Set the tone of the discussion as to discuss the various difficulties that are being faced by everyone, especially women during this lockdown; who are trying to strike a work life and family balance.

Delivered his opening notes, wherein he mentioned that he conducted a survey for working married women, and the results do emphasize that workload has increased in lockdown as compared to pre-Covid.

The summary of the survey indicated:

Below is the summary of the survey:

74% women responded saying workload has gone up in absence of domestic help

23% said husbands don’t help them at home, whereas 42% said they receive help from their husbands

76% felt the necessity of having Work from Home guidelines

61% want to have flexible working hours

Many emphasized on empathy from organizations in terms of working hours and meetings, and general guidelines irrespective of gender

Expressed his views on having the policies. Everyone needs to be aware during as well as post the lockdown, about the policies that we want to build. Considering lockdown, all members of the family are hot due to absence of domestic help. As we are moving towards the end of lockdown, we need to consider the post life situation. Covid has been a University of Hard Knocks, an eye opener about valuing people of low authority like laborers and house help. Covid has brought about the realization that they are not under the peripheral vision, but are supporting you from beneath and you are standing probably because of them. This brings across empathy, which in Indian ethos means Dharma. Tyranny of generalization has been plaguing the administration and HR; as India as a country is different where even job descriptions don’t work and role is important.

We need to reflect on what exactly serves the customers. Like many big brands are named differently in China as compared to other parts of the world. It means having a perspective that makes me as well as the other person happy. So how long will HR hide behind the generalization? Today we are looking more at personalization than customization. Covid has let people leave behind their control obsession and risk averseness. In India everything is mutually dependent, given that I’m unsure if we can come up with policies that don’t decrease productivity.

Had a different perspective on this topic. According to her the past 2-3 months has only exasperated what already existed in the community. Drawing from her own experience as well as other females’ with whom she interacts; she mentioned, “Our community has certain inbuilt expectations from women, like responsibilities of home. I feel women go through guilt when we feel we are not able to do certain things that are expected out of us. Personally I have been able to convince myself that I cannot be perfect at everything. I need to have a balance between my personal and work time”

As per her this is a good time for women to start making everything inclusive. With or without policies, it’s important for women to bring in the inclusive mindset to bring in the work balance.

Expanded the discussion by agreeing with Ms. Monica’s views. As women we need to get everyone onboard regardless of lockdown or post Covid. The euphoria is that husbands and kids might have promised to help with work, but now the ownership is back to women to figure out home-schooling and rest of the house work.

Communication needs to be transparent with female employees and expectations need to be set. In her opinion, prioritizing and not multitasking will be a long term solution. Timelines also need to be discussed at home. Everyone has lost the differentiation between work days and holidays.

She quoted Bazner, ‘’you have to be more respectful of others and try to avoid conflict situations by monitoring your own behavior. You have to be more honest and lenient to others but also have to control yourself ’’

I hope there will be more gender equality rather than diversity.

Brought her perspective to the plate, where she mentioned; the results received from Mr. Sanjeev’s survey were transactional in nature. These are fixable issues as that work will get delegated post Covid. Many organizations are considering various aspects like liquid working. She agreed with Mr. Naga’s perspective of showing trust and empathy towards employees; as well as Ms. Monica and Ms. Pooja’s opinion on mindset needs to start changing. Women tend to thrive to become perfectionists and end up killing themselves while achieving it.

During lockdown, especially for women, they are taking more responsibilities, perfection and guilt is leading to burnout resulting in mental stress. Apart from these, there has been a rise in sexual harassment and 47% increase in domestic abuse. This makes it necessary for us to have a country wide policy to help and support these women.

Ms. Nitu Mohanka shared her perspective next, agreeing with most of the views of other panelists. Finally there has been an acknowledgement that women have more responsibilities at home, which has been imbibed in our culture. She feels rather than expecting others to understand, women need to be stubborn and do what they feel is right. She personally maintains a calendar to track her work throughout the day.

My belief is that it is important to have fewer, but focused hours of work when you are WFH to ensure that the quality of output at work is really superior. Also ensure that we only accept deadlines that we can actually deliver on. Finally, have a very transparent relationship with your manager for setting expectations.

I would suggest that women should stop feeling guilty about not being able to give your house the kind of attention it’s seeking every day. We can’t be perfect. Everyone is adjusting to the New Normal. It’s about time we help our kids/ family be self sufficient and work like equals.  

