Tanvi Sharma | Head - Strategy & Business Dev, Ex-HR Head Transformer Div | Raychem RPG
Learn – Unlearn - Relearn. With technology taking a central role in business and daily, it will be paramount for any organization to reskill its human capital to stay ahead of the curve. Technological innovations like Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, Natural language processing, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, Augmented reality and more are slowly digitizing most of the organizational processes and humans in future organizations will play a more strategic role for decision making. I believe that it will not be either technology or human as one cannot truly replace the other. However, the two will have to co-exist and co-create. Technology will augment human intelligence (i.e. Augmented Intelligence) in daily lives and decision making. Human cognitive ability and contextualization will still be of great value.
I believe a true HR business partner can play a central role in taking organization through this critical transformative journey. The HR role itself will expand beyond people management and extend to corporate strategy, digital transformation, skills development for a world in Web3.0. I aspire be the pioneer in this transformative journey of HR role as we enter this new world of augmented intelligence.
Points of differentiation
Over the period of time I have been exposed to different business roles and gained good business acumen:-
- As Head: Business Development & Marketing: I got to know deep insights on internal as well as external customers’ needs & expectation.
- As Head Strategy: I got an opportunity to link business long term goal with business & HR strategy, cascade it to the last level goals and measure the success of it.
- As Head of Customer Success and Driving Digital: I am responsible for enhancing each customer touch points by bringing in digital initiatives and bringing transparency across the entire business value chain.
- As Head HR/ Plant HR head/ Business Partner HR / Corporate HR: I have worked on different initiatives including employee engagement (Getting “Great Place To Work” Award), Learning and Organizational Development for Cultural Change (Getting Leadership League Award by People Matters) and Focused Corporate Social Responsibility for women empowerment & Capability Development for white collar and workmen (Getting Top 100 HR minds in India Award by World HRD Congress & Times Ascent).
- I believe having developed this T-shaped core skill: having breadth as exposure to different roles and depth of people processes is a differentiating factor.
- A multi-dimensional approach towards corporate strategy, people development and digital transformation will be key to success in the HR role of future organizations.
Biggest Talent Priority to solve
Matching a job opening with the right candidate. Today India ranks highest in terms of unemployment. But interestingly, Indians have the highest cognitive ability as well. We rank smarter and competent in front of our foreign counterparts. Also, our talent drain is highest which means we are not able to match the right candidate with the right job. I would like to work upon a new concept of each organization having an education factory/school of their own, wherein they develop talent internally as per not their core products only but for predictive future disruptive technologies. The focus on T-shaped multidimensional skills will be key to jobs in future.
The one thing I will retain in HR
I would like to retain the human aspect. No matter how many talent sourcing, onboarding softwares we have, the kind of satisfaction & comfort an employee has with a direct conversation can’t be replaced with simple chatbots. Human have basic need of social recognition & conversation which can’t be fulfilled by technology & machines. So, I would like to retain the human touch of HR.
The one thing I will change in HR
The way forced exits takes place. While hiring a candidate, we connect with candidates many times, give them customized offers which suit their needs, help them in their transition and go beyond our boundaries. However, when an employee is fired or given a pink slip, his experience is exactly opposite. I would like to bring the same customization when we ask an employee to exit as a result of manpower rationalization.
For e.g.: No matter how high or poor performing employee one is, if one is on the list of exit, both gets 2-3 months of salary. Also, HR connects once over a call/physically and that’s it. Rather than this, we can do customized offerings, for e.g.: rather than giving an exit compensation amount at a go, it can be spread over a period of time. We can even ask them to work for an extended period of time on contract at a nominal/subsidized salary. This is beneficial for organization as well – savings in interest cost, avoid any short term skill gap, ensure smooth skill handover – as the employee is still on the job. This will also help in corporate brand equity.
Vision for HR's future growth
I envision the Human Resources future growth as a strategic business partner unleashing the 3 Cs-
Culture
- Fostering an innovative culture
- Leaders for driving digital
- Leveraging multi-generational workforce (Gen X,Y,Z) & diversity
Capability
- Blended & adaptive learning scheme for developing T-shaped skills & design thinking
Connect
- Enhancing the human touch
- Centre point for integrating all functions
- Experts of change management to help organization for smooth transition in this VUCA world