Author: Akshit Pushkarna | HRKatha

Dissatisfaction from one’s work is a common phenomenon which professionals from almost all fields experience sometime in their career. However, a particularly interesting case popped up recently when in conversation with an actuarial science professional. The decently-qualified person had two to three years of experience in the field, and had switched from a smaller scale organisation to an MNC. Working for that organisation had been his ambition for a while. However, when an opening in the company presented itself, it was for a lower position. Still, he took the opportunity. However, he now regrets his decision, as he is unsatisfied…

Meesho, one of India’s fastest rising social e-commerce startups, has recently grabbed headlines for introducing a couple of employee-friendly policies recently. It managed to grab eyeballs in the first week of September by declaring a companywide break from November 4 – 14 so that employees could completely unplug from work, to rest and rejuvenate! That is not all. In the last week of the same month, the Company came out with a 30-week gender-neutral parental leave policy! The official release said that the 30-week leave policy applies equally to women, men, heterogenous or same-sex couples, so they can stay present…

The festival season is always the time for more shopping, and hence, calls for a ramp up in business activity, particularly in the retail industry. This year, even though the pandemic continues to be a threat in India, the festive season will coincide with an increased rate of hiring across the country. Multiple surveys had predicted a jump in hiring across sectors, with retail accounting for a large chunk of the same. A survey conducted by Manpower Group found that out of about 3,000 employers, about 64 per cent would be looking to expand their hiring during the last two…

After serving as CHRO of Bharti AXA General Insurance for over a year, Paramjit Singh Nayyar has joined Hero Housing Finance. Now that he has entered the housing finance space, Nayyar tells HRKatha that he will be looking to scale the organisation to new heights in this sector, which has a huge growth opportunity. As the new CHRO of the Hero FinCorp subsidiary, Nayyar will lead the HR, internal communications, corporate social responsibility and facilities functions for Hero Housing Finance. A veteran HR professional, Nayyar comes with around two decades of experience. With an MBA in human resource management from…

FIS, the global fintech firm, has announced plans to expand its operations in India. The American Fortune 500 company has been operational in the country for the past 23 years, employing around 15,000 people here. It is now gearing to increase its headcount by 10,000 in the coming 12 months. “The key focus of future growth for FIS will be in emerging economies. Hence, we have been consistently increasing our footprint in India over the past decade. India as a geography has a vast and diverse pool of IT and ITES talent across the country,” Amol Gupta, chief human resources…

The semi-conductor industry, which manufactures semiconductor chips for smart devices, is currently facing a shortage of supply against an alleviated demand, globally. In a bid to meet this overwhelming global demand for semiconductor chips, major companies across the world have turned towards India, opening up opportunities aplenty for growth. One such company is MediaTek, the Taiwanese global fabless semiconductor manufacturer, which is aggressively expanding its operations in India. In a discussion with HRKatha, Rituparna Mandal, general manager, MediaTek India, says that the Company plans to at least double each of its existing Indian teams by FY2022. “However, there is no…

With work-from-home tossing work-life balance out of the window for many, employee burnout has become a more frequently-observed phenomenon since the pandemic started. A survey of 1000 full-time employees across the US, carried out by Visier, found that 89 per cent of employees experienced burnout in the past year. With the digitalisation of various businesses post the pandemic, work pressure on professionals in the digital space has grown tremendously, leading to IT emerging as one of the more hectic work profiles post pandemic. Dealing with the increased rates of burnout has become a new challenge for companies that continue to…

Social-media influencers are not just promoting brands on their pages these days, but also jobs. Companies which require talent in bulk, such as BPOs, are using these influencers to attract talent in droves to be part of their workforces. Why? Because each of these influencers has millions of followers. A social-media influencer with over five million followers, tells HRKatha that companies have been using his platforms regularly to promote their jobs. These influencers put up audio-visual Instagram stories that work as teasers for job openings. In a day, these posts are viewed by at least a million of his followers,…

