The answer lies in learning, unlearning and relearning, which is the mandate for success.

Culture of continuous learning

Central to preparing for the phenomenon called ‘permavucalution’ is the notion of perpetual learning. “It’s not just about acquiring new skills but also unlearning outdated ones and relearning in alignment with evolving organisational needs,” emphasises Anil Mohanty, CPO, DN Group. This culture of continuous learning lays the foundation for a workforce capable of navigating the complexities of the modern workplace, where AI integration is not just a possibility but an inevitability.

As highlighted by industry experts, including leaders from Maruti Suzuki and other prominent organisations, traditional approaches to strategic planning are becoming obsolete. Instead, businesses are embracing a mindset of learning, unlearning and relearning to navigate through the complexities of the modern world.

“Businesses must cultivate resilience, fortifying themselves against unexpected disruptions while remaining poised to capitalise on emerging opportunities.”

Anil Gaur, senior HR professional

AI: A catalyst for transformation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of this transformation, promising to revolutionise industries and streamline operations. Systems enabled by AI have the potential to make decision-making more efficient, reduce manual intervention and enhance accuracy. “Leaders must emphasise the need to view AI as an enabler rather than a threat, recognising its ability to simplify tasks, accelerate processes and improve overall productivity,” advises Mohanty. Additionally, they must stress the importance of adequate training and preparation to harness the full potential of AI and ensure that all stakeholders are equipped to embrace this technology.

The fourth industrial revolution, driven by advancements in AI, machine learning, 5G technology, robotic and quantum computing, presents both unprecedented opportunities and challenges. To remain competitive, businesses must invest in up-to-date technological infrastructure and foster a culture of digital literacy and innovation.

“It’s not just about acquiring new skills but also unlearning outdated ones and relearning in alignment with evolving organisational needs.”

Anil Mohanty, CPO, DN Group

Embracing uncertainty

The advent of the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) era further underscores readiness in the face of constant flux. What was once considered an exceptional circumstance has now become the norm, demanding a paradigm shift in mindset and strategy. “Businesses must cultivate resilience, fortifying themselves against unexpected disruptions while remaining poised to capitalise on emerging opportunities,” emphasises Anil Gaur, senior HR professional.

Furthermore, the need for flexibility and adaptability has never been greater, as businesses must navigate unpredictable disruptions such as economic downturns and public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. To thrive in this environment, organisations must embrace a more iterative and responsive approach to strategic planning, continually reassessing their strategies to capture emerging opportunities and address evolving challenges.

Therefore, rather than overestimating future growth or relying on long-term projections, businesses are encouraged to focus on short-term strategies that prioritise agility and flexibility. By staying attuned to current market conditions and avoiding overly speculative assumptions, organisations can position themselves to respond effectively to unforeseen challenges and capitalise on emerging opportunities.

Logic and pragmatism

Amidst market fluctuations and economic uncertainties, leaders emphasise the importance of logic and pragmatism in decision-making. Rather than chasing quick gains or engaging in speculative practices, businesses are advised to pursue gradual, incremental improvements. “This entails avoiding excessive risk-taking, maintaining a balanced approach to planning and prioritising long-term sustainability over short-term gains. By adopting a logical and methodical approach to business strategy, organisations can navigate through turbulent times with resilience and confidence,” suggests Mohanty.

Crisis as catalyst for innovation

Agreed, there is a perpetual state of crisis, but then it also presents an opportunity for innovation and evolution. Startups, buoyed by government support and venture capital, are driving change and challenging established norms. However, as Gaur cautions, “the journey from inception to success is fraught with challenges, requiring not only creativity and strategic direction but also the ability to navigate crises of leadership, autonomy and control.” 

Embracing change with confidence

As organisations embrace the imperatives of learning, adaptation and resilience, they are better positioned to thrive in an ever-changing business landscape. With the right mindset and strategic approach, organisations can transform challenges into opportunities, paving the way for a brighter and more prosperous future in the dynamic world of modern business.

