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Dear Readers,
The National HRD Network has been bringing out a semi-academic, theme based, quarterly journal
for the last few years. It aims at compiling and publishing the professional views and experiences of
reputed HR professionals, line professionals, CEOs, researchers, academicians in each theme area. We
carry out extensive research, identify and invite persons who have eminent publications or have rich
experience in the theme area to contribute articles for each issue. Through the journal, we aim to build a
body of knowledge in all facets of HR which is not otherwise easily available for the current and future
HR Professionals. So far, close to 350 eminent authors have contributed articles. Each issue is guest
edited by a person of eminence in the concerned theme area.
This journal is circulated free to the members of NHRD Network to stimulate their thinking and towards
their professional development.
Publications so far have been based on themes such as :
•	 “IT in HR”
•	 “Performance Management”
•	 “Attracting and Retaining Talent”
•	 “Career Management”
•	 “Organizational Change”
•	 “Global HRM”
•	 “Women in Corporate Leadership Roles”
•	 “Organization Development”
•	 “Learning and Development”
•	 “Leadership”
•	 “Work-Life Balance”
•	 “Institution Building”
•	 “Coaching For Performance and Development”
•	 “Human Resources Management in Rapid Growth Organizations”
•	 “HR Competence”
•	 “HR and Employee Relations”
• “CEO and HR”
•	 “People Power – Draw, Drive and Deliver”
•	 “Getting HR Ready for Gen Y”
•	 “CSR & HR”
•	 “Shapes and Structures of Organizations - Today and Tomorrow”
•	 “Managing Change, Transformation and Enhancing Competitiveness : The HR Role”
•	 “Dots and connections: winning hearts and minds through internal communication”
•	 “Skill Building and HR”
•	 “Technology and HR”
The copies of these issues of the journal can be accessed from www.nationalhrd.org.
The current issue is on the theme of “Social Media and HR”.
Some of the guest editors for future issues include Srikantan Moorthy, Senior VP, Group Head of HR
and Member, Executive Council, Infosys and Dr. A.K. Balyan, MD and CEO of Petronet LNG.
This is your journal and will be as rich as you want it to be.
In order to further enrich it, we would like to receive your
1. 	 qualitative feedback on issues brought out so far, and
2. 	 suggestions for themes to be covered in our future issues;
3. 	 Any other suggestions.
Kindly send in your thoughts to drpvrmurthyresearch@gmail.com
Dr. PVR Murthy
Managing Editor
(On behalf of the Editorial Team)
NHRD Network Journ
al 
Skill Building and H
R 
January 2013
ISSN - 0974 - 1739
NHRD Network Journal
January 2013 
Volume 6  
Issue 1
www.nationa
lhrd.org
A Quarterly Pu
blication by Th
e National HRD
 Network
Skill Building
and HR
S Ramadorai
M V Subbiah
Arun Maira
Dr. Sharda Prasad
S Mahalingam
Lakshmi Narayanan
Dr. K C Reddy
R C M Reddy
Manish Sabharwal
Ramya Venkatarama
n
Dr. Mukti Mishra
Dr. Santanu Paul
T Muralidharan
Megha Aggarwal and
Dr. Devesh Kapur
www.nationa
lhrd.org
National HRD Network
The National HRD Network, established in 1985, is an
association of professionals committed to promoting
the HRD movement in India and enhancing the
capability of human resource professionals, enabling
them to make an impactful contribution in enhancing
competitivenessandcreatingvalueforsociety.Towards
thisend,theNationalHRDNetworkiscommittedtothe
development of human resources through education,
training, research and experience sharing. The network
ismanagedbyHRprofessionalsinanhonorarycapacity,
stemming from their interest in contributing to the HR
profession.
The underlying philosophy of the NHRDN is that
every human being has the potential for remarkable
achievement. HRD is a process by which employees in
organizations are enabled to:
•	 acquire capabilities to perform various tasks
associated with their present and future roles;
•	 develop their inner potential for self and
organisational growth;
•	 developanorganisationalculturewherenetworking
relationships, teamwork and collaboration
among different units is strong, contributing to
organisational growth and individual well-being.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our profound thanks to all the contributors of articles, who have taken time off from their
busy schedules out of their passionate interest in the field of HR and Social Media.
We acknowledge the excellent contribution of the Guest Editor - Elango R, Chief Human
Resources Officer And Head Emerging Geo Business Unit, Mphasis Ltd. for conceptualising
the entire issue and inspiring all busy experts in the field to share their thoughts.
Along with the support of Co-Editors Irfan Abdulla, Dr. Tanvi Gautam, Yashwant Mahadik,
Gautam Ghosh and Raghuraman M.G. this issue promises to be thought provoking and
riveting.
A special note of recognition for Mamta Malhotra, Susan Korath and Julian Peter who
supported Elango with research and ground work.
We acknowledge the support from Sunathy of Exclusive Search for passionately working
with me.
– Dr. PVR Murthy, Managing Editor
(On behalf of the Editorial Team)
CONTENTS
S.No.	     Title of Article	    Author	 Page No.
	 1	 Social Media 101 for HR	 Gautam Ghosh	 1
	Section I
	 2	 Introduction to Talent Acquisition	 Irfan Abdulla	 4
and Social Media
	 3	 Recruiting Gone Social 	 Savneet Shergill	 5
	 4	 Talent Acquisition: The Social Way	 Syeda Meher Taj	 8
	 5	 Attracting Generation Y Workforce	 Debolina Dutta	 11
	 6	 Social Media – Breaking Traditional 	 David Istacky	 15
Mindset and Looking Beyond
	Section II
	 7	 Best Practices and Future of Learning 	 Yashwant S Mahadik	 18
	 8	 Linking Learning to Business Strategy: 	 William Pelster (Bill) 	 20
About Deloitte University
	 9	 Social Media & Learning: A Perfect Match 	 Gautam Ghosh and	 23
	 Andrew Lax
	10	 Case Study: Social Learning @ Jardine	 Sunder Ramachandran	 26
Lloyd Thompson India
	11	 The Farm	 Kavi Arasu	 28
Section III
	12	 Branding and Communication: 	 Dr. Tanvi Gautam	 30
The Essentials
	13	 Creating YOUR Personal Brand	 Anand Pillai	 32
	14	 Reinventing Your Career for 	 Dorie Clark	 36
HR Professionals
	15	 Cross Cultural Issues in Branding and 	 Dr. Vinayshil Gautam	 38
Communication
	16	 ‘Brand’-ing Begins At Home’ Managing 	 Roger Darashah	 41
Communications from the Bottom Up
	Section IV
	17	 Balancing The Benefits and Risks 	 Raghuraman M G	 43
of Enterprise Social Media
	18	 Social Media Company Showcase	 Elango R and	 46
	 Gautam Ghosh	
S.No.	     Title of Article	    Author	 Page No.
Editorial Comments
”As you delve deeper, you will realise that at its
core, social media is about conversations and
connections, at an infinitely unimaginable scale
and speed.”
Within the first 20 minutes of waking up, I have checked
my emails, fixed my schedule for the day, paid bills, found
directions to a client meeting, made a reservation for dinner
with my wife and wished my distant aunt for her 50th
birthday! All this, with a few swipes of my finger on smart
phone that weighs no more than 130 gms.
As early as 5 years ago, this would have sounded
unimaginable and futuristic, much like a sci-fi movie
with unrealistic stunts. With 67 million users in India
and growing at the rate of 52% YoY, smartphones are a
ubiquitous part of our day, and often the cause of panic
attacks when they run out of battery.
We are indeed in the midst of remarkable times and the
possibilities are limitless. We stand at an interesting
juncture where technology is evolving at a speed that
makes it impossible to predict which mode of interaction
would be ‘in’ 2 years from now. Web 2.0 is expected to
have enormous potential to change the way people interact
and work, offering HR bountiful opportunities to ride this
wave and actively participate in this revolution.
There is already a buzz around Social Media and we’ve
merely seen the tip of the iceberg. For HR Professionals,
Elango R
Chief Human
Resources Officer
And Head
Emerging Geo
Business Unit,
Mphasis Ltd.
the implications are tremendous – we get to impact culture
and engagement at speeds and levels of influence we never
imagined, but wished for. We now have access to direct
1-0-1 connect with every single employee, irrespective
of how geographically dispersed they are or disparate
their roles are. This is tailor made for us to reinvent our
roles and take that much desired seat at the business table,
only if we can figure out how to harness this beast or beauty!
Just a bit of party pooper – while the opportunity is real,
the hype and mystification is unwarranted. As you delve
deeper, you will realize that at its core, Social Media is about
conversations and connections, at an infinitely unimaginable
scale and speed. Consider this: I have 500 connections on
LinkedIn, whom in turn are connected to 500 each, taking
my second level network to a few thousands! And the key
is that they are just a virtual message away. All it takes
to connect, listen, ask and respond is a few seconds to a
minutes and god Wi-Fi connection. Keep it simple and you
can harness this for terrific business and personal success
as HR professionals.
That is exactly what we set out to do, in this edition of
the NHRD publication — to demystify Social Media and
throw open the portals to a connected universe that is just
waiting to be tapped.
I have invited my peers from the industry to contribute
their perspective and the collective expertise makes this
hopefully, an unputdownable issue.
At the cost of being called simplistic, we have kept this
edition basic, jargon free and practical. No appendix, no
reference papers – just simple 1-0-1 conversations. I hope
you will appreciate this.
A fitting start from Gautam Ghosh who has been a
pioneer and realized the potential of the web for HR
Professionals, as early as the dial-up days of the internet.
He has written a great article on Social Media 101 for HR
Professionals.
The rest of the issue is co-edited by Leaders from our HR
fraternity and beyond, who have been early adopters of
Social Media, get what it takes to tap its potential and
have been generous to have taken time out of their already
packed schedules. They have drawn from their networks
and invited luminaries in this space to write some very
interesting columns.
Irfan Abdulla from LinkedIn (where else) has anchored
the Talent Acquisition section. Dr. Tanvi Gautam of
People Tree has pulled together the Branding and
Communication section. Yashwant Mahadik, Chief Learning
Officer of Philips and someone well versed with the full
potential of Social Media, has personally architected the
Learning section.
For good measure and some balance, I invited Chief
Information Officer - MG Raghuraman of MphasiS to
write a piece on how he views the HR communities’ Social
Media aspirations from his perch, atop the server stacks
and Internet pipes!
