightforward, though my team knows my intent. In the past, I used to have the mindset of bagging people together with their performance.

But then I realized people come with their

As a leader, sometimes even you don’t know what the best choice is because of the large and complex dependencies. And many times you can't rely on your past experience.

So that is the beauty collaborating and influencing is a part of my every second, every day. This is also what I say to my team-they have to go and face challenges as that is how they will learn, be passionate and trust in what you do. You need to have a constant conversation, ask questions to build trust, and be brave to state your mindset.

What I need to improve upon is the fact that I take my job very seriously!

Sometimes a bit too personal. Sometimes I feel, it is also a part of being a woman, wherein I self-criticize a lot. The way we think is very different from men. There’s a research that says that if a man chances upon a job vacancy and he fulfills 50% of the requirements, he will apply but a woman will apply only if she fulfills 95% of the requirements. We are so humble!

What matters to you most, effort or outcome?

For me outcome matters more. But at the same time I also believe that a good result is sustainable only if it is supported

I N TERV I EW

How digitally ready are you as a leader on a scale of one to ten?

unlearn, think in the now, assess the situation, decide, execute, and learn from it.

own strengths and weaknesses-it is human to make mistakes. And making mistakes, learning and improving is a process. So now I don’t see things simply as black and white.

What’s the one most important factor you consider when hiring someone?

There are two things I would say which are hard requirements we look for when hiring people for OLX. They are drive and curiosity. Let's talk about them one by one. Drive: I believe that you cannot coach drive. It’s either there or not. We need someone proactive to dive into uncharted water and get things done without much being told or instructed.

Curiosity/growth mindset: your belief and passion to keep improving yourself will make you travel far to make a career in this technology era. There are many unknown things that were not heard of in the past. So you need to unlearn before you learn and continuously seek new ways of doing things.

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Y Shekar

Digital world: Emergence and relevance of new skills Taking a short lesson from One-day Cricket, we take a look at how on a daily basis, organizations need to rework on their strategies and employees have to upskill and re-skill themselves to adapt to the ever-changing digital world

D L e s s on s f r o m C r ic k e t

igital is the ability to capture data at source in electronic form, store and process them using software tools, and analyze them using analytics, with little or no human intervention.

In a well-defined process, technologies take care of moving data from being captured to being analyzed, very quickly and automatically. Hence, data is always ready for analysis in the digital world, which is used for planning, forecasting and serving other management needs. This explains the popularity of analytics and higher speed of operations in the digital world!

Understanding how digital works When data moves quickly from source to analytics, it increases operational speeds -Enhanced Efficiency. This efficiency triggers an increase in the scale of operations – access to newer markets, products and strategies - Scale. The combination of efficiency and scale leads to managing unknowns of a higher order, exposing operations to larger variations - Complexity. The unified demand of

speed, scale and complexity leads to using more automation, which triggers the vicious cycle of capturing, storing, processing and analyzing more data, faster.

The working of stock exchanges is a classic example of a digital organization. Their processes are well-defined by rules and operations are regulated by policies. Their processes are optimized for operational efficiency and also to deal with known variations – spikes and troughs in transaction volumes. The business activity per se, consumes a lot of data, which needs to be processed and analyzed too, very quickly. Without automation, their business activities cannot function at the scale and complexity they are currently working at. Stock exchanges continue to invest in technologies to bring in greater precision, become more responsive to their environment and provide better transparency into their operational processes.

One of the stock exchanges that started operations when Indian government opened up its economic policies in the early nineties, grew from a less than 100 crore turnover to over 2400 crore in about 2 decades. For a 24X growth, its manpower grew less by than one-third of that, although business complexity and transactional speed had increased manifold. Their lean structure continued but the roles kept changing periodically, necessitating their employees to get constantly reskilled. Such

The unified demand of speed, scale and complexity leads to using more automation, which triggers the vicious cycle of capturing, storing, processing and analyzing more data, faster 80

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the business activities being done fast, at a higher scaled and dealing with greater complexity.

What would these mean to structure and skills?

The structures are getting flatter and roles are overlapping. Top management’s greater involvement into day-to-day operations leads to a tussle between the top and middle managements’ responsibilities. Middle management feels the stretch in their roles from top and bottom levels and they are suddenly expected to handle all sorts of exceptions. Entry level roles are getting highly skilled without the skilled workers knowing about the application of their skill or its impact on the organization’s output. Since organizations are expected to respond to external changes faster, smaller structures give them the agility and efficiency to do so. The result is, organizations will prefer to hire – even on short term basis - readymade skills than to provide training to its existing staff, causing a concern to the employees. A variant of this is where the staff picks up skills on its own and the organization financially supports this when the staff ’s skill is put to real use.