However, “despite the urgency and significance of the ‘permavucalution’ phenomenon, awareness and adoption remain limited within the business community, particularly in regions such as India,” points out Gaur. While some forward-thinking organisations and industry leaders have begun to embrace the permavucalution mindset, many others remain unaware or indifferent to its implications.

He further suggests, “Moving forward, it is imperative for businesses to prioritise education, awareness and proactive action in response to the permavucalution paradigm. Professional bodies, industry associations and thought leaders have a vital role to play in facilitating discussions, disseminating knowledge and driving organisational change.”

While the road ahead may be fraught with uncertainty, it also presents boundless opportunities for those willing to embrace change and innovation. By harnessing the collective ingenuity of industry stakeholders and leveraging the transformative power of technology, organisations can navigate the turbulent waters of modern commerce with confidence and resilience.

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Insurance companies, such as Aviva Life Insurance are crafting their response to the crisis and are continuously striving to improve their existing practices.

Amit Malik, chief people operations & customer services officer, Aviva Life Insurance, says, “Any crisis is an opportunity and I think that has been one key element of our response — be it towards our customers, partners or employees.”

The Company’s response to the Covid situation was guided by its crisis-management team. To ensure business continuity and stakeholder communication, the focus has been on its employees and customers.

“It has involved relooking at a lot of processes to enable remote functioning, quick adoption of digital means and educating our customers to do the same, increasing the frequency and nature of communication with our existing customers, and helping our employees manage their health and wellbeing in these tough times,” adds Malik. 

Very simply put, there were three challenges that the Company had decided to focus on when the menace broke out. 

The first challenge was to make sure that any new customer seeking a new policy is able to do so, and hence, the whole policy-issuance process needed to continue even while working from home.

Second, attention had to be drawn towards the existing customers. The Company had to make sure that they were able to reach out for any help they required with respect to their policies. 

Any crisis is an opportunity and I think that has been one key element of our response — be it towards our customers, partners or employees

The third and most important challenge was to ensure that the employees, the Company’s driving force, did not experience any form of anxiety because of the ongoing uncertainty. 

Living the value of ‘Care More’ in these challenging times, Aviva India continued with its legacy of ensuring the engagement and wellbeing of its employees and took no time to adopt social- distancing norms. Guidelines and best practices were shared with all employees to help them balance their mind, body, heart and soul as they continued to work, even while handling added household responsibilities. 

The ‘Work Feeling Happy Campaign’ or WFH was launched to ensure that learning never stopped. The fun activities did not let anyone’s mental wellbeing be impacted during the testing times.

To handle this situation in a structured way, the Company came up with several strategies as a key to encourage everyone to embrace the new normal.

Learning via ‘Curious Learner Challenge’

Aviva India’s 1700+ employees have been provided access to 8500+ learning resources to identify their learning needs and enjoy on-the-go learning. People have shown interest in courses not only related to their jobs, but in various fields such as IT, coding, fine arts, photography, music, social-media advertising, mindfulness, leadership skills and so on. 

Over the last two months, Malik shares, “We have curated and shared over 25 webinars and podcasts and received excellent feedback. It is indeed interesting to see insights from employees who attend webinars and live sessions shared by us, which encourages healthy debates on the WhatsApp groups.”

Engagement via ‘Work Feeling Happy Campaign’

This four-week campaign aimed to equip everyone with information, micro-steps, fun quizzes and webinars on weekly themes and complimentary access to a meditation app, which they could enjoy along with their families.

The initial theme was health and wellbeing, with the focus being to ensure that the disturbance in the daily schedule and reduced movement does not impact the physical and mental wellbeing of the employees. This was followed by mindfulness and gratitude, with an aim to de-stress everyone.

Gradually, the employees were offered online courses, along with activities to inculcate budgeting amongst kids and family, and understand the shortcomings while handling personal finances. The employees were also guided on being resilient in adverse situations similar to the current scenario around the globe.

The evolution of the video platforms has built a supportive ecosystem for the sales team.

Under such extreme conditions, the ability to adapt to digital platforms faster has helped its salesforce deliver even under lockdown conditions. 