And the tail piece is a showcase that Gautam and I put
together with the help of some brash youngsters. They
challenged us all the way, and contributed to a making this
last section a fitting and interesting end to what seemed a
long but enjoyable journey.
Crystal ball gazing in isolation can be delusional, but the
help of my peers, we bring to you views and practices that
are forward looking, practical and realistic.
It calls for a shift, and it will take time but the transition
is sure to happen. And the reason I know that is because
most eyeballs for this edition will be via the virtual version
rather than the print version of this edition.
Enjoy the read, but don’t stop there. Experiment. Don’t
dip your toe in the water – dive in and swim to new shores,
tweeting and linking all the way.
While you are at it, share with us your stories and views.
I am on twitter@agastyasays and would love to hear
from you.
Dr. PVR Murthy
Honorary Managing
Editor on behalf of
the Editorial Team
Dr. Pallab
Bandyopadhyay
Dr. Arvind N
Agrawal
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 1
Here’s the thing HR and other people
need to remember, “social media”
might be a new term, but what it signifies
is not really new. Ever since the advent
of the internet people have connected
with each other in a public system
(via Usernet, Bulletin Boards) to discuss
and share their views and opinions.
It’s just that social networks like
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have
emerged at a time when internet
penetration is growing exponentially in
our part of the world.
So what does social media comprise of?
When most people think of social media,
they think about “networks” – and the
biggest three names are of networks.
Social networks like Facebook (Friendster
and Orkut earlier), professional networks
like LinkedIn (and Ryze earlier) and
information networks like Twitter are all
networks.
The networks are people-centric. My social
network comprises of people who I have
known, but might not know each other.
The other aspect of social media is
“communities” which are virtual places
where people who have a common interest
gather to share and engage about that
subject. These can range from communities
of practice (where professionals interact)
to hobby communities (photography or
quilt weaving, for example).
The principles that drive social media
adoption is when people start sharing
information and creating content on
networks and communities. According
to an oft quoted thumb rule, a minority
of the people “create” content. Some
more people “curate or comment” on the
created content and the majority of people
“consume” content. As a person gets more
and more comfortable – they start to curate
and create too.
These sites have also added design
principles that encourage people to move
from the “consumption” default. There
are two main ways they do that. One is to
reduce the effort to curate. This is what the
“like” and the “share” buttons on Facebook
and the “favorite” or “Retweet” buttons
on Twitter do.
The other thing many communities do
is give recognition in the form of levels
and designation to people who contribute.
So as they contribute more and more
and other members find their content
useful they move from a beginner
to an expert level. They also publish
leaderboards two drive peer based
competition so that others are motivated
to rise up the ladder.
About the Author
Gautam Ghosh is GM – HR strategy and Projects at Philips
India. In this role he owns and drives the key strategic objective
of making Philips India a strong Employer Brand by leveraging
new emerging media & technology. Gautam is one of India’s
earliest HR Bloggers and an avid Twitter user.
Social Media 101 for HR
Gautam Ghosh
2	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
Since many people are aware of Facebook
and LinkedIn here are some other
communities and sites that I thought would
be useful to know about.
Google Plus
Google Plus is Google’s answer to Facebook
with the promise that you can share
your information with specific people
and communicate with them. One of its
biggest features is that you can have video
conference with 9 other people, without
installing any additional software. The
chats also get integrated with Gmail chats.
Slideshare
Slideshare can be described as the YouTube
of slide decks. It also has the ability
to upload documents too. By nature
of its content, Slideshare seems a very
“professional” site, and businesses have
found it useful to showcase their reports
and viewpoints easier through this than
video (which is expensive and harder to
get right) Professionals also use Slideshare
to showcase their expertise and build their
own personal brand. After the acquisition
by LinkedIn, Slideshare integration is
seamless with LinkedIn profiles.
Quora
Quora is a “question and answer” site
where people ask questions in various
topic areas and others answer them. People
who read answers can them vote on them,
causing the most useful answers to rise
to the top. So people can discover experts
who share their knowledge in areas as
diverse as Engineering to Management to
Photography to Mythology to Economics.
Since Quora originated in Silicon Valley the
topics of startups, entrepreneurship are
specially rich and detailed. A lot of
entrepreneurs, VCs (like Jimmy Wales
of Wikipedia and Craig Newmark of
Craigslist) are active on the site almost on
a daily basis.
So what does this all mean for HR
Content is shaping how people find and
connect with each other. Organizations
now have to become content creators
themselves to remain relevant. They
cannot rely on external media (paid,
like advertising or earned, like being
mentioned in mass media) alone. They
have to invest in creating “owned media”.
For an employer brand that means
media that showcases the organization’s
culture in the form of articles,
presentations, videos. This is necessary
as otherwise employees and alumni are
rating and reviewing all aspects of an
employer (from culture, to salaries, to
interviews) on sites like Glassdoor and
JobsBuzz.
It also means that HR needs to “listen” to
conversations on the social web about what
people are talking about it, its leadership
and even its competitors. This can be as
simple as doing a search engine search
regularly, or using sophisticated tools
that track large number of conversations
and can even judge the sentiments of the
conversations.
Within the organization, it means HR
(along with IT and other functions)
needs to get the organization ready to
deploy tools that enable employees to
use the principles of “participation for a
purpose” to engage the next generation
workforce with the larger organization.
These tools can be deployed from the
cloud (via the internet) or installed
on company servers too. Most larger
ERP service providers also offer social
networking softwares these days. These
tools help in employees to connect across
geographies and silos to discover and
collaborate with other colleagues. These
are also a great tool to engage the larger
workforce in larger change initiatives
or communication when they are rolled
across the organization.
To do all this HR people have to
embrace and experiment with this new
medium and grow comfortable with it.
It is time to stop talking about it, and to
start doing it.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 3
Section 1
Talent Acquisition and Social
Media
Jobsites and recruitment agencies were yesterday’s
headlines. Today, hiring happens through the power of
social media, and the key to success for both recruiters and
the recruitees lies in their readiness to adoptsocial media
and their Social Media Quotient.
This section focuses on success stories and learnings of
organizations that have implemented the new way of
hiring. 
4	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Irfan Abdulla, is currently the Director of Talent Solutions at
LinkedIn India, the web’s largest and most powerful network of
professionals. He joined LinkedIn as Head of Talent solutions
and was responsible for building the India business from the
roots. His primary focus now is in helping companies recruit,
engage and retain the world’s best talent. He has worked
in various hyper growth companies and enabled building
businesses from the ground up.
Introduction to Talent Acquisition and
social media
Irfan Abdulla
The recruitment landscape in India has
evolved immensely in recent times.
Traditionally, the core competency of talent
acquisition was either outsourced or left
to chance but the recent foray into online
social communication has created new
frontiers. Employers are moving towards
online social and professional networks,
not only look for talent but also to build
their employer brand among passive
candidates. In order to acquire passive
talent or employees that are the right fit,
employers have to be equally savvy in their
ability to communicate online. This issue
of NHRD broadly encapsulates the rise of
social media as an effective tool in talent
acquisition across industries.
Sharing her insights on how Dell
approaches talent differently on social
media, Savneet Shergill, Director –
India Talent Acquisition, talks about the
advent of the digital age, and reinforces
the emergence of social media as a critical
part of the recruitment and employee
engagement tool kit.
InaninterestingpieceonTalentAcquisition:
The Social Way, Syeda Meher Taj, Global
Lead Employer Branding, Infosys makes
her case as to why organizations need
to smartly combine conventional hiring
practices with social recruiting. She further
highlights how social media must
be integrated into the broader talent
management agenda, beyond just
acquisition & attraction.
In her opinion on attracting today’s
Generation Y workforce Debolina Dutta,
General Manager – Human Resources,
United Spirits Ltd highlights how the
growing war for talent that has now
moved online. The article further draws
a comparison between conventional
recruitment and social media recruitment
across various parameters.
David Istacky, Head – Talent Acquisition,
Elgi Equipments Limited in his article
Social Media – Breaking traditional
mindset and looking beyond, talks about
re-inventing the conservative hiring
strategy of the company, while keeping
in mind the volatile and unpredictable
markets and the economies.
Fromengagingconceptslikecrowdsourcing
talent to building an impactful employer
brand, from insights on the war for talent
to keeping pace with talent pools in
unpredictable markets, this edition is an
absolute treat. Enjoy the issue!
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 5
About the Author
Savneet Shergill is responsible for hiring across all businesses for
Dell in India. Prior to Dell, Savneet was working with Wipro BPO
for over six years and led the recruitment effort for Delhi, Kolkata
and Chennai sites. Wipro was her first corporate stint as prior to
that she was with the Indian Air Force (IAF) and happens to be a
part of the first ever batch of 12 women officers inducted into the
IAF in the country.
Recruiting Gone Social
Savneet Shergill
Social networking has digitized humanity
the world over, and how! Today, people
engage with their colleagues, friends and
loved ones through the interesting and
intriguing world of Social Media. While
Facebook provides people with the power
to be engaged in ‘real time’, LinkedIn
brings together like-minded individuals
from around the world to leverage
professional relationships. Twitter, on
the other hand has emerged as a platform
for netizens, to question thought-leaders
across the globe with a simple tweet.
The massive rise in the prominence of
social media across all walks of life has led
organizations to develop social strategies
and use social platforms such as LinkedIn
and Facebook for a more unique purpose
– to attract and retain talent.
As organizations adapt to the digital age,
social media is emerging a critical part of
the recruitment and employee engagement
tool kit. Having the right set of people
that fit the mind-set and culture of an
organization is the need of the hour – social
media can not only help organizations
build, engage and foster communities
for employment branding, but also for
sourcing, engaging and career outreach.
Ever since the emergence of Web 2.0 and
social media platforms, Dell has used social
media in internal collaboration, product
development, social commerce as well
as talent acquisition and management.
Dell effectively uses social media for new
talent attraction through platforms such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
When looking to find prospective
candidates, social media complements
the traditional recruitment platforms.
Though broad attributes or criterion may
not differ vastly from what an organization
would look for while recruiting in a
traditional environment, organizations can
in fact leverage professional social media
platforms to look into background details,
business achievements and skill sets. This
provides the organization a holistic view
of the prospective professional and their
career growth over the years. Furthermore,
organizations can match a job description
and a particular candidates profile to
evaluate whether he/she will be the right
fit for the particular role.
Dell has in place different ways of
approaching talent on social media,
broadly focused on the Big 3 – LinkedIn,
Facebook and Twitter.
