CHENNAI: The two-day national conference organised by the National Institute of Personnel Management on “HR Positioning in Current Disruptive Business Environment” was inaugurated by ‘Mafoi’ K Pandiarajan, Minister for Tamil Culture and language at Taj Coromandel Hotel on Friday.
Pandiarajan, who founded a human resources consulting firm, emphasised the need to understand the importance of the workforce and their contribution to the overall result of a company. At a time when the business environment, driven by technology, is in a constant state of flux, the bedrock of such advancement – the people – are ignored.
“Human Resources should invite themselves to the table,” said Suresh Narayan, chief managing director of Nestle India who delivered the keynote address. “The opinions of the workforce are just as important as the ones of those who manages them,” he said while addressing the 800 HR personnel from India and abroad at the event.
The other speakers at the inaugural session on how businesses are rewriting their strategies, Aravind Balaji, joint managing director, Lucas TVS and I S A K Nazar, chairman, Manna group of companies, agreed that personnel satisfaction greatly contributed to the long term growth of a company.
Speakers along with Muthukumar Thanu, chief of HR at TAFE, who was the moderator of the inaugural session, emphasised how at a time when disruption is the new constant, ‘flexibility’ is a skill that is highly desired.
The next session which discussed how technology is the biggest disruptor of the business environment also pointed out how technology can be employed in the field of human resources. “I vouched for an independent tech team for managing HR processes when I was at General Electricals,” said Raj Raghavan, head of HR for Amazon in the Asia-Pacific region.
Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks, a global solutions company based out of Chennai, revealed how FB workplace redefined the work ethic at Freshworks. “Employees got off other social media and were hooked since there was no pre-training required to use workplace,” said the winner of ET start up of 2016.
S Gurumurthy, Editor of Tughlak, said that while disruptions in culture and technology have polarised the west, India has been incubated from such dangerous occurrences. “While the west is drowning in debt, we are afloat thanks to our savings and idea of society,” he said while outlining the role of the government and society towards disruptions. “You don’t have time to fight on casteist or religious lines when you are in business with your neighbour,” he said.