HR learning: 15 May, 2017

1.
What’s in the Pepsi-HUL ‘Career JV’?

This one-of-its-kind JV promises to offer enhanced exposure and learning opportunities to employees of both the companies, but will it stand the test of time and offer more than the usual L&D programmes? Industry observers opine! 

FMCG companies Pepsico and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) have entered into a JV. No it’s not one of those usual business joint ventures. It’s one-of-its-kind Career JV as per which both companies will allow select high-potential employees to gain experience at the other firm for two to four months.

The companies involved will keep posting openings as and when they arise and employees can apply for the same to experience a different work culture, tackle new challenges and come back ready to take on more.

As of now, Pepsico’s Apeksha Jain is the only employee from the two companies to have completed the programme. Jain, a member of the HR team at Pepsico, got placed with HUL for a project on assessing the effectiveness of their current learning curriculum, and proposing a capability-building road map across functions.

HUL occasionally sends its employees to work on short- term assignments with other organisations to gain exposure to new skills and also transfer some of the learnings and insights. It’s yet to send an employee to Pepsico as part of this programme.

On the onset, this JV looks promising as a unique learning and talent development initiative to develop high-potential talent. It promises to offer enhanced exposure and learning opportunities to people. Additionally, it also lets them experience a new culture, and in turn, supports leadership development.

2.

Role of talent analytics in redefining learning culture

Talent analytics is the catalyst that’s gaining immense importance in making learning more agile and accurate.

While organisations are investing huge efforts in designing the best-in-class learning solutions for talent development, talent analytics is the catalyst that’s gaining immense importance in making learning more agile and accurate. Whether need-based or not, if learning is the prescription to a condition (or a probable condition), analytics is the diagnostic mechanism that helps get to the root of the condition, ensuring that the best prescription is offered. It is now a well-established fact that efficient talent analytics is critical to learning design.

In fact, analytics enables HR professionals to analyse, interpret, and make the best possible decisions and recommendations based on workforce data. It is crucial for organisations to determine what workforce-related problems they need to solve and how addressing those workforce challenges will impact organisational effectiveness. It is analytics that helps identify the same. 

Hemalakshmi Raju, head, learning & development, Cipla, says, “The power of analytics in making learning more effective is something that we will see going ahead. Using the power of data to see what kind of learning is needed, who needs it and when, can be a big game changer with respect to learning effectiveness.”

3.
Building Skills for a Digital Future - What's needed?

Here's how companies need to think about skilling in a Digital First World.

Every major tech and non-tech company in India has announced a commitment to Digital. NASSCOM estimates that by 2025, Digital-led services would have grown four-fold as compared to a two-fold growth in traditional IT services. But is our workforce digitally enabled from a skills point of view?

A study by Deloitte estimates that the rapid pace of technology change in the workplace would lead to a skills shelf life of only 2.5 years, which means the current skill set may become redundant after some point of time. Digital is one of the headwinds that will not only bring about the obsolescence of skills that our workforce has today, but will also create demand for new/evolved skills. So what are some of the skills which will be required in the digital era? Are these unique? Can they be developed? 

Before answering that question, it is important to break the problem down into 3 steps

a.) How we define Digital?

b.) What Roles will Digital require?

c.) What Skills will those roles require?

How do we go about building those skills

For an Enterprise to be Digital-ready, they need to focus on a digital-skill building mission along multiple dimensions

·         Digital Foundation – here the company’s focus is on training new entrants into its workforce on the fundamentals of Digital technologies

·         Digital Depth – the company identifies segments of employees  who have strong technical depth that can be cross-skilled onto Digital technologies

Digital Skilling at Scale – here the company’s focus is on providing fundamental digital competencies across the workforce