HR the Facilitator

In a tech-savvy world, where it has been deemed absolutely essential to keep

your entire workforce networked or hooked on, companies are making it sure that

the advancements in technology help enhance the creative capacities of the

employees. In the knowledge industry, HR has got a pivotal role to play from

planning, hiring and even in rightsizing. The most important role is in bringing

in the quality talent available in the market. Once the talent is in, the

challenge for HR lies in grooming and retaining that talent and for this it is

imperative to create a culture within an organization, which facilitates an

associate’s growth and development. The approach has to change from reactive

to proactive HR.

Rajat

Ganguly, HR head at HPS, maintains that "the biggest challenge that HR

faces today is creating a uniform culture and opening up effective communication

channels, to help bring together people from different cultural

backgrounds".

With a very stringent recruitment process, the emphasis at HPS is to evaluate

an individual’s technical and behavioral strengths, along with domain

knowledge and leadership skills. And as technology requirements change, the

company constantly upgrades its productive intellectual capital. Ganguly says,

"We have set up Competency Development Centers (CDC) which are responsible

for analyzing trends and developing programs to enable our employees to rapidly

gain expertise in new technology areas. The CDCs also provide a medium for

client-specific training in methodology, technology and business domains."

Ganguly further explains that HPS has a robust management system, which helps

identify under-performers, who are subsequently put on the ‘Performance

Improvement Plan’.

HPS, employees are made to sign a network usage agreement at the time of

joining.

On the changing role of HR, Ganguly stresses that HR is not becoming

redundant, but some of the routine HR functions are.

"We are in the industry of knowledge and our capital assets are our

people, therefore it is imperative that we have a continuously evolving HR

department. HR in its new creative role as a facilitator is certainly not

redundant. It is evolving," he says.

Dhanya Krishnakumar



Dataquest