This is part of the Tata Group’s attempts at reviving the national carrier, and in the process, bring about more transparency and fairness in the appraisal system. This digitised performance-management process, under the Rise.AI project of the carrier, will clearly convey what the employees are expected to deliver.

The employees have been informed of the new system by Campbell Wilson, chief executive officer and managing director, Air India, via an e-mail. Among other things, the system will define job descriptions clearly and also put forth specific performance goals for staff to chase.

The new system will also be aligned with the pre-existing Vihaan.AI goals of the airline. Vihaan.AI was the name given to the Tata Group’s transformation plan for Air India under which it intends to grow the airline’s fleet and network, and also revamp its customer proposition, ensuring reliability, sustainability and innovation.

A new roster system has also been put in place which permits crew to switch flights and even manage their accommodation during layovers. This was a step towards its plans to increase the carrier’s market share to a minimum of 30 per cent in the domestic market, while also increasing international routes.

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According to the head of Baidu’s virtual people and robotics division, Li Shiyan, costs for virtual people have decreased by around 80% in the past year due to technological advancements. For instance, a three-dimensional virtual human costs approximately $14,300 per year, while a two-dimensional one costs $2,800 per year. Li predicts that the virtual person market will continue to grow by 50% annually through 2025.

The Chinese government is actively working to develop virtual persons, with Beijing City announcing a strategy in August to increase the value of the municipal virtual persons market to over $7 billion by 2025. The plan also calls for the creation of one or two ‘leading virtual people businesses’, each with operating revenues of at least $700 million. Key government agencies have also published a plan to incorporate more virtual reality, particularly in industries such as broadcasting and manufacturing. The country’s most recent five-year plan, unveiled last year, also emphasized the importance of economic digitalization, including in virtual and augmented reality.

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E-Books on major initiatives and achievements of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions were announced as a part of the Good Governance Day celebrations in the national capital on Sunday.

An official statement said, “After inaugurating the Good Governance Week celebrations from 19-25 December 2022 with a nationwide launch of ‘Prashasan Gaon Ki Ore’ campaign on 19th December, the Good Governance Day will also commemorate the birth anniversary of our visionary former Prime Minister, Bharat Ratna, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.”

As the previous version of the eHRMS tool was limited, Singh launched the second version in the hope that employees will finally be able to avail the benefits of such a program.

The second version hopes to fix the issues faced by version one.

The first version limited users to certain functionalities and did not integrate with existing HR software well.

A statement from the government confirmed Singh’s intentions with the release of the new platform, saying, “Singh will launch the revamped e-HRMS 2.0 portal as the earlier iteration of the e-HRMS was limited in scope, where employees could avail limited services and it was not connected with other human resource applications. As a result, the employees were unable to get the full benefits of digital service deliveries and seamless connection with HR applications and initiatives of the government.”

eHRMS 2.0 provides users with new capabilities like transfers (rotation or mutual), deputation, private foreign visits, vigilance status, deputation opportunities, service books and other basic HR services like leave, tours, reimbursements among others, in digital mode.

The new portal is the first of its kind to offer end-to-end HR services in the government sector.

According to the government, the revamped eHRMS 2.0 system will save several thousands of man hours and tons of printing paper. Additionally, it will help employees feel more satisfied with their work, promote ease of HR processes and enhance productivity and transparency in administrative functioning.

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Many in other fields of work describe the onset of computerised analytics to be detrimental to the ‘human aspect’ of analysis. A key instance of such would be in sports, namely basketball.

In the National Basketball League (NBA), players are judged on their plus-minus (+/-) performance per game. A statistic measured each game to assess a player’s impact on the score. A positive +/- meaning the player had a positive impact on the score and the opposite for a negative +/-, without being affected by the result of the game.

What many people fail to realise is a player could have a very high +/- if they score at a high volume, on a bad team, shooting their average +/- up and making them look like a top player.

A player playing at a very high level on a winning team without contributing to the score at the exponential levels would be more valuable to an organisation than the player mentioned above.

One of the major aspects in sports and business is a person’s ability to work in a team. This is when analytics fails us.

In an analytics driven league, the +/- could affect a players potential in getting a larger contract. A player could score at a very high clip but in turn cause the team more harm than good. The same is true in business.

Many large organisations have faced huge lawsuits because of those who were perceived to be high performance leaders, but were reported to be terrible to their employees.

Analytics do a very good job focusing on one specific aspect and based on some predetermined factors to find a specific result, but fail at making well informed judgments when tasked with multiple metrics.