6	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
•	 Dell post jobs on LinkedIn on a regular
basis and uses their Corporate Recruiter
Licenses to source profiles. Recruiters
at Dell update their profiles with
information on critical positions that
Dell is hiring for, and are also active
on LinkedIn Groups, participating in
conversations and keeping a tab on
what’s brewing socially.
•	 On the Facebook front, a very active
Careers at Dell APJ page is used to
engage the target audience. Facebook
is a great way to disseminate career
related information to candidates
and interact with them. Dell has a
job search widget on Facebook that
helps prospective candidates find
and look for the positions being
offered. Interestingly, Dell has a Find
Your Career Fit Widget which helps
job seekers explore different career
functions at Dell. Today, Dell has over
27,000 followers on its career Facebook
page.
•	 On Twitter, Dell’s career focused
twitter handle @CareersAtDell is
used extensively to interact with
followers. Dell posts jobs, career related
information and answers questions
through this id. With over 1500
followers on twitter, Dell reaches out
effectively to its target audience.
Before taking the plunge into social
media recruiting, an organization needs
to take utmost care when its employees
engage on its behalf on social platforms.
An organization needs to ‘empower’ its
employees to make sure that, both from
a recruiting perspective as well as from a
candidate experience touch point, the end
to end process is seamless and delivers
on the set expectations. To ‘empower’ its
employees, an organization needs to:
•	 Have a Social Media Strategy in place
so that the designated individuals have
a ground to fall back on and revert to
•	 Have Social Media Policy in Place.
Social media needs to be used the right
away – thereby it is imperative that a
policy be in place to inform employees
about privacy, information protection
and related laws
•	 Invest in training employees on
different social media platforms. At
Dell, a Social Media University helps
guide and render certifications across
different platforms to employees once
they complete their training. This way,
employees are confident of what and
how they need to communicate across
social media.
The new buzzwords in Social HR –
Crowdsourcing and Gamification
Finding the right kind of people that fit
perfectlywiththecultureofanorganization
can be a challenging task, and that is where
the Worldwide Web steps in and opens
up whole new avenues of opportunities.
The new trend of Crowdsourcing can help
organizations build, engage and foster
communities that can be utilized effectively
for branding and recruiting.
A simple example of crowdsourcing is the
Employee Referral Program. Very often,
organizations have a few positions to close
and send out information to employees
asking them to help in the recruiting
process. When an appropriate candidate
gets selected, the employees are rewarded.
Thereby it’s a win-win situation for both,
the company who’ve found talent as well
as the employee who enjoys the rewards.
Now, imagine opening up this particular
concept to the external world. Think about
the kind of possibilities that it could create,
the impact of collective networking of
employees and the kind of reach it gives
organizations! However, it is of prime
importance to ensure meticulous planning
and crafting of attainable objectives while
carefully defining deliverables.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 7
While new age recruiting is inundated
with buzzwords like crowdsourcing
and building talent communities online,
gamification is another trend that is
quickly gaining traction. Gamification is
the integration of game mechanics & theory
into non-game applications & processes in
the workplace. Gamification is garnering a
lot of attention these days with a yearning
among hiring leaders globally, to increase
engagement rates with their potential
talent communities.
One should also remember that new
trends are not a replacement but a useful
and additional resource to traditional
methods. Building, aligning and infusing
attractive incentives into new strategies
will ensure a win: win situation. At
the end of the day, the challenge lies in
devising and implementing well-thought
out recruitment methods that have
the ability to go viral and yet, from a
recruiter’s standpoint, provide the ability
to measure cognitive abilities of potential
candidates. The art of hiring heavily
depends on a clear understanding of new
trends, and decoding what exactly these
buzz words mean and how they can be
leveraged on a day to day basis for hiring
needs globally.
8	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Syeda Meher Taj has over 11 years of experience spanning both
B2C and B2B technology marketing. From strategy to execution,
she has led global branding & communication programs while
managing cross-functional teams. In her current role, Syeda Meher
Taj is the India-based lead for Global Employer Branding and
Digital Talent Engagement at Infosys.
Talent Acquisition: The Social Way
Syeda Meher Taj
Here’s a statistic that will surprise no
one : In 2012, 93% of recruiters looked
for candidates on LinkedIn. Narrow the
scene of action to North America, and that
score climbs to a near-perfect 97%.
But numbers can sometimes flatter to
deceive. North American employers –
97% strike rate notwithstanding – aren’t
leveraging social media to the fullest for
acquiring talent. They depend heavily on
LinkedIn, but not nearly enough on other
channels like Twitter or Facebook, which
are also quite effective, especially for
mounting a soft sell in the run up to the
hard core hiring process. And any seasoned
recruiter will tell you how important it is
to prepare the ground.
Companies looking to attract the best
talent through social media should plan to
utilize it all through the recruitment cycle.
Even before getting into the mechanics
of hiring, they should be out there in the
social sphere promoting their workplace
among the target audience and working
up a conversation. This is particularly
important in entry level hiring, where
incumbents are still unsure of their
career goals and in real need of guidance.
A forum like Facebook provides an
informal yet personal environment for
recruiters to address career concerns and
softly promote their organization, right
into their young audience’s consideration
set. Videos featuring employees talking
about what they love about their work
and workplace can be a great source of
positive peer influence.
However, in the case of lateral hiring,
the role of social media is clearly at the
business end. Employers have the option
of earned and paid routes – engaging
with prospective candidates in a social
networking forum, or placing paid job
advertisements to attract applicants. Tools
like webinars and web chats are useful
for building engagement, for impressing
potential hires with thought-leadership,
and for fostering a sense of belonging even
before a candidate enters the organization.
Many companies get senior HR personnel
to ‘sit in’ at events that are likely to be
attended by senior candidates, so that they
can jumpstart the executive search process.
When hiring experienced candidates,
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 9
who are usually in demand, it is very
important to reinforce the credentials of the
organization between the offer and joining
dates, to make sure they don’t drop off or
choose to go to another employer. It might
be a good idea to invite such candidates
to join a small online community of peers
and senior colleagues or encourage them
to participate in other social forums where
they can gain a first-hand feel of the
organization’s informal culture, and get
to know some of their co-workers. For the
organization, this could be a great way to
tap into networks of networks and also
in a soft, non-intrusive way, keep tabs on
the candidates before they officially come
on board.
Although social recruitment enjoys
several advantages, such as reach,
authenticity, immediacy, directness, and
cost effectiveness, it does not render
traditional forms of hiring redundant.
It is quite effective for spotting active
talent – those who are actively hunting
for jobs – but fails to make a compelling
impression on passive candidates.
Ironically, the medium’s greatest strengths
can also undermine social hiring – because
social networks are so accessible, job
advertisements invariably attract an
excess of applications, many from the
wrong kind of candidates. This creates a
dual problem for recruiters; one, it makes
it much harder to spot the right candidates
among a mass of applicants, and two, it
discourages the right candidates from
pursuing the opportunity.
Another issue is that recruiters will find it
almost impossible to maintain discretion,
so important in top level hiring, on a
medium that is so public. Last but not
least, they might also struggle to adopt
the ‘social mindset’ and nail their social
hiring strategy because of the dynamic
nature of that space.
So, the bottom line is that social recruiting
cannot work as a stand-alone solution,
nor does it work in isolation. This is why
organizations need to smartly combine
conventional hiring practices with it.
Integration is a key factor of success
in social-conventional hiring strategy.
Newspaper advertisements, campus
presentations, and agency-led executive
search must deliver a consistent message
and impression about the workplace,
which social recruiting must reinforce
through different forums. And one must
support the other, which means that
posters put up in college campuses should
advertise the company’s Facebook forum
and Twitter handle, and jobs posted in
conventional media like TV, radio, and
print must be replicated on the company’s
website, and in its Facebook, LinkedIn and
Twitter spaces.
A logical extension of this argument is
that social media must also be integrated
into the broader talent management
agenda, beyond acquisition. It offers great
opportunities for inducting fresh hires into
the organization by way of closed groups
where new employees can meet each
other, connect with senior colleagues, seek
answers to frequently asked questions,
familiarize themselves with the dreaded
employee manual, and generally find their
way around.
Once new employees settle into their jobs,
it is time to up engagement through means
like blogs, which are very effective for
showcasing and advertising the company’s
achievements and strengths, for sharing
knowledge across the organization, and
for building thought leadership. The
company can also identify the socially
active and influential through such forums,
and nurture them into future brand
ambassadors.
10	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
Social forums can also be strategic in
onboarding an entire organization of
employees in a merger or acquisition.
Acquiring companies face immense
challenges in assimilating employees in
these conditions – cultural differences,
fear of marginalization, resistance to
change, and interpersonal friction, are
but some of them. Transparency, open
communication, easy accessibility, and a
welcoming environment can facilitate that
process to a great extent.
And what better medium to enable these
than social?
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 11
About the Author
Debolina Dutta has 22 years of work experience in HR and
Sales domain. She has a degree in Electrical Engineering from
College of Engineering, Pune and a Post Graduate Degree in
Management from IIM, Bangalore, and is currently enrolled in
the FPM –Industry program at IIM Indore. A passion for writing
has resulted in development of multiple research papers and
business case studies, some of which have been published and
others are being considered for publication in the Asian Case
Research Journal, HBS Case site, etc.
Attracting Generation Y Workforce
Debolina Dutta
There is consensus that to win the ‘war
for talent’, early stages of applicant
attraction becomes critical, especially
in a robust job market, as potential
applicants have a number of choices.
Moving forward, talent acquisition leaders
will be required to think like marketers
when developing media and sourcing
strategies. Highly skilled job seekers in
a tight labor market behave similarly to
consumers in a crowded marketplace
(Collins & Stevens, 2002).
In today’s day and age, social networking
as a recruitment tool is increasing in
popularity. With the current generation
largely interacting on social media sites,
organizations are waking up to the
potential of leveraging these channels
to build their brand images and attract
applicants to their organizations. This
requires development of appropriate
metrics which measures corresponding
outcomes through a different yardstick,
compared to those conventionally used
by HR to measure recruitment efficiencies.
This then raises a question for reputed
organizations like United Spirits, leaders
in the alcohol beverage industry with high
brand equity – what can compel them to
use social media and what are the benefits
it could offer them?
