Putting people at the frontlines of business

At its full potential, the Indian automotive sector can create 30 million jobs, said Deepak Jain, chairman of the HR, IR and skill development committee, and managing director, Lumax Industries.

He was speaking at the sixth HR summit of the ACMA western region in Pune on January 17. The event was attended by over 100 delegates, many of them from the automotive segment. The theme of the summit was People First-Business Will Follow.

That is an ambitious number given that the Automotive Mission Plan, which aims to generate 25 million jobs by the year 2016, will generate considerably less than that. But there’s a new buzz in industry and one of the key driving factors is the government’s made-in- India policy.

So it wasn’t a surprise that this thought underpinned every business seminar but when it is about HR, nothing could be more important.

Elucidating his views, Jain said the importance of manufacturing in India’s GDP, whose proportion will double by 2034, will crucially depend on how the sector including the automobile sector manages its talent pool. Fleshing that out, he said the key aspects of the HR challenge are as follows: the need to create a people development strategy and that such a strategy would be crucial to the made-in-India strategy that the government wants to promote. And, finally, he said the need for business is to understand that the role of HR in a corporate is changing.

ENGAGING TODAY'S CUSTOMER
This trio of factors will doubtless circumscribe any HR policy in a company and as the new head of the committee on HR and IR at ACMA, Jain has said the opportunity to influence this for the future. Saying that this HR committee is verily the people committee, he added that ACMA’s biggest USP is engagement with the customer. As head of the HR committee, comprising 52 members, he said the aim would be to be better engaged. The association is also planning to institute an award for excellence in HR from among its numbers.

The HR Forum under the aegis of ACMA has 160 members. Jain said ACMA has decided to also re-start the salary benchmark. These are small but significant steps in an industry where  most leaders says that HR tops their individual priority lists.

The chief guest at the summit, Prakash Kodlikeri, the managing director of Maxi on Wheels, said employee performance has to go hand in hand with business. He focused on three attributes of the HR function which, according to him, includes developing leadership that can handle ‘the  ups and downs’  of business, handling the cultural aspect which is essentially focusing on speed of trust that enables faster decision-making and finally, integrity. As an example of the integrity aspect, Kodlikeri gave the example of the collapse of Lehmann Brothers in 2008 whose impact rippled through the entire banking sector.

Speakers at the summit also elaborated on how the HR function is also not just company-dependent but Kodlikeri highlighted a key aspect when he said that handling emotions is also part of the job. Companies must, therefore, create an environment in which depending on the level of the employee within the organisation, he is aware of the challenge. Briefly, at the base level, the individual employee must do some amount of self-training; at the middle-level, teamwork is of the essence, and at the top, aligning to strategy is the main challenge.

This particular standpoint came up in another session when the speaker said that with gen-next now getting more potential opportunities,  individuals must have the responsibility of their own career growth paths.

Then in another reference to employees, Kodlikeri, whose company supplies wheels to the auto sector for both domestic and overseas markets, also touched upon employee engagement saying that they must learn to give to their fellow workers. Here too, the reference was to the need for teamwork.

The summit was also addressed by speakers from a non-automotive background including Naresh Kumar Pinisetti, director, HR, Deepak Fertilisers and Ravendra Mishra, president, Human Capital, Garware-Wall Ropes. Kumar said that in Indian companies, HR is still seen through an administrative prism , and this has to change if a company has to go forward and function in a dynamic business environment. He also touched upon some other aspects including the fact that the HR function must have a thorough understanding of the business, and must percolate down to the lowest levels in an organisation. Above all, companies must show an urgency to cater to HR requirements.

Mishra said HR is the steward of the organisation’s health and that CEOs must put HR leaders at the front line of the business.

Speakers also touched upon the impact of social media, the challenges of transition and planning for succession management. Yogesh Zope, CIO, Kalyani Group, referring to his own company spoke about how the group has started to foray into the special media space in a limited way, and will see how best it can go about it and assess its impact on business.

Identifying the high-potential employees is also important. Kumar said companies remain challenged to identify the enterprise contributors, and in a  reference to what he described as an Indian trait, he said there tends to be a fascination with job titles and what results is poor focus on job content and bureaucracy.

USE OF ANALYTICS
Speakers also touched upon relatively new areas in the HR field including the use of analytics and data interpretation. The HR summit also included speeches by Dr Santosh Bhave, mentor, ACMA, on HR and IR, and Vishwanath Yerwa, chairman, western region - HR forum.

In the final session, Sumedha Nashikkar, senior VP, KPIT, spoke about the various initiatives of her company as it transitions to a products company from a pure software company. It is currently working on what it calls India’s first plug-and play hybrid system for cars — Revolo.

Giving a brief overview of what KPIT has done, she said it has launched new subjects for people from an engineering background as part of its campus connect initiative. It has taken professors from academia into the company for even up to six months as it strengthens its connect with the academia.

In a larger context, the impact of the family is very important in creating people capital, Nassikkar said. Families, she said can instill confidence in Generation-Next as well as cultural sensitivity.

These comments took the debate to a new level, making Human Resources a concern for everyone. 