HR professionals are tasked with numerous key roles in an organisation. HR tools have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) softwares and performance analysis metrics on these tools to assist HR professionals gain a better understanding of their current workforce and future hires.

“If an organisation does not understand the importance of human intervention and understanding while executing a plan based on analytics, it will not be able to get the right inputs necessary,”

Chandrashekhar Mukherjee, sr. president – HR & CHRO, Bhilosa Group

Even with these technological advancements, HR professionals are required to keep a close eye on their workforce to make better decisions as there are still too many flaws with HR analytics for it to be run on its own without human intervention.

“It is essential to use HR analytics as an aid to making decisions. Understanding the human aspects along with the culture of the organisation is essential. Organisational maturity plays a large role when making decisions on the basis of analytical research. If an organisation does not understand the importance of human intervention and understanding while executing a plan based on analytics, it will not be able to get the right inputs necessary,” details Chandrashekhar Mukherjee, sr. president – HR & CHRO, Bhilosa Group.

When implementing large analytics projects, it becomes very easy for organisations to bite off more than they can chew on that front. Large analytics projects take years of data collection and in most cases form a lot of irrelevant data when it finally gets processed, leaving an organisation with huge amounts of data that cannot be used to analyse their present workforce.

“HR analytics is essential from a decision making perspective, but many organisations fail to reap the rewards of the data collected because of the lack of direction when collecting data,”

Jacob Jacob, CHRO, Malabar Group

These large projects add little or no value in actually understanding an organisation’s workforce, rather confusing the ones decoding the information with arbitrary information regarding the employees.

Jacob Jacob, Group CHRO, Malabar Group, echoes the same when speaking about HR analytics and its uses. He believes, “they are essential from a decision making perspective, but many organisations fail to reap the rewards of the data collected because of the lack of direction when collecting data, resulting in a collection of basic information.”

As organisations collect more and more data, interpreting the information and ensuring privacy becomes crucial for them..When not interpreted correctly the data collected could prove to be useless. HR tech has still not reached a point where it can decode the information found in these surveys on its own.

The day machine learning can master human thinking ability and creativity along with delivering it with empathy, may be that day not only HR head but every leadership role would be no longer required

Vivek Mukherjee, CHRO, Benetton India

Vivek Mukherjee, CHRO, Benetton India,  details some of the issues faced while trying to decode the information from these surveys and why it is imperative that organisations employ quality HR teams to do so.

“Power, Privacy and Protocol are the three key issues faced when decoding data from HR analysis programs. Ensuring that no bias dilutes the data, understanding that the information found might not be the end all be all of a certain situation and protecting one’s data with utmost maturity and confidentiality is crucial when handling such sensitive information,” says Mukherjee.

HR analytics projects have to be tailored to an organisation’s internal policies as well as comply with data policies externally. Data analysis and research has been a topic of conversation these past few years and many international and national laws are constantly being tweaked to ensure data privacy for all parties involved.

“General and personal data should not be disclosed to any outside source, but is crucial when making predictive analysis. Looking at compensation, internal and external benchmarks are imminent for decision making, but consent is required when it needs to be passed on,” says Jacob.

In the end, HR tech has still not reached a place where it could possibly start taking away from the human aspects of HR, as it is still dependent on a lot of external factors when making decisions.

HR tech is still very dependent on human intervention and interpretation as a lot of the decisions made in an organisation are still based on human factors.

Vivek says, “The day machine learning can master human thinking ability and creativity along with delivering it with empathy, may be that day not only HR head but every leadership role would be no longer required, however till then HR head role along with every people leader role is here to stay.”

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HRM is critical to working towards transparent, accountable and democratic institutions. NATO BI works to support allies and partner countries to promote good governance and implement values of integrity, transparency and accountability in the defence and related service sectors.

NATO believes operationally viableHR management systems are crucial to a well functioning defence and security sector as they establish good leadership cultures that can be trusted and relied on. Integrity building is an essential part of any institution and should be incorporated into all its divisions, from job design, recruitment and selection to organisational culture.

The newly developed toolkit aims to build a bridge between principles and practices within the organisation in varied contexts. With the publication of the ‘Glossary of Human Resource Management in the Public Sector’, the HRM toolkit can be utilised in accordance with the principles of NATO BI. Its aim is to aid civil servants and public sector managers, as well as individuals from civil society organisations and the media in building institutional resilience in the public sector. The toolkit will be made available in NATO’s two official languages (English and French), as well as Arabic, Georgian, Ukrainian and Spanish.

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The complexity however lies in selecting the right partner for these technologies, especially when there are several players in the same domain claiming to be different and having an edge over the competitors.

