Sterlite’s solution was a bold three-pronged attack, shattering the mould of traditional appraisals. Transparency, fairness, and individual growth became the cornerstones of their new system. One of the first things to go was the dreaded bell curve. No more categorising employees against each other in a fight for limited rewards. Instead, Sterlite focused on rewarding absolute performance. “Someone exceeding their goals by 115 per cent gets acknowledged for that achievement, not compared to someone else,” explained Pande. This eliminated the time-consuming debates about rankings and ensured everyone who met or exceeded expectations got rewarded.

But fairness wasn’t just about the present. Sterlite understood the importance of investing in the future. Their ‘Job Worth Model’ meticulously evaluated the market value of each role, ensuring salaries reflected not just current worth but also anticipated future demands. This helped mitigate the risk of losing talent to competitors offering better compensation. It was a future-proof strategy that recognised that a satisfied and valued workforce was the backbone of any successful organisation.

“The potential for higher increments based on increased proficiency fuelled a growth mindset within the organisation. Employees were no longer cogs in a machine; they were valued partners whose development was seen as an investment in the company’s future.”

Ruhie Pande,  group CHRO, Sterlite Power

Next came the expertise factor. Sterlite recognised that continuous learning and development were crucial not only for individual growth but also for the company’s continued innovation. Employees were assessed based on their current skill level, from beginner to expert. This not only recognised their contributions but also incentivised them to keep learning. The potential for higher increments based on increased proficiency fuelled a growth mindset within the organisation. Employees were no longer cogs in a machine; they were valued partners whose development was seen as an investment in the company’s future.

But potential wasn’t ignored either. Sterlite used a robust ‘talent-assessment process’ to evaluate an employee’s potential, ability, and overall fit. This multi-layered approach ensured consistency and fairness in assessing potential across the organisation. Variable pay, with the possibility of earning up to 150 per cent, was directly tied to this assessment. Here, Sterlite was acknowledging that some individuals possessed the drive and talent to excel beyond their current roles. By identifying these high potentials and rewarding their potential, Sterlite was investing in future leaders who would drive the company forward.

The linchpin of this system was the OKR (objectives and key results ) methodology. OKR ensured everyone, from top to bottom, understood how their individual goals contributed to the company’s overall objectives. There was no cap on variable pay, further motivating employees to strive for excellence. Production goals cascaded down from top-level profitability objectives, ensuring everyone was aligned towards a common purpose. Imagine a well-oiled machine where every part functioned seamlessly to achieve a greater goal. That’s what Sterlite was striving for – a company where individual ambition and purpose were harnessed to drive organisational success.

This new system wasn’t without its challenges. Rewarding potential was a leap of faith, and ensuring accurate talent assessment was crucial. Budgeting also required adjustments, as there was no longer a system of ranking and elimination. Open communication with employees was paramount to ensure a smooth transition. However, Sterlite successfully navigated these hurdles, and the feedback from employees was overwhelmingly positive. They felt valued, heard, and invested in, a stark contrast to the often-negative sentiment associated with traditional performance reviews.

The company’s commitment to continuous improvement didn’t stop there. Regular benchmarking ensured they stayed ahead of market trends in compensation and performance management practices. Variable pay was awarded twice a year to reflect market fluctuations, keeping employees engaged and focused on delivering results throughout the year. Looking ahead, Sterlite planned to digitise the entire appraisal process, catering to the mobile-first preferences of the younger generation. The goal? To streamline discussions and focus on providing valuable developmental feedback, not just debating performance metrics. Performance reviews, once a dreaded formality, were being transformed into meaningful conversations about growth and development.

Sterlite Power’s innovative approach to appraisals proved that performance reviews could be a tool for growth, not just a box-ticking exercise. By focusing on transparency, fairness, and individual development, they created a system that benefited both the company and its employees, ensuring they remained a leader in the ever-evolving energy sector. In a world where the only constant is change, Sterlite had embraced a performance management system that was flexible, adaptable, and future-oriented, positioning them for success in the years to come.

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Forget the stereotypical view of factory workers as replaceable cogs in a machine. At Mukand, they’re recognised as the beating heart of the business. “We don’t just mean senior leadership by total employee involvement,” emphasises Viplav Bhatt, head HR, Mukand. “Every employee plays a crucial role, and we make sure their voices are heard.”

This isn’t just lip service. Mukand understands that every voice, from the CEO to the welder, contributes to the company’s success story. It breaks down the walls between the executive suite and the shop floor. Traditionally siloed employees are now active participants in strategic planning workshops. They don’t just learn about the company’s goals, they help shape them. “We show them how their ideas directly impact the bottom line,” explains Bhatt. “It’s about fostering a sense of belonging and purpose, where everyone feels invested in the company’s success.”

“We don’t just mean senior leadership by total employee involvement. Every employee plays a crucial role, and we make sure their voices are heard.”

Viplav Bhatt, head-HR, Mukand 

 

But participation is just the first step. Mukand goes a step further by ensuring everyone is aligned. Managers work with employees to define clear, measurable goals (KPIs) that cascade down from the company’s overall strategy. Through user-friendly interfaces, even shop floor workers can tailor their goals to directly contribute to departmental and company objectives.

The results? “Enhanced employee involvement and a stronger sense of belongingness,” says Bhatt. “This, in turn, has fuelled a high-performance culture where everyone is working together towards a shared vision.”

Finding and nurturing talent is another pillar of Mukand’s success. They use a data-driven approach to identify critical positions that significantly impact the business. It’s not just about filling a role, it’s about finding the right person with the potential to grow.

Performance evaluations go beyond simple metrics. A unique nine-block system assesses strengths, weaknesses, and future potential, while a separate system gauges leadership capabilities. This data becomes a roadmap for development, pinpointing high-potential individuals ripe for advancement.

And advancement isn’t limited to those with fancy degrees. Mukand places a special emphasis on developing the shop floor workforce. Training programs based on Total Quality Management (TQM) principles equip employees with the skills they need to become future leaders.

But it’s not all about classroom learning. The company actively promotes “quality circles” where shop-floor employees collaborate to solve problems and implement innovative practices. And to keep everyone motivated, a robust rewards and recognition program acknowledges and celebrates valuable contributions.

In today’s competitive landscape, a versatile workforce is key. Mukand understands this, and they focus on multi-skilling their operators. By providing training across various areas, they ensure their employees can adapt to ever-changing industry demands.

This commitment to empowerment extends beyond traditional factory roles. Mukand  is proud of its diverse workforce, including its female shop-floor employees. “We actively hire women for roles where they excel,” says Bhatt, “and we’re proud of our high retention rate. Many of our female employees have been with us for over 30 years.”

The company champions career development for all. Clear career paths provide transparency and empower employees to take charge of their professional journeys. Additionally, programs like the Graduate Engineer Development Programme equip participants with the leadership skills and knowledge needed to climb the corporate ladder.

Promotion from within is a core value at Mukand. Bhatt shares an inspiring example: “We have a senior executive who started as a participant in our Graduate Engineer Development programme 17 years ago. Today, he leads our business strategy.”

Data is king at Mukand, and they use it to track diversity metrics and identify areas for improvement. Diversity-related KPIs are even incorporated into manager performance reviews, ensuring accountability in fostering an inclusive environment.

Employee resource groups provide support and a sense of community for all. A mobile app connects everyone, offering access to workflows, critical information, and fostering a collaborative spirit. Even face-recognition systems eliminate the need for cumbersome ID cards, ensuring seamless access for shop-floor employees.

“This digitisation enriches the employee experience throughout their journey at Mukand,” concludes Bhatt. By empowering its shop floor employees, Mukand has not only built a culture of innovation, but also a foundation for long-term success. In a competitive manufacturing landscape, this commitment to inclusivity, skill development, and a culture of ownership positions Mukand as a true industry leader.

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The training will take place at SCPwD-affiliated centres across India, facilitated by certified trainers and assessors. It aims to equip students for roles in the business and hospitality sectors, thereby addressing skill gaps and enhancing productivity upon their entry into the workforce.

The programme was launched last year, to assist PwD in overcoming employment barriers. The first batch of 100 students is set to graduate this year.

The year 2024 will see this commitment being reinforced, as Diageo aims to ensure that PwD have equitable access to resources, skills and job opportunities throughout India.

Furthermore, this batch consists of 300 students, including individuals with visual impairments, poor vision and speech and hearing impairments. This tailored programme incorporates specific learning modules and assisted technologies, such as sign language instructors, to facilitate effective learning and skill development. Furthermore, it will offer specialised training in hospitality skills, enhancing employment prospects for PwD.

Noteworthy attendees at the event included senior members from NAB (National Association for the Blind) Karnataka and representatives from various industries.

Diageo is a global firm dealing in alcoholic beverages, with a diverse portfolio including brands such as Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff and Captain Morgan. Established in 1997, it operates in over 180 countries, boasting a strong commitment to responsible drinking and sustainability while consistently delivering premium quality products to consumers worldwide.

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This master class delved into the intricacies of recruitment and advocacy providing participants with invaluable tips on how to optimise talent-acquisition strategies and foster a culture of advocacy within organisations. The speakers shared practical tips and actionable strategies, which empowered the participants to navigate the digital landscape with confidence and drive impactful change within their professional spheres.

The attendees gained insights into the latest trends and strategies in digital innovation and talent development. The speakers engaged in meaningful discussions with the employees of Virtusa even while they leveraged the opportunity to network with co-workers from across various departments of the organisation.

Seetharam L, director of talent acquisition, Virtusa Corporation, highlighted the fact that the company’s tie-up with LinkedIn “has enabled us to empower professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to leverage social content for personal branding. In today’s competitive landscape, a strong digital presence on platforms such as LinkedIn is essential for career advancement and professional success.”

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Corporate employees vs shop-floor workers

Corporate settings often involve roles that require a significant amount of desk-based work, involving tasks such as strategic planning, management, analysis and decision-making. The environment is typically characterised by a more formal setting, often in offices or remote workspaces.

For corporate employees, L&D may heavily involve digital-learning platforms, webinars, seminars, workshops and training sessions that focus on soft skills, leadership development, project management and industry-specific knowledge. The emphasis may be on communication, strategic thinking, decision-making and innovative technologies tailored to office settings.

“The focus lies heavily on achieving zero errors, minimising manufacturing issues and ensuring maximum productivity. Worker evaluation centres around output quality and meeting the required standards”

Praveer Priyadarshi, senior HR leader

On the other hand, shop-floor workers, often found in manufacturing, assembly, or production settings, deal with hands-on tasks, machinery operation, physical labour and immediate problem-solving within their workspaces. Their environment is characterised by machinery, equipment and often a more fast-paced and physically-demanding setting.

Shop-floor workers require a more hands-on, practical approach to L&D. Training may involve on-the-job guidance, simulations, equipment-specific training, safety procedures and frequent skill reinforcement to ensure operational efficiency and safety. Practical skills, machine operation, safety protocols and troubleshooting techniques take precedence.

Praveer Priyadarshi, senior HR leader, comments that learning for these workers is more outcome oriented, emphasising efficiency and productivity over skill diversification.

“The focus lies heavily on achieving zero errors, minimising manufacturing issues and ensuring maximum productivity. Worker evaluation centres around output quality and meeting the required standards.”

He points out how a worker’s proficiency may be assessed based on whether they’ve produced 100 units according to specified standards, ensuring the required quality and efficiency in their work.

For shop-floor workers, the challenge lies in balancing training without disrupting the production flow. Often, training occurs during non-peak hours, necessitating careful planning to ensure that productivity is not compromised. The training is more hands-on and may involve shadowing experienced workers, practical demonstrations and real-time problem-solving scenarios.

Challenges and opportunities

Challenges faced by corporate employees in L&D may involve keeping up with rapid technological advancements, adapting to changing market trends and developing leadership skills. The opportunity lies in leveraging online resources, personalised learning paths and networking opportunities to keep abreast of industry changes.

Shop-floor workers encounter challenges related to workplace safety, equipment familiarity and evolving job roles due to automation and technological advancements. Opportunities here involve leveraging virtual reality (VR) training, upskilling in automation technologies and incorporating continuous improvement strategies to adapt to changing work environments.

“Learning dynamics for grassroots-level workers, who are deeply tied to the specific tasks they handle. Their learning experience tends to revolve around the precise duties they perform, without much scope for diversification”

Mangesh Bhide, senior vice president and HR head, Reliance Jio Infocomm

Mangesh Bhide, senior vice president and HR head, Reliance Jio Infocomm, shares learning dynamics for grassroots-level workers, who are deeply tied to the specific tasks they handle. Their learning experience tends to revolve around the precise duties they perform, without much scope for diversification.

Bhide points out, “For instance, consider a shop floor worker responsible for driving and maintaining a vehicle, where their knowledge is specialised around understanding the dashboard indicators, checking oil levels, managing air pressure and monitoring fuel. Their expertise is finely tuned to the demands of their role, and any transition to another task would necessitate retraining or readiness for a lateral shift. This need for role-specific skill sets is similar to service roles; for instance, the staff taking your order at a restaurant or delivering it, each equipped with distinct, job-specific competencies.”

Bridging the gap

While the L&D needs of corporate employees and shop-floor workers differ significantly, an effective organisational strategy recognises the value of both segments and strives for a balanced approach.

The essence of a comprehensive learning strategy involves tailoring training content to meet the distinct needs of diverse groups within the organisation. This means, employing a diverse array of training methods, including digital modules for corporate employees and hands-on, experiential learning for shop floor workers. It’s essential to cultivate a culture that deeply values ongoing learning and skill development across all levels.

Ensuring that the training is seamlessly accessible and aligns with the daily workflow of each role is pivotal. This holistic approach acknowledges the varied learning styles and environments within the organisation, fostering an inclusive and effective learning experience for all employees.

