Flipkart cuts hiring in bid to reduce costs

Under new chief financial officer Sanjay Baweja, Flipkart Ltd is slashing hiring in all but two functions, increasingly outsourcing order deliveries to logistics companies, improving its supply chain planning and boosting marketplace sales to bring the company’s ballooning costs under control. While Flipkart has emerged as one of the most valuable Internet companies globally, there is growing pressure on the Bengaluru-based e-commerce firm to control costs and show investors that it can generate profits in future. The pressure will only become stronger as Flipkart prepares for an initial public offering (IPO), which is expected some time at the end of 2016, according to investors and analysts. None of India’s e-commerce companies, including Flipkart and Snapdeal, are anywhere near achieving profitability. “As the industry matures we need to show the path to profitability,” Baweja said in an interview. “We’re moving into a cost-containment mode where our fixed costs will become smaller of the overall pie going forward. The aim is to make most of our costs variable so that we spend only as per the volumes or sales we’re generating. Hiring for our corporate functions will need to be much more controlled. We’ll continue to hire aggressively in technology and logistics but we don’t need to add people in functions such as HR (human resources), finance and legal.” Baweja, who is the senior-most executive hired by Flipkart yet, was brought in by the company late last year from Tata Communications Ltd. He is expected to play a key role in preparing Flipkart for its IPO. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce firm, is growing sales at a rapid pace by spending huge amounts of cash on deep discounts, advertising and adding warehouses. The company’s workforce has more than tripled to roughly 33,000 people over the past year. For the year ended 31 March, 2014 the losses of various Flipkart India entities amounted to Rs.719.5 crore on revenue of Rs.3,035.8 crore, according to data from the Registrar of Companies. These entities reported sales of Rs.1,195.9 crore and losses of Rs.344.6 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2013. Supply chain costs, primarily warehouse management and logistics, are one of Flipkart’s largest expenses. The company has struggled to operate its large logistics network, which includes more than 15,000 employees, in a cost-efficient manner, partly because its focus was toward adding capacity to meet surging demand rather than saving costs. Now, the company is putting greater emphasis on controlling supply chain costs by strictly implementing its business plans by monitoring expenses on a quarterly basis and improving space utilization at its warehouses by increasing use of technology. “If our planning becomes better then capacity utilization of our warehouses will improve and that’s a key part of improving supply chain efficiencies. This includes signing up new warehouses much closer to when we can start using the warehouse. Earlier there were times when we were signing warehouses several months before they started being operational. That will stop,” Baweja said. The company is also increasingly outsourcing its order deliveries to external logistics firms. Currently, a majority of Flipkart’s deliveries are handled by WS Retail Services Pvt. Ltd, which is the company’s largest seller and logistics provider. “We had a relatively transactional approach with third-party logistics partners since we delivered a majority of our orders. But now we’re working much more closer with our third-party logistics partners. We’re going to share our technology with them, give them large volume commitments and enter into much more collaborative partnerships,” Baweja said. Apart from controlling costs, Flipkart is trying to build its high-margin advertising business, with chief executive officer Sachin Bansal taking direct charge of this initiative, Mint reported on 16 February. The company is also increasingly moving toward the marketplace model and has set a target of adding 100,000 sellers in 2015 from 12,000-13,000 currently. Flipkart, which started out by selling products directly to shoppers, moved to a part-marketplace model, where it connects customers with other merchants. The marketplace model burns less cash than direct online retail. To be sure, it’s far from clear if Flipkart’s cost-control and margin-boosting measures will work. The company will need to continue to spend big on hiring thousands of people in the supply chain and adding capacity. It plans to more than double its warehousing capacity over the next year, according to three people familiar with the matter who declined to be named. Since its valuation—estimated at $11-$12 billion—is based almost entirely on its ability to maintain its flying sales growth, Flipkart will also have to continue giving deep discounts and spending large amounts on advertising. “It’s highly doubtful if Flipkart can achieve profitability over the next few years,” an analyst who works with Flipkart said on condition of anonymity. “Discounts, advertising and supply chain account for their largest expenses and if they want to maintain their market share, they will have to continue to spend big on these three. When there is no way you can cut your biggest expenses, how will profits come?”

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Companies and their strategies

Performance mapping provides managers with an important opportunity to enhance employee engagement as well as advance the performance management culture necessary to attaining the Eyes High Strategy. You have an important role in this process by helping employees:

• feel respected, rewarded and recognized for their accomplishments
• align their talents and skills to organizational goals
• Develop their potential.