“How flexible is the technology’s ability to adopt new trends in HR and also incorporate the experience gained from clients over a period of time?”

Reena Wahi, SVP HR, tecnology & sustainability, Tata Realty and Infrastructure

Reena Wahi, SVP HR, technology & sustainability, Tata Realty and Infrastructure, shares that the first thing she considers while selecting an HR technology partner is whether the new technology product can integrate into already-established systems within the company and at the same time has the potential to expand as per the organisation’s needs.

She also stresses on the importance of finding a partner with an efficient customer service as that could help mitigate many of the operational problems initially faced during such a transition.

is the question that needs to be answered, says Wahi.

Core HR tech & HCM

In the last few years, most organisations have migrated from human resource management systems (HRMS) or human resource information systems (HRIS) to human capital management (HCM).

Core HR functions such as payroll, employee recruitment scheduling, internal relations, benefits management, employee training and compliance and safety measures are dealt with by HRMS and HRIS. Between these two lies the HRMS, which offers an additional talent-management system.

The upgraded HCM system is a much wider platform vis-à-vis HRMS and HRIS. For one, HCM is used as a bucket term for a variety of business functions that treat employees as assets, managing them the way an organisation would manage money and capital equipment.

“Organisations should look at a progressive system rather than a contemporary one,”

Sharad Sharma, CHRO, Pramerica Life

However, the biggest advantage of HCM is that it provides a more malleable structure, which can integrate with the existing system and also adapt as per the organisation’s specific needs. Human capital management is an automated process and comes with an integrated software. Apart from collating employee records in core HR and talent-management systems, it also includes subsystems for recruitment, performance and compensation management.

Sharad Sharma, CHRO, Pramerica Life, believes that it is important to assess one’s needs and then select the HR tech product accordingly, instead of just following the herd.

What he means is that organisations need to be vigilant of the gaps in their current system and make sure the module they’ve chosen is progressive, and can adapt with the changes in the organisation.

Specialised modules

Among the new automated modules offered by an HCM system, talent management seems to be the most complex one. It is responsible for bringing people with the right experience and potential into an organisation, developing their skills, motivating them, assessing their performance, compensating them, retaining them or ensuring a smooth departure.

“The ‘plug and play’ approach most companies embrace doesn’t allow for a flourishing culture to form. A talent-management programme should maintain a constant rotation allowing people movement up the ladder and exposure to different roles. This will ensure well-rounded leadership, which, in turn will mitigate the risk of collapse,”

Devarshi Deb, CHRO, Asahi India Glass

Devarshi Deb, CHRO, Asahi India Glass is of the opinion that for a talent-management software to be effective, an organisation must have an already well established and efficient talent- management strategy.

Deb also urges companies to look within and build a talent-management programme, internally.

Service-delivery systems

HR service-delivery systems are essential for digitising the human-resource department. Most HR service delivery systems come with either of two options – employee self-service (ESS) and manager self-service (MSS) systems.

In an ESS system, organisations allow employees to update their own information, but only those which are important for the former. For instance, employees can update personal information, submit leave requests, retrieve salary slips and benefits information, and submit expense claims.

On the contrary, an MSS is specifically designed for mid-level managers. It provides them with access to employee information, and also allows them to prioritise and complete tasks and functions applicable to their employees.

Manager self-service system is a more complex system that allows for a full range of applications. It makes it possible for tasks, which would usually take days to complete, to be completed in minutes. For instance, sanctioning a vacation could be done in no time because of its ability to show department-wide work schedules, all while maintaining the same level of privacy and security as in-house systems.

Many HR practitioners are of the opinion that ESS doesn’t work smoothly on mobile phones, and that it requires an investment on specific on-site hardware to realise its full potential.

While an ESS does allow users to perform basic tasks on mobile phones, at the same time, it also requires larger screen real estate such as shop-floor tablets, break room computers and point-of-sale systems to the best of its capabilities.

Sharma also warns companies to evaluate the tech savviness of the workforce before making the transition to vast technology overhauls.

Making sure that the technology is mobile friendly and can be accessed on the go, is vital.

Advanced HR tech

Human resource technology is a constantly evolving industry as is the role of the human resource department. To keep up with the ever changing nature of both, HR tech companies have been making strides to offer the best user experience to their customers.

Implementing artificial intelligence programmes capable of spotting patterns in the system and making apt predictions on the same can help companies make better decisions pertaining to recruitment, hiring and development of new talent. Security measures such as blockchain technology help make the data stored in the database essentially permanent and hack proof. Remote process automation “bots” (RPA) can execute common HR responsibilities, such as benefit selection and expense reimbursement, as well as fast and efficient sorting of resumes.