Bhide emphasises that any training or educational focus must cater to the specific skill set needed for the task, ensuring the workers are adept at their jobs. He opines, “This can involve tailored training sessions that address the intricacies of their work, ensuring they are continually updated on job-specific skills and ready for any potential role shifts or advancements within their sphere of work.”

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Presently, the platform has over a 100 employees who are engaged in offering online cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data courses for the professional development and career training of students. The new hires, it is hoped, will enhance the operations of the firm and help it deliver world-class training.

In May 2022, QwikSkills had managed to raise seed funding of Rs 3.85 crore from various angel investors, including Manish Sinha and Naveen Gupta of Indian Angel Network (IAN). At the time, the firm had revealed its intention to use the raised capital to expand its presence in the business-to-business (B2B) enterprises and business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) space, and reach out to colleges and universities. It had also planned to use the funds to hire more talent for its team of developers, sales and marketing personnel, as well as cloud experts.

The Gurugram-based startup offers monthly as well as annual packages to its users via a subscription-based model. Leveraging these yearly packages, users can practice cloud computing and fulfil the needs of the industry. Students are allowed to hone their technical skills and benefit from hands-on cloud skills practice.

The post QwikSkills to hire 300 to deliver world-class skill training appeared first on HR Katha.

This collaboration will see the two entities attempt to study and harness the powers of HR data and analytics, speed up automation and use of related tools, and improve employee experience with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Taking pride in the “globally benchmarked” learning and development programmes at Infosys, Ashiss Kumar Dash, EVP & global head – services, utilities, resources and energy, Infosys, said, “Through this collaboration, we intend to bring our digital expertise and tools to Aramco’s HR practice to deliver a world-class employee experience. By aiming to incorporate high-level AI and automation into their employee-management model, we will attempt to help Aramco scale and enhance their talent model.”

Infosys intends to integrate digital transformation practices and tools into Aramco’s HR platform, so that their employees’ digital experience is enhanced, which will result in better engagement and productivity.

Infosys will also use AI to narrow the skill gaps that exist in Aramco’s workforce, and address issues related to employee learning and development and ensure suitability of talent to the opportunities available.

This tie-up will also try to analyse ways in which automation can take over monotonous and repetitive HR tasks in the area of learning and training, to increase the efficiency of the latter and reduce the time and costs involved.

Aramco will also benefit from the algorithmic decision-making feature that will help the company remain up-to-date with trends and also find relevant recruitment channels.

According to Faisal A. Al-Hajji, SVP-human resources, Aramco, “This collaboration will allow us to explore ways to further upgrade our focus on customer-centricity and transform our digital HR offerings.”

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Excited about his second stint with Microsoft, Bhaduri announced his latest assignment on LinkedIn, calling himself a “boomerang employee” and “doing what I love doing – L&D”.

An alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur, Bhaduri started his career with Tata Steel, back in 1989, as deputy divisional manager. Five years later, he joined Mudra Communications as HR director for a short stint of a little over two years.

From 1997 to 2005, he was HR director at Colgate Palmolive, before he moved on to Pepsico International, as HR director.

It was in 2008 that he came to be associated with Microsoft as HR director. For a year and a half, he was responsible for overall HR for the sales, marketing and services group of Microsoft India. During his tenure, he helped to hire, develop and retain top talent, making Microsoft India a Best Place to Work.

In 2009, he joined Wipro as chief learning officer. For seven years, he was busy building a culture of curiosity, innovation and learning for 1,75,000 employees across 54 countries. During this stint, he authored the books ‘Digital Tsunami’ and ‘Don’t Hire the Best’. He also coached CXOs and senior business leaders on leadership development.

In 2016, he turned entrepreneur, launching Abhijit Bhaduri & Associates, coaching business leaders and leadership teams to drive a culture of innovation, agility and growth. The firm has been helping global brands, startups and business leaders discover their personal brand and communicate it through storytelling. As CEO of Abhijit Bhaduri & Associates, he played career transitions coach and also helped HR teams become more future-ready by advising them on digital transformation strategies.

He is also author of ‘Dreamers and Unicorns: How leadership, talent and culture are the new growth drivers’.

HRKatha wishes this talent management expert all the best for his new assignment.

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Thakur served as CHRO at Paytm for more than a year and a half. Before that, he was heading human resources for Accenture in India, from 2017 to 2019.

An alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur, Thakur also served as head of HR for Microsoft in India for more than four years, from 2012 to 2017. He moved to Microsoft from GE where he served as director – HR for well over 11 years. His stint at GE was the longest of his career.

A commerce graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Thakur began his career with Eicher Goodearth as deputy manager – HR. Two years later, he joined Bausch & Lomb Eye Care as senior manager – HR. During his successful five-year stint there, he led the Learning and Development function for the Company and also served as the plant HR leader for the Company’s manufacturing centre in India. In 2000, he moved to Cadence Design Systems as compensation and benefits manager for a year, before joining GE.

Meanwhile, Paytm is preparing to file its initial IPO documents with SEBI and is looking at raising $2.3 billion. In what is expected to be one of the biggest IPOs in the country, Paytm is looking at Rs 22,000 crore IPO by Diwali 2021.

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Having launched operations in 2005 from a kitchen in Bengaluru, the Company has now grown its workforce to 1,500, spread across over 45 markets.

In early 2021, iD Fresh had decided to invest Rs 100 crore to set up new production plants in India and abroad, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the US. The Company saw a 24 per cent y-o-y growth in the last financial year, following which it expanded its team by 150 employees across functions, amidst the pandemic.

Despite the challenges the pandemic brought in its wake, the Company has shown amazing resilience and been able to perform well. While hiring, it now wishes to offer employment opportunities to those who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and those who wish to return to the active workforce post a career break.

With its exclusive Women Network, iD plans to foster a culture of learning and development focussed on women. It hopes to be able to contribute to their professional growth, by offering them equal opportunities to progress and develop into leaders.

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Dheera Bhadani, senior manager, human resources, YOHT, who is leading the programme, explains, “Since none of the trainings were happening physically, we saw this as a good opportunity to be leveraged and aimed for diverse participation in the programme. Traditionally, we run such training programmes at the respective locations. People were anyway working from home, so they were able to join whenever and from anywhere, irrespective of the time zones they belonged to.”

Rajeev Singh, CHRO, YOHT

It’s a 12-week exercise and has competency-based assessment, pre and post the sessions. There are three learning modules spread across six virtual sessions conducted by trainers. It has a mobile-based gamified platform as well. After every module is completed, closure or feedback sessions are conducted. After completing their assignments people revert based on their learnings. This breeds peer learning and sharing of cross-cultural participation. That’s why the virtual programme, which began in January 2021, had a mixed batch.”

The idea to roll out a programme for early and mid-level managers comes from a 2019 initiative called ‘Managers as Coach’. Bhadani reveals that the organisation had several batches running for the ‘Managers as Coach’ programme. Offering further expalantion, Rajeev Singh, CHRO, YOHT, says, “The purpose of this intervention is to create a developmental culture in the organisation. The first thing is to look at the senior people and sensitise them. That’s why, the initiative of ‘Manager as Coach’ was introduced. With that mind-set, it’s easy to have conversations.” With the senior levels adequately addressed, the question arose as to how to address people who are managers for the first time or those who need some support to be better managers. “The objective was to ensure that managers across levels are able to understand how to manage themselves, their teams and the stakeholders. Therefore, the goal was to prepare a senior manager to nurture a coaching mindset and then work on making the upcoming manager more
effective,” enunciates Singh.

The criteria to get selected for the programme is quite simple. This is designed for those managers who have recently been promoted or have moved from an individual contributor position to that of a team-handler. Such managers needed assistance to perform their jobs efficiently. The participants for this programme are selected after holding conversations with their managers, the HR manager and the employees who are getting nominated. The manager and the HR will discuss the requirements and identify the people who will benefit from the exercise. The nominated employees are made aware of the objective of the programme and the managers identify the areas relevant for their learning and development. They customise the programme according to the feedbacks.

The programme was put in place by YOHT in partnership with Tack TMI Inspire One, a service provider. It also employs some measurable tools to gauge the transformation in these managers before and after taking this training programme.

Dheera Bhadani, senior manager, human resources, YOHT

Even though the program is only a few months old, both Bhadani and Singh have observed some noticeable changes in the behaviour of the employees. Bhadani shares, “People were excited doing role plays or activities in the breakout rooms on Zoom meetings. They related some examples which were very specific to our industry. In the first module, the trainer used generic case studies, while in the next one, the suggestion that came up was whether it could be more relatable. Accordingly, we tried to modify the questions and case studies.”

Some of the changes incorporated were use of terminologies relevant to the industry, or situations that managers may come across in the organisation in a normal day. A few quick chats with the participants and managers in terms of context and expectations helped them come up with a solution. “Participants shared some situations during their feedback sessions and we incorporated them in the programme. It was a game changer for us. In a virtual session, one cannot see everyone. After the modifications, however, one could even see few people — who wouldn’t otherwise contribute — volunteer to speak because they could relate to it,” Bhadani reveals.

Singh, on his part, realised that people had already started putting their learnings to use. “One of the criteria is what benefits they will get from it. Their takeaway is getting measured with some in-built tools. I have seen people’s approach to work change. I have seen the tool kits that have been shared during the sessions being used in their day-to-day interactions,” Singh observes proudly.

For the first batch, the virtual module had two hour-sessions every day spread across three months. The organisation now plans to make it physical by moving the session to the plant. Therefore, the courses will get compressed to one or two days at the site. “One can’t make someone sit for hours on a virtual medium. Therefore, we had divided the modules into a couple of sessions rather than have long sessions on each day. Each session lasted two hours and was scheduled in the evening. People were in different time zones. Going forward, since things are going back to normal, we are moving the exercise to the plant site,” Bhadani explains.

Singh reveals that the organisation always wanted the session to be in person. “Plant setups are ideal for in-person sessions. We also want to test the effectiveness of the programme. Henceforth, we will have two-day programmes instead of three-month long ones. The on-site programme will have the same faculty, content and measures. This is specifically curated to help the staff at the physical sites,” informs Singh.

Currently, each batch has 20 odd participants. Moving forward, the organisation wishes to train 300 managers. To become effective contributors, YOHT believes that all upcoming managers need to go through this training programme.

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Commenting on the importance of learning and development of the organisation, Shailesh Singh, director and chief people officer, Max Life Insurance, says, “One of our organisation’s core values is the growth mindset, which is essential for an enterprise to have. In order to fulfill that, it is important for an enterprise to learn. Unless we learn as a team, it will be difficult for the organisation to renew itself and progress. A foundation of growth mindset is what the leadership at Max Life believes in.”

Individual and organisational learning

With the rapid technological advancements, the world is becoming more competitive. With the crisis having adversely affected businesses across almost all the sectors, companies have had to shift most of their corporate workforce to AI. However, this shift came as a result of organisational learning along with individual learning. “To stay in competition, learning is important. In fact, learning has two-fold importance — as an enterprise need and as an individual need. Keeping both in view, Max Life maps each employee’s aspirations and their growth path with the Organisation. We look at the gap between their current skills and their aspirations, which help us understand what learning process they require to reach their goal in the Company,” explains Singh.

Commenting on the individual learning and development procedures followed at Max Life, Singh says, “We present Individual Development Plans or IDPs, which allow employees to choose learning programmes according to their choice and aspirations. On the basis of their selection, we provide a variety of tools, such as coaching, grooming and mentoring. ”

One of our organisation’s core values is the growth mindset, which is essential for an enterprise to have. In order to fulfil that, it is important for an enterprise to learn. Unless we learn as a team, it will be difficult for the organisation to renew itself and progress.

Explaining how Max Life guides its people on their career path, Singh shares, “We encourage our team leaders and supervisors to have an annual conversation with their teams to discuss their goals and their performance matrix. We have crafted experience maps, which help people plot their performance journey, and identify the functions they need to go through before ending up in the positions they desire. This helps employees self-determine their learning and development paths and plans. ”

However, there are always two sets of people — one that is eager to learn, and the other that is too reluctant to develop new skills. The latter set may also comprise people with high potential, who may need a push into the learning process. In order to retain such people with high potential, companies may have to undertake certain initiatives. At Max Life, “There are indeed some people who don’t realise their own potential and the need to learn,” reveals Singh. “It certainly gets difficult for the organisation to motivate them to learn. In such cases, we work in association with the HR team, on the basis of annual performance reports, to help such employees realise the need to upskill and learn. This awakens them to the need to invest their time, money and resources for their own good, and the Company supports them in this process. While it may take some time, it is important to do their bit in order to foster a growth mindset. However, ultimately it is up to the individuals to adopt it.”

Internal and external talent

A report published by Max Life states “Over 50 per cent of mid-senior positions are filled through internal talent.” Commenting further on this Singh says, “We believe in achieving a balance between buying and retaining talent. We build as well as buy talents because our strong culture, built over the years, is very powerful when it comes to some of the senior and mid-senior people. We have faith in the culture that has groomed our people through the years. Every person in the mid-senior level is capable of leading, and we are in a good position to have some of these positions filled by internal talent. On the other hand, buying is more expensive than retaining, not only in terms of paying more, but also in terms of the time taken by new people to absorb the culture and the structure of the company. The process consumes more resources in terms or money and time. Therefore, building is always superior because internal talent is better aware of the organisation than external talent, but we also wish to keep our doors open to outsiders. Our foundation is made strong by a growth mindset, which requires learning, and we always encourage that in the newcomers.”