Since July 2021, the Government of Telangana has been urging IT companies to resume work from office in full swing. However, IT employees’ unions and small IT business owners based in Hyderabad do not wholeheartedly support this move. Sharing his perspective, Vinay Kumar Pyaraka, president of Hyderabad’s IT Employees Association, tells HRKatha, that even though the pandemic looks to have subsided at the moment, the threat of a third wave of infections still looms large. According to him, “personal losses due to the pandemic have taken a heavy toll on people in the industry. Therefore, a significant portion of the…

The logistics and supply-chain industry is one that continues to be as relevant in the modern world as in the ancient past. The key components of the business include freight transportation, warehousing, material handling, inventory control and so on. Traditionally, the industry is considered to be a male- dominated space because of the perceived nature of the job. Women’s representation in the field was as low as five per cent in 2016, which made it one of the few industries of the modern world where women were represented in single digits. Since then, the ratio has improved slightly, standing at…

An apprenticeship or internship has been a staple step for those beginning their professional careers, irrespective of the field. While employers benefit because apprentices work at lesser cost, the apprentices gain the much-needed hands-on experience at the jobs they desire to hold in the future. Hiring apprentices has been a common practice for ages now in most industries, and the trend continues to grow in India. According to the latest Apprenticeship Outlook Report for H2 by the National Employability through Apprenticeship Programme (NETAP), around 64 per cent of employers are thinking of increasing their current uptake of apprentices from July…

Given the continuous growth and development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, it is highly unlikely for any facet of our day-to-day life to be bereft of AI interference. With the extensive tasks that human resources have at hand, a growing reliance on AI to assist in some processes is being observed across industries. A common use of such technology is in the complicated process of hiring. In order to sift through applications for particular positions, HR now relies more on automated software programmes, to speed up the hiring process. The system allows recruiters to sift through…

As the use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to gain more prevalence in people analytics, newer innovations emerge to make the lives of HR professionals easier. Graph technology is one such innovation, which treats people as nodes of a more elaborate network and helps analyse people’s movement. Acclaimed HR analyst, Josh Bersin, says in his latest annual report on technology, “Graph technology, based on relationships, has the potential to transform HR and human capital management. The insights it brings will enhance real-time people management.” Amit Sachdev, chief people officer, Tata iQ, believes that graph technology does have far-reaching…

Although the pandemic introduced the idea of remote operation for many businesses, the general consensus is that most companies would prefer to adopt it for an extended period of time. Since social isolation became a norm to keep a check on the spread of the virus, professionals adapted the work-from-home lifestyle, which may now continue for many. However, a research study featured by the World Economic Forum suggests that getting employees back to working from office might be the best thing for them. The report, ‘On-site, remote or hybrid: Employee sentiment on the workplace”, sampled 9,000 US-based employees and discovered…

India, with a huge subset of its youth equipped with technical skills, has been rapidly advancing in the field of engineering. Robotics being a relatively new sub-domain, few indigenous startups have come up in this space. One such company, Addverb Technologies, rose to fame when it developed a tele-robotic ultrasound system in conjunction with IIT Delhi and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), to make ultrasound imaging possible from a remote location. Set up in 2016, the global robotics company currently employees over 550 engineers with diverse specialisations. Since the skillset required is relatively expensive, the Company has…

Let us suppose that a salesperson in a sales team has been consistently delivering well throughout his tenure with a particular company, in terms of smooth operations and hardly any fluctuations in his individual weekly numbers. The company fails to observe the performance of the team, overall, focusing instead on the individual’s contribution only. Being one of the most senior salesmen within the organisation, the higher ups are deliberating whether to promote him to a leadership position or not. The individual does have a proven ability to deliver results, but is he capable of leading from the front? Does a…

Controlling high rates of attrition has always been one of the more daunting tasks for HR professionals working in the services industry. With attrition rates in the 15-20 per cent range for most of the major IT companies, bringing these rates down has been one of the bigger challenges. However, the same is not the case for the older and more traditional manufacturing companies. Pankaj Lochan, CHRO, Jindal Steel and Power, tells HRKatha that the attrition rate for his company averages about 5 per cent, and goes as low as 1.5 per cent for certain departments. In many traditional companies,…