In this world of cut throat competition, companies are putting tremendous effort to hire competent employees and to develop relevant competencies in their existing employees. These are one of the few ways in which companies can gain competitive edge over each other. In this slowing economy where so many companies are fighting for limited resources and talent, it is very important for organizations to incessantly reassess their competencies, update it and have the courage to make the necessary changes. It is equally imperative for a firm to define a set of core competencies which corresponds with its key market differentiators. This is where competency mapping plays a key role.

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Competency Mapping and Employee Mapping in HR

It is the process of identification of the competencies and the level of proficiency required in it to perform a given job or role efficiently.

Every job requires some set of attributes whether it is technical, managerial or behaviour to perform the same successfully; these attributes or skills are known as competencies.

L&T InfoTech has a successful competency-based HR system. Recruitment, training, development, job rotation, succession planning and promotions-all are well defined by competency mapping. Nearly all HR functions are linked to competency.

                                                                                            

Competencies are enhanced through training and job rotation.  Job rotation acts as a learning experience for the employees and it widens their horizon about the company itself.

For example, a person lacking in negotiation skills might be put in the sales or purchase department for a year to hone his skills in that area. When the company first started competency mapping the whole process took eight months for six roles and two variations.

Eventually, 16-18 profiles were worked out. L&T InfoTech uses PeopleSoft for competency mapping.  Two appraisals are done- one after every project-end for skills, and the other is done on annual basis for behavioural competencies. There was initial resistance from the line people, but when the numbers started flowing, everybody eventually agreed. An SBU-based skills portfolio is published every quarter.

As far as training and development is concerned, instead of asking and forcing people to attend classes, they themselves willingly want to attend them since it will help them in improving upon their job specific skills. Introduction of competency mapping has also involved introducing competency based appraisals in performance appraisals.

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Walmart’s Latest Employee-Relations Debacle

A Kemptville, Ontario, Walmart employee was fired  this week after urging a customer to not leave his dog in his car while he shopped. The story quickly grew legs and amounts to yet another PR black eye for the company. 

Walmart had enjoyed a wave of decent PR for a while, but now it finds itself back in a defensive posture–both because of this incident and also for other employee-relations horror stories that play to a now-familiar narrative.  In fact, it’s hard to stay on top of all the negative stories about the big-box retailer. However, this particular story might have been avoided had the company weighed its options more carefully and recognized the value of quality employee-relations.

The lesson for PR pros is to think ahead. That may seem to be a simple notion, but when you dive into Walmart’s handling of the situation, it seems clear that management responded in a knee-jerk fashion.

The employee admits that she directly addressed the customer who allegedly left his dog in the car. She also indicates that the customer responded with anger and claimed that he would not shop at the store again. Later that day the she was called into her manager’s office and told that such issues should be taken up with him directly. Unsatisfied with this solution, she instead declared that the next time she would contact the police. Following that statement, she alleges, she was terminated.

The manager was correct to ask his employee to openly communicate troublesome situations with management, and to avoid confronting the company’s stakeholders directly. Where he arguably went wrong was in terminating an employee who was acting on a humane impulse—rather than exploring alternative solutions or council from human resources. Not only that, but the manager’s decision to let his employee go helps reaffirm a popular narrative that Walmart cares considerably more about its bottom line than its employees.

Walmart (and others) should consider ahead of time how actions can impact reputation. And that goes for a company's entire personnel—from a store greeter all the way up to the CEO.

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9 tips how to Develop an Employee Engagement Programs

together some helpful tips Human Resources professionals should keep in mind when it comes to engagement programs:

1) There is no magic formula. Enough said here.

2) Each employer's idea of engagement and how to bring it about is different. Respect that what may work at another company, may not be the right fit for yours. Understand, and be true to your culture.

3) Determine what are the key drivers of engagement at your organization. Whether through employee opinion surveys or walking the halls, determine what drives employee engagement at your company. Is it work/life balance, compensation, career paths and personal growth? Having this information will help guide your efforts and focus.

4) Alignment. Make sure your programs, the messages, and actions are aligned with the business strategy.

5) Measure, measure, measure. Have the data ready to show how the programs are working (or not). Make sure it answers some of the following questions:
a. How are the initiatives making a difference? 
b. Has turnover been reduced? By how much?
c. Has your engagement scores improved? By how much?
d. Has your time-to-fill been reduced due to increased applicants?
e. How do these statistics impact the bottom line?

6) Be Flexible, be adaptable. Understand that sometimes the one constant is change. What may be the strategy today can change in an instant tomorrow with new leadership, as a result of economic changes, competition and the like.