A recent definition of recruitment by
Breaugh (2013) says that recruitment is
defined as ‘an employer’s actions that are
intended to (1) bring a job opening to the
attention of potential job candidates who
do not currently work for the organization,
(2) influence whether these individuals
apply for the opening, (3) affect whether
they maintain interest in the position until
a job offer is extended, and (4) influence
whether a job offer is accepted’. Social
media clearly possesses the ability to
influence all four actions defined above.
Thegrowingpopularityofsocialnetworking
websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and
Twitter are forcing organizations to
recognize the potential it provides in
attracting Generation Y workforce. With
over200millionusersonLinkedIn,andover
a whopping 800 million users on Facebook
12	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
(Hunt, 2010), the advantage of using this
medium is its ability to reach a ‘targeted
audience’ vis-à-vis an unwanted ‘global
audience’. In their seminal paper on ROI
of Social Media Marketing (2010) Hoffman
& Fodor defined motivators of social media
engagement as the ‘4 C’s of connection,
creation, consumption and control’. This
essentially implies that social media dilutes
the circle of influence and control of the
organization and places higher levels of
control on interfacing individuals. In the
context of talent acquisition, organizations
also need to look at these channels as
a potential area to improve employer
branding and be perceived as an employer
of choice among the Gen Y workforce.
Prior research on recruitment has studied
pre-hire outcomes (e.g., number of
applicants, job offer acceptance rates),
post-hire outcomes (e.g. job performance,
employee turnover), recruitment objectives
(cost of hire, time to hire, number of
positions filled, diversity) (Breaugh,
2013). These remain the conventional
yardsticks to measure a recruitment
functions’ effectiveness. It therefore
becomesimportanttodifferentiatebetween
conventional recruitment methods and
the related outcomes, from social media
methods and outcomes, in terms of
their applicability, strategy and uses.
Organizations today place extra emphasis
on two basic metrics – Time to Fill and
Cost Per Hire, and neglect to sufficiently
debate upon, identify and measure a new
age parameter, Quality of Hire.
In the effort to get the fastest available
applicant, the most suitable applicant
may get missed. All metrics defined in
conventional recruitment practice depend
on the outcome of actually recruiting an
applicant. This is a fundamental difference,
since active recruitment through social
media reduces social media to just another
channel. The power of social media exists in
its ability to enhance peripheral persuasion
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Therefore, social
media can be leveraged both for active
recruitment, and more importantly, for
passive recruitment.
Social media channels clearly allow for
organizations to disseminate targeted
messages to a filtered audience, thereby
contributing to and increasing the quality
score card. Additionally, customized
targeting of potential applicants of defined
demographics, through social media, lends
itself for affirmative action in specific
areas of recruitment like increasing
diversity (gender, disability, racial etc.).
The fundamental differences between
conventional recruitment channels and
social media recruitment are given in
Table 1.
A recent study indicated that of the 35%
of employers using social media for
recruitment, 21% are using it to recruit
and research potential employees, and
18% are using it to strengthen their
employment brands (Hunt, 2010). The
tactical choices and investments done in
social media typically emanate from four
strategic goals that an organization may
have. Analogous to the strategies in the
sales and marketing context, as defined by
Andzulis, Panagopoulos, & Rapp (2012),
in the recruitment context these can be
defined as building relationships, building
employer brand, active recruitment, and
finally, cost optimization.
Based on organization needs, resource
availability and priorities, HR functions
need to carve out their social media plan.
It may be feasible for an organization to
choose a few of these or all, and decide the
relative degrees of investment required.
In this context, recruiting suitable talent
for United Spirits Limited is not much of
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 13
Measure or Criteria Conventional
Recruitment
Social Media Recruitment
Objective / Utility Active demand
fulfillment
Active and passive recruitment
Channelsof
communication
Newspapers, referrals,
direct, websites, job
boards, recruitment
consultants
Social Media channels like blog
sites, micro-blogging, websites and
forums/discussion groups, social
networks (LinkedIn, Facebook)
Metrics Pre and post hire
outcomes, operational
efficiencies
Employer branding and
personalized engagement
Locus of control HR Function Social Media Community
Level of
individualization
Medium to Low Very high
Target applicant
group
All individuals
matching current open
positions
Gen Y, internet savvy, having
access & active on social media
channels
Tenure of
engagement
Relatively short term,
from application to
onboarding of applicant
Continuous engagement
Table 1: Differences between Conventional and Social Media Recruitment
STRATEGY PHILOSOPHY OPERATIONAL
INVESTMENT
TACTICAL
OUTCOME
Relationship
Strategy
Building trust
and collaboration
through
personalised
engagement
Dedicated ‘Community
Manager’ focussed
on prospective talent
lead generation and
engagement
Strategic talent
inducted into the
organization
Employer
Branding
Establishing
credibility,
gaining attention,
demonstrating
employer value
propositions.
Social media monitoring,
sentiment analysis,
creation of purposed
communities
Organization
perceived as
‘preferred
employer of
choice’
Active
Recruitment
Reactive demand
fulfilment
Maintaining a dynamic
career microsite reflecting
active open requirements
Active recruitment
positions closed
Cost
Optimization
Reducing costs
of recruitment
channels
Maintaining a dynamic
career microsite and
integrating with active
open requirements.
Dedicated resource to
close applicants from
these channel
Reduce
recruitment
spend on more
expensive
channels
Table 2: Aligment of Strategy, Philosophy, Investment And Outcome For Recruitment
14	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
became the key driver for the organization
to take a serious look at the benefits of
social media recruitment. Having said
that, benefits accrued through employer
branding, active recruitment and cost
optimization become the icing on the cake.
a challenge primarily due to the strong
employer brand. However, with a robust
succession management plan in place, it
became critical to adopt a ‘relationship
building’ strategy with potential, well
defined and targeted individuals. This
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 15
About the Author
David has over 15 years of work experience in HR and
Consulting domain. He works towards reaching out to great
talent across the world and building winning relationships
and valuable partnerships. His specialty lies in contributing to
people’s lives in a manner and that brings new meaning to what he
does everyday. Head - Talent Acquisition, ELGI Equipments Ltd.
Social Media – Breaking Traditional Mindset
and Looking Beyond
David Istacky
For a thriving Coimbatore based Indian
engineering company, that’s grown
brick by brick over the last 6 decades
and recorded steady growth in business
revenues year on year, it’s a given to expect
that most systems and processes are well
set and so are the mindsets.
In our industry, such an environment is
a boon for an employee as the sense of
security is high, people have a chance to
settle into their roles and become experts.
Expertise brings in consistency and helps
both the employee and the organization
stay focused on current objectives and plan
ahead. As a result employee engagement
is high, attrition is low and hiring kept
on a leash.
Our hiring strategy therefore, could afford
to be conservative, focused and specific,
based on run-of-the-mill methods and
practices, driven by a well-oiled HR
generalist, who’s been-there-done-that
and can now do it with his/her eyes
closed. Hiring was earlier supported by
a band of hiring partners, who developed
certain competencies to support our
specific needs and with time, they became
an extension of the company. Hence, all the
Recruitment Team had to do, while being
the glorified coordinator, was to keep the
hiring partner in good humor. This more
or less became the norm for all the hard-
to-find, mid management and the senior
management open positions. Another
option was to scan job boards,which were
automatically subscribed to annually.
The recruiter downloaded CV’s of
potential talent worth engaging and ran
them through the mill, while machine
operators and junior level position got
filled through word of mouth, contactors
and employee referral. All this coupled
with the Employee Referral Policy saw us
through with all our hiring requirements.
But enter a new era – where markets and
economies are volatile and unpredictable,
governments and policy unstable, new
businesses emerging and older ones
moving into oblivion, business plans and
forecasts going haywire. We often found
16	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
ourselves grappling with questions that
had no right answers and soon realized
that, what got us here,wasn’t going to get
us ahead.
The era that we live in, has the ability to
change,veryrapidly,thewayorganizations
and people are perceived and valued,
which can result in growth or declination,
depending on the choices and decisions
we make.
Come to think of it, our families, friends,
colleagues, professional contacts or their
connections influence most of the choices
and decisions we make. They become a free
knowledge pool and a versatile intelligence
network that help us think, analyze, learn,
grow and choose a path, if only we can
tap into it.
With technology moving from PC’s to
mobile devices, technology and people
now go hand in hand. We are constantly
using mobile devices to connect calls,
video, email, SMS, MMS etc., with people
or a network of people, whom we chose
to connect and share information with.
Imagine what could happen when we start
evaluating and classifying our contacts and
communication and enabling those in our
networks to work for us? Imagine what
would happen when you discover that
there are so many people sitting in places
around the world, who share your personal
or professional interests or can do business
with you or lend insight into something
that’s even beyond your comprehension.
What if they in turn can connect you with
somebody who can change or impact your
business beyond your imagination, or your
life itself?And all this for free?
That is the power of social networking.
Our company is in the leadership
quadrant in India and we see great
opportunity for us to grow our presence
in the international markets. The last
three years have seen three overseas
acquisitions in France, Italy and the
USA, two of which happened in the last
year alone. We have also established
manufacturing outfits in China and have
warehouses in several countries like Brazil
and Australia.
As this led to a challenge of finding
talent in these countries, it became
important for us, as a company, to be
understood well by local talent and to
build a framework that would target
specific people with specific information
and create a forum that will help them
communicate with us.
We picked a leading business-oriented
social networking site as the platform
that could help us do just this and more.
Professionals who we encountered on
this platform were not active job seekers
unlike those on job boards, but powerful
networkers who were there to learn
from each other through forums and
communities. This also offered a platform
for professionals to introduce and get
introduced to others.
In our first year, we encouraged the
Talent Acquisition Team to get onto the
tool, understand the application better
and start networking. They soon
discovered new visibility, with people
reaching out to them for information
regarding our company, products, and job
opportunities or requests to be partners
or vendors.
We then got a paid subscription for
domestic job seats and slots and this
gave the team a lot more power to reach
out to people directly and network with
people in our industry, on the basis of
specific technologies or skills. We also
started adding valuable contacts onto
our networks, and by exploring their
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 17
connections, we developed a list of
followers.
By the end of year one, we were ready
to do a lot more. We got ourselves a
Career Page, a recruitment advert,
global seats and global job slots. We
put up testimonials, videos, banners
and updates, which helped our brand
create a buzz in the market place, both in
India and overseas. This changed the
game for us dramatically and within a few
months, we moved from ‘conservative’
to ‘viral’, with the number of followers on
our company page touching 3800 people
from across the globe.
