"Only 17% Of Engineering Students Are Employable"

At the BW Businessworld HR Conclave 2017, an eminent panel comprising HR heads of Adidas India, Jindal Stainless, Jet Airways, Tata Steel, Jubilant Foodworks, Samsung Electronics addressed the challenges faced by the HR management community in India. 

Technology replacing Humans

Sandeep Tyagi of Samsung Electronics said, “HR people are no more just managers but leaders, a lot of collaboration with other functional role is going on. We try to give experiences which are as personal as possible as technology is not personal but HR has to be close to people.”

Adding to that, Arijit Sengupta, HR Director of Adidas India said that, “We will not be working in physical spaces near future but virtual. The way to deal with the change is to be proactive in its acceptance.”

Demands of Millennials

As India is on its way to be youngest country in the world by 2020, more millennials are joining the workplace.

Sandip Dhir of Tata Steel mentioned, “HR has to understand every individual to create a viable working environment.” Changes in the way of working, methods of working have to be in sync with the needs of people. Today, young people prefer mobile-friendly platforms for communication, performance management and continuous feedback .

“We have created an online workplace on facebook for 16000 employees where they share information related to work on real time basis. Also more than 500 groups have been created to address the work related issues.” Rahul Taneja, HR Head of Jet Airways said.

How to hire better and retain talent?

Amitabh Akhaurai, CHRO, Jindal Stainless said, "Only 17% of engineering students are employable due to lack of practical education in the country. Also, only 15% of the graduates that are being hired stay with the company for long time.”

Elaborating on the same he said, "To retain talent, HR has to improve the overall environment of the company leading to personal growth of individual along with organizational growth.”

Work Life balance

Rahul Taneja of Jet Airways mentioned, “We must encourage our employees to make changes in lifestyle for work life balance.”

Training HR people

HR is always busy imparting trainings to employees but they should also focus on self-capability building learning. Sandeep Tyagi, HR, Samsung Electronics advised, “To be updated with the business environment and latest innovation in the field, Training of HR professionals is equally important.”