In a tech-savvy world, where it has been deemed absolutely essential to keep your entire workforce networked or hooked on, companies are making it sure that the advancements in technology help enhance the creative capacities of the employees. In the knowledge industry, HR has got a pivotal role to play from planning, hiring and even in rightsizing. The most important role is in bringing in the quality talent available in the market. Once the talent is in, the challenge for HR lies in grooming and retaining that talent and for this it is imperative to create a culture within an organization, which facilitates an associate’s growth and development. The approach has to change from reactive to proactive HR.

Rajat Ganguly, HR head at HPS, maintains that "the biggest challenge that HR faces today is creating a uniform culture and opening up effective communication channels, to help bring together people from different cultural backgrounds".

With a very stringent recruitment process, the emphasis at HPS is to evaluate an individual’s technical and behavioral strengths, along with domain knowledge and leadership skills. And as technology requirements change, the company constantly upgrades its productive intellectual capital. Ganguly says, "We have set up Competency Development Centers (CDC) which are responsible for analyzing trends and developing programs to enable our employees to rapidly gain expertise in new technology areas. The CDCs also provide a medium for client-specific training in methodology, technology and business domains."

Ganguly further explains that HPS has a robust management system, which helps identify under-performers, who are subsequently put on the ‘Performance Improvement Plan’.

HPS, employees are made to sign a network usage agreement at the time of joining.

On the changing role of HR, Ganguly stresses that HR is not becoming redundant, but some of the routine HR functions are.

"We are in the industry of knowledge and our capital assets are our people, therefore it is imperative that we have a continuously evolving HR department. HR in its new creative role as a facilitator is certainly not redundant. It is evolving," he says.

Dhanya Krishnakumar
Dataquest