It’s all about guilt. Am I doing good enough? There is a theme of wanting to do it all in this question. Can I do all of it, like nothing has happened and I’m working from home? You need to ask yourself ‘do I have to do everything that I was doing earlier during normal times?’ or ‘how do I adapt to this situation and work with stakeholders with changed expectations?’

Everybody reacts differently to situations. A bias already exists which says, ‘A woman is the nurturer and a man is the bread-winner’, where women are expected to resolve domestic issues and men to take care of finances. This patriarchy exists and we are unable to think beyond it, even when the world is moving towards equality. We need to think on how we can change this mindset as a community together. Also 72% of the women do not speak out for themselves.

In agreement with Ms. Rashmi’s perspective. Yes that’s a wonderful point.

Do we raise boys and girls equally? Do you think a 25 year old female will suddenly not be confident? Maybe the instances in childhood lead to the lack of self belief.

Why do we ask a girl to get water for the relatives and not the boy? It’s a small thing, but this builds momentum and the buy ends up becoming a husband and father, and the girl, woman and wife. It remains in your mind and it’s subconscious.

I agree with the perspective that it’s all in the mindset. In my recent experiences, a senior working female shared her helplessness of not being able to concentrate on work in absence of household help. She has the same mindset that my co-panelists have been discussing. She approached her family members for help and they readily came onboard. Everything fell in place after she spoke for herself. So women need to talk, everything will start with you.

Situations are different for everyone. But we should not stray away from focus; we need to put foot down and set the expectations right. Without clear communication, stress and gaps will always exist.

It’s a different situation for single mothers. Single women who are staying with others or their family should be able to better balance their work as well as help at home. For working women living in joint families, the mindset will have to be changed and support from family will be essential. I’m lucky to have a supportive family who takes care of my kids while I’m working.

One important thing required when creating such policies is personalization. Every person’s life is different. If an organization can personalize their HR Software and Tech products as per the customer needs, then why can’t we personalize the policies for our employees? We also need to think of men who live alone along with women. It’s time to acknowledge that we need to have such policies.

I agree with Mr. Naga, that we need policies for different people. People leave organizations when they do not feel a sense of belonging. Organization needs to support us to have policies and support for employees. At the same time we need to negotiate and ask employers for it. NASSCOM data says, out of the total hires in IT there are 48% dropout rates of female employees in 3 years. The reasons are many, one including marriage. But data says half of them did not even check with their managers about a possible transfer in another city. It’s important to speak up and be confident.

Organisations have moved from Basic to Add ons to CTC, and now they have come up with a bouquet of choices of taxations.they now need to be more empathetic on what all they can offer to the employees. In my stint with TATA Steel, there was an option of choosing what my requirements were. Even Facebook has started an internal website for their organization, to make employees more inclusive.

I’m part of POSH committees in some organizations. Sexual harassment defined by the law includes physical, verbal, virtual, emails, chat boxes, WhatsApp messages etc, where a woman feels unsafe and complains in her office.

As per the act, the workplace is defined as wherever the employee is, if he/she is in office, travelling for work, in cabs, everything comes under the act. In lockdown, where everyone is working from home, home becomes the workplace.

From a man’s perspective what is aligned to POSH in the context of WFH?

He should be respectful of the woman; because the law clearly states that if the woman has felt unsafe and has complained then it’s sexual harassment.

As a manager don’t accept anything that you would not accept against your daughter or sister.

I agree with Ms. Rashmi, that we need to think of connotations like jokes or comments now that we are working from home.

Men and women need different customization and personalization. if compartmentalization means proper switch between work and personal lives, I feel we as society are not mature enough to support that. It might happen in the next 4-5 years.

The policy should be applicable to both genders and companies should be able to frame the working hours and meeting hours. Long meetings need to be avoided. Currently we need to delegate the work which was previously done collaboratively and then collaborate.

This has a lot to do with empathy of the organizations. You can offer options like early goings, late comings, few hours off; but it’s essential to ask that employee what are her requirements during pregnancy as well as post birth  and how far the organization can go to accommodate them. It’s all about the values and culture on which the organizations are built on.

You cannot change anyone’s role only because she is pregnant; especially without asking her. The regular state labor laws apply here.

Previously we used to talk about flexible hours, but now in my opinion we need to roll between fixed hours and variable hours. Like while working from the office, many women leave early and then login again from home. There is a need to maintain that balance in WFH as well.

It depends on multiple factors. If you’re in a senior leadership role, like I work for an office based out of San Francisco, so due to different time zones, I’m on late evening calls twice or thrice a week. But I do have the flexibility to take 3-4 hours off during the day because I need to be up at night. So flexibility and customization is important; you cannot be working 24 hours a day.

