Skill Development discussed as a key focus area in the first CII Puducherry HR Summit

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Puducherry held the first ever Puducherry HR Summit 2017 (PHRS 2017) on 3rd November 2017 at Hotel Sunway Manor. The event saw active participation from HR professionals from various sectors, particularly manufacturing sector, senior management from corporates and students. The summit was inaugurated by Honourable Chief Minister of Puducherry, Mr. V Narayanasamy. The speakers in the inaugural session Mr Anil Karthikeyan Chairman CII Puducherry, Mr N V Balachandar Co-Chairman, CII HR&IR Sub-committee(SR) & President – HR Corp. Comm. and CSR Ashok Leyland Ltd and Mr M Nandakumar Vice Chairman CII Puducherry State Council set various themes of the summit in the context of rapidly changing socioeconomic environment and how HR teams play a critical role in embracing diversity and technological disruptions.

Following the keynote session, there presentations by Mr. Mr S Deenadayalan Founder & CEO, CEO Skill Academy and Mr Tathagata Basu Director – People & Organization Pricewaterhouse Coopers Pvt. Ltd that brought in multi-dimensional role of HR  in managing talent and addressing challenges from Automation, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and other aspects of Industry 4.0. The fact that domain of HR needs to look beyond transactional roles was well-captured by the experts as they discussed different ways to add value to current practices in attracting, engaging and retaining talent.

Emphasis on skill development, employability  and inclusive hiring

One of the focus areas of the summit was skill development of present and future workforce and how hiring can be made more inclusive. The case studies from Saint Gobain, Youth4Jobs and Swami Vivekananda Rural Community College demonstrated various initiatives towards skilling the youth and placing them in jobs or ensuring that the contract workers are also included in the long-term earn-while-you-learn training schemes.

Dr. Madhuri Dubey, Founder, National Skills Network – NSN, briefed the participants with current government projects and schemes in skill development and made a case for industry-driven skilling to overcome skill mismatch. She also discussed how the industry can be in the driver’s seat to ensure that they get the rightly skilled workforce and retain them in the long run.

Mr G V Subrahmanian, Founder, Swami Vivekananda Rural Community College, presented a case study of how youth in Puducherry were transformed with the help of vocational skills and the contribution from the industry in the growth of the college. The college has helped more than 2000 students to earn a job after training; the students were mostly school drop-outs, underprivileged youth who were shows a path towards productivity.

Mr M Pugalenthi, Team Leader – HR, Saint-Gobain India Pvt. Ltd shared exemplary cases of how the company embarked on programs to skill the workforce who were employed on a contractual basis by including them in earn-while-you-learn scheme.

Ms Meera Shenoy – Founder Youth4Jobs Foundation spoke about the experiences in training youth with disability and ensuring suitable placement for them in the industry. Her presentation “Roadmap for Inclusion- Hiring persons with disability” shared many stories about how the disabled youth found a means of livelihood and financial empowerment by getting jobs in organized sector.

The event also has a panel discussion on the emerging role on HR with regard to changes in the organizational culture and the challenges in balancing their twins roles of being employee champion and business facilitators. Ms Latha Nambisan, Managing Partner Savitur Business Consulting LLP moderated the session that featured panelists , Mr E Vallavan, Labour Commissioner, Government of Puducherry, Ms Rajani Seshadri Executive Coach & Advisor and Mr Israel Inbaraj General Manager- HR Tata Consultancy Services.