While it is convenient to retain internal talent, this requires talent mapping. Only then can the right talent be placed in a new role. However, for a company with such high numbers of people on board, the correct mapping may be challenging. With the new AI tools and techniques of talent mapping in the market, many companies are able to adopt new procedures for this. “We have been running OTR, which is a process of annual submission of talent reports by the team leaders, for almost ten years now,” claims Singh. He goes on to explain, “Every supervisor is expected to deliver a report on how well equipped a team is in terms of talent needed to launch a new business strategy or plan. In the report, the supervisors also need to plot the path that they wish to take to grow with the team. During this process best bets of each team are identified and scrutinised by every level of leadership. Therefore, the outcome is more reliable. Additionally, we also use AI tools to filter out who is likely to fit in better in our culture and work structure. These AI tools help streamline the candidature while hiring. We also employ some tools to acquire feedback on our existing employees, and most importantly, to train the the internal talent.”

With time, the hiring process has become more technical given the involvement of AI tools and software. In addition, there are the changing business needs, which also have an impact on the process. This makes it equally important for the hiring managers to undergo training and upskilling as well.

“It is absolutely imperative for our leaders to stay up to date with the happenings in their respective areas. They can either do this themselves or seek help from their supervisors. We also have something called ‘Ideas Exchange’ wherein senior leaders and former leaders come together to discuss with the Max Life team ways to grow and groom to stay relevant with the times. Unless one continues to make efforts to learn and grow it will be difficult to withstand the tough market competition,” enunciates Singh.

Reducing gender gap

Talking about the measures to bridge the gender gap across all levels in the Company, Singh highlights the fact that Max Life has been working on enhancing gender diversity for a few years now, choosing to focus on culture. The priority of Max Life has been to keep the culture diverse in terms of gender.

Singh shares, “Our desire is to make sure that everybody is heard, and there are no biases as far as possible. We want to ensure that women are rightfully represented. Over the last few years we have made significant changes in this direction. Even ten years back when the Government of India used to grant two to three months of maternity leave, Max Life allowed five months of maternity leave. Looking forward to making women feel safer and help them balance their personal and professional lives, we started providing them cab services in case of late sign-outs after 8 p.m.”

“Also, when we hire women, we provide 20 per cent higher incentives for referring successful women for the team. We also have women mentoring initiatives across all the levels of the company. We wish to create a balanced and caring workplace for women, and also make sure that supervisors understand this very well. In instances of supervisors not abiding by such rules, necessary measures have been taken against them. We aim to develop a talent pipeline for women and ready them to take on mid-senior roles,” he adds.

Clearly, Max Life is going out of its way to make the workplace more competitive and sensitive. It believes in creating the right workplace culture to ensure integrated growth of the Company along with its employees.

The post How Max Life drives a ‘growth mindset’ appeared first on HR Katha.

Organised by the National Human Resource Development Network (NHRDN), Pune Chapter, at the Fergusson College, the overarching theme of the summit was to reimagine the L&D strategies for the decade 2020-2030. The design of the summit included expert views and insights on the best and next practices in the industry, to carve out L&D strategies for 2030.

In the inaugural speech, Abhay Jere, chief innovation officer, Ministry of HRD, said, “Usually, it is the HR professionals who make others listen, but I take this opportunity to turn the tables. The main crisis of human resources in India is surely the way the education system is designed. Indian students are much less efficient at problem-solving than students from the world over.”

Jere in his speech had various recommendations for the HR industry ranging from creating internship opportunities for graduates and improving the employability of engineers in their organisations.

The Re-imagining Learning and Development Summit has been curated for business leaders, HR professionals and all the stakeholders responsible for organisation development at large and the themes too carefully crafted to help ignite the minds of L&D leaders, talent management practitioners and all HR professionals.

“In the recent past, the L&D function has experienced the severe intrusion of technology which has its pluses and minuses. The L&D Summit explores how the human-centric approach in the world of AI can be realigned. Overall the Summit promises to be an exciting learning experience for the delegates and speakers alike,” shares Anand Khott, Summit director & president, NHRDN Pune Chapter & HR leader, IBM.

The Summit’s pedagogy included presentations and discussions with emphasis on experience sharing; it also was conducted in a highly interactive mode with a Q&A round in each session.

The post NHRDN organises ‘Re-imagining L&D’ Summit appeared first on HR Katha.

How do companies bridge this skill gap at an ongoing basis, when new, innovative and cutting-edge technologies are emerging with each passing day? Competency based learning is the solution to this.

AT&T, which entered the cloud business in 2016 realised that the workforce lacked the requisite skills to enter the new era of business.

A robust competency-based L&D programme helped AT&T to reskill 2,80,000 of its employees in two years.

“The assessment tools that we use helps us to extract relevant data around the current capabilities of employees and aligning them with the organisational goals of the company”

Competency-based learning focusses on a particular set of competencies, including behavioural skills and technical skills.

In this method, the organisational goals become the main focus. A framework of competencies is then created for the workforce to achieve those goals.

The important step is to analyse the current capabilities of the workforce and compare them with the standard competencies required. This helps to find the gap between the required skills and current skills.

“In our organisation, we ask the managers and the employees to discuss what skills are they lacking. This is our way of finding the skill gap,” reveals Vishal Nagda, head HR, Ozone Group.

“The competency learning model helps overcome the competency gap in the organisations. But we truly need to go back to our drawing boards and use the classroom method and other technologies in the learning space to make a bigger impact”

“We believe that the employees are the best people to identify the areas in which they need training, keeping in mind the kind of work function they are in,” he adds.

While the Ozone Group relies on employee feedback to understand how to cover the skill gap, there are other processes as well.

Generally for assessing the current skills of employees, the traditional method is to use the annual performance review meeting of employees with their managers and taking feedbacks on performance. But at Infosys, skill assessment tools are being used to assess the capabilities of employees and align them with the organisational goals of the company.

Also assessments of managers are also being done on different parameters of technical and behavioural skills.

“The assessment tools that we use helps us to extract relevant data around the current capabilities of employees and aligning them with the organisational goals of the company. It helps to create relevant development programmes for our employees for the future,” shares Nandani S, Group head – Organisation development, Infosys.

Benchmarking is another process through which skill gaps can be identified. In this process, the skills of the top performers are compared to the rest of employees.

“We believe that the employees are the best people to identify the areas in which they need training, keeping in mind the kind of work function they are in”

“In India, the biggest issue is that we fail to understand what competencies are,” shares Karan Sandhu, group chief learning officer, Jindal Steel and Power.

He truly believes that technology should be leveraged to understand the skill gap in the organisation, through various assessment tools available in the market.

“In most businesses, L&D has been at bottom of the priority list. It’s high time, companies realise that L&D is the way to keep the business alive,” asserts Sandhu.

“Competency-based learning surely works in the modern age of negating the skill gap,” shares Nagda.

“The competency learning model helps overcome the competency gap in the organisations. But we truly need to go back to our drawing boards and use the classroom method and other technologies in the learning space to make a bigger impact,” concludes Sandhu.

The post Competency-based learning helps bridge the skill gap appeared first on HR Katha.

One of the new ways of learning is invisible learning— a methodology where learning is an in-built process in the organisation. The employees themselves drive their own selves towards learning new things and adding new skillsets. The principle behind invisible learning is that employees take the initiative to learn themselves, and they learn whatever they want and whenever they want to.

To understand this more clearly, let us look at a structured learning process. It is solely prepared by the L&D team for the employees, who follow it to the T. This is visible learning. On the other hand, an unstructured way of learning, where L&D is just a facilitator to employees can be called invisible learning.

The mindset of Indian employers looks quite positive towards the concept of invisible learning and some of them have made room for it in their respective organisations.

“At Mahindra people can use the LMS system such that they can learn whatever they want outside their regular role as well”

As per Prince Augustine, EVP-group human capital & leadership development, Mahindra and Mahindra, 80 per cent of their L&D process is structured and 20 per cent of it is free. Employees can learn whatever they want and can get all the resources from the LMS system.

“People can use the LMS system such that they can learn whatever they want outside their regular role as well,” says Augustine.

Varun Upadhayaya, group head-HR, Wockhardt, narrates an incident that took place in their organisation. Once a group of employees wanted to learn how to work on Excel. The L&D team organised a few learning sessions for them by professionals, and it turned out to be a great success.

This is a very small example of how the L&D can support the process of invisible learning.

“At Wockhardt, employees are free to learn whatever they want and we supply them with the materials and resources through various mediums, including online,” mentions Upadhayaya.

“The adoption of invisible learning is quite low right now in the Indian corporate world, but slowly it is gaining popularity”

There are certain ways in which organisations can build an invisible learning culture:

Clear communication at all levels – First, the organisation needs to clearly communicate the organisation’s goals and align them with the personal goals of the individual employees. This way, the employees will strive to work on their personal skills, which will also help the organisation to grow.

Promote collaboration, interaction and team work – Encouraging employees to network, interact and share their ideas about learning and growth can really help. Give them online and offline platforms to collaborate and interact. They can learn from their peers and together achieve goals.

Be supportive – The L&D department has to support the employees in their own learning process. They should help them by giving them various resources and access to knowledge, so that they can create their own learning processes and paths.

Encourage communication – It is crucial to encourage employees to speak up about what they want to learn so that the organisation can make arrangements and create processes to facilitate them. Communication is important.

“I feel in India, people do learn when the need arises and I see many excited millennials with an attitude to learn new things, especially in technology”

“The adoption of invisible learning is quite low right now in the Indian corporate world, but slowly it is gaining popularity,” shares Binoj Vasu, chief learning officer, Yes Bank.

Self-directed learning depends a lot on the trust of the learner. But HR leaders believe that the new generation wants to learn new things and stay relevant.

“I feel in India, people do learn when the need arises and I see many excited millennials with an attitude to learn new things, especially in technology. Being a progressive organisation, Wockhardt always appreciates new concepts and methods to grow the business,” mentions Upadhyaya.

Learning should always be a process, which is not forced but facilitated at organisations. Only then will you be able to create a better learning culture and make the business grow.

The post Make L&D invisible to create a better learning culture appeared first on HR Katha.

The TPS is based on lean manufacturing or lean management system which translates into speedy flow of work by cutting out waste from the whole process. This means, taking out all the unproductive activities from the system.

The principal of lean management system is now being applied in learning and development (L&D) processes in companies and that’s yielding some great results.

Sushil Barkur, AVP-L&D, Alkem Laboratories, shares with HRKatha how the pharma company recently transformed its L&D system through digitisation, to majorly align with the lean learning system.

“This has really brought down our content curation time. We can give relevant information and knowledge to our employees on the go in small bytes,” says Barkur.

In fact, it’s become important for every organisation to focus on delivering fast content to its employees.

“My focus is usually on giving relevant knowledge to our people without any delay. In the retail industry, new products keep on entering the market, and it becomes necessary to give information about those products to the people” 

Reliance Digital’s L&D processes also focus on fast delivery of content and knowledge to its employees.

“My focus is usually on giving relevant knowledge to our people without any delay. In the retail industry, new products keep on entering the market, and it becomes necessary to give information about those products to the people,” explains Pratibha Saraswat, head-L&D, Reliance Digital.

She adds, “At Reliance, we focus on giving small bytes, liberal content and fast delivery of content.”

In today’s world, the most challenging situation in the L&D spectrum is the retention of knowledge.

According to the Forgetting Curve Theory, people forget 75 per cent of the knowledge if they do not apply the skills or knowledge acquired within six days.

As part of one of the principles of the lean learning system, employees are allowed to apply their knowledge to their work and new challenges.

“We focus on giving monthly refresher quizzes to our employees with feedbacks from the senior leadership. This helps them retain the knowledge and apply it to their jobs,” shares Barkur.

At Reliance Digital as well, bytes are used as small refreshers. “The need of our industry makes us focus on action learning and fast delivery,” mentions Saraswat.

“We focus on giving monthly refresher quizzes to our employees with feedbacks from the senior leadership. This helps them retain the knowledge and apply it to their jobs”

The principles of the lean learning system focus on offering relevant learning, at the right time to the right audiences, by cutting out the waste, that is, all the unproductive activities.

This results in giving faster and better knowledge and skills to the employees.

There are three dimensions to this system. An organisation wishing to incorporate the lean learning system, say, in its L&D department, can definitely do so by introducing the necessary interventions into its processes keeping these dimensions in mind.

Three dimensions of the lean learning system

Support learners and sponsors: Focus on eliminating ‘overburden’. The L&D managers should lessen the burden on their stakeholders, such as learners and sponsors. This can happen by getting rid of the unwanted activities, such as cumbersome training equipment, inconvenient location of classrooms, dangerous tasks, and uncomfortable pace of learning. These unwanted elements are best discarded because they force learners to go beyond their natural limits, which results in a burnout.

Streamline L&D products: Focus on eliminating ‘unevenness’ from L&D and ensuring fast learning deliveries. There can be delays in the process because of scheduling. Therefore, it is important to concentrate on Just in Time (JIT) delivery of content. This allows one to locate hidden problems that slow down, and enables to take steps to add value.

Simplify the L&D process: Make the L&D process simple by eliminating ‘unproductiveness’. The making of a product or service results in consumption of resources. While creating a product or service, if more resources are consumed than required for the end user, then waste is generated. Though L&D practitioners have learned to be efficient, they tend to miss out on ‘overburden’ and ‘unevenness’.

To make the L&D process productive, agile and result oriented, lean learning is what organisations will need.

The post Why lean learning is important for agile organisations appeared first on HR Katha.

Leaders need to recognise their employees who are enthusiastic and make use of every opportunity to grow in their careers. They are the ones who do thorough research before venturing into a new challenge and learn about things which are unrelated to their work as well.