“Our ‘mobile sales tool’ has helped them log in policies without requiring personal meetings with the customers. Customers were encouraged to leverage the benefits of the self-service portal— that helps them with their policy renewals and so on, for which they would typically depend on their advisors,” Malik said.

The crisis and the related uncertainty of health and life have made the need for insurance stand out like never before — especially in a country, such as India, where people are prone to buying insurance not for indemnity, but rather investment. 

The insurance company is living up to its purpose of ‘With You Today for a Better Tomorrow’, wherein it is operating with the goal that not a single customer’s policy should lapse for the lack of awareness or inaccessibility to our services.

In Malik’s words, “After the initial low in March, renewals have steadily improved — the top query in our call centres for the last month has been about renewal premium payment and our business numbers for the months of April and May are evidence of the same.”

Moreover, self-service portals for policyholders are proving to be game changers for Aviva Life Insurance. 

Malik believes that insurers will need to ramp up their call centre operations to keep pace with the increase in premium payments, claims and other customer requests. Going forward, new- age solutions such as cloud telephony, AI-powered chatbots, and interactive voice response and so on will provide the customers with contactless service and seamless experience.

Now that the Company has got back to working from office, albeit with just a few employees initially, the challenge is to help its people imbibe social distancing as the new normal.

Aviva is meticulously putting in interventions for every single minute that an employee spends in the office to ensure that social distancing is maintained at all times.

An onsite doctor has been engaged who visits the office thrice a week to check on all support staff and any employee who is feeling unwell. Employees have to sign an e-health declaration every day before coming to work. For seating arrangements, a minimum six-feet distance is ensured between the work stations. Employees will have limited usage of common spaces, such as the cafeteria, lifts, meeting rooms and so on.

For Malik, employee safety is paramount, and therefore, even more than the numbers, it is about understanding who can contribute from home and who needs to come to office. 

The post How Aviva Life Insurance India sees opportunity in a crisis  appeared first on HR Katha.

Employees are the backbone of any organisation and it is important that the employers take care of them, to sustain and grow their business. But how do employers take care of their employees in a crisis, such as flood, hurricane or storm? Aren’t they responsible for communicating with them and helping them be safe in those hours too?

AlertMedia, a technology company, aims to provide a solution to the employers to convey important messages to their employees even during crises or trouble. The company offers an emergency communication system to employers—a cloud-based platform and a mobile app—which sends information through channels, such as text messages, voice mails, push notifications and e-mails, to employees before and during a disaster. 

Actually, the messages are sent through various channels so as to confirm that the message reaches the intended employees for sure. Some employers can make confirmation mandatory by the employees.

The employers can design communications as per the situation, such as for disasters, hurricane evacuation, and so on. These pre-planned messages can be sent to every employee listed on the database by the benefit executives, who can add C-suite, HR or other high-level employees as administrator to the system.

Also, the system dashboard helps employers see how effective their communications are in real time.

Employees need to download the AlertMedia Pro which is the iOS- and Android-enabled mobile app to receive information from the employer. Employees need to have a corporate account to login to the app and use the services.

Companies, such as Greyhound, DHL, AT&T and Volkswagen in around 80 countries are using this communication system.

They can buy the services of this communication system as per their needs. For instance, an organisation wishing to monitor the drivers of the vehicles, can use services, such as apps, e-mails and text messages, because they are in a drive.

Also, services can be availed as per the size of the company.  The pricing of services depends on the company size and the number of communication options availed. A company may spend from a couple of cents to about $1.50 per employee, each month.

The post A mobile app to help companies connect with employees during crises appeared first on HR Katha.

Neyveli Lignite Corporation India (NLC), has elevated its chief general manager of human resources, R Vikraman, as its new director-HR, with effect from December 9.

Vikraman joined the company as a graduate trainee and has spent over 31 years with NLC. He was involved in the successful construction, commissioning and operation of thermal power station-II – stage II. He soon became the group head of human resources of all thermal units. He was also responsible for the entire gamut of HR functions of these power stations except recruitment of regular workforce.

