The role of human resources (HR) department is changing. It ceases to be the yesteryear’s communication department between management and employees and it is no more just a hiring or recruiting department. Now HR managers are required to play a more active role.
Rachna Singh, principal consultant, Transcendix, spoke on ‘HR 2020’ organised by the BL Club and sponsored by Syndicate Bank for the students of RJS Institute of Management Studies. She said the HR department would provide human capital advisory services in future.
“The future HR department will be an advisory body and it will advise an organisation what kind of work should be done. Hence, you need to be a change management champion. You need to constantly innovate, and constantly improve the systems at your department. It is also important to constantly reward the right behaviour and constantly build the right culture in an organisation,” Rachna said.
During the question-answer session, a student wanted to know the role of HR in curbing the attrition rate in an organisation.
Rachna said that about a decade ago, the attrition rate was in single digit. However, now it is around 15 per cent. “Even, this is fine. But the reality is the companies where there is zero attrition are also not happy because the feeling is that old employees are not leaving the company and youngsters are not coming in. Now, what companies have realised is that those employees who are happy with their job are willing to stay and they are least bothered about the salary package offered to them. And, managements are yet to perfect a mechanism to reduce the attrition rate,” she said.
B.V. Prabhakar, principal, RJS IMS, said that the average age of workforce by the year 2020 would be 29 years in India and it would be 60 years in China. The future HR managers have lot of challenges and that included finding suitable successors for companies, he said.
Delivering the presidential address, N.V. Keshava Reddy, chairman, RJS IMS, urged for global labour laws to protect the rights of labourers all across the world.
Aruna. K, head, Department of Management Studies, RJS IMS, introduced the guests to the gathering.
Information was also provided to students about ‘SyndVidya’, the educational product and the interbank mobile payment services launched by Syndicate Bank.