7) Communicate. Do not make the assumption that the whole organization knows what you are working on when it comes to engagement programs. Communicate constantly, hold small information sessions or Town Halls to introduce new programs.

8) Don't lose momentum. Once you start the engagement initiatives keep them going. Build upon the buzz and the energy. Also once rolled out, revisit your programs periodically to keep them fresh and updated.

9) Get Buy In! I cannot stress this enough. The issue of buy in came up time and again over the course of the conference and programs that have succeeded were those that had buy in from the senior most executives and business unit heads before embarking on these initiatives.

Every company is on a quest to attract, retain, and motivate a high performing team. How we each achieve this may take different paths respecting what makes each of our companies unique. But just remember that no matter where in the world you may be, or in what industry, you are not alone in your quest to build engagement.

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India on top in 'employer-employee relationships'

A new survey has found that the "positive relationship" between the staff and management has increased in countries like India and China, whereas Australia dropped four places to take the 13th spot on the list.

According to ORC International's annual workplace engagement index, just under half (48 percent) of Australian workers reported a positive relationship this year, which is 6 percent less than last year, News.co.au reported.

The survey conducted on almost 10,000 workers surveyed them on their attitude towards their organisation, as well as whether they felt a sense of loyalty towards their job and whether they were willing to go beyond their usual duties to help their organisation to achieve its goals.

The survey found that while India and China's rankings jumped by at least eight places from last year's survey, to occupy the top two places on the list of 18 countries, merely 38 percent of Australian employees said their manager inspired them to be effective in their job.

Countries with a lower percentage of positive relationships between the staff and management than the global average of 53 percent, occupied the seven lowest spots on ORC's Employee Engagement Index (EEI)

ORC International's Global Engagement Index for 2014:

1. India

2. China

3. Brazil

4. Switzerland

5. USA

6. Austria

7. Canada

8. Netherlands

9. Germany

10. Russia

11. Singapore

12. Italy

13. Australia

14. Spain

15. France

16. Hong Kong

17. UK

18. Japan (ANI)

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High attrition rates, talent shortage worry recruiters

Talent shortage and high attrition rates are now issues weighing on the minds of recruiters and company chiefs in Asia, as companies expand more aggressively in Asian growth markets.

Nearly two-thirds of CEOs based in Asia told consultancy PwC in a survey they face a 'limited supply of candidates with the right skills'. Also, 47 per cent said they lose their top people to competitors.

In a report by boutique recruitment agency Ambition Group, about half of the 200 Singaporean executive respondents said attrition rates have risen in 2010 and have raised the trend as a key concern.

The tight talent pool comes at a time when companies are looking to expand in Asia. PwC says that nine in 10 CEOs surveyed in their global CEO survey are expecting their operations to grow in Asia, with a focus on China and India.

Gautam Banerjee, executive chairman for PwC Singapore, notes that Singapore is also a strong destination for businesses and talent.

Paul Endacott, managing director of Ambition Group Singapore, said the recruitment pick-up was at first driven by replacement hiring in Q1 through mid-Q2 2010. 'But by Q2 onwards, it was attrition that began to drive hiring and investment in key areas that led to a candidate-short market.'

Seven in 10 executives in Ambition's report have seen people wooed by higher remuneration packages from other firms. On average, Singaporean candidates are offered pay packages 10 to 15 per cent higher than they used to earn and in Hongkong, they can be as much as 20 per cent higher.

About 41 per cent say people leave because of a lack of career opportunities available.

'Attrition is extremely costly to a company. Some research has shown that replacing a person into a role can cost the company 150 per cent of the person's annual salary,' says Mr Endacott.

About 62 per cent of Singaporean executives have to cast their eyes to overseas talent because they are unable to find the right people here.

In banking, Ambition CEO Guy Day finds recruiters tend to pick from other financial hubs like Hongkong, Japan, Australia.

It gets trickier when the roles get more niches, like in digital marketing, where it's rare to find someone with experience in Asia. Typically, says Mr Day, such companies recruit from the US, the UK or Australia.

Companies are resorting to non-monetary means of shoring up talent erosion. About 65 per cent of CEOs in PwC's survey say they are deploying key employees overseas.

Other popular strategies include retaining workers past their retirement age and tapping more female talent.

'If it's purely money, then it’s going to be very challenging for companies to retain people,' notes Mr Endacott. 'However, if it's career development that's the issue, companies can invest more in training, learning and do more to improve work-life balance by offering flexible working arrangements.

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Don’t worry, we’ll be fine...