We’ve closed a few critical positions and
have discussions in progress with potential
talent from different countries.
We are now creating talent pipelines
thatwillallowustomapandstayconnected
with critical talent, with specific plans to
engage our followers more evocatively.
Basedonthesuccessthatisunfoldingbefore
us, we are also working on leveraging our
brand on other relevant platforms, as part
of global networking and branding strategy
through online media. As we continue to
network, next in line will be to plot returns
on investment in all these avenues.
Nhrd journal aug 2013
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 19
Section 2
Best Practices and Future of
Learning
With social media available as a new pedagogy of learning,
the role of a Training Professional is set to evolve from
being a creator of content to a curator of content.
The entire spectrum of brick-and-mortar learning as well
as social learning, and the progressive manner in which
learning is experienced has been showcased in this section.
20	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Yashwant S Mahadik is a seasoned global HR professional with
24 years of experience across industries/sectors and geographies,
in top-class companies like Colgate Palmolive, AstraZeneca,
Johnson & Johnson. He has established a track record of success
in all his roles and assignments as part of his experience as Head
and Leader of the Human Resource function at enterprise levels.
He can be reached at yashwant.mahadik@philips.com or on
twitter @indianyash
Best Practices and Future of Learning
Yashwant S Mahadik
When Elango requested me to co-edit
this section on Learning for the
NHRD Journal, I was thrilled because I was
sure that this experience is going to be a
huge learning opportunity for me. I present
this section along with colleagues and
friends from the Industry – top-notch HR
and Learning professionals, passionately
engaged in transforming learning in their
organizations, and yet they call themselves
students of the subject.
Learning is a very complex subject.
Complex, because it concerns human
beings and every human being is unique
and different. Research in neurosciences
has thrown a lot of light on how the
human brain works and learns. If you read
the paper presented by Dr. Lila Davachi,
Dr. Tobias Kiefer, Dr. David Rock and Lisa
Rock on ‘Learning that lasts through ages’,
they suggest that “with more to learn
than ever, faster innovation cycles, and
reduced training budgets, organizations
everywhere are trying to get more from
their learning programs. However, to
increase the effectiveness of learning,
some of our intuitive understanding
about learning may need updating. For
example, while people generally predict
that concentrated learning in one block
of time is more effective, neuroscience
research is clearly showing that it is
far better to break up learning
interventions to facilitate successful
long-term learning”.
Many organizations are now focusing
and discussing technology as an enabler
of learning, which is important. In my
opinion, to understand how learning works
and to become good designers of learning
in schools, society or organizations, it’s
equally important to first understand
research and findings in the space of
cognitive science, neuroscience, and
psychology. Further, it’s also important
to understand the paradigm shifts that are
happening in the world. The challenges
and needs driving us to be more effective
with learning are as follows:
•	 Fast changing environment that
surrounds organizations, such as
macro and micro economic changes,
implies that organizations need to build
business models and businesses that
can withstand economic uncertainty
•	 Fast changing customers’ needs and
demand implies that organizations
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 21
need to remain agile with customer
centricity as their mantra
•	 Demographic changes happening in
the world - falling birth rate and ageing
population of developing economies,
younger people entering the workforce
in emerging economies etc. implies that
organizations need to understand and
develop the diverse work force and deal
with its unique needs
•	 The fast paced and constantly changing
technological landscape implies that
organizations need to remain early
adopters of new technology and do it
in the most cost efficient manner
•	 Increasing needs to build sustainable
businesses and products to preserve
natural resources and the environment
implies that organizations have to act
more responsibly and innovate for the
sake of customers and mother earth!!
These five challenges are compelling us
to learn fast and continuously. Every
organizationisrealizingthatthecapabilities
it required to play and win in the past are
very different from what it needs in the
future, and it will only continue to change
further.
The litmus test for learning and
development professionals is to create
a new mind-set of continuous learning,
irrespective of whether it’s in the form of
brick and mortar, virtual or social. Each
have their own advantages and limitations
– but when blended together in the right
proportion, it has the propensity to take
learning to the next level altogether.
Social learning in itself may not yet
be a mainstay of corporate training
departments, atleast not as yet – although it
has great potential. In addition to including
social media in their service portfolio, LD
managers are now using social media to
position themselves strategically as subject
matter experts.
At Philips, we are busy transforming
learning and building a best-in-class
virtual Learning University. Our focus is
shifting from class room and e-learning
offerings to becoming a more leader led
and action learning oriented organization,
where best in class learning technology
and techniques are leveraged to create
more value for our learners and build
their capabilities. 70-20-10 is our learning
model: 70 being self-directed action
learning whilst on the job, 20 being
leader led learning via coaching and
mentoring and 10 being traditional class
room learning and e-learning offerings.
We believe in providing learning to all
our employees on the go and anywhere
– hence we are trying to make sure
that all learning offerings are available
on smart phone and tablets, instead of
laptops only. And there is a lot of other
cool stuff happening, but we’ll keep that
for another day.
In this section, I am very happy to present
contributions of some prominent global HR
and Learning leaders and professionals,
eachrepresentingadifferent,yetinteresting
part of the learning continuum, one end
of is classroom training and at the other,
social learning :
1.	 An article contributed by Bill Pelster, on
how his global organization has created
a benchmark, the Deloitte University,
and is investing in its human capital
development
2.	 An article contributed by Gautam
Ghosh and Andrew Lax on how Social
Media and learning are a perfect match
3.	 A case study contributed by Sunder
Ramchandran of JLT on how to leverage
Social Learning to create value
4.	 A story contributed by Kavi Arasu from
Asian Paints drawing parallels between
a farmer and a learning professional.
22	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
Linking Learning to Business Strategy:
About Deloitte University
William Pelster (Bill)
About the Author
William Pelster (Bill) has over 20 years of industry and consulting
experience. In his current he is responsible for the talent
development experience of Deloitte’s professionals to include
learning, assignments, and career/life fit. His knowledge spans
the many aspects of HR to include strategy, talent acquisition and
university relationships, HR technology platforms, knowledge
management, strategic change, communication, culture
assessment, training, and HR delivery models. Bill manages a team
of over 350 talent development professionals based in the U.S. and India delivering
services to over 50,000 U.S. and India based professionals.
Learning and the linkage to business
strategy is an on-going journey for
many of us as learning leaders. We
constantly seek ways to enable the overall
business strategy through our learning
programs and how we develop people
within our organizations.
In 2008, Deloitte decided to make a major
investment in the way we develop our
professionals as a key to meet our long-
term business objectives. We purposefully
chose to go against the prevailing wisdom
around moving to more virtual learning
and eLearning and instead invested $300
million into a physical learning facility
outside of Westlake, Texas.
In making the decision to invest in a
physical learning facility, there were
several principles that we wanted the
facility to embody. This includes culture,
demonstrated through the design and
learning experience of what Deloitte
values, who we are and how we serve
our clients. This also includes giving our
professionals a sense of the size of Deloitte,
with over 200,000 professionals in over
150 countries, our scope of services and
our history dating back over 125 years.
We wanted this to be a place where our
apprenticeship model is practiced in its
highest form. To do that, all our learning
programs at Deloitte University are leader-
led with an average student to instructor
ratio of 5:1. Finally, we also wanted this
to be a safe place to try new skills, so we
moved away from a lecture based model
to an experiential based learning model.
A combination of the above principles
allowed us to create a facility that focuses
on building business leaders and is open
to all employees of Deloitte. Deloitte
University – The Leadership Center, is
designed to deliver up to one million
hours a year of experiential based learning
that will allow everyone in Deloitte from
our new hires to our most experienced
partners to develop and enhance their
business skills through real life scenarios,
business simulations and the application
of their core technical skills. Throughout
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 23
Deloitte University, Westlake, Texas, USA. Spread over a campus of 107
acres, has top-class learning environment and infrastructure - 800 guest
rooms, 35 class rooms, 36 break-out rooms. Includes a large auditorium
and ballrooms.
a person’s career at Deloitte they will be
invited to attend multi-day, immersive
sessions that will allow them to hone their
skills, experience a variety of business
scenarios relevant to their level in the
organization, and to learn more about who
they are as a leader.
The curriculum at Deloitte University
also helps Deloitte professionals stay
on the leading edge of issues impacting
our clients. In addition to core programs
around leadership, Deloitte University
serves as the main vehicle to deliver
insights around industry trends, changes
in the regulatory environment, and other
issues our clients are dealing with. When
Deloitte professionals come to Deloitte
University, the interactive media walls,
information centers and our streaming
of content throughout the facility, allows
us to constantly update our professionals
on topics that are important to us both
domestically and globally.
Through Deloitte University, Deloitte
accelerates how our professionals are
developed so that they can deliver those
skills to the clients they work with. Clients
expect that professional services firms
not only have staff that are well versed
in their particular technical areas, but
also possess insights, are able to work in
a global setting, and are willing to voice
their views. Deloitte University provides
the forum to develop our professionals to
deliver exceptional client service.
So why create a physical facility and
not just more eLearning? Given that
the core of our transformation is to
develop business leaders, we needed to
create an environment where we could
impact behavior. This type of learning
transformation is best done through a live
learning event, an event that is experiential
and has firm leaders in the classroom to
coach and mentor. Given the amount of
accelerated transformation in core business
24	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
High tech class room at Deloitte University, which is designed to facilitate
leader led and connected (globally anywhere) social learning.
skills we are looking to achieve, we needed
to create a facility that could do that level
of transformation and do it at a scale that
has previously been unheard of among
other firms.
The creation of Deloitte University is a
clear example of how learning and the
learning function within an organization
can directly impact and support the
broader business strategy. Through
transformational learning programs,
we are creating business leaders at all
levels in the firm who are well positioned
to help Deloitte meet its broader business
goals around serving our clients with
distinction.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 25
About the Authors
Gautam Ghosh owns and drives the key strategic objective of
making Philips India a strong Employer Brand by leveraging
new emerging media and technology. He is one of India’s earliest
HR Bloggers and an avid Twitter user.
Andrew Lax specialises in managing and
implementing HR Strategic projects, from
Learning and Development, Change Management, Organisation
and People Planning, HR Mid Term Plans, HR MI, Recruitment,
HRIS Strategy Design and Implementation, Organisation Design
and Leading Instructional Designers.
