People Matters

Cover Story : India Skilling

By Tejasvi Mohanram & Ester Martinez

Jul 1st 2010

The labour situation in India – one with an estimated 240 million additional skilled workforce requirement over the next 10 years and with 250 million workers currently untrained and underemployed – has all the makings of a socio-economic disaster. Over the last couple of years, policy makers have awakened to the reality of an outdated vocational training system that falls way short of the demand for skilled manpower. People Matters talks to people from government, industry, indu... Read more »

Cover Story - The View From Government

Jul 1st 2010

On Vocational TrainingMeera Shenoy: Most of government training in the past, whether ITI or otherwise, has suffered from being “training for trainings sake” or done at the end of the year to exhaust budgets. The other problem has been many trainings have been in traditional areas without moving in pace with the new economy demands. Slowly, change is happening. ITIs are being successfully turned around in a PPP mode with companies adopting ITIs and overhauling outdated curriculum.&n... Read more »

Cover Story - The Industry View

Jul 1st 2010

Demand-Supply Mismatch V.M. Kaul: The problem is that most of the work going on is being executed through contractors. We don’t manufacture our own towers but outsource them. While we do a lot of induction and training, we find that there is a big skill gap with our contractors. But these contractors are not keeping pace and do not have many skilled labour to effectively manage operations. So the gap is prevalent from that front. Quality of work depends upon the skills of the person who... Read more »

Cover Story - The Facilitators View

Jul 1st 2010

Organization’s mandateDilip Chenoy: NSDC is mandated to do three different things. We have to create and set up institutions in places where none exist. Second is to enable institutions to train people in a sustainable manner so that they are employable. So we are not looking at things such as grants, aid or charity. It is really a business model to help people break the supply gap that exists. The third element is concentrating on the area of standards and accreditation. Under the Natio... Read more »

Waka Waka!

Jul 1st 2010

The world’s biggest sporting occasion is a celebration of teamwork and human competitive spirit. People Matters looks at World Cup 2010 and highlights the top organizational and management takeaways from the sporting carnivalTheme#1: Investing in Talent1998 was a washout year in German football. The team had been thrashed 3-0 by outsiders Croatia in the World Cup Quarterfinals and it was plain to see that not enough talent was coming through the ranks of Germany’s supposedly well-o... Read more »

Conflict and Resolution in the Myths of Oedipus and Brahma: A reflection of their respective world views

By Rajeshwar Upadhyaya

Jul 1st 2010

Man’s is a lonely predicament; and religion has sought to extol his ‘aloneness – sometimes providing a rationale for existence and evolution. All religions, without exception, seek to provide man with a deeper, saner reality – something more fundamental than that which ordinarily meets the eye. At the depths of truth, words conjure up meanings that belie their etymology and therefore words will have to be seen as reflective of states of mind. The deep recesses of the h... Read more »

Growing Upstream - Indian Oil’s Transformation into an Integrated Energy Company

Jul 1st 2010

In an exclusive interaction with People Matters, B.M. Bansal, Chairman, IOC and V.C. Agarwal, Director – HR and Director-in-charge (IBP Division) IOC discuss the market-oriented and organizational challenges faced and overcome by the PSU since it set forth to becoming an integrated energy player a decade agoHow has been the evolution of the business since 1991? Mr. Bansal - Until 1991, IndianOil was purely a downstream company. We were not into any other businesses. It was only after li... Read more »

The Intellectual

By Shantanu Dhar

Jul 1st 2010

In fond memory of HCL Technologies Co-founder, Subramanian Raman and his simple, yet effective, management styleOn a recent flight, I discovered that the person next to me was a business head of a midsized manufacturing organization. His eyes also lit up when he discovered that I am an HR professional. The gentleman, a senior profile in his fifties, decided to talk about competency management in an organization.He asked me, `What is a competency ‘?`Identifying those ingrained behaviors t... Read more »

Across Time, Enterprise and Applications

By Balaji Ganesh, CEO, Adrenalin eSystems Limited

Jul 1st 2010

HR Technology should adapt to the needs of today’s organization by providing seamless integration of data & applications and ability to address the needs of a mobile and geographically spread workforce, says Balaji Ganesh, CEO, Adrenalin eSystems Limited In today's increasingly service-driven economy, attention is gradually shifting toward assessing and managing the performance of the less tangible assets like the human capital. How does a HRIS/HRMS system contribute to this objecti... Read more »

Workforce Analytics Key to Corporate Profitability

By Dick Cahill, VP & GM International, Kronos Incorporated

Jul 1st 2010

Workforce Analytics enables the HR to play a strategic role in achieving corporate profitability providing insights to drive growth, says Dick Cahill, VP & GM International, Kronos IncorporatedWhat is the strategic value of your time, attendance, leave, schedule data? Is your organization sitting on a gold mine of untapped workforce performance information that could deliver huge performance improvements without dramatically disrupting your workplace? It is a truth universally acknowledge... Read more »