People Matters Oct 2016-10

VOL VII / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2016
Special Story
Big Interview
Creating brand ambassadors

out of HiPos
Gerry Crispin, Principal &

Co-founder, CareerXroads
Research
Employer branding trends 2016

- Building strategic imperatives
THE HUMAN-MACHINE DILEMMA
Impact of
automation on
jobs and the
future of work
THE FUTURE YOU

PLANNED FOR
JUST BECAME
THE PAST.
2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
GROWTH IS LIVE.
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automate and integrate
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Do you use a New age HR process?
You are a
New age business
You use
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You manage a
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If YES, share your story! IF NO, hear ours!

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imes are changing. We are

navigating through unprecedented transformations. And
the most revolutionary of all
is the advancing automation.
Its the age of Digital Darwinism where
the winner takes it all the divide between
organizations that are adapting the new
ecosystem of digital and the ones that dont
is getting wider and the price for not adapting is getting higher. While consumers
have gone digital in the way the consume
products and services, the tasks and activities to service those consumers have not
yet been digitized to their potential.
The stage is set for change where AI,
Machine learning and Automation will
change the landscape of work as more
and more activities get automated, jobs
will change, org structures will change
and the systems of the organization as
we know it. The potential to digitize jobs,
activities and tasks is huge and even
companies and industries at the forefront
of digital spending have yet to digitize the
workforce fully as per McKinsey Global
Institute (MGI).
We all can deliberate about whether
automation is a threat or a boon, but we all
| OCTOBER 2016
THE COVER STORY

(BEHIND THE SCENE)
it looks like this

person wants
to use the
washroom.
ya, weve got it! but

no fight club please.
VOL VII / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2016
FFrroom
m tth
h e E d i t o r ss DDeesskk
4
The Times
They Are
a-Changin'
are uncertain. But many are of the opinion

that automation will be an asset. In Beyond
Automation by Thomas Davenport & Julia
Kirby, the authors explain that If this wave
of automation seems scarier, its for a good
reason. As machines encroach on decision
making, its hard to see the higher ground to
which humans might move. We could reframe
the threat of automation as an opportunity
for augmentation.
And we believe that is the case. Which
is why, we wanted to reach out to business
leaders and industry experts to give us their
opinions on what they believe automation is
doing eliminating jobs, redefining jobs, or
doing neither just restrain job growth.
For our cover story this time, we have
columns from analysts on how automation
will impact jobs and how organizations can
be ready; case studies from organizations on
how they embraced automation with minimum or no job-loss; and what are the domain
knowledge shifts that organizations need to
work on.
For the Big Interview, we have Gerry
Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of
CareerXroads, a global talent acquisition
guru, who explains what drives candidate
experience, and shares some best practices in
candidate experience.
Our special feature this time is on People
Matters Monster.com Employer Branding
Trends 2016 which reveals the latest trends in
employer branding in India. Along with this,
we also have our HiPo Week special feature,
which shares insights on how to leverage
HiPos as Employer Brand Ambassadors.
As always, we would be happy to hear your
views, comments and suggestions regarding
our stories.
Special Story
Big Interview
Creating brand ambassadors

out of HiPos
Gerry Crispin, Principal &

Co-founder, CareerXroads
Happy Reading!
Esther Martinez Hernandez Editor-in-Chief
follow
M > @Ester_Matters
F > estermartinez
> ester.martinez@peoplematters.in
Research
Employer branding trends 2016

- Building strategic imperatives
Impact of
automation on
jobs and the
future of work
phew
contents
OCTOBER 2016
volu m e V I I
issue 1 0
INFOGRAPHIC
39
Automate that!
42
The debate on automation and jobs
Technical feasibility of automation depending on

nature of jobs
By Padmaja Alaganandan, Leader - People &
Organization, PwC India

44
Automation What it has done and

what organizations need to do
As told by Faridun Dotiwala, Master Expert, Partner, Lead

Human Capital Practice, Asia, McKinsey & Co
46
Technology has evolved the nature

of jobs
By Saurabh Govil, President & CHRO, Wipro
C O N TE N TS
Impact of
automation
on jobs and
the future
of work
Automation
34
and Jobs
cover
story
The debate of Vs And
There is an emerging discourse

surrounding automation taking away
jobs. In this Cover Story, we look at the
impact automation has on jobs
48
50
Photography
Senior Editor
General Manager - Sales
Suparna Chawla Bhasin

Assistant Manager
Content & Production
Vikas Arora
Assistant ManagerS Content
J Jerry Moses | Shalini Sengupta |

Vani Vyas
SR. ASSOCIATEs - CONTENT
Dhruv Mukerjee | Monalisa Deka

Sr. Manager - Research
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6
Amit Kumar | Marta Martinez
| OCTOBER 2016
Removing manual dependency to

increase efficiency
As told by Meher Sarid, Group President - Corporate Affairs

at Oxigen Services
52
Artificial intelligence Is that a job

killer?
By Abhijit Bhaduri, Author & Digital Transformation Coach
54
The alluring promise of a blissful

tomorrow
By Murad Salman Mirza
Esther Martinez Hernandez
As told by Seema Arora Nambiar, Vice President Business

Excellence & People Resources, Hardcastle Restaurants
By Vikas Arora
Editor-in-Chief
A renewed objective of automation at

work
58
Automation helps humans evolve

By Pavan Soni, Research Fellow, IIM Bangalore
Printed and Published by
Mahesh Kumar on behalf of People

Matters Media Pvt. Ltd.
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Reproduction in any manner

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This issue of People matters
contains 96 pages including cover
contents
26
the big Interview
Interview
Customers and
Candidates Two
sides of the same coin
Its about taking it to

the next level
Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder,
Adrenalin
CareerXroads
By People Matters Editorial Team
60
Krishna GV Giri, Chairman & CEO,
By Vikas Arora
20
N e w s F eatures
Decoding hiring trends in

India 2016
By Vikas Arora
22 The slumping wage meter
By Suparna Chawla Bhasin &
Manav Seth
24
Determining the best fit The state of psychometrics in India
Special
story
62
Creating brand
ambassadors
out of HiPos
By Dhruv Mukerjee & Vikas Arora
C O N TE N TS
Maternit y B ill
30 Rewarding the vacant
chair The Maternity

Benefit Amendment Bill
62
- A missing link
By Prashant Pandey, Country Head,

Right Management
By Biren Misra, Associate Director at

UnitedHealth Group

32
By Dr. Ranjan Banerjee, Dean,

SPJIMR & Dr. Snehal Shah, Head
of Research and Professor, People &
Performance, SPJIMR

INFOGRAPHIC
64
T ools & F ra m e w orks
Design thinking as a tool

for HR transformation
S trategic H R
Hipos: Your brand
By J Jerry Moses & Dhruv Mukerjee
88
Employer Branding Trends
90
Leveraging a positive
brand perception
employer branding
As told by Kunal Wali, Associate

Director - Talent Development, IBM
program
interview
As told by Deepa Chadha, CHRO,

Jabong
68
76
As told by Prithvi Shergill, CHRO,

HCL Technologies
If you dont bet on your

own people, someone
else will
HiPos - Invest inside,

harvest outside
HiPos - Catalysts to
Prabir Jha, Global Chief People

Officer, Cipla
By Vikas Arora & Medha Roy
Employer branding trends
INFOGRAPHIC
74
Building a robust HiPo
2016: Building strategic

imperatives
As told by Prashant Khullar,

VP HR, Mahindra Holidays &
Resorts India

66
HiPos as brand
ambassadors

84
70
ambassadors survey 2016

results
92 HR preparedness for 2020

By Sandhya Johnson, Founder and
MD, Ingenium Global
R esearch
HiPos as brand advocates
As told by Sanjay Modi, MD - APAC

and Middle East, Monster.com
| OCTOBER 2016
Contributors in this issue

regulars
04 From the Editors Desk

10 Letters of the month
12 Quick Reads
78 Knowledge + Networking
94 Blogosphere
Abhijit Bhaduri
Biren Misra
Meher Sarid
Murad Salman Mirza
Padmaja Alaganandan
Pavan Soni
Prashant Pandey
Dr. Ranjan Banerjee
Sandhya Johnson
Seema Arora Nambiar
Dr. Snehal Shah
Sourish Mohan Mitra
featured in this issue

Deepa Chadha
Faridun Dotiwala
Gerry Crispin
Krishna V. Giri
Kunal Wali
Nitin Sethi
Prabir Jha
Prashant Khullar
Prithvi Shergill
Sanjay Modi
Saurabh Govil
Shatrunjay Krishna
IGNITING LEADERSHIP
WITHIN YOU
Join us on:
Join
us on:
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curriculum takes you on a
self-advancing journey right from
the ground level to the
pinnacle of your career:
Developing the Leader in You
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Using Influence as a Leadership Tool
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Letters of
the month
People Matters values your feedback. Write to us

with your suggestions and ideas at
editorial@peoplematters.in
Randstad-Monster Acquisition
september 2016 issue
Ma i l
Big Interview: Dennis W. Shuler

The Big Interview of Dennis W. Shuler,
President & Founder, Kinetic Consulting
was indeed big, and gave an insight into
high performing organizations and how HR
should strike a balance between managing
people and businesses at the same time.
Before reading this article, I held the perception that Human Resource professionals are only restricted to unleashing the
capacity of people, but Shuler cleared the
air by talking about some of his personal
experiences in double hatting as a HR
manager & a business leader. The article
stressed on the role of employees behind
high performance organizations.
- Bani Goyal
Cover Story: Best B-Schools 2016

The Indian Management education has
raised its bar in terms of global learning
system starting from the establishment of
the first B-Schools in the country. The cover
story of the September issue 2016 was very
informative & gave a peek into the premier
B-Schools of the country with a rankbased list. With a plethora of options for
management studies, it is very important
for aspiring management graduates to have
a list of B-Schools to pick. The comprehensive ranking of the B-Schools was done
through a rational methodology based on
ten evaluating parameters. I am sure this
article will be a catch for students helping
them to go that extra mile in choosing the
best B-School.
- Gurpreet Kaur
10
| OCTOBER 2016
Among the many M&A activities, the

Randstad-Monster acquisition has created
some ripples in the recruitment world.
This news indeed brought some rays of
hope for sourcing and engaging talent in
a better, quicker and cost effective way.
The Randstad-Monster Acquisition article
highlighted the statement of Tim Yates,
CEO, Monster.com, This is a strategic
move, as along with becoming a constituent of a diversified organization, thispartnership will surely open doors to consolidate and restructure different aspects of
recruitment. This deal is set to strengthen
both Monster and Randstad's position in
the market. I consider this article an interesting piece of information that talks in
detail about the close partnership between
the two companies.
- Garima Tandon
Vinil Chacko @vinilchacko

The rising threat of #fraud:
Key questions goo.gl/H2tdSy
#Assessments #BackgroundVerification
#BackgroundChecks @PeopleMatters2
Subid Chakraborty @HR_Transformers
RT Amol Bengali: Insights from the
WTW's State of Psychometric Assessment
Study published in @PeopleMatters2
Khaki Banda @AbhinavCJ
Reading @PeopleMatters2's list of top
B-schools proved to be an unexpected
source of comic relief as I discussed the
same with the TA team.
HR Tech Weekly @HRTechWeekly
Forget HR jargon: Keep it simple,
silly! http://bit.ly/2cQLgUz via @
PeopleMatters2 #HR
Himanshu Ramdeo @HimanshuRamdeo
@a1purva talks about #integration of
#HR #Marketing & #Technology! @
PeopleMatters2 @hcltech
Mohamed Atef @elmelegey
Things to remember while acquiring
HR technology http://bit.ly/2cJB0xt @
PeopleMatters2 #HR
follow
M > @PeopleMatters2
Udta Udyog - Industrys

addiction to contract
workers
The article by Visty Banaji on

Udta Udyog provided some
food for thought about the
dependence of Indian industry on contract workers which
is becoming a critical issue for
the business world. Temporary workers are becoming a
perpetual fixture in an economy where labor competition
is fierce and high-paying positions are scarce.
- A a k a sh B h a t n a g a r
{WRITE TO US NOW BY
SCANNING THIS CODE}
Corrigendum
In the K+N section of September 2016
edition,Skillsoft was mistakenly published
as Sumtotal in the L&D Annual Conference
Events Listing. We regret the error.
skilling
funding
Center to spend Rs 32,000 crores

towards skill development
q u i c k
r e a d s
In order to generate an employment-ready

workforce, the central government has
made a provision to spend Rs 32,000 crores
for skill development in next three years
as a part of Skill India Program. Out of
this, 12,000 crores will be provided through
Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna
(PMKVY). The central government will be
responsible for meeting three-fourths of
the target, and the state governments will
be responsible for attaining the remaining
target. The cabinet also endorsed a national
apprenticeship promotion scheme under
which five million people are to be trained
by 2019-20 at a cost of Rs.10,000 crores.
BENEFITS
collaboration
Jabong extends
ISB & SAP tie-up
maternity leave to to launch a new
6 months
program for social
Online fashion portal Jabong has extended
entrepreneurs
the companys maternity leave to six
months from the earlier leave policy of
three months. In a statement by Jabong,
the move is a part of Jabongs endeavor to
enable favorable working environment for
expectant mothers. Women represent 30
percent of Jabongs workforce and (impact)
60 percent of our revenue. We believe that
making our culture more inclusive is an
economic imperative for the success of
our organization and the country, Jabong
CHRO Deepa Chadha said.
Many other firms like Hindustan Unilever, Accenture,
Microsoft and Flipkart
have enhanced their
maternity leaves to aid
their women employees. Jabong, which was
acquired by Myntra
in July, already offers
in-house crche, flexitimings and work from
homeoptions among
other programs.
12
| OCTOBER 2016
In a collaborative effort by The Indian

School of Business (ISB) and global
software firm, SAP, a new program
called Jumpstart has been launched to
cultivate and promote social entrepreneurship ecosystem. The program will
focus on progression and growth of social
enterprises across the country. This will
also enable the creation of ample job
opportunities within the sector and will
lay emphasis on fulfilling social needs
which are not being met so far. To achieve
this, Jumpstart, the Startup program will
identify five social enterprises (startups)
and will train them to fast-track their
growth process. SAPs role in collaborating with ISB is to strategize and drive
its thought leadership to a much wider
audience in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, specially social entrepreneurship.
It will focus on bringing in expertise in
technology, customer acquisitions, design
thinking etc. under the social enterprise
program.
The HR Fund launches

its Mentorship Program
The HR Fund has launched its mentorship program to help HR entrepreneurs

get functional and strategic mentorship
from Senior HR professionals, allow HR
startups to get their product validated
by industry folks, provide HR startups
with network & operational support,
and facilitate interactions with successful HR entrepreneurs and SMEs.
The mentors in this program are senior
HR professionals with vast experience across different verticals of HR,
Technology & Finance. The program
is designed to be a 6 months program
starting from October 2016 March
2017, and each selected Startup will be
assigned one primary Mentor who will
engage with them for the duration of
the program. A minimum of one face-toface meeting with their respective mentors every month (in addition to email/
phone based interactions).
Kelly Services & Temp

Holdings unveil fund
for HR start-ups in India
Kelly Services India, a global staffing
and recruitment firm, has unveiled a
Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) fund,
named Temp Innovation Fund for the
Indian HR market. The CVC fund will
focus on funding and acquiring innovative HR start-ups in the recruitment and
staffing sector. It will act as an angel
investor and handhold the investee
companies. The Venture Capital Fund is
being launched by Kelly in association
with its joint venture partner for Asia
Pacific, Temp Holdings Co, Ltd. (TSE:
2181). The fund was launched early this
year by Temp Holdings in Japan and is
now accessible to all global markets.
employer branding
Asian Paints in Forbes 100

Innovative Companies list
Ola fires 250 employees due to

non-performance
Citing non-performance and other
issues, Ola has
laid off about 250
employees from
its workforce. This
comes right after
the cab aggregator sacked about
700 employees of
its TaxiforSure
business which
it had acquired
months ago. Ola
just finished its annual appraisal and this lay off is a fall-out of
the same. Some of the employees are also leaving because their
contracts are getting over soon. The company is also set to hire
newer and better talent from various cities, according to the
statement made by an Ola spokesperson. Ola has nearly doubled its employee strength over the last couple of years to 6,500.
It has about 5.5 lakh driver-partners across 102 cities. An Ola
spokesperson said that these have been "well thought through"
organizational decisions, keeping in mind the best interests of
employees and business efficiencies. In August, Ola shut down
its TaxiforSure operations 18 months after it acquired the business for $200 million.
According to the 2017

Michael Page India Salary
and Employment Outlook
report, Indias employment market enjoyed
a good year largely
unaffected by the global
economic slowdown of
2016, and 80% of employers in India are confident
that hiring activity will
remain steady in 2017.
This years report is based on the responses of over 300 employers
across India. The key highlights of the Report are: 44% of employees will leave their jobs due to limited career progression, 88%
of employers are offering 6 to 15% pay increments in the next 12
months, 51% of employers are expected to give bonuses in the range
of 6 to 15%, and about 83% of employers say diversity and inclusion
is a priority and have active workplace programs in place. Intense
market competition and the lack of highly qualified candidates
in the growing Indian economy has resulted in a growing talent
crunch, which is why attraction & retention of talent are key areas
of focus for employers.
r e a d s
layoffs
Hiring to be steady; salary to

increase in 2017: Michael Page
report
q u i c k
Asian Paints is the

only Indian organization to be featured
in the top 20 in the
recently released list
of Forbes Top 100
Innovative companies. The company
has been ranked 18th
in the list. Other
Indian companies
which made the cut
in the top 100 are Hindustan Unilever (31), Tata Consultancy
Services (66), Sun Pharma (73), and Larsen & Toubro (89). The
top honor went to Tesla Motors followed by Salesforce.com
and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in the second and third spots
respectively. As per Forbes press release, companies are ranked
by their innovation premium: the difference between their
market capitalization and the net present value of cash flows
from existing businesses.
industry updates
Online recruitment shows

growth in India - Monster India
Online recruitment activity in August registered a growth of 17 percent over the corresponding period last year led by
robust hiring in education
and banking sectors, says
a Monster India report.
The Monster Employment
Index India for the month
of August stood at 244,
registering a jump of 17
percent over the corresponding period last year
when the index stood at
208. There was a slump in
usual employment generating sectors, like IT and production & manufacturing, but sectors
like banking & finance and education managed to keep the hiring
scene buzzing. The banking and finance sector (BFSI), which is
currently undergoing series of reforms, has shown a positive online
hiring trend this month with a year-on-year growth figure of 30 percent. Education sector continues to chart a long-term growth owing
to special impetus by the government since the budget of 2016.
OCTOBER 2016 |
13
Always
LookIng
The RIse of ContInuous CandIdates
Globally, there has been an Increase In the number of candIdates
who say, I am always lookIng for the next job opportunIty.
In order to understand how employers can leverage global candidate
preferences, ManpowerGroup Solutions surveyed 4,500 job seekers globally
in October 2015 in five dominant employment markets. The third report in the
seriesof the four reports analyzing the results of a proprietary Global Candidate
Preferences Survey, Always looking: The rise of continuous candidates,
investigates the appearance of a new normal Continuous Candidates
candidates who are always looking for the next job opportunity.
A look at the common traIts of contInuous

candIdates, the reasons that Make them
move and tIps for retaInIng them
Globally, one In three candIdates

Is a ContInuous CandIdate & The
global average rests at
q u i c k
r e a d s
Who are contInuous candIdates?
TIps to steppIng up retentIon efforts
Here are some interesting facts to note about continuous

candidates and some common behavioral traits
Facts to know
behavIoral traIts
1) Speak fluent advancement
Proactively articulate the career advancement

opportunities to candidates.
2) Walk the walk
60%
Are millennials (18-34

years old)
Seek career advancement & have

more experience in the workforce
57%
Feel changing jobs will

increase compensation
Comfortable with all

types of interviewing
43%
Feel every job is

temporary
Emphasize the holistic

journey, not one job
29%
Applied to 3-9 jobs in

the last 6 months
Seek career security
Expand the definition of advancement to include

expanded roles and projects that involve giving back
to the society.
2X
Likely to express job

dissatisfaction
Active on job sites and

job-related social media
5) Foster learnability
4X
Likely to think advancement

corresponds with changing
jobs often
More knowledgeable about job

position and company details
early in interview process
6) Mentor, mentor, mentor
Why do candIdates look for new posItIons?

Common drivers of job change
33% Compensation
15% Opportunity for advancement
13% Type of work
12% Benefits
9% Schedule flexibility
7% Geography
5% Brand/reputation
4% Industry
2% Others
14
37%
| OCTOBER 2016
Give honest, constructive feedback and maintain realtime communication with employees.
3) Spotlight examples of advancement
Use peer testimonials, about us webpages, company

newsletters, etc. to communicate success stories of
career advancements both internally and externally.
4) Expand the definition of advancement
Nurture learnability through providing for professional

development programs.
Create a culture of mentorship. Skill acquisition,
regular feedback, teamwork and exposure to
successful role models are some ways to do it.
7) Build a talent community
Make it easy for Continuous Candidates to add

themselves to talent communities on social media
and career sites.
8) Vet and reclassify applicants
Under-qualified applicants should be vetted,

reclassified and transparentlycommunicated with to
avoid creating negative perceptions among applicants.
9) Challenge the myth of job-hopping
Dont perceive frequent job change as infidelity or poor

job performance; it may be because of the candidates
desire for geographic mobility or sought-after
advancement opportunity.
Source: ManPower Group Solutions report, Always looking: The rise of
continuous candidates. Link: http://www.manpowergroup.co.uk/
the-word-on-work/continuous-candidates/
q u i c k
r e a d s
Arundhati
Bhattacharya Indias top woman
banker
16
rundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson &

Managing Director of the State Bank of
India, has been ranked second in Fortune's
'50 Most Powerful Women International' list, that
ranks the most powerful women based outside
the US. Bhattacharya was also ranked 25th on the
Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women in the world
list 2016. According to Forbes, Bhattacharyas
profile has risen during her three-year tenure atop
Indias largest bank, a 210-year-old institution that
ranks No. 232 on Fortunes Global 500. The Forbes
list ranks Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO of ICICI
Bank, at the fifth position and Shikha Sharma,
CEO of Axis Bank at the 19th position. Botin,
Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander,
Eurozone's largest bank by market value, repeats
as No. 1.
Bhattacharya was appointed the first woman
chairperson of the 207-year-old State Bank of
India joined SBI in 1977 as probationary officer
at the age of 22 years. Since then, she has held
several positions during her 36-year career with
the bank including working in foreign exchange,
treasury, retail operations, human resources and
investment banking. Bhattacharya is credited
with modernizing the institution in terms of
introducing digital technologies and making SBI a
women-friendly workplace by establishing a twoyear sabbatical policy for women employees for
child or elder care.
| OCTOBER 2016
Bhattacharya is credited
with modernizing the
institution in terms
of introducing digital
technologies and making
SBI a women-friendly
workplace by establishing a
two-year sabbatical policy
for women employees for
child or elder care
Conjectured to be the successor to Raghuram
Rajan as the Governor of Reserve Bank of India,
SBI Chairperson Bhattacharya, has persistently
continued her "high-profile battle with the bank's
bad loans, while courting overseas partners to
invest in the stressed assets. She has also been
credited with orchestrating SBI's merger with six
other groups, a plan that, once complete, will result
in SBI being one of largest lenders in Asia. The
Indian government is also considering granting
extension to Bhattacharya whose three-year term
comes to an end this month.
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Urjit Patel succeeds Raghuram Rajan as RBI

Governor
Urjit Patel has been promoted from the post of
Deputy Governor of the RBI to become the 24th
Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. He took
over office on September 6th 2016. A Bachelors
in Economics from London School of Economics,
an M.Phil from Oxford University and with a doctorate
from Yale, Patel has worked with the IMF, consulted the
Government of India and has also worked with High
Level Committees.
q u i c k
r e a d s
Sunil Mittal re-appointed as Chairman of

Bharti Airtel
Sunil Bharti Mittal has been re-appointed as
the Chairman of Bharti Airtel for another five
years. The founder and Chairman of Bharti
enterprises will be Chairman till October 1, 2021.
Melissa Ries is Skillsofts new VP & GM of

APAC region
Skillsoft has appointed Melissa Ries as the
Vice President and General Manager of the
Asia Pacific. Ries will oversee the growth of
Skillsoft and SumTotal in the APAC region. Ries
joins Skillsoft with 23 years of experience of selling
enterprise software in the APAC markets.
Targets CMO, Jeff Jones hired by Uber

Jeff Jones has joined Uber Technologies Inc.
from Target. In his new role as the President of
Ridesharing, he will be the second in command
after CEO Travis Kalanick, and will be responsible for running the cab aggregators global operations, marketing and customer support.
Madhav Vamsi appointed by Microsoft as

head of India unv. relations
Madhav Vamsi has been appointed as
Microsofts Head of India University Relations.
Prior to this, Vamsi was the Campus Head of
Flipkart and was responsible for managing all
campus recruitment programs across geographies.
Paul Skelton joins Standard Chartered as

Global Head of Banking
Paul Skelton has been appointed as the Global
Head of Banking at Standard Chartered. Skelton
holds 30 years of banking experience and was
the Regional Head of Commercial Banking for
HSBCs Asia Pacific business. He will be responsible
for the banks large corporate and financial institution
client relationships.
Emami appoints Nihar Ghosh as

President-HR
Emami Group has appointed Nihar Ranjan
Ghosh as its President Human Resources.
Prior to this, Ghosh held the position of
Executive Director HR, Group Corporate at the
RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group.
P&G hires Gerry D'Angelo as the Global

Media Director
P&G has hired Gerry DAngelo from Mondelez
International. An experienced media executive,
he will be responsible for overseeing the media
budget of P&G.
Microsoft Accelerator, India appoints
Bala Girisaballa as CEO
Bala Girisaballa has been appointed to lead
Microsoft Accelerator in India as its CEO-in
Residence. With an experience of working in
enterprises such as Yahoo! and Oracle and being
the founder of startups such as PurpleFront and
nineMotion.com, Girisaballa, at Microsoft, will help
market-ready startups scale up their businesses.
Amazon India appoints Ravi Desai as its CMO
Ravi Desai has been appointed as Amazon Indias
Chief Marketing Officer. Desai joins Amazon
from ITC Ltd, Foods Division where he was
the cluster head of marketing and an executive committee member. At Amazon, he will be
responsible for product marketing, advertising and
brand building.
18
InterContinental Hotels Group appoints

Ranjay Radhakrishnan as CHRO
Ranjay Radhakrishnan has been appointed
as the Chief Human Resources Officer of the
InterContinental Hotels Group and he will
join the organization starting December. He will
become a member of IHGs Executive Committee,
replacing Tracy Robbins who stepped down from the
role in January 2016.
OCTOBER 2016
2016
| September
Industrybuying appoints Manvinder