He has been instrumental in enabling efficient crisis management, ensuring no production loss at the company. A life member of the National Institute of Personnel Management (NIPM), he also currently holds additional responsibility as honorary secretary of NIPM, Neyveli chapter. Vikraman is a mechanical engineer, with a master’s in business administration from the Annamalai University.

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Crisis doesn’t come calling. It can happen anytime, anywhere. No individual or organisation can claim immunity. Let us take the case of the latest controversy around Nestle’s Maggi. A brand which was popular across generations is now fighting for survival. We are not getting into the righteousness of the subject but the fact remains that any organisation can or has come across a similar situation, though both the nature and degree of the problem could be different.

In such situations, it is expected that the top leadership of the company will get busy firefighting outside. No harm. That is the way it should be. But it is also dangerous to ignore the small sparks inside, which could just transform into a big fire or may have a long-lasting effect, internally, even after the issue gets over.

If industry observers are to be believed, it is almost imperative for an organisation to communicate and clear the air internally as well as externally. And the human resources function has a great role to play in this.

In terms of internal communication, the first thing the companies in crisis should do is change the way they communicate with the internal audience. During such situations, there can no longer be a conversation between the leaders and the subjects. Rather, the leadership has to come down to the level of the employees and speak to them at par. Only then will they be heard.

Says Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands, “There has to be a human approach to the story while communicating with the employees. False claims and promises do not work in such situations. In fact, a further attempt to hide anything from the employees could just backfire.”

In simple words, if a goof up has happened, it is important to accept it in front of the employees.

Poor communication or the lack of any communication will generate rumours. If one side suspects that the other has access to more information, this will further aggravate the issue.

A few years back, a multinational cola brand had got into a controversy on a similar quality issue. We are talking about Coca-Cola

The first thing the Company did was reach out to all the employees— from the top leaders to the front line employees— who directly touch the customers in the markets, and present them with transparent ‘pure facts’.

“They had to believe us unquestionably or we would lose the battle,” says Adil Malia, president HR, Essar Group. Malia was senior vice-president, Coca-Cola India at the time of the controversy.

“We stopped all work in all departments because we wanted all ‘feet on the street’,” adds Malia.

One message that needs to be sent across the cross-section of employees, is that it is not the problem of just the top leadership alone. Rather, it is every employee’s problem and everyone needs to contribute to get to over this situation.

Coca-Cola India prepared communication packs with FAQs and built teams of its employees to go and convince critical opinion makers and influential key customers in different segments. When employees were involved in convincing others, they started getting into the facts and believing in the product integrity much more than before.

It even went a step ahead when it wrote letters to families and explained the facts. Neighbours, friends, school teachers, even canteens and street corner ‘Mom&Pop’ shops had to be convinced, and who could be better brand ambassadors than the extended families!

It is important to involve each employee. By giving each one of them a task, the employees will feel that they are part of the organisation. This will not only be helpful in breaking the perceptions, but also boost the morale of the team.

Regular communication is also an integral part of the internal communication strategy during crisis time.

Pepsi, for instance, made sure that during the crisis situation, the then CEO, Vikram Bakshi communicated with the employees directly on a daily basis to update them on the progress.

From a workforce perspective, such crisis situations can be a boon in disguise for organisations in the long run.

It is the time of acid test. Companies will get to know their loyalists and also should take this opportunity to bind the team together, but there has to be complete transparency in the conversation.

It’s similar to the situation, when crisis hits a family — the closed ones get together to fight the external force without worrying much about the repurcussion. 

Abhijit Bhaduri, chief learning officer, WIPRO, opines, “The perceptions of an employee based on past experiences, determine how strongly they defend an employer brand under attack.”

“It would be killing to start building employee trust and belief in the brand integrity only at the last minute, when the brand is under market attack. The Army that sweats in peace, bleeds less in war,” concurs Malia.

The crisis situations also have a long-standing effect. If the leadership manages to sail through the crisis through smart moves, it is not only able to build a perception among its present employees but is also able to attract talent and future employees in the long run.

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