Even while adopting an artificial intelligence (AI)-based HR system, companies need to move ahead with utmost caution.
The first mistake that most companies make is to believe that AI can run completely without any human intervention. However, that’s far from reality as of yet. Also, there are still several trials and errors before an effective AI-based HR system can be fully operational.
Human resource leaders also stress on why organisations should carry out thorough background checks of their prospective HR tech partners, to make sure of their intentions as partners.

As the HR tech industry is still young, there is a lot of money still to be made. For that very reason, many tech companies are either selling out midway through their contracts or merging with bigger players, who may not have the same commitment to the organisation as the previous company did.

It is advised that companies seek out established HR tech firms and work closely with them to create the best platform customised as per their HR needs.

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This national database of unorganised workers will allow those registered to gain convenient access to the social-security benefits offered by the Government. Workers, irrespective of the segment they belong to, can use their Aadhar number and bank account details to register themselves on the portal, along with all the required personal details, including name, date of birth, hometown, work category and so on.

Once registered, the workers will receive an e-Shram card containing a 12-digit unique number, which will integrate them with a range of government social-security schemes. They will not need any separate registration to participate in these schemes. The benefits will be delivered to these ‘shram yogis’, as Bhupender Yadav, the Union minister for labour and employment refers to them, including construction workers, street vendors, domestic workers, migrant labourers, and so on. The portal is meant to ensure last-mile delivery.

All the details of registered workers will be shared by all departments of states.

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This is just a small step towards implementing a paperless governance policy. While the intention was there earlier too, the whole transformation was accelerated following the challenges faced during the pandemic.

SPARROW, that is, smart performance appraisal report recording online window, is the portal which the Delhi government will be using from now on. The same was implemented by the Central government two years ago. The heads of departments have been given a briefing about the entire process.

Employees are mandated to fill in their health details in the review form starting this year. That means, they will have to provide all details related to treatments, surgeries and annual health checkups. The manual process of yearly performance review of employees will cease to exist, and the entire process will move to the digital format. The system will cover all Delhi government departments including, power, health, finance, transport, home, administration, social welfare, public works, food, art & culture, revenue, education, planning and so on.

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This collaboration could not have been better timed as the incidence of hacking and cyber security breaches have multiplied in recent times. Also, the issue of cyber security and the significance of artificial intelligence have gained prominence during the ongoing pandemic, when most companies have their employees working remotely or from home. Also, in India, shortage of cyber security personnel is reportedly 10 per cent higher than the global average.

This CoE will help roll out advanced scientific and technological products and services IPs that will safeguard the country’s strategic assets and data pertaining to government infrastructure, enterprises and digital forensics for police and defence forces.

Certificate learning programmes will also be offered to fresh graduates and working professionals. These will be linked with skill training in cyber defense and postgraduation in technology, with specialisation in cyber security and defense. Considering that awareness about cyber security defense from advanced persistent threats (APTs) is the need of the hour, these courses will be of great benefit to the future talent pool of the country as well as the country on the whole.

Data protection as well as privacy laws in the rising networked digital economy, according to NASSCOM, will give rise to a US$ 35 billion revenue opportunity, and will create more than two million jobs in the field of cyber security for Indians.

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“With this initiative, we promoted a lot of digital activities,” states Ajith Kumar KK, EVP & CHRO, Federal Bank. “We divided our nine zones across the country into eight teams, like in the IPL, giving them respective team names,” he explains.

It’s a six!

While IPL players scored runs on the cricket field, Federal Bank employees scored six runs for materialising a certain number of digital transactions by their customers. More than 1,200 branches of the Bank across the country took part in the FPL, which culminated in the final round followed by a virtual prize distribution ceremony. The ingenious banking premier league was Federal Bank’s answer to the problem of limited face-to-face contact in the time of a global pandemic.

Calling it a first-of-its-kind initiative, Kumar says, “Our intention was to help more people migrate to digital transactions so that footfall in the branches reduces to a great extent.”

The single initiative of FPL helped the bank achieve three significant goals.

The first was, of course, the inevitable scaling down of human contact to be in line with pandemic protocols. This offered the bank the much-needed boost to empower its customers to adopt digital banking. “We educate them to make the switch to digital and ensure that more and more people migrate so that our employees can then use that time for other productive activities.”

Second, the efforts lead to business growth by default. “The business grows naturally because more and more employees are contacting customers about digital banking, requesting for business and getting new accounts opened,” explains Kumar.