Kaur as VP-HR
Manvinder Kaur has been appointed as
the Vice President, Human Resources of
Industrybuying, a B2B e-commerce platform.
Manvinder has held several HR leadership
positions at Gap Inc., BT Global Services and
IndusInd Bank before this appointment.
Think Talent appoints Bhaskar Das as
Head of Leadership Practice
Think Talent Services, a leadership & talent
consulting firm, has appointed Bhaskar Das as
the Head of Leadership Practice. Prior to this,
Das worked as VP-HR at Cognizant where he led
the HR function.
GiftXOXO hires Vishal Kumar as Sales
Lead for special projects
Vishal Kumar BM, the co-founder of Hey Bob,
has joined the experiential gifting and rewards
platform GiftXOXO as its Sales Lead for special
projects. With 10 years of experience in brand
management and marketing, Kumar will focus on
business development through strategic sales functions.
f e a t u r e
n e w s
Decoding
hiring trends
in India 2016
A snapshot of the four key hiring trends from the Aon
Hewitt People Matters Decoding Hiring Trends Study 2016
By Vikas Arora
ndia Inc. has had a very positive hiring

outlook and as many as 79 percent organizations project increased hiring in 2016-17.
However, evolved jobseekers, threat from
competitors and an increasing demand from
businesses are poised to put a lot of pressure on
Talent Acquisition teams. In an age where candidate is the king, talent acquisition teams need
to attune themselves to the trends in the talent
market to be effective at attracting the right talent.
In view of this, Aon Hewitt, in partnership
with People Matters, conducted the Decoding
Hiring Trends in India 2016 Study, which provides
inputs on Hiring Drivers, Hiring Outlook, Hiring
Practices and Hiring Metrics. The study captured
responses from 160 organizations in more than 12
industries to understand talent acquisition priorities of these companies & the industry. Here are
the key findings of the study.
Where is the focus of organizations?
20
| OCTOBER 2016
Talent engagement - Talent selects the

organization!
Organizations have identified engagement with
passive talent as a key talent acquisition priority.
48 percent of organizations identify engagement
with passive talent when done effectively by
competitors is a top threat to talent. And creating and nurturing a strong talent pool will be the
core differentiator of talent acquisition teams.
Organizations today are realizing the power of
social networks for sourcing passive talent. The
study revealed that the top recruitment priority
of organizations is to leverage social networks for
sourcing talent (43 percent organizations). To support this strategic imperative, 37 percent organizations are increasing investments to enhance
their social media presence, which can further be
utilized for engaging talent, as well as effectively
communicating the employer brand.
Employer branding - The driver of talent

Having a well-defined and consistently communicated employer brand is a clear competitive advantage. 29 percent of the organizations
surveyed have cited building and communicating
their employer brand as one of the most important
priorities for their organizations. With the talent
37 percent
organizations are
increasing investments
to enhance their social
media presence
sourcing approach changing from push to pull,

having an effective strategy for employer branding
has become imperative to businesses. 39 percent
organizations are increasing their wallet share
in branding and marketing with an objective of
communicating the employer brand effectively.
Organizations are also investing in building the
employer brand internally to decrease external dependencies for sourcing and using their
employees networks to source talent. 33 percent
companies plan to increase spend to further utilize
employee referrals for sourcing talent.
Process efficiencies - Changing the recruiter

role
The dominant hiring metrics currently are speed

and cost of hiring, with 55 percent organizations
tracking time to fill and 44 percent organizations
tracking cost per hire. Further, organizations are
moving towards measuring quality of hire, with
30 percent organizations wanting to track quality
of hire consistently in the coming year. Going
forward, organizations will have to move towards
data-driven decision making in talent acquisition
and effectively measuring quality of hire. Prehiring assessments remain more important than
ever as 65 percent of organizations have dedicated
capability for assessments, data analytics and technology. However, leveraging big data for effective
hiring decisions is still at a nascent stage.
needs to drive organizational performance, says

Nitin Sethi, Partner and CCO at Aon Hewitt, India.
And going ahead, the talent attraction strategy
has to be aligned with the trends in the job market.
The evolution of talent attraction strategies will
require significant investment in the recruitment
teams to ensure their readiness for the future.
Organizations have underlined quality of hire as
one of the most important metrics to track hiring
effectiveness, and to ensure that hiring managers are equipped with the requisite assessment
skills. In this backdrop, 50 percent organizations
are investing in building interviewing capabilities
of hiring managers and 54 percent are seeking
hiring manager feedback on the hiring process
and effectiveness. Hiring manager effectiveness in
identifying the best talent and their true support
as trusted talent advisors to business is what will
keep organizations ahead of the curve and help
them to become preferred employers for the best
talent.
The way forward

India Inc. is bullish about its hiring plans as clearly
articulated by the study. As fundamentals of the
economy further improve, India Inc. will see a further increase in talent demand across sectors. HR
and TA teams will come under significant pressure
to attract and retain the best talent that business
f e a t u r e
Evolved metrics
50 percent of companies have

digitized some of their recruitment
processes, while 30 percent plan
to digitize the entire recruitment
cycle by the end of 2016
n e w s
Recruitment budgets are increasing in 67 percent

organizations, but the additional budget is not
being spent on increasing the size of recruitment
team. Only 21 percent of companies report wallet
share increase for recruitment team cost, thereby
adding to margin pressures. To aid recruiters in
keeping up with the business need of hiring talent,
organizations are increasing investment in HR
technology/platforms to bring process efficiencies
in recruitment processes. 42 percent organizations report an increase in wallet share for this
component. 50 percent have already digitized some
of their recruitment processes, while 30 percent
plan to digitize the entire recruitment cycle by the
end of 2016.
Digitizing recruitment processes also creates
an opportunity to utilize the skills of the Talent
Acquisition team differently. With technology driving the operational part of the recruitment cycle,
TA professionals can now play a more strategic
role and be trusted talent advisors to business,
which is the third most important recruitment
priority for organizations.
{Scan here to download the

Aon Hewitt People Matters
Decoding Hiring Trends
Study 2016}
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F > in/aroravikas20
OCTOBER 2016 |
21
The slumping
wage meter
With salary dissatisfaction a common phenomenon
among the working class, India has seen a salary
growth of just 0.2 per cent in the last eight years
n e w s
f e a t u r e
By Suparna Chawla Bhasin & Manav Seth
oney is money. It is not

the only factor that is
looked at by any person
making a career choice,
but it certainly is a crucial
component.
Salary dissatisfaction has become a
common phenomenon among the working
class and this sentiment has been observed
and reinforced by a TimesJobs Survey
which recently revealed that 55 per cent
Gen Y and 53 per cent Gen Z employees are
a disappointed lot when it comes to their
first drawn salaries.
And this is corroborated by the fact
that India has seen a salary growth of just
0.2 per cent in the last eight years according to a new analysis by the Hay Group
division of Korn Ferry when compared to
the Indian economic growth of 63.8% since
2008. Compared to this, China has had a
salary growth of 10.6 percent since 2008.
The data that the report took for study
was drawn from Hay Groups PayNet that
contained data for more than 16 million
job holders in 24,000 organizations across
more than 110 countries. The report shows
22
| OCTOBER 2016
India has seen a

salary growth of
just 0.2 percent
since 2008,
where the Indian
economy grew by
63.8 percent
the average difference in pay between
lower level employees in an organization
and senior managers by country for 2008,
2011 and 2014 & also shows the change in
the average percentage difference from
the start of the recession in 2008 to2014. In
terms of real salary growth, China topped
the list by registering a 10.6% growth
in the real salary. Indonesia (9.3%) and
Mexico (8.9%) followed in close. Canada
on the other hand, had the best salary
recovery among the developed countries,
and also had one of the most equal salary
growth for entry-level (5.1%), professional

(8.8%) and senior (7.8%) positions, averaging to a total of 7.2% growth, with a growth
of 11.2% in its GDP.
Commenting on the Indian state of
affairs, Benjamin Frost, Korn Ferry Hay
Group Global Product Manager stated
that, Of the countries we looked at,
Indian wage growth was by far the most
unequal - people at the bottom are 30 per
cent worse off in real terms since the start
of the recession; whilst people at the top
are 30 per cent better off. India has made
less progress than some other countries
in bringing high value jobs to the country.
This has led to poor job growth, therefore
an oversupply of un/semi-skilled people,
and poor wage growth.
But why are countries, particularly
India, unable to replicate growth with
equity. Why is Indias wage growth
unequal?
Along with a plethora of rapid changes,
While overall, global economists point
to this recovery as one of the worst in
history, there are political, economic and
social reasons for the disparate salary
fluctuations in different countries. In the
countries that are seeing tremendous
salary growth, the issue is supply and
demand. With countries like China seeing
a whopping 75.9 percent GDP growth since
the beginning of the recession, universities and corporations simply cant train
people fast enough. This leaves an acute
talent shortage and points to the reason
skilled employees are seeing steep pay
increases. While India needs to skill its
44 million youth in 18-23 age bracket and
equip and empower them to contribute to
the country's growth process, on the same
tangent, the growth for senior jobs is
mostly because of skill shortages for key
professional and managerial roles; and the
increasing connection to a more globalized
pay market at the senior levels - a market
where India still pays less than most countries, but is catching up fast Frost said.
The incessant drive to achieve growth
has overtaken a fundamental rule of
sustainable development equal, better
yet, equitable growth. The worrying
indicators suggest that the current course
of recovery are widening the rift between
different sections of employees, a trend if
left unchecked, might as well be the core
ingredient of an impending global workforce crisis.
References
http://www.haygroup.com/en/press/pay-gap-betweensenior-managers-and-lower-level-workers-surgesworldwide/
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/mTf8d5oOqzMwavzaGy4yMN/IMF-warns-of-growing-inequality-inIndia-and-China.html
Determining the best fit -
n e w s
f e a t u r e
The state of psychometrics in India
Competency assessments
through psychometrics to map
talent demands holistically can
create high performing workforce & prove to be a differentiator for organizations. A look at
the key findings of The state of
psychometric assessments in
India - a study by Willis Towers
Watson
By Dhruv Mukerjee & Vikas Arora
R professionals have, over

the years, greatly benefitted
from academic advancements
in the fields of psychology
and behavioral economics
by applying the principles & theories of
such domains to real-time talent acquisition and management processes. One such
application has been the use of psychometric assessments to better understand
workforce preferences. For instance,
24
| OCTOBER 2016
job interviews, traditionally, have been

reliant on the interviewers ability to ask
questions, interpret answers, and be fair
in the recruitment process. Psychometrics
add quantitative measures to qualitative
assessments to present a holistic portrayal
of a candidates capabilities. These
psychometric instruments, at the recruitment stage, can help overcome the reliability and validity challenge. And when
combined with qualitative assessments,
psychometrics can help assess a new hire,
an existing employees abilities, leadership
potential, personality and culture fit and
also determine an employees potential to
take on larger roles.
The State of Psychometric Assessments in India a study by Willis Towers
Watson highlights this importance of
psychometric assessments and explores
the awareness, acceptance and application
of psychometric assessments in India.
In this article, we look at the key
findings of the report, how psychometric
assessments can be leveraged in an organization, and what does the HR need to do to
adopt a holistic approach to assessments.
Application of psychometric
assessments
The report reveals that in India, more
than one in three organizations have
never explored psychometrics and almost
half do not currently use it where only
9% are unwilling to explore a new tool. A
majority of organizations though, do use
How do you define

psychometric assessments?
Aassessment is the science of applied

t its most basic, psychometric
psychology which is intended to identify

specific personality traits that could
highlight the suitability for specific roles.
These can be in the form of personality
questionnaires, leadership tests, motivation
tests and situational judgment tests.
Source: State of psychometric assessments in India,
Willis Towers Watson
psychometric assessments in a variety of

ways and apply it across the talent cycle
of an individual. According to the Study,
the current penetration levels & openness
to explore psychometric assessment tools
is by 56 percent organizations that use
psychometric assessment tools.
The dominant area where psychometric
assessments are used is while recruiting
and selecting talent. The Study reveals that
77 percent organizations use psychometrics for candidate assessment at the senior
management level. The number stands at
65 percent, 74 percent and 81 percent for
middle management, junior management
and entry level candidates respectively.
But there is a huge scope for using
psychometric tools in the areas of talent
development, High Potential identification
and development, and succession planning,
as the application of psychometrics is
considerably average (see Figure 1).
Towards a more mature use of

psychometrics
The areas where organizations use psychometric assessments

77%
Candidate
assessment /
Recruitment
and selection
65%
74%
81%
53%
54%
49%
Talent
assessment &
development
7%
38%
High potential
identification &
development
52%
29%
19%
28%
Succession
planning
13%
9%
3%
Other
4%
7%
6%
3%
Senior Management
Middle Management
Junior Management
Entry Level/Individual Contributors
Psychometrics can add a quantitative

layer to a lot of decisions that are taken
on instinct, making them more efficient.
Another advantage of psychometrics is
that they allow for benchmarking a candidates ability against a talent pool.
Low adoption in Indian markets

The adoption of psychometrics, despite
all the tabled advantages is still considerably low within Indian markets. A major
reason for this is the availability of tools
other than personality psychometrics like
psychometrics like personal interviews,
assessment centers, etc. Other major
reasons for not utilizing psychometrics are
because they come with a high cost and the
reliability of the tools available is also a
question mark.
What does HR need to do?

A holistic approach to psychometrics
might turn out to be a cost-effective way for
companies to create a high performing and
engaged workforce. And for HR to drive
f e a t u r e
Hiring the right talent can save

organizations approximately three
times the cost of attrition or wrong hire,
and reliable psychometric tools can
help in that process
n e w s
As observed in Figure 1, the application

of psychometrics is the maximum at the
recruitment stage and it decreases during
the employee life cycle. This can be traced
to the overarching objectives of assessments the Study reveals that the top
objective of psychometric assessments is
To assess quality of hire (60 percent).
This is followed by the objective to
identify right job/culture fit (58 percent).
Both these objectives are fulfilled at the
recruitment stage, but after recruitment,
the application of psychometrics is considerably low. For instance, the application of
psychometrics for broad-based employee
development stands at 25 percent.
Psychometrics can play a pivotal
role in broad-based talent development.
Consider this example A recent report
by Willis Towers Watson on Reimagining
Employee Engagement in India, notes that
Companies are increasingly interested in
identifying the fit between an employees
personality, and the culture and values of
the company. If we can reasonably assume
that the greater such a fit, the more likely
one is to be engaged, we have an extremely
powerful factor to add to our selection
criteria. Imagine how valuable it would
be to hire only those employees likely to
be engaged at a company, given its unique
culture and/or the ideal culture it is trying
to build to help execute its strategic goals.
In such cases, psychometrics become a
valuable asset with HR professionals to
plug employees into roles which suit them
more comfortably. By having multi-dimensional assessment parameters, psychometric assessments become a vital tool for HR
professionals.
Application of psychometric assessments
the adoption of psychometrics across an

employee life-cycle, it is important for HR
to build its capability. Psychometrics need
an understanding of three factors human
behaviors, personality and behavior interaction in given context (role, organization
etc.) and assessment fundamentals validity & reliability as Shatrunjay Krishna,
Director, Willis Towers Watson puts it.
HR professionals need to be inquisitive
about such parameters to be able to design
the appropriate assessment framework,
he adds. It is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the talent cycle
requirements. For example, assessment
requirements at the time of hiring are very
different from assessment requirements
for development needs analysis or highpotential identification. By understanding
the advantages that different assessments
provide, HR professionals can map talent
demands in a better manner.
1. 'Reimagining Employee Engagement', Willis Towers
Watson
OCTOBER 2016 |
25
i n t e r v i e w
b i g
Customers & candidates Two sides of the same coin

Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder of CareerXroads and a global talent
acquisition guru, juxtaposes customers to candidates, explains what drives

candidate experience, and shares some best practices in candidate experience
By Vikas Arora
26
| OCTOBER 2016
erry Crispin is the Principal &

Co-Founder of CareerXroads, a
member driven peer-to-peer platform
for TA Leaders that focuses on what
keeps them up at night and what
they are doing about it now. A world-renowned
talent acquisition guru, Gerry is also the founder
of TalentBoard, a non-profit and also conducts
CareerXRoads annual studies on Source of Hire,
Candidate Experience and Evolving Referral
Practices which act as global benchmarks in the
talent acquisition and HR community.
You co-founded CareerXRoads in 1996. What

was the purpose of starting the organization?
If one talked about candidate experience fifteen

years ago, people used to laugh. People couldnt
imagine treating candidates differently from the
way they already did. Two things certainly changed
that. One was the rise of social media which
apparently is still rising to this day and its role in
amplifying the voice of the candidates. And the
second, which is more important in my opinion,
was the concept of Net Promoter Score, which was
first introduced in an article written by Frederick
F. Reichheld for Harvard Business Review wherein
he talked about the importance of customer
perception. That particular article started an
extraordinary discussion on how customers affect
us in our businesses and that continues till this day.
I extended that discussion to candidates. What that
article has done is that it has taught us (in Human
Resources) what our marketing colleagues have
been doing and it has gotten us to think about how
we measure, define and understand relationships,
Companies can create a differentiated candidate

experience by focusing on these five things
expectations, perception of fairness, closure,
holding recruiters accountable, and being able
to listen and demonstrate. These things help in
improving candidate experience.
Lets take the examples of expectations and
perception of fairness and how they impact
candidate experience. Visualize a customer who
has come at a diner. The expectation is to get a
great customer service by the wait staff, and if (s)
he doesnt get it, it is a possibility (s)he wouldnt sit
there. Some people expect the order to be delivered
within 30 minutes, and if it isnt, people actually
leave. Juxtapose this argument of expectations
of customers to the expectations of candidates.
If you do not deliver in accordance with the
candidates expectations, you will be rated less.
78 percent of the candidates with

positive experience encourage
others to apply; 40 percent of
the candidates with a negative
experience go out of their way
and discourage others to apply
i n t e r v i e w
You call customers and candidates as two faces

of the same coin. Why so?
What, in your experience, improves candidate

experience? What are the areas that organizations
should focus on?
b i g
CareerXroads was a commercial company a

consultancy that was devoted to understanding the
impact of emerging technologies on recruiting.
We wrote 8 books from 1996-2003 detailing the pros
and cons of the technology tools, resources and
strategies employers were using to acquire, screen,
select and onboard Talent. We also consulted with
numerous firms and eventually built a peer-to-peer
community for Talent Acquisition leaders that
currently numbers about 100 large firms.
The founding of non-profit, Talent Board, in
2010 by myself, Elaine Orler, Talent Function and
Ed Newman, Phenom People was a result of our
belief that it was time to help identify employers
trying to improve their candidate experience rather
than castigate those doing a poor job or satisfied
with doing nothing. Talent Boards mission is
to define and measure the underlying value of
candidate experience as a compelling business
necessity. Keeping Talent Board a non-profit allows
us to attract some of the brightest minds in the
world, engages a greater number of companies to
participate and allows for a broader distribution of
our results than a commercial firm whose agenda
might be questioned.
changing attitudes and changing behaviors of our

customers i.e. candidates.
These expectations about the process of recruiting

are benchmarked with the best in the industry.
Moreover, we also see technologies help employers
set those expectations more effectively, for instance,
through Instagram, mapping, video, through all
kinds of tools that are available out there.
Another critical point is around the fairness
of perception. Suppose you discover at the diner
that you werent served in 30 minutes, but someone
else was. It is going to have a negative impact.
Translating this into a candidate scenario, the
perception of fairness about the recruiting process
is an absolute critical component of how you
build and design the tools, the information and the
openness and transparency towards the candidates.
One of the things we have found is that not only
is there a host of areas in which candidates will
rate you less, but there are several areas in which
they will rate you more. We have discovered that
that those companies that are willing to have their
last question of the application to be, What didnt I
ask you about your skills knowledge and experience
that you would like to share with us now that
OCTOBER 2016 |
27
makes you more competitive in this job?" positively

influence the perception of fairness about their
selection process.
If candidates are customers, would you say

customer service is an important skill HR needs to
learn? How can HR acquire these skills?
Handling rejection is an
important but minor skill in
customer service & the treatment
of candidates requires real
mastery of how to handle this
28
What have been some of the other startling

findings of the study?
We see the influence of candidates also
expanding in their inner circles. 80 percent of
candidates would share the positive experience, and
65 percent would share the negative experience. This
has doubled in three years time. Publicly, 51 percent
would share a positive experience and a third would
share a negative experience.
What is counterintuitive is that millennials are
less likely to share a negative experience they have
been coached not to burn bridges; on the other hand,
the baby boomers don't care anymore so they share
negative experiences a lot more.
We asked 20 of our 5000 finalists if they were
asked for feedback about the process, 60 percent
said no. When a candidate is not selected, nearly
60 percent receive an email from a do-not-reply
address notifying them. In this group, only 20
percent of the candidates never got any response
from the employer. This makes speed of response
the key. We find that the longer you take to inform
the candidates that they did not get the position,
the lower your rating will drop and it will affect
you in the long run. We also are able to show
high correlations in terms of holding recruiters
accountable for the candidate experience. The more
you do that, the higher your ratings are.
Could you share an example of the impact of

candidate experience to business?
You conduct the global annual candidate
experience survey every year. What are some of
the key findings of your study?
b i g
i n t e r v i e w
Customer service skills are critical. However,

for all the elements that make the treatment of
candidates and customers similar, there is one huge
difference. Customers are served they are able to
purchase the product nearly 99 percent of the time
if they have the qualification that is, money, etc.
With candidates, it is the reverse. 99 percent never
get the job. Handling rejection is an important but
minor skill in customer service. The treatment
of candidates requires real mastery of how to
handle rejection. Those skills are seldom taught
to recruiters. In the future, systems and cognitive
programs will mimic these capabilities.
those candidates who had a bad experience would

discontinue all relations with the organization.
In the 2015 study, we had 200 employers who

participated from the US, a 100 in EMEA and
another 55 in Asia Pacific. The companies that
participated sent the data of all their candidates
(a total of 150,000 candidate responses) and a
benchmark of 50 companies that were rated the
highest was created. The candidate responses were
obtained, looked at, and analyzed. It is one of the
biggest collaboration of companies that we know of,
and we are producing data for their benefit.
Here are some of my observations relative to that
data. We asked the candidates how likely they were
to apply again, and what we learned was that if
they had a positive experience, 62 percent said they
were willing to apply again. If they had a negative
experience, a quarter of them said they would never
apply again. We then asked the candidates how
likely they were to refer someone in the future. 78
percent of the candidates with positive experience
said they would actively encourage others to apply,
but if they had a negative experience, 40 percent
would go out of their way and discourage others
to apply. Calculating the cost it will have to the
business is also not difficult to determine; it is
pretty straight forward. Another interesting finding
that was uncovered was that about 25 percent of
| OCTOBER 2016
Take the example of Hilton. One of the things

they did was invest significantly in a small group
of candidates from around the world. They engaged
in a white glove treatment of all the candidates and
what they discovered was that over the following
year, the candidates that they did not hire spent
another 130 million dollars with Hilton as the hotel
chains customers. This is a powerful example which
highlights the cost of doing it poorly and the reward
of doing it well.
What did Hilton do differently to give its

candidates a great experience such that it had a
positive impact on its business?
Hilton set expectations and delivered on them,
listened intently at every stage of the recruiting
process, asked for and gave specific feedback to help
candidates identify openings in other firms and
tips to compete more effectively for those jobs, held
recruiters accountable for the candidates experience
and informed candidates not going forward in the
process as soon as it was determined they would
not compete. Everyone not hired in this pilot group
was given a gold card which allowed the candidate
future discounts when staying at Hilton.
(The interview has been extracted from the excerpts from Gerry
Crispins keynote speech at TechHR16 Conference held on the 4th
and 5th oF August)
biren misra
Rewarding the vacant

chair The Maternity
Benefit Amendment Bill
There are many arguments in favor of the recent judgment on Maternity
Benefit Amendment Bill; but there are a few arguments to the contrary
Ma t e r n i t y
b i l l
Why should the

business pay for
extended absences for
employees who aren't
contributing?
he recent decision on Maternity

Benefit Amendment Bill 2016, in Rajya
Sabha, provided for a maternity leave
of 26 weeks instead of the current 12
weeks, and allows for 12 weeks leave
for commissioning and adopting mothers while
making it mandatory for establishments with
50 or more employees to provide crche facility.
Although it is a step hailed by many, businesses do
have their fair share of concerns with it, some of
which are:
Why should the business pay for extended
absences for employees who aren't contributing?
How does the business turn around pre-committed client deliverables with reduced employee
size?
Wouldnt it set the ground for leaking talent
30
| OCTOBER 2016
pipeline? Women talent is in scarcity and this

can potentially pose the risk of women not
returning!
Additional load of reworking the policy, finding
a crche in the vicinity and more.
Does it mean the business will have to be mindful in the hiring strategy and should focus more
on hiring men?
To say the least, let me be benevolent Isnt
it unfair for my male employees? What about
paternity leave? Would that also increase in
future?
In a nutshell, why do we reward the vacant
chair?
Competitive edge, customer satisfaction, net
promoter score are the usual messages we hear
every day. The business ecosystem has become so
competitive, that only profitability matters and
of course for the right reasons; someone has to
pay for the bills! That said, while we understand
our employees, who we refer to as Talent, where
is that border to truly claim the employee first
proposition. Lung screeching claims on how Talent is critical is a pass or does it really means
something?
Over the years, businesses have treated talent
as incumbents, who fulfill certain duties to get a
salary; businesses have also established the story
of employee engagement, diversity, and equality
and now it is in the dichotomy of staying true
to diversity at workplace promises and the thin
operating margin, that the Maternity Benefit Act
has put the company into a labor pain.
Their exists historical evidences that countries
Ma t e r n i t y
Long leaves correlate

with women leaving
the workforce eternally,
and this also comes
with associated
implications like pay
gaps or biases when it
comes to other women
in the workplace who
choose not to have kids!
b i l l
like Norway, Austria and Czech did extend the

maternity policies, however, my limited research
ability did not support me in finding the associated
benefits. Most economists do write of the economic
loss for the country and that such an extended
leave has no significant effect or benefit to the
economy or workplace continuity than a leave
lesser than 20 weeks. In Germany, which offered a
generous maternity leave, evidence showed that it
failed to keep women in the workforce. In fact, long
leaves correlate with women leaving the workforce
eternally, and this also comes with associated
implications like pay gap or bias when it came to
other women in the workplace who choose not to
have kids!
In this entire argument for mounting financial implications, we lose the very essence of
compassion. A scroll through some of the fortune
companies indicates that the Mission and Values
statement enlist Compassion, in significance.
Instead of the dictionary meanings of sympathetic
pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes
of others, businesses showcase it as a means to be
empathetic by understanding and being sensitive
to the people we work with. We know of many businesses that ensure that employee salary continues
for prolonged periods in case any employee succumbs to a critical illness. And given the state of
Indias social culture, being compassionate on the
aforesaid grounds may truly aid creating prolific
talent pool such talent pool which returns to
workplace and contributes in making it congenial,
by building higher-quality relationship & commitment to the workplace. Its been established that
diversity at workplace definitely positively contributes in the financial returns of the business.
Though it leaves with arguments on both sides
to ponder; how do we budget for these additional 14
weeks? Where and how do we find the replacement

talent? Why speculate that it may impact diversity
at workplace decisions, would it? Is it not similar
to reservations; in spite of equal opportunities?
When businesses are pushing to minimize losses
in this inflationary economy, how do businesses
manage vacant chair costs?
Only time will tell if rewarding the vacant
chair has some rationale.
The views expressed are those solely of the author and do not
represent any policies or practices of the/any associated company
or reflect the views of People Matters
About the author
Biren Misra is Associate Director at UnitedHealth