Today’s employees believe in changing the world and connecting their work experiences to their personal lives. They love to innovate and tread on paths seldom explored. Junior and mid-level employees today are passionate and motivated about their jobs and have no qualms about working long hours if they are rewarded and recognised for their efforts.

So how do employers ensure that the workers are equipped to learn?

Work cultures today need to be exciting and engaging for employees to give themselves fully to their work. Organisations need to provide employees the means to educate themselves and devise a reward system to recognise their efforts. Without adequate recognition, workers will not see the value in their efforts and most likely will concentrate their energies somewhere else.

Leaders can adopt learning methods which enable individuals to develop their capabilities and have a positive experience while at it.

Allow employees to choose their path

One of the ways companies can ensure their employees continue to learn is to provide them the space to learn on their own accord. Offering online courses and relevant content which is accessible to the employee on demand is a good way towards enablement. Companies organise conferences and training sessions for employees who are not mandated to attend them. Such events are a way for HR leaders to know which employees are motivated to learn.

Customised and curated learning

Almost every organisation faces a skills gap and tough competition in hiring at one time or the other. It would be easier if the required skillset could be developed within the organisation itself. Companies should arrange for a platform which can provide that developmental journey.

The roles most commonly found in organisations today should be taken up and a sequenced path of learning should be developed for them which move the employees towards a more aspirational role.

These should not be looked at as curated merely because each step in the learning path is related to the final goal. Instead, these should be journeys that build upon each other and contain new content which is specifically designed for each individual role.

Download this report based on research conducted by HR.com in partnership with Skillsoft to know today’s L&D trends and challenges, and suggestions for how organisations may boost learning effectiveness to close skills gaps which are a result of poor learning cultures and inadequate learning and development (L&D) functions that many organisations suffer from.

Clear communication about company goals and values

Before designing any learning program or taking on board any learning service provider, it is essential to communicate the company’s goals. Each employee in every department should have a clear idea of how their effort to develop new competencies and learn new skills can benefit for both themselves and the company. Make learning personal and an experience

Make learning personal and an experience

Today’s workers are learning for more than career progression and are looking beyond work experience. Learning has become more personal and integrated. HR must reinvent itself accordingly by supporting continuous learning, providing incentives and focussing on helping employees identify and develop new skills. Employees need to be enabled to fulfil their own needs and the needs of the market. It is the human experience which pro-learning employees look towards that an organisation needs to provide. It enables learning to have an impact beyond work and into the personal sphere of an individual.

Feedback and follow up

Last but not least, it is vital to research new market trends and follows up with employees about their learning needs. HR needs to maintain a learning quotient for every employee so that pre-learning activity and post-learning activity can be measured accurately. Accordingly, new content can be designed, which suits the employees’ learning capabilities and can enable him/her to deliver quality results.

Every organisation has employees passionate to deliver their best. Therefore, organisations should provide learning that enables them to realise their full potential.

The post Five ways to ensure that employees learn continuously appeared first on HR Katha.

While organisations seek to reimagine their operating business models by leveraging disruptive technologies, they must not underestimate the importance of fostering a culture that endorses such sweeping changes. Indeed, building a digital-ready enterprise through constant adaptability and evolution with changing business dynamics can pave the way for increased innovation, agility, leanness and responsiveness.

The business case for companies to promote a culture of digital readiness and adaptability is compelling. A recently published BCG study found that almost 80 per cent of the organisations that emphasised on culture reported robust or best-in-class performance on a sustained basis.

And, talent transformation leaders in Indian companies recognise the imperative to instill a culture of digital readiness. They increasingly realise that rolling out contextual human capital management (HCM) and talent-development applications can not only enhance staff productivity and morale throughout the employee lifecycle, but also boost digital adaptability.

According to Gartner, digital dexterity in people must be placed high on the priority list. Companies must invest in studying existing skillsets and unearthing gaps, developing and acquiring the right skillsets through hands-on experiences, and inculcating an experimentation-driven ‘lab’ mindset.

An array of digital technologies is transforming organisations in every industry across the globe. Digital is everywhere and it’s catalysing the need for investment and realignment of technology, business models and work processes to create innovative experiences for customers and employees. Read this whitepaper to know how to develop a digitally dexterous workforce.

Enhanced digital learning outcomes with digital readiness

How can companies then cultivate a culture that thrives on constant experimentation and fast-paced learning, in alignment with shifting marketplace and customer requirements? The key for chief human resource officers (CHROs) and learning & development (L&D) leaders, such as you, is to evaluate your enterprise’s digital readiness to reskill and redeploy talent.

It’s important to bear in mind here that merely rolling out the latest learning technologies will not lead to the institutionalisation of a robust learning culture. You need to first gauge the readiness of your staff to embrace new skills, then define and articulate a coherent vision for implementing such learning modules, and then, finally, build awareness.

Assessing audience willingness involves, first and foremost, talking to each employee, and understanding their unique learning requirements. For instance, ask questions, such as which learning approaches they liked in the past; what previous learning experiences have shaped their attitudes; and how they pick up new skills at work and outside of it.

Without undertaking this exercise of capturing employees’ actual learning needs, you might well build learning platforms that will be irrelevant to the former, and as a result, impede the organisation’s digital readiness.

Once you have assessed employees’ willingness for new learning structures, the next step in the journey of promoting a culture of digital readiness is to secure buy-in from the leadership. The senior management giving financial backing via budgetary allocation will not suffice on this front, though.

A critical mass of top decision makers in the organisation must become ‘learning evangelists’ to encourage and motivate employees to upskill and reskill. The way to spot such advocates is to ask your leadership team as to how learning can help address some of the teething business problems they are seeking to resolve. For instance, ask them which learning modules are delivering on their mandate, and which ones are not. Also, pick their brains on what new skills are required to drive business excellence.

Finally, you need to define a sharp, coherent vision for your planned digital learning initiatives that will further embed the concept of digital readiness and adaptability throughout the organisation. It’s vital here to judiciously combine the business imperatives with the real-world learning requirements of your employees. So, factor in things, such as just-in-time learning, social and collaborative tools, self-directed learning platforms, and synchronicity between at-work and outside-work learning.

Conclusion

No matter how great a company’s strategy, business model and customer engagement initiatives are, all of that will count for nothing if the organisation fails to institutionalise a culture of constant digital readiness. With uncertainty becoming the new normal, you must embrace disruption, and leverage digital learning platforms to reimagine workforce and talent management. Doing so will not only help you strengthen your competitive advantage, but also ensure superior employee productivity.

The post How can you promote a culture of digital readiness in your organisation? appeared first on HR Katha.

With the help of more than 100 instructors, Ifly conducts specific training sessions throughout the year, for its over 25000 strong workforce. These workshops train the employees on customer services, ramp and marshalling, communication, leadership, departure control system, safety and emergency procedures, as well as e-Learning. Ifly offers a 99-day long cabin crew training course, which is the longest in the world.

The awards were bagged by Ifly for the best learning and development team, for the best customer service training programme and also for its remarkable simulations-based learning programme. It ranked number one in terms of its risk/safety/policy compliance training programme, for its efforts to develop leaders through its comprehensive leadership development programme, and for its genuine attempts at delivering quality management/ improvement training programmes.

The award does not come as a surprise considering the popularity of Ifly. An entire floor of the academy has been designed to replicate each and every aspect of an IndiGo aircraft. Therefore, the crew actually gets trained in an atmosphere identical to their working conditions.

Not only is it compulsory for the Indigo crew to train at Ifly, they also have to undergo repeat courses from time to time.

The post IndiGo’s training academy awarded for best L&D practices appeared first on HR Katha.

The Company has been using robots to help smoothen the sorting and delivery processes. It will now focus on retraining about a lakh employees in the next six years, so that they are able to handle jobs that require better/higher skills within the company or even embrace new careers elsewhere.

The training programme will help the workers in the fulfilment centres to shift to roles that require technical skills, even if they have no prior experience in information technology (IT). Workers with no technical knowledge will get a chance to learn the skills required to shift into software engineering careers. The Company plans to offer prepaid tuition to train workers in the fulfilment centres to handle high-demand occupations that they choose to opt for, whether within Amazon or outside, including that of data-mapping specialists, data scientists, solutions architects and business analysts.

By offering opportunities to the employees to keep up with the digitisation wave, Amazon will prove that its working conditions are enviable. Last year, it had hiked the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Also, the Company’s workforce in the US will have a strength of about 300,000 by the end of this year.

As part of this Upskilling 2025 programme, a machine learning university will also be launched to benefit thousands of workers. This will be extremely useful to those who possess a technology background and knowledge of coding and wish to learn machine learning.

According to the Growing Career Choice programme, Amazon will bear 95 per cent of the tuition and fees towards a certificate or diploma course.

The post Amazon will invest $700 million on training appeared first on HR Katha.

Many organisations have a ‘training’ culture. In such companies, learning and development is just a tick in the box activity. And employees do not like to train themselves. However, organisations with a ‘learning’ culture are the ones where employees get to learn things willingly and happily. These are the organisations that can rightly claim that their employees grow with the company because of their learning programmes.

There are many researches that reveal that employees are not really keen to learn new skills and grow in life with the help of what the organisation has to offer. There are also various researches that say that one of the most popular reasons for an employee to quit is that they feel that organisations do not provide them with relevant training and skills to grow!

Who exactly is at fault here? Is it the employees who lack the desire to learn and grow, or is it the organisations, which actually fail to understand the needs of their employees and end up losing them?

Remember how we struggled with algebra, and then asked our teachers, where it will be of use in our practical lives? Similarly, employees do not always know how a certain kind of training will add value to their performance and growth.

“Organisations need to communicate to their employees, why they are sending them for training. And that is what they fail to do,” says Chandrasekhar Mukherjee, chief people officer, South Indian Bank.

Another factor is that organisations also fail to measure the outcomes of the training that they have conducted.

“As of now, there is no co-relation established between the performance of an employee and the training process. It is very hard to say whether training will enhance the performance of an employee,” shares Sudheesh Venkatesh, chief people officer, Azim Premji Foundation.

There are some tools which can be used to measure the outcomes of the training. “When an employee goes for training, the line manager mentions why the person is sent for the training. Once the employee returns after getting trained, through discussions with the employee the manager finds out and reports whether the purpose of training was fulfilled or not,” explains Mukherjee.

“Organisations need to communicate to their employees, why they are sending them for training. And that is what they fail to do”

Its very hard to tell whether these activities are taken seriously or not. But you do have a mechanism to analyse the outcome of trainings. And with the presence of AI and and big data, it has become easier.

Sometimes, we also see rigidness in an organisation’s approach. There are some mandatory training programmes for managers and employees. It is very hard to understand whether imposing something on others will give positive results.

“There will be some mandatory programmes which the employees will have to attend. The organisations have a career path panned for you, and therefore, they will want you to be prepared for upcoming roles within them,” mentions Mukherjee.

Venkatesh also adds, “There are some basic skills that employees need to survive in the organisation. When I used to work for Tesco, the Company had a programme to embed the skills of planning, doing and reviewing, which were essential to survive in the business and the organisation.”

“There are some basic skills that employees need to survive in the organisation. That is why mandatory learning programmes are important”

With the entry of Gen Z, the true digital natives— with their technological knowledge, the workforce will be more tech-savvy. They are used to free knowledge at their fingertips. They will learn what they want to learn. But as we all know, organisations will make you learn what is business driven. So there is always a clash between the interest of the organisation and the employees.

With the disruption of e-learning platforms, which enable employees to learn whatever they want to on their smartphones and other digital devices, it becomes difficult for the trainers to create a balance between the interest of the company and the employees.

To tackle that, Mukherjee suggests,”We can let employees opt for one subject of their own choice along with others, which are mandated by the organisation. In Colgate, amongst the five core subjects selected by the company, employees are allowed to choose one of the subjects or skills that they want to learn, and it can be anything.”

However, such a scenario is rare. Organisations fail to understand that it is better to let the employees choose what they want to learn and in which area they want to grow. It’s better to make people do what they want to do rather than impose restrictions.

There can be instances where a person working in HR for two years wants to move into sales and marketing, and learn some skills which are related to that field.

“It depends on the requirements of the organisations. Also, a person with a certificate may not necessarily be good for the role. There are other things to analyse,” says Venkatesh.

Apart from the above-mentioned reasons, there are other causes for the lack of motivation in employees to not develop their skills, such as the positioning of the L&D programme.

“People may think they are branded as low performers, and that is why the company is sending them for trainings,” shares Venkatesh.

Yet another reason can be the outdated models of learning in the organisation.

Whatever the reason, it should be the organisation’s responsibility to promote a culture of learning and ensure that employees understand that learning is a lifelong process. Learning can only add value to their personal and professional lives, and hence, should always be welcomed.

The post Why employees are wary of learning and development programmes appeared first on HR Katha.

I was amazed to learn that he had started off as a sales executive in the same company, and had grown up the ranks — first manager, then regional manager, then country head—to become a business head.

The gentleman admitted that it was because of his talent and calibre that he had succeeded in attaining his present position. But he also revealed that the company had supported him in a big way, and helped carve out his leadership personality from within. His organisation had a very strong development process, which helped shape him into a true leader.

No organisation gets readymade, fully baked leaders from other organisations. Companies think it better to be self-reliant and create a leadership pipeline within them.

Talking to some of the HR leaders in the industry, HRKatha brings to you some of the L&D practices followed in different organisations that specifically focus on developing managers into great leaders of the future.

Paramjit Singh Nayyar, CHRO, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, shares with HRKatha some of the leadership programmes that specifically cater to developing future leaders amongst the company’s managers.

