At its full potential, the Indian automotive sector can create 30 million jobs, said Deepak Jain, chairman of the HR, IR and skill development and managing director, Lumax Industries. The importance of manufacturing, whose proportion of the country’s GDP will double by 2034, will crucially depend on how the sector including the automobile sector manages its talent pool, Jain added.
Outlining the key aspects of the HR challenge, Jain said the need of the hour is to create a people development strategy and that such a strategy would underpin the made-in-India strategy that the government wants to promote. And, finally, he said the need for business is to understand that the role of HR in a corporate is changing.
He was speaking at the sixth HR summit of the ACMA Western Region in Pune on January 17. The event was attended by over 100 delegates, many of them from the automotive segment.
The chief guest at the summit, Prakash Kodlikeri, the managing director of Maxi on Wheels, said employee performance has to go hand in hand with business. He focused on three attributes of the HR function which included developing leadership that can handle the ups and downs of business, the cultural aspect which is essentially focusing on speed of trust that enables faster decision-making and finally, integrity. As an example of the integrity aspect, Kodlikeri gave the example of the collapse of Lehmann Brothers in 2008 whose impact affected the entire banking sector.
Kodlilkeri, whose company supplies wheels to the auto sector for both the domestic and overseas markets, also touched upon employee engagement saying that employees must learn to give to their fellow workers.
The summit was also addressed by speakers from a non-automotive background including Naresh Kumar, director, HR, Deepak Fertilisers and Ravendra Mishra, president, Human Capital, Garware-Wall Ropes. Kumar said that in Indian companies, HR is still seen through an administrative prism; this has to change if a company has to go forward and function in a dynamic business environment. He also touched upon some other aspects including the fact that the HR function must have a thorough understanding of the business, and must percolate down to the lowest levels in an organisation.
Speakers also touched upon the impact of social media, the challenges of transition and planning for succession management. Yogesh Zope, CIO, Kalyani Group, referring to his own company, spoke about how the group has started to foray into the special media space in a limited way, and will see how best it can go about it and assess its impact on business.
Speakers also touched upon relatively new areas in the HR field including the use of analytics and data interpretation. The HR summit also included speeches by Dr Santosh Bhave, mentor, ACMA, on HR and IR, and Vishwanath Yerwa, chairman, western region, HR forum .
In the final session, Sumedha Nasshikkar, senior VP, KPIT, while speaking about the various initiatives of her company as it transitions to a products company from a IT services-based company, said that in the larger context, the impact of the family is very important in creating people capital. Families, she said, can instill confidence in generation next as well as cultural sensitivity. These comments took the debate to a new level, making human resources a concern for everyone.