Group; working in the area of Total Rewards and
Transformation
OCTOBER 2016 |
31
Design thinking as a tool

for HR transformation
How can design thinking become a tool for the individual
to design an optimal, living & breathing, people-centric
blueprint of an organization?
TOOLS & FR A MEWORKS
By Dr. Ranjan Banerjee & Dr. Snehal Shah
32
R functions have not always

been well regarded in organizations. A cynical operating
leader once remarked to me
HR is too important to be left
to the HR department. He was only being
partly jocular. The element of administration, expense control and proximity to the
top, has led to HR being often regarded
with a mix of suspicion and disfavor. This
is beginning to change. HR as a strategic
partner is no longer a mere buzzword.
There is a new emphasis on organizational
excellence, and the role of learning, teamwork and a culture that fosters innovations. This, then is both the opportunity
and the challenge for HR. But how does HR
adapt to become both a transformational
force for, and a custodian of organizational
excellence?
The emerging field of design thinking
may hold some promise to combat this
challenge. Design thinking involves both
process and mindset dimensions, and
involves:
a) Eclectic cross-functional teams building an outside in view of a users situation through creating simple and usable
insights.
b) Using an iterative process of insighting, ideation and prototyping to arrive
at solutions quickly. In design thinking
terms, this is fail fast to succeed early.
As organizations are adapting to the
changing environment, many gurus and
consulting organizations have attempted
to map out what the transformational
role of HR may look like. David Ulrich, a
renowned management scholar has called
upon the CEOs to regard CHROs as the
architects of the new organization order.
The idea is that this architect, through
an optimal combination of aesthetics,
space, balance and movement can breathe
life into four walls of a building. In this
| OCTOBER 2016
a) Facilitating engagement
b) Enabling line managers to perform
training and mentoring roles
Empathy maps
reveal perceptions
from the users
point of view, and
by forcing research
that looks at both
emotions and
reason, gets a truly
people centric view
of a situation
context, let us look at what are some of the
new responsibilities of an HR architect?
How can design thinking become a tool for
the individual to design an optimal, living
& breathing, people-centric blueprint of an
organization?
Employee champion
Role Work complexity has increased
manifold and in the new age organizations,
talent has become the most critical asset.
HR professionals have to perform the dual
role of:
In order to design the interventions

and everyday processes required to
perform this role, HR managers need
to immerse in the context of both the
employee and the line manager. As
an example, for employee issues, this
would involve understanding the factors
affecting employee engagement from the
employees point of view. This includes
both rational and emotional dimensions.
As these are not easy to articulate for
many employees, an HR professional
would need to immerse in the job context,
and conduct unstructured conversations
with employees in their work setting. In
this setting, empathy maps are a valuable
tool to build systematic understanding.
An empathy map clubs user feedback
under four dimensions think: the users
opinions on the subject of interest; feel:
the users emotional reactions on the issue
of interest; do: the users actual actions
related to the subject; and say: verbatim
quotations. The advantage of this tool is
that it reveals perceptions from the users
point of view, and by forcing research that
looks at both emotions and reason, gets a
truly people centric view of a situation.
A leader may not see it as a negative that
his team members call him busy, but an
empathy map could reveal that for some
team members, busy could imply difficult
to approach.
DT Tool: Empathy Map

Benefits
Ensures holistic evaluation of
employees needs and motivation
Enables targeted HR initiatives that
would help engage and retain talent
Talent Broker
Role In the era of war for talent and
fierce competition for skilled resources, the
traditional function of selection, hiring &
managing the employee does not ensure
highly skilled talent walking in the door and
adding value for the organization. Todays
HR professional has to find ways to become
a savvy broker for talent who has the
expertise to size up the market, understand
candidates expectations & find out innovative ways to match the talent to the job.
In order to understand the war for talent
from a prospective candidates point of
view, AEIOU is a very interesting framework, which enables to unravel this insight.
An analysis of this sort may reveal

the differences in activity and profile
between a passive candidate (somebody
who fits the recruiters need, but is happy
and successful in his current job) versus
an active candidate (somebody who is
searching actively but is not such a good fit)
and may drive more strategic sourcing.
DT Tool: AEIOU framework

Benefits
Evolve a robust hiring & selection
process that yields best fit of the
candidate to the job profile
Efficient process customized to
different candidate/employee segments
Steward of organization culture

Role According to Global Human Capital
Trends, a 2016 Deloitte report, HR function is taking on a new role as the steward
and designer of new people processes.
The mission of the HR leader is evolving
from that of chief talent executive to
chief employee experience officer. HR is
being asked to simplify its processes, help
employees manage the flood of information
at work, and build a culture of collaboration, empowerment, and innovation.
The chief issue here is the predominant
mindset of solution finding. Too often,
we try too hard to find the right solution,
not realizing that when problems are ill
structured. The answer then is to observe
(there is an important distinction between
The mission of
the HR leader is
evolving from that
of chief talent
executive to
chief employee
experience officer"
observation and interpretation we need
to learn to separate symptoms from diagnosis), create comfortable conversations
based on observations, and then use early
insights to try solutions. As a simple example, observation might reveal that some
people do not talk in meetings. Conversation may reveal introversion or a feeling of
being overwhelmed by the more talkative.
Solutions could include calling on people to
speak with randomization, asking people
to write down impressions and then share
exactly what they have written. Another
way to generate relevant information is
to ask probing questions. The technique
of five whys is always very effective. In
an instance when an employee appears to
be demotivated to put in her best performance, the HR leader can better understand his/her situation by asking multiple
whys to unravel his/her story -why he/
she felt a certain way, why he/she and
others around her behaved in a particular
way, why would he/she not want to do
the assigned task etc. This type of inquiry
enables real issues at a much deeper level
to surface, which can lead to various methods of problem solving. Such techniques
of fact-finding preceded by observation
and followed by experimentation make
up the Look, Try, Do and Learn cycle of
design thinking. Two points emerge here.

Simple insights lead to multiple possible
approaches. It may not be possible to determine a priori the best answer, the approach
is to try something that seems promising
based on accurate problem identification
and learn quickly from what works (and
what does not).
DT Tool: Create a design thinking

mindset: Look, Try, Do & Learn
Benefits
Deeper employee buy-in of shared
values as they become an integral part
of co-creating the culture
Develop building blocks of a learning
organization
In conclusion, design thinking provides
process expertise in the hands of a user.
It allows non-judgmental observation of
a situation at hand, facilitates a dialogue
that helps identify root causes and employs
multiple approaches to effective problem
solving. Human Resources as a discipline
will benefit from embracing this technique
as this implies that HR must abandon preconceived notions of how and why people
work the way they do and demonstrate the
very openness that they seek to build in
the organization. For a HR leader, design
thinking tools offer a powerful methodology to build a culture of ideation and
experimentation necessary for success in
todays context. The hope is, when these
leaders become design thinkers themselves, they can then start curating such
an experience that is transformative, both
for themselves and for the organization as
a whole.
TOOLS & FR A MEWORKS
Activities: What does the user do

on a daily basis? How does he get his
information? Where does he travel?
Environment: What are the objects in
the vicinity? What does his home look like?
Who are the people around him?
Interactions: Who does he meet? What
conversations does he have?
Objects: What are objects that are a part
of his life? What value do they have from
him?
User: What do I know about the users
profile? Age? Demographics? Lifestyle?
About the authors
Dr. Ranjan Banerjee, Dean, SPJIMR

Dr. Snehal Shah, Head of Research and
Professor, People & Performance, SPJIMR
OCTOBER 2016 |
33
STORY
C OVER

Impact of automation on jobs
and the future of work
34
| OCTOBER 2016
Automation
and Jobs
By Vikas Arora
STORY
There is an emerging discourse surrounding

automation taking away jobs. In this Cover Story,
we look at the impact automation has on jobs
C OVER
The debate of Vs And
hen IBMs supercomputer, Deep Blue, defeated the reigning

world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, it fuelled the
already burning conversation Can machines be smarter
than humans?; Can machines replace humans?. For this wasnt a
machine from the industrial revolution which was capable of doing
mechanical work like lifting heavy material or pulling metal worth
metrics of tons, this was a machine with cognitive abilities. Albeit
programmed just to play chess, it was a big reminder that machines
could be programmed to think and act like humans. Knowledge work,
something on which humans had a sense of entitlement, could now
be automated.
Almost two decades since the Man vs. Machine chess match,
automation of knowledge work has been recognized by McKinsey as
one of the 12 Disruptive Technologies that will reshape the future of
work.i
Organizations are widely using machines with artificial intelligence capability at the workplace, indulging in activities that couldnt
have been expected to be done by machines a few years ago. With this
development, a school of thought lamenting the threat of automation to jobs has emerged. Take for instance World Economic Forums
Future of Jobs report which expects 5 million jobs to be lost by 2020
owing to technology.
This reinforces the two-sided discourse surrounding digital
advancements of businesses and the fourth industrial revolution A
positive for businesses, but a negative for jobs.
But do digital advancements really eliminate jobs? In this Cover
Story, we explore this dilemma.
OCTOBER 2016 |
35
EXPLAINED
Who is a knowledge worker?
The term knowledge worker was first introduced

by Peter Drucker in 1959 in his book, Landmarks of
Tomorrow.
Knowledge workers are essentially workers whose
main capital is knowledge. Their job is to think for a
living as defined by Thomas Davenport in Thinking
for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and
Results From Knowledge Workers. Examples include
software engineers, physicians, pharmacists, architects,
scientists, public accountants, lawyers, and academics.
The argument in favor of

automations impact on jobs
Do digital advancements only cause job
displacement?
C OVER
STORY
Thus far, automation hasnt had a significant

effect on overall employment across industries. A
research, Robots at Work by Georg Graetz and
Guy Michaels, underscores the impact of robots at
cumulative employment, productivity and wages
across 14 industries in 17 countries between 1993
and 2007 and reveals that there is no systematic
empirical evidence of their impact. The study
notes that the impact of industrial robots, if
any, has only been on low-skilled workers and in
increasing total factor productivity, labor productivity and wages, but no significant influence on
the overall employment.
Sales figures of industrial and service robots
disclose that organizations havent held back from
using robotic capabilities at workplace, for their
impact on productivity is well-established. The
investments in industrial robots have only gone
up since the market crash of 2008. The estimated

worldwide annual supply of industrial robots was
229,000 units in 2014, according to World Robotics
2015 Study by IFR Statistical Department. The total
number of professional service robots sold stood at
24,207 units. The number had only been projected to
go up it is believed that 152,400 new professional
service robots and 1.3 million industrial robots
will be installed between 2015 and 2018. The Study
has noted China to be the biggest consumer of
industrial robots, with the sale of industrial robots
increasing by 56 percent from 2013, and the total
number standing at 57,096. The figure in India for
industrial robots stood at 2,100 in the same year,
marking it as an important market in Asia. Factor
in the penetration and usage of software robotics,
and the adoption and application of robots at work
is immense.
The antics of robots at Amazons fulfillment
centers in the US are well-known around the world.
The way the robots move around the warehouse
floor, skimming, selecting, picking, moving,
dropping, and shipping products is a sight to
behold. But such advanced application of robots
has not resulted in job losses at the worlds largest
e-commerce company. As a matter of fact, Amazon,
despite deploying Kiva robots in 13 warehouses,
has always looked to hire more employees for its
fulfillment centers. The warehouses have humans
and machines working in sync and getting the
work done.
Technology, however advanced, has been
augmenting human capabilities and emerging
in areas where humans are either absent, or it is
displacing human activities that are repetitive in
nature and directing people towards more valueadding work.
Even a fully-functional robot that greets
customers at a bank and directs them to service
touch points (somewhat similar to a receptionist)
hasnt displaced anybody from the bank. (Exhibit 1
illustrates more such examples)
Extending the augmentation argument to the
future, take the case of the e-commerce industry. It
was expected to revolutionize the way people shop
across the country. However, due to constraints
of the reach of courier services, the penetration
of e-commerce has also been limited to the pin
A RESEARCH, ROBOTS AT
WORK BY GEORG GRAETZ
AND GUY MICHAELS,
DID NOT FIND ANY
SIGNIFICANT EFFECT OF
INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS ON
OVERALL EMPLOYMENT
36
| OCTOBER 2016
Did they gain or did they lose? Some examples
EXHIBIT 1
Here is a list of some recent examples of automation in the industry, globally. But were jobs affected?
ICICI Bank (India)

What was automated: Introduced 200 software
robots to carry out internal transactions.
Impact on business: The response time due to
software robots reduced by 60% and accuracy
increased to 100%
Impact on jobs: No reports of any job losses due
to software robots
Future plans: Increase the number of internal
transactions carried out by software robotics by 10
percent. Increase the software robots from 200 to
500. According to the management, it wont lead
to any layoffs
Amazon (US)
Washington Post (US)

What was automated: Artificial Intelligence
technology, Heliograf was used to auto-populate
events schedule, results and medal tallies at Rio
Olympics 2016
Impact on business: The Post was able to
generate more stories when compared to past
sport events
Impact on jobs: No journalist was outplaced. It
freed up reporters to write in-depth features as
Heliograf automatically published event results.
Foxconn (China)
What was automated: Work at the manufacturing
factory has been taken up by robots
Impact on jobs: 60,000 factory workers will be
replaced by robots, and the total workforce size of
the factory will reduce to 50,000
Creation of new avenues. Automation is

refurbishing the established system. While some
avenues might get shut in the future, there are
many newer avenues that have opened, and experts
expect many more to open up. Faridun Dotiwala,
Master Expert, Partner, Lead Human Capital
Practice, Asia at McKinsey&Company believes so.
He says, Technological advancements will always
open up something new which is unheard of.
Big Data Analytics is one avenue which has
been created by machine learning systems. There
are advanced systems available today that are able
to do Big Data Analytics independently. It might
be argued that instead of having one machine
to play that role, an organization could have a
team of people working on making sense of Big
Data (with limited support of technology). Even
if it was remotely possible for humans to make
sense of Big Data in its raw form and it might
have given employment to people, organizations
were anyway not doing that, argues McKinseys
Faridun. So in hindsight, machine learning did
not take away the jobs of data scientists. In fact,
Walmart (US)
What is getting automated: Store back-office
processes of accounting and invoicing. Cash
recycler machines will now manage the
stores daily cash flow or process claims from
manufacturers
Impact on jobs: 7,000 back office jobs will be
displaced. Most of the displaced 7,000 employees
will be deployed in customer-facing roles.
Technology has opened up new

avenues for people who create
that technology, who sell it, who
help implement it and those who
are eventually using the analyzed
data to make decisions
STORY
codes to which the courier services deliver. Meher

Sarid, Group President - Corporate Affairs,
Oxigen Services explains that technological
advancements, say drones and droids, can
challenge that notion, help break those barriers
and add to the existing human capabilities.
This though is yet to be tested for feasibility and
applicability, she says, which has left us in a grey
space as of today.
HDFC Bank (India)

Projected automation: Bringing in a robot to
play a receptionist role in a Mumbai branch. It will
show banking options to customers, and based
on the selection, will show the floor layout of the
bank highlighting the area where that service is
available.
Impact on jobs: As of now, there are no reports
which say that this robot will replace any
employee
C OVER
What was automated: 13 warehouses have robots

to pack and transport items
Impact on business: The clip to ship cycle (sifting
stacks, picking product, packing it, shipping it)
which took 60-75 minutes reduced to 15 minutes
Impact on jobs: No direct reports highlighting
elimination of jobs in warehouses, though,
Amazon has increased its cumulative headcount

since the introducing Kiva robots and has been
hiring people for full time jobs in warehouses
the presence of a machine doing data analytics

has opened up new avenues for i. people who
create that technology; ii. people who sell that
technology; iii. people who help implement that
technology; iv. people who are eventually using the
analyzed data to make decisions.
Maybe when Hal Varian, Googles Chief
Economist, in a media interview with McKinsey
in 2009, claimed that the hottest job in 10 years
will be of statisticians, he was right! A legacy
automobile manufacturer BMW hiring experts in
machine learning and artificial intelligenceii and
Porsche hiring 1400 people for its electronic car
project Mission E are examples of technology and
automation opening up avenues unheard of.
At McDonalds India, the standardization and
automation of back-end processes has indeed led
to the establishment of a service center which
handles all the technical queries/complaints about
the system. Could the jobs of people working at
these service centers be at risk from AI-powered
OCTOBER 2016 |
37
LESS THAN 5% OF OCCUPATIONS CAN

BE COMPLETELY AUTOMATED. BUT,
APPROXIMATELY 60% OF OCCUPATIONS
COULD HAVE 30% OR MORE OF THEIR
CONSTITUENT ACTIVITIES AUTOMATED
C OVER
STORY
customer service systems? Seema Arora Nambiar,

Vice President Business Excellence & People
Resources, Hardcastle Restaurants, doesnt think
so. For rendering any kind of service, there is
an element of human interaction that has to be
there, and hence I dont think it will come to a
point where machines will overtake such roles,
she says. Looking at the BPO industry, such a level
of impact on jobs by AI-powered chat support
hasnt been seen. The IT/BPO sector has been
the creator of the maximum jobs in India as of
2015 among eight key industries, according to the
Labour Bureaus quarterly report on Changes
in employment in selected sectors. This sector
created 76,000 jobs in the year 2015.
Another example of technology creating new
avenues relates to startups and the jobs they
provide both permanent and temporary. A
research paper Who Creates Jobs? Small vs. Large
vs. Young by John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and
Javier Miranda (NBER Working Paper No. 16300)
suggests that the younger companies create
more jobs, regardless of their size. Something
which can only be a good sign for India the India
Startup Outlook Report 2016 predicted 130 startups
to create 5,000 jobs in 12 months.
EXHIBIT 2
Discourses on
automation
Here is a list of an intriguing collection of

research papers and books on the subject of
automation and jobs
The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson
Humans Need Not Apply by Jerry Kaplan
Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford
"The Future of Employment by Benedikt Frey and
Michael Osborne
Robots at Work by Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels
A History of Social Psychological Reactions to New
Technology
AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs by Aaron Smith
and Janna Anderson
A history of social psychological reactions to new
technology by Jim Carlopio
Future of Jobs by World Economic Forum
Silicon Collar by Vinnie Mirchandani
38
| OCTOBER 2016
What is getting automated? How is it

impacting the workplace?
When Oxigen, a fintech company, automated
some parts of its revenue management system,
the company did not layoff the employees who
were rendered redundant. They were deployed
to work on devising ways to optimize the stock
that the company is purchasing by analyzing
user consumption data, something which is
of much more importance to the business and
directly impacts their bottomline.
A McKinsey Researchiii on automation,
carried out in the United States reiterates the
above argument, and with a large sample size.
The research highlights four key points about
automation and its impact on jobs:
1. Automation of activities
The research reveals that very few occupations
will be automated and eventually eliminated
in their entirety. Only certain activities will
get automated. For instance, at Oxigen, the
activity of a salesperson involving filling KYC
documents and sending couriers was automated,
the occupation of the salesperson wasnt
threatened. If at all, the salesforce at Oxigen has
only strengthened and every salesperson can
now focus on his/her real occupation, which is
client acquisition.
Predictable physical work is the activity
that has been found to be the most automatable.
(Infographic on the next page details the least
and most automatable activities and industry
sectors)
2. Redefinition of jobs
The research states that only less than 5 percent
of occupations can be completely automated
using current technology. But, approximately
60 percent of occupations could have 30
percent or more of their constituent activities
automated. So the kind of work people engage
in will change. For instance, Wipros employees
and managers have an automated self-service
mechanism to manage their daily operations,
and also have bots with Artificial Intelligence
capability in the employee helpdesk area. This
has allowed for people managing transactions to
work towards actually improving the employee
experience.
3. Impact on high wage occupations
There are even some highest paid jobs that can
be automated using the current technology.
The study estimates that 20 percent of a CEOs
working time could be automated. On the
flip side, only a fraction of activities can be
automated in some lower-wage occupations like
maintenance work, landscaping work, etc.
4. Future of creativity
Automation of mundane tasks will allow for
people to focus more on activities that utilize
creativity and emotion. Automation can enable
employees to spend maximum time on thinking,
ideating and innovating.
Automate that!
Note: This data is

specific to the US
Technical feasibility of automation depending on the nature of jobs across sectors
THE TIME SPENT ON ACTIVITIES THAT CAN BE AUTOMATED BY PROFESSIONALS ACROSS SECTORS
Average
time spent
Managing
others
9%
Applying
expertise
18%
Stakeholder
interactions
20%
Unpredictable
physical work*
25%
Data
collection
64%
Data
processing
69%
Predictable
physical work*
78%
Sectors
Agriculture
Transportation
& warehousing
Retail trade
Mining
11
Other services
12
Construction
10
Utilities
14
Wholesale trade
12
Finance and
insurance
22
13
51
14
26
14
24
13
41
13
19
23
13
24
Real estate
12
21
Administrative
13
14
Healthcare and
social assistance
14
14
Information
25
Professional
Management
10
<1
33
13
14
28
17
12
17
15
11
15
11
10
13
12
23
17
13
25
19
16
15
24
34
12
3
11
14
19
16
17
23
21
13
10
11
20
13
20
16
20
27
16
19
23
25
16
17
24
29
10
less Automatable activities
*Unpredictable physical work (physical activities and the operation of machinery) is performed in unpredictable
environments, while in predictable physical work, the environments are predictable.
13
10
21
less Automatable industries
10
11
21
48
11
15
24
11
22
17
10
22
19
22
Arts, entertainment, & recreation
Educational
services
STORY
Manufacturing
C OVER
more Automatable industries
Accomodation &
Food service
more Automatable activities
All figures in percentages

Source: McKinsey Global Institute
OCTOBER 2016 |
39
The argument against automations impact on jobs

Does automation restrain job-creation?
STORY
Going by the data, (and, considering Foxconns mass

exodus of 60,000 people due to automation as an
anomaly), even if it was to be concluded that automation hasnt resulted in job losses (yet), it is still
important to look at the potential argument has
automation slowed job creation?
The IT/BPO industry may have created 76,000
jobs in 2015, but it is equally important to note that
this is less than half the number of the jobs created
in the same sector in the year 2014. And this is just
one sector. Job creation has significantly gone down,
so much so, that job creation in 2015 in India was
the lowest since the 2008 recessioniv. While there is
no data to establish a direct correlation between
technological advancements and slowdown in job
creation, it has to be considered as an important cog
in the wheel. For the first time in over two decades,
Wipro and HCL witnessed a net decline in hiring this
yearv. Data from Nasscom also highlights that the
requirement of engineers to generate $1 billion of
export revenue has come down from 31,846 engineers
in 2009-10 to 16,055 engineers in 2015-16. A McKinsey-
C OVER
Activities, and not occupations,

will get automated. Consequently,
the roles which people currently
indulge in, will get redefined
References
i McKinsey
http://bit.ly/1VuON5F
Fortune
http://for.tn/2cW3m4D
iii Four fundamentals of
workplace automation,
McKinsey&Company
http://bit.ly/1ozn6ha
iv People Matters
http://bit.ly/23JXcqE
v Live Mint
http://bit.ly/1Vl8cc8
vi Economic Times
http://bit.ly/29kMqlJ
vii Fox Business
http://fxn.ws/1Xu771B
viii ZDNet
http://zd.net/2cl80bh
ii
40
| OCTOBER 2016
Kotak study notes that the industry will need 1

million engineers to generate the next USD 100
billion of revenue, whereas the first USD 100 billion
were generated from 3 million engineersvi. It might
lead to either more growth or lesser jobs created; or
maybe a combination of both.
Seema Arora Nambiar of Hardcastle Restaurants
attributes this slowdown in job creation to a more
cautious approach that is being taken by employers.
But technologys role cannot be downplayed, forget
getting disregarded. After all, for McDonalds it's
cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire
an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour
bagging French fries,vii as articulated by former
McDonalds USA CEO Ed Rensi in an interview to
Fox Business. The plain economics of it suggests
having a robot arm instead of a human. It may be
argued that the individual bagging the fries may
not lose the job and be redeployed to a new role, say
customer service, but it just might shut an avenue
for a prospective jobseeker who wants to work in
customer service, thus accentuating the argument.
What does it entail for the workforce?

