The People Management Committee of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized 'The People Management Conclave - 2nd Edition - Achieving Business Competence through Capability Building' at Hotel Novotel, Rajarhat, Kolkata on July 5, 2019.

A Brief about the Conclave:
India is considered to be the fastest growing economy among major economies in the world and its rapid growth will largely hinge on the ambition and passion of Indian business leaders. Strategically, when planning for growth, manpower is a key in driving and supporting the growth. However, there needs to be a positive outlook towards planning, training, up-skilling manpower and continuously building capability. Employee training and development for soft skills, hard skills and compliance-based needs are to be assigned, taught, nurtured and measured across the full employee lifecycle to drive optimal business results. Successful organizations develop all the skill areas to maximize employee and organizational performance while creating an equal environment and ably supported by technology.

This Conclave focused on the following themes for an engaging panel discussion
• Leveraging performance for Strategic Leadership
• Journey from Diversity & Inclusion to Belongingness
• The Technology Paradigm in creating the HR function of the future

Leveraging performance for Strategic Leadership

There is a complex relationship between organization's human resources and means of leveraging these resources to influence performance and develop strategic leadership to fuel organizational growth. Organizations outline their vision, mission and core values as well as draw up their strategic goals for the future, however, often find it a herculean task to develop and align strategic leadership to head the organizations, various functions and lead teams to execute the strategic plans and contribute to organizational success. Implementing strategic plans effectively is as critical as developing them. Leadership bears the responsibility to ensure that every manager in the organization understands the importance of identifying and developing the next generation of talent. Both supervisory support and appropriate processes need to be in place in order to foster this development. Employees also assume the responsibility for their own development, seeking opportunities as well as gaining supervisory support for their career growth, training and development. Leaders must understand that high potential talent exists within various levels and functions and therefore implementing talent development and talent review processes will prepare an organization for succession planning for their future leaders and create core strategies in organizational development, strategic planning and alignment, talent retention as well as engagement and development to successfully leverage these talents. Tracking success and benchmarking data will always be key and this can be accomplished through means such as periodic engagement surveys, roundtable discussions, workout sessions, development tracking related to ROI and organizational scorecards.

Journey from Diversity & Inclusion to Belongingness

In simple terms, diversity is the mix and inclusion is getting the mix to work well together. Diversity and Inclusion is a sizeable challenge for any organization, especially those that have previously been less diverse and demonstrably exclusive. Diversity allows for the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It means understanding one another by surpassing simple tolerance to ensure people truly value their differences. A McKinsey report found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15 percent more likely. Inclusion is a sense of belonging. It is having a culture of connectedness that facilitates teaming, collaboration, and professional growth. While diversity and inclusion (D&I} may take different forms across cultures, the need for a sense of belonging in the workplace is universal. What belonging, in simple terms means is, what allows employees to feel like they can be their authentic selves (having opportunities to express opinions freely} without fear of different treatment or being judged-and it has a major impact on performance and retention and thus, positively impacts business outcomes.

The Technology Paradigm in creating the HR function of the future

The world of technology and mobile computing has made the concept of "traditional workspace" a thing of past. Today, employees can work from anywhere at any organizational structure. Technology has completely redefined the role of human resources all over the world. Recent advances in technology have transformed nearly every aspect of HR. The wave of technological transformation impacts the organizations in two ways: Firstly, it offers numerous tools to better manage and engage the talent in organizations. Secondly, it is helping HR managers to shift their focus from managing workforce to driving profits for the company. While technology plays a crucial role in transforming human resources management software and operations from personnel management to business execution, technology itself does not create this change. HR managers must leverage technology to drive a real value to the business. Digital technologies facilitate greater integration and flexibility, thus allowing employees to voice and share their work experience. Technology is poised to further disrupt HR and redefine the future of human resource department.

