A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to speak at one of India’s leading HR institutes. While I was preparing for this session, I realized that over the last few years, I have developed certain strong views and beliefs about various aspects of HR, and unless I state them upfront in the session, the students may not be able to fully relate to many of my points. This was a very interesting – I realized that now I belong to a particular ‘school of HR’ – many beliefs, convictions that I have developed over last few years have become fundamental to the way I think about and work on any area of HR. I thought it will be a good exercise to put some of these points on paper – and that’s how this article was born.
It is very important that I clarify few points – I am acutely conscious of the fact that I continue to be a ‘student of HR’, I am also aware that my limited experience does not qualify me to pass any ‘final judgments’ about HR issues. At the same time, I also feel that I have had the privilege of working in some of India’s finest HR organizations and learning from some really wise and accomplished HR leaders. I have had the opportunity to get exposed to a wide range of HR matters and settings and I have thought deeply about things I have seen and experienced. I have learnt a great lot through my interactions with other HR professionals and I have also tried to maintain a basic level of understanding of the academic body of literature related to the field. All this has enabled me to form a certain ‘point of view’ about HR. As I try and articulate the same in this article – I also look forward to refining my thinking further, based on the feedback on this article and the experiences I will gather in future. I believe that this article is a beginning of a dialogue and debate …