Employers must put contingency plans in place to minimize disruptions if top-level managers leave. Knowing why a senior executive has resigned can help employers prevent or prepare for similar exits in future. 

This article looks at five more:

·         Poor communication

Clear and consistent communication between the senior management team ensures senior executives are fully involved within a business.
Without this, they are likely to feel excluded, undervalued and lack the confidence to make suggestions to company management.
Poor communication can also cause feelings of insecurity and paranoia about their position within the business, all of which can lead top-level managers to consider moving on.
By involving them in key decision-making from day one and valuing their opinions, employers are more likely to make senior executives feel part of the senior management team and businesses are more likely to retain them.

·         Company direction

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, businesses are under constant pressure to re-evaluate their strategy and direction. This can create problems for senior management.
Over time, some executives may become detached from the route that the organisation is heading in, while those who are prepared to run with the change — but who lack the support to bring it about — are likely to become frustrated.
Either way, it is difficult for executives with differing beliefs from the rest of the company to justify remaining with the business.
In these circumstances, effective communication between executives and management can ensure both sides are fully aware of the facts before either makes a rash decision.

·         Dilution of company brand

To be successful, senior management must believe in the fundamental brand values of the business.
As companies and their brands evolve over time, executives need to buy into this change. However, some may be unable or unwilling to do this.
For example, a senior executive may have little belief in a new product or service or may not have the appetite required to rebuild a diminished brand.
Although it depends on the exact circumstances of the situation, this may be a sensible time to part ways.

·         Loss of company support

A senior executive who loses the support of the company — be it through internal or external politics, change in company direction, communication difficulties or under performance of the company — will find regaining it difficult.
Even if he is able to develop a solution for the bigger problem, he will be unable to push this through without the full and committed backing of the board and company as a whole.
Losing company support is a particularly common problem for senior executives at public-listed companies, which need to take shareholder opinion into account.

·         Personal circumstances

Personal circumstances can be the primary motivation for a senior executive to consider leaving his position.
Senior managers may decide against moving as part of a wider company relocation.
Executives who look for new positions may want a shorter commute to work, or to spend less time travelling on business.
Family commitments are often pivotal to their decision. In the right circumstances, businesses have allowed executives to carry out a suitable portion of their working week from home to retain them.
Long- or short-term illness can also be a difficult barrier to overcome.
In these circumstances, some businesses have employed affected executives in smaller advisory roles so that they can continue to contribute their expertise and experience, while at the same time reducing their personal commitment.

·         Explore options

The success of a senior executive is aligned with the wider success of a company — depending on circumstances, his resignation may or may not therefore be welcomed by the business.
If it is not, senior management should carefully consider the cause of resignation and explore the options available.
Where appropriate, improved remuneration packages, greater opportunities for career progression and demonstrating a reasonable understanding for individual personal circumstances can all persuade executives to stay.
Where senior managers are not prepared to reconsider, the business does not need to suffer.
Most organisations realize that the best executives are ambitious and are likely to seek new challenges in time.
Employers who prepare for these circumstances and put contingency plans in place are unlikely to experience too much disruption when a senior member of the staff leaves.
A parting of ways may sometimes be in the best interest of both parties.

For example, if an executive does not agree with a company’s change in direction or branding strategy or has lost the support of the organisation, a new appointment may be more willing and better suited to driving the business forward.

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Best workplaces are 'female-friendly'

Just what makes a workplace great?

The answer is more elusive than you might think, given that more people are versed in the dysfunctional work environment than in the truly exceptional workplace. Fortunately, the research consultancy that produces Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For rankings - the Great Place to Work Institute - knows a thing or two about what builds trust and engagement among workers.

What stands out on this year's list, published last week - software provider SAS took top place - is that many of the firms picked represent 'female-friendly' workplaces. Groups not typically found in the highest ranks, such as minorities and women, tend to be more visible in these environments. Furthermore, these organisations bend and adapt to their employee base - they do not ask their staff to conform to the corporate 'way'.

So what else is key to their success?

Among other things, their work-life policies are stigma-free.

Take one firm's well-intentioned policy. A part-time partnership track was carved out, allowing top performers to assume more responsibility while simultaneously cutting down hours. The problem? Only women took advantage of the benefit. The result was that, companywide, part-time partners found they were not taken all that seriously.

The best workplaces offer work-life accommodations that all employees are encouraged to use - top-down and bottom-up - including sabbaticals, compressed work weeks, remote working and job sharing. It is understood at leading companies that the wide adoption of benefits long considered mainly for women helps the workforce at large.