Apollo Munich has a leadership development academy in partnership with IIM-A, where some of the selected managers are sent for executive courses. Once a year, a select few managers go through a five-month programme at the IIM-A campus, which includes leadership lessons. The modules for the programme are prepared in collaboration, by the IIM-A faculty and the L&D team at Apollo Munich. As part of the leadership course, the participants also have to work on external projects which are real-life case studies. At the end of the course, the candidates have to present their solutions to the case studies in front of the senior leaders at Apollo Munich.

“We believe that it is better to invest in our future leaders very early in their careers and develop them into individuals, who can take over as senior leaders in the organisation”

The Company also offers a different kind of programme, which focusses on cross-pollination of leadership practices in their managers. Some of the best leadership practices of the Company’s successful managers are converted into modules for a three-day course. This programme is set up for the junior managers or the first-line managers.

“We believe that it is better to invest in our future leaders very early in their careers and develop them into individuals, who can take over as senior leaders in the organisation,” says Nayyar.

Kellogg’s India also runs three types of leadership programmes for its managers, to nurture leaders at different levels. The first programme is called the ‘Young leaders programme’ for the young and budding managers, to train them for mid-level managerial roles. The second is known as the signature programme, which aims to develop senior-level leaders, and the third is the ‘rising stars programme’, which is for the upcoming star managers.

These programmes prepare the managers to adapt to different geographical locations and cross-functional teams.

All these in-house programmes at Kellogg’s India run for six months, and follow a three-module structure. They involve class experiential learning, interactive sessions and e-learning modules to develop future leaders for the organisation. Managers are also given real-time projects to work on.

At the end of the course, all the submitted projects are examined by the senior leadership teams.

“Developing leaders is a journey and the programmes that we have cover different stages of progression of a person moving to a more complex role,” shares Rohit Kumar, director & CHRO, Kellogg’s India.

There are different leaders working at different levels. There will be first-line managers who will be moving to mid-level manager roles and mid-level managers who will be moving to executive roles. Sometimes, it gets very difficult for them to transit to the higher role as they are unaware of what the organisation expects from them.

“Developing leaders is a journey and the programmes that we have cover different stages of progression of a person moving to a more complex role”

The most common problem encountered by managers on being promoted to a higher role is that, it is very difficult for them to understand and fulfil the expectations of the organisation. They pretty often end up performing the same tasks as in their previous role.

To overcome this problem, Apollo Munich runs a programme called ZAP (ZBH acceleration programme) where the person is taught two things— business orientation and geographical orientation.

Under business orientation, the employees are taught financial acumen, people management and systems and processes. Under geographical orientation, they are taught to adapt to the region they will be leading and the cultural nuances.

There are other companies that have seriously invested in developing people, particularly leaders of tomorrow.

This year, Cipla introduced an L&D programme called the LEADx programme, which focuses on developing people management skills in managers. It also aims to develop leaders who can inspire their team members. Cipla plans to fulfil this aim using a mix of classroom learning, experiential learning and role plays, which are more specific to the business of Cipla.

Welspun Group introduced a group leadership programme (GLP 2.0) in order to create a leadership pipeline. The Company partnered with various institutes to conduct this programme, the curriculum for which was carefully examined by the CEOs and managing director.

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Multiunit managers are a key part of Domino’s Pizza’s 400 corporate-owned stores in the US, with each supervisor managing eight stores. It is a position which requires skills of leadership, conflict resolution, and time management, as well as financial acumen. It also requires the ability to manage differently from the hands-on, direct-control approach that a one-store manager may embrace.

Kammerer and Helmholtz explained that the previous plan failed to give any results and build relevant competencies. It spanned over six months with different learning events. It was lengthy and cumbersome and did not ensure that the learning stuck.

While the new plan does not solve each and every problem, Kammerer and Helmholtz were able to show progress toward a “learn, watch, try, reflect” experience for each participant. This started with one simple step— adding constraints.

The Company started by asking people what activities developed leadership qualities in them and what activities they spent the most time on. Real-world activities ranked higher than structured offerings. The new programme cut short the time period of training to 28 days of more dedicated approach, rather than training happening in bits and pieces over six months. The shorter timeline also included more functional and technical training apart from leadership development. While relying on technology and virtual elements, the instructors wanted the participants to interact more with people and not just with their peers. Apart from internal instructors they also received coaching from in-house experts and external executive coaches. The latter kept their conversations with the participants strictly confidential, not sharing them even with Domino’s.

The constraint challenges lead to a change in scheduling various activities as part of the programme. First, the training programme was introduced, followed by an on-site immersion and other activities. All of this culminated in a final week where participants began planning how to handle their new markets while receiving ongoing support through internal contacts, the external coach and e-learning offerings.

Finally, all the activities were aligned to the 70:20:10 concept defined as, challenging assignments (70 per cent), training and learning from peers (20 per cent) and course work and training (10 per cent).

To measure the progress, Domino’s set up nine key metrics that incorporated various parts of the job and that could be measured easily both on their own merits and against a baseline of previous participants.

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We spoke to Anil Jalali, CHRO, Capgemini to know more about how they have raised the bar for fun and happiness at work.

At Capgemini, HR is more technology driven and has evolved to become more focussed on business and outcome.

“For us, employee relations is all about making sure that we are always on the ground and are always accessible to people and their concerns. We ensure that their grievances are addressed and employee experience across different dimensions (beyond HR) is positive at a desired level,” says Jalali.

Being a part of a transforming industry, Capgemini sets a precedent for the HR function too. As a part of a cumulative transformation process, it has focused initiatives around learning and development, reskilling, upskilling, and so on.

Kickstart your journey towards building a company culture that facilitates employee engagement with Vantage Circle, the all in one employee benefits and employee engagement platform. The primary products: Rewards & Recognition program, Employee benefits, and discount platform and the Employee health and wellness program; aims towards the holistic growth of your organisation

Learning & development

Various programmes initiated by the learning and development teams have successfully upskilled more than 60,000 employees in 2018. The digital talent academy is available to employees on a broad basis to learn, develop and upskill. This digital platform provides flexibility to learners, who are able to schedule when, where and how they wish to learn.

“Technology has been leveraged to provide L&D in multi-platforms and user-friendly interfaces that can be accessed at their convenience,” emphasises Jalali.

“We are a large organisation with a large presence in India. We ourselves are a talent marketplace, and have taken appropriate steps towards leveraging that marketplace. We consistently launch new initiatives and enhance the existing ones towards bringing that marketplace to talents,” explains Jalali.

‘Ace your career’ initiative

‘Ace’ is connected to the ace of spades in a deck of cards, and the same spade forms the logo of Capgemini too. The HR at Capgemini is driving the initiative to ensure accelerated career growth for the employees. They have improvised the internal job posting programme and launched a career café. The latter facilitates café style dialogues between employees and industry experts. The casual setting encourages conversations and the employees benefit tremendously from it as they get a road map for their careers.

The HR has strived to optimise the internal talent through frequent promotions and rotation of talent within the organisation with smaller promotion cycles.

Reward & recognition

Time and effort have been invested to improve the reward and recognition framework in the organisation. An award for excellence in people leadership has also been instituted. “We believe that employee engagement is an outcome of effective leadership, and to encourage that we award leaders who demonstrate the same. As our industry is going through disruptions, these managers will help people stay agile and navigate through change,” says Jalali.

A reward-related programme is run globally wherein employees can participate in the ESOP option. The objective of ESOP was to enable the staff to be sustainable partners in the development of the Group and benefit from its potential performance. In 2018, subscriptions increased by 50 per cent as compared to 2017.

Capgemini strives persistently to transform talent to align their skill sets with the present, not just in terms of core technology skills but also in terms of building leadership.

A career-acceleration programme for mid-level management is also on offer, wherein a select cohort of talent is taken on a journey spanning six to eight months. They enjoy a variety of experiences, learnings, assignments, and so on. It is a platform that helps them accelerate their careers in the organisation.

“We believe that employee engagement is an outcome of effective leadership, and to encourage that we award leaders who demonstrate the same. As our industry is going through disruptions, these managers will help people stay agile and navigate through change”

Elite programme for hiring fresh talent

“We are one of the prolific hirers from top B-Schools and the aim of the Elite programme is to accelerate early career talent into senior leaders through a rapid career path,” opines Jalali.

Diversity

Capgemini is making rapid strides in the area of gender diversity and building women talent within the organisation. One of the programmes that Jalali highlighted was the ‘Power Ahead’ programme, which is focussed on building women’s leadership.

“We mark the journey of the employees with a series of experiences, including allowing them to shadow leaders from the industry so they can learn first-hand from the expert. They get a chance to interact with the likes of Naina Lal Kidwai through our special initiatives for women employees,” says Jalali.

Monday is the new Friday

Capgemini quit the formal dress code and initiated casual dressing on Mondays. The move was eagerly welcomed by the employees and has helped tackle the eternal problem of ‘Monday Blues.’ The casual dress code policy has now been extended to all days of the week.

“This programme further resonates with our philosophy and culture of minimum governance. Formal dressing makes the staff feel uptight and imperious. Since Fun is our core value, we decided to take it forward by initiating casual dressing on Monday,” reiterates Jalali.

Capgemini has transformed the workplace to create an environment that motivates creativity and agility, with open spaces, casual sitting rooms for conferencing, and so on. It is as ready for Gen Z as can be.

The post How does Capgemini do it better than others? appeared first on HR Katha.

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Yes Bank has partnered with Coursera to offer the ‘Professional Technology Programs’ to its employees, wherein YES BANK will provide its employees with access to latest, innovative training and learning material, hyper-relevant to the specific and evolving challenges of the industry.

With increasing demand for training, especially new-age tech skills that let employees skill-up at an organisational level, YES BANK has identified ‘Future Ready’ courses on themes such as, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, cyber security, big data and advanced analytics, cryptocurrency & ICOs, Internet of Things (IOT), digital marketing and robotics and process automation.

Upon completion of the programme, employees will receive sharable e-course certificates from leading global institutes such as National University of Singapore, Northwestern University, Yale University, Princeton and Indian School of Business (ISB) to name a few; allowing employees to leverage these skills, and advance their careers as well as contribute to Yes Bank’s growth in their capacity as ‘professional entrepreneurs’.

Rana Kapoor, MD&CEO, Yes Bank, says, “As one of the fastest growing Banks in India, we want to effectively scale the ‘Digital Quotient’ of all Yes Bankers which not only allows us to remain relevant in changing times, but also keep us ‘Future Ready’. With Coursera, we aim to provide Yes Bankers access to the best-in-class learning platform, equipping them with skills to succeed in tomorrow’s workplace and economy.”

Raghav Gupta, Director – India and APAC, Coursera, says, “Technological developments have taken the Indian banking sector by storm, and have certainly made banking easier for consumers. However, they have changed the nature of jobs and therefore the skill sets required by the banking workforce. With increased adoption of emerging technologies and automation in this sector, employees need to be equipped to do much more.”

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With an aim to provide more expansive and engaging learning content to working professionals, Skillsoft has partnered with Shine Learning, launched by Shine.com, with a vision to upskill the Indian talent pool to adapt to the changing job market.

The partnership provides Shine Learning users access to Skillsoft’s extensive learning portfolio of more than 500,000 pieces of engaging content. This will help professionals seek new opportunities and advancement in India’s highly-competitive job market.

“Skillsoft has become one of Shine.com’s key partners in our mission to upskill the millennial workforce and prepare them for the future job industry,” says Zairus Master, CEO of Shine.com.

“Skillsoft’s engaging training content enhances the value of Shine Learning’s offerings at a time when learning has become more important than ever before,” he adds.

Skillsoft will provide users of Shine Learning with high-quality learning from beginner to expert level. The content will cover a broad array of topics, including business skills training, management training and development, digital transformation, productivity and collaboration, and IT certification and developer training. The content is available in a variety of modalities, including 7,000 courses, 65,000 videos, 46,000 books, and 1,300 audiobooks.

“Change is the only constant in today’s digital world, creating opportunities and challenges for organisations seeking digitally-literate talent,” says Chad Gaydos, chief operating officer of the Skillsoft Group.

He adds, “Skillsoft’s partnership with Shine.com will provide a broad spectrum of learners in India access to the world-class skills and training they need to compete in a world of constant technological innovation.”

Shine Learning has experienced an increase in course completion rates since adding Skillsoft’s impactful learning content to its offering. Users also benefit from Shine Learning’s proprietary algorithm that predicts not only emerging skills but also provides personalised training recommendations, now including Skillsoft courses, after analysing a user’s resume and application history.

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Learning and development (L&D) is one area that has been significantly disrupted by technology and has got HR rethinking its strategies over the last decade or so. With changing workplace norms, the rising trend of remote workers and the dramatic pace at which skill needs are shifting, personalised and anywhere, anytime learning has become a necessity now. L&D is that essential arm in organisations in the absence of which businesses risk losing out on great talent.

A UK research, in fact, revealed that a large chunk of people has changed jobs because of a lack of L&D opportunities. To compliment the finding, the survey also revealed that the employers agreed they should offer their staff the opportunity to develop professionally.

That said, it is critical that organisations meticulously plan budgets and strategies around their learning interventions, based on workforce needs. With more service providers now offering innovative learning solutions with SAAS- and AI-backed systems, organisations specially need to plan strategically, keeping the specific skill and learning delivery method requirements in mind.

Integrated solutions that align learning and talent development with organisational goals and business objectives are of course an organisation’s first choice, but they also need to consider the ease of access to the learning material and customisability as per various learning needs. To match individual learning pace and level of interest, AI-backed solutions nowadays are taking the front seat in L&D.

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Systems that combine talent management with learning offer a holistic solution to organisations, helping them develop their resources and grow their businesses. For instance, PeopleStrong’s Alt learning, which is integrated with its talent-management platform, Alt, offers mobile learning solutions to companies.