Digital is also influencing communication and decision-making to become more precise, objective and data oriented. Judgements and feelings are smothered because data can speak, and hence, people feel that their roles are becoming either monotonous or ambiguous. There’s a sense of unsettlement at the workplace as there’s no clarity

Digital is collapsing structures, coalescing roles and bringing in a new divide between repeatable and non-repetitive functions

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L e s s on s f r o m C r ic k e t

a behavior will be more visible in the future when more organizations become digital and scale fast.

There’s another impact of digital besides efficiency, scale and complexity – need for new skillsets in employees. This is because our traditional hierarchy is on the assumption of data moving less rapidly from source to analysis and the transformation is facilitated by human interventions at various points, especially at the point of collection. When human intervention is minimised and data moves fast, hierarchical structures experience two distinct phenomena – coalescing of roles and collapsing of layers.

Coalescing of roles refers to multiple roles getting consolidated into one. Tasks that required multiple skill-sets, knowledge and perspectives residing individually in different people will, in the digital world, require one person with multiple capabilities. For instance, during internal automation like ERP and CRM, concepts of end-to-end process linkages became popular - Order-to-Cash (on the customer facing side), Procure-to-Pay (on the supplier facing side), Hire-to-Retire (on the internal people facing side), etc. These processes required people with different skills to work as a team to complete all the tasks defined in the process. Such a process-oriented approach had clarity on roles, responsibilities of interlinkages, expected time to complete and a non-ambiguous understanding of start and completion of tasks.

With technology becoming intelligent, automation will do these well-defined tasks. Human beings will be required only to manage exceptions or those situations for which rules have not yet been defined. Thus, the person in the process, needs to have an end-to-end understanding of the process to manage the technology. Activities like customer order, billing, managing delivery date, shipment, tracking, etc. which now will get automated, will collapse into one role of customer experience management. Additional tasks such as customer engagement and satisfaction will also become part of the job description, thus making one person with multiple skills in operations, decision-making and communication work end-to-end in an order to cash process.

The other aspect of digital is, collapsing organization structure– the levels in the organization will reduce significantly as data moves speedily from operations to decision making. Since data is now available for analysis the moment it gets into the system, the hierarchy needs to be able to analyze and make available inferences for top management’s decision-making. The time to do this gets shrunk on account of automation and hence the hierarchy gets flatter. Again, the experience here is that roles have all the components of ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’, which earlier was demarcated as entry level -doing, and top-level -thinking.

The combination of coalescing and collapsing is that fewer people will be doing more tasks for which they need to have requisite skills of end-toend process knowledge and understand the impact at the decision-making level at the entry level point of capturing data. This is in the context of

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Just like in Cricket, as a player, you are playing a new game every day, experiencing new situations which demand new strategies and ideas, and different skills which need to be quickly deployed. In essence, this is working in the digital world of roles and responsibilities let alone the prospects of career progression! These are but one part of the digital world we are entering into!

The other part is, roles are getting more creative, multi-skilled and not driven by processes and outcomes! Human-beings are highly skilled, empowered to take decisions and even define outcomes, and they work in small teams that have the requisite components of skill – full-stack.

Emergence and relevance of new skills As automation increases and traditional organizations too start behaving like the digital stock exchanges, work for human beings will get more and more creative, complex and ambiguous. The common aspect to all three is that, outcome cannot be accurately predicted – it can only be desired!

This is in stark contrast to the process-oriented approach where roles were clear and so were the expected outcomes.

Digital is collapsing structures, coalescing roles and bringing in a new divide between repeatable and non-repetitive functions. Those that conform to a structure, are done in a prescribed manner and require minimal supervision, will get done by machines. However, this scope also expands to those roles that require structured thinking, managing known exceptions and providing approvals. Many 82

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of the top and middle managements’ responsibilities are becoming non-directing and non-authoritative, because directing and authority came from the principle of ‘being-in-the-know-of-things-betterthan-others’- experts! In the digital era, experts will have an on-demand role with an organization and they would therefore be contracted by multiple companies on assignment basis.

• As the environment changes rapidly, the use of experts becomes short-term and judicious. In an organization that is facing rapid changes in its environment, the role definitions for its managerial employees will be ambiguous.

• When situations to manage are not going to be similar, identical or following a known pattern, a manager’s problem-solving skills will get tested – the ability to surmount, circumvent or manage an unfamiliar situation.

• When expected outcomes are unpredictable or complex, need for creative, entrepreneurial thinking and strong emotional capabilities to spring into action even after facing set-backs and failures, will be recognized.

