Chief Employee Officer

Q. Define the CEO’s role in transforming HR.

A. If CEOs spend more time with HR, it will motivate and drive the HR team to transform from operational HR into strategic HR. The CEOs should take proactive steps to involve core business team in HR activities.

Q. What is the biggest challenge that CEOs face while working with HR on a common ground?

A. The senior HR people do not have any exposure to the P&L, cash flow or market reach, therefore HR should be equipped with the necessary skills. HR team is generally internal facing, whereas CEO has a 360-degree view of different aspects of the business. Traditional way of handling HR function may not provide answers to big HR challenges. A radical transformation can be achieved if CEO is driving the change management along with HR.

Q. How can a CEO help HR deal with diverse workforce?

A. The CEO can act as an ambassador with a common message and vision as a string to connect diverse workforce. CEO has to ensure the establishment of a common working platform. One of the challenges is to tackle the needs and wants of the diverse workforce. When it comes to senior employees who have spent 20-30 years with the business, we focus on giving a two career path. Likewise, the people who do not have the capability to grow in management have the freedom to grow technically and when it comes to salary expectations they will be equivalent to their peers who are there in the managerial positions. Here, the time spent by the employee in the firm matters as senior employees tend to be more loyal to the business.

Regional diversity for the employees who go to foreign locations can be handled by equipping them with the right knowledge through required training and development programmes. Click here to read more...

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

The current inflation can turn out to be too dear for UPA

For any country like ours, which houses the maximum number of poor households, any form of price distortion in basic commodities invariably remains a sensitive issue. And probably it is for this very reason it has been observed that citizenry has historically pardoned various elected governments of poor overall governance but has never pardoned any government for general prices mismanagement. And that is all the more reason, it becomes even more intriguing to analyse as to why the current UPA government has allowed the inflation to go beyond control and that too, at a point in time when the elections are ‘round the corner. On the face of it, it looks like that two reasons, i.e. complacency and miscalculation had been the villain of peace for the ruling UPA. For they could never pre-empt that the crude oil prices would spiral to this extent, and even if they had, then they had blatantly avoided it by thinking that they would be able to tide over the situation riding on the growth plank. This is also evident from the statements that are being issued from the Finance Ministry, wherein the onus of the inflation is put on crude oil prices!...Continue

Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri

Is the government hell bent on digging its own grave? The last part of my reservation trilogy!

Last fortnight, I was invited for a talk show on Janmat, and I had a new learning – which I think, I must share. I was supposed to express and defend my views on reservations. As the compere of the show completed his opening lines for the show, I realised that I had actually been invited to speak on reservations of a different kind! An issue with far more damaging possibilities of creating nuisance in the country than the education reservation issue. The issue was of reservations of jobs in the private sector. As the debate progressed, I realised its real potential to ignite illiterate minds and divide the country further on the basis of castes, without providing any permanent solution to the existing problems. Education is something one has to strive for years to get. So the people demanding reservations are physically not really seen around much. But if the question is about job reservations, then you would be able to see those demanding it in all street corners. Such is its potential to entice people to come out in support of it (in a country with mass unemployment like India) that every second person you meet would want job reservation! What can be better than not having to compete for a vacancy, but have it on a platter through reservations?

And nothing can be more damaging for India on the whole at this point in time than this completely ridiculous idea of having reservations in private sector jobs. First, the government fails to do things it was meant to do and the country stagnates with a typical 3% Hindu rate of growth for more than 40 years. Then finally, by default, it embraces liberalisation, allowing the private sector to break free of the license raj and give India the much deserved respect in the global arena. And then, just when there is good news all around, comes this farce from the government of attempting to do away with its basic responsibility and putting the responsibility of the unemployed masses on the private sector. Shame on every politician who endorses such a regressive idea. No, they are not illiterates to not understand what a crime it is, at this point of time, to force such a non-free market policy down the throats of the private sector, and create the huge possibility of making them non-competitive in the world markets. They are simply “India non-committed politicians.” They know, this way they can put the blame on the private sector, as if they are the villains not ready to give jobs to the unemployed; as many asked me, vociferously, during the show – Is the private sector’s objective only to make profits? Don’t they have any social responsibility? In my entire life, I had never heard of such an irrational definition of social responsibility.

The answer of course, in this case, is that the social responsibility of the private sector is to remain competitive & earn more profits; and therefore grow more & create more jobs. They are, in any case, creating the jobs, and reservations won’t help them create more jobs or reduce unemployment. It will only disgust them & push them into giving existing jobs that they are creating, to – not necessarily – deserving candidates and therefore ruining their competitiveness, and therefore reducing the entire process of job creation. It is as simple and basic as that, and the last politician one would expect not to know this, is our highly educated ex-IMF-World Bank Prime Minister.

So what should the government do? It should simply mind its own business and stop irritating those – the private sector – who are doing the country proud after years of third class existence. It should stop dividing the country on illogical grounds and should stop taking advantage of the biggest, calculated and deliberate crime against Indians that it has committed – that of keeping the masses illiterate. And in turn, should start working for a change. It should begin by giving people primary and secondary education for one. And from the year it starts on with a sincere process of education drive for all Indians, regardless of caste, creed, religion and economic condition, it can then – if at all it is hell bent on having reservations – divide the real percentage of backward castes by 16 (typically those many years of good education make a man capable of jobs) and start progressively reserving as much proportion of jobs for them year on year. That means, if OBCs etc. are 48% of our population, then it can start with a 3% percent reservation in the first year and increase it by 3% every year, till it touches 48% in 16 years. Because, by then, in any case those 48% would, on their own merit, have reserved 48% seats for themselves – for, given the same education, every human being is capable of becoming as competent. That’s the basic truth of life. And if the government does anything else, it surely is digging its own grave, for without the support of the private sector, the country & the government both will see their worst.

(Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri, Dean of IIPM)