‘HR needs to be adaptive and flexible to deal with new normal’

Visakhapatnam After a year of getting "humans" back to offices, HR professionals are now striving to put the "human" back in human resources. While hybrid work culture is here to stay, HR professionals are working to bring about engaging employee experiences while supporting skill development, diversity, wellbeing and security. Compassionate culture is now the order of the day. HR needs to be adaptive and flexible to deal with the new normal, said Dr V Murali Krishna, Vice Chairman, CII Andhra Pradesh and Managing Director, Vizag Hospital & Cancer Research Centre Pvt Ltd in his opening address.

D Ramakrishna, past chairman, CII AP stated: “As companies are experiencing rapid change, business leaders foresee new ways to grow their organisations giving a rise to more strategic roles for the HR leaders."

Sharing his keen insights during a theme address K Srinivasa Rao, founder and chief strategist of The Strategist said, “HR is the game-changer for any business in the post-pandemic ecosystem where change and culture are core to success and the path to that begins with building in belief in purpose.” Gautam Gupta, MD & CEO of Paradise Food Court Pvt Ltd, said culture plays a very important role and one should have “be good” cultural codes which are percolated down the line by constant appreciation and recognition of instances when these values are displayed at any level.

Dr PS Tagore, convenor, CII, Visakhapatnam HR Panel and Vice President-HR & IR Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services India Pvt Ltd, said empathy is a critical HR leadership skill. It helps build and sustain positive workplace relationships, foster diversity and inclusion, encourage cooperation and collaboration, and facilitate conflict management.

Emphasising the need for innovations in HR, Keval Savla, Lead HR-Talent Management, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt Ltd, said with the world moving digital, the notion of work, workplace and workforce is changing. So, it is important to leverage technology in business processes. Thus, making HR transformation an important element that needs to be prioritised, not only for growth and seamless functioning but also for appealing to the millennials who are the latest workforce driving the growth story of organisations all over the world.

Stressing the need for engaging and retaining employees, Srikanth Surampudi, HR Head-Hyderabad, TCS, said businesses must put people at the heart of how they design and use their HR technology. Organisations are increasingly realising that employee experience is crucial to business success. However, the focus now is on retention and reskilling. "We are putting the ‘human’ of human resources at the centre, via technology," he stated.