In the short and mid-term. As far as the history of
technology adoption suggests, automation will not be
able to immediately create ripples in the workplace.
Vinnie Mirchandani, in his book, Silicon Collar
argues that both the evolution and absorption of

technology is really slow and cites the example of
how, despite the excessive use of e-mails, US Postal
Service has thrived. At the introduction of emails,
a technology-will-replace-humans argument would
have been that the postal service would become
redundant. But when one looks at the employee
strength of India Post, it is found that the impact of
e-mails, if any, has been snail-paced. In 2006-07, India
Post employed 520,191 people, and the number has
only dropped to 460,457 people in 2015-16, despite the
debunking of telegram and money order services.
This also does not factor the private courier services
where people work. So clearly, the adoption of emails
hasnt been detrimental to millions of people working with postal and courier service in the country.
Mirchandani says, Societies conspire to stay analog.
And in many ways that's not too bad. It keeps humans
employed far longer than the doomsayers predict.viii
Before we talk of all-out automation and elimination of jobs, there are other aspects to also keep
in mind. For instance - is the state infrastructure
conducive to advanced technologies like driverless
cars? Are warehouses architected in ways to support
self-sufficient bots? Given the current readiness of
the state, organizations, and the limited extent of
dependence on technology by people, preempting
an impact to the degree where everything becomes
machine dependent and virtual can be stated as farfetched.
In the long-term. One cannot really predict,
says McKinseys Faridun. The truth remains that
automation is a reality and organizations will have to
embrace it. A McDonalds may not hire an employee
to bag those French fries and use a robot arm instead.
It makes complete business sense. But it should also
start working on creating new avenues for employees
who will become redundant. An Amazon will have to
reflect upon whether it has devised a workforce plan
for its 90,000 full-time employees working in fulfillment centers in the US that it might displace in the
future because of automation?
There are a plethora of arguments that can be
made in favor and against automations impact on
jobs when comparing todays scenario to the second
industrial revolution. It is not entirely justifiable
to juxtapose the fourth industrial revolution (20xx)
with the second industrial revolution (1870) simply
because of the differences in the ability of machines
to work in the two eras. Machines have never had
such evolved cognitive abilities as they have today,
and organizations must start thinking and take steps,
even if small, to prepare for the age when the Deep
Blues will replace human occupations; for now the
Gary Kasparovs are well in control.
Read next: Articles from experts on how automation will impact jobs and how organizations can be
ready; case studies from organizations on how they
embraced automation with minimum or no job-loss;
the domain knowledge shifts that organizations need
to work on; and guest columns on automation.
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The debate on
automation and jobs
Padmaja
Alaganandan
Automation is one of the most debated factors affecting the workplace

and the structure of the workforce today. But even as jobs became
redundant due to technology, newer ones have been created
C OVER
STORY
he increasing pace of digitization and

automation is one of the most debated
factors affecting the workplace and the
structure of the workforce today. Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) is being adopted across
industries. In our annual global CEO survey1,
CEOs reiterated the strategic importance of
robotics and automation to their businesses and
spoke of rates of adoption growing at more than
100% across functions. They further went on to
estimate that 18% of jobs would be automated in 5
years time. Other sources of research corroborate
this trend, with the Swedish Foundation for
Strategic Research estimating that 35% of all jobs
would be replaced by technology by 2035.
This trend taken in isolation can be a worrying
one, more so for a nation like us where 120 million
youth enter the workforce every year. Recently, on
my way to the farms in Thiruvalluvar in Tamil
Nadu, the team I was travelling with discussed
about the technological innovation in the agriculture sector which now allowed mechanization of
all parts of the cycle including ploughing, planting,
harvesting, as well as applying inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. We expected to see resistance
to this mechanization in the farms we visited. We
also were of the view that in a populous country
like ours, a mechanized model was probably not
the apt solution given the need to provide employment (even if this meant lower levels of productivity). It hence came as a surprise to see the farmers
we visited actively embrace mechanized methods
of cultivation, with a clear rationale that their crop
yields and profits per acre of land had increased
by 50-60%. This had not led to an increase in the
unemployed in the villages on the contrary, the
youth had moved towards better paying jobs in the
city and if anything, mechanization had helped
solve the problem of not enough hands to help.
Economies with low population growth such as
35 percent of all jobs would

be replaced by technology by
2035 according to the Swedish
Foundation for Strategic Research
42
| OCTOBER 2016
in parts of Europe would look at automation in a

similar way.
This experience and similar conversations
across industries within the corporate sector
brought home that historically, we have always had
this situation with respect to technology and jobs.
Technology has been providing us solutions to
get work done more efficiently and to scale, which
by definition means taking away jobs that can be
done by a human being. During the Industrial
Revolution, there were concerns that the cloth
mills would mean occupation and livelihoods being
taken away from the weavers. In the last century,
transport systems meant jobs taken away from
carriage drivers and stable boys. More recently,
wide spread use of computers meant typists and
stenos became redundant. A particular skill and
hence livelihood involving that skill becoming obsolete has happened through the course
of history. The scale of it may be larger in our
current context, but that is also because the global
population is at the highest it has ever been.
History had also shown us that if there is a
better way to do something through automation,
we should not allow barriers to adoption. Economies and countries have faced this dilemma and
tried to balance between productivity enhancement and employment generation. Doing the latter
at the cost of the former has only led to inefficiencies and is not sustainable in the long term. Rather,
we have seen that productivity gains have meant
greater surplus at a collective level that can then
be redistributed either by the government system
or by corporations through CSR activities they
undertake. I am not factoring in here the benefits
automation has provided to customers and to
workforce themselves we have examples today in
the insurance sector where a customer can submit
pictures of auto accidents as a way to simplify
and shorten the claims process. On the shop-floor,
robots taking on a greater share of the load have
resulted in fewer accidents and better health and
safety record for the workmen.
So what is really different now? All throughout
history, even as jobs became redundant due to
technology, newer ones have been created. Henry
Ford's plant in Detroit meant many carriage
drivers were under threat of their livelihood,
however line operators, shift supervisors and
managers were needed to run the assembly line
and run sales and other functions. Having said that,

the scale of organizations and workforce, and the
increasing pace of technology change have made
the issue have a greater impact than it may have
had in the past. The "cognitive re-apportionment"
to aid collaboration between man and machine
means that white collar jobs are being eliminated
which is happening for the first time in history.
How can organizations and workforce

cope with this change?
STORY
The "cognitive re-apportionment"

to aid collaboration between man
and machine means that white
collar jobs are being eliminated
which is happening for the first
time in history
C OVER
For one, we will see an increasing need for reskilling in the coming years, where large sections of the
workforce will need to learn new skills. To take an
example from the banking sector, technologies such
as Blockchain could mean that large parts of the
settlement process are managed without the need
for human interface. Workforce will need to show
openness to learning these new skills, and organizations will need to provide platforms and avenues
for it. The human mind can focus on tasks requiring more ingenuity than routine and repetitive
tasks, with value add being related to "diagnosing"
relating to domain-specific knowledge and experience. Thus an experienced hand in a cement plant
would be valued for the ability to judge issues with
the size of limestone being crushed in the clinker
based on the sound being produced; an artisan's
craft would be more valued and priced. We could
see a generation of digital artisans with highly specialized skills grow and thrive. Also, workforce will
need to be encouraged to develop skills and work in
a "market place model" to look for buyers for those
skills, rather than continue to bank on permanent
employment models. Organizations will need to
encourage entrepreneurial models of engagement
and as a society we will have to see how to provide
platforms for building entrepreneurs across the
spectrum from offering standardized skill based
jobs to highly specialized ones.
Secondly, organizational structures will need
to be revisited. The development of organizations
with large workforces created the need for
managers who added value through supervising
the work of other people, however automation and
new workforce models will increasingly mean that
this role becomes less relevant. We will see more
individual contributors at senior levels who bring
in specialized skill sets that are not standardized; at
the same time, supervisors will need to move away
from "managing teams" to rolling up sleeves and
having more direct engagement with customers
and getting deeper into business and ways to add
value. The traditional pyramid model will come
under pressure and move towards more matrixed
and collaborative ways of working both within
organizational boundaries as well as with an
extended ecosystem. The mindset of managers
in terms of how they add value and build their
self-worth will have to be reshaped this will not be
an easy challenge considering that a belief system
will need reshaping. This will also mean that newer
methods of performance management, reward
management and workforce engagement will need

to be created.
One of the areas of greatest impact will
perhaps be on the leadership required for this
digital age. We will need leadership that is
not focused on pure cognition as machine
intelligence can build predictive models and
conduct analytics far better but has the ability
referred to as "sense making". Further, leadership
should be able to engage with teams within the
organization and without, and inspire them with
a vision and purpose, be courageous and stay the
course through failure, and above all demonstrate
a strong moral and ethical compass. In many
ways, the focus will be back on the fundamentals
of leadership. Creating this strong core to guide
organizations in this digital age and build value in
a sustainable and responsible manner will emerge
as a key determinant of success in the coming
years.
1
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2016.html
About the author
Padmaja Alaganandan, Leader - People &

Organization, PwC India
OCTOBER 2016 |
43
Automation What it
has done & what organizations need to do
Faridun
Dotiwala
To what extent has automation impacted the workplace? To what further

extent will it do in the short, mid and long term? Here is how automation
will impact jobs and how organizations can be ready for the future of work
C OVER
STORY
efore entering the debate of automation, it

is important to understand how technology
would be impacting the future of work.
McKinsey Global institutes Report on Indias tech
opportunity: Transforming work, empowering
people, nitpicks the twelve technologies which
will reshape business, economy and the future of
work in India. The twelve technologies that have
been identified are Mobile internet; Cloud
technology; Automation of knowledge work;
Digital payments; Verifiable digital identity;
Internet of Things; Intelligent transportation and
distribution; Advanced geographic information
systems; Next generation genomics; Advanced
oil and gas exploration and recovery; Renewable
energy; and Advanced energy storage.
The collective economic impact that these.
technologies could have has been estimated to be
between USD 550 billion to USD 1 trillion by 2025 in
India; the estimated economic value of automation of knowledge work alone is between USD 700
million and USD 900 million a year in 2025 in the
country. Speaking of the impact of automation
of knowledge work globally, McKinsey Global Insti-
What is automation of knowledge work?

Knowledge work automation is the use of computers to perform tasks
that rely on complex analyses, subtle judgments, and creative problem
solving. Computing, machine learning and user interface capabilities
create new relationships between knowledge workers and machines
and allow for a possibility of interaction between man and machine.
Machines can play the role of co-workers.
Source: Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global
economy, McKinsey Global Institute, May 2013
tutes Study, Disruptive technologies: Advances

that will transform life, business, and the global
economy says that its economic value would be
between USD 5 trillion and USD 7 trillion a year
in 2025. Automation of knowledge work, globally,
will impact nine percent of the workforce, which
means that two hundred thirty million knowledge
workers could get disrupted.
The challenge to jobs (or not)

The question that arises then is what would be the
44
| OCTOBER 2016
impact of this disruption of knowledge workers?

Another McKinsey Study done in the US and
published in McKinsey Quarterly in November
2015, Four fundamentals of workplace
automation, points out that the proliferation
of automation and technology will lead to a
redefinition of jobs. It will be redundant human
activities that will get eliminated, and not
occupations in totality. The susceptibility of
jobs will vary based on the kind of activities
people indulge in. The job that would be least
susceptible to automation would be managing and
leading others. The most susceptible would be
predictable physical work. Something we currently
see happening in the industry, with repetitive
activities getting redundant and being replaced
by robots. We are already witnessing repetitive
activities such as warehouse workers in retail
stores being done by robots now. Their work is
getting redefined to supervising the robots, and
would get redefined further as the capabilities of
the bots evolve.
Take another example of artificial intelligence.
There are advanced systems available today
that are able to do Big Data Analytics independently. But we still require human judgment in
decision-making at the end after the completion
of the machines work. One may say that we
could employ a lot of people to actually engage in
number and data crunching but the reality is,
we werent doing that work earlier. In hindsight,
this has only created new jobs. This is one example

of how automation and technology opens up new
avenues.
In the given context, the onus is on
organizations to be ready for the future of work.
Are we looking at the

complete picture?
When discussing the subject of job creation,
it is important to look at it holistically. It is
important to ask if a slowdown in job creation
is due to technological disruption or is it being
driven by a slowdown in economic growth?
According to McKinsey Global Institutes
report, Help wanted: The future of work
in advanced economies, a combination of
factors influence employment levels and
how jobs are created. Besides technology,
skill mismatches, geographic mismatches,
untapped talent and the disparity in economic
growth are others.
Future-ready organizations need

to be agile, but currently, only 17
percent make for agile organizations
STORY
The answer to readiness of organizations to

embrace technology, relieve people of repetitive
activities, and be open for them to indulge in
creating higher value lies in agility. Future-ready
organizations need to be agile organizations.
There are two dimensions to an agile
organization stability and speed. Agile
organizations have the ability to do things
consistently every time and do them fast. For
instance, in an agile organization, the ability
to procure materials and manufacture them,
customer service and sales is extremely efficient
and consistent. These processes operate like
machinery consistent day in and out. But there
are other parts of the organization are much
more agile, for instance, ability of employees to
innovate and try new projects every month, the
organizations ability to quickly launch a new
product, etc.
Automation, in fact, helps organizations in
becoming agile.
How can organizations be agile? Organization
theory talks of organizational evolution it says
that organizations in their crudest form are a
fighting tribe, a small company which is recently
created where the people work very closely like a
tribe, overcoming challenges together. From there,
the organization becomes a professional army,
which has a larger workforce, defined structures
and hierarchical ways of working. Organizations
then become machines there are values,
processes, targets and accountability. The most
evolved phase is what is called a living organism,
which means the organization is agile, fast and
innovative.
To be truly agile, the organizations must be able
to respond to both internal and external changes
C OVER
Are organizations ready?
like a living organism. They should be open to

grow something today, and cut down something
tomorrow, akin to a living organism. Mostly,
todays organizations are designed like armies or
machines. A McKinsey research shows that only 17
percent organizations are agile.
The real question for the remaining 83 percent
is how to evolve and become agile? To begin with,
organizations need to take two steps:
Step 1. There are three dimensions where
organizations need both stability and dynamism
structure, process and people. In structure,
the organization should have a simple stable
structure as the backbone wherein the top team
sets direction, and dynamic capability can stem
from individuals owning projects and doing them
end-end. In processes, the core process should
be standardized and digitized, which should
also allow for fluid reconfiguration in terms
of experimentation, prototype etc. In people,
organizations should have a set of values that hold
people together, and then they can be dynamic in
their approach to motivating people.
Step 2. An important next step is that the level
of consciousness or maturity of people should
grow. The frequency of change increases with
technological advancement which demands

for evolved mindset and maturity of people. In
a machine-like system, the roles are defined,
and people go about their business as they are
supposed to be. But when the organization evolves
into a living organism, people have to self-organize teams, decide on their team goals, individual
goals, collaborate with other teams, which calls
for a much higher level of maturity.
However, organizations may not be at that level
of maturity yet.
The adoption rate in this digital revolution
is the fastest when compared with the historical
transformations in the industry. So organizations
clearly have to keep up and be ready for the future
of work. Having said that, research concludes that
automation of knowledge work will not penetrate
to a level, at least in the short and mid-term, that
makes humans redundant. What will happen in
the long term? One cannot really predict as of
now.
(As told to Vikas Arora)
About the author
Faridun Dotiwala, is Master Expert, Partner, Lead

Human Capital Practice, Asia at McKinsey & Co
OCTOBER 2016 |
45
Technology has
evolved the nature
of jobs
Saurabh Govil
Over the decades, the number of jobs has only grown as the
global economy has expanded through multiple phases of
technological advancement
C OVER
STORY
utomation which everyone is talking about

is not anything new, but the nature has
changed. Let me step back and cite one
example in history to explain the statement better.
The first time an automobile was engineered, the
horsemen who ran carts saw their jobs eliminated.
The first time airplanes flew over the seas, the
sailors who sailed on the seas saw their jobs
eliminated. Similarly, in near future, technologies
of telepresence will reduce the traffic of airplanes
and will perhaps see the air travel industry shrink.
But in the long run, it may push the air travel
industry to reimagine itself. Modes of mass air
travel might be replaced by powerful personal
drone cabs.
But did the horsemen really lose jobs or jobs
moved elsewhere and people had to redefine their
skills to be employed? The reality is that over the
decades, the number of jobs has only grown as the
global economy has expanded through multiple
phases of technological advancement. The nature
of jobs, however, has definitely evolved. The horsemen and ship crews have reskilled and found other
jobs.
Above is a simple example to explain the shift

but once can pick up any walk of life, and one will
be able to visualize how that area has evolved. The
current debate on automation is similar. We are
in another evolutionary phase and the world will
witness a tectonic shift.
In this shift, like in the past, people will have
to redefine themselves to stay relevant. Employers
will have to provide support mechanisms for their
employees to undertake this redefinition through
reskilling, in order to keep abreast with the needs
of the job market.
The role of individual organizations in supporting employees through this change must be
underscored. The reason is dual. Organizations
have a give and take relationship with the larger
society, and as they partner with individuals for
economic advancement, they are also responsible
for their development and well-being. Secondly,
employee morale and engagement is a crucial precondition for collectively achieving business goals.
Individual employees are likely to react to such
uncertainty with a lot of anxiety. Since this shift
is happening at a very large scale and equally fast
pace, the onus on organizations to be responsive is
a lot more.
At Wipro HR, we have been automating a
lot of our processes over a long period of time.
Our employee intranet portal offers all services
through different apps. We have a robust selfservice mechanism for employees and managers
to manage their daily operations. Recently we have
also used bots with Artificial Intelligence capability in the employee helpdesk area and we have seen
the resolution process become a lot more efficient.
The most visible

impact of automation
can be seen in terms of
the reduced number
of people required at
the bottom most layer
of the pyramid
46
| OCTOBER 2016
These reactions had the potential of disrupting

the existing operations till the new process came
into force. And this led us to realize the importance
of continued support for employee to enable the
planned change.
Overtime we realized that sensitivity as an
employer is central to managing a smooth and fair
change process. While the transition managers are
quick to realize the logical impact of the change
and actively move to resolve challenges, they often
ignore the anxiety and uncertainty it may cause.
Our experience has taught us that transition
STORY
1. Employees at all levels were reluctant to accept

this change and went through a phase of anxiety
2. Even before the process was launched, some
employees by themselves started looking for
other jobs within the organization, anticipating
some change in their roles.
The key differentiator for

organizations will be the strategies
they adopt to seamlessly integrate
their people strategies with
automation goals
C OVER
The reasons for automation were strategic. We

wanted to focus our human intellectual capital
on improving the employee experience, and our
technical prowess in smoothening the running of
the existing people operations. Previously, we had
to invest in a large team to manage the increased
workload of transactions and to bolster this
employee facing structure, we also had to dedicate significant leadership energy in managing
escalations of these transactions gone wrong. The
people investment on managing these transactions
was considerable and it also took away from our
goal to invest in actually improving the employee
experience, as we dedicated our people in primarily
maintaining a smooth status quo.
With the automation initiatives, the most visible
impact can be seen in terms of the reduced number
of people required at the bottom most layer of the
pyramid. A common knee-jerk reaction to such an
impact often adopted by businesses is in the form
of layoffs to show a quick improvement in bottom
line. However, our experience has demonstrated
that this approach is not required. What we have
experienced is that with time, as the processes have
transitioned and stabilized, there has also been a
shift in the expectations of service delivery. In our
case, the human focus has now shifted from mere
transaction closure to making a difference in the
employee experience of the process. New teams,
new roles focusing on the employee experience of
the process have been crafted. Reduction in numbers has not been the logical conclusion. However,
as highlighted earlier, this transition has demanded
flexibility from the employees and sensitivity
from us as an employer. New roles have required a
higher level of skill set. Employees who have been
ready to challenge their comfort zones, have found
themselves placed in these new redefined jobs, and
we have aided them in the upskilling process.
When we started the automation process,
we anticipated and planned to reskill and place
impacted employees in different roles but other
than these, two unanticipated reactions occurred:
demands a carefully thought out communication

plan that addresses all the affected stakeholders. It
is reasonable to keep the basic project transition
plan confidential but we need not hide the impact
with the employees. Increased communication
actually helps manage the emotions employees go
through more proactively and effectively.
It is important to be transparent to employees
to ease their anxiety, and lastly invest money and
time in creating an enablement mechanism for
each individual to accept this change and get ready
to learn new skills. Organizations like ours are
growing in scale but also in complexity. Therefore
opportunities always exist but in distant parts of
the ecosystem. So if we have the right enablement
tools, it is easy to redeploy most of the employees
over time.
Businesses grow as they adapt, and automation
has always been a key survival skill for businesses. Going forward, the key differentiator for
organizations will be the strategies they adopt to
seamlessly integrate their people strategies with
automation goals, and the effectiveness with which
they communicate the same.
About the author
Saurabh Govil, President & Chief Human Resources

Officer, Wipro
OCTOBER 2016 |
47
A renewed objective of
automation at work
Seema Arora
Nambiar
The Indian business of the worlds largest burger fast food chain,
McDonalds, has automated both internal activities and customer-facing
activities. Here is how automation has impacted the nature of work & jobs
C OVER
STORY
t McDonalds, the equipment is so

standardized that their operation doesnt
require high skills for operation. Starting
from the establishment of McDonalds India
in 1996, the first level of automation at the
quick service restaurant chain was business
standardization. And it is something that helps
people to do their jobs which otherwise would
require high skills. They acquire and build skills
as they go and it is one of the reasons why we can
work really well with an 18-year-old.
The objective of automation at McDonalds has
been to eliminate activities that are repetitive and
dont add value to an individual or to the business.
So anything that is repetitive, which cannot provide career growth to an individual, we outsource
The objective of automation at

McDonalds has been to eliminate
activities that are repetitive and
dont add value to an individual or
to the business
such activities to partners or use technology to do
such work. For instance, we launched an electronic
learning module which provides online training to
employees, facilitates flexibility and is a refreshing training approach compared to a face-to-face
training.
The objective of launching the Electronic
Crew Development Program (eCDP) program was
to make learning resources readily available for
accelerated growth of crew members and make
training independently funneled to the participants. Participants are shortlisted on the basis of
performance criterion and elimination through a
Cognitive Ability and Psychometric Test. Every
crew room PC has an eCDP Package installed
which has video training modules for each and
every station in the restaurant. Having changed
the self-learning aspect to allow for flexibility, the
on-floor and shoulder-to-shoulder learning with
peers and on-floor trainer time has been increased
48
| OCTOBER 2016
to allow a faster transfer and hence quicker productivity.

McDonalds structured training and employee
engagement processes relating to people development and combating attrition is imperative,
as we believe that training is an important
tool for employee engagement. Our Restaurant
Development Program provides opportunities for
employees that help them develop skills for life as
we impart learning in class, training curriculum
as well as on the job learning.
McDonalds has automated of both customerfacing activities and the internal processes. These
are:
Customer-facing activities
Customers have evolved over the past 20 years,
however the need still continues to provide fast,
friendly and accurate service. Starting in 1996,
there was a complete absenteeism of the selfservice culture, people expected table orders and
service, today we have moved to an environment
where customers want control over how they
place orders and prefer to customize their food
however want to get served at their tables. We
have various automated points of sale options
that will allow for consumer flexibility and are
actually experimenting to move from a standard
burger menu to a customized menu option without
impacting taste, keeping our crews life simple and
also ensuring fast and friendly service.
The agility of the organization determines
what roles become standard and hence replaceable
by technology. However, there will continue to
be new roles that emerge for the future and the
challenge continues to be re-skilling as jobs
emerge.
While customer service will continue to
expand, there will be additional automated
options. One example is an additional automated
systems installed at drive thrus. Using automated
equipment for runner activity could also open
new avenues for transporting orders from the
kitchen to multiple locations in the vicinity of the
restaurant. Back-end processes which involve tray
cleaning and dishwashing; and night processes
which involve organizing the restaurant,
maintaining cleanliness, etc. can also be done
by automated equipment, making the job more
aspirational for the young employees.
In conversation
Excerpts from the conversation with Seema Arora Nambiar on her views on
the decision-making process when choosing between people and equipment
and technology and the impact on jobs
By any chance, do you see your future
automation strategy as a threat to the
people who are currently taking orders, or
are handling the back-end processes, or
maintaining restaurants at nights?
I dont see a threat to people at all.
Our philosophy is re-skilling and hence
people will get absorbed into newer jobs
and roles that will add value to them and
the business. We multi-skill our people.
All our crew members, at any point in the
restaurant are capable to handle multiple
processes like making the food and ordertaking as well as dealing with customers.
Technology will only add to the existing
capability and allow the crew to indulge in
other activities.
How do you decide which roles are to be

automated?
We like to build the organization thinking about the future. We try to understand
which job roles really need to be permanent. Some roles might be temporary in
nature and it would make sense to have
short-term partners/consultants do such
jobs instead of employing people full time.
Hence you would take a decision on roles
to be added vs. technology to be deployed
together. Decisions like these cant be
taken in isolation of the business need and
hence is taken on a situational basis.
Internal HR processes
When we look at the HR processes and HR team, we
have managed to keep the team very lean. This can
be attributed to the fact that we have always had a
technology tool to handle the HR operations side.
We have a 13 people HR team working from the
corporate office and interestingly, the size of the
team would have been the same even if there was
no technology support for operations. It is more
because of the way the business has structured,
not because of technology. Technology has simply
supported in the standardization of processes.
Evolving nature of work: If we didnt have
an automated system for handling operations, a
majority of our team would be engaged in doing
clerical, administrative work of just maintaining
data an activity which is essential about being
compliant with the law. But since technology
handles operational work like this, the HRs team
biggest role is to do consulting. We help employees
in building McDonalds as a people organization
like we want it to be. All our restaurants are selfsufficient units they do their own recruitment,
their own training, and their own performance
management none of these activities are done by
the HR. What we do is design these processes and
help push the business ahead.
Job creation by automation: Automation has
added jobs, instead of eliminating jobs. One of the
Has there ever been a case of any

outplacement at McDonalds India due to
automation?
No.
(Interviewed by Vikas Arora)
Technology should not be made the

scapegoat for the slowdown in job
creation. It is happening because of a
combination of factors
things that the automated systems have brought
is the service sector. If there are any queries on
automated systems, they are all directed towards
this service center, which has been outsourced to an
agency. Can artificial intelligence-run chat clients
replace the people sitting at service centers? At this
point, I dont think so. People need people to talk to
and not machines. For rendering any kind of service, there is an element of human interaction that
has to be there, and hence I dont think it will come
to a point where machines will overtake such roles.
Technology should not be made the scapegoat
for the slowdown in job creation. It is happening
because of a combination of factors, viz. skilling and reskilling not being a focus, increased
peculiarity of HR when recruiting, highly selective
candidates and different kinds of jobs getting created. But technological advancements are a reality.
We should embrace it, skill people better, and have
future ready org designs.
STORY
Isnt that exactly where the dilemma

really lies for business? Doesnt it make business sense to have a machine perform a job
if it is both cheaper, and much more efficient
and effective?
In the long term, do you see automation

replacing people at fast food chains? Going
back to the ex-McDonalds USA CEO Ed
Rensis comment, that a McDonalds will
not hire an employee for $15 an hour for
bagging French fries when it could buy a
$35,000 robotic arm. Do you see that level
of automation activity happening in India?
No. I dont see it happening here in
India in the mid to long future. A robot
arm might work if you are in a transactional business. But if you are in a
community restaurant business, where
relationships drive business, it isnt an
optimal move. A large part of our sales
comes our strong relations with the community.
C OVER
But doesnt it curb job creation? You

might not be outplacing people, but
wouldnt it deprive you of the need to create
jobs?
No. While automation will make some
activities redundant; the reality of life
is you would still need people to do work,
because it is a necessity. If technology
creates redundancy, it also has a non-linear

effect on job creation technology itself
gets created and operated and maintained
by people. So that is one new avenue where
it creates jobs.
Actually, sometimes if people are

engaged in a repetitive job and doing
something which they dont enjoy, then it
is normally the hotbed of discontentment
and leads to disengagement something
which isnt conducive to the business.
About the author
Seema Arora Nambiar

is Vice President Business
Excellence & People
Resources, Hardcastle
Restaurants
OCTOBER 2016 |
49
Removing manual
dependency to
increase efficiency
Meher Sarid
Here is how automation helped Oxigen to set up & standardize

its virtual business and enhance efficiency
C OVER
STORY
he first level of automation at Oxigen was

of its business platform itself. The money
flow chain for trade advance & new retail
acquisition was completely automated and that
is the reason the company has been able to create
200,000 touch points pan India with retailers. Being a
virtual company, Oxigen has been able to penetrate
the market despite having a small workforce
size when it began and today has accumulated a
customer base of 150 million users.
Oxigen is a financial technology company but it
started as a payment solution provider where the
processes were fairly manual. The company treaded
the path of automating its back-end processes
and has been working towards removing manual
dependency to increase efficiency. As the organization evolved, it has focused mainly on automating
and standardizing processes that were manual in
nature.
Here are some of the back-end processes the company has automated and the impact that this transition has had on the workforce and the business.
1. Automation document filing (On-boarding retail partners)