Today, when it is all about learning that is fast, on-the-go, customisable and snackable, organisations need to choose wisely. While most companies prefer to design their trainings internally, the support and expertise a technically strong service provider brings is unquestionable. Having an efficient learning platform in place also ensures that learning effectiveness can be measured accurately.

Alt learning, for instance, is one mobile-based offering that brings in an outcome-based approach to learning, which is one of the biggest pain points for many companies. It allows companies to set up and deliver any type of training to its remote user base.

While there are various offerings to choose from, here are a few aspects that organisations should consider while picking one:

Anytime, anywhere access: The platform should be location agnostic and capable of offering multi-screen access, and not limited to devices or operating systems.

Self-paced learning: The system should be able to track the progress of the users and adapt to their learning needs automatically.

Personalised learning: Different mediums that engage the learner are a must in the current times. A learning solution that offers flexibility to read, watch or listen to a course is preferred by the new-age learner.

Optimum data consumption: Tech-based learning platforms that consume loads of data are also painful for companies to manage. A solution that consumes less bandwidth on the cloud and offers a strategic combination of online and classroom training is always better.

Learning and development budgets in organisations have increased tremendously over the past few years. However, spending it judiciously requires thorough understanding of the learning needs as well as the specificities brought in by the various solutions offered and their relevance to the organisation.

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Skillsoft has announced new ‘Access for All’ programme to ensure all corporate learners have equal access to its content and technology. The new accessibility programme will ensure that its content and technology is accessible to a new standard of industry excellence.

In this age and time, the Internet has made everything available at the click of the mouse. No one can restrict sharing knowledge and experience in terms of content and accessibility in a learning platform. With the advent of the Internet, learning has become simple and cost effective.

Skillsoft has established an Accessibility Programme Office to ensure that everyone within a workforce has equal access to its learning content and technology. It also ensures that all learners with physical disabilities, whether they are from small companies or big, are able to utilise its learning content.

Bill Donoghue, chairman and CEO of the Skillsoft Group says “Equity of access for all goes beyond being compliant, to striving and setting new standards of excellence. At Skillsoft, we believe that everyone has an equal right to use our content and learning platforms. Accessibility is a core component of our corporate DNA”.

Internet has made everything available at the click of the mouse. No one can restrict sharing knowledge and experience in terms of content and accessibility in a learning platform. 

Today technology is changing constantly, which requires workforces to equip themselves with new skills and knowledge. While employees need to acquire and learn new skills, it is the responsibility of the employer to provide them with a learning platform and training.

Bill further adds that “Our Federal customers expect us to meet accessibility standards for many years. Increasingly, our corporate customers also recognise the importance of equity of access to their learning solutions. We make sure that all employees are supported and empowered to learn so our corporate customers can confidently deploy a best-in-class learning solution.”

Skillsoft’s Accessibility Programme Office will adopt all latest global accessibility standards. It has partnered with The Paciello Group (TPG), leading accessibility consultant, which supports accessible design, auditing and user testing.

Michael Paciello, founder of TPG comments, “Skillsoft’s significant investment to establish its Accessibility Programme Office demonstrates the Company’s commitment to making accessibility a core value. We continue to be involved in every step of the development of their new content and the Percipio platform”. He further adds, “Ensuring accessibility of Skillsoft’s award-winning, world-class content and technology to all users will impact learning across all organisations.”

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Organising the annual sales meet in Bangkok or Dubai is a passé. Kohler, the luxury bathroom accessories company, changed its dealer meet into management development programme.

In June this year, it launched a unique programme called ‘Back to School’ for which it partnered with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. The learning intervention was designed as a five-day on campus, residential, management development programme that brought together 15 top dealers of the company to learn more about enhancing their business strategies.

The programme that was held from June 5–9, helped the channel partners or distributors gain more knowledge, enabling overall development across personal and outlet space. It offered them value addition beyond their sales targets, as they learnt about advancing their family business better.

The programme that was held from June 5–9, helped the channel partners or distributors gain more knowledge, enabling overall development across personal and outlet space. It offered them value addition beyond their sales targets, as they learnt about advancing their family business better.

The company believes that such programmes will help its business partners run their family business better in a luxury environment. It’s also a way to reward their work by offering certification from a Top B-School brand.

The learning programme included managing and executing a luxury brand- store design, customer service, understanding potential of profit in luxury business, working capital management for family business, managing success through professionalising governance, sustaining business growth and taxes & legal implications.

The HR function at Kohler India partnered with the business team and created a unique learning retention initiative for the sales staff across its 300 stores in the country, and an executive course for its distributors.

Indraneel Das, head-sales capability development at Kohler, shares, “Those who attended the programme actually bonded together as batchmates in a school or college and it was interesting to observe them share their business experiences with each other after the regular sessions. There was a lot more learning involved in those informal discussions as well.”

While HR— in organisations of all sectors, scales and sizes— talks about creating a business impact, only a few are really able to do so. In addition to an in-depth understanding of the complexities involved in a particular business, it takes a strong realisation on the part of HR to be able to reach out to the core of what really matters to business.

A real business impact through HR is only possible when HR knows and agrees that its role cannot be simply confined to managing and developing the internal workforce, but goes beyond, to help nurture even the frontline staff. Especially in retail, where the frontline sales staff represents the brand, it is extremely important to ensure they are well trained.

“We design our interventions in a way that is relevant to the recipients and impacts business performance. ‘Back to School’ is an industry first initiative to reward our trade partners in a way that it gives them meaningful business returns overtime and not just provides vacation and engagement opportunities,” says Pankaj Rai, Director HR – India & Sub-Saharan Africa, Kohler K&B.

Those who attended the programme actually bonded together as batchmates in a school or college and it was interesting to observe them share their business experiences with each other after the regular sessions. There was a lot more learning involved in those informal discussions as well.

Das believes that learning should not be restricted to levels or domains. “Learning is meant for all,” he says. In that, it is crucial to simplify learning delivery such that it is easy to consume and apply when required. He says, “Innovation in learning means how it can be simplified to make it easy to grasp, and such that it sticks.” As an effective solution to allowing learning recall and retention for the frontline sales staff, Kohler introduced the concept of QR codes for learning.

Das shares that for its more than 1000 store associates spread across 300 stores and selling over 100 stock keeping units (SKUs), enabling learning and knowledge retention was a challenge. Traditional methods of training, such as OJTs (On Job Trainings) are essential, yet expensive and time consuming, and don’t necessarily guarantee retention of knowledge and subsequent dissemination to consumers. Now, although the store associates are not a part of Kohler’s internal workforce, they are an important entity to the business and the brand. Hence, it was vital for HR to nurture that arm.

Moreover, knowing that learning degrades with the passing of time, and that after the training has been delivered, understood and before it’s retrieved to be passed on to the consumers, information is rapidly forgotten, Kohler conceived the concept of ‘Cued Recall’ insight at Kohler stores. That led to the creation of simple technology-led hints about product information through learning bar codes.

To reinforce the learning offered through JLTs and empower the store staff to further utilise that knowledge when required, Kohler created a QR code for each SKU, with its detailed information embedded in the code in a simple uncluttered format. These QR codes were then printed as attractive stickers (Know what makes Kohler different?) and put on the SKUs for easy access to information. This, in turn, helped the store associates to present the products better to the walk-in customers as they could at any moment scan and refer the USPs if they forgot any talking point about that SKU.

Das shares that over 92 per cent store associates agreed that learning QR Codes gave them an easy to use ‘take-a-hint’ platform, while more than 95 per cent of them felt that it gave them a ready reckoner to pitch products better.

“What started as a pilot, has now expanded to the entire network of stores and the following impact has been lauded by the global Kohler team for simple and effective use of technology towards offering bite-sized learning and retention, where it matters the most! It’s been branded KODE—Knowledge of Displayed Elements,” Das says. Well, actually that is where learning efforts can convert into a direct business impact.

Similarly, all organisations, which depend on their retailers’ and distributors’ network, provide perks and benefits to them to keep them motivated to enhance sales. For most other organisations that comes under the purview of the marketing teams, and HR has nothing to do with the performance of external stakeholders such as the distributors. At Kohler, however, the HR team decided to make a difference there as well.

Das, who has been the brainchild behind these initiatives, believes that it is through such programmes that HR can create an impact in the hearts and minds of people who matter the most to business, irrespective of whether they are their direct employees or not. Das shares that he observed strong peer to peer learning during the ‘Back to School’ programme.

This certainly sets a new benchmark in how HR can partner with business in its true sense and work towards bringing about a difference, and what better way than to have a strong learning approach for all those who matter to business!

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The talent management solutions provider, SumTotal, recently unveiled a range of new features and additions to the SumTotal Talent Expansion® Suite—the first in the industry to bring talent, learning, recruitment, and workforce management on one platform.

This release includes expanded access to learning content, enhancements to the visually engaging user interface, improved browsing and search capabilities, and deployment flexibility to meet the complex technical requirements of modern organisations, both in the cloud and on premise. The Suite simplifies and streamlines talent management for organisations and engages employees with innovative solutions to know, mobilise, develop, promote, reward, and incentivise global organisations of all sizes.

“Since the acquisition of SumTotal we have invested significantly in bringing a platform, that delivers rich functionality on a beautiful consumer-led experience, to the market. Last year, we brought learning and talent together in our Talent Expansion Suite and with this release, we have a unique proposition —delivering talent, learning, recruitment and  workforce management on a single, unified data SaaS platform,” said Bill Donoghue, chairman and CEO, Skillsoft.

“By bringing all the HCM components into one suite, we are addressing our clients and the market challenges of attracting, retaining, developing, and engaging this multigenerational workforce—delivering a state-of-the-market digital technology experience, with cutting edge functionality,” he added.

This release of the SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite features a number of new capabilities specifically created to allow organisations of all sizes to measure, understand, and maximise the performance of their global workforce, including

Career planning and job matching
Career planning: Advanced algorithms to support internal mobility, which recommends internal open jobs to employees that best fit their profile and career goals.
Job and competency matching: New competency metrics provide an at-a-glance dashboard, highlighting areas for development in both current jobs and jobs targeted as part of their career plans.

SumTotal Mobile
Smartphone-optimised access: Provides complete employee profile and resume information, including metrics and details of performance, goals, compensation, learning and development.
Seamless user experience for mobile learning: Users can now seamlessly download courses on the app and launch them offline, regardless of location.
Continuous performance feedback enhancements: With the new SumTotal Mobile App, managers and employees can provide and view feedback, anywhere, at any time.
Windows 10 and Windows Surface integration: Employees can now access content using Windows 10 on their laptop and Windows Surface devices—online and offline.

Next generation of performance management
New single dashboard: Now allows employees to easily review, search, and filter all feedback.
Connect feedback to development plans: Managers can provide feedback to select individuals, and can link users back to specific goals and competencies.

Learning process optimisation
Streamlined, form-based approvals: Allows organisations to optimise their learning management processes by supporting new forms-based approval workflows that comply with the SF182 and EHRI federal government standards.
Powerful content management tools: Administrative users can now easily publish, manage, and replace content without having to create a new version from scratch.

Workforce management
New appearance: Unified look and feel with single sign-on capabilities.
Workforce management enhancements: Simple streamlining of daily schedule and shift changes.
New single timeline for managing and completing tasks: New enterprise-search allows a single point for users to search.

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Technology has disrupted every aspect of modern workplaces and its influence on learning methodologies has been significant. It’s no news that traditional learning is shifting towards anytime, anywhere, any device learning. Taking into account the need for bite-sized content and the increasingly short attention spans, Kohler India came up with the unique concept of Kohler Radio.

Kohler Radio is an IVR-enabled learning platform, wherein audio messages are recorded and relayed in the form of a call to individual mobile phones, which the participants can listen to, take part in, learn and get assessed through a few objective questions asked after each session.

The purpose behind launching Kohler Radio was to make training and engagement content effortless, fun, essentially millennial-ready and to have a new-age platform to deploy content. As Pankaj K Rai, director-HR, India & Sub-Saharan Africa, Kohler K&B says, bite-sized content disseminated in a fun manner is the way to go forward.

“We have about 130-strong sales force spread across various parts of India. Earlier, we were utilising Webex-enabled sessions in addition to the classroom approach for learning. However, that required either travelling to a set location or logging in to the systems wherever one may be. Given the high growth plans we are targeting right now, there is always a paucity of time, and therefore, we came up with this idea of offering content through a medium that’s quick, convenient and capable of generating a captive audience,” he elaborates.

Furthermore, Kohler Radio-Training Podcast System, which recently relayed its first session with the second one lined up for this Friday, was conceptualised to be used as a tool for internal training. This system allows leaders and audiences to listen and interact. The communication machine has features of automated voice calling, texting and inbound call management. The system is also supported with Interactive Voice Response, Outbound Dialer and Mobile SMS facility.

There are three things which get podcasted twice a month:

Management Talk: It’s a message from the leadership team for the spells when there is not enough time to go through the mails and thus miss some critical information. The message is followed by a ‘Feedback’ option. The users can record their voice feedback/views, if any. This enables a connect between the top management and the workfrorce.

Product Talk: Product managers are interviewed and their views on new launches and focussed products for the year are recorded. They talk about the latest innovation and key highlights of the products. It’s then followed by a short quiz for the participants in an IVR format for which they earn points.

Best Practices: It’s an interview format with the top sales associates from the sales team pan- India. A platform to share how they achieved their numbers, this gives a chance to the company’s revenue earners to become popular as RJs!

The programme has been christened Kohler Radio and has received immense global attention as well. The radio podcasts are planned to happen twice a month (with content lasting not more than five minutes) with over 200 associates participating each time. The communication design has been appreciated on internal social platforms.

