New Delhi: IILM Institute for Higher Education organised an HR Conference on ‘Transforming Human Resources through Technology’ at its Lodhi Road campus to deliberate on the role of technology in ‘Human Resources’ function, focusing on using a data driven approach to talent management. The conference served as a useful platform to bring together students, industry practitioners, HR enthusiasts and key stakeholders of organizations.
The theme of the conference was conceptualized to reflect on the role of technology in Human Resources function of organisations, its application and the pros & cons of applying a data driven approach to talent management.
On the HR conference, there were two panel discussions. The first delved into the area of ‘People Management in the digital world’ in which Mr. S. Swaminathan, General Manager HR Training, Airports Authority of India, and Mr. Subodh Saluja, Head Projects, Manpower Group shared their valuable inputs and initiated a dialogue. Mr. Swaminathan mentioned that knowledge is available aplenty and emphasized the need for skilling people, train them in the job, thus making them productive. Taking several examples, he shared the different ways in which technology has become an inherent part of human resources. He concluded his session with the thought that “true leaders of tomorrow will be hybrid professionals who combine digital skills with domain expertise”.
Mr. Saluja organised his views around two key questions: “Why digital technology is required and how can HR benefit from it?” and “How do you implement it?” Taking practical examples of implementation at Amazon and Godrej, he spoke about the gamut of applications of technology in human resources.
The second panel discussion focused on ‘Practice of People Analytics: Challenges and ethical considerations’ in which the panellists Mr. Babu Vittal, Head-Human Resources, Shop Clues, Mr. Shubhashish Nath, Managing Director, Axis Risk Consulting and Ms. Sonia Paul, Senior Manager, ITC Hotels expressed their views on the subject, encouraging a healthy discussion. Mr. Vittal gave a broad perspective of the range of data collected from an employee at the time of joining, during employment and while exiting, sharing examples of how this data can be used for the benefit of the organization.
Taking the example of Nadine – the robot receptionist at Singapore University, he demonstrated the wide range of services that can be digitally driven. Mr. Nath took the discussion forward taking examples of how Walmart and FIFA use analytics to present the extent of application of analytics. He also warned the audience to the downside of overdependence on data and emphasized the importance of keeping the context in mind while analysing any data. Ms. Paul added to the dialogue her hospitality experience taking examples from ITC underlining the need to be optimal in applying analytics.