Agreedwith Ms. Monica’s views. Customization and flexibility are required, along with what the woman wants. Organizations need to judge employees based on their output and productivity rather than working hours.

Companies need to start caring rather than curing people with policies. As long as you care, answers will come on their own; it’s no longer about inflicting policies on employees.

Based on the survey, 61% have asked for flexible working hours and I think we need to honor that. It’s necessary to have mandatory working hours, and no exclusivity when it comes to both the genders. Both are working from home, and even men are trying to change their mindsets and we need to give them a chance. We need to have equity.

I think it’s important to understand that there cannot be a generic bookmark to this. But it’s an essential point that needs to be addressed for a realistic point of view. Women who are suffering from too much workload need to speak out to their managers. If you don’t speak the answer will always be no. Expected working hours are going haphazardly, they have gone up to 11 hours. Our survey suggests that many women do not understand that they are burning out themselves. So they need to be addressed to.

One of the challenges especially when dealing with automation is, what is its need; and does it tie up to a business goal. Business goals are not limited to reducing costs. There was a period when, largely automation was towards reducing cost, now the world is changing where automation is required to improve revenue.
Secondly, today automation is also asking for it to remove human to human touch. As humans we thrive on human interaction, without that it’s difficult to get the best out of the person. Automation is no longer an initiative, today it’s horizontal rather than vertical.
Lastly, people are now getting frustrated with too much automation. Human intelligence is getting covered by the chatbots or analytics. That is taking over the human gut. We need to be cautious about automation telling you things, we cannot have human gut being taken over. Automation is not the ultimate goal.

Life will be definitely different once we get back to offices, and what we had assumed to be impossible is going to be the norm; especially in companies with traditional yet successful approaches. So the biggest challenge is going to be, making a change to the mindset in the way we work, with some technology and some human interface.
I’m a firm believer that some functions cannot be entirely replaced with automation. So if efficiency is something you’re aiming for, you need to see what value the automation will bring, to both customers as well as internal stakeholders.

I think the current challenges are Predictability and Constraints. We are not able to predict what the future is. Whatever future we were envisaging earlier, just passed away yesterday! There are a lot of constraints. The question is how do I stay with the constraints? Economy will grow from cities to rural areas because of the constraints. We can convert the challenges into opportunities.

In today’s world, the biggest challenge is going to be managing fixed costs. It is made to ensure that you can sustain in his environment which is competitive to a different level. The days have gone where you had advantages of things like your brand. Everyone is at the same level now in terms of challenges and expectations to deliver a particular service. Compensation reduction therefore should be part of a bigger initiative for any organization, to manage its fixed costs. Businesses are mandated to negotiate with their vendors, office rentals and landlords. So everyone is trying their best to reduce fixed costs, and compensation is a part of this. So HR needs to see this as a part of making the business more robust, so tomorrow when the opportunities open; I will be there as a part of the organization to contribute, and when I contribute, I will be rewarded as well. So when the PM says, ’Jaan hai to Jahan hai ’, it’s a fact. If we do not make small sacrifices, tomorrow when the opportunity is there we won’t be there to share the spoils. Salary cuts are painful to everybody, but if there’s a long term perspective, we should be happy that the organization is having us as a part of them and giving us an opportunity to turn around the business.

Whether Covid or no Covid, every organization has to keep evaluating its cost structure. For every 10 organizations that get setup in a year, there are also 2 organizations that close down. So organizations have to keep re-evaluating their cost structures. The point is, is it done with transparency? And that’s where the business heads along with HR partners will really have to put out a very transparent process to all the stakeholders. If we take any one cost element in isolation, it will lead to victimize. The definition of leader has changed. This is the time for the character of individual and organization to come to the fore. This is the time to show your true values. So if it’s a question of survival, we all will need to do it, but in a very transparent way, where employees need to feel as partners and not victims. Mr. Prasad Rajappan: Covid has happened to the entire universe and we all are part of that. So now you need to be a party to that change process. Salary cut is always heartburn, but if there is transparency it will be less. And salary cuts are always better than layoffs. You always need to strike a balance between the two.

According to him, HR will become a trait niche manager. Every manager needs to have HR characteristics. If you’re part of the HR fraternity, it’s time to take center stage and take charge. Most HR people are successful who think of the business.

In many conferences it is said, HR needs to become a business partner. I think this is a good time to put that statement to test. How do you balance the sensitivity to the softer aspects as much as being firm? It’s like finding the balance between your heart and mind, and HR is in that sweet spot to bring that balance to the business.

One of the first steps is ensuring your employees that you’re going to give them a safe working environment. To give comfort on the future which is right now uncertain would be unfair. So we need to take one step at a time. First is ensuring offices are a safe place, people not risking themselves while coming to work or delivering their work. Secondly we will have to wait and watch, rather than giving a very prescriptive answer for the next 6 months. How the next 6-8 weeks go in India, will help to draft those answers.

Emphasized that it is going to be important how the last 2 months were used by the organization. This situation has given everyone time to take a step back and look at the business in a calm and clear way. If this has not happened, and we are waiting for the world to open again, then we will end up going in the same circle of madness that was happening before. However, if you have looked at your business from a different level, than there are chances that you have identified certain building blocks. Identifying the gaps and working at solutions to fulfilling these gaps is important. You many need to tweak the fundamentals and bring in some technology aspects, but it needs to be done. So when everything opens up you’re ready and turn out to be a much stronger organization.

Made a valid point that We need to be agile and resilient. Apart from high level strategy for resuming work, we have technology tools too like HR Software with Facial Recognition technology or QR based attendance software rather than Biometric, linking of medical policies and so on. They all will show your care towards your employees.

Answered this question, when you are part of a test team, what is more important? Batting, Balling or Fielding? In your organization, you need to figure out, which area are your weak and strong seats; and start building on your strengths. That is the mantra we follow, it helps make your weaknesses relatively insignificant. That could mean policies or technology in place, safety in the environment.

Had a question which he asked to Vasant and Ashish, do you think Covid 19 is going to make less control policies and more empathy policies? There are many discussions on making policies more employee friendly, do you see that happening?

Answered this stating One thing that I have observed in this Work from Home phase is, employees have realized working is about outcomes. So as long as you are delivering your outcomes, the number of hours or location does not matter. This is a change in mindset that I can see happening gradually.

Felt what differentiates a great organization from a good one is having empathetic policies. Now the organizations may want to have empathetic policies but will be constrained by budgets, because all these policies will come with a cost. Like insurance for instance, today I might want to widen the scope, but I will not have money in my pockets. My second take is, controlled policies have to go away. I think we need to start thinking of the 3% who will break the policy rather than the 97% who will follow it. The policies should have less use of Don’t and Not to do and more of Do and what you’re supposed to do

When you talk about CTC, it includes incentives, but incentives are built upon performance. There are companies that are accepting that 2019 has been a decent year and performers need to be rewarded. But as of 2020, 3 months have passed and we don’t have clarity for the next 3 months. In such a situation, how do we materialize any incentives. There are companies that have reduced their pool by 50%. The reduction needs to be done on salaries; it also depends on company cost structure. Some of them have 50% cost structure towards employees, some have only 5%. So 10% reduction in a company with 50% employee costs is a significant saving, and 10% in a company with 5% costs is a symbolic saving.

There will be huge re-evaluation on business, restructuring of profit and loss statements of companies. So to answer whether there will be hiring or increment in future is difficult. It will vary in different industries. Like healthcare or online platforms will not have a huge impact. So to answer this question on a general level will be unfair. Apart from this, it’s important to accept the reality, given the situation; we need to reset our targets and aspirations. You need to focus on staying in the game rather than succeeding in it.

There might be hiring in sectors like retail or manufacturing, because their employees like part time workers have moved back to their villages. Hiring will happen in phases, and multi-skilling will be essential; as companies will look at operating frugally. As for the question on education, that sector is up for a big change. With the government announcing that education till Higher Secondary can be completed online, an education revolution is on its way.

I endorse everything that’s been said. The takeout is, if you’re an employee; ensure you’re constantly upgrading your skills. If you’re an HR, please communicate the message to your people. If you’re a student, make sure your education makes you employable, not just your certificate but also your skills.

Since I have worked in the Industrial Relations sector, my short answer to this is, if you view trade unions as your partners you can really make changes. Trade unions happen because of policies of the organization. If you have employee centric, empathetic policies, this will not completely change, because humans are wired to interact together. I don’t have a handbook answer, but unions will also change their view going forward.

With an analogy of how things change between test cricket and T 50, and if you say I will play test cricket the same way I played T 50 and vice versa, then you are in the wrong business. Rules will have to be framed with a uniqueness that will help you with Work from Home, and in the absence of any framework, it’s like free for all. We have calls at 8 PM which never happens in normal office life. So we need to lay groundwork that makes sure Work from Home does not become a burden.

New rules will come in place, and the HR practitioners along with CEOs will have to sit and define these rules. There are no best practices right now; what works for Google may not work for you. Things will clear up as time goes by. In the interim, it’s the business leaders who will make the rules.

The HR team needs to organize training for all employees on Finance Management. We have been receiving this question on the moratorium period from employees as well as customers. Maybe you can use them to clear your credit card bills or high interest bills. Also the RBI has said moratorium for another 3 months, so 6 months is a good time to plan your finances.

Mentioned that multi-skilling will be essential so you’re not limited to the box of say HR Operations or Recruitment. Now it’s the time to be a generalist, who is good in every aspect.

In his opinion, it’s not pressure but an opportunity. When we conducted Lean HR workshops pre-Covid, there was an observation of around non value 80% activities. So now it’s an opportunity and imperative for us to focus on this.

I agree this is an imperative where HR has a role to play in working on the cultural dimension of the change; because that will naturally be receiving unprecedented resistance as everybody is under the pressure to perform. So it’s important that HR is the holder of that cultural dimension in bringing about that change.

If the designed outcome is that there has to be changes in the org structure and roles & responsibilities have to change then they will have to change. Otherwise the whole purpose of automation is lost. So let’s not fear it. This whole process is not only about cost deferment but also revenue increase, if we can make this work, then we don’t need to worry about AI driven or non human interface processes.

There are many cross-functional agile teams that are being formed, which might mean that the traditional hierarchy might deviate to such small member teams. This is the best time to up-skill and be prepared for the future. We at ZingHR (Global HCM Platform) are running our own academy for HR professionals, to train on how to handle this scenario, conduct service, how to handle AI and so on.

I think it’s all about setting expectations of certain deliverables. It also depends on the nature of your job. Like in our case, people need to be on construction sites, they cannot work from home. But for people with office jobs, the deliverables should be the criteria and not how many hours did they login.

Human beings are prone to having emotions and they need to be expressed. Good news is human beings are also intelligent. After the initial anger and remorse, objectivity will settle in and people will calm down.

I have also been at the receiving end of the bad news, I reacted with emotions and over a period of time you get aligned with it. When dealing with humans, you have to let those emotions come out. Trying to control them is like waiting for a nuclear reaction.

In the spur of the moment it’s going to be a problem, but later on when the person will realize that it was a rational decision with no other option, it will settle down. You can’t prevent certain things from happening.

My understanding is, there is not going to be no interest, it’s just going to be deferred. The meter is still on, it’s just that the person’s ability to not pay, and give him an opportunity to be not a defaulter. But the fact that he has to pay the delayed interest is not going away.

Like people who have taken loans from you have an option of moratorium, you as an MFI also have an option to ask for a moratorium from your lenders. So it’s not limited to one side of the equation. There will be an impact as the cash flow will be limited, but organizations will have to find a balance depending on their own internal context. Given the situation it was expected that the moratorium would be extended and the organizations should have prepared themselves for it.

Yes we are spread all over. When you have such a large organization with almost 33000 employees, more than 4.5 L secondary workforce spread across all over, it is difficult. We consider our frontline workers, delivery staff the Covid warriors. Everyday our delivery staff is reaching different 30 – 40 houses. In a month or so they are connecting with 1000 of houses. So that becomes a huge challenge.

We focused on 3 fundamentals, which we thought were essential:

We gave only authenticated information and guidance to our teams. We had a hyper committee which was constituted, and we have been meeting regularly since the last 50-60 days. We also decided to take out advisories which would be sent out to all the stakeholders, and they comprise all the guidelines.

Connecting with people was another element. It makes more impact when you connect with your people in adversities.

Keeping people engaged and motivated. We have 60% of our people working from refineries or pipelines or supply locations. Another 40% of our employees work from administrative offices. It was essential to keep both these groups engaged and motivated.

In his opinion five learning’s will be very important for us to take it forward:

Flexibility, Adaptability , Agility , Resilient, Empathy

We have almost 27000 retail outlets as of now, out of which around 170 are the ones where we operate; the rest are franchises operated by dealers. There has been no difference in productivity, in fact in many places, the delivery and customer teams of the dealers have responded extremely well to this situation. We have supported each of them by offering a 5L ex gratia and have covered them under medical insurance.

Going by the learning, a lot of new activities have now been undertaken. We have realized that we can work from home. Also we are realizing maybe our work assignments need to be more developed. We had developed technical competencies for each role on paper. This crisis gave us an opportunity to take that forward. We are planning as to how we can align our customers with the internal stakeholders at any point of time.

We have our offices in all the major cities in India as well as in Singapore. All of a sudden there was this realization, that HR Tech solutions for employees is an essential service. Earlier customer requirements were more inclined towards controlling the work of employees, and in no time this perspective shifted to care and concern. So the tools were the same, but requirements changed. For instance, many organizations wanted to check if their teams were safe and doing well in this crisis. Going by this demand, our team worked relentlessly to get a survey tool in place, which can be used to reach out to people on both, smartphones as well as via SMS.

The deployments have been huge. People are looking out for HR Software with facial recognition technology without having to invest in a recognition device. This led us to develop a mobile based facial recognition with Artificial Intelligence. There is also a surge in demand for chatbots and multilingual solutions. Fortunately, all our solutions come in all 26 local languages. This has helped us in reaching out to diverse people.

Another thing I observed in corporate India is; everyone started empathizing. Another phenomenon is the employees started reciprocating, which is very good for the economy. They started thinking of the company first, some employees are ready to leave their leave balances, and some are ready to leave their incentives. People have realized that this is a global crisis.

Absolutely! We had most of the HR Tech modules ready before, but the demand has increased now. The activity and engagements have become 200%, and we are hiring more people as well as collaborating with partners.

We do have many SMS solutions, as well as tracking solutions for non smartphones via tower triangulation. I have companies who are worried about their employees who have moved to their native, and they want to track them from a concern perspective. So we have SMS solutions using which it can be tracked in which region.

We have been trying to reach out to the Arogya Sethu team, to see if we can integrate our solution with them. Around 2.5 CR people are using it, so we can integrate with them and try and keep people safe. So like we have the best HR solution with a mobile application , where you can check from your phone, how far you’re from Red Zone. This is a national movement, so we are checking the feasibility of linking it with Arogya Sethu and opening it free nation-wide.

It’s a beautiful experimentation; the moment the country was stuck up with Covid. But we had planned it much ahead as we have global presence in around 20 countries, so we knew what was coming. We had all the Business Continuity Plans in place for all the departments. And as for the migrant laborers, at the time when Covid struck, we had 35000 CR of work in hand, and the construction was on at about 150 odd locations across India. As soon as lockdown was declared, we ensured all our laborers were taken care of. We started providing them food, ensured better living conditions for them by acquiring a high degree of sanitization and retained them. They are all migrant laborers and we could retain more than 60% of them. When the lockdown was relaxed, we re-started our constructions. As far as agency laborers were concerned, like security and sanitization, we took them in-house. We recognized they are our frontline workforce and retained them. We gave them INR 250 per day, when most of the organizations were cutting them.

Power is a very essential commodity and the show must go on. So in the operation area, nothing was impacted and we also had a backup plan in place for each station. An advanced preparation was very useful to us. Also being part of disaster management, we have handled multiple disasters like earthquakes, floods in Srinagar, recent Amphan in Odisha, so we knew how to handle the crisis.

We decided to change the entire workplace practices due to Covid. It made it essential to revisit all the processes, policies, systems and we had to make them fit to the people. As for the HR perspective, you need to be adjustable, flexible and you need to redefine the policies. Safety was our biggest priority. We also started tele-medicines, and for the ease of payment allowed our workforce to send scanned copies of bills from any part of the country. We went full throttle in the HR team, even with regards to promotions. We kept exploring multiple ways of keeping employees engaged.

Innovation is the key. In some of our sub-stations, our people invented their own kind of sanitization machine. From CSR perspective, we routed almost 200 CR in PM cares fund, and around 30 CR in migrant, construction and agency laborer.

Another learning was, we already had a calendar in place and decided to go ahead with it, without any changes to the operations and training programs. Also since lots of people are working from home, we started with multiple learning initiatives, and are rolling out programs starting with morning meditation, yoga to hard core company programs. Since we are located in many remote locations, communication is the key for us, and as HR it’s very important to create a 2 way communication system.

As the country was preparing to work from home, we decided that the board members will continue to work. We had board meetings held on virtual platforms, to discuss various issues. We had to ensure safety along with 24*7 operations. We did everything possible to make it a safe workplace, and provided relaxation in terms of policies. Also when people know you care for them, things fall in place.

Communicating in a timely, precise and transparent way is essential. You need to communicate the change in various roles as well as remove misinformation effectively. Prepare the employees mentally to take up additional responsibilities. Engaged employees are the best assets.

Emphasised that If you communicate transparently with your employees and put forward the business uncertainty situation, then many of them would understand the problems better.

Agreed with Dr. Balyan, everything can happen if you discuss it with people. Everyone needs to realize this situation will redefine the way in which we work. Agility and adaptability are crucial for our survival.

Justified one of the questions asked by the audience that Work from Home is a preferred option for women. He mentioned that women in his family effectively work from home as well as managing other things at home. Women are better managers in terms of time management and multi-skilling.

Added to this on a lighter note, it’s a good opportunity to make your spouse multi-skilled. On a serious note, earlier Work from Home was only for the IT sector. But now it’s essential and imperative to come up with Work from Home guidelines.

Made a valid point here that the current Work from Home experience has been bad. But this work is not the regular Work from Home that should happen in future. Female employees are facing multiple issues, and we are under the assumptions that since people are working from home, it implies they are available 24*7. But the future will change as it has to be redefined. There has to be a clear cut balance between work and family life.

Mentioned that From an HR perspective, the main points are: How do you deal with uncertainty? Do you have people that are comfortable to work in uncertainty? How do you convert people to manage the situation with ease? What changes are happening? Covid has hassled the process so fast that everyone is taken aback. But changes are happening and how do you predict what will happen? We need people who can help us with predictability, and larger organizations have come up with such positions.

Made an analogy. It’s like there’s a huge building that goes haywire due to an earthquake. You can either tinkle with it or build a new one, and put in only those things which are essential; because in your old house there would have been many things which you were not using. So HR now has the option to restructure things differently. Like we at ZingHR use the word Outcomation; do only what is going to give you business outcomes for organizations as well as employees.

As the country was preparing to work from home, we decided that the board members will continue to work. We had board meetings held on virtual platforms, to discuss various issues. We had to ensure safety along with 24*7 operations. We did everything possible to make it a safe workplace, and provided relaxation in terms of policies. Also when people know you care for them, things fall in place.

Communicating in a timely, precise and transparent way is essential. You need to communicate the change in various roles as well as remove misinformation effectively. Prepare the employees mentally to take up additional responsibilities. Engaged employees are the best assets.

Emphasised that If you communicate transparently with your employees and put forward the business uncertainty situation, then many of them would understand the problems better.

Agreed with Dr. Balyan, everything can happen if you discuss it with people. Everyone needs to realize this situation will redefine the way in which we work. Agility and adaptability are crucial for our survival.

justified one of the questions asked by the audience that Work from Home is a preferred option for women. He mentioned that women in his family effectively work from home as well as managing other things at home. Women are better managers in terms of time management and multi-skilling.

Added to this on a lighter note, it’s a good opportunity to make your spouse multi-skilled. On a serious note, earlier Work from Home was only for the IT sector. But now it’s essential and imperative to come up with Work from Home guidelines.

Made a valid point here that the current Work from Home experience has been bad. But this work is not the regular Work from Home that should happen in future. Female employees are facing multiple issues, and we are under the assumptions that since people are working from home, it implies they are available 24*7. But the future will change as it has to be redefined. There has to be a clear cut balance between work and family life.

Mentioned that From an HR perspective, the main points are: How do you deal with uncertainty? Do you have people that are comfortable to work in uncertainty? How do you convert people to manage the situation with ease? What changes are happening? Covid has hassled the process so fast that everyone is taken aback. But changes are happening and how do you predict what will happen? We need people who can help us with predictability, and larger organizations have come up with such positions.

Made an analogy. It’s like there’s a huge building that goes haywire due to an earthquake. You can either tinkle with it or build a new one, and put in only those things which are essential; because in your old house there would have been many things which you were not using. So HR now has the option to restructure things differently. Like we at ZingHR use the word Outcomation; do only what is going to give you business outcomes for organizations as well as employees.

What we have learnt from Covid is, how do you make your team adapt to a new way of working? How quick is your team to adapt to these changes? How comfortable are you with these changes? People do get perturbed with changes, especially if they have been following a particular work style for more than 10 years. How do you manage these changes? Leadership crisis is different. We need leaders at all levels, who can work effectively in crisis.

Added a valid point that the best service HR can do is to make HR a trait niche manager and not keep it as a department. If HR can identify their purpose in the business; their job is done.

L&D should not be islolated as a good to have function. L&D has it’s own reason for being there.
Three metrics can be followed:
One , that is same as the Business Metrics.
Second, you can use ratio of internal hires to external hires in any organization. Are you able to promote the employees to any required role based on their skills and competencies?
Third, are you able to give ROI, and the denominator remains investment, numerator can be top line, bottom line, cash-flow or valuation in stock market.

The need needs to come from business and we need to facilitate that. Major concern is how do we tactically put this into practice? How many L&D people actually discuss about cashflow or how programs can be designed around it? Strategically it looks great, but how to tactically put it into practice, needs to be looked at minutely.

Investment in learning is an important aspect. ROI needs to be proved; if we are not adding any ROI then it’s a problem.

Learning is a slow process, results can be seen in phases.

Example, Weekly Net Promoter score helps in understanding how the employees are performing and what are customer expectations and problem areas in the retail industry.

Every meeting, whether that discuss people or not gives us a whip of where the business is leading. We need to stop pitching L&D as budget, but competencies and business impacts. As business partners, we need to understand business.
ROI and Training is like love, if it’s there, it shows.

Gamification at a deeper level is about playfulness, fine with making mistakes and learning. All L&D needs to have a touch of gamification, it will definetly help people in learning better. It will increase a person’s risk appetite and make the experience more effective.
There is a child inside every one of us.

If we need to measure ROI of L&D, than the answer is AI. AI is data. When we talk about improving employee efficiency, understanding their needs and competencies than we need to look into data. A good LMS is essential, which gives the data of all employees. Using this we will be able to understand learning needs, design curative programs and get results. Next step would be to understand the employees learning from the program; and if he is able to demonstrate it in his workspace. Blended solutions can be used to measure knowledge & skill-set and the actual on-floor performance. AI plays a crucial role in this.

Once we get access to the relevant datasets, employee behaviors can be validated. That will be one phenomenal use of AI. AI will also play an important role in training identification for a business, rather than leaders voicing it, if data speaks for itself it will be a classic problem solver. We need to convert subjective problems into objective ones and find solutions.

AI gives us tools to predict and classify outcomes. This predictive nature can be used in capturing the need and designing a program uniquely for every individual. It will majorly help in capturing, designing, delivering and measuring the outcomes.

We need to understand that AI predictability is the result of data that has gone into the machine. So more the data that goes into it over the period, better the predictability. Right now in my opinion, humanness of the decision is extremely important and over & above AI.

It’s a new skill that the employee will have to invest in. Going ahead, organizations will have less but multi-skilled manpower. Going by this situation, one will have to be better equipped with multiple skills, else his growth will stagnate. Organizations are always willing to invest in people’s potential.

Post-covid, for most organizations, the clear cut job dimensions will be blurred. Radius will need to become bigger. We need to get into the flux and thrive into it. There will be retrenchment, less number of jobs. Some sectors like travel will be critically affected, others like pharma might thrive. Businesses and people need to get more flexible.

Rather than predicting what skills would be needed years down the line, I will prefer making my people think on what is it that they would want to push themselves into. If the ask of the new skill comes from employee, it is faster taken. For skills at behavioral level, I would like to make our people more agile learners.

‘Ekla Chalo re’ should be your motto. Every individual needs to take responsibility for individual learning without depending on the organization. You need to up-skill yourself and focus on your development.

I can speak for my business. We cannot afford investing into any new methodology, we will continue with tried and tested models for at least next 1.5 – 2 years, depending on the cash in-flow. We need to look at what can be done more efficiently, without needing budget.
Many organizations are working at zero budget staffing.

‘We are not in the same boat, we are in same storm’.
Everyone is trying to save their own boat from sinking. Minds are already stressed.
It’s a business driven acumen right now. We need to be more reactive and less proactive.
Have the infrastructure in place, so we are ready when we do need to deliver. When will that happen, let the business decide that.

It is during this lockdown period, when stores are having zero revenue; L&D has come in forefront in keeping all the employees engaged. This was possible only because our organization had invested in correct platforms at the right time. Not everyone will be willing to invest in external learning methodologies. In this case, we can always harness the internal resources. Take support of SMEs and build internal learning communities.

Even with zero budgets, if we are creative enough, cutting edge L&D can be delivered today. There are so many free applications, sites available. Another approach is challenging the fact that what I would have otherwise normally done, am I able to do that ? vs. What the business wants me to do?.
It’s a paradox. Measuring metric of impact is essential.

When pushed to a corner, my best comes out.

Agreed, so let’s deliver a top cutting edge LnD this year, and we may or may not need any budgets in the coming year.

We are mainly burning out budgets on external faculties. If business wants to send employees to Howard or IIM Calcutta than ofcourse I need a budget, but to drive effectivess and impact on ground, a very large budget is not essential. Typically L&D teams are capable and functionally qualified; it’s an opportunity for them to look at enriching and enlarging their role.