The analog way
Before adopting technology, when a retailer would
sign up, the sales representative would visit the
retail outlet and fill a KYC document for the company; and after filling the agreement, the retailer
would receive a point of sale device alongside a
trading advance. This transaction was very physical in nature. It was then followed up by collection
of letters by the sales representative in the field,
enclosing them in envelopes and sending couriers
to the head office. The data would then be punched
manually into a system, and would then get populated onto a portal from where we could manage
the retailers lifecycle.
The digital way
Technology was introduced for this process. The
sales representatives would now be required to
go and deploy the service, instead of collecting
the Retail Outlet Enrollment (ROE) form. All
that is needed is sending the location pin which
Oxigen verifies. The details of the retailer can be
filled in via a mobile app, including upload of the
necessary documentation. This facilitates instant
on-boarding.
Impact
The first major impact was that the sales
representative could do what was supposed
to be his real job, i.e. acquisition of retailers.
The sales representatives werent stripped of
their responsibilities, their role just became
more focused and the productivity increased.
The formalization of the retailers acquisition,
which would earlier take a month due to all
the paperwork became a matter of few days.
2. Automation of real time earnings for

retailers
The analog way
When a retailer takes any service from us, there
is a commission that is attached to the service.
Oxigen has treaded

the path of automation
and has been working
towards removing
manual dependency
to increase efficiency
50
| OCTOBER 2016
In the analog way of operation, we would pay the

commission in the subsequent month, and this
also involved keeping a record of the transactions
followed by a dialogue between the finance department and the retailers every month on what is the
correct commission.
The digital way
Now the retailer is both selling and earning
instantly. Instead of paying the commission at
the end of the months cycle, the commission gets
adjusted instantly when the payment is made by the
customer. The amount that comes to Oxigen and the
retailers commission is split automatically.
Impact
The instant impact of this has been the
simplification of calculating commissions,
record keeping and it has essentially optimized the retailers cash rotation. This has
also eliminated any scope of discrepancy and
avoids large manual accounting processes by
the finance department for micro payment
reconciliation. Since, Oxigen has a minimum
of 50 million transactions monthly, it is hugely
beneficial with this automation.
The digital way

Multiple levels of these interactions have been
automated and the system does most of the work
that employees were doing.
Impact
This has reduced the team size of the revenue
management team from 12 people to 6. And the
6 people who became redundant in the revenue
management team have now been involved in
doing data mining for making customer profiles & on devising ways to optimize the stock
by analyzing the user consumption data.
No elimination. Only redefinition

There have been no redundancies and cases of
outplacement from Oxigen due to automation till
date. In fact, automation of processes has simply
improved our efficiency, made us agile and helped
us make a more efficient use of our manpower.
A plug n play approach

When we look at redefining the role of some people
in the revenue management team, the objective
was to deploy them in a more strategic role. And
the redefinition of their role was in accordance to
the skills they already had, i.e. a deep understanding of finance and data, the process of purchasing
inventory and consumption of the inventory. Since
they already knew how the system works, all that
was required by HR was to facilitate training on
inventory management and optimization. All it
took was a simple one hour session which was
done with them internally. It was a plug n play
kind of role for them.
STORY
The analog way

How revenue assurance works is that we buy
inventory from partners like stock exchange on a
daily basis, then we push this to the retail network.
When this inventory is purchased, the operator
is paid an X amount, and the consumption of this
inventory is dynamic in nature. Sometimes stocks
are left unutilized, and it is the job of the revenue
management team to ensure that the appropriate inventory is bought, the stock is maintained
appropriately, and if there is shortage on stock, it
is refilled correctly. They also coordinate with the
bank to ensure that the money is going back to the
retail source.
Automation has impacted

jobs at Oxigen Services but
positively; it has enabled people
to do quality work
C OVER
3. Automation of inventory and revenue

management system
The employees have been deployed to do quality

strategic tasks which have had a direct impact to
our revenue.
The sales teams roles have been streamlined
as they are focusing majorly on retail acquisition.
The redundant activity of packaging, sending
couriers, following up with the services has been
taken care of. In fact, the sales team size has only
increased as we have become focused on customer
acquisition. Introduction of automation in
revenue management processes allowed Oxigen
to create a new team which could indulge in Data
Analytics and be advisors to the business on stocks
that are or not to be purchased and the stocks that
are to be returned. This team advises Oxigen on
how to optimize cash flows and also help position
and upsell new product lines.
The future automation strategy

The next step for us in this automation journey
would be to indulge in Big Data Analytics. We have
set up a team to engage in the analytics and are
now starting to profile retailers, the clientele the
retailers get, information about the consumer and
their consumption of services. Such data will help
us know what consumer preferences are whether
railway tickets, mobile recharge, wallet top-ups,
banking services etc. Such insights will help
Oxigen to personalize the way each retail outlet
looks all based on the analysis of data we have at
hand. We dont see automation strategy impacting
job-creation at Oxigen or lead to redundancies. It
will only make people efficient at work.
About the author
Meher Sarid is Group President - Corporate Affairs at

Oxigen Services
OCTOBER 2016 |
51
Artificial Intelligence
Is that a job killer?
Abhijit Bhaduri
The same technology that makes life simpler also puts

someone out of a job. But when people learn to work with
machines, the possibilities are endless
C OVER
STORY
he heads HR for one of the largest banks and

now has a difficult mandate to execute. She
has had to shut down a branch in a small city
because that branch is no longer profitable. The
reason is automation. Many of the jobs in the bank
that were once being done by humans have been
handed over to robots or bots as they are called.
"Is Artificial Intelligence a job killer", I ask her.
She protests. "The bots have been programmed
in-house in our innovation lab. The innovation lab
has added jobs. She tells me that we cannot run
away from the future. The future of the bank is
bots doing all the work and being supervised by a
single person.
You can bank on AI.
AI taketh with one hand and giveth with
another albeit with a caveat. The jobs that are
being automated often lie at the lower end of the
skill pyramid those that need basic education and
cognitive sophistication.
The jobs that tech is now creating are plenty.
But they all need higher education and in depth
expertise. As drones become the default delivery
model, there will be a need for people to design
drones, manage fleets of these, ensure accuracy,

keep them light and retrievable, prevent them from
being hacked. All these jobs will need people who
have a certain education, skill set etc. that an average person may not possess.
People need banking but they do not need
banks. This is not a new phenomenon. ATM
machines replaced humans in some jobs but the
efficiencies enabled job creation in other parts of
the bank. ATMs are more efficient and perform
more transactions. So banks need fewer tellers
in the branch and lowers operations costs. This
in turn enables banks to reach a bigger market
and add more branches but with fewer tellers per
branch.
AI is everywhere.
90% of healthcare data is images generated
from X-Rays, CAT Scans and MRIs. IBMs Watson
is now being trained to read images. In April, IBM
announced a partnership with Apple and the insurance giant Japan Post to try and improve the lives
of thousands of senior citizens. AI will do it better
than any human. That is because the machine can
scan through the vast knowledge base of diagnostic tests of millions of people, choose from almost
800 forms of possible treatments of cancer and sift
through millions of test results of drugs and their
side effects. The machine does all this in a fraction
of a second.
Imagine the difference it could make to your
doctor to have access to this level of diagnostic support. That is the same as a researcher being able to
do a Google search for any information any time.
The jobs that are being

automated often
lie at the lower end
of the skill pyramid
those that need
basic education
and cognitive
sophistication
52
| OCTOBER 2016
STORY
Talking to machines is slowly

becoming common. Apples Siri and
Google Now are good examples of
how AI is being brought in to every
day usage
C OVER
Deterministic vs. Probabilistic

The world of work that is deterministic depends
on clear cut rules. Most algorithms are based on
these clear rules. If you encounter situation "A"
then do "B". The "If-Then" component of most
jobs will get automated. To stay competitive,
organizations will adopt technology. Bots will do
these jobs better, faster and be much cheaper than
humans.
Then there are jobs that are probabilistic.
Deterministic jobs have clear rules which when
followed leads to the one single destination. The
scientific calculator is a good example of machines
supporting humans in doing deterministic work.
Artificial Intelligence can supplement human
judgement and make us more effective. Imagine
being able to match people to jobs that maximize
their potential. Or to help HR organize the most
effective teams or create new organizational
structure that maximizes employee engagement.
Supplementing human talent: brawn, brain and
heart
The International Association of Athletics
Federations (IAAF) records tell us that the mens
pole-vault world record set in 2014 at 6.16m is
53% higher than the 1912 record. It was in the
'60s when wooden or steel poles were replaced by
more flexible carbon-fiber ones. When humans
work with machines, they can augment their
capabilities.
We don't feel threatened when a crane does the
heavy lifting. We don't cry foul when the search
engine spits out the answer to our search queries.
We love it when the turn by turn instructions
allow us to drive to unknown destinations with
confidence. When we tag our friends' photos on
Facebook and Google, they use AI to recognize the
face of a person accurately every time by scanning
millions of photos. The police are using the same
technology to identify criminals. But a despot
could use this technology to suppress dissenters.
The problem is not with technology. It is with the
human who is using the tech.
Talking to machines is slowly becoming
common. Apples Siri and Google Now are good
examples of how AI is being brought in to every
day usage. Google has acquired Deep Mind, the
company that defeated the worlds best Go player.
Deep Mind has built the capability to generate
speech which mimics any human voice and which
sounds more natural than the best existing Textto-Speech systems, reducing the gap with human
performance by over 50%.
AI, machine learning, and image recognition
are being used by advertising agencies to hypertarget consumers by learning their interests and
preferences. Facebook uses AI to narrow target
segments for their ads. Since all the ads are around
your interests, there is a high probability of you
getting tempted enough to buy.
In Georgia Tech when a professor added a bot

to become his Teaching Assistant, he was able to
answer each student individually because most
students usually asked the same questions every
year as the course progressed. The best part is
that the students did not even realize that their
questions were not being answered by a human.
The same technology that makes life simpler
also puts someone out of a job. But we all like the
freedom to withdraw cash from an ATM any time
at our convenience. We won't turn back.
When the AI based virtual assistant in our
smart phone helps us choose a restaurant or send a
text message we enjoy the moment. We don't want
to turn the clock back to a time when we did not
have AI based systems recommending to us what
we never knew we wanted to buy. The machine
is watching us and learning each move we make.
Instead of augmenting brawn, machines are now
augmenting our cognitive abilities. Understanding
emotions of self and others will be the next
frontier. When people learn to work with machines
the possibilities are endless.
About the author
Abhijit Bhaduri is a digital transformation coach to

CXOs and the author of the new book The Digital Tsunami
OCTOBER 2016 |
53
Murad Salman Mirza
The alluring promise of a

blissful tomorrow
- An organizational overview of the partnership
with Artificial Intelligence
What would be the organizational structure of the future enterprise? A look at

what the future organization will look like in an era of Human-AI partnership!
T
s t o r y
he aura of Groundbreaking
Technology has long been touted as
the majestic manifestation of human
ingenuity with innovation being the
compelling driver and progress
holding the motivation portfolio. History has
borne witness to three industrial revolutions and
we are now in the throes of the fourth one. This
has been highlighted by Klaus Schwab in his
article The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it
means, how to respond, as follows:
c o v e r
Navigating the next industrial

revolution
Revolution
Year
Information
1784 Steam, water, mechanical

production equipment
1870 Division of labor, electricity,

mass production
1969 Electronics, IT,

automated production
Cyber-physical systems
https://www.weforum.org/pages/the-fourth-industrial-revolutionby-klaus-schwab/
The rapid infusion of ubiquitous technology

has prompted new genres of lexicon to capture
the extent of transformation that is reaching
into all spheres of human life. Some of these
are: Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented
Reality (AR), Intelligence Amplification (IA),
Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc. All such forms of
technological advancement are in various stages of
development/adaption/adoption in different fields
with AI capturing the limelight supplemented
by the strides being made in aligned areas, e.g.,
Neurorobotics, Computational Neuroscience,
Computational Linguistics, Combinational
Materials Science, Cybernetics, 3D printing, etc.
54
| OCTOBER 2016
While there is general agreement that the pace

of technological innovation and discovery will be
remarkable in the coming decades, there are broad
differences as to how that would actually transpire
into the daily lives of people. Futurists/forwardthinkers/philosophers/strategists are consistently
voicing opinions on a multitude of factors that will
gain prominence in the years ahead impacting all
facets of life. Such viewpoints need to be weighed
with the following 7 questions, i.e.:
1. What kinds of changes would be there in
the future?
Refers to various types of changes, e.g., genetic
transmutation, nanotechnology, autonomous
transportation, real-time hybrid interactive
education, autonomous manufacturing, highly
customized services, etc.
2. Why will these changes take place?
Refers to the needs that will drive such a change,
e.g., cancer cures, extending life spans, human
accidents/errors/fatigue/stress reduction, cost
optimization, knowledge storage/preservation/
consumption, environmental concerns, product
robustness/reliability, wow factor, etc.
3. How dominant will these changes be?
Refers to the extent of influence exercised by
such changes, e.g., will it be exclusive, will it be

pervasive, will it last, will it become obsolete, etc.
4. Who would be the primary driver of such
changes?
Refers to the influential stakeholders, e.g., top/
senior leadership, government regulators, policy
makers, global consortiums, industrial alliances,
judiciary, public opinion makers, etc.
5. How will these changes look like?
Refers to the actual face of changes, e.g., medical
nanobots, pilotless commercial planes, cyborg
teachers, AI employees, holographic smartshopping assistants, etc.
6. When will these changes take place?
Refers to an educated determination of the
timelines of such changes becoming ingrained in
daily life, e.g., next 5 years, within a decade, around
30 years, etc.
7. Where will these changes take place?
Refers to the regions/countries/cities/places
where such changes will be realized more readily
than others, e.g., North America, England, New
York, Small Towns, Agricultural Communities,
Oceans, Wilderness, etc.
General Attributes
The organizational structure will be no more
hierarchical; rather, it would gravitate towards a
Hub & Spoke model. Most organizations will be
global in scope and generally operate with a human
workforce of approximately 1000-5000. Such a
size will be achieved by the huge induction of AI
in different functions and massive layoffs of the
human workforce. Consequently, current large
multinationals, as a survival tactic, will reduce
to such a size and new organizations/startups of
the future will eventually reach such a threshold
in employees. The new size will evolve into a new
type of entity that I am naming as a Medium-
s t o r y
Technology is evolving at a furious

pace buoyed by the comforting
proclamation of making lives easier
but with the downside of a world that
is pervaded with AI that can result in
job losses, mass skilling etc
c o v e r
Despite the boldness of their opinions, hardly

anyone is venturing into presenting a visual
context of what the future organization will look
like in an era of Human-AI partnership. Allow
me take this opportunity to present my view of
the basic organizational structure of the future
enterprise, a publicly traded company that will
become the norm in technologically-advanced
countries within the 21st century, as follows:
I have picked a manufacturing example to

convey my perspective; however, it can easily be
viewed from a services side if the manufacturing
functions are omitted and the services elements are
inserted in their place. Lets take a brief look at
the key characteristics of the aforementioned basic
organizational structure of the future enterprise:
Basic Organizational Structure for the Future Enterprise

Hub & Spoke Model
SL & KSM
(Strategic Leadership
& Key Stakeholder
Management
Hub & Spoke Model
Finance
R&D
(Research &
Development)
P&P
(Planning &
Production)
S&D
(Storage &
Distribution)
P&P
CX
(Customer
Experience)
Cerebral
Core
Supply
Chain
S&D
(Human & AI)

SL & KSM
CX
S&M
TM & OD
This symbol depicts

two-way interaction
TM & OD
(Talent Management
& Organizational
Development)
R&D
S&M
(Sales &
Marketing)
AI
(Artificial
Intelligence)
Led by AI
Shared Leadership
Led by Humans
OCTOBER 2016 |
55
A future enterprise will be highly

focused on innovation and
supremely technology-driven with AI
taking a shared and visible role with
its human colleagues/peers
Development (OD) with AI having rights as fulltime employees through policies/procedures that
would cater to their unique requirements.
Cerebral Core
This will be the main hub of the organization and
will be operated jointly by both Human and AI
colleagues/peers, e.g.: (see the below table)
Other Functions
c o v e r
s t o r y
To-Large Enterprise (MLE). It will possess the

primed agility of a medium enterprise and the
matured sophistication of a large enterprise. It
will be very highly focused on innovation and
supremely technology-driven with AI taking a
shared and visible role with its human colleagues/
peers. Business processes will be optimized at
much higher levels than Six Sigma and practically
achieve zero defects. Mergers & Acquisitions will
become extinct due to the ubiquities nature of
technology/expertise/knowhow.
Management Systems will be seen a sacred
constitution and will be flexible, but, robust
enough to sustain market dynamics. Carefully
defined core values will cement the corporate
foundations and will be actively practiced by both
humans and AI. Formal designations will be
minimal and would be largely replaced by strategic
and operational roles with clearly defined relevant
skill sets. Employees will be tech-savvy and multiskilled with significant cross-functional exposure.
Talent Management will significantly tilt in
favor of being a science than an art. Total Rewards
package will be highly attractive. Attrition rates
will be negligible. There will be high focus on
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives
and environmental ownership. Big Data use will
be prevalent and used extensively in all facets of
the organization. HR function will be split into
Talent Management (TM) and Organizational
Human
AI
Developing the overall business

direction & associated strategy
and taking remedial measures for
achievement
Advising on the overall business

direction and formulation/monitoring
of associated strategy
Setting strategic goals/objectives and

directing the enablement of suitable
corrective/preventive actions to ensure
achievement
Advising on setting strategic

goals/objectives, monitoring their
achievement and assisting in taking
suitable corrective/preventive actions
Managing sound relationships with

key stakeholders and taking remedial
measures for improvement
Monitoring the quality of relationships

with key stakeholders and advising on
improvement measures
Establishing and devising corporate

policies/procedures/processes and
directing the enablement of suitable
corrective/preventive actions to ensure
achievement
Advising on establishing and devising

corporate policies/procedures/
processes, monitoring their
achievement and assisting in taking
suitable corrective/preventive actions
Providing the Vision & Mission and

directing remedial measures to ensure
congruence
Providing feedback on the efficacy

of the stated Vision & Mission and
monitoring congruence
Shared-leadership functions will follow the

pattern of the cerebral core by splitting
responsibilities according to relevant skill sets.
AI-led functions will have an AI as functional head
and will be assisted by a team of AI and human
members serving in various assigned roles.
Humans will only lead the TM & OD function and
will be assisted by human and AI team members
according to their relevant skill sets.
Conclusion
The aforementioned reflection of the future
enterprise has been presented as a thoughtprovoking reflection of what can be expected
to happen in the years ahead. Technology
is evolving at a furious pace buoyed by the
comforting proclamation of making lives
easier, better, longer and richer, however, such
exuberant promise has to be realized with the
sobering prospective downside of a world that is
pervaded with AI, e.g., job losses/mass reskilling/
shortened careers/early retirements, safety &
security of devastated working neighborhoods,
prospects of increased marginalization of less
privileged sections of society, rising costs of
quality healthcare & fruitful education, unabated
birthrates, population underutilization, higher
percentage of elderly people requiring proper
care, etc.
Additionally, there is the little matter
of assuming that there will be an amicable
partnership between humans and AI without
the latter getting any notions/inclinations/
compulsions of trying to dominate on account of
its superior skills in certain areas with/without
the assisted malevolent designs of fellow human
beings trying to assert their own intelligence
quotients. The optimistic in me says that it will
be delightfully complementary; the realist in me
winks and says it wont be that easy, while, the
nagging pessimist in me wants to cherish the gift
of humanity in the here and now while we can.
Lets see what happensfingers crossed
About the author
Murad Salman Mirza is an innovative thinker and

an astute practitioner in areas within and associated
with the fields of Organizational Development, Talent
Management and Business Transformation
folLow
F > muradsalmanmirza
56
| OCTOBER 2016
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Pavan Soni
Automation helps
humans evolve
So what happens when machines replace humans at the workplace?
A look the options humans are left with in such a scenario
C OVER
STORY
58
hile the debate rages on

the effect of technology
adoption, automation
and artificial intelligence
on job cuts, a relevant
question that comes up is regarding the
quality of jobs. Lets first understand the
meaning of technology or technique, in
general. Any approach that saves human
effort can be deemed as technology.
A pulley is as much a technology as a
computer, except one is low-tech, and the
latter is high-tech.
Now lets cast a wider net and look at
the essence of human evolution in the
last 1000 years. It would become quickly
apparent that our evolution is punctuated
with technological advancements. The
printing press, steam engine, electricity,
assembly line, gasoline engine, and you
name them, most of these general purpose
technologies have helped humans take a
leap in the evolutionary trajectory. So the
debate between technology and human
labour is not necessarily new.
Every time a technology gets
introduced, it threatens the dominance
of incumbents. Remember the way the
dominance of the church was questioned
with the introduction of the printing
press; for now, anyone can have a personal
copy of the bible. Or, for that matter,
when electricity became commonplace, it
led to productivity improvements at the
workplace and convenience at homes. This
so-called creative destruction is the norm
of technology-led human evolution.
Not only that a technology advancement
is an indication of human evolution, but
also the very cause. Each such advanced
technology results in humans getting
engaged with more significant tasks and
higher-order activities. Regardless of your
strength, why would you want to give away
the utility of a pulley while fetching water
from the well? Its that you would want to
| OCTOBER 2016
'Creative
destruction
is the norm of
technology-led
human evolution
apply your saved time and efforts to doing
something else, something better.
Having understood that technology,
including dynamite, might create a
disruption or a disturbance in the short
run, but is nevertheless helpful eventually,
we must address the question of the role
of humans in the face of technological
advancements.
Humans are uniquely endowed with
the capacity to create. Our minds draw
juices from solving problems, and the
moment a problem is solved we would
like to move on, or else it becomes boring.
Thats exactly where technology steps
in. If you look at the places which are

heavily automated, one commonality
is repeatability of the task and desired
reliability of the outcome. Right from
factory automation with the help of
robotics, to office automation with the
advent of massive computation and
communication power, the tasks are
getting done faster, cheaper, and error
free. While hitherto scores of humans
might have been busy performing such
chores, at the hindsight, it becomes
apparent that such was not the best
utilization of human labour. Think of the
office boy who passes on files from one
table to another before e-mails became
commonplace.
So what happens when machines
replace humans at the workplace?
Humans are left with broadly two choices.
One is to fight back and show some
resistance, and the second is to move on
to do more evolved tasks. Now, evolution
doesnt come easy, for it calls for some
real skills, and courage to develop yet
newer ones. That is the desired response
of the people, both white-collar and bluecollar, who have been hit by automation.
As a matter of fact, they are hit out of
mediocracy into an opportunity to be
doing something still better with their
available talent and time. The analogy
is that when cars became popular,
horse-carriages were out, but some of
the people re-skilled to become drivers
because they still were the best guides
around the city. The same applies to the
current scores of employees who fear
machines. Machines are nudging us from
becoming machines!
About the author
Pavan Soni is Research Fellow at IIM Bangalore
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I N TERVIEW
Its about
taking
it to the
next level
Krishna GV Giri, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer,

Adrenalin, on digital transformation of the HR function
and his vision for the company
rishna GV Giri, Chairman & Chief

Executive Officer, Adrenalin has been
involved in strategy consulting of
companies like Accenture, Mitchell
Madison Group (by McKinsey
and Company Partners), IBM and Andersen
Consulting. He has led many transformational
projects globally and his areas of expertise range
from Strategic Planning, Business, ICT Strategy,
Transformation and Process Improvement in
diverse industries, both in the Private and Public
Sectors. Krishna is also the co-founder of Zolog
Marketplace and the Principal Advisor to the
Chairman, Intellect Design Arena Ltd.
From personal perspective, I always questioned
as to why India couldnt create technology giants
like Facebook, Apple or Google? We have our tech
super stars working in these companies. There are
lot of innovations happening in India but they are
not as visible as they should be... We need companies that encourage creativity, a work environment
and funding ecosystem that promotes innovation to
create one large enterprise legacy for Asia at least, if
not the world.
I am trying to see how I can bring the culture
of high performance, creativity and productivity
60
| OCTOBER 2016
metrics to reward talent in Adrenalin. I feel there

is a lot of potential at Adrenalin to grow because
14 years is a long time since the company has
been there and we have seven hundred thousand
users using the product across 65+ countries with
hundred thousand global users on cloud. Its huge.
And I think the reason I am here is to find out how
we can take it to the next level?
Krishna GV Giri
How do you think businesses are

transforming digitally? What do you think is
the role that HR should play to help businesses
transform?
Digital is a broadly used term these days
and it has a number of components in it, which
cannot be simplified. Whether it is a small or a
big enterprise, one of the key mandates that HR
needs to drive is to leverage all human capital
within the organization to take it on a path of
transformation. Businesses are getting disrupted
and trying to change, but you cannot transform
yourself unless you have the fundamental
backbone and back-office processes in place.
When I say backbone, I mean very simple HR
processes right processes & policies etc., the
entire framework has to be in place before you
undertake the transformational journey. Once
you cross that barrier, you can then look at Digital
HR that combines processes with design thinking.
The next evolution for HR will be an agile HR
across all forward-looking organizations.
In your view, what are the drivers of HR technology implementation? How much of it is about
solving a business problem vis--vis a following
an expected path?
Just following what others do is not the right

starting point as every business and every
company operates in its own context. CHROs
need to derive the benefits of technology investments, but for that, they should be clear about the
problems they are trying to solve. Once CHROs
link business problems with the benefits attained
from technology, they will realize the value of it.
From the employee, the manager to the CHRO or
the CIO, all of them need to relate to the power of
HR technology and digital transformation to drive
the business. Awareness of the immediate benefits
of an agile HR and its impact on not only survival
of businesses but also transforming the business is
very important.
You mentioned that technology investment

should be contextual to the business problem
organizations are trying to solve and should
also be aligned to the organization strategy and
maturity level. What is your advice for different
kinds of companies looking ahead to be at the
fore-front of HR excellence?
Your vision for Adrenalin is to create a truly

home-grown best-in-class tech product from
India to the world. What ingredients will be critical for you to achieve this vision?
Strong leadership is the number one ingredient; a team is only as fast as its leader. The second
element is the quality of our talent. Third is
product innovation, and fourth is branding and
positioning. I want our clients to feel excited about
using Adrenalin product. The vision of creating a
world-class product from India is very energizing
and while it will be a long journey, we just had a
fantastic first quarter and in the next 4 quarters,
Once CHROs link business

problems with the benefits
attained from technology, they
will realize the value of it
I N TERVIEW
Big corporations tend to go in for a complex

and expensive large scale ERP technologies and
many raise a question on the ROI. By the time
the large ERP applications are rolled out it takes
minimum of 2 to 3 years. I think there is 7 year
burn out every firm goes through. After the 7th
year, they get tired of it. The initial 3 years are
gone in selecting and evaluating the product. So
by the time technology is rolled, it has already
taken 2 to 3 years and new technologies are already
available to be leveraged. Then it is time for its use,
which is roughly about 7 years. And by this time,
it is already 10 years and technology gets obsolete
along with the thinking and the implementation of
it. Therefore, most companies look at ripping and
replacing the product and start all over again. My
recommendation to such organizations would be to
not go back and implement one big complex solution again. Break it into pieces and create more
agility as the technology selected 10 years back is
bound to be different today. Times have changed a
lot and so has the required investment. Get a new
technology but pick up a real digital HR technology
which is transformative, simple and can be fully
adapted in any country much faster.
On the other side, we have small companies
that are growing fast and realizing the need of
creating the people foundation. They should not
sit on paperwork but should directly jump into
technology and create processes along with that
technology. We can leapfrog the implementation by
becoming agile in implementation as well.
Adrenalin works with all company sizes we
have large multinational enterprises using our
product in 65+ countries and we also work with
SMEs. The shift this year is that Adrenalin is all
set to focus on SME clients for which we have
developed a new product called works4u that is
essentially a ready-to-use solution in a box created

on the basis of all the best practices of our work
over many years. Typically in a small company, a
Finance or Operation would be doing HR, procurement and the HR would also be doing the same
thing. So this product helps them to alleviate all
the pain. It helps them to address the labor department issues, compliance issues, reimbursement
issues etc. It simply helps them execute business
without any hassles and removes people dependencies
we will really focus on re-energizing the brand and

focus on achieving our goals . We have one of the
greatest mobile apps in the market today. What we
want to do is enable HR to digitally transform the
HR function. We want to do this transformation for
our clients, both internal and external and create
awareness about the importance of digital HR
Tell us more about your leadership style and

how you create alignment in your teams now
that the organization itself is undergoing a transformation?
As a leader my expectations from the team

go much beyond mere numbers. There are other
things that are critical for the achievement of our
business goals. I strongly believe success of any
organization largely depends on collaboration,
teamwork and having the right attitude. When
collaborating, we do not work in silos, we work
with one goal for the firm not just my individual
growth alone. We collaborate together for the
growth of the firm. Most of the times, we see that
we collude more than collaborate. We need teamwork to get the job done. Collaboration is mature,
forward thinking and inclusive. To quote Helen
Keller, Alone we can do so little; together we can
do so much
OCTOBER 2016 |
61
STORY
s p e c i a l
hipos as brand advocates

A MISSING LINK
A recent study of Right

Management and People
Matters reveals the gap
between the efforts by
employers on creating HiPo
programs and leveraging the
full potential of high potentials
as levers of attraction and
retention of top talent
By Prashant Pandey
62
| OCTOBER 2016
esearch suggests that today,

HIPO programs are mainstream
in many organizations. The
Right Management & People
Matters Study, HiPos - Your
Brand Ambassadors Survey 2016, reveals
that 73 percent of companies have a HiPo
program. However, the question is how
robust these programs are regarding identification, communication, and management
- and that is where the real value of these
programs lies.
The Study also explores the most
commonly used methods for HiPo talent
identification. Even today, 73 percent of
organizations rely on performance data,
and as many as 63 percent rely on manager's
recommendation. The Study also reveals
that 43 percent of companies use assessment
centers as part of HiPo identification.