• When automation deals perfectly with well laid-down processes, human beings will spend more time in managing people. Showing empathy, acting in judgement, using discretionary decision-making skills in exceptional situations, will add to the leadership skills in one’s track record.

There are many more aspects to the impact of digital on structure, skill and how businesses will be done in future. What these mean to management and managerial skills, roles and responsibilities and a team comprising human beings and technologies (HuTech), will be discussed at another point in time. However, the recently concluded Cricket World Cup provides some interesting lessons: players get into the team because of a core skill, like batting, bowling or both. But they retain their places on their abilities to deal with uncertainties like toss, weather, pitch-condition, opposition and match situation – which changes with the progress of the game even though the rules are the same all through. Players need to be adaptable with their skills and even re-skill themselves to acquire new techniques or to develop new faculties - improve fitness levels, develop emotional courage to come back from a defeat to find new winning ways.

One-day Cricket tells us that, the game’s format is known but the outcome is always a guess. As a player, you are playing a new game every day, experiencing new situations which demand new strategies and ideas, and different skills which need to be quickly deployed. In essence, this is working in the digital world!

About the author

Y Shekar is a PhD in Management and researches on middle management roles. He has over three decades of industry experience in Information Technology management, and is currently associated with a leading IIM to put up a program in Enterprise Digital Management.

He is also a certified executive coach, but prefers to coach at the middle management level.

Shivangi Gupta

Importance of soft skills in learning and development An L&D study conducted in 2019 reveals that organizations with highly engaged employees are over twice as likely to prioritize soft skills training

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Jobs of the future As the industry gets more and more automated, the human jobs of the future are going to be those which rely on soft skills and the human touch. There is a growing emphasis on customer service, and impactful and professional communication skills will be in even greater demand in the new age of AI. Increasingly, jobs require greater creativity, collaboration, and relationship building. This is also reflected in what we hear from our clients: more than academic qualifications, it is the ability to be creative in high-pressure situations that businesses need.

Talent pipeline A recent Bersin study found only six percent organizations feel their leadership pipeline is ready and 86 percent companies across the world cite “gaps in their leadership pipeline” as one of their top three issues. Our work with corporate organizations reveals that many employees get stuck at middle management, not for lack of their technical abilities, but due to lack of soft skills which impedes their ability to be in leadership and strategic roles. Soft skills, or 21st-century skills, improve the ability to interpret data quickly, assess a situation and then come to a decision.

Future leaders need these skills. Not just be knowledgeable, they need to work with others -- communicate, cooperate, collaborate, and more challenging, inspire!

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A good learner doesn’t look very different from a star employee The hallmark of a good soft skills training program is not just imparting knowledge and building skills, but also developing the ability to self-reflect and self-learn. Sounds familiar? Those are exactly the skills that businesses need to foster in their employees across the board and is what makes our training method so effective.

Managing the 10% Does L&D in your organization follow the golden 70:20:10 ratio? While planning the 10 percent, remember to include an adequate focus on soft skills. The following soft skills are essential to any L&D plan: • Diversity and inclusion: Skills such as working effectively in a diverse environment and avoiding unconscious bias can add intercultural fluency to your organization’s value proposition.

Training your employees in this area sends a strong message about organi-

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zational values, promotes a good work culture and can help avoid HR and PR disasters in the era of movements such as #metoo.

Interpersonal communication: Communication effectiveness enables organizational effectiveness. Many studies on customer-facing teams have shown that top performers have better English skills compared to the rest of the team. In our experience as well, English training has a direct impact on CSAT scores.

Productivity and performance: Equip your employees with the skills and awareness they need to be part of high-performance teams. You can train them to be able to build meaningful relationships for your business, to run productive meetings and manage their own time effectively.

Customer service: Make sure your employees are able to empathize with and delight your customers, and that your customer service to truly adds to your brand value proposition.

Leadership communication: Your ability to deliver in a challenging and changing environment depends on your current and future leaders’ ability to inspire their teams and customers.

Train them on the art of strategic business storytelling, creating their executive presence, and coaching and mentoring.

learning & development

he nature of jobs and businesses is changing at an unprecedented pace. This has resulted in a large number of unemployable educated youth. Even for existing employees, L&D managers find it a challenge to design and deliver development programs which can reskill them at such a pace. An L&D study conducted in 2019 by LinkedIn, reveals that organizations with highly engaged employees are over twice as likely to prioritize soft skills training. It is no surprise that the only common denominator in several L&D studies conducted since the 90s has been the importance of soft skills.