Social Media  Learning: A Perfect Match
Gautam Ghosh and Andrew Lax
If you were to survey business
professionals with one clear question –
“What has been your most memorable
learning experience?”, it’s very unlikely
that anyone would respond by saying
“corporate training/learning event”. The
reason for this is typical learning/training
approaches used by corporates are not
really learner-centric. They are typically
event-based (a day or two) and driven by a
facilitator. People come with different and
varying skill levels and when they finish
the course they go back to their workplace/
team and struggle to implement what they
have learnt, as they are stuck in the stage
of ‘conscious competence’. This phase
is characterized by experimentation and
repeated failures before the person can
move to the ‘unconscious competence’,
where learning becomes a part of doing
without thinking about it. Most training
delivered fails at this crucial transition.
Additionally, according to a paper
presented at ASTD in 2007, two weeks
after the course, recall and retention of
learning comes down to about 10% of the
training delivered.
How could social technologies help?
•	 Social technologies can help create a
community of fellow learners before
they attend training. This would
help them learn from each other’s
experiences
•	 Shifting the focus from competencies
needed to people sharing their expertise
and strengths
•	 Sharing content and theory before the
training, so that face to face time with
facilitators could be used for practice
and feedback
•	 The community of learners could
form support and ideation groups
when they go back to the workplace
and implement their learning. This
would help reinforce concepts and
practical application in the context of
the workplace
26	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
•	 Managers could also be a part of the
community to understand how best
to support their team’s learning and
translate it to the workplace
These methods not only support the
learning process but also reinforce key
take ways, pre and post the event, making
learning more memorable and far more
cost effective.
Examples of content that could be put
together using social media:
•	 Basics on the subject – files, websites,
videos, list of books that act as a primer
for gaining knowledge
•	 Additional reading material –
documents and aids that people can
download
•	 List of resources – agencies, thought-
leaders andpartners, all collated at one
place
•	 Listofpeople(yellowpages)–employees
who have worked on initiatives, along
with their coordinates (email, Skype,
IM)
•	 FAQs – A series of basic questions
focused on what a new employee needs
to know, like best practices, eBooks,
videos, power point presentations.
All the above artifacts should be editable
by key stakeholders, like the course
facilitator and instructional designer. In
fact, the role of the facilitator changes
from ‘content creator’ to ‘content curator’.
Other employees can add comments and
their ratings against the published content.
Once employees have gone through this,
they can then be tested on their knowledge
using a quiz or survey tool, which acts
as a measure of learning effectiveness.
Coaches, subject matter experts and
mentors can be invited at a specified time,
or requested to answer queries via social
collaboration tools like wikis, threaded
bulletin boards.
Updating new information
Keeping content dynamic by updating
what is new in the domain, the buzz
around the firms’ products/services/
operations and what is the market/
competitive intelligence, can be done by
using:
•	 RSS feeds of Google Alerts: with
key words around the brand name,
competitor name, and market name
•	 RSS feeds of thought leaders’ blogs and
websites:- to ensure new ideas come
directly to the employee’s desktop.
•	 Twitter updates by subject matter
experts: so that employees can keep
track and even interact with them
•	 Using list curation services like
http://listorious.com/Competitive
Intelligence: a dynamic page which
is updated with news/tweets about
major competitors, based on publicly
available data which is collated and
shown on a specific site. Comments
would enable employees to add their
personal views and experiences
•	 New videos and slideshows: using a
keywordtrackingprocesses,newvideos
and slides updated on the specific
subjects (like Financial Modeling or
Consumer Behavior or HR Trends)
could be embedded in the dashboard
of the employees.
Collaboration
Is about enabling employees to learn from
each other using learning logs and ideation
platforms to connect.
Some ways this can be done are:
•	 Ideation platform: a blog/wiki in
which senior management asks for
ideas around a certain campaign,
initiative, problem statement or even
new policy
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 27
•	 Status updates: would let other people
know what the employee is working on
so that, if anyone has any ideas/lessons
to share, they can do so via the tool
•	 Lessons learnt: similar to the ideation
platform, it focuses on past initiatives,
what worked and best practices learnt
from them
•	 Sharing project plans: getting other
employee’s feedback and views
•	 QA: with partners, senior
management or consultants, which are
then archived
•	 Discussion around events like
conferences, trainings that employees
attend and come back to share their
learning with the rest of the peer group.
Implication for Learning Professionals
If learning professionals have to leverage
social technologies, they must get
comfortable with new skills to become
online facilitators and move from a ‘we
will build content’ mindset to ‘we will find
the best content and curate it along with
facilitation’ mindset. Understanding why
people share content online and how to
design interactions that help them connect
and learn as a community, is the key skill
facilitators need to build. These skills are
known as ‘community management’ skills
in the digital realm, and LD professionals
need to transfer this offline skill to an
online skill.
It’s an exciting period for the LD
function, as it moves from event-based
focus to continuous learning focus,
finally impacting the 70% and 20% of the
70‑20‑10 model. Hopefully, the next time
professionals are surveyed about their key
learning moments; they would look back
and say “the learning in the community
facilitated by our LD team”.
28	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
Case Study: Social Learning @ Jardine Lloyd
Thompson India
Sunder Ramachandran
About the Author
Sunder Ramachandran is a highly energetic training leader with
extensive experience in building capabilities for large teams in the
offshore/outsourcing space. His articles on workplace learning
have appeared in Indian  International media including - The
Economic Times, Hindu Business Line, Times Ascent, National
HRD Newsletter, Rediff.com, Askmen.com, Top7business.com,
Human Capital and HrmAsia.com.
Sunder was an entrepreneur for five years and has gained valuable
experience on both the ‘Buy’  ‘Sell’ side of the training business. He brings an
entrepreneurial spirit  a profit maximisation mind-set to all business endeavors.
JLT Group (www.jltgroup.com) is an
international group of Risk Specialists
and Employee Benefits Consultants, one
of the largest companies of its type in the
world. The India office is home to over
850 employees engaged in operational 
knowledge service roles.
To focus and grow in specialist areas,
JLT partners with CII (Chartered Insurance
Institute – www.cii.co.uk) which is
the world’s largest professional body
dedicated to insurance and financial
services qualifications. Success in CII
qualifications is universally recognized as
a global standard.
Social Learning @ JLT India
A team of 40 employees from JLT India
were preparing for the CII professional
qualifications in May 2013 and were
supported by social learning. It has
become increasingly clear that employees
are hooked onto the virtual world,
and social networking, micro blogging,
YouTube videos for learning are realities
that employees embrace in their personal
learning space. The idea was to use
the same engagement principles and
support these employees to prepare for
their professional qualifications. Social
learning involves participating with
others to make sense of new ideas, using
technology platforms. To meet this goal,
we used chatter (our internal collaboration
platform from Salesforce.com) to provide
these engagement opportunities to all
the learners. The following were the key
mechanics of this engagement -
•	 Communities of practice: We
created a CII Exam Community on
our internal social platform. This
became the epicentre of all discussions
pertaining to the exams. Participants
were encouraged to share content, tips,
answer questions and post updates
on their own progress. The training
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 29
team watched from the side-lines and
moderated where required. It was
amazing how peer to peer information
sharing and learning was adding speed
to the knowledge sharing process.
The group was learning at will, by
getting questions answered at their
workstations.
•	 Off-line meets: A strong sense of
ownership led to offline meets.
Participants met once every week, for
45 minutes, to discuss key updates
and share tips. Any key points made
on the online forum that involved
further deliberation were brought up
in the offline meets. This was also an
opportunity for senior managers to
address the participants which further
encouraged them to succeed at the
exams.
•	 Chatterthons: We used the widely
popular tweetathons concept (used on
twitter) and launched Chatterthons.
Each week, a topic of importance was
picked up and chat sessions were
organised within the online community.
This enabled us to drive engagement
within the community and learners
responded well, with over a dozen
questions answered in a 30 minute slot
(which is very difficult if done in an
offline classroom environment)
•	 Gamification through Fastest Finger
First - Contests were launched within
the community which focused on the
ability of learners to provide correct
answers with speed. This was an
important skill for the exams as well.
A list of questions was prepared and
all the participants were invited to be
a part of these events. As the activity
kicked off, the response was absolutely
overwhelming and we were elated to
see participants answering questions in
the spirit of competition. The winners
were rewarded with goodies and
incentives and as were learners who
were the quickest to provide the correct
answer.
We saw an evident change in the way
learning gets delivered, with 84% success
rate in the actual exams held in May 2013.
Social Learning was clearly the most
pragmatic and effective way to ensure that
participants take ownership and engage in
peer to peer learning. The key benefits of
social learning @ Jardine Lloyd Thompson
India were:
•	 Improved knowledge sharing
•	 Fostered collaboration
•	 P r o v i d e d i n f o r m a l l e a r n i n g
opportunities
•	 Ease of finding resources  relationship
building
30	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
The Farm
Kavi Arasu
About the Author
Kavi Arasu specializes in Training Design and Delivery,
Individual Coaching, Organization wide Training Processes and
Strategy and Psychometrics.
The core anchor of his life and career is a firm belief that people
and teams can do better than they are doing now. Igniting
and facilitating people to discover their potential and help move
their dreams closer to reality has been an area that has been
fulfilling.
We meet after several years. We were
in school together. We bumped into
each other. In some time, we are sipping
coffee. Catching up on lost years that
have quietly slipped by. He tells me he
is a farmer and quickly asks, “What do
you do?”
I answer slowly, “Learning 
Development”. I pause. “A variety of
programsfordevelopingleaders,capability
building, preparing the organization for
future challenges...” My voice trails.
He quips, “I live in a different world.
Plants, livestock and land”
We sip our coffee. I notice he sips it with
a certain care. Savoring each sip. I speak
gingerly. “I know you put it simply. There
is a lot that must go into farming”.
“We begin with a piece of land”. His voice
oozes confidence. “Decide what crops to
grow when. Each crop has its own cycle”
I am all ears.
“I plough the field. I need to get it ready
for the seeds to germinate. I can’t plant
the right seed on an unprepared surface
you see”.
“And then, there are choices to be made.
The season. The land. The water. All
these components determine what I plant.
I have suffered both with the wrong seed
for the right land and the right seed at the
wrong time, because I kept my eye on what
the merchant will give me”
The striking similarities in his work and
mine pique my interest. I warm up. “That’s
a big decision. But who tells a farmer what
is the right thing to do for his land?”
He places the coffee cup on the table, soaks
in some air, and says quietly, “If the farmer
doesn’t know his land and the seasons, he
isn’t a true farmer.”