While these inputs are critical for HiPo
identification, they are not sufficient.
Right Managements 4P approach looks
at Personality (essential ingredients such
as the drive to grow), Potential (ability
to perform at a higher level within a
timeline), Performance (from performance
data and manager's inputs) and Perception
(perception of stakeholders) as a holistic
way to identify HiPos. Now in its 4th
year, the HIPO Week, which is a running
partnership between Right Management
and People Matters, focuses on leveraging
HIPO programs and HiPos as brand
ambassadors. Brand matters and it matters
a lot. Employers with strong employment
brands see a 43 percent decrease in cost per
hire (LinkedIn). According to Glassdoor,
84 percent would consider leaving their
current jobs if offered a role with a
company that had an excellent reputation.
So how can an organization leverage their
Creating brand
ambassadors
out of HiPos
HIPO programs and HIPO talent as brand

ambassadors?
The Right Management Study reveals
that 57 percent of companies perceive
that less than 50 percent of their HiPos
play the role of brand ambassadors.
But 90 percent respondents believe that
robust HiPo program translates into a
stronger employer brand. Additionally, 79
percent of respondents believe that the
quality of candidates referenced from a
HiPo is higher than the rest. These are
all indications on how participants think
that HiPos can play a significant role in
enhancing the brand and translating it
into attracting more quality talent and
higher retention.
The Study exposed that only 46% of
companies leverage HiPo's in external
forums and only 31 percent in social
media. These are the low hanging fruits
for the organization to leverage externally
as well as creating opportunities for
STORY
s p e c i a l
Employers that provide career development

opportunities are six times more likely to engage
their employees than organizations that do not.
This establishes a correlation between robust
HiPo programs and a top employer brand. And in
order to establish this correlation, People Matters,
in partnership with Right Management, organized
the fourth edition of HiPo week which facilitated
knowledge sharing about leveraging HiPos as Brand
Ambassadors. of organizations. This Special Story
highlights the key takeaways from the HiPo week!
The Right Management Study reveals

that 57 percent of companies perceive
that less than 50 percent of their HiPos
play the role of brand ambassadors
this talent pool to become mentors and
coaching internally. As part of some other
conversations and polls taken during
the HiPo week, it was revealed that most
organizations are having difficulty in
leveraging Hi-Po programs as levers for
enhancing their employer brand due to
reasons like not being sure about the
efficacy of the programs themselves, and
the impact it may have on both the HiPos
and the larger organization.
The need of the hour is for companies
to take more risks with their HIPO
talent. Invest in the foundation of the

right selection and management of the
HiPo program and provide opportunities
for internal and external interactions
with HiPo talent which can yield higher
engagement, alignment, and pride of
belonging to the organization - in turn
increasing retention of HiPos.
Prashant Pandey is Country Head at Right
Management
(This HiPo Special is compiled from the events
that were organized during the HiPo Week)
OCTOBER 2016 |
63
HIPOS: YOUR BRAND AMBASSADORS

SURVEY 2016 RESULTS
Right Management & People Matters Study
THE KEY FINDINGS
79%
of respondents have a
High Potential
Development program
in their organizations
HIPO PROGRAMS
HOW MATURE
ARE THEY?
HOW DO YOU
IDENTIFY HIPOs?
s p e c i a l
STORY
HOW MUCH PERCENT OF YOUR

TALENT IS HIPO TALENT?
26% of companies have less than 5%
of their total workforces as HiPo
talent. The majority of organizations
stay within the 5 to 10% of the total
employee size.
<5%
Still performance data

and manager
recommendation lead
the way. Fewer
organizations use
assessment centers
5-10%
26%
54%
73%
Use performance
data
63%
40%
Consider manager
recommendation
Use assessment
centres
19%
Consider
vintage/tenure
WHAT DO HIPOs WANT?

Interesting work, challenging
assignments and fast-track careers
tops the charts of what matters to HiPo
talent. A well-designed program is not
an outcome for HiPos but a means to
an end.
Interesting work/
Challenging assignments
10%-20%
Empowerment
>20%
15%
64
A well-designed
HiPo program
5%
| OCTOBER 2016
Fast track
career progression
Appreciation
and recognition
HIPOs AS BRAND AMBASSADORS,

HOW DO COMPANIES FARE?
WHICH PLATFORMS DO COMPANY

PROVIDE FOR HIPOs TO BE
BRAND AMBASSADORS?
56% of respondents feel that less than 50%

of their HiPo talent plays a role of brand
ambassadors for the organization
Campus hiring tops the list but still lots

to be done to create avenues for HiPo
to play the role of ambassadors. 35%
of companies nominate for external
awards, 31% of organizations leverage their HiPos on social media.
>75%
>25%
19%
37%
47%
50-75%
25-50%
24%
20%
Leverage
campus
hiring
process
Provide
industry
forums
35%
Nominate
for external
awards
Use
social
media
DEMOGRAPHICS & PARTICIPATIONS

From the 120 unique companies participated in this years study. Both
Business and HR leaders across a balanced representation of industries.
STORY
90%
Respondents believe that HiPos
personal brand translates into attraction
of talent towards your organization
31%
s p e c i a l
BUT, YET HIPOS AS BRAND

AMBASSADORS HAVE
TREMENDOUS POTENTIAL FOR
THE ORGANIZATION
46%
26%
25%
Manufacturing/
Engineering
IT/ ITES
79%
Respondents believe that HiPos
refer better performing talent as
compared to other employees
74%
Respondents believe that referrals
provided by the HiPos stay in the
organization longer as compared to
referrals by other employees
9%
Pharma/
Life
Sciences
7%
BFSI
42%
Respondents promote the
organizations HiPo program in the
external world to positively impact
the Employer Brand
29%
4%
Automobile
Others (Education,
Healthcare,
Real Estate)
OCTOBER 2016 |
65
Building a robust HiPo program

Here are the key questions you must have clear
answers to crack a solid HIPO program
O
STORY
rganizations are at different stages

when it comes to creating mature High
Potential (HiPo) programs, but what is
amply clear is that talent differentiation is a necessary evil and getting it right is the
key to deriving the benefits from the perspectives
of leadership, growth, and innovation. Getting it
wrong can be disastrous for any organization; it
can lead to the loss of key talent and can instigate
politics, confusion, and lack of transparency in the
organization. Here are the key questions one must
have clear answers to, black and white, with no
shades of grey to crack a solid HIPO program.
Who is a HiPo?
s p e c i a l
Organizations need to define a HiPo in the context

of their business. What are the qualities that are
most relevant to the firm today and tomorrow that
will hatch the next leadership cadre? Many companies use a mix of behaviors to define a HiPo, which
includes three elements: firstly, past & present
inputs (performance and achievements); secondly,
leadership competencies (the fabric and DNA of
the individual; and, thirdly, their potential (ability
to take on higher roles). Other organizations that
are moving away from the performance rating are
verging into one single measurement of the indi-
vidual and incorporating all three in one metric.

What is critical is to understand what qualities
we are looking for in a HiPo that will change from
business to business and are contextual to each
organization (stage of maturity, competitive landscape and aspiration of the company).
For example, Ericson takes the vision 2020
and the business strategy as the base to define
the kind of leadership they need for 2020. All
HiPo programs and leadership development
interventions align to achieving that goal. One of
the leadership qualities that have been identified
as critical for Ericson to reach that target is
entrepreneurial leadership; and that is what
the organizationlooks for in HiPos (among other
10 competencies). The process took over five
months to look at the talent pool and identify
those HiPos. In different businesses, at Genpact,
their CEO, NV Tyagarajan has identified three
behaviors that drive the business to the next level:
collaboration, digital thinking and being able to
move across spectrum from concept to execution.
For Genpact, HiPos need to exhibit these three
behaviors and the entire selection happens around
these competencies.The starting point should
become the end in mind: Ascertaining what the
organization needs is imperative to achieve the
end goal.
How to find your HIPO?

Create a robust and transparent way to identify
HiPOs is the next step. It is critical that the process
is solid and perceived to be fair by all stakeholders
in the organization. Many organizations start with
performance (achievements) as 1st level of filtering, then move to the competencies and qualities
of the individual either using leaders council
reviews or assessments (or both). This stage
assesses for two things: the leadership DNA &
alignment with companys requirements, and the
ability & aspiration of the individual to grow and
take on higher and more challenging roles. Typically, this process happens yearly and reviewed
half yearly while companies are also moving to
move regular and on-going reviews.
Eriscsson uses a five-month process to identify
HiPos andset up an internal talent council to do
the 1st level of screening, followed by a talent
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| OCTOBER 2016
Here, the process starts to get tricky. If you have

walked the path one step at a time and have a solid
framework on who a HiPo is and how to be a HiPo,
then why should one worry about communicating? Or creating differentiated pay? Organizations
struggle to come to terms with the consequences
of communication and differentiating both ways:
scared to tell a HiPo that he/she is the one (fear
of losing the person) and scared to tell the solid
citizens that they are not happy (and fear to demotivate and again losing them). No easy answers.
In some organizations, communication happens
very formally (like an event) where the leadership team communicates one-to-one and creates
an opportunity to build connect and commitment.
Others dont communicate at all. But does the
sheer fact that as an individual,one is chosen to
be part of projects and trainings, it is understood
that one is a HIPO and hence the organizations
is indirectly telling by showing commitment and
investments?
Leaders fear that this can create a divide in
culture. The You vs. Me and Have vs. Have not.
Additionally, there is also the context of talent
demand and supply and it really depends from
industry to industry and also the stage of maturity of the organization and other talent-related
processes. What is important is that it should align
with your management philosophy and should
be consistent with the culture and values of the
organization.
What is critical is to understand

what qualities we are looking for in a
HiPo that will change from business
to business and are contextual
to each organization (stage of
maturity, competitive landscape and
aspiration of the company)
STORY
How to communicate?
The next step in the decision ladder is whether

to differentially pay HiPos or not. Again, if there
is clarity on 1, 2, 3 steps, the answers of 4 emerges
automatically. Some companies give differentiated
cash compensation linked to being identified as a
HIPO automatically, and some dont. What seems
to be common is of course access to critical roles,
funding of external education in premier institutes, projects and international mobility as part of
the non-monetary benefits. But many organizations
do not differentiate in cash from day one, it is the
emergence of career opportunities, new projects
etc. that lead to promotion and hence compensation
change but not the HiPo program itself.
s p e c i a l
boards to dig deeper into each candidate and

finally followed this by an assessment center to
validate the competencies with each candidate.
In Credit Suisse, the process runs through the
organization. After they identify top talent on the
basis of performance/achievement/potential ("as
is" today), they measure this pool by taking them
through the assessment center with the objective
of assessing the individual with the competencies
required for one level up. This exercise also shows
the talent gaps and creates a foundation not only
for identification but also for development.
Similarly, at Genpact the whole approach to
HIPO process is anchored around development of
careers across level. Genpact only uses assessment
centers for VPs and above, for the other levels the
philosophy is that managers need to take ownership of their judgment. The process is not a onetime exercise. The constant question managers ask
themselves is Are you seeing similar trends being
demonstrated cycle after cycle by the individual.
There is a lot of focus on consistency of behaviors
for talent identification.
How to measure the success of a HiPo

program?
HiPo programs should have a clear objective that is
defined and measurable and is linked to the mid to
long-term vision of the organization and creating
leaders for the future. It is critical that it is articulated and defined by the leadership team and also
has measured KPIs that provides milestones on the
direction of the program and its effectiveness. The
most commonly used KPIs are the number of positions taken internally by HIPOs (instead of lateral
hires), retention and engagement levels of top
talent. There are other interesting KPIs like risktaking from HIPO pool that is, how many HiPos
have taken roles outside their natural domain. The
important thing about KPIs is to pick the ones that
will be most meaningful for what the organization
is trying to drive and achieve.
This is a fascinating theme that keeps many
CEOs and CHROs up at night, more so, with the
changing paradigms of performance management
philosophies, evolving demographics and
millennials coming in and with more and more
volatility in business.
(As told by Deepa Chadha, CHRO, Jabong)
OCTOBER 2016 |
67
HiPos - Invest inside,

harvest outside
HCL Technologies is empowering its high
potentials with skills & an environment which
gives them a sense of purpose
H
STORY
iPos are critical for organizations to

succeed and if I talk about how we, at
HCL, look at high potentials, we may be
one of the few organizations today that
carries out a potential assessment of its workforce across all levels with 100 % coverage every
year. And as a part of Performance Management,
we require our People Managers to identify and
categorize their team members in the following 9
categories:
s p e c i a l
Proven high performance

Effective, driven and responsible
Accept changing roles
Committed to organization
Productive and efficient
Seek information and see a broader view
Synthesize data for decisions
Have integrity and authenticity
The reason for this is that while we believe that

high performance is crucial and a desired objective, it is important to understand as to who has
the depth, skills, attitude and mindset to look at
and take the next level of progression & responsibility. The imperative for us is to discover how we
can make employees more productive and effective
as we look at their careers going forward. Who has
the ability to take an enterprise view rather than
just a line of business, and has the authenticity,
integrity and commitment to go beyond for the
organization. This gives us rich insights into the
talent pool that we have.
HiPos as brand ambassadors

When we talk about a brand, for us as an
employer, our brand talks about our identity,
We profile our high potentials as

Ideapreneures who demonstrate
HCLs culture of living and add
value by seeding, nurturing and
harvesting ideas and being the Culture
Champions of the organization
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| OCTOBER 2016
beliefs, intentions, the promises we make in

terms of the experience people will have when
they come and build a career here. Organizations
talk about this as Employee Value Proposition,
and at HCL, we are looking at creating a reason
for people to strive to do better and in turn help
us achieve our people agenda to attract the right
people and to be considered as an employer of
choice for the employees of choice that we want.
When you put these things together, the high
potential talent segment gives us a pool of people
who can truly help us take the message across
as brand ambassadors. High potentials are considered as Culture Champions within HCL who
take our story to the key audiences and be career
coachers, mentors and counselors to the larger
workforce.
Let us see how this plays out in reality. HiPos
are looked at as models or examples by the
workforce of individuals who have beliefs that
are similar to HCLs value system. We profile our
high potentials as Ideapreneures who demonstrate HCLs culture of living and add value by
seeding, nurturing and harvesting ideas and
being the Culture Champions of the organization. We recently launched a program called
Inspire where we looked at many of these high
potentials to work with their colleagues, team
members and friends to cascade such beliefs and
behaviors down throughout the organization. We
believe that a culture not only gets created topdown but is sustained if kept alive bottom-up.
High potentials at HCL are members of the
Employee First Councils and provide inputs
on whether we as an organization are really
delivering on the Employee Value Proposition,
the promises that we have made around building
a culture or environment where they would want
to work. Thats how we make an Employee Value
Proposition and a promise about an experience
which delivers. The best testimonials through
which this can be demonstrated specially when
one is looking at attracting talent is by having
people to go out and talk about their journey, by
either showcasing the organizational methodologies or by going and meeting other people,
learning from them, bringing back the new ideas,
introducing & sharing our best practices.
At HCL, we try and make sure that there are

distinctive inputs given to the individuals for
learning & development by ensuring that they get
access to the best learning sources in the world.
In terms of our Rewards and Recognition, we
have a practice where people with outstanding
performance and who come in the top 30% of the
organization, are invited to an event called O
infinity, where they celebrate their contributions
to the organization with their families. They are
recognized not just in the presence of others but
are also encouraged to share their stories so that
others can learn from them.
We also encourage grass root innovation.
Currently we are tracking value of ideas close
to 500 million dollars plus per year which is
outside of commercial contracts with our
clients, and these are ideas that get generated
by our employees for their clients. We find
that HiPos play the lead in helping others use
many of the seed platforms that we have in
which people can share their ideas. Talking
about Career Progression, we have created a
specific developmental program we call Top
Gun which helps HiPos take accountability
for transformational and global strategies. We
STORY
HiPo engagement at HCL
We look up to our HiPos as

Proponents of Optimism because
in present uncertain and volatile
work environment, it becomes very
important that there is a positive
voice inside the organization as we
go forward
s p e c i a l
Many of our learning programs, specially

the external forums in which we invest as a
part of our job based curriculum, we encourage
our HiPos to participate and engage in what we
call Eco Learning Sessions, where they share
what they have seen and experienced in the
organization. At the end of the day, if you have
a certain experience in an organization, it is not
left to you alone, you will share the experience, if
it is good, with at least 10 people and if it is bad,
possibly with 10 extra people. Word of mouth, in
terms of communication and advocacy is more
than marketing. We look up to our HiPos as
Proponents of Optimism because in present
uncertain and volatile work environment, it
becomes very important that there is a positive
voice inside the organization as we go forward.
At HCL, we also have Career Management
Processes, where we use a methodology called
Career Connect which allows the employees to
crowdsource ideas from experts about how they
can grow in their careers and assume higher
levels of responsibilities. This is a great platform
for many of these high potentials to play the
role of mentors and guides. People can see how
they (HiPos) have grown in their careers & have
fulfilled their potential and get counseled on how
the same can be applied to their careers.
manage their careers across the enterprise and

offer positions and roles for new initiative &
businesses so that they can truly grow and help
the company grow in turn. Last but not the least
is anchoring what we called Passion clubs or
Employee First Councils, which are employeeled activities and provide high potentials a
leadership opportunity to demonstrate their skills
and capabilities. By giving them autonomy to drive
new ideas & initiatives, we help them to accelerate
their careers.
This is the key from our perspective: to give
high potentials the autonomy to be the best of
what they can be, to give them the skills so that
they are ready for the 21st century enterprise of
the future and most importantly an environment
which gives them a sense of purpose because that
really brings out the best in them.
(As told by Prithvi Shergill, CHRO, HCL Technologies)
OCTOBER 2016 |
69
HiPos as Brand Ambassadors

Training projects need to be followed up
with actual delivery. That is Mahindras focus:
Education, Experience and Exposure
T
s p e c i a l
STORY
o set the context, we can use this small

anecdote. There was a colony of frogs like
us, with high potentials and low potentials
and two frogs were asked to jump in a well.
For the colony, one of them was a high performer,
the other one was a low performer. They asked both
the frogs to jump into the well and started encouraging the high potential one. The HiPo frog kept
trying and finally gave up and died. The second got
scared of meeting the same fate. The other frogs
that were encouraging the HiPo started discouraging this one. This one kept trying, took a huge leap
and eventually jumped in! Everybody was shocked.
It turned out that the frog was deaf ! He thought he
was being encouraged, when he finally jumped in.
Someone asked a question, How do you identify a
HiPo at the first place? This example put forth a
very clear case of whether we know who is really a
HiPo or not? The colony of frog thought this chap
is a low potential because he cannot hear. The chap
was probably not! All he needed was a little encouragement. So how do we as an organization really
identify the HiPo?
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| OCTOBER 2016
40% of organizations today use assessment

centers to identify HiPos. I recently went through
an Assessment Centre in my organization 3 weeks
back. The first question that people ask during
these assessments is, In the next 2 day, you are
going to decide what I have done for the last 25
years of my life? You are going to tell me whether I
am good or not and what are my areas of improvement. Almost all of us have been to the Assessment Centers, how many of you agree to the report
which came? - A little less than 50 percent. Where
do organizations go wrong in identifying the high
potentials? First, we limit it to one process, in this
case the Assessment Center because a lot of money
is being spent on it, around 2.5 to 3 lac plus the
travel cost. There are organizational competencies
which are defined which many a time are unclear
to people. At Mahindra, we have 7 leadership
competencies, a spider graph which shows what
performance level are you expected to perform at
and what are you currently at. Based on this you
get the report.
I have been with hospitality for most of my
career and customer service is engrained in me.
When I went through the Assessment Centre for
the first time, Customer Orientation came to me
as a drastic improvement area. I got a score of 2.5
on 5. At that time I was sent on an international
assignment as a GM and I was told, You need to
improve in Customer Orientation. My response
was, I meet almost 100 guests a day from around
the world and you are telling me that I need to
learn Customer Orientation? The person gave a
standard reply that you can choose to do whatever
you want to do with it or you can put it aside. I
chose to put it aside. It just ended there. Probably
I never got the chance to understand that there
really was a developmental need, which I realized
around 4-5 years later when I got into technical
assessment, that I still do not know how to identify
the untapped or unstated needs of the customer.
When a customer asked you for something, you
go out of your way to deliver that but was that
really what Customer Orientation meant from the
competency frameworks point of view? It didnt,
and I didnt know. So one of the things that we do
in Mahindra, assessment reports once they are
generated, we do not end the process there. First,
some important member of the family with you.

