With the increasing number of Mergers and Acquisitions that have taken the global corporate scenario by storm, the role of HR in cultural integration was an issue addressed by almost all the speakers throughout the course of the symposium. Change in organizational structures and having an international outlook were some of the suggested areas that the HR professional should develop and implement so that their respective organizations meet the various challenges they are faced with.
The symposium addressed several pressing and relevant themes such as HR Outsourcing, Cross Cultural Competencies, Leadership and Change Management. In the transformational era, migration of products and services, talent, capital and business processes are the four pillars of changing time, pointed out Mr K Pandia Rajan, Managing Director and CEO of Ma Foi Management Consultants. The sessions also saw interesting aspects such as whether HR should cater to the commercial aspects of the organization alone or can it actually look after the spiritual well-being of the workforce.
Mr Madan Padaki CEO of MeritTrac Services Pvt. Ltd questioned whether it is the bandwidth or the intelligence. He emphasized that HR professionals should seek to create more bandwidth for people within the organization, to do things that they are supposed to do much better and to derive intelligence out of the work that is happening around them.
During the sessions that spanned across the two day event the podium was graced by the likes of Mr V Ramachandran Director, Human Resources, Motorola, Asia-Pacific, Mr Nishant Kolgaonkar, Head International HR, CA (India) Technologies Pvt Ltd, Mr Jays Chandy, Head People Function, Mindtree Consulting, Mr N.S Iyer, Head HR, Asian Paints, Dr S S Badrinath, Chairman Emeritus, Sankara Nethralaya, who all stressed on the fact that HR professionals need to develop global business acumen – understand socio-political developments, acquire geographical, functional, corporate competencies so that they benefit the organization in the long run.
The final session was indeed the most engaging one as it was a panel discussion on the topic ‘Emerging Roles of HR: Paradigm Shift to Strategic Business Partnering but at What Cost?’ The session bore witness to a lively and engaging debate on a variety of key issues on the future of HR such as whether HR professionals could be CEOs or whether strategy and HR were congruent with many contradicting views being deliberated actively by both the panel and the participants over the direction the function would take in coming years.
The event was brought to a close with an endearing and interactive valedictory address by Mr N Murali, Managing Director of The Hindu Group of Publications, who said that students who aspire to be a successful HR professional must acquire multiple skills. While he stressed that HR has a long way to go to earn a place in the board room of a company in the country he also admitted that in India, albeit slowly, HR is dawning now. He stated that though business paradigms are changing very fast, for all these changes to bear fruit, the education system needs to be appropriately changed so that it would suit the needs of the industries and organizations in general. Apt indeed were his remarks as were the invaluable insights of the host of industry stalwarts that made for another successful edition of the Insight series of Management Symposia.