My mind runs back to office and to
the leaders we deal with. Leaders and
managers, who are self-aware and own
their development, are the ones who go
a long distance.
I look at him for more. He continues.
“Mother Nature keeps it simple. But you
can’t just plant the seed and wait for
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 31
Mother Nature to do the rest. You need to
know when to water and how much water.
Too much water can kill too! “
“So is the case with fertilizer. As is with
pesticides. Just the right dose, at the right
time, in the right sequence. And that is very
different for different plants in different
soil. Just because something works well
with the rice crop, it doesn’t mean it will
with millets. We need to find the right mix.
In fact, every farmer needs to”
I smile. And say, “So, it’s a question of
finding the blend? Right?”
He smiles. “Finding the right blend EVERY
SINGLE TIME! A true farmer nurtures. He
nurtures by walking the fields. He nurtures
by talking to his crop. He nurtures by doing
the right thing and not over doing it”
“So how successful are you in growing
your crops?” I ask.
He laughs. “I don’t grow the crops. The
crops grow by themselves. I am just there”.
I realize “I am just there” conceals as
much as it reveals. Yet it sinks in clean.
The elegance of his description makes me
wonder how we miss the most obvious in
the quest of the new / shiny / fancy!
“A good farmer is patient. To him, who
sows the right seed in the right soil and
does just that much to nurture and watch
them grow, a good yield is a given”.
That night I stare into the skies. And
his words keep coming back to my mind.
“I don’t grow the crops. The crops grow
by themselves. I am just there”.
I want to write that down and put it on
my desk. Perhaps pass it on to our leaders
and managers. Development is nature’s
way of ensuring all is well. And yes, true
development is a natural process.
****************************
The Farmer’s story is perfect for concluding
this section on Learning. It’s clear that
it’s all about value creation and not
just value addition via learning. The
importance of the third building block of
Social Learning, next to the two blocks
of formal  informal learning is fast
gaining importance. Creating learning
organizations has become a strategic
imperative for organizations to stay
relevant, perpetual and competitive.
Learning has a lot of art and science
to it and the science is becoming more
important for designing the right and
relevant learning experiences.
The challenges are tougher than ever
before and understanding and developing
human capital effectively is an area ripe
for research and experimentation.
Nhrd journal aug 2013
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 33
Section 3
Branding and Communication –
The Essentials
Personal branding is a personal choice, brought alive
by many aspects of our behavior, including how we
show up online. With no effort at all, our connections,
comments, engagements, or lack thereof, matched with our
experience, expertise and skills, creates a perception that
may not represent the true self.
This section focuses on making ourselves relevant to
others, in a manner that does justice to our purpose and
their need.
34	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Dr. Tanvi Gautam consults and trains on innovative talent
managementpractices,leadership;crosscultureteammanagement,
as well as diversity. She was recognized by the Business Manager
magazine as one of the leading women HR professionals
(July 2012), and also serves on the boards of ARTDO international
(a pan Asian HR consulting and training organization
headquartered in Malaysia) and D.K International (HQ:
India). She has written for, been interviewed and quoted by
international publications such as Harvard Business Review (On point, 2013) and
Forbes, USA.
Branding and Communication: The Essentials
Dr. Tanvi Gautam
60 seconds. What can be done in one
minute?
While it does not seem like a lot, consider
this: In less time than what it will take
you to finish reading the next paragraph,
Google would have attended to more than
2 million search queries, YouTube would
have had 1.3 million video views and
204 million emails would have been sent
globally. If you are still not overwhelmed
consider the prediction that by 2015, five
years’ worth of digital video will traverse
IP networks each second (yes, per second
not per minute). These predictions come
from the popular Intel info-graphic on
the topic.
To say that we are living in the age
of information overload is to grossly
understate the issue at hand. The rise in
the volume of data, while in and of itself
is overwhelming, to my mind it is not the
core issue.
The real challenge arises from our ability
to personally  professionally cope with
living in this information rich but insight
poor environment.
For instance, in this diverse and overloaded
environment, how do we powerfully
capture the attention of relevant others?
How do we communicate in a manner
that the meaning is not lost in translation?
How do we create organizations that cut
through the noise to resonate with the best
talent out there?
While there is no one or universal answer
to these questions, much depends on the
frameworks we adopt to find and define
our solutions. Given my own work in
employee engagement, cross-cultural
teams and corporate storytelling, I tend to
lean towards solutions that emanate from
that space. In this particular section that
I am anchoring, the authors approach
these questions from the lens of branding
and communication. And hence the
proposed solutions lean towards creating
of personal and professional brands and
challenges of communication in a global
and diverse world.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 35
The articles provide some important
insights and a road map on how to
approach some of the questions raised
earlier. The first article underscores the
importance and value of having a personal
brand in capturing the attention of relevant
others. The proposed model and clear
steps to success provide much needed
clarity on the issue of personal branding.
The second article on reinventing your
career is a very timely one — as HR
professionals acquire new knowledge and
competencies, we may find ourselves in
roles that may not have existed a few years
ago. Reinventing our career in a manner
that enables success in the information age
depends on creating great content, taking
on leadership roles and having the ability
to embrace the quantitative. Indeed, the act
of reinventing your career is related to the
idea of creating a powerful personal brand.
The third article, examines what it takes to
create an employee brand that attracts and
resonates with the talent we are trying to
attract – an issue that is close to the heart
of all HR professionals. And the final
article, reminds us that while creating a
brand is critical, being mindful of cultural
boundaries when trying to communicate in
global world is an imperative that simply
cannot be ignored.
I am positive that the articles will only whet
your appetite for more and so I would like
to share with you some amazing insights
generated through #indiahrchat (India’s
only twitter chat for the HR community).
In the tweets from this particular chat on
the topic of personal branding for HR
professionals, Anand Pillai (one of the
authors in this section) was the guest.
I do regard #indiahrchat as a space where
the HR community learns together and
communicates in a manner that allows us
all to grow as professionals, a model of
‘communicating’ and learning that will
become even more common in the years
to come.
36	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Anand Pillai has more than 31 years of rich experience in the
corporate world, having handled challenging assignments in
general management and as head of operations in companies
such as TATA Group (10 yrs.), Hughes Network Systems and
Bay Networks and HCL Technologies Ltd (14 years). He is a
much sought after speaker in many national and international
forums. Given his thought leadership in the field of leadership 
innovation, Anand has been recently appointed as Member of the
World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership 2011.
Creating YOUR Personal Brand
Anand Pillai
Every individual brings a unique
combination of strengths, passions,
gifts, and purpose to the workplace, a
combination that coalesces into a unique
brand; a brand which exemplifies the
unique him/her, inside as well as outside
the organization. Not many people
recognize that they are unique, and even
in case they do, they fail to do anything
about it. When they try doing something
about it, they may fall victim to doing it
ineffectively.
I ask people “What is your Personal
Brand?” Most of them end up defining
themselves based on their nationality,
ancestral origin, qualifications or
achievements.
People often confuse their identity with
the way they look, the community they
belong to or the position they hold. They
think that their identity is fused with their
achievements. They associate their identity
with a specific circumstance or instance
of success.
Creating your Personal Brand
So what is a Personal Brand and how to
create it? Your personal brand is what
people would say when they hear your
name, or the results Google would throw
up when a search is run in your name.
Personal Branding is about knowing your
uniqueness, discovering your strengths
and leveraging them. It is about making
a full-time commitment to the journey of
defining yourself as an individual.
To quote Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas
Ridderstrale of Funky Business – “The
‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar
companies, employing similar people,
with similar educational backgrounds,
working in similar jobs, coming up with
similar ideas, producing similar things,
with similar prices and similar quality.”
The world we live in presents everything as
anequalizer;theoneandonlydifferentiator
is YOU. Creating a personal brand involves
showing genuine interest, which radiates
outward and engages others.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 37
Building Your Personal Brand
In today’s competitive market, building a
personal brand is critical to any individual,
particularly HR professionals. The seven
steps of building and leveraging your
personal brand are:
Believe in Yourself
Discover Yourself
Re-Invent Yourself
Build Yourself
Let Go of Yourself
Renew Yourself
Be Yourself
Believe in Yourself: Do you believe in
yourself? Do you accept yourself the way
you are, the way you are made? That is
what will enable you to establish your
identity and build your personal brand.
Believe in your self ,
because if you don’t,
nobody else will!!
Discover Yourself: Once you believe in
yourself you need to get into the journey
of Discovering Yourself. Gallup gives us
five simple tests of discovering ourselves.
The first one is Yearning which is, the
unspoken desire to do things that naturally
appeal to you. For example, for me, it is
People Development. You will be making
me much happier if you wake me up in
middle of the night and ask me to facilitate
a session on Personal Branding. Ask
yourself, what kinds of activities are you
naturally drawn towards?
The second test of discovering yourself is
Rapid Learning. There are things which you
don’t learn at all, even if a best teacher in
the world is teaching you. But there are
things which you seem to learn rapidly,
the things which you enjoy learning. You
learn those things rapidly because you are
hard-wired for that. Ask yourself, what
kinds of activities do you seem to pick
up quickly?
The third test is Flow. In what activities
did the ‘steps’ come to you automatically?
As if they were programmed in your
mind, though you may not necessarily be
qualified for it.
The fourth test is Glimpses of Excellence. As
you are doing your work, you suddenly
get a WOW feeling!! You feel proud of
yourself and commend yourself for doing
that fantastically. Glimpses of excellence
come to you. Reflect and ask yourself,
during what activities have you had
moments of subconscious excellence, when
you thought, “How did I do that?”
The fifth and the final test of discovering
yourself are spotting signs of Satisfaction.
Doing some things,even when you are tired
and completely knocked off, gives you a
sense of satisfaction. That energy validates
the Chinese proverb which says “Find a job
you love and you’ll never have to work a day
of your life”. Ask yourself, which activities
give you such a ‘kick’? Either while doing
them or immediately after finishing them,
you think, “Oh, when can I do that again?”
Reinvent Yourself: Once you discover
yourself or become fully aware of yourself,
you should not stay that way, you have
to get into the next step which is Reinvent
Yourself.
Unless you reinvent yourself, you are going
to go back into a blue game; you’ll have to
move with the changing time. Becauseyou
need to progress with time.