Apart from Kohler Radio, the company also has another unique initiative, which boosts both learning and engagement. The Learning Wallet is an e-wallet that lets employees earn as they learn. After each learning session, as employees take the assessments, their scores add up as points in their Learning Wallet. Each point is equivalent to five rupees, and these points are then available to them to be redeemed for online shopping at Amazon and other similar e-shops. The Learning Wallet ensures that the more the employees learn, the more they earn.

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He speaks to HRKatha on how the landscape of learning is changing with the rapid digital disruptions.

You have been an IBMer for most part of your professional life and this happens to be your second stint. Does it give a feeling of homecoming? What’s life like being an IBMer? As an HR professional, what’s your advice for HR colleagues while onboarding a boomerang employee?

The privilege to come back to an organisation brings a special mark to the way one sees things internally, because it comes with the value-add of having an external eye at the same time.

I believe that boomerang employees have better insights about the real meaning of some of the rituals and culture of the organisation, and how that compares with the external marketplace.

The talent equation should always comprise several components, and the presence of boomerang employees creates a good combination for businesses to achieve the desired outcome.

While any boomerang employee should be onboarded the same way as any other, the advantage with them is that one can even take a shortcut, as they already know some basics.

In addition, boomerang employees can help guide other new employees, acting as catalysers for them to understand and adapt to the new organisation.

A lot has changed in the last one year in the workspace—everything from the way we work to whom we work with is undergoing a shift. What’s been the impact of IoT and AI on L&D?

L&D is now ready for a big disruption. Traditionally, it followed the corporate university model trying to imitate the academia environment. Corporate learning is now undergoing change and three factors play an important role in this disruption.

As L&D professionals, we need to create a smooth and seamless connection between digital and physical work for the employees. They are not ready to accept the traditional methods of learning and the old-fashioned LMS anymore.

First is technology, which is changing everything. The availability of various things on our smartphones at the touch of a fingertip, has raised the expectations among employees from learning opportunities as well.

The second aspect is the consumerisation of these expectations. Employees expect the same experience in learning as in their daily lives as consumers. As L&D professionals, we need to create a smooth and seamless connection between digital and physical work for the employees. They are not ready to accept the traditional methods of learning and the old-fashioned LMS anymore.

The third component is the job context. Earlier, one job description defined a particular job and everything it entailed, while in the evolving marketplace now, every job requires multiple abilities, especially in the professional services arena, which is where corporate university thrives. This means, if the role of L&D earlier was to prepare the employees for their set job roles, now it is to prepare them for the multiple tasks and job roles that they might have to take on within an organisation.

Do you think AI would be a better teacher than humans? The teaching and learning performed by machines at a massive speed and scale is exhilarating and frightening at the same time.

I believe, AI and cognitive systems are enhancers of human capability but they cannot replace humans. The complexity of the brain and social behaviour of human beings is extremely difficult to replicate, even closely.

Organisations that invest less in learning and more in recruiting and turnover will need to revisit their business model.

At IBM, Watson provides us amazing capabilities to enhance the insights of people driving day- to-day business. Similarly, for L&D, cognitive systems enhance the ability to impact.

Last year, we launched our new cognitive learning platform, ‘Your Learning’, which allows personalisation, and smart projections. It allows the system to understand the learners’ preferences and tailor their learning experience to their profile and behaviour. The cognitive system has the ability to learn who you are and in a dynamic way adapt to what you need. This will bring exponential expansion in L&D and that’s what we are doing at IBM.

A recent survey by Deloitte suggests 22 per cent of millennials treat T&D as a benefit and this is a higher share than any other benefit. Do you think companies across the globe are taking it seriously and doing enough to grow the learning curve of their employees?

Career acceleration and growth of skills and competencies is the core of our employer branding at IBM. If you ask any IBMer or any former IBMer about their best experience as an employee, most of them will mention how IBM changed their outlook towards professional life.

Take, for instance, my case—I am a lawyer who did an MBA with a major in finance, and while I have also worn various other hats at IBM before, I now drive their digital platform business. This shows that IBM allows one to move along in their career.

The role of the talent managers five years ago was focussed on how to create a career path for an individual. Today it has evolved into how to create an environment for the team to succeed.

At IBM, learning is considered a core part of employer branding. This isn’t something new. However, organisations that invest less in learning and more in recruiting and turnover will need to revisit their business model. One can buy talent from the marketplace but the level of engagement and loyalty may be much lower.

Also, what do you do with those employees when that role no longer exists? AI, cognitive systems and digital experience have made it much more feasible to scale up L&D than the traditional investments in the brick & mortar corporate university rules. The whole L&D space, as I mentioned earlier, is now ready for a big disruption.

What learning architecture have you adopted to put employees in charge of the learning experience and foster a culture of learning throughout the organisation?

You have to let employees perceive learning as an advantage and as a value-add. The days of compliance-based learning are gone.

Yes, we may still need to have certain basic compliance programmes because we operate in regulated industries or it may be a part of the employment agreement. However, we need to provide employees quick and fast learning—on their fingertips. It needs to be done at the right moment, in the right medium and with a seamless transition between the digital and the physical.

One can buy talent from the marketplace but the level of engagement and loyalty may be much lower.

We need to work towards enablement and personalisation, and then provide tailored recommendations for employees. Learning, by the way, is just one component. Organisations also need to build a culture around how they drive the performance of the organisation as one that learns, adapts and possesses agility in its DNA.

L&D professionals need to behave like product managers working for customers who have unfulfilled needs, rather than simply design courses that employees are required to complete. Do you see the shift happening soon on a larger scale?

Absolutely! We need different characteristics now as we cannot fulfil the promise of learning as a core element of employer branding without having the professionals in L&D playing different roles. This is not about pushing a process or pushing an initiative or a programme anymore.

We now need to take out the chip from the brains of our teams and put it in the digital marketplace to create an experience for the employees around their expectations. For this to happen, L&D needs to behave more like a community manager or a merchandising manager.

At IBM, for instance, we have such different characters in our L&D team. Our most sought-after team member or the proud jewel of the L&D team currently is no trainer or content creator, but one of our distinguished engineers. He is our cloud architect, and he is the one who brings about a difference in many of the things that we currently do in L&D.

Based on your experience, how has talent management evolved over the years, especially in the IT sector, where both attrition and talent mobility are high?

Talent management is now shifting to enabled, more multitasking teams instead of individuals. The role of the talent managers five years ago was focussed on how to create a career path for an individual. Today it has evolved into how to create an environment for the team to succeed. The marketplace is moving very rapidly into agile execution — the ability to get a team that can accomplish a task and again disband it to create another team that can accomplish some other task for the future.

The world, where everyone used to have a job role with repeat tasks is rapidly vanishing and moving into an agile methodology.

It is similar to the Hollywood movie-making model—where you get the actors and crew to make a movie and then move onto another project, with probably a totally new team.

The world, where everyone used to have a job role with repeat tasks is rapidly vanishing and moving into an agile methodology. Though, it may not be the case with sectors, such as manufacturing, as it still works the traditional way, but even in that the role of the talent team is going to be central in the way we conceive and structure talent management.

In times such as these, one cannot construct an efficient talent management plan thinking just about individuals, because it is the team one collates, that makes a difference.

What is the one thing organisations need to really focus their energies on in order to be successful in the digital age?

There is no one thing, but I would say organisations need to embrace the new reality of the marketplace and the digitisation of everything that is taking place around us. If you don’t embrace the digital tsunami, you will end up on the losers’ side.

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The super hit Augmented Reality (AR) based game Pokemon Go is making the world go crazy ‘catching them all’. People playing the game admit that it is highly addictive and that it immediately creates an urge to catch more of the Pokemon creatures as soon as one gets into the game. No wonder, people are even playing the game at work— in the office corridor, cafeteria, break-out areas. It is easy to spot someone aiming a poke ball at a Pokemon character standing right beside one! Something that has gained so much attention and popularity the world over, has some hidden lessons for organisations too, for sure. Let’s find out.

Let employees be a part of the organisational story 

Virtual or augmented reality gaming and good storytelling are similar in one way—They both allow people to become a character living that experience. Just as Pokemon Go allows players to catch Pokemons, making the monsters a part of their own surroundings, organisations also need to set the context right to enable people to perform well in whatever settings they are in.

Abhijit Bhaduri, chief learning officer, Wipro, says, “Like people get immersed in a good story right away, organisations also need to design imaginative programmes to help create that kind of an experience for employees, where they feel associated with the company. For instance, induction can be designed in a way that makes employees feel like a part of the organisational story.”

Create an environment of gaming 

Be it Pokemon Go, Farmville or any other game that has caught the attention of people, the fact remains that games encourage competition, a desire to compare oneself with where others stand, an urge to keep moving a level up, an itch to win and most of all to have fun. Organisations could also look at creating an environment that’s fun to work, alongside healthy competition, with the right motivators to help people stand out and keep levelling up constantly.

Make people move boundaries and strike meaningful conversations at work 

Pokemon Go is about catching as many species of Pokemon as one can, train them, develop them and ultimately battle them with others at the Poke gyms. In short, the game makes people go out of their homes in search of Pokemon creatures and then at places where they meet with other players for bigger challenges.

Similarly, “It’s important for organisations to help employees build social skills by creating an environment where people can go beyond their teams and strike meaningful conversations with other colleagues, resulting in cross-functional learning and networking,” says Chandrasekhar R, former executive vice president – learning and development, CSR and chief values officer, HDFC Life. He also believes that game-based learning has the highest success in terms of applicability.

Realise that augmented reality is the future of gamification for corporate learning 

Augmented reality, or the coming together of virtual reality and real life is soon going to be inevitable for organisations looking at deploying gamification for training and skill development.

Bhaduri shares, “Augmented reality can be used for training people on the field – for example surgeons or mechanics. It can also be deployed in classrooms for sharing real-time feedback and for training people on negotiation skills. Augmented reality and virtual reality are going to be very powerful tools for imparting new skills in people, in the coming times, if not immediately.”

Design policies and programmes with a pull factor in mind – Most organisations follow a set hierarchy and a top-down compliance-based approach, which at times results in forced policies or practices that people are expected to follow without raising a brow. Games like Pokemon Go, on the other hand, go viral due to the pull factor in them. Organisations and leaders also need to understand that people will happily assimilate any proposition that offers them something in their interest — be it flexibility, exposure to new opportunities or challenges, learning or career growth.

Whether or not Pokemon Go is just a fad or the madness will stay, these tips are surely going to go a long way in ensuring organisational success and happiness. So, while the world goes hunting for Pokemon creatures, organisations have the chance to build a better future!

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The human mind is a warehouse of ideas – ideas that can change lives, help build a better future and lead businesses to great success, provided these ideas are seen or heard and are implemented well.

More often ideas do get killed at germination due to lack of direction or encouragement by employers. Organisations which expect employees to follow protocols and continue working the way they do, miss out on those great ideas.

However, there are some companies which know how to nurture ideas in a structured environment. Accenture India is one such company, which has built a proprietary platform called ‘IdeaHarvester’, for the submission and curation of employee ideas.

This platform sorts ideas and sends them to the right people for curation. So far it has gathered over 9,000 ideas from employees, nearly a third of which are being implemented for clients.

This January, Accenture started a competitive program the ‘Innovation Summit’ which received 4,000 ideas, of which 500 were implemented. About twenty of those ideas were selected by a jury consisting of 10 of Accenture’s top customers and were provided an initial funding of $2000 each to build prototypes.

In addition, the company has also organised over 40 Innovation Workshops with its customers where these ideas are presented and thought over.

As the corporate world heads towards disruptive technologies and digital platforms that are replacing conventional ways of work, organisations have become more focused on boosting innovation.

This is also why organisations are consciously investing efforts in learning and development programmes. An official statement shared that In FY15, Accenture invested more than $840 million in employee learning and professional development.

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From performing arts to yoga and meditation, organisations have done it all in a quest to introduce unique and unconventional methods for engaging and developing their employees. Well, here is another art form that has chosen the gastronomic route to bring out the best in people—culinary art. Surprisingly, it was quite unexplored in India till Satish Venkatachaliah established ‘Something’s Cooking’.

Something’s Cooking is a culinary studio that offers opportunities for team bonding and HR learning initiatives in a culinary setting. It helps people interact with each other in a different perspective altogether— while preparing a meal.

The idea germinated about 10 years ago when Venkatachaliah visited Heidelberg for a global meeting, where he experienced a group cooking activity for the first time. “It was a unique way of having a team building activity and the experience was very memorable. It not only gave an opportunity to cook, but also get to know global colleagues beyond the realms of work-related conversations. Subsequently, I had a few more experiences across the world with similar outcomes. I found it intriguing that an activity as subtle as cooking could lead to such impactful outcomes”, he says.

The idea germinated about 10 years ago when Venkatachaliah visited Heidelberg for a global meeting, where he experienced a group cooking activity for the first time.

With this in mind, Venkatachaliah moved out of his corporate career in late 2012 and established Something’s Cooking, with an aim to provide an innovative solution to the needs of the corporate world in the areas of team bonding and experiential learning.

Sharing the intent behind the effort, he says, “It had to be a fun, engaging and exciting solution. Like we say in our secret to success, ‘Add laughter to taste’.”

Something’s Cooking indeed has a fun-filled solution for specific people concerns that various organisations seek to address.

Corporates can bring their teams over to celebrate, as a reward or just to regroup and encourage innovation, rapport and creativity, by inculcating a winning attitude. Culinary art can also be used as a medium to conduct training programmes and avail courses in management development, through associative learning, and team orientation— all set in a charged, laughter-rich environment!

The kitchen/culinary studio at Something’s Cooking has been designed such that teams have separate cooking islands that are self-sufficient to a large extent. However, each one draws from certain common resources. In a team-building initiative, where 5–6 people work on a single island or cooking station, they have to face each other, which ensures adequate communication in the group. These aspects reflect any real-time scenario in an organisation, where there are inter-dependencies within teams and across various teams at the same time.