Soft skills and communication skills training solutions are the need of the hour and must be modern, effective, scalable and digitally-enabled for maximal outreach. This training is needed by all organizations - government organizations, leading private sector companies and educational institutions across the world.

About the author

Shivangi Gupta is the Assistant Director of English India at British Council.

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I see a talent cost chaos in the market for advanced digital skills I N TERV I EW

In a conversation with People Matters, Airbus’ Head of Human Resource Suraj Chettri talks about challenges in hiring and upskilling employees with specialized digital skills, and how to build a learning culture

By Jerry Moses

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uraj Chettri is a leading HR professional with nearly 20 years of experience in a variety of industries spanning across specialist HR functions. Currently the Head of Human Resources at Airbus India, Chettri started his career with Bata India and moved to Bosch India in 1996 and then to their HQ in Germany. In 2003, he joined General Motors Technical Centre as Head HR and was part of the Leadership Team responsible for setting up their operations in India. In 2011, Suraj joined the Airbus Group India. He was conferred with the Gold Karmaveer Chakra and the Rex Karmaveer Global Fellowship for his contributions towards the Bio-Diversity Program by iCongo in association with the UN during 2014-15.

In an exclusive conversation with People Matters, Chettri shares how the company is navigating the need for new technology skills, emerging challenges in skilling and building the right learning culture. Here are the excerpts from the interview:

How would you characterize the need for digital and technology upskilling in the context of your business and industry?

Technology is core to everything we do. Over several years, we’ve looked at the mega trends across the world in terms of technological break-

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throughs, demographics, and social trends in the context of rapid economic change and a shift towards urbanization. And then we looked at what our focus areas should be and came up with ten technologies that we would like to focus on.

The first thing we needed to do was to restructure the organization. A digital transformation office was created and functional innovation teams were introduced. We formed cross-functional catalyst networks within the different businesses we have. With a focus on external innovation, we launched a program to encourage ideas from outside the organization that we could fund, sponsor, incubate, take it internally and run it. In order to co-innovate, we created a funding organization called Airbus ventures.

With a focus on incremental innovation, the goal is to create the right environment. And then set up a different proof of concepts (POCs) with the objective to learn fast, fail fast. All of which are at a different level of adaptation.

Data is going to be the key in the future.

There are billions of data points that we generate. And if we can connect the entire ecosystem, it’s going to benefit everyone

What are the talent challenges you’re seeing with the rise of new skills?

The depth and understanding of advanced technology skills in India are high. Because we aren’t mass hiring, we have created different clusters of technologies. So far, hiring is not a challenge.

The challenging part is looking at the roadmap not in isolation but along with other roadmaps on strategy, operations, information technology, etc.

Another challenge is to make sure that technology focus areas are not overlapping. It’s a problem area in large companies.

revenue generation. A similar project involving data that we worked towards was optimizer. The idea was that when an aircraft lands in an airport, what is the sequence of activities that will help get the return flight-ready at the earliest. Can we look at the possibility where we can pick up the luggage from your house and it automatically gets delivered to where ever you want it to get delivered?

There is a whole host of technologies and jobs that will impact the ecosystem including the Internet of things, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

From the perspective of upskilling, what is your journey of upskilling internal employees like?

What keeps you up at night? Is there something that worries you about emerging skills and technologies like Data Science, AI, and ML?

What is required from a leadership and culture standpoint?

From a leadership standpoint, it is important to create the right environment, where there is recognition for innovation and new ways of working. There are three levels of creating this environment.

Internally, different departments have their own structures and platforms, and we get cascade ideas up the organization. We also ask employees which projects they want to push or work on.

Using our biz lab which is a business accelerator, we’ve had the active involvement of the leadership to help identify projects to fund.

If we are creating an environment of learning, we should be able to support and handhold employees and lead them to the future. So it’s not just talking about the idea but also ensuring that we can implement it. Culture is a platform on which you can build technology.

What are some of the top trends that you are excited about?

Data is going to be the key in the future. There are billions of data points that we generate. And if we can connect the entire ecosystem, it’s going to benefit everyone. Say for example, if an airline is looking at optimizing their route that they fly through. And we have the data of similar aircraft – and we’re able to tell them how they can save a certain percentage of fuel or how their flight paths can be optimized, that could create a new model of

One thing that really bothers me is the compensation hikes for candidates working on these specialized technologies. The fear that I have is that it’s come to a stage where the candidate can demand what they want. And I haven’t seen this kind of a trend earlier. And these costs are strangely the same everywhere.

