This year's edition of SIBM HR Conclave expanded minds and broadened horizons

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The corporate world ushers in new businesses frequently and houses an infinite number of small, medium and large businesses. Combined, the workforce is massive and needs routine supervision to keep them happy and motivated to help progress the company's future and their own. Enter the Human Resources(HR) department, ensuring these attributes are looked after.

To further diversify the role and responsibility of the HR professional, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) hosts an annual gathering for this purpose namely HR Conclave. Industry stalwarts of the HR world come together to give their views on what the current landscape is, what the future holds and how it can be shaped in a way that the already refined processes put in place can become more efficient.

This year's edition of the SIBM HR Conclave saw some prominent names grace the event with their presence as prolific speakers such as Ms. Anita Pai, Chief Operating Officer, Yes Bank along with Mr. Amit Malik, Chief People, Operations and Customer Services Officer, Aviva Life Insurance India LTD. and Mr. Subhankar Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director - Head HR & CSR - Asia Pacific & Japan, Lenovo.

This year's theme being 'Embracing agile HR - Responding to disruptive trends', the panel chosen to enlighten the audience consisted of some obvious names along with individuals defying the trends and the odds.

A pair of outstanding orators Mr. Amit Chincholikar, Global Chief Human Resources Officer, Tata Global Beverages and Mr. Ankit Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Dare2Compete teamed up to become moderators for this event to ensure the crisp flow of information and coordinate the entire panel's views on this important agenda. Mr. Aggarwal had this to say to begin the panel "HR is no longer a support function. It is a business in itself and it needs to be agile to ensure an agile and adaptable organization to take on all the environmental changes with ease."

The panel they were moderating was an exciting bunch from various domains consisting of multinational giants to conglomerates and entrepreneurial successes. Mr. Prasad, Executive Director - HR, KPMG India said 'Agility is the new currency. Our wallets can be heavier if we create learning agility.' In between their views and life lessons, Mr. Ankit Aggarwal shared his valuable insights into the world of employer branding ' People are the main asset that any organization has. HR role is to ensure that the right people are hired who are opening to unlearning and learning new games of the trade during their professional and personal journey and are ready to take on challenges as they are thrown at them. All of this doesn't come easy and is a cultural change, and most of it is driven top-down from the leadership.

The panel members were :

• Mr. Navneet Prasad, Executive Director - Human Resources(India), Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler
• Mr. Amit Jain, Associate Vice-President - HR, PeopleStrong
• Mr. Ranjit Jose, Head HR, Diageo Business Services India
• Mr. Binu John, General Manager - HR, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting
• Mr. Arvind Usretay, Director - Talent & Rewards, Willis Towers Watson
• Mr. Kunj Sanghvi, Co-Founder, InsideIIM
• Mr. Rajesh S Manik, Director - Human Resource, Deloitte
• Mr. Vikramjeet Singh, President & CHRO - Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd.

With constant innovation and up-gradation in every aspect of life, professional and personal, even HR gets a boost to become more adaptable to the modern circumstances. Intricate aspects of organizations such as facilitating and adapting the flexibility of the workforce employed. Also, supporting and conforming the organization to become more responsive and adaptive, and lastly adapting and restructuring if need be the activities within.

Keeping the above points in mind, the following pointers were discussed thoroughly:

• How to make the management workforce agile, smarter and impactful?
• What are the current actions taken by some organizations to move towards agility?
• How is technology playing a role in bringing 'agility'  inside an organization?
• How can agility help an organization to succeed in cut-throat competition?

Agility entails to have the ability to adapt quickly if not instantaneously with whatever changes that may come across you to stay ahead of the competition. The esteemed panel spoke specifically to the changes they had to put in place and the hindrances that came along the way and how they were studies and resolved for future needs. With one snippet being 'Large organizations need to get into the startup mode to ensure that they remain agile and things move quickly from one point to another without a need for multiple layers of approvals and thoughts. HR role is also to get cultural grammar for the organization in terms of what not to do as an employee rather than What needs to be done.', that Mr. Aggarwal pointed 0ut. With multiple industry representatives on stage, each panelist had their own story to tell that catered to their needs the best and how it made them a better more robust firm for the future.

Some of the facts that came up were riveting and kept the audience hooked. With the need for a better functioning and understanding thought process, the future versions of SIBM's HR Conclave promises to usher in a new wave of ideas and conversations for the betterment of both employer and employee.