Third, Federal Bank believes its employees should be empowered with the same digital banking products as its customers. “We believe employees are the most valuable assets of the Bank so if one is offering a particular product to the customer, especially digital, one should offer the same to the employees too.”

Digital at the fore and human at the core

While Federal Bank’s digital switch had been going steady for the past 10 years, the pandemic provided opportunities to double the momentum. The Bank has enjoyed the first-mover advantage with most of its digital-banking products, but it is only now, Kumar says, that “more and more customers are coming to know about them. Even employees are now very thorough about the various digital products that the Bank offers.”

“We believe employees are the most valuable assets of the Bank so if one is offering a particular product to the customer, especially digital, one should offer the same to the employees too.”

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It has been well known for far too long that several routine banking tasks can turn digital effortlessly, and yet e-banking has been slow to catch up in India. “Banking is one of the major sectors where digitalisation has played a huge role,” notes Kumar. “But even now, many customers in India prefer to walk into a branch, greet their familiar teller while carrying out their banking activities,” he adds.

Through its efforts, the Kochi-headquartered bank is working to find that sweet spot in digital banking where the good old human touch can still have a place. “Our theme is ‘Digital at the fore and human at the core’,” informs Kumar. “So while we give a lot of importance to digitalisation and have migrated substantially, we continue to ensure that Federal Bank’s service permeates through to the customer at every touchpoint.”

A similar digital migration in a world without the pandemic would have taken five years, feels Kumar. “In a normal year, the learning or the understanding of the digital products may not have happened at such a pace. I think that’s the biggest benefit we got from launching this initiative.”

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Going digital

The Company is going through a phase of digital transformation — both in sales and collection — and the main focus is to connect with customers, OEMs and dealers through their fin-tech marketplace initiative, I-Quippo. “We have invested heavily in the technology platform. It will be India’s first equipment-solution marketplace, where all OEMs, dealers, customers will be on one single platform, and will avail financing, valuation, auctioning and other value-added services. The second main focus is on the collection and recovery engine, both physical and digital. Thus, our core focus for business will be the distribution and collection/ recovery,” Chatterjee explains. And that’s where SREI will invest in talent.

Human resources

There are certain skillsets desired in a candidate, to clinch these job titles at SREI. Chatterjee lists them out saying, “For the recovery, collection and financial solutions for large accounts, we will need analysts with strong credit-assessment skills, balance-sheet understanding and knowledge of financial ratios. For the pure retail collection and recovery side, we will look for people with enough retail recovery and solution experience. On the distribution side, people with digital sales experience and mindset, who have worked in fin-tech companies or similar BFSI space will be preferred.” Therefore, SREI is quite clear about the roles it wants to work on with this digital switch.

The digital platform will be completely managed by a separate team, which will be on I-Quippo’s payroll. It will have a manpower-outsourcing arrangement if required.

The attrition rate at SREI has reduced from 20 – 25 per cent to 15 per cent this year and Chatterjee explains how that happened. The Company may not have grown exponentially, but according to him, remained solid to maintain momentum. “We, as an organisation, do not believe in the hire-fire culture. In a month, we do some 40-45 talent moves and engage with staff heavily during tough times. Managers put in extra efforts, led by senior leaders, to ensure that every voice is heard and every query answered. Human resource managers rallied with business leaders on open house, town halls, e-mail communication and even the chairman, vice chairman and MD were on the same communication address, ‘Reset, Reimagine, Reboot’.

“SREI is quite clear about the roles it wants to work on with this digital switch.This enabled staff to appreciate the organisation culture and ethos of “united we stand”. Even in these tough times, people who performed received incentives. Therefore, they understood that their jobs are secure and that we are there for the long haul”

”This enabled staff to appreciate the organisation culture and ethos of “united we stand”. Attrition was quite slow and staff remained loyal. There were no salary or job cuts. “Even in these tough times, people who performed received incentives. Therefore, they understood that their jobs are secure and that we are there for the long haul,” says Chatterjee with pride.

Given the pandemic, like many other companies, SREI too upgraded its performance-management system and geared up to go completely digital. Managers key in the data on the basis of self-appraisal ratings, without any elaborate form filling or face-to-face meeting. The Company is contemplating a new compensation and benefits strategy, based on performance. It will be more on the variable side and less on the fixed side. This will not just be for the frontline staff, but for the back office as well.

Along with plans to add several people on the sales and distribution side, SREI is working on spreading its product suite too. More feet on the streets, in terms of sales, and less on supervisory management, is the goal here. The objective is also to create a right pyramid in terms of the organisation structure. Chatterjee predicts an addition of at least 50 to 100 lateral recruits by March 2021, over and above those being picked from B schools.

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