Eminent CEOs and HR Heads came together to discuss about Building Future ready retail Organizations and setting a vision for HR in the sector at the 10th edition of the Manning Modern Retail Conference of the Retailer Association of India (RAI). 

The theme was "Building Future Ready Retail Organizations". The Summit uncovered the three new imperatives of people practices to help retail organisations be ready for the future:

Hiring for attitude: “Recruiting for IQ and EQ is not enough anymore. TO create future ready organisations, we need to recruit for AQ – Adversity Quotient. It means we need to hire people who have the attitude to see adversity as opportunity and plan to capitalize on it,” said Aslam Karmali, CEO, Direct Sales and Senior Vice President, Marketing Eureka Forbes Ltd.

Project-based appraisals: “If we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, have can we make a 5-year plan and assess performance according to it?,” asked B S Nagesh, Chairman – RAI; Founder – TRRAIN in his keynote address to MMR 2016. He predicted that soon, considering the VUCA (Volatile Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous) business environment, we need to prepare for shorter business cycles. Soon, organisations will be appraising people on projects completed rather than waiting to assess their performance at the end of the year. “This will help organisations be nimble and flexible,” he said.

Alignment to customers rather than goals: Gone are the days when teams and hierarchy in the organisation were aligned to the company vision or business goals. “As an organisation, if all your management levels, especially the top-management, are not aligned to their customers in age and attitude, then they have no business being there. Ensure that all employees are able to think like customers and think young – because that’s going to be your main customer base,”   

Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, RAI, said “The customer is changing, the market is changing as well as the technology is changing. Therefore, it’s imperative that the way we hire and nurture talent needs to changes too. At MMR 2016 HR leaders across different formats of retail and other service-driven industries freely exchanged ideas on people practices that will help organisations to anticipate uncertainties of the future and thrive. There were a lot of insights that HR leaders could back and implement at their workplaces.”

Through its power-packed sessions the Conclave covered some very interesting issues relevant to today’s HR, not just in retail but across industries. 

Other highlights of the event included: 

• Release of the RAI-Complykaro handbook ‘Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace at the hands of Vishal Kedia.
• A talk by Ambi Parmeswaran, veteran ad man and author Nawab, Nudes and Noodles on what How HR can learn to map Societal Trends for Talent Management. 

This year, Manning Modern Retail (MMR), presented the 1st ever Retail HR Awards which recognises the shining stars of Retail HR. The awards were presented in two categories HR Emerging leaders Awards and HR Breakthrough Awards. The top 3 finalist under each category presented in front of the Jury and winners are as follows: HR Emerging Leaders award was presented to Aradhna Pujari, TCNS Clothing and HR Breakthrough Awards to MaX( Landmark Group).

The Summit witnessed other interesting sessions like The Breakfast Alchemy: Increasing revenue per employee in Indian Retail Talent Scarcity, Incentives at Work: A retail sector perspective and Digital transformation and challenges 2020.

As retail copes with a dynamic, digital VUCA world, MMR 2016 encouraged HR leaders to abandon traditional perspective on HR and embrace new ideas and practices towards people management in HR that will help Retail ready for the future but also make it one of the most preferred employer in the country.