Just learning courses and upskilling don't ensure that one has the depth of experience and is ready to tackle emerging opportunities. And that makes the job of a recruiter all the more difficult

I N TERV I EW

Once we’ve identified a skills gap, we work towards bridging the gap after looking at what is done in our ecosystem. By and large, our focus is on getting experts from the industry and ensuring that employees work together. Only when you understand the value of doing something can you build a culture of agility and digitalization.

For programs on information management, for example, projects have moved away from a waterfall method to an agile method - which means when they start working with their product owners and scrum masters, there’s awareness about new ways of working. That’s how employees are groomed to learn. Like most other organizations, we have online portals that educate employees on AI, ML, Data Science, etc.

Earlier we would talk about having a cost advantage of operating in India, today we have cannot play with costs any longer. It’s not 1x or 2x, we’re talking about 15x when it comes to cost. So that really impacts the budgets of everyone, and it keeps on growing.

As an HR professional, do I have a bandwidth to hire someone in data science with specialized aerospace industry experience? The answer is no.

There is a talent cost chaos in the market when it comes to specialized and advanced digital skills.

And it causes difficulty in predicting labor trends.

The speed with which I have seen technologies grow has made me certain that in the future, something more exciting will keep coming up. And by the time you master and understand a new technology, something else will have already taken its place. Today, it’s AI, tomorrow it could be cognition technology.

But it’s also important to remember that there’s a lot of white noise and misunderstanding from a skills perspective. Just learning courses and upskilling don't ensure that one has the depth of experience needed to tackle emerging opportunities. And that makes the job of a recruiter all the more difficult.

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Past month's events Enabling first time managers to run high performance teams People Matters & Enpar-

Knowledge + Networking

adigm

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17th September, 2019 Online Studies show that the average age of first-time managers is 30, and the average age of people in leadership training is closer to 42.

Studies correlating the dominance of millennial value system with a lack of candidates who seem prepared to take on managerial positions point towards a crisis of training for leadership roles. While there is no dearth of training available, traditional training seem to miss out on seamlessness, scalability, accessibility and objectivity. The gaps arise from how traditional methods are put into practice and the ways in which the transformation of the workforce has affected expectations from learning.

The current trends around employee engagement show there is a wide scope for new learning methods that balance traditional ways by incorporating technology and the millennial ethos. There is a greater emphasis on soft skills rather than academic qualifications. Learning methods that foster creativity, collaboration and relationship building are the most suited for the new generation of managers. In this webcast by People Matters & Enparadigm, John Cherian, the Executive Director & Co-Founder, Enparadigm, shared how organizations can develop behavioral competencies for team management through gamification and how gamification is the solution for millennials skills gap. Through a simulation experience, he guided the audience to use gamification to deliver learning programs effectively.

October 2019 2019 | SEPTEMBER

The era of self-directed learning – What’s L&D’s new role and strategy?

People Matters and Degreed 12th September, 2019 Online “Improving learning and development” is a top rated challenge according to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends Report. At a time when the emphasis on learning is aligned to life-long and continuous learning programs, the driver of the learning road-map is the individual.

In this Webcast, Anushree Tiwari, Director of Enterprise Sales, Degreed deep dived into the era of self-directed learning. She shared the importance of investing in understanding the workforce for better and what exactly the modern workforce seek in terms of growth and personalized skill development. She also shared examples of few innovative organizations who have designed a great learning experience for their workforce.

Meet my Workplace with Vodafone Idea Workplace by Facebook 10th September 2019 Online In this webinar Ramesh Gopalkrishna, Head of India and ASEAN, Workplace by Facebook, and Suvomoy Roy Choudhury, CHRO at Vodafone Idea shared their learnings, tips and fundamental knowledge on how to build a great place to work in India. They also deep dived into how to connect all employees within an organization with one collaboration and communication tool and discussed how taking advantage of the changing environments can bring together an organization as a whole.

The discussion also covered the nuances of using video as a means to scale up the learning and training programs.

The game changing impact of the digital workforce on the HR function People Matters and Automation Anywhere 4th September, 2019 The Le Meridien Hotel, Gurugram In a roundtable hosted by People Matters and Automation Anywhere, industry experts from across organizations came together to discuss the game changing impact of the digital workforce on the HR function. The session kick-started with the keynote session presented by Anurag Aman, Partner with Management Consulting (People and Change Advisory) at KPMG. Anurag brought to light some interesting statistics on the use of RPA and Cognitive Automation in the HR function, followed by a discussion led by Sonali De Sarker, Senior Director HR IMEA, Automation Anywhere.

