HR Learning: 17th January, 2022

 1.  Manage talent, not weakness. 

Traditional HR strategies focus on the weaknesses and development areas of employees. More modern approaches emphasise the assessment of competencies in order to align an individual’s behaviour to the ideal job role.

Stop asking: How can I get employees to perform optimally in their existing positions?

Start asking: In which function will this employee perform optimally?

2.  Big data comes to HR: The need for a talent dashboard

No talent management and succession planning strategy is complete without objective information about the talent and motives of your old and new employees.

With the rise of ‘big data’ in organisations across the world, HR departments face the challenge of instituting a talent dashboard, defined as a real-time user interface that provides the current status and historical trends related to employee competence, assessment results, development areas and more.

Dashboards offer the ability to systematically measure and monitor what employees are good at and what they have to offer, allowing HR to make strategic decisions that are backed up by a wealth of data.

3. Employee misclassification in the gig economy.        

 With the rapid advances in technology in the past decade leading to the widespread deployment of ridesharing applications and delivery platforms, terms such as ‘gig workers’, ‘Flexible work’ and ‘sharing economy’ have been brought into the mainstream. Such classification of gig workers in the category of independent contractors enables companies to avoid providing the benefits which they would otherwise be liable to pay under various Indian labour laws. Notwithstanding whether the misclassification of employees has been done intentionally or not, it could lead to the exploitation of these workers by depriving them of basic protection and benefits such as social security, minimum wages, payment of bonus, overtime, leave, etc. Such misclassification carries serious penalties, risks, and consequences for employers including, but not limited to, non-compliance with the applicable laws, litigation by the affected workers, back payment to the said misclassified workers, loss of revenue/tax for the government, loss of reputation, etc...