The Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) India’s Human Capital Analytics recently organised a workshop to sensitise companies with perspective and process understanding, the ultimate aim being to enable them to improve the quality and effectiveness of people related decisions, which should be based on logic, information and analysis. Vijayan Pankajakshan, dean, human resources at WE School, Mumbai, key instructor at the workshop, believes that “HR professionals can bring huge value to any organisation’s goals and aspirations, at the same time ensuring in a significant manner the development of the human capital in an organisation”.In his opinion, decision making is always based on judgment. What data, facts and information do is help the manager make a better judgment. There are hardly any people-related decisions that can be taken based on gut or only on dry acts and logic. Hence, companies can get their decision making ‘more right’ by equipping managers to have the right tools, processes and enabling frameworks.

In this context, Management Information System (MIS) is a well developed management practice in most organisations — small or big. It captures the performance of the organisation/function/business on a number of metrics, and is representative of a particular time period: weekly, daily, even monthly. A dashboard is also a performance reporting tool that focuses on those key metrics that is relevant for a company, at a point of time, in a particular business context. Pankajakshan feels “There will be continued focus on optimising the mix of Full Time Equivalent’s (FTE) to be hired, contingent staffing levels besides outsourcing arrangements”. He adds, “Preference will be given to candidates who can ‘come up to desired minimum productivity levels’ sooner”. In his view, enhancing the ‘real diversity’ in the workforce — to support serving the customers/clients, better and more profitably and employees who bring a ‘portfolio of skills and capabilities’ will be preferred over ‘one-dimensional’ candidates.

On the question of what lessons educational institutes can draw from HR practices, he talks about attracting the right talent and retaining the high performers as paramount factors. In fact, statistics and presentations at the workshop indicated that the education Industry in India is going through transformational changes at various levels to keep up with this. “The impact and influence a teacher can bring about is gaining prominence”, he concludes.

— pallavi@newindianexpress.com