When it comes to strategizing and

decision-making, intelligent automation happens in three stages. While humans continue to act and think like humans, machines are more occupied with providing information in the form of rules (workflow automation), learning (enhanced automation) and reasoning (cognitive automation and predictive analytics). With the extent of impact of robotics and cognitive automation, there is definitely a resistance to bring them in as well. Addressing the dilemma on the right time to bring in the digital workforce and readiness of both the people and organization, Anurag said, “Ask yourself, are you doing it for efficiency, or are you doing it to really create an experience.” Some of the factors he suggested to consider as you tackle the dilemma are benefit of realization (cost vs impact), degree of transformation and availability of data.

Upcoming events Learning for the Future

By Invite only

People Matters TechHR Singapore 2020 Conference & Workshop

People Matters 6th November, 2019 Grand Hyatt, Mumbai The future is uncertain; it’s fast, and it changes rapidly. To enable and empower L&D leaders to spearhead the organizational future readiness agenda and create a fast learning ecosystem, People Matters is back with L&D Annual Conference 2019.

This year, the conference will bring together the latest trends, innovations and best practices under one roof and will help the leaders foster right the mindsets, design processes, and put enabling structures in place to build a future-ready workforce. Global thought leaders and experts will come together to deep dive into thoughtprovoking conversations on critical aspects of the entire learning lifecycle from developing a narrative on skilling to strategizing to design, to execution and impact. Some of the speakers include Gurucharan Das, Author, Commentator, Public Intellectual and Former VP & MD, P&G Worldwide, Dinesh Deo, Chief Executive Officer, JLT, Raghav Bahl, Founder & Chairman, Quint and Founder & Former MD, Network 18, Manavi Baveja, Head APAC- People Development, Uber, and Charandeep David, Head Of Learning And Development (Sob), Oyo, among others. All the attendees will have access to the knowledge, strategies, and solutions they need to effectively scale, develop and reinvent and not merely train talent to stay relevant for the future. This conference is for everyone who wishes to reinvent the strongest bastion of your business for the future: the human side.

Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, Singapore The future is on everyone’s minds. What lies ahead and what will be its impact on people and work? How can we be future-ready by design? It is these questions People Matters TechHR Singapore 2020 will explore and hope to find the answers to. People Matters TechHR Singapore 2020, Asia’s largest HR and WorkTech conference is back in a bigger and bolder format. Themed around “By Design”, the conference will examine the purpose of technology, its impact on business, accelerating change in talent practices as well as the way in which we architect digital culture while keeping an eye on what technology brings to the fore. The conference will also stimulate conversations on completely rethinking how we run our business, how work gets executed and how we create seamless experiences for our customers and employees. Speakers like Jason Averbook, CEO & Co-Founder, Leapgen, Cassie Kozyrkov, Chief Decision Scientist, Google, Nora Manaf, Head, Group Human Capital, Maybank, Nadiah Tan Abdullah, CHRO, S P Setia Berhad and more will share with us their thoughts. Additionally, the week also includes certification workshops on 19th February and the keenly anticipated People Matters Study Tours across some progressive companies in Singapore on 21st February 2020.

https://lndconference. peoplematters.in/

https://singapore.techhrconference. com/register

People Matters 19th February to 21st February 2020

SEPTEMBER October 2019 |

Knowledge + Networking

People Matters & ACCA Friday, 22nd October 2019 Sofitel, BKC, Mumbai There is only one way to stay relevant in today’s dynamic business environment and that is through learning the new and unlearning the old. The future is uncertain, it’s fast, and it changes rapidly. And to grow under such volatile conditions requires a dedicated effort to learn quickly, implement that learning rapidly, and adapt constantly to be ready for the future. A research report

by People Matters & ACCA on ‘A Finance-Talent strategy for the long term’ reveals that the importance of learning initiatives has risen. As per the report, the two key concerns which have become extremely relevant in today’s world are retaining top talent (51%) and building the digital proficiency of modern-day finance teams (41%). In such a scenario, the role of HR and L&D leaders becomes more important. How can they help talent upskill in line with future skills and competencies? How can they design their learning processes to support learning for the future?

More so, when it comes to specialized professions such as finance and accounting, what will be the key competencies needed for them in the future? To discuss these questions and learn how some of these companies have been able to solve these challenges, HR and L&D leaders from diverse industries will come together for this breakfast roundtable organized by People Matters & ACCA.

People Matters L&D Conference 2019

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Blogosphere

>> Amitabh Adhikary

A leader is accountable for the task or objective along with their team and his role is not limited to providing instructions but, also to deliver equally with their team

Choices define a leader, not qualifications b l o g o s p h e r e

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ow often have you heard the lament: “They don’t make leaders the way they used to?” In every organization, there is an emphasis on building employee skills, concepts like life-long learning, classroom trainings and behavioral interventions, in pursuit of leadership development. Yet, identifying good leaders continues to remain a challenge.