Top-ranking firms also have zero tolerance for unfairness.

In their new book, The Great Workplace, Dr Michael Burchell and Dr Jennifer Robin note the strong message sent by SC Johnson, a company that institutes real consequences for unfair treatment. If the consumer products company sees prejudiced judgment, it handles the problem swiftly by not tolerating such behaviour at all.

In addition, top firms that truly care about fairness provide an appeals process that allows grievances to be addressed.

Dr Burchell and Dr Robin point out this best practice at American Express, where the office of the ombudsman acts as 'a confidential and neutral resource where employees can seek guidance without fear of retribution'.

Taking a stand on equitable treatment can be particularly important for women, some of whom have sounded their grievances only to be ignored, sidelined or even fired. Industries dominated by males can take a page from this book, and recognise that filing complaints about unfair treatment often results in a more harrowing experience than the initial harassment or abuse.

Last but not least, firms that provide the best workplaces acknowledge the power of the unspoken.

Kraft, a company acknowledged for its diversity policies, understands that not all success criteria are spelt out for new employees. Its Jump Start programme offers new staff an orientation in the unwritten rules and strategies for succeeding in the corporate culture. The programme is designed to help collapse the learning curve in terms of how to build influence, find mentors and maintain strong relationships.

Other companies could benefit from adopting this practice, helping those not in the key power constituency by sharing the secret rules of the game.

In the end, employer and employee need only follow a simple formula: Commit to my long-term success, I commit to yours. 

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Companies go all out to win women over at work

Indian HR heads may not be in a hurry to roll out egg-freezing perks like tech giants Apple and Facebook. But several of them have introduced their own woman-centric policies to help attract and retain talent — from offering exclusive parking lots to IVF leave.

MTS India, for instance, has made available special parking spots for women employees who drive to work. "There are also cab drops for female employees who end up working late as well as a security guard in case any female employee needs escorting," says Tarun Katyal, chief human resources officer, MTS India.

Since fertility treatments can be both physically and emotionally demanding, ICICI Bank allows 180 days of leave to employees seeking to undergo fertility treatment. This is in addition to maternity, childcare and adoption leave.
At Citi India, which has three women networks (employee-initiated and employee-led units), there are rooms for new mothers to relax in. Anuranjita Kumar, chief human resources officer, Citi South Asia, says diversity is a "business imperative" for the group. "It is an imperative to build a workplace that nurtures and promotes career trajectories of men and women alike," she says.

Gloob, a home decor and improvement company, has a play area for toddlers and lets women employees bring them along on certain work days. "This ensures greater engagement with women employees, among other things," says Kunal Sharma, Gloob's founder and director.

In India, a perk similar to paying for egg-freezing like the one Apple and Facebook have instituted may be perceived as "culturally insensitive" say HR sources. Mayank Chandra, managing partner, Antal International, said such practices (companies paying for freezing eggs) are not on top of the mind of prospective employees. "A good company, safe working environment and career growth are the major factors in terms of job change or even to retain employees," he says.

However, given the stress on achieving gender balance across industries, DSM India president Bharath Sesha does not rule out the idea of Indian companies paying for freezing of eggs of women employees in the near future. Incidentally, DSM India has a special sabbatical policy for women employees, where if a woman takes, say, a six-month sabbatical, her performance is assessed on the time that she worked with the company, that is, the six-month period that she did work is assessed as 'one year'.

But the real question experts are asking is how exactly are such practices translating into driving organizations to attain gender diversity?

"While companies are offering a lot of benefits to women employees, the question that should really be asked is why are these not translating into a greater number of women employees at the mid levels or senior levels? Why are women not getting promotions as fast as men do? Why are there pay gaps between women employees and male employees? Organizations which focus on general inclusion must look deeper into these areas so as to ensure they attain gender diversity," says Shachi Irde, executive director, Catalyst India's western region centre who believes the practices that will actually bridge the gender gap are parity in salaries and promotions.

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HR professionals' role has become challenging

With modern day companies striving hard to retain and develop talent, the role of human resource professionals has become more challenging and crucial, said industry experts.

"HR professionals, who were earlier deemed to be a part of the 'operational side' of the company, now have become 'strategists' as they have to retain, motivate and nurture talent to help an organization grow," said Kedia Infotech and e-Seva World chief executive officer Ashok Kumar Kedia, while addressing the seminar on 'Smart HR management: Working smarter and using technology for organization's advantage' organised by Kushmanv Information Technologies at the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Fapcci) here.

