To be able to take up a managerial role in the fast moving and ever changing industrial scenario, today’s managers must have a strong grip on all interfaces of business areas and they also need the skills for researching relevant information, working with teams, communicating their ideas effectively and convincing others .That is what the MBA programs are all about, isn’t it? It’s all about equipping the student with all the knowhow, skills and confidence needed for his chosen career. WeSchool strongly believes in integrating the philosophy of Leadership and Innovation with a design-thinking approach into management education by offering ‘Different ‘programs that are also flexible so that the students get a chance to get in touch with their respective developmental needs and opportunities to practice the skills with real life business scenarios. Students are also encouraged to bring in their work experience to the learning table and expected to analyze and develop strengths , reflect on weaknesses ,map out charts of personal growth and be equipped with tools of success in career and life .In short, the academic activities at WeSchool equip them for future as an adoptable and confidant professional. And today companies are looking for people that can combine innovation with experience to find better ways to do things. Innovation cannot just come from delivering products or services; it may be in logistics, financing, marketing, organizational design or a better way to handle attrition.
The manifestations of this ‘different ‘approach to business education at WeSchool are many. While Stita Misra (PGDM – Batch ,2011-13) and her team of young scribes has gone on to launch ‘Samvad’ an online magazine dedicated to all that is evolving in business education , Sohail Sayani ( PGDM Business Design 2011-13 ) and his team of music aficionados has successfully launched Mumbai’s first in-campus web based radio channel ‘RadioWE’ that offers education as well entertainment on its multiple waves.
An extremely sensitive, touching short story by Anchal Singh (PGDM Business Design 2011-13) is selected from nearly four thousand entries that poured in from all nooks and corners of the world, for ‘Inspired by Tagore’, an anthology published by The British Council in honor of the birth centenary of the Indian noble laureate and at the other end of the spectrum ,a very precisely written research paper titled ‘Embedding Technology Human resource-Distance converd and road map’ by Shweta Maheshwari ( PGDM 2011-13) has got published in Conquest, the much revered management journal of IIM (Shillong ) .
And Himanshu Kapadia, the champion of ‘out-of-the box-thinking and action ‘ who went on to win fourteen prestigious awards and top honors during his course of study at WeSchool continues his winning streak by winning an internal competition at HDFC ,where he has joined as a Trainee in May 2012.
Immediately after joining the HR Dept at HDFC, Himanshu was sent for a four day induction program ’Swagat ‘where the first day was spent in company specific learnings and the rest of days were reserved for training in the basics of Banking & Financial Services Industry. The Chief People Officer was personally involved in the project work where each trainee was expected to undergo a Special learning program covering nineteen points exhaustively covering the entire gamut of HR life-cycle; they were tagged to six different mentors to comprehensively understand what are the practices and systems within the bank over those nineteen processes.
They were asked to work on special weekly assignments of working with live data from the bank and recommend changes / process improvements which were presented to the Chief People Officer and most of them were actually implemented. This was followed by submission of a book report on learnings over the first two months, based on our understanding of the nineteen points. Then came the acid test, where they had make the final presentation to the entire HR Leadership Team of HDFC, on the Induction / Mentoring program, along with an overview of projects they had worked on and recommendations that they had implemented. The outcome – They are now formed into a “Central Resource Management Team” which is working on extremely strategic agenda of creating job inventories and defining source mix for recruitment of each job within the bank . They have been entrusted with the responsibility to manage the entire resourcing channels for the bank.
“To top it all, HDFC had announced an internal competition to encourage the HR trainees to come up with innovative branding ideas and I’m glad to inform you that I have bagged the award by winning the competition in the entire HR dept. But the best part is, the entire HR Transformation Exercise will be named “E-mpower” which was my winning idea. I have also been entrusted to design a logo for this initiative. It is rare that in such a short span of time, one gets so much exposure and appreciation, more than that, a chance to give ideas and see them being appreciated and executed is a big high! “, Conveyed an excited Himanshu.
“My stint so far has been extremely enriching and empowering. The senior level management has taken a keen interest in my work and has really appreciated it. The feedback received from my mentors has contributed to giving me a better professional edge “, says the budding HR Manager well on his way to a very creative career graph at HDFC.