A recent study by the University at Buffalo School of Management found that the more attractive people are, the greater their chance of getting hired and receiving better performance evaluations. The study, published in the journal, ‘Personnel Psychology’, elaborates that while a ‘beauty premium’ exists in the professional world, it is owed to the fact that people who are conventionally better looking have a comparatively greater sense of power and are naturally better non-verbal communicators. The study was conducted in two parts, where the researchers evaluated 300 elevator pitches of participants in a mock job interview process. The first study…

It has been about 18 months since the pandemic changed the world of work. It has turned our lives, personal and professional, topsy turvy. The second wave, in particular, wreaked havoc in the lives of many. What is worse is, its after-effects continue to take a toll. Multiple mental health issues, which were previously unheard of, have reared their heads. Post the second wave of infections, managers have been dealing with teams where employees have suffered personal tragedies. This requires employers and leaders to be empathetic towards their team members, lending them emotional and mental support. They have had to…

The workspace has undergone significant changes since the pandemic spun life, as we know it, around. Having already consumed a better part of the past two years, experts believe that the pandemic may be nearing its end, giving a green light to the resumption of life as usual. Moving forth, the paradigm shift introduced by the pandemic in the office culture may bring about lasting changes in the way businesses operate. “It has been observed that the decision- making process is faster when employees are working from one base” Siddharth Vishwanath, head- human resources, Zivame Already embracing a hybrid work…

India, being one of the largest nations in the world, sees diversity in all shapes and forms. From caste and religion, to gender and sexual orientation, Indians hail from all sorts of backgrounds. The great Indian diversity, however, does not necessarily get reflected in the workplace. Incorporation of diversity in the workplace has been prioritised by top corporates in recent times. Diversity hiring has indeed become the main focus of most corporates, and special recruitment drives for people belonging to underrepresented sectors have become more prevalent. Representation of different communities isn’t only a social responsibility for the corporate world. Having…

Reskilling or upskilling employees in order to ensure maximum productivity is a practice that many organisations follow to improve their attrition rates. Pramath Nath, CHRO – Asia Pacific & India, Steam Power, GE Power, tells HRKatha how reskilling has been the priority for his team at GE. “Reskilling is the most critical HR project rolled out by us in India, in 2021. We keep a live skill inventory of each talent and that’s the reference point for any upskilling initiative,” shares Nath. All learning interventions are designed to bridge skill gap, if any. The on-the-job learning plan and the upgradation…

Work-from-home’ wasn’t a common practice before the pandemic-induced global shutdown. However, due to the unprecedented times and the desperate measures that had to be taken, most companies have now shifted to remote operation for roles where output is not affected. Now that vaccination drives have picked up steam in India, many corporates are looking forward to opening their offices to their employees and moving towards establishing a sense of pre-pandemic normalcy. However, over the course of the past year, many professionals have mastered the skill of executing their tasks effectively from a remote location. In fact, now, in a bid…

With ‘return to office’ gaining momentum in India due to the increased vaccinations, things are finally heading towards normalcy. For the working population, normalcy entails heading back to the workplaces, which have been opening and shutting down repeatedly, depending on the intensity of the pandemic in the last year and a half. However, as offices move towards reopening, motivating employees to return is proving to be far from easy. A US-based survey conducted by Blind, which sampled 3,000 employees from top-tier companies, including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, found that employees prefer to permanently work from home than get a $30,000-a-year-raise.…

The year was 2006. Ravi Mishra, now senior VP, Aditya Birla Group, had to hire a site engineer for the Company’s plant in Gawan, Jharkhand, an area known for its deep Naxal infestation. Interviewing multiple candidates for the position, Mishra came across a female candidate from Ghaziabad who showed potential and could be deemed the right fit for the position. However, the region where she was supposed to be deputed was not considered safe for women. Further, the Company hadn’t employed any women for that particular role till then. However, Mishra was extremely confident about her candidature at the time…

With the advent of the hybrid work model, corporate operation has taken an unforeseen turn. Employees — who are already reeling under the challenges of working from home — have an additional responsibility to coordinate work with the upper management more efficiently, while also ensuring that their daily tasks are accomplished. Add to it the extra pressure of continuous meetings throughout the day, to ensure optimum communication. Combined with the daily work, this cocktail is definitely not meant for efficient output. Not only can back-to-back meetings with management affect the productivity of employees, it can mess up their health and…