This is why, Venkatachaliah says, “Cooking is an interesting metaphor to replicate in organisations, where people come together to create an outcome/product, which satisfies the needs of the end user or consumer. The output is not just the sum of the input, but requires alchemy to create a transformation. Sociologically, in the same way, cooking plays a crucial role in bringing people together”.

The team-building activities in a culinary setup, being the most sought after, allow participants to interact with each other in a non-threatening environment with one of the most engaging, multi- sensory activities possible — the preparation of a meal! “Complete culinary novices have concluded this programme with a new faith in their cooking abilities, established new friendships with their team-mates and a sense of individual and group accomplishment in having successfully completed their task”, Venkatachaliah shares.

The team-building activities in a culinary setup, being the most sought after, allow participants to interact with each other in a non-threatening environment with one of the most engaging, multi- sensory activities possible — the preparation of a meal!

Such initiatives act as an ice-breaker because groups come together to create a dish from a given recipe and a set of ingredients. Of course there is an in-house chef to support and guide them. They can then enjoy the same dish in a dining-cum-conference area. They get to comfortably discuss their experiences and learning from the activity, over a satisfying meal prepared by their own self. Such an exercise makes people enjoy the same kind of comfort that they experience while bonding over a casual meal with the team elsewhere. The thrill and excitement of preparing it themselves is the bonus.

Various purposes, such as encouraging collaboration, change agility, trust and communication have been served through culinary programmes. From leadership development to change management, skill building to shifting paradigms, the interventions planned and implemented through the culinary route are highly engaging with sticky messaging. In addition, the programmes can be customised to make them contextual to specific organisational needs.

Talking of the power of cooking, Venkatachaliah says, “The happiest homes come together at mealtimes. The best of friends catch up over chai. Wouldn’t it then make sense, to bring teams together for a delicious meal — which they have prepared themselves? Wouldn’t it be a memorable experience for groups to create and accomplish a tangible (and delicious!) result, almost immediately?”

As the corporate world is getting increasingly attracted towards experiential learning, cooking comes in as the best and most effective way to bring about awareness and behavioural changes. The kitchen is a venue of social interaction unlike any other, and there lies the secret spice to making learning and development initiatives more engaging and fun!

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Learning and development is an ongoing process for a professional, but it is considered an important tool for organisations for retention of talent.

Accenture spent around $ 841 million (Rs 660 crore) on the training and professional development of its workforce in the fiscal 2015. This included 15 million hours of training, at an average of more than 40 hours per employee.

Besides, the company has revamped its learning approach with a focus on digital. This has empowered its workforce of 3.7 lakh employees to unleash ideas, drive innovation and develop the highly specialised skills required to serve Accenture’s clients and communities.

“As a talent-led organisation, we are always inventing new ways for our people to learn and grow professionally in their careers,” asserts Pierre Nanterme, chairman and CEO, Accenture.

“Digital is the key to learning and we continue to invest in the latest digital technologies to deliver highly relevant training to our people—quickly and at the point of need,” he adds.

A major portion of this investment has gone into the creation of the ‘Accenture Connected Learning’ (ACL), which is a blend of classroom-based training and a digital learning environment. It links the company’s employees to professional content and world-class experts from inside and outside Accenture.

In FY 2015, ACL conducted 50 connected classrooms, which it plans to increase to 100 in the current fiscal. These virtual classrooms enable Accenture employees, from multiple locations, to participate together in interactive and collaborative classroom sessions.

These virtual sessions are taken by senior leaders of the company and subject-matter experts.

ACL boasts of more than 24,000 online courses and 900 learning boards. In addition, it has created five regional learning centres, for a traditional classroom learning environment at Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur, London, Madrid and St. Charles, Illinois.

Accenture claims that the new initiative has helped it create more than 100 professional communities. These communities help Accenture employees, with similar work profiles from across the globe, to connect with each other and harness the power of Accenture’s global network—for answers, ideas, collaboration, innovation, lessons learned, and industry insight.

The new learning process has enabled the company to develop highly specialised skill sets and employees—be it data scientists, visual designers, information architects or mortgage processors—in order to respond to quickly changing business requirements faster than ever before.

The critical skills help the employees to remain market-relevant and also enhance their own career opportunities.

“Accenture Connected Learning makes learning continuous, flexible and increasingly democratised,” says Ellyn Shook, chief leadership and human resources officer, Accenture.

“Our people learn best by connecting, collaborating and practising for the scenarios they will encounter in the course of their work with our clients. From basic skills to industry-specific content, learning is available to all our people— anywhere, anytime—most often without involving any selection or approval. They have to simply tap the app and start learning.”

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To start with, I would like to share some of the initiatives that we tried out at MakeMyTrip (MMT) in the last two years. These have made us realise that traditional, copybook HR practices are fast outliving their relevance. These have also made me believe that some HR beliefs and practices need to be shunned this year. For instance, it is often said that HR is the power centre, close to the CEO, the process police, especially from a larger organisational context. All of these need a fresh look.

At MMT our ways of democratising policy formulation, the beta version of every guideline and strong communication forums such as ‘Rubaroo’ and ‘Creating magic at workplace’ got wide appreciation among team members. My current premise on HR trends is largely an outcome of this continuous learning and experience at MMT. I firmly believe that nuggets of wisdom from the past provide a great launch pad for contextual and futuristic initiatives in organisations.

If I may be a bit scandalous and try to stir the hornet’s nest, I would like to raise questions on some of the traditional practices and leave it to the readers to find their own answer.

How about moving away from traditional leave policies? Why not let people take leave whenever they want? Currently no organisation can boast of availment of 100 per cent live in a year by 100 percent employees. Can we pose more trust on the workforce and assume positive intent?

How about moving away from the hodgepodge of notice period versus notice pay issues at the time of exit? Why not let managers decide how many days they want to have the employee post resignation?

What about having learning advisors in the organisation and making learning as personal agenda of every team member and not one being driven by the L&D team? Provide advisors, counsellors and individual resources to people and let them own their development and link it with their growth.

It is high time that we do away with chasing for mandays and coverage of employees. We at MMT have been experimenting with some of the above. The results have been encouraging and hence we plan to implement some in the coming years.

I think with the hyperactive job market, plethora of hyperbole on start-ups and their escapades, diluted JE based salary bands, tired concepts of compa ratio, diminishing value of tenure (having short stints is not a taboo !), expanding professional networks and many more new developments, HR will have to be different in the coming years.

One of the most important trends would be to cut NVAs from the processes to enable speed and agility of execution. I think speed of business decisions and people movement would compel and warrant HR folks to relook at the work and process flows and remove ‘boxes’ and ‘diamonds’ to deliver with alacrity.

I also sense that the learning models will be relooked at, there will be insistence on looking at the learning and development models which can be deployed easily and used on the go without disturbing the work place rhythm.

At MMT, we are experimenting with an app based learning solution which has learning nuggets of 2 to 3 minutes videos uploaded by colleagues who are functional champions and SMEs. Moreover, I think there is traction for such unique offerings. The workforce seems to have a fair amount of people who are happy being individual contributors and want to create a mark in what they do. To cater to such people, equal focus on functional skills would be needed and here HR guys can’t escape responsibility of knowing the business better to handle such needs.

Another practice which looks unavoidable is the HR’s ability to integrate entities and deploy organisational culture that retains essence of existing culture while deploying acquirer’s cultural nuances. This is tough one to manage, but interesting enough to challenge ones own ability. In the era of acquihiring, to quickly build on to the organisational competence, expertise to handle integration is going to be a unique skill set needed to lead the organisational agenda.

The advent of information and knowledge era joined at the hip with extremely confident and aware workforce also requires a driving decision-making process, which is well balanced in terms of democracy and dictum. Skills and proficiency to facilitate decision-making would require in depth understanding of people dynamics and power equation in the groups. Understanding the importance of ‘better done than perfect’ and ‘fail fast’ to regroup and leverage learnings would define success. This is more to do with the soft skills and org dynamics but definitely underlines the critical role to be played by the HR professionals in driving this philosophy in org context.

I believe, the year 2015 was an year of surprises and wake-up call for the professionals in every domain,. It challenged every function to relook at their ways of working and leading. With year 2015 in the backdrop, 2016 would offer opportunities for everyone to brace up, resurge and consolidate learnings and redefine every work place.

(The author is CHRO, Make My Trip).

The post New Year Special: Questioning the age-old practices in HR: 2016 appeared first on HR Katha.

Capricorn (Dec 22 – Jan 19)

Dude, you are so digital that anything other than e-Books will just not work for you. Use the Kindle app on your phone (you have to first download it before it shows up on your phone) and then get used to squinting on that small screen. Once your eyes have learned to read that tiny font, you will make a trip to the ophthalmologist and buy brand new specs. Avoid buying Google Glass. It does not go well with your personality this year. Maintain a gratitude journal every day. Find something to be grateful for every day. Don’t think that is hard, because you have no idea what my life is like!

Aquarius (Jan 20 – Feb 18)

You will finally learn to use Skype this year (wait I have not finished my sentence) to learn stuff from your virtual colleagues across geographies. They are virtual because you have virtually never spoken to them. Many new ideas will come from people outside of your department. You will discover new friends among colleagues and many of them will have ideas you can implement at work. That increases your chance of finally winning the Employee of the Day. Listen to one TED talk every day. Use that idea at work the same day.

Pisces (Feb 19 – March 20)

Learning for you will go omnichannel – just like retail. Teach yourself how to use each device (laptop, desktop, ipad and mobile) you own for learning. Bring these devices under a secured network from where you can plug into great learning content and you are ready to rock the on-demand learning party. Just remember, the mobile is not the best platform to do an hour-long e-learning course. Save that for the time when you are sitting before your laptop.

Aries (March 21- April 19)

‘Coach on app’ will be your killer idea this year. You will find a coach you can connect with on your phone (think Google Map for coaching) who will give you step by step directions as you negotiate a tough day at work. Remember to use headphones as you navigate your workspace or else you will find everyone else doing the same thing. That will make your office look like a giant Macarena dance. Not cool at all. Try using LinkedIn as your new publishing platform. You can’t learn the digital media until you create content.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

See if you can get a heads up on how to use Predictive Analytics to judge potential leaders in your team. That lets you coach the right people whom you will put into complex positions later on in the year. Talent Analytics promises to give you unprecedented popularity for being an unbiased decision maker. Just one suggestion – remember to ask Santa to let this be delivered in your stocking and not someone else’s. Working out Loud will be your new obsession. Simply keep sharing what you are currently learning (maybe through a blogpost) even as you are trying it out. It inspires others to join you as you climb the mountain, not after you have hoisted the flag.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

You have two of everything, thanks to your sun sign. That means twice the chances of success at creating terrific content for your internal social media channel. If you do not start writing two pages (yes Gemini, you have to write for your twin too) every day, all you will achieve in 2016 is twice the amount of jokes forwarded on WhatsApp. That does not count as content creation. Write about areas where your colleagues seek you out.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

You have to avoid being sensitive about getting feedback. So stop being a soft-shelled crab and use your claws to grab colleagues who can give you great feedback on areas you can improve. Ask for specific feedback on how you are improving your knowledge of sectors other than your own. Your emotional intelligence is a gift that others can learn from. This is a skill you can teach others by role modelling. You will discover the joys of learning from Podcasts like Freakonomics. When you groan and embark on your daily commute, listen to your favourite podcast.

Leo (July 23 – Aug 22)

Classroom training is dying slowly. You get to pull the plug on it this year. But don’t use the sage-on-stage model to deliver your wisdom when people come to ask you just how you manage to come up with this brilliant idea whose time has come. Instead, play the guide-by-the-side and occasionally let the learner make mistakes. Not roaring at the learner after they have made the same error twice lets them reflect and learn. So let them. With Facebook getting lots of feeds from New York Times and Wall Street Journal, it could be your favourite site to learn from.

Virgo (Aug 23 – Sept 22)

This could be the year when more people go to watch “Return of the MOOC”. So far, MOOCs have been televised recordings of classroom lectures. That does not exactly drive the viewer crazy with the desire to learn. If people take breaks while watching movies that have good looking stars and dialogues that sizzle, then that’s what MOOCs need to be like. You are likely to spot one of these rare sequels that look as snazzy as a Hollywood blockbuster. Google Search, if used, well can be a great learning tool.

Libra (Sep 23 – Oct 22)

If you are in the L&D team then it is time you took a hard look at your skill set. While learning will continue to become mission critical, the corporate L&D team does not automatically get to win the race for being the sole provider. Create learning communities in your organisation and dish out sizzling byte-sized content that gets people excited about learning. The rule of social media is simple — first get people to stand around you and listen to you without blinking. You will start using Google Docs to co-create content with your colleagues. It will strengthen your skills in collaboration.

Scorpio (Oct 23 – Nov 21)

You will continue to find Twitter to be the most powerful learning tool for the seventh year in a row, followed by YouTube snapping at the wings of the Twitter birdie. Finding the right people to follow on Twitter will remain an enigma. So keep shuffling 20 people of the people you follow. That is the trick in getting fresh ideas. Sketchnotes will continue to be your preferred tool for creating quick visual snapshots of ideas.

Sagittarius (Nov 22 – Dec 21)

By the time you are celebrating your birthday in 2016, some more organisations would have killed their corporate learning management system because the best content is already there on the Net (and it is free). You could be using Pinterest to do more work-related research. Pinterest has gone beyond being the place where people exchange embroidery designs. Use Pinterest to share ideas.

(The author is chief learning officer, Wipro. Follow him on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri)

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