Speaking about the role of IT in HR management, Greenco Group senior vice-president (Corporate development) K Sriram said, these days the role of IT department has transformed from being a 'control and administrative department' to a 'service department'.

Sriram pointed out that HR departments are using IT tools extensively in the area of performance management and administration. However, the data security aspect is a key challenge as all employees records are stored electronically, he added.

Meanwhile, Fapcci corporate law and intellectual property rights (IPR) committee chairman Abhay Kumar Jain said HR is the main asset of the company. "Only if we groom and train our HR, can we develop IPR in an organization."

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E COMMERCE, START-UPS TOP B-SCHOOL CAMPUS PLACEMENTS

Recruiters heading for campus placements will find the batch of 2015 free of the usual jitters. Placement cells of more than 11 top B-schools point out this may be the best placement season in the past few years.

Factors such as bigger pay packets, more job offers and companies waking up from a hiring freeze have resulted in students displaying a larger risk appetite and testing the market for recruitment despite pre-placement offers (PPOs) in hand.

Placement cells of IIM Indore, XLRI, MDI Gurgaon, NMIMS,IIM Calcutta and IIM Lucknow have found students in larger-than-expected groups, wanting to join the e-commerce and startup industry. “E-commerce is the most buzzing sector on campus,” says Prabudh Jain, student placement coordinator, MDI, Gurgaon. Agrees Suvarna Athavale, external relations secretary, IIM Calcutta, “E-commerce is growing rapidly in India, and many students are interested especially because of its unique challenges. Students are also expecting to bag more offers than before.”

Banking and consulting, the traditional favourities, are still popular on campus, especially when it comes to strategy consulting roles from the likes of McKinsey & Co, BCG, Bain & Co and the like.

An earlier indication of the popularity of e commerce was revealed during the ‘ET Top Recruiters in B-School’ survey when, for the first time, e-commerce recruiters such as Flipkart and Amazon joined the top 10 rankings, alongside traditional recruiters such as Cognizant, ICICI BankBSE -0.02 % and Deloitte, which have consistently been making it to the top 10 over the past few years.

At Mumbai-based NMIMS, the placement team is trying to double the number of start-ups they got last year to placate one-fourth of the batch who want to join these new-age firms. NMIMS has 450 students to place and had five start-ups hiring from their campus, last year.

“The students are rooting for smaller companies that are below the radar like Salt n Soap, and not just larger ones like Flipkart and Amazon,” says the chairperson, placements of one of the top B-schools who does not wish to be named. Students believe opportunities to learn may be more in smaller firms. Besides, the large number of deals in the startup phase has boosted their confidence, adds the chairperson.

Arpit M (name changed), an IIM Bangalore final year student has a PPO like many in his batch. However, most of his classmates, despite their PPOs, will sit for interviews again during final placements. “In any other year, a PPO would have sealed our decision, but those trying their luck this time despite PPOs could be higher,” he says.

Student placement committee member, Mahima Sushil of IMI Delhi, says, “It’s still early days but we are expecting a good number of first-time recruiters as well.” Deferred placements may also increase because more students want to start their own ventures, in an economy that whets the risktaking appetite. Around 20 graduates from the Class of 2014 across the six older IIMs alone had opted out of cushy corporate jobs to launch their own ventures.

Rajiv Mishra, chairperson, placements at XLRI has already seen a couple of students discussing deferred placements. XLRI has 180 students to place. Usually, a few students opt for deferred placements, but this year could see more doing so. B-schools offer deferred placements to top students who want to start their own businesses but in case of a failed attempt, get help from their alma mater for another shot at recruitment.

Indications are that companies may shell out more for their choice of candidates. A placement cell member at one of the newer IIMs, IIM Rohtak, says that freshers are expecting anywhere between Rs 12 lakh and Rs 16 lakh per annum. “This, despite the fact that average work experience for this batch is about 14 months as compared to three years last time. For the batch of 2014, the average salary was at Rs 9.72 lakh,” he says. “The season has begun with a bang,” says Jain from MDI Gurgaon. “It’s still early days, but as compared to last year when the average salary was at Rs 14.74 lakh, we are expecting around or above Rs 16 lakh.”

Although students are treading with caution, some positivity from the summers has rubbed off on the students of IIM Bangalore. “During summer placements, firms made more offers and if that happens again during finals, it will change the game,” says Sapna Agarwal, head, Career Development Services of IIM Bangalore. Summer placements ended in record time for most B-schools, and many companies across campuses had to be declined.

At XIM, Bhubaneswar, feelers have been sent from IT firms and FMCG companies that had not hired in the past four years, for IT system profile and roles in marketing.