To my mind, the problem is not so much in the way we hire, train or organize, but in the way, we interpret the role of a leader.

A leader is responsible for delivering results for their organization. In order to achieve results, they are given the authority to take decisions and, when necessary, discipline or course-correct those that report to them. However, what many organization leaders often forget is that the authority given is commensurate to something more important – accountability. A leader is accountable for the task or objective along with their team. Their role is not limited to providing instructions but, also to deliver equally with their team. The failure to complete a task reflects as much, if not more, on them as the team. This means that they need to build and sustain a team and effectively use their influence across levels to accomplish the task. It is here that the choices they make as a leader matter: Will the leader be fair or will they have favorites? A good leader’s first trait is fairness. No person likes punishment, disciplinary action or lack of growth. However, they will accept the punishment if they know that a standard course of action will be taken uniformly across the board. Similarly, they will accept the lack of growth when they understand that the process is fair and meritocratic. They may not like it and they may not like you, but they will

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Being a leader is a choice or more accurately, a series of choices. Choose deliberately to make effective decisions accept it and in the end they will respect you.

• Will the leader treat subordinates with respect or reserve that respect for those senior to them? You cannot be an effective leader if there is a dissonance in your approach towards your manager and your subordinates. It is important to not misconstrue ‘respect’ as ‘politenesses’ or a ‘consensus-driven decision-making’ approach. Respect is a lot more in action than in words—“Do you genuinely listen to your team members? Do you actively seek their opinion? Do you explain the rationale behind your decisions? Do you allocate time to give them honest feedback? Respect goes beyond not losing your cool, smiling and shaking hands—those are important but not enough.

• Will the leader remain close to the front line? The biggest risk we run with multiple levels is them not being close to the front line, not close enough to the associate or the customer. If you do not know what is happening on ground, the chances of you being right are low. So, spend more time on the floor or in the field. The professional competence gained through this will also give you the confidence to encourage disagreements and debates.

• Will the leader encourage debate or avoid conflict? The problem most of us have with debates with our team is that they become personal. General debates on how to serve our customers run the risk of becoming personal conflicts. People get into a debate with the intention to win and the other party has to lose. So, the outcome is “let’s take this offline”, “let’s meet again with more data” and other such ‘excuses’ that just delay the decision-making process. Debates should not be allowed to get personal.

• Will the leader instil a higher purpose or focus only on today’s problems? There is no fun in working for this quarter or next imminent milestone alone.

The fun is in truly believing that you and your teams impact lives and are changing them for the better. Don’t lose sight of this higher purpose and don’t lose sight of the customer.

The position you are in is a gift—a function of your past performance, education and, to some extent, luck. Being a leader is a choice or more accurately, a series of choices. Choose deliberately to make effective decisions.

About the author

Amitabh Adhikary is the Head of HR for Agile Airport Services, a 100% subsidiary of InterGlobe Aviation.

REFERENCES 18 Managing political talks at workplace 1. https://about.google/community-guidelines/ 2. https://beta.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/23/google-says-only-talk-about-workworkand-definitely-no-politics/ 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/technology/ google-culture-rules.html 4. https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/08/26/googlesnew-policy-forbids-employees-from-having-ragingdebates-over-politics/ 5. https://thenextweb.com/google/2018/03/07/googlersare-furious-about-their-ai-being-used-with-militarydrones/ 6. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/google-employeeswalk-out-in-protest-of-sexual-misconduct-handling.html 7. https://beta.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/06/trump-accuses-google-anti-conservative-bias-without-providing-evidence/ 8. https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/sex-religion-politicsstay-discussing-office/ 9. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2018/09/28/ free-speech-work-rights/#6848f6438c87 10. https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/managing-political-speech-in-the-workplace/ 11. https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outsidevoices-careers/articles/2016-03-14/can-your-employerforbid-you-from-talking-politics-at-work 12. https://clutch.co/hr/resources/policies-regardingpolitics-workplace 13. http://blog.indeed.com/2018/09/20/report-politicsworkplace/ 14. http://www.nishithdesai.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ pdfs/NDA%20In%20The%20Media/News%20 Articles/180410_A_The_employer_right_to_control_ employees_freedom_of_speech_.pdf 15. https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/businessof-life/opinion-how-to-talk-politics-at-the-workplace-1558964612746.html 16. https://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/research-topics/ office-hr/your-workplace-rules-should-addressemployee-political-activities 17. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of10-millennials-would-consider-a-pay-cut-to-get-this.html 18. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ bank-america-employee-fired-racist-facebook-rantarticle-1.2658891 19. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/morethan-half-of-employers-have-found-content-on-socialmedia-that-caused-them-not-to-hire-a-candidate-according-to-recent-careerbuilder-survey-300694437.html