Harvard has many programs- 15 day, 30 days, 3
months but we kept the program duration at 7 days
because this is not a HiPo program but is a part of
the education under the HiPo program. The level
next to it is GPM which is Global Program for
Management Development in partnership with the
University of Michigan Law School that happens
in Nasik at Mahindra Leadership University.
The next thing is Experience. We have the
Talent War Room. One of the reasons why HiPo
programs fail because a high performing individual who is recognized for development to the next
level is not going to develop enough until we provide multiple exposure to that employee. A HiPo
program cannot be taken as a fast track program
STORY
According to a research data, 1 out of

7 people put in a HiPo program are
wrongly put in the first place. 55% of
people nominated for a HiPo program
never see its completion. 55% globally
drop out of that program
s p e c i a l
do not use only the assessment reports. It is one

of the indicators. We also look at recommendation
from the Manager. It is a blended approach. The
Assessment Centre report has a certain weightage because a lot of time, money and energy are
being spent on it and we value that. But we also
look at the Managers recommendations. What we
also do is that there are company led programs
throughout the year. There are a lot of competitions where employees are given opportunities
to step forward and participate. We look at that,
what is the participation level of this person in
some of these company led programs, how often
do they step forward to show interest. We look at
this because our High Potential is based on factors
like the aspiration of the person and the ability of
the person. Just because an individual is a high
performer, we do not let people decide he is high
potential. The ability comes from the Assessment
Centre. One of the most important things that we
look at for identifying high potential is engagement. How engaged is this person in his work, in
companywide initiatives, in helping and collaborating with other people. There are standard tools
that we use to identify this. Till the time we do not
see enough action in each of these areas, we dont
classify that person as a high performer just based
on Assessment Centre reports or previous years
performance. Once the Assessment Centre report
comes, they are discussed and validated with
the immediate supervisor, the HR SPOC, person
responsible for leading the development and the
concerned person. So if a person is scoring low
in Customer Orientation and the supervisor does
not feel the same way, in such case, first we help
the person understand that when we talk about
Customer Orientation, these are the things, do you
think you are doing all of these things? We ask
this to both the person and the supervisor. These
discussions help us. According to a research data 1
out of 7 people put in a HiPo program are wrongly
put in the first place. 55% of people nominated for
a HiPo program never see its completion. 55% globally drop out of that program.
But how do you execute an actual HiPo program? At Mahindra we use the 3E approach; Education, Experience and Exposure. There are different levels basis whats your current level is at the
organization. We have largely kept the hierarchy
of these levels very narrow to ensure consistency
in what we are delivering. Talking about Education, our key program is called Mahindra Universe which is a program in collaboration with
Harvard Business School. Every year, 30 employees
travel for 7 days along with their spouses. We
believe learning is not complete until you have
because thats where we are falling into the trap of

the Business Leaders who feel that they are going
to promote the person anyway. That is not the purpose of a HiPo Program; it is not a fast track program and certainly not training program. We need
to brand it much better than what we do already.
The experience is very important and thats where
the Talent War Room lets people rotate.
The third is the Exposure. In my previous
organization one thing that people used to look
forward to was international learning missions.
The program was for about 10 days, with a group
of 10 F&B Managers selected across the country
and the training was to stay at different hotels
and just experience all the F&B (Food & Beverage)
outlets. It did wonders! People came back and said
that they have seen some of the best hospitality
chains in the world, they learnt about buffet
presentations including a lot of things and it
took precisely 3 months for each one of them to
replicate that in their hotels. So there was input
and there is a visible output. Till the time you
put anyone through education, experience and
exposure, if they are not going to see a visible
change or result which they are able to show you,
OCTOBER 2016 |
71
STORY
s p e c i a l
A HiPo program cannot be taken as

a fast track program because thats
where we are falling into the trap
of the Business Leaders who feel
that they are going to promote the
person anyway
the program is not successful. We keep on thinking
about the HiPo program from our perspective but
its about their perspective. Have they been able
to impact the business enough to close the HiPo
program?
Some of the things that we do as part of the
exposure is something called Shadow Board
which is a group of about 10 people in each of
the Mahindra companies who are HiPos selected
through a process, form the board of the company.
They elect the chairperson and are given freedom
to choose any process that they want to cause
disruption to and change to the company. Anything
they want to change or any new business they
want to start for the company which is then
presented to the board of the company. There is
a Shadow Board competition. Many years ago
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| OCTOBER 2016
Mahindra bought Punjab Tractors which are

now a part of the Swaraj division. It was the
Shadow Board of the automotive sector which
recommended the buying of Punjab Tractors.
Thats the significance because if we are just
going to create programs which are not going
to have any impact on the business, people are
not going to buy it anyways. The Shadow Board
process for us is an extremely important process
where are actually given full rights and access to
information they need as the actual board of the
company.
There is something called Fireside Chats.
Every quarter there is a group president or CEO
and about 25 to 30 High potential people across
all sectors who are invited for an hour chat with
the CEO to know what he does, how does he
do decision making, how does he do execution
of tasks at work. Another important thing is
any person who goes through any education
program, that program is not completed unless
there is an action learning live project. If I
come back from the Mahindra Universe at the
Harvard, I am given a live business project
which is not a recommendation, it has to be
implemented and I am being tracked on how
this project is being implemented. If it is not
implemented, the project is scrapped, think of
a new project now but something that you will
implement is the business and we are very strict
about it. Training projects need to be followed up
with actual delivery. So that is really the focus:
Education, Experience and Exposure.
In most of our sectors it is working extremely
well because right from the start we are
very clear and jointly sit with the person to
discuss and even if a particular competence
came up through the Assessment Centers as
development, it wont be considered so till the
time there is a buy in and the person agrees that
yes this is what I think is my development. That
is how people start to open up. When we started
saying that just because assessment reports say
you are low on Customer Orientation doesnt
necessarily mean its right till the time its a
mutual discussion and you agree, if you dont
agree, we will not spent time, money and energy
developing something in you which does not
need development.
(As told by Prashant Khullar, VP HR, Mahindra

Holidays & Resorts India)
HiPos - Catalysts to Employer

Branding
HiPos not just contribute to higher efficiency
and productivity, but they act as ambassadors
for the organization
T
s p e c i a l
STORY
here are different stages based on the

High Potential (HiPo) maturity model that
exist in different organizations. There are
organizations that start afresh and they
might be at level 0 or 1 and this is the start of the
journey! But at the same point of time, in established organizations, it may not be moving right
from level 0 to 4 in a progression a HiPo strategy
can be designed depending on the operating environment and can reach any level.
The foundation of the Maturity Model starts
right from a reactive stage where organizations
are testing waters; there are ad hoc processes
which are very much need-based and there may
not be a specific HiPo Development Model in the
organization but it exists because of some requirement at that point in time. There is a future view
of how high potentials can be leveraged and here is
where creating a brand for the organization comes
into play.
The next level or step is termed as Inconsistent HiPo Identification where although there is
a keen intent and a long-term view, in practice,
it becomes manager-specific. At this stage, there
might be a broad Talent Management Philosophy
but it does not really incorporate the importance
of high potential candidates within the organization.
The third level is around how organizations
standardize the process of identifying high potentials and leverage them. This stage is typically integrated as a critical part of the talent management
process and has executive engagement and a short
term planning in picture.
After this comes a transparent HiPo program
where one has a long-term plan and a business
integrated HiPo strategy. In this, each executive member is committed to this entire play of
HiPos in any organizations not

just contribute to higher efficiency
and productivity, but they act as
ambassadors and build a story for
the organization
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| OCTOBER 2016
grooming, capitalizing and further enabling high

potential candidates and leveraging their strengths
from an organizational perspective. This is fully
integrated as a part of not just the talent processes
but business impact measurement criterias as
well. The system is transparent and every high
potential is aware of where they stand within
the organization and from the other side as well.
The organization too understands the pipeline of
the high potential talent that they are building.
There are organizations which jump to level 2 or
level 3 and this happens when there has been a
late start and focus on this particular aspect in
talent management, however at the same time,
there is enough focus and commitment on long
term strategy play. Most organizations (which
are established and have a commitment towards
nurturing high potential talent) find themselves in
level 2 or level 3. However, not many organizations
reach level 4! And there is a reason: our industry
(whichever we are in) is transforming very fast. It
is very critical for talent management organizations to make sure that not only are they aligning
themselves fast but at the same time the business
is also leveraging consistently, and the commitment stands not just when the business is stable
but also in the transformational time frame.
Building channels for employer brand

Coming to the second critical part of the topic
that is about what employer brand is? What are
Today, the emphasis is increasing on efficacy of

HiPo programs. Every organization in different
domains and industries has different approaches to
such programs. But what cuts across as a common
thread is how well is it stitched together and is
consistently driven to achieve desirable outcomes
that the organization wants from each of these
candidates & in bringing to front, the collective
success of the organization. At a very high level,
the best companies have a common thread of
identifying the right set of measures of not just
the high potentials aspiration and ability but also
what is desired by the organization, the goals from
a two year or a five year stand point. It is about
identifying such benchmarks.
The critical part for L&D professionals is
in providing structured learning experiences
Today, structured learning experiences

are no longer restricted to just
classroom interventions or virtual
sessions, they are a combination of
education, exposure and experience
STORY
Efficacy of HiPo Programs
s p e c i a l
the various channels that employers in todays

world leverage to make sure that their brand is
visible and known externally and to a large extent
internally as well, especially for complex and large
organizations. There are 9 channels and they are
not exhaustive but they are essentially the critical
ones in todays era, which most of the organizations do leverage right from employee referrals
(internal/external) to social media (Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn), Visual Effects (Pinterest,
Instagram, YouTube), Print Media (Newsprint,
Magazine, Journals), other websites (Glassdoor/
payscale), Brand Ambassadors (Blogger, Spokeperson), Job Boards (Naukri, Headhonchos), Career
Events (Campus Events) and Career Sites (Company Recruitment Portal). Five years back, some of
them could have been easily clubbed together, for
example print and other websites could have been
clubbed together. Visual Effects and Social Media
could have been clubbed together but as we progress each day and with the diversification of various channels through which we can communicate
internally & externally, each one of them becomes
critical and hence the focus on each one of them
becomes critical. If you look at what is the lowest
common denominator of each of the channels, it
is employees, hence, it is imperative to understand
that these are just the mediums.
HiPos in any organizations not just contribute
to higher efficiency and productivity, but they act
as ambassadors and build a story for the organization. And this can be leveraged by an organization
by exhibiting best practices and great work done
by HiPos through the right channels. To me, it is
a very strong linkage between the HiPos and the
employer brand specifically in todays environment.
which result in impactful performances. Today,

structured learning experiences are no longer
restricted to just classroom interventions or
virtual sessions,they are a combination of
education, exposure and experience. The 3 Es give
a consolidated exposure to any individual in an
organization right from the base level to the senior
level. But when transforming fast, managing
becomes a challenge as refreshing concepts,
changing the model and making sure that a
strategic view is maintained is critical. So it is
always the fight against how soon these practices
can be deployed and sustained in an ever changing
environment.
(As told by Kunal Wali, Associate Director - Talent

Development, IBM)
OCTOBER 2016 |
75
If you dont bet on your own

people, someone else will
Prabir Jha, Global Chief People Officer at Cipla talks about
leveraging HiPos as employer brand ambassadors, the

Type 1 and Type 2 errors companies make & how he
personally benefitted from a HiPo program
By Vikas Arora & Medha Roy
n an exclusive conversation with People

Matters for a radio show on Leveraging
HiPos as Talent Magnets, Prabir Jha shared
his insights on High Potentials. Here are some
excerpts from the conversation.
STORY
Many organizations face the challenge

of clearly articulating HiPo programs. In
such a scenario, is there an opportunity for
organizations to leverage their HiPo programs as
an attraction and retention tool?
s p e c i a l
I believe that in a socialist structure of an

organization, talent always finds a way to define
itself. But often, corporate leadership has been
found to be a victim of appeasement. A lot of
companies shy away from differentiating their
their employees as they run the risk of upsetting
the other members of the organization. As a
consequence, they end up not having an articulated
HiPo program.
Organizations are still at a nascent stage when
it comes to leveraging HiPos as their employer
76
| OCTOBER 2016
brand ambassadors. But to reach that stage,

companies first need to realize the importance
of taking bets with some people; because it is not
possible to bet on all of the people at the same
time. And if you dont bet on your own people,
someone else will. Managing talent, according to
me, is fundamentally the art of differentiation and
focused effort. And to create a HiPo program, any
corporate needs to clear its conscience and belief
system.
How can organizations leverage high

potential talent internally to create a culture that
percolates down to the entire organization?
To begin with, organizations must be clear in

their heart and mind that they want to celebrate
high potentials. Assuming that this bridge has
been crossed, the first step for organizations is to
talk about their high potentials publicly so that
it gets legitimacy and is not seen as a cloak and
dagger operation.
I have myself witnessed HiPos lead
organizations and business transformation
programs, conceptualized these programs and also
helped in their implementation. When you give
credit to the people for the work they have done,
they become the ambassadors of the organization
by default.
Making HiPos mentors is also a good way to
give them exposure. I have found that bright young
people prefer to be mentored by bright young
people instead of average guys or senior guys just
for the sake of it. It is of mutual benefit to both
the HiPo mentor and the mentee. And overall, the
organization benefits when people are mentored
early and get inspired.
Organizations can also leverage HiPos to
be brand ambassadors both internally and
externally. HiPos, for instance, can be made part
of recruitment teams and be the representatives
of organizations during campus visits. In many
instances, people who hire are not always inspiring
leaders and that is the reason candidates opt out
of an opportunity. A candidate once told me that
he loved the job and the opportunity, but he did not
like the guy he was supposed to be working with.
HiPos, if put as a part of the recruitment effort for
an organization, can be strong talent magnets.
Externally, what are the areas other than

campuses where HiPos can be leveraged as
brand ambassadors?
Measurement of success of any HiPo program

involves both quantitative and qualitative
measures.
One metric which determines the success of
HiPo programs is the degree of success of High
Potentials in mission-critical projects. And the
more the number of High Potential talent getting
deployed for such critical business projects, the
greater is the success rate of the HiPo program.
As a program, there are many other dimensions
which can be measured. One is, when an
organization is promoting people to bigger roles,
they should look at the percentage of HiPos that
have been promoted. Another metric to judge the
success of HiPo programs is the measurement of
how long an employee remains a High Potential.
No HiPo can retain his/her position for life!
If the duration is long, then it implies that the
organization spotted them early, moved them fast
enough and they continued to remain HiPos for a
long time.
deliver sustained breakthrough impact through

different roles, in different contexts. This is
another trap that organizations should be very
careful of. Lastly, it is also crucial to make sure
that if a HiPo is not doing a great job, s(he) has
to be taken off the list. You can do it formally or
informally.
If companies can be watchful of these four
aspects, then I think any HiPo program will help
the company directionally at all times.
What are the common traps pertaining to

HiPo programs that organizations fall into?
The first challenge is to get comfortable making

Type 1 errors and ensure not to make any Type
2 errors. Type 1 error is related to situations
where a few high potentials are left out from
being identified as HiPos. Companies should get
comfortable with some omissions, because they
STORY
Is there a way to measure the success of a high

potential program?
When you give credit to the people

for the work they have done, they
become the ambassadors of the
organization by default
s p e c i a l
There is a large opportunity for high potentials

to be seen or heard on public platforms and
forums. It does not always have to be the CXOs
who represent the organization. I receive multiple
speaking invites, and it is not possible for me
to attend them all. But I leverage all of these
opportunities and send HiPos from my team to
represent their views and be heard. This adds to
the brand ambassadorship of both the HiPo and
the organization.That is one way of nurturing and
sustaining your HiPos. Even if they fail, it is all
about the investment you make in building their
confidence. I also encourage High Potentials to
write because High Potentialsneed to be thought
leaders and thought shapers.
And when you give them an opportunity to
represent the company, you send a message to the
external audience that here is an organization
whose leader is betting on people to come and
articulate their views and ideas.
are unavoidable to an extent. A common counter

argument made to this type 1 error is to not run
a HiPo program, which can be suicidal in todays
time; because if you dont bet on your people,
someone else will. Type 2 error happens when one
gets someone in the program because one happens
to like that individual. Inclusion of HiPos must
be a well-reasoned, fair, mature and a commonly
owned process.
Second challenge is to ensure that identifying
high potentials is not seen as an act of coronation,
but is actually seen as a suggestion or a hint of
greater accountability. The third challenge is
rotation of HiPos. There are times when HiPos get
hijacked by an individual leader, and sometimes
companies get over-dependent on keeping certain
HiPos in particular roles for a long time. However
good they are, HiPos remain HiPos when they
{Scan here to read Prabirs

blogs and articles}
folLow
M > @PrabirJha
F > in/prabir-jha-991a5a10
OCTOBER 2016 |
77
The present and future of HR

and talent management
Event Name: Converge India 2016
Organizer: Cornerstone OnDemand
Partners: Aon, Kronos, People Matters,
SHRM
Knowledge + Networking
78
hat are the best practices in

implementation of unified talent
management systems? How to
determine which system is contextual
to the organization? How to leverage
analytics to make better people decisions?
What are the common myths around
HR technology implementation? What
is next in talent management? - These
were some of the pertinent questions that
were deliberated on during the Converge
India 2016, a full-day knowledge-sharing
conference organized by Cornerstone
OnDemand on 14th September, 2016 in
Mumbai.
Starting the first India Cornerstone
OnDemand Converge Conference,
Arun Dhaka, Country Sales Director
- Cornerstone OnDemand - India &
South Asia reminisced and shared the
companys journey globally and in specific,
its journey in India. With Cornerstone
OnDemand reaching 27 million users
over 191 countries, Arun linked the
organizations success with its purpose
of realizing potential and its culture of
constantly pursuing excellence.
In the first keynote, Frank Ricciardi,
Vice President and General Manager,
Asia-Pacific at Cornerstone OnDemand,
took the audience through the evolution
of talent management systems to unified
talent management systems. He also
talked about how technological changes
are affecting both businesses and also the
changing dynamics of the way we work,
how we work, where we work & when we
work.
Mark Goldin, Chief Technology Officer,
Cornerstone OnDemand, joined Frank in
the keynote, and explained the different
ways in which organizations can leverage
people analytics and asserted, When you
add the layer of analytics to unified talent
management systems, then what you get is
strategic HR. He also shared Cornerstone
| OCTOBER 2016
When you add the

layer of analytics
to unified talent
management
systems, then
what you get is
strategic HR
OnDemands new product, Cornerstone
Insights, a new analytics offering based
on Big Data and Machine Learning that
aims to help decision makers across talent
management challenges.
The discussion around steps to
becoming a data-driven organization
continued with the presentation of case
studies of HR technology implementation
from IDFC Bank and Genpact. Both the
organizations have successfully procured,
implemented and adopted services from
the CornerStone OnDemand Suite.
Animesh Kumar, Head of HR, Brand &
Foundation at IDFC Bank, spoke about
the implementation of CornerStone
OnDemand at the startup bank and

how the implementation of the system
right at the inception of the bank made
the adoption for employees very easy.
Vimal Dev, VP - IT Global Enterprise
Applications Leader at Genpact walked
the audience through the 24-month talent
transformation journey they undertook
at the organization.
Frank Ricciardi, in a session on
Digital HR or HR in a digital world,
demonstrated how HR technology can
make workforce management seamless.
Sharing case studies of customers
from across the globe, he envisaged a
roadmap for implementation and the best
solutions available.
The day was full of enriching
conversations from seasoned
industry leaders including Yashwant
Mahadik ECP and Global CHRO, Sun
Pharmaceuticals and Abhijit Bhaduri,
ex-CLO, Wipro Group who talked
about the myths of HR technology
implementation and the Digital Tsunami
in HR respectively. Laying out the reality
at the table, Bhaduri said, It is no more
about engagement, it is now about
experience.
The day was brought to a close with
a session on Refresh Reboot HR wherein
Vikrant Khanna, Lead, Insights and
Innovation, APAC & Middle East, Aon
iterated what HR needs to do to stay
relevant in a digital world and what
would be the future of work.
Key takeaways
Analytics + Unified talent
management systems = Strategic HR
Dark Data is a large set of data
which is not being used to derive any
insights from
CHROs and CIOs need to work
together to select and implement
integrated talent solutions. CIOs
bring in the expertise around
integration of systems, and
CHROs can select the best talent
management solution that caters to
their business challenge
Concept : www.eddyingbay.com
SIMULATION VARIANTS
BRING IN A REFRESHING CHANGE!

convert your orientation program into a
fun filled
induction GAME!
THE LAUREATE GLOBAL

OD Consulting . Research . Learning
Scan the QR code for
deeper insights
Reach out to us for a business discussion

+91 98800 48609 / 98800 32545 / 99000 08547
consult@laureateglobal.com
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HY DER ABAD
MUMBAI
DELHI
Strategic employee onboarding

Event Name: People Matters & InspireOne
Webinar
Organized by: People Matters
Partner: InspireOne
Knowledge + Networking
igh infant (early) attrition is a

momentous challenge being faced
by HR and L&D leaders today. This
challenge is of strategic import since it
directly impacts productivity, time to market of the new talent and therefore business
results, especially in organisations with
large employee strength at the finger tips.
People Matters, in association with
InspireOne, organized a webinar on
Strategic Onboarding to highlight how
onboarding if designed as a strategic intervention can help organizations assimilate
and retain employees and ensure productivity in shorter timeframes. The webinar was
jointly hosted by Suman Sethi, Principal
Consultant, InspireOne and Saurabh Wadhwa, Learning & Development HR Partner
Consumer Banking, Induslnd Bank. At
the outset of the webinar, Suman laid out
the business imperative of addressing onboarding as a strategic initiative by citing
mammoth cost implications of a tick in
the box approach to on-boarding. The cost
20th October, 2016

Event Name: L&D League Annual
Conference 2016
Event Theme: Reimagining workplace
learning
Organizer: People Matters
Venue: The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon
Who Should Attend: CLOs, L&D Heads,
OD Heads, Training Directors, Organizational Effectiveness Heads, Leadership
Development Heads, Senior HR Leaders
with responsibility of capability building,
career progression, capability building
and leadership
Sponsors: Cornerstone OnDemand, Bits
Pilani, Skillsoft, Step Consulting, FranklinCovey, Pluralsight, Jaipuria Institute
of Management, Pearson TalentLens,
Indeed, Center for Creative Leadership,
Dale Carnegie, KNOLSKAPE, BlueSky
Learning
7th 8th November, 2016

Event Name: HR Conference
Organizer: FICCI
Venue: New Delhi
Who Should Attend: Senior HR
practitioners, CHROs, Managers and
Senior Leaders
Introducing consumerization in learning
orkplace demographics are changing gears, and technology is forcing employees to constantly learn
and refresh their skills. Given this reality,
learning leaders will have to change the way
learning is addressed today. The tweetchat
on Consumerization in learning organized by People Matters in the build up to the
L&D League Annual Conference, sparked a
conversation on the transformation of role
of L&D leaders and how can organizations
embrace consumerization in learning.
Here are some of the best answers

to some pertinent questions asked
How do you define consumerization
in learning?
john j ambrose @johnjambrose
Must put the user in control, not force
them to do data entry. Provide value/
insights, like Fitbit does for exercise.
#LnDLeague
Prabhakar L @prabhakarl
@Ester_Matters A1 #LnDLeague Learning
where the giver is able to get a mindshare
80
of hiring, cost of attrition, loss of productivity, cost of hiring and L&D teams and
other associated opportunity costs all
amount to a significant impact on results.
Saurabh Wadhwa then went on to throw
light on how at IndusInd they took the
bold decision of approaching On boarding of their Relationship Managers and
Customer Service Manages as a strategic
effort and investment.
IndusInd and InspireOne then
partnered to co-create the six-month
long Onboarding journey as opposed
to an orientation event. IndusPro a
certification based onboarding journey
was designed to equip and enable the
new hires with organization knowledge,
product and process knowledge interwoven with sales and service skills all of
which would help them to be successful
at their roles in shorter time frames. The
journey entailed gates at various levels,
successful completion of which allowed
people to progress towards certification.
These gates included knowledge tests, real
life observed role plays, on the job audits,
e-learning goals, success stories of where
the skills were applied and achievement of
threshold results.
Upcoming Events
| OCTOBER 2016
of the learner for sustained franchise by

way of practicing
#LnDLeague @Skillsoft
Which are the tools/ frameworks/

technology helping you in consumerization of learning?
While balancing expectations, what

challenges L&D leaders face in imparting skills and knowledge sets? How to
overcome them?
Katarina Karalic @KatarinaKaralic

A2. Social tools are definitely the next big
thing in learning space! Like what we are
doing now. :) #LnDLeague
Gurpreet Bajaj @_gbajaj

A4. Solution- L&D's own IDPs must come
out of the dirt box! #lndleague
Sharlyn Lauby @sharlyn_lauby

A2. MOOCs bring some interesting options
to the learning environment. Lots of
opportunity. #lndleague
Today, employees need 24*7 engaging

learning content - How is L&D addressing
it?
Rashi Anand @RashiAnand11

A4 evolution of the pull based approach
rather than push based :) bringing in the
value associated with learning n why!
#LnDLeague
What learning do you need as a learning leader?
Prashant Srivastava @prashantspeak

A3. For 5000 yrs Indians learnt by listening
not reading. Online content should help
learning thru listening #LnDLeague
Guru Shivakamat @connectguru

A5 new leaders need to be empathic,
they have to set an culture of learning.
#culture eats#strategy for breakfast.
#LnDLeague
Ankur Gupta @ankurgupta27

A3 Utilizing & targeting various content discovery & delivery experiences
Sushil Baveja @sushilbaveja

A5 Making learning relevant to the business context and challenge #LnDLeague
Experiential learning, On-campus

Event Name: AGON
Organized By: IIM Ranchi
Media Partners: People Matters
ith People Matters as one of the

knowledge partners, HiRe the
HR club of IIM Ranchi organized
its annual management fest AGON on 3rd
and 4th of September, 2016. Celebrating
its 6th anniversary, the event witnessed a
conglomeration of students and HR leaders
from across the nation. The theme of the
event was Coming of Age which covered
a wide range of critically important
sessions that paved the way for an exchange
of ideas and perspectives between various
participants. There was an air of fresh
excitement among students to battle for
the exciting prizes. The three invigorating
events organized by the club Coordinators,
Monica Jaiswal, Ruchir Bhartee and
Ashmita Bose were Vorstand 3.0, Maneuver
2.0 and Final Stint 2.0, an amalgamation of
simulation based case study, recruitment
& bidding and an on spot team building
competition to test student capabilities.