At IIM Lucknow, PE firms and investment banks are returning with more profiles, says Pushpendra Priyadarshi, chairperson, placement. “The batch of 2015 has also shown signs of being selective about their roles and plans to wait for the right offer than accept the first one,” says a student placement cell member of IIM Indore.

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50 BIG IDEAS TO CHANGE L & D

Our task is to take those 50 ideas to change Learning and Development. Explain how and why we can/have/should make it happen. Alternatively, why they shouldn't. So, the big 50…

1. Make connectivity and sharing a catalyst for all learning.
2. Stop claiming every person will be competent.
3. Have people design their own quality criteria, and develop frameworks to help them understand how.
4. Celebrate learning by celebrating performance.
5. Don’t require people to come to a course.
6. Stop using the words and phrases best practice, and learner engagement.
7. Have a group of successful professionals in your workplace document the 10 most important things they know, and the 10 most important skills. Then compare and contrast them with your workplace standards.
8. Let people use smartphones at any place in work.
9. Mobilise learning by mobilising people in communities they care about.
10. Make any space in the workplace into a learning space.
11. Make learning resources entoirely visible – literally open all your content to everybody.
12. Ditch L&D function “filters”; remove the hurdles like pre-qualification.
13. Be honest when things suck, are boring, or are wastes of time. Stop rationalizing, making excuses, or using confirmation bias.
14. Transform your learning function to a 21st century cultural centre with cutting edge experts, thinking, and support.
15. Stop encouraging people to go on overpriced courses that fail to improve their performance, and that perpetuate a system that stifles innovation and equity.
16. Make your learning function about creativity.
17. Make learning at work about self-discovery, accountability, and how to find and evaluate information people care about.
18. Make your formal support about participation in networks.
19. Support your learning function as a business.
20. Treat the people who learn best like rock stars: Give them reality shows, endorsement deals, and huge contracts.
21. If people underperform, hold them accountable. Find a way to make support meaningful, social, and knowledge-based.
22. Make people accountable to one another, not the L&D function.
23. If we don’t celebrate performance in the the way we do level 1 evaluation sheets, let’s stop being surprised when businesses consider us to be superficial.
24. Review your formal professional systems. Every L&D member is an expert in something. There’s your Personal Development team.
25. L&D – Stop patronizing learning tech like brand fanatics.
26. Don’t set benchmark tests that reward 15% error rates with a pass.
27. Make learning budgets entirely transparent to everyone in your organisation.
28. Throw out test scores forever. Test in the workplace with performance as your yardstick.
29. Stop asking so much of trainers and instructional designers.
30. Help your business understand what training, learning and development are for.
31. Make sure anyone in a L&D function understands what it means manage commercially. 
    
32. Promote learning through networks, not curriculum.
33. Make performance support and the ability to ask the right question at the right time the criteria by which we measure a L&D function.
34. Stop testing to count learning, and measure performance.
35. Rebrand learning the same way Apple has done with computers, Starbucks has coffee, and Nike has jogging.
36. Stop criticising managers for their lack of support for your formal learning interventions.
37. Push the language of learning – learners, pedagogy, etc – out of learning spaces completely.
38. Design complex mentorship and apprenticeship support.
39. Use support based around thinking habits, and the ability to know what’s worth understanding rather than “content.”
40. Create support based on the ability to self-direct and design their own learning pathways.
41. Require Subject Matter Experts to design and deliver learning support.
42. Stop training–this is a push-pull action; instead, promote learning.
43. Use YouTube channels instead of handouts.
44. Eliminate educational language in your learning function – you are not a school (unless you’re a school).
45. Use social media and ESN instead of email.
46. Make learning resources more like app stores with support that excites people –that they want to use.
47. Create support that functions like a playlist, and that browses like Google search results; require people to document their own understanding.
48. Allow people to decide what they do and don’t want to learn; insist only that the learn something to support their performance.
49. Treat the goal of learning as performance.
50. Design your learning function as a think tank to understand and address your business problems.

So what now.  Well, it’s likely that there are certain points on there that you agree with, you disagree with, don’t understand, wish to develop.

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Role of L&D in the 21C Workplace

It is increasingly becoming evident that L&D department in organizations can no longer function the way they used to, at least not if they want to be relevant and be a business partner to the organization. The impact of technology, globalization, ubiquitous connectivity, remote work and distributed work teams, and economy of individuals to name a few drivers have changed the face of workplace learning and performance dramatically.
Workplace learning in many places is still struggling to come out of the Industrial Era where workers were trained on best practices, put to work, and their efficiency measured by supervisors. The more of the same task they performed, the more efficient they became. And time to production improved. Economy of scale was achieved. Gone are those days and those requirements. Repeatable tasks are performed more rapidly, with greater accuracy and more cost effectively by machines. Somewhat complicated tasks are being outsourced but even the face of outsourcing is undergoing rapid change.

These are some of the critical and macro-level shifts in the role of L&D that are becoming apparent. There are more micro-level ones like:

1. The ability to put together a course rapidly from existing content on the web, OERs, and internal content
2. Being up-to-date with different technologies that can impact learning
3. The capability to gauge what kind of support is required for optimal and timely output – a course, a Job Aid, initiating and facilitating a forum discussion, curating external content and sharing internally, and so on.

The role of L&D will continue to evolve and expand. It is going to become strategic and critical but the onus lies on us to keep honing our skills and shaping our capabilities to meet the constantly changing needs of the workplace.

Ability to learn rapidly is perhaps the mega-skill that makes the rest possible.Today’s workers can no longer rest on their laurels and past success doesn't necessarily imply future success as well. This is the world of work that L&D must support today. And this means re-skilling for L&D as well.
From course designers to learning facilitators – Given that till date, L&D has been tasked with designing courses based on TNA, task analysis and skill gaps, this is perhaps one of the fundamental and most difficult shifts. While courses will still have their place, the approach to course design itself will need to become more dynamic, rapid and inclusive of informal and social components.
Proficiency in social media usage – While we would all like to boast about being social media gurus, using it effectively for learning and enabling others to do the same calls for a different understanding of social media. It goes beyond a Facebook status update.
Facilitating self-driven learning – As course designers and course disseminators, L&D role has been more of that of the sage on the stage. However, with the need for learning new skills becoming more dynamic and skill requirement more complex, workers must know how to “pull” what they need to drive performance. This requires them to reach out to the right people, access the right content and use their own plan to acquire the information or skill required. 

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How Learning & Development Must Change: Three Challenges

“The three points of change have always been part of the L&D function, but today’s greater speed of technological change, combined with the increased importance of learning to the modern organization, means these three facets of the modern L&D department are crucial to its success.”

The three challenges we face today

The result is that L&D must change the way it operates in today’s world, in three ways. In particular:

1. We must develop content collaboratively. The L&D department can no longer work at a remove from the rest of the organization. While trainers in the past could develop deep expertise in a given subject matter, today’s urgent need for information makes that impossible. More than ever, L&D needs to establish strong ways to develop learning content in collaboration with workplace subject matter experts (SMEs).
2. We must support current practice. A great deal of learning takes place in the workplace without L&D’s intervention. However, the department has a role to play in supporting this learning, whether managers deliberately organize it, or whether colleagues informally arrange it among themselves.
3. We must maintain and build our department. It is no longer possible to support the wider demands of workplace L&D with a generalist skill set. Instead, it is essential for L&D staff to have both a good general grounding in L&D and specialist skills in particular areas.

This table shows some of the ways that the new approach to L&D differs from the old:

Table 1.

Old L&D	New L&D
Centralized	Involved with the organization
Classroom and/or face-to-face delivery mechanism	Multiple media, including the classroom where appropriate; both synchronous and asynchronous; online and offline
Content experts	Experts in how people learn and in working with SMEs to get the best from them
“Push” delivery style	Multiple styles: “Push” delivery where appropriate (e.g., for compliance training), plus “pull” for performance support information
Minimal technical expertise	Technical expertise in e-Learning
Course writing expertise	Expertise in writing for courses, blogs, and wikis
Design and set up courses requested by management	Curriculum design expertise as well as performance consultancy expertise to determine whether courses are actually required

These are just some of the practical ways L&D must change to meet the challenge of today. The three points of change have always been part of the L&D function, but today’s greater speed of technological change, combined with the increased importance of learning to the modern organization, means these three facets of the modern L&D department are crucial to its success.

In this respect, the L&D department is a microcosm of the modern working environment in which individuals are becoming increasingly focused specialists in their field. In this L&D microcosm, specialists in certain areas of learning practice staff the department. They add value to the enterprise in collaboration with fellow workers and use technology to ensure that they focus on high-value work as often as possible.

The world of work is changing and the L&D department must change with it. L&D can not only survive, it can flourish if it bears in mind the benefits of working with SMEs and employee managers and if it places a deliberate focus on L&D team members by both developing them in a structured way and by supporting them with the right systems.

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