You can reinvent yourself by working
on your courage zone. Come out of your
38	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
comfort zone and challenge yourself in
unexplored territories of work and life,
what I call, the areas of risk, difficulty and
discomfort. You need to keep reinventing
yourself once every 18 to 36 months, and
the pattern you’ll have to adopt is: 60%
of your day to day activities should be
in comfort zone, while 40% should be in
your courage zone. Venture out; try things
which you have never tried, because that
is how you’ll reinvent yourself. Once you
reinvent yourself, you’ll then be able to
rediscover yourself, be able to build your
identity.
Building your identity means creating
your individual signature. Personal
branding is not an easy job, you need
to work hard, work smart and stamp
mark whatever you do. It requires
mapping your passion to address new
opportunities or threats within the
organization’s walls, benchmarking self,
having a dream company/position in
mind and decisively working towards
achieving it. It involves networking with
value adders, and creating your own blue
ocean. That is, creating bandwidth for
doing things which are high in value, and
by eliminating or reducing things which
are low in value.
4. Let Go of Yourself: The next step
towards building a personal brand is
‘Let go of Yourself’. You need to learn to
give up to go up. It entails making three
exchanges with self:
Affirmation for Accomplishment – Stop
being a people-pleaser. If you always say
yes when you would rather say no, then
you will find yourself unhappily going
through the motions of living, giving
control of your time, energy, and spirit to
anyone who asks for it. Fundamentally,
leadership involves serving others and
adding value to them.
Security for Significance – Security can be
tough to pass up and yet, significance
usually calls for risk. It involves stepping
away from familiar territory in order to
explore new lands. To be a pioneering
leader, you have to change your attitude
toward uncertainty; otherwise you will
confine your influence
Immediate Victory v/s Long-Term
Sustainability – To excel as a leader, you
have to change the timeframe in which
you view success. If you measure your
performance solely in terms of immediate
results, then you run the risk of giving up
when times are tough.
Invest in .yourself: Make SPICE the way
of your life.
Invest in yourself Spiritually, Physically,
Intellectually, Community and
Emotionally.
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 39
Renew Yourself: Continuous learning,
renewal, refreshment and re-invention are
key to remaining at the cutting edge at all
stages and ages of your life.
Be Yourself: Be yourself, because everybody
else is taken. Never let go of the unique,
special qualities that define you as an
individual.
Maintaining your Personal Brand
Once you go through the seven steps
to building your personal brand in a
systematic focused manner, you will be
able to differentiate yourself from others in
your field and that’s when you get to, not
only branding yourself, but maintaining
and evolving that brand. This is a life-long
exercise.
God has made each of us
as a f ir st class or iginal.
Don‛t die a second gr ade copy!
It is difficult to cover personal branding
in just one article. However, some of the
simple and basic steps covered can ensure
that every interaction is an opportunity to
create, build and maintain your personal
brand. Discover yourself and let the world
discover. Happy Branding!!
To know more on Personal Branding,
follow me on twitter @Anand_Pillai.
40	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients
including Google, Yale University, and the Ford Foundation. She
is also the author of the newly-released Reinventing You: Define
Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review
Press, 2013). You can listen to her podcasts or follow her on @
dorieclark
Reinventing Your Career for HR
Professionals
Dorie Clark
You’ve worked hard to build your
reputation as an HR professional. But
what if you now want to reinvent how
you’re perceived by others? Perhaps you’d
liketoworkinadifferentindustry,handling
talent management in the technology space
instead of pharmaceuticals. Maybe you’d
like to move to an even more senior level
at your company, where you need to
showcase your leadership abilities. Or you
may simply want to demonstrate that, as
the industry is changing, your skills are
both keeping up and moving forward.
Here are three strategies you can employ
to ensure others recognize your true
capabilities.
Create content to demonstrate your
expertise: The single best strategy for
demonstrating your value to others is
creating online content – whether it’s in
the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, or
even a smart Twitter feed – it shows you’re
engaged in key discussions and you know
what you’re talking about. Particularly if
you’re moving into a new industry, this
is your opportunity to allay any concerns
from your new employer; they can see with
their own eyes that you’re thoughtful and
have a smart perspective to contribute.
Take on leadership roles: Being the leader
of a professional organization sends a
powerful signal to others – your peers
have agreed you’re a worthy leader.
So if you’re involved in a group, make
the extra effort to become a leader. As I
recount in my new book from Harvard
Business Review Press, Reinventing You,
a U.S. consultant named Alan Weiss took
on a role, in the mid-1990s, as the New
England Chapter President of the National
Speakers Association. He thought he’d
make less money in those years because he
was devoting extra time to volunteer. On
the contrary, he made an extra US $250,000
directly traceable to his role, because his
visibility and network increased so much
during that time. It pays to be seen as a
leader.
Embrace the quantitative. As I’ve written
about in Forbes, the new frontier for HR
July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal	 41
may be Big Data and how to adapt its
insights into measurable performance
gains for your organization. Many HR
professionals aren’t trained in analytics,
but given its growing prominence, diving
in now and establishing your expertise
may be a smart way to stay ahead of the
curve. For instance, eBay uses analytics
to identify departmental and managerial
hotspots where employees are leaving,
thus allowing them to discover and address
problems at an early stage. They’ve also
turned to analytics to help them adjust their
maternity leave policy, enabling them to
better retain top female employees.
HR – like much of the business world,
is rapidly changing. If you want to
reinvent your career and how you’re
perceived by others, developing insightful
content, taking on leadership roles, and
mastering Big Data may be your ticket to
advancement and future success.
42	 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal
About the Author
Dr. Gautam (IIT-Delhi) is an internationally renowned
management thinker and consultant. He was the First Head
Management Department; IIM-K (Founder Director), IIM-S
(Leader, DPR consulting Team) DCM Engineering and Electronics
Division (Head, Management Development Centre). He is a past
Director of International Federation of Training and Development
Organizations (London) and Past President of ARTDO
International (Manila).
He is, along with other decorations, the recipient of the ‘Hall of Fame’ Award 2013;
Devang Mehta Life Time Achievement Award 2012; G51, Millennium Award;
Outstanding Contributions Award of ARTDO International and Industries. Dr.
Gautam’s deep expertise in management has been sought internationally in places
such as USA, UK, Germany, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. He has represented
India in UNESCO and APO events.
Cross Cultural Issues in Branding and
Communication
Dr. Vinayshil Gautam
My ‘brand’ which underpins all my
roles, is not something I actively created.
It got ascribed to me with over four
decades in the profession, buttressed
by the image that literally thousands
of my students, trainees, those in the
audiences I addressed, and others, gave
to me. My brand was being created and
conveyed as a spontaneous response.
It is not a method I am advocating but
rather elaborating a reality of what field
conditions can be like.
It needs to be recognized that a brand is
created not only through all that you say
and do but also by what you don’t say
and don’t do.
The brand defines the expectation in each
interaction, and in my case it has come to be
a brand that conveys operational expertise
And what do you do Dr. Gautam?’
came a perfectly valid question
from a casual acquaintance at a recent
dinner gathering. I paused for a moment
because the reply may have ended up
raising more questions than it answered.
My profession requires me to wear
several hats – a researcher, a consultant, a
teacher, a trainer, a mentor, a counselor,
a public speaker, a committee man, an
author and much more, with the aim of
meeting the needs of my international
client base.
Yet while these are all my roles, I am
not just about my roles. My roles are a
response to the context. My brand is my
essence. My roles are what I do while
my brand is who I am, as perceived by
others. It is true; image can be no different
from reality!
‘
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013
Nhrd journal aug 2013

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Nhrd journal aug 2013

  • 1. Dear Readers, The National HRD Network has been bringing out a semi-academic, theme based, quarterly journal for the last few years. It aims at compiling and publishing the professional views and experiences of reputed HR professionals, line professionals, CEOs, researchers, academicians in each theme area. We carry out extensive research, identify and invite persons who have eminent publications or have rich experience in the theme area to contribute articles for each issue. Through the journal, we aim to build a body of knowledge in all facets of HR which is not otherwise easily available for the current and future HR Professionals. So far, close to 350 eminent authors have contributed articles. Each issue is guest edited by a person of eminence in the concerned theme area. This journal is circulated free to the members of NHRD Network to stimulate their thinking and towards their professional development. Publications so far have been based on themes such as : • “IT in HR” • “Performance Management” • “Attracting and Retaining Talent” • “Career Management” • “Organizational Change” • “Global HRM” • “Women in Corporate Leadership Roles” • “Organization Development” • “Learning and Development” • “Leadership” • “Work-Life Balance” • “Institution Building” • “Coaching For Performance and Development” • “Human Resources Management in Rapid Growth Organizations” • “HR Competence” • “HR and Employee Relations” • “CEO and HR” • “People Power – Draw, Drive and Deliver” • “Getting HR Ready for Gen Y” • “CSR & HR” • “Shapes and Structures of Organizations - Today and Tomorrow” • “Managing Change, Transformation and Enhancing Competitiveness : The HR Role” • “Dots and connections: winning hearts and minds through internal communication” • “Skill Building and HR” • “Technology and HR” The copies of these issues of the journal can be accessed from www.nationalhrd.org. The current issue is on the theme of “Social Media and HR”. Some of the guest editors for future issues include Srikantan Moorthy, Senior VP, Group Head of HR and Member, Executive Council, Infosys and Dr. A.K. Balyan, MD and CEO of Petronet LNG. This is your journal and will be as rich as you want it to be. In order to further enrich it, we would like to receive your 1. qualitative feedback on issues brought out so far, and 2. suggestions for themes to be covered in our future issues; 3. Any other suggestions. Kindly send in your thoughts to drpvrmurthyresearch@gmail.com Dr. PVR Murthy Managing Editor (On behalf of the Editorial Team) NHRD Network Journ al  Skill Building and H R  January 2013 ISSN - 0974 - 1739 NHRD Network Journal January 2013  Volume 6   Issue 1 www.nationa lhrd.org A Quarterly Pu blication by Th e National HRD  Network Skill Building and HR S Ramadorai M V Subbiah Arun Maira Dr. Sharda Prasad S Mahalingam Lakshmi Narayanan Dr. K C Reddy R C M Reddy Manish Sabharwal Ramya Venkatarama n Dr. Mukti Mishra Dr. Santanu Paul T Muralidharan Megha Aggarwal and Dr. Devesh Kapur www.nationa lhrd.org National HRD Network The National HRD Network, established in 1985, is an association of professionals committed to promoting the HRD movement in India and enhancing the capability of human resource professionals, enabling them to make an impactful contribution in enhancing competitivenessandcreatingvalueforsociety.Towards thisend,theNationalHRDNