Role is just a set of expectations ..

This is my 28th year in HR” says Vasanthi Srinivasan, Assistant Professor, Organisation Behaviour and HRM, IIM-B with an elegant smile on her face. She was addressing the students of HR Varsity in CBS.

The interactive session began with a question posed to her from a student with respect to the academic knowledge and its application in the organizational environment. She replied by describing her first job experience and took us through compensation benchmarking exercise – the real aspect of it. This triggered more questions from the students and the session led to a discussion on compensation benchmarking process.

We also learnt the way to differentiate role and task. The learning that “Role is nothing more than a set of expectations” cannot be forgotten at any moment in our life.

She has done abundant research, published papers and her research on Competency Management helped her to highlight the three frames of competencies for HR professionals. She threw light on “unstated assumptions in Variable Pay” which would be kept in mind when we need to design compensation structure for our organizations. It was an enlightening session that made us realize the strategic importance of this function.

Importance of HR in an organisation

During recession, most of the management students fall in the trap of perceptions and tend to have false impressions about the market conditions . Sometimes, these perceptions can also lead to cloud their perspective about the functions in which they specialise in.

These were some of the issues discussed in the session addressed by Mr Shantaram, HR Head of Prasad Corporation Ltd. on May 1st 2009, on the topic “Importance of HR in an organisation.” The entire session was highly interactive and informative. It lead to discussion on other topics like “Why should HR know the business of the organisation and “Role played by HR in an organisation” as he discussed the functions of a HR professional in an organisation.

The interaction was backed with a lot of industry examples. The students, rather than learning something from the session, unlearned a lot of myths that they had in their mind regarding the HR function in an organisation. The highlight of the session was how Mr. Shantaram made the students realize that the answer for all the questions they had in their minds were always within them and it just needed a little spark to bring it out. At the end of the session, Mr. Shantaram made the students realize that HR in a text book is different from HR in an organisation. After all, at CBS, we are prepared to face the real world .

Abhilash Prakash.
HR Varsity

Retail is all about detail !!!

“Retail is all about detail”. This statement came to life when Mr. Ashoke Bhaskaran, Vice-president (Hyper), Reliance Retail addressed the students of retail varsity at CBS. Retail is not only about the glitz and glamour that one experiences at a mall but the sheer hard work that makes the experience glamorous. According to him, it’s as simple, as “clean, Stack and Serve” but becomes complex as it deals with the most delicate of the entities, human mind! Product, suppliers and customers are three most critical drivers of any retailer’s success, and customer perceptions of the store can break or make the retail destiny.


Every Retail activity stands strong on four important pillars, namely Merchandising, Store Operations, IT and Supply chain/ logistics. Support functions such as commercial, HR and marketing keep the pillars strong rooted to the base objectives – margins and customer satisfaction. Among the pillars, store operations assume prima face importance as it serves as the pre ultimate point of contact between the retailer and the customer. The entire success plan can go to shackles, if “The Ops guy” fails to execute, even if other support functions paved the way for the same. At the end of the day, making the customer visit the store frequently will do the trick, and operations can play a great role in ensuring the same

Any activity will ultimately depend upon the results it yields, so does retail. Though sales and turnover can be adjudged as safe indicators of success, it can only throw light on the traction of the products, and not the effect in real monetary terms. According to him, the retailer should consider the residual profit value in rupee terms after considering all the expenses incurred in the process.


He stressed on Service as a major differentiator. According to him, Human resource plays a major role in bringing all the pillars together to attain the ultimate objective of retail as price, quality, range, ambience, location advantage and other value added services can be easily replicated by other retailers but it’s the human touch and service that will serve as the thin line of difference and the final frontier for success. From the customer’s point of view, this sets the service level expectations which need to be fulfilled to sustain in this simply complex journey of retail.

By Ramya, Retail Varsity,CBS