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