2. https://twitter.com/deepigoyal/status/1156431524058652672 3. https://www.marketingweek.com/yougov-brandstaking-political-stand/ 4. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-46874617 5. https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/pepsi-adkendall-jenner_n_58e52783e4b0fe4ce08764d0 6. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/companiessign-letter-against-trumps-proposed-gender-definition-change.html 7. https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ brands-are-taking-a-stand-against-presidenttrumps-immigration-ban/ 8. https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/07/news/companies/volkswagen-germany-protests/index.html 9. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way /2018/05/29/615119351/starbucks-closes-more-than8-000-stores-today-for-racial-bias-training 10. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/ may/29/roseanne-barr-tweet-valerie-jarrett-ape 11. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2017/leadingand-following-example-companies-taking-publicstance-social-issues/56281/ 12. https://www.webershandwick.com/news/millennial-demand-for-ceo-activism-surges/ 13. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/ insights/us/articles/5136_HC-Trends-2019/DI_HCTrends-2019.pdf 14. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/ nationalism-xenophobia-and-authoritarianismhow-should-business-respond-to-these-risingtrends

26 Preparing the workforce for the next global economic recession • • • • • • •

24 Taking a stand on social issues 1. https://twitter.com/ZomatoIN/status/1156429449258250240

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/ aug/25/is-a-global-recession-coming-here-areseven-warning-signs https://www.livemint.com/news/world/globaleconomy-may-face-recession-in-9-months-but-notindia-morgan-stanley-1565607598801.html https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/ us-china-trade-war-triggering-global-economicslowdown-imf-108827 https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ news/20190820_01/ https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Southeast-Asiaset-for-more-headwinds-after-lackluster-2Q-growth https://www.peoplemattersglobal.com/news/ layoffs/deutsche-bank-to-let-go-dozens-of-traderssalespeople-22991 https://www.peoplematters.in/news/employeerelations/2-lakh-auto-sector-workers-lost-jobs-inlast-3-months-fada-22635 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304099 https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-recession-could-be-big-trouble-for-the-gig-economy-51545927389

36 A Hippocratic Oath for HR 1.

Helen Silving, The Oath: I, Yale Law Journal, June 1959.

2. Rachel Hajar, The Physician's Oath: Historical Perspectives, Heart Views, 18(4), Oct-Dec 2017.

3. Raphael Hulkower, The History of the Hippocratic Oath: Outdated, Inauthentic, and Yet Still Relevant, The Einstein Journal of Biology and Medicine, Vol 25, No 1, 2010.

4. Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Routledge Classics, 2005.

5. Visty Banaji, HR’s Business Should Be Happiness Raising, People Matters, asd, (asd).

6. Visty Banaji, Fairness Is Fundamental, NHRD Network Journal, Volume 7, Issue 4, October 2014.

7. Visty Banaji, Is your HR Head a Jerk?- A Taxonomy of HR Asterisks, People Matters, 24th May 2018, (https://www.peoplematters.in/article/ceo-chropartnership/a-taxonomy-of-hr-asterisks-18331).

8. Visty Banaji, Pyrrho, please pay another visit - A DIY kit for sniffing out BS in HR, People Matters, 23rd March 2017, (https://www.peoplematters.in/ article/strategic-hr/pyrrho-please-pay-another-visita-diy-kit-for-sniffing-out-bs-in-hr-15175).

9. Susan M Heathfield, Reasons Why Employees Hate HR – What HR Managers Can Learn From Common Employee Gripes, The Balance Careers, Updated 21 April 2019. (https://www.thebalancecareers.com/ reasons-why-employees-hate-hr-1917590) 10. Visty Banaji, Is your HR Head a Jerk?- A Taxonomy of HR Asterisks, People Matters, 24th May 2018, (https://www.peoplematters.in/article/ceo-chropartnership/a-taxonomy-of-hr-asterisks-18331).

11. Kathy Oxtoby, Is the Hippocratic oath still relevant to practising doctors today?, BMJ, 14 December 2016.

56 Talent acquisition in the Gig Economy 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/business/ restaurant-jobs-apps.html 2. https://www.betterplace.co.in/the-rise-and-rise-ofthe-gig-economy-in-the-next-billion-india/ 3. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todayspaper/tp-peopleatwork/article28079918.ece 4. https://qz.com/india/1679944/gig-economy-rising-asmore-and-more-jobs-in-india-get-outsourced/

10