The 2nd Hindustan Times Shine HR Summit saw over 250 HR professionals and senior leaders in attendance, who addressed key issues of HR like attrition, recruitment, progressive HR policies and the future of current practices.

Harnessing the unbridled talent of the country is critical today. Four fundamentals that emerged as the most crucial are:

Pace it up: Quick decision-making and shouldering greater responsibility at early stages of one’s career is not just advocated by companies, but the millennial entering the workforce endorses this concept too. Tarun Kochhar, CEO, Carpediem, highlighted the need for this skill by contrasting test matches in cricket to the latest 20-20 setup of the game. He commented, “The game of cricket, like today’s business environment, has always been unpredictable. But, today everything is faster and results need to be delivered at a faster pace than ever before.”

Diversify: Leaders in the CEO session spoke beyond gender diversity in the organization. Sreekanth K Arimanithaya, CHRO, Britannia Industries, emphasized that there should also be diversity in ethnicity, ideas, age, experience, et al. “A leader with a diverse management team will get different and better ideas. A diverse team ends up throwing more challenges and there are lesser mistakes,” added Sandeep Dhar, CEO, Tesco HSC.

Toy with technology: Today’s corporate arena is fueled by technological advancements. The knowledge industry is growing bigger by the minute while industries that deal with the ‘hands and feet’ output are diminishing faster than ever before. “Earlier, we said work-life balance, now we say any-time-any-second,” said Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Director HR, Citrix, explaining technology’s role in creating virtual workspaces that have significantly increased industry output.

Invest in people: Suresh Ramasubramanian, Director, HR, Max India made a thought-provoking comment that there is no shortage of talent in India; managers need to be more willing to invest time in people. Skill scarcity and talent shortage are whims as per industry protagonists. “Lack of people is a major challenge for all. So, CEOs and HR need to consider a country-wide view in terms of talent and help develop a national human development strategy”, said Dilip Chenoy, MD & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation.