Saturday, September 06, 2008

4th ERA National Conference- Key note- ARE YOU READY FOR TOMORROW?

Yesterday, we had over 400 delegates attending the convention at The Grand Kakatiya, Hyderabad. About 40% of the attendees were from the corporate world- including Business Leaders and HR professionals-while recruiters formed about 40% of the delegates-rest being from academia, social service organisations and media.

The theme :Is Partnering a challenge? The 3 C Approach

During the last month, ERA Hyderabad had a series of 5 power breakfasts- inviting CEO/business leaders from specific industries-and one exclusively involving HR leaders and engaging them into a deliberating about the challenges of talent acquisition. 

The one day convention had some excellent take aways.Over the next few postings,I shall attempt to capture the gist of the deliberations made..

Mr. S.Sivakumar, Chief Executive, ABD, ITC Ltd delivered the the key note address

“Are you ready for Tomorrow?” 

Referring to a report by PwC –‘Managing Tomorrow’s People-The future of work to 2020’,Mr Sivakumar outlined three possible organizational models of the future, as a result of the changing global forces:

1. The Blue World –where ‘Corporate is king’. Capitalism rules as large corporates turn into mini-states and take on a prominent role in society.
2. The Green World ,i.e, ‘Companies Care’ -the environmental agenda enforcing fundamental changes in business strategy, and
3. The Orange World or ‘Small is beautiful’- companies breaking down into collaborative networks of smaller organizations.

He briefly touched upon the challenges each of these business models would bring about in people management!

Mr Sivakumar however, wagered to stake his bet on “the Orange world” with specialization dominating the world economy .

He predicted that as a result of increasing specialization, the responsibility of ‘skills development’ will shift wholesale from corporates to individuals, as members of a professional network rather than as an employee of a particular company! Their engagements would be short term restricted to some projects. Naturally, the role of HR would change!!

Going forth, to be relevant, he advised the recruitment consultants to evolve from the traditional ‘vendor model’ assembling a shortlist to a ‘partnering mode’- which would not just restrict the gamut to sourcing, but also building in employee value propositions, to help onboarding, and even outplacement of employees on the completion of the projects.

He prophesied that the dominating recruitment agencies of the future would need to be focusing on ‘co-creation model’ and would morph into exchanges between organizations and talent alliances.


The crystal gazing effort thus set the ball rolling for a series of panel sessions, focusing on specific industry tracks –that saw several business and HR leaders deliberate and interact on the challenges –and explore how the corporates and consultants could collaborate in future for engaging the ‘candidate’ in the most efficient manner

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