Eminent Speakers at this event were:

1. Mr. Somesh Dasgupta, Chairperson - The People Management Committee, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Group President & CCRO, India Power Corporation Limited
2. Mr. Subhodip Ghosh, Director General, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry
3. Shri Hemant Kanoria, Trustee, Kanoria Foundation and Chairman, Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited
4. Shri M K Singh, General Manager/TS to Chairman, Coal India Ltd
5. Mr. Rahul Bose, Co - Chairperson - The People Management Committee, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Global Manager Learning & Knowledge, IBM Global Business Services
6. Mr. Jaidip Chatterjee, Head HR, Srei Financial Services & Quippo Group
7. Mr. Anand Pillai, Managing Director, Leadership Matters Inc.
8. Mr. Paul Dupuis, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Randstad India
9. Mr. Rajiv Narang, Founder & CEO, Erehwon Innovation Consulting
10. Mr. Suresh Dutt Tripathi, Vice President - Human Resources Management, Tata Steel Limited
11. Ms. Rituparna Ghosh, Function Head, HR - Global Workforce Transitions, Wipro Ltd
12. Ms. Ajanta Chatterjee, Group Head L&T, Talent & OD, JSW Group
13. Mohammed Asif Iqbal, Associate Director, PWC India Mr Gautam Ray, Executive Director, HR & Admin, CESC Ltd
14. Ms. Sonali Bhattacharya, Senior Director - Enterprise IT Automation, Cognizant Technology Solutions
15. Ms. Sreela Das Gupta, AVP & Specialist: Diversity and Inclusion, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd
16. Mr. Prakash Panda, Sr. Vice President HR, India Power Corporation Limited
17. Dr. Allen Eisendrath, CEO, Corelli Systems, USA & Co- founder, Empower Genie
18. Mr. Surya Prakash Mahapatra, Global Head - Talent Transformation and Learning & Development, Wipro Digital Operations and Platforms
19. Ms. Veena Iyer, Head HR, Societe Generale
20. Mr. Sujoy Banerjee, Group Chief People Officer, Gainwell Commonsales Pvt. Ltd

Eminent HR heads were of opinion that organizations today were dealing with two problems - on one hand, organizations had to deal with rapid growth which involves large additions to human capital at the bottom of the pyramid and setting up reliable supply chains for greater access to such manpower. The main challenge will be to execute this at a consistent speed, quality, cost & efficiency that are required along with maintaining the organizational culture. On the other hand, the organizations faced the task of building a strong internal management capability to be able to absorb, engage and integrate new talent in the organizational culture, make them productive and then to ensure continuous improvement of performance, outcomes & productivity through continuous re skilling/up skilling. Competence and performance should be the key differentiators for any organization. Companies in India are competing both domestically and internationally today. Therefore, there was a need for every organizations to strategize and plan for the current workforce to avoid unprecedented situations, by skilling and up skilling efforts organized under a long term strategic program.

Eminent Business leaders viewed learning as a strategic component of their overall strategic HR mission and they were leveraging integrated talent applications to drive optimal employee performance. E-learning was widely considered to be the most efficient and cost effective way to deliver training to a workforce. However, the best way to truly prepare employees for meeting organizational objectives will be to focus the training in major areas of skill development. The focus should be on developing leadership skills in the new era. Another key area to focus will be on developing leadership skills that can succeed in the new cognitive era. Along with the digital age come opportunities, challenges and trends for the HR function around the globe. Rapidly changing requirements for novel skill-sets in fields such as data science, AI, cloud, blockchain, security etc. signal a need for flexible recruiting practices that allow organizations to reach out to these fresh talent pools.

In a nutshell every HR professionals need to build more effective listening skills and pay heed to their employees on a continuous basis and keep taking corrective action as and when necessary.

A magazine named "HR Graffiti" was also published on the programme day which contains many articles written by eminent HR heads from the industry.

The Conclave was attended by Directors, Faculty, Students and Administrative Officers of Engineering and Management Institutes and HR Leaders involved in recruitment process.