Vorstand 3.0 was the flagship event of
HiRe that took insights from students
and evaluated them with the focus to gain
information about industry preparedness.
The panel of judges for the final on-campus
round included Simin Askari - VP
Corporate-HR and Kaustav Hazarika,
Management Associate from DS Group.
After a great round of participation by all
the top three teams, Team Militarium from

IIM Ranchi fetched the crown of AGON
2016 winners followed by Team Hope from
XLRI as runners up.
The next event in the league was
Maneuver 2.0, sponsored by Sparkspot,
on the theme Hire at your cost, Bid for
the best. The event kicked off with an
online quiz with participation from over
500 teams out of which 6 teams were
shortlisted for the final on-campus round.
This round saw live bidding by six teams
for candidates from different profiles in
an attempt to find the best fit. The event
was judged by Roshan Yadav Sr. Manager
HR, Tata Steel and Asha Wazir - HR Head,
Mecon accompanied by Trisha Sardar- HR
MT, Mecon. Team Torex from IIM Ranchi
won and Team IMI Stark from IMI Delhi
was declared as runners up. The last HR
event to feature in the list was Final Stint
2.0, a game developed to challenge teams
around the concept of team building and
leadership and negotiating capabilities of
its participants.
Careerist Management Consultants Private

Limited
DGM HR
Location: Chandigarh, Job ID: 19305661
Description: Partnering with business towards
identification of resourcing requirements
(manpower planning) & fulfilling manpower
requirements through effective Talent
Acquisition.
Hector & Streak Consulting Private
Limited
HR - Business Partner
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 18997967
Description: Design, develop & implement
talent management & organisation
development solutions for business in
partnership with Head.
Superior Talent Resources, Inc

Recruitment - Head/ Mgr
Location: Bengaluru / Bangalore, Chennai
Job ID: 19118564
Description: Work proactively on end to end
recruitment for hiring for our Customers by
utilizing effective tools.
ABC Consultants Private Limited

Vice President/Head - Talent Acquisition
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 19221252
Description: Identifies critical success factors
from a recruitment perspective and formulates
strategy.
New Era India Consultancy Private Ltd

General Manager Human Resources
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 19240438
Description: Should have excellent knowledge
of Generalist HR Functions, Should be Regular
Full Time MBA.
Parexel International India Private Limited

HR Manager
Location: Chandigarh
Job ID: 19265451
Description: Drive PAREXEL performance
management both at a local and individual
level, ensuring that target-setting, follow-up
and corrective actions are taken in a timely
manner.
Vitasta Consulting Private Limited

Manager / Asst. Manager HR
Location: Navi Mumbai
Job ID: 19258560
Description: Employee Life Cycle
Manag ement, Talent Acquisition and
Induction Leverage employee referrals and jobsites to minimize costs.
Recruise India Consulting

Manager/Sr.Manager Employee Relation
Location: Chennai
Job ID: 19214172
Description: Collaborating very closely with
HR, Legal, Corporate Security and other
stakeholders in handling of corrective actions
and in providing strategic intervention to
reduce ER issues at the workplace.
ledge
gular
mited
mance
idual
w-up
mely
ycle
and
d job-
with
other
tions
n to
WNS Global Services Private Limited

Deputy Manager - HR Policies
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 19329806
Description: Preparing offer dashboards on a
monthly basis for management highlighting the
no. of offers made the average percentage hike
and percentile positioning for India offers.
Black Turtle India Private Limited

HR Manager
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 19329670
Description: Would be responsible for
rebadging of employees, Experience in
legislations and compensation structure for the
organization.
SummitWorks Technologies Private

Limited
HR - Specialist
Location: Bengaluru / Bangalore
Job ID: 19329211
Description: Employee life cycle management
on Peoplesoft, Liaisoning with HR Busies
Partners on day to day activities.
Nichepro Technologies
Payroll Specialist
Location: Bengaluru / Bangalore
Job ID: 19316233
Description: Ability to work independently
and with minimal supervision, Ability to work
with a sense of urgency when required and
uphold deadlines.
Orcapod Consulting Services Private

Limited
Team Lead -IT Recruitment
Location: Cochin / Kochi / Ernakulam,
Bhubaneshwar
Job ID: 18918530
Description: Candidate should have min 4+
years of IT Hiring exp, Team Handling exp is
must.
P3 Synergy Consulting
HR Manager
Location: Mumbai
Job ID: 19253256
Description: 8 + years experience in handling
Statutory Compliance in Shop &
Establishment Act.
IRESE
N TERVIEW
A R C H
Employer
Branding
Trends 2016
Building strategic
imperatives
People Matters Monster.com
Employer Branding Trends
2016 reveals the latest trends in
employer branding in India
By J Jerry Moses & Dhruv Mukerjee
84
| OCTOBER 2016
A slight realization has kicked in with respect to

investments, Modi says with companies focusing
on measurable metrics to identify the return on
their investments.
Shift in employer branding channels

There is a clear shift in the channels that
organizations are leveraging for employer
branding purposes. While the use of traditional
channels namely, campus outreach and career
sites remain fairly unchanged, there is an increase
in the use of social networks. The use of Facebook
has increased by 15 percent (up from 51 percent in
2014 to 66 percent in 2016), and the use of Twitter
has increased by 11 percent (up from 23 percent in
2014 to 34 percent in 2016). Usage of other social
and professional networks moved up from 26
percent to 66 percent (an increase of 40 percent)
and Internet advertising has increased from 27
percent in 2014 to 42 percent in 2016 (up by 15
percent).
Conversely, traditional channels such as print
advertising, banners, and billboards as well as
television commercials have seen a significant
decline in employer branding spend. In 2014,
Building an employer branding

strategy involves articulating and
practicing values, aligning the
different talent management plans
of the organization and building a
robust communications strategy
RESE A R C H
f the consumer brand of a company helps

customers identify the best of products
and services in the marketplace, it is the
employer brand of a company that helps
potential candidates to understand the
organizations reputation as an employer. Building
an employer branding strategy involves a number
of steps, including articulating and practicing
values, aligning the different talent management
plans of the organization and creating a robust
communications strategy. Access to high-quality
talent, higher employee productivity, engagement,
decrease in the time to hire and the cost of hire are
just some of the many benefits that organizations
track and measure today. A companys employee
value proposition, therefore, lies in the well-being
of its employees. The 4th edition of the People
Matters-Monster.com Employer Branding
Trends Study 2016 benchmarks and assesses the
key shifts in the way organizations approach their
employer branding strategies. The Study surveyed
over 85 companies and mapped perceptions of
about 600 candidates to identify potential gaps
in expectations between the employer and the
prospective employee.
In the last two years, the strategic importance
of employer brands has increased significantly.
A total of 84 percent of the employers who
participated in the Study noted that the
importance of employer brand as a component
of the company strategy has increased (up from
66 percent in 2014). An increasing percentage of
companies are also focused on expanding their
employer branding budgets and are creating
employer branding strategies that are tailored to
their hiring priorities, which includes hiring more
women, Gen Y talent, and skilled employees. In
light of the ongoing digital transformation across
different sectors, the emphasis is on building a
continuously engaged strategy as opposed to an
annual review item for the CEO or CHRO. Going
forward we will see much more evolved and
mature communications strategies coming out,
says Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster
India.
Increase in budgets
While the number of companies that spend less
than 10 percent of their overall branding budget
has gone down from 72 percent in 2014 to 64
percent in 2016 there is an increase in the
companies that are willing to spend above that
limit. Companies that spend in the range of
10 percent to 25 percent of their overall brand
budget on employer branding has moved up
from 23 percent in 2014 to 29 percent in 2016. And
companies that spend anywhere in the range of
25 percent to 50 percent of their overall brand
budget has increased by 2 percent. Above the 50
percent mark, there is a marginal decline. The
increase in investments is also being linked to RoI.
OCTOBER 2016 |
85
include engagement and productivity and even

reduced dependence on external recruitment
consultants.
While hiring talent from college campuses
continues to be the primary focus area that
employer brand strategy is tailored towards,
organizations are also looking to hire more
women (47 percent) and Gen Y talent (37 percent)
and are also aligning their employer branding
strategies accordingly.
A R C H
IRESE
N TERVIEW
Mapping candidate preferences
While the use of traditional

channels namely, campus outreach
and career sites remain fairly
unchanged, there is an increase in
the use of social networks
62 percent companies surveyed stated that they
leverage print advertising for employer branding
purposes. That number is now down to 22 percent
in 2016, a decline of 40 percent. Only 13 percent
organizations now use banners and billboards,
down from 21 percent in 2014, and only 5 percent of
companies leverage television commercials, down
from 9 percent in 2014. This shift clearly indicates a
move towards a primarily digital focused employee
branding strategy which is clearly geared at
continuously engaging the millennial workforce on
mobile and the Internet.
Hiring priorities and needs

The biggest outcome that companies are expecting
from their employer branding efforts is the
quality of talent. According to 61 percent of
the employers who took part in the Study, the
quality of applications is one of the top measures
to ascertain the effectiveness of the employer
brand. This is followed by the reduction in time
to hire (47 percent), reduction in the cost of
hire (45 percent) and the number of relevant
applications (45 percent). Other measures of
ascertaining effectiveness of the employer brand
86
| OCTOBER 2016
While it is important for organizations today

to convey their value proposition through
branding communication that they undertake,
such branding efforts need to be relevant for
candidates. It is, therefore, necessary to clearly
map candidate preferences. An alignment of
candidate priorities with the employers value
proposition is essential for the success of an
employer branding initiative in the long run.
The Study found a significant overlap
between the candidates priorities and key
attributes that employers focus on in their
branding efforts in India. The top three
characteristics that a candidate looks at are:
job stability/security, closely followed by the
companys image as an innovator/disruptor,
known for its out of the box approach to
business; and the third key factor of being a
knowledge intensive company.
The top perks that candidates want include:
1) health and wellness programs, 2) car and
transport benefits, and 3) finding the space
and encouragement to cultivate their hobbies
and contribute towards community building.
According to the Study, the factors that motivate
candidates and make them recommend their
employers to peers include the provision of
learning and career opportunities, a strong
work-life balance and the existence of a strong
rewarding culture. Employers need to focus on
these factors as employee referrals remain one of
the top sources of accessing high-quality talent.
While the responses from the employers
show a high degree of awareness and knowledge
of candidate preferences, the survey also
identified key attributes that todays candidates
prioritize. 71 percent of the candidates rated
an organizations involvement in social
causes as important. And 42 percent of the
candidates stated that the diversity policies are
very important while deciding on a job offer.
Understanding such attributes help companies
tailor their employer branding strategy to their
target audience. The People Matters-Monster.
com Employer Branding report to be launched
in October will delve into greater detail into the
findings of this Study along with expert views
by leading HR heads across various sectors.
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Group HR
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People Matters
Monster.com
Employer
Branding
Trends 2016
IRESE
N TERVIEW
A R C H
The 2016 People Matters & Monster.com employer branding trends study assessed key trends in the
market with an emphasis on candidate experience. The two surveys that were launched as a part of this
Study included an employer survey that focused on benchmarking employer branding initiatives and
identifying key trends, along with a candidate survey that was focused on mapping candidate preferences
and identifying gaps therein.
Where the employer survey covered over 85 unique organizations, the candidate survey included 600
unique respondents.
Employer branding budgets

viz-a-viz overall brand spend
Key Findings
84%
companies state that the

importance of employer branding
has increased as a component of
the business strategy
(up from 66% from 2014 survey)
71%
candidates state that an

organizations involvement
in social causes is
important while deciding
on a job offer
42%
candidates state that

a companys diversity
policies are very
important while
deciding on a job offer
Learning and career

opportunities,
Work-life balance
and Rewarding culture
are the top factors that would
make candidates recommend
a company
Less than 10%

of overall brand
spending
Between 10 &
25% of overall
brand spending
Between 25 &
50% of overall
brand spending
64%
29%
4%
More than 50%
of overall brand
spending
50% of
overall brand
spending
1%
1%
Top channels for employer branding
Career
site
74%
88
Facebook
66%
Twitter
34%
| OCTOBER 2016
Other social/
professional
networks
65%
Internet/web
advertising
42%
Short
messaging
services
7%
Television
commercials
5%
Radio
7%
Print
advertising
22%
Bannersand
billboard
13%
Campus
outreach
programs
76%
Measuring effectiveness of employer

brand - Top methods
Discretion for employer brand

spending is exercised by
Higher quality of
applications
Reduction in
time to hire
Reduction in
cost of hire
61%
47%
45%
Number of
relevant
applications
Engagement and
productivity after
appointment
Reduction in number
of recruitment
consultant partners
45%
42%
27%
CEO
CHRO
45%
45%
CMO
9%
Top priorities in employer branding strategy
Hiring
Gen Y
Hiring
Leaders
Hiring Campus
Talent
Hiring
Global Talent
Hiring Mid-level
Managers
Hiring Niche and

Specialized Talent
47%
38%
39%
62%
28%
27%
47%
Survey Profile
RESE A R C H
Hiring
Women
Industry type
Construction and
Mining/Oil and Gas
Type of organizations
BFSI/
Finance
Health
Multinational
Company
Indian
Company
Small and Medium

Businesses
Public
Sector Unit
60%
26%
7%
1%
Other
6%
IT and
ITES
Insurance
Manufacturing
Total employee strength
Telecommunications
Services
Wholesale/
Retail Trade
>500
500-1000
1000-5000
5000-10000
>10000
16%
16%
33%
10%
26%
Other
OCTOBER 2016 |
6%
3%
3%
27%
6%
20%
3%
6%
6%
20%
89
Leveraging a
positive brand
perception
Sanjay Modi, MD - APAC and Middle East, Monster.com shares
his views on how companies need to capitalize their employer
branding initiatives to attract and retain talent
RESE A R C H
ompanies have realized the

importance of maintaining
regular communication
with their customers and in
todays digital world, conversations that
organizations have with their audience
have grown substantially. Although social
media forums have existed for some time
now, there is a renewed energy within
organizations that has accelerated the
levels of customer engagement. But
companies are no longer just talking about
their products. There has also been an
increase that has been seen in the way
companies have been communicating their
value proposition to prospective candidates
through communication channels, the
scope of which has increased almost ten
times. This trend has picked up as more
and more organizations are realizing the
benefits of employer branding to attract
the talent that they seek.
For reaping substantial benefits of
employer branding, organizations need to
tailor their employer branding approach
in a more focused way. If companies want
to influence their brand perception as good
employers, they need to invest for the long
run. Many organizations have dedicated
teams that assess employer-related conversations and take the lead in answering and
engaging with prospective candidates.
Communicating the value

proposition
Employer branding is no more about an
advertisement that companies put up on
a billboard or an event that they organize.
There have been significant investments
in sprucing up the company websites
and making them interactive. Companies
have realized the importance of creating an informative, easy to understand,
interactive websites to convey their value
proposition in a cohesive manner. Internet
for communication purposes is the most
robust approach across the several channels available. This transition has led to an
even closer alignment between depart90
| OCTOBER 2016
The focus should now

be on understanding
the talent expectations
and creating robust
communication channels through which
companies share realistic, honest and impactful stories about their
work culture
companys existing employees are talking

about it. It is beneficial to have a process
through which leaders and HR professionals are able to gauge what the employees
think about the company. By understanding their perception and improving on
the recommendations, companies can
understand what truly attracts the talent
out there. By highlighting aspects of
their work culture, in an honest manner,
employers can create a branding strategy that actually motivates prospective
candidates to become employees of the
company.
ments of marketing, communication and

the HR function. The ways to interact with
the audience is also becoming dynamic as
companies have also begun to minutely
look at what they broadcast and announce,
paying a close heed to the feedback they
receive. There is also a mind-set that prioritizes the long-term benefits of attracting
the right talent through such branding
activities rather than investing money
today and expecting results tomorrow.
Mapping candidate preferences
Conveying the right information

In order to demonstrate the brand and the
employee experience they create, companies today have to organize themselves
internally first. Employer brand communication should be a mirror reflection of
the internal workings of a company, rather
than a made-up reality that doesnt exist.
The idea of employer branding being an
effective way to attract talent can only
hold true when organizations deliver on
what they promise. For an employer brand
strategy to be successful, honesty and
acceptance are key factors. Today, there are
companies that are projecting themselves
as a young, vibrant and open company.
But, there is a chance that what they are
projecting is not true. This discrepancy
can cause challenges for a company when
it comes to retaining talent.
One way to strengthen the internal
workings is to start listening to what the
Employers have now realized the importance of collecting relevant data on the
changing candidate preferences. This is
reflected in our People Matters Monster.
com Employer Branding Trends 2016
survey as it indicated a significant alignment in the candidates and employers
preference for job stability and security as
the top priorities for candidates looking
for jobs. Companies today are beginning to set up exclusive data collation
processes that allow them to understand
the priorities of their workforce. This data
is then used to benchmark their employer
branding strategies, keeping in mind the
demographic variations across the talent
pool. Based on what they know, companies
today can realistically assess the areas
that their branding activities should focus
on to improve the results.
Although such avenues to understand
talent perceptions are fairly easy to
access, most companies are still to get
their focus and approach right to make
their branding strategies impactful. The
focus should now be on understanding the
talent expectations and creating robust
communication channels through which
companies share realistic, honest and
impactful stories about their work culture
in order to attract the respective talent
they intend to.
(As told to Ester Martinez and Dhruv Mukerjee)
Real Time Compliance Management

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Organizations have to adhere to many compliances
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likely to happen & give an opportunity to the contractor
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in a real time mode.
Some of the compliances that can be implemented in
real time mode are

Working without a weekly off

Maximum work hours exceeded in a week
Contractor Labour License expired
Labour License Capacity exceeded
Medical Check up not done
Induction training not completed
Work Order expired
Work Order Capacity exceeded
Female worker entry during night shift
Debarred worker entry
There are many more compliances which can be

handled in an offline mode as well.
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Sandhya Johnson
HR preparedness
for 2020
HR faces the challenge of keeping up with a constantly

evolving internal and external business landscape. But how do
businesses rate HR preparedness for 2020?
s t r a t e g i c
h r
92
versheds and Winwarks

survey reported that HR
functions, in general, scored
just over 3 out of 5 for their
level of preparedness to meet
organizational needs and requirements in
the year 20201. The question remains how
the business will rate HR preparedness
for 2020. HR faces the challenge of keeping
up with a constantly evolving internal
and external business landscape. It is
therefore not surprising that HR leaders
find the future daunting. Over the last
decade, there have been a plethora of
programs and initiatives that HR has been
implementing, executing, tracking, and
enhancing HR Business Partner model,
performance management, succession
planning, career management, leadership
development, assessment centers,
employment branding, engagement,
workforce forecasting, and the list goes on.
However, there has been very little time
dedicated to forward-looking strategies
and the proactive origination of business
aligned talent practices.
HR as a function has continued to
experience significant transformations
since the 1990s largely driven by the
business, technology, globalization and
other external market conditions. The
core mindset of HR has shifted from
being transactional to strategic, processdriven to data-driven, policies to cultural
practices, efficiency to effectiveness,
skills to capabilities, talent integration
to talent differentiation, and cost center
to competitive advantage. There are
numerous contributors in the field who
continue to propagate the urgency for
HR to be true business advisors, talent
champions, culture stewards, and
data scientists. Yet, HR continues to
be constantly occupied with resolving
immediate crises and launching underresourced initiatives, many of which will
not be completed. It is as though HR is
| OCTOBER 2016
Define the business

strategy and organizational
capability needs in 2020
Diagnose the
current state of HR
programs
2
3
Determine and
prioritize capability
gaps
4
Decide on investments
needed for competitive
advantage
5
Design HR programs
that are interrelated and
constitute a system
Develop a well
thought-out change
management plan
Direct timely roll-out

of initiatives
HR continues to be constantly occupied

with resolving immediate crises and
launching under-resourced initiatives it
is always working from behind, struggling
to catch up; skating to where the puck is
instead of where its going
always working from behind, struggling
to catch up; skating to where the puck is
instead of where its going. It is time for
HR to take on a mission critical, strategic
planning approach now in order to better
support the fulfillment of business goals
in the years to come. If you are an HR
leader who is feeling the need to step up
to better support your business, below is
the recommended HR strategic planning
methodology for 2020.
Define the business strategy and
organizational capability needs in

2020. The first step requires HR leaders
to adopt an inquiry-based method to gain
a deep understanding of the business
strategies for the next 3-5 years as well
as their human capital implications.
Stakeholder interviews with key
business leaders can be conducted to
gather information on: (a) key business
challenges that must be addressed, (b)
business initiatives that will need to be
executed to address these challenges, and
(c) capabilities and talent that will be

critical to achieve the desired results.
Diagnose the current state of HR
programs. Measuring effectiveness of
the current programs can be assessed
by gathering feedback from internal
customers (business leaders, line
managers/supervisors, and front line
employees), benchmarking against best
practice organizations, and having HR
delivery channels provide constructive
input on what is and what is not working.
An Effectiveness Survey with HRs key
customers followed up with focus groups
can be enlightening especially with
regard to verifying the value that HR is
providing to the business. Benchmarking
of operational as well as strategic metrics
can be yet another valid point of reference.
There is no greater resource to discuss
the efficiencies and effectiveness of the
prioritized HR focus areas. The HR

leadership team needs to complete the
required due diligence for each human
capital strategy, determining whether
it is more advantageous to buy or build
such capabilities. Additionally, they
ought to research the cost implications
and work closely with Finance and other
shared services to resource each initiative
appropriately. It is important to ensure that
HR examines its own internal resources.
Does it have enough of its key positions
staffed and budgeted? Are the people in
those roles the right people, with the right
skills for the future? This is an important
step and may require several iterations
until firm decisions can be made. Long
range planning and budgeting are as
vital to HR as they are to the rest of the
enterprise. HR in 2020 must be more than
just a necessary expense; it must show a
return on investments made.
Design HR programs that are
Develop a well thought-out

change management plan. The plan
to introduce the strategic programs to
the business needs to be carried out
thoughtfully. The goal should be to create
value and demand for the enhanced
programs. The pre-launch, launch
as well as post-launch activities have
to be determined ahead of time. The
communications plan could be vetted
with a sample group of business leaders
and line managers to ensure there is
agreement and acceptance to the timing,
messaging, etc. It is almost impossible
to over-communicate during a change
initiative. Some quick win milestones
must be designed into the change process.
Direct timely roll-out of initiatives.
When it is time to launch the solution(s),
it is essential for HR to affirm their value
proposition to the business. Throughout
the implementation, it is highly
recommended that HR be watchful for the
h r
current HR programs than the HR team

members themselves.
Determine and prioritize capability
gaps: The directional information
received on business strategies as well as
the assessment of the current state of HR
programs can be triangulated to identify
gaps within the HR portfolio of programs
and services. Besides identifying gaps, the
goal of this step is to also prioritize HR
programs based on impact and alignment
to business initiatives. It will be an
eye-opening activity for the HR team to
compare and contrast where their time and
efforts are being spent currently versus
the desired future state. This step also
highlights what actions will be necessary
to better align with business priorities.
Decide on investments needed for
competitive advantage. It is important
to ensure that there is an unwavering
commitment as well as complete buy-in
from senior business leaders on the
interrelated and constitute a system.

Once the priorities and programs have
been finalized, HR team members can
begin enhancing existing programs and/
or designing new ones to address future
human capital needs. One important
consideration during the design step is
to not create a collection of individual
HR activities but a system of distinct
and highly interconnected programs
that contribute to the organizations
competitive advantage. Each program
must be integrated with others to
ultimately drive the desired business
outcomes. Their underpinning must be
consistent in focusing on the acquisition,
development and retention of the critical
capabilities that were identified as
organizational gaps. The core teams that
are responsible for design could encourage
involvement from the business to insure
that priorities, resources and timelines are
in synch. High-level metrics that measure
the impact of the program should also be
agreed upon and finalized.
s t r a t e g i c
The HR leadership team needs

to complete the required due
diligence for each human capital
strategy, determining whether it is
more advantageous to buy or build
such capabilities
indications that the programs launched
are effective. The design team should be
open to feedback and make appropriate
edits if necessary.
It is evident that the global, political,
economic and business environments are
bound to continue to evolve up through
2020 constant change is inevitable.
This emphasizes the need for HR to be
more aligned with the business and to
participate in true long range planning.
Where is your HR function heading over
the next three to five years?
References
1 www.hr2020report.com
About the author
Sandhya Johnson, PhD, is the Founder

and Managing Director at Ingenium Global, a
Dallas-based consulting firm. She is a leader in
HR optimization, leadership development, team
performance, and organization effectiveness
OCTOBER 2016 |
93
Blogosphere
>> Sourish mohan mitra
It is imperative for companies to align their financial rewards program with

employees expectations and balance it with profitable growth. Heres why!
b l o g o s p h e r e
Can fat bonuses ensure

employee retention?
94
regularly read out stories to my four

year old son and this particular story
titled The Hunt from the coveted
Aesops fables caught my attention. It
goes like this:
One day the king of the jungle, the lion
went on a hunt with some other animals
and together they caught a deer. The lion
declared to the hunting party it is time
to divide the kill; the first quarter I shall
keep since I am the king. The second
quarter also I shall keep since I am acting
as the judge and dividing the meat amongst
us. The others meekly agreed. The lion
continued the third quarter shall also
be mine since I equally participated in
hunt with all of you. The other animals
had desperate expressions on their
countenance. He roared and concluded
as for the last quarter, let me see who is
brave enough to take it from me. All the
other animals fled in fear. The moral of the
story sometimes people work together to
achieve something, but may not be able to
share the reward.
There is a direct correlation of
the moral of the story to the actual
or perceived appraisal process. The
employees are generally clueless about
how salary hikes or bonuses are calculated.
It is fairly assumed that if the team,
division or unit has achieved its financial
goals or targets, the related growth of
the companys book size should also be
divided, thus generously creating high
anticipation of entitlement to a share of
the bigger pie. There are multiple factors
which kick in when determining annual
hikes. In todays world of recession and
uncertain market behavior, most prudent
companies are in a mood for cost-cutting,
which also affects appraisal of employees.
When increments are announced
and they appear significantly below
| OCTOBER 2016
While a company
may have growth
figures to keep
stakeholders
happy, it will take
a hit on employee
satisfaction, which
will surely impact
delivery and output
expectation, disgruntlement kicks in.
The obvious effect in most cases is a
severe backlash with an exodus. While a
company may have growth figures to keep
stakeholders happy, it will take a hit on
employee satisfaction, which will surely
impact delivery and output. Further, adding
to a companys woes, cost of hiring and
training new employees may have a reverse
impact on its profitability in the long run.
It takes an average of 8 to 26 weeks to reap
benefits from a new hire. Thus, it becomes

quite imperative for any company to
align its financial rewards program with
employees expectations and balance it
with profitable growth. Dolling out fat
bonuses to some employees at the cost
of the majority can be more detrimental
to employee retention on a bigger scale.
The top management need not always be
recipient of the major chunk of the money
available for distribution to employees.
The moot question is can fat bonuses
ensure employee retention?
Let us take the example of Tata
Consulting Services (TCS), one of Indias
largest private sector employers. Last
year it had announced a special bonus
equivalent to one weeks salary for every
year of service completed at TCS. The
attrition rate went up to 15.9% in the next
quarter from 14.9% at that time, to 16.2%
and then fell to 15.5% in the last quarter.
Thus it goes to show that largesse
shown by management to the masses
and not a select few, can certainly lead
to employee retention. A companys
payroll policy needs to be flexible enough
to accommodate such payouts and the
management needs to give a thumbs-up to
such pro-employee initiatives. It is clear
that in todays times behaving like the lion
did in the story above is outlandish, if not
suicidal.
(Views expressed are author's own)
About the author
Sourish Mohan Mitra is India-qualified

lawyer & currently works as Associate Director
with a Big 4 Firm in Delhi, India
folLow
M > @sourish247
> sourish24x7@gmail.com

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VOL VII / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2016

Creating brand ambassadors

Gerry Crispin, Principal &

Employer branding trends 2016

THE HUMAN-MACHINE DILEMMA

THE FUTURE YOU

2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

WHAT IS YOUR HR STORY?

Do you use a New age HR process?

If YES, share your story! IF NO, hear ours!

+91 8884022929 info@peopleworks.in www.peopleworks.in

imes are changing. We are

THE COVER STORY

it looks like this

ya, weve got it! but

VOL VII / ISSUE 10 / OCTOBER 2016

are uncertain. But many are of the opinion

Creating brand ambassadors

Gerry Crispin, Principal &

Employer branding trends 2016

THE HUMAN-MACHINE DILEMMA

The debate on automation and jobs

Technical feasibility of automation depending on

By Padmaja Alaganandan, Leader - People &

Organization, PwC India

Automation What it has done and

As told by Faridun Dotiwala, Master Expert, Partner, Lead

Technology has evolved the nature

By Saurabh Govil, President & CHRO, Wipro

THE HUMAN-MACHINE DILEMMA

The debate of Vs And

There is an emerging discourse

General Manager - Sales

Suparna Chawla Bhasin

Assistant ManagerS Content

J Jerry Moses | Shalini Sengupta |

Dhruv Mukerjee | Monalisa Deka

Design & Production

Manager - Neha Yadav

Amit Kumar | Marta Martinez

Removing manual dependency to

As told by Meher Sarid, Group President - Corporate Affairs

Artificial intelligence Is that a job

By Abhijit Bhaduri, Author & Digital Transformation Coach

The alluring promise of a blissful

By Murad Salman Mirza

Esther Martinez Hernandez

As told by Seema Arora Nambiar, Vice President Business

A renewed objective of automation at

Automation helps humans evolve

Printed and Published by

Mahesh Kumar on behalf of People

People Matters Media Pvt. Ltd.

People Matters Media Pvt. Ltd.

Note to the readers

The views expressed in

Printed and Published by

Mahesh Kumar on behalf of

Reproduction in any manner

the big Interview

Its about taking it to

Gerry Crispin, Principal & Co-Founder,

By People Matters Editorial Team

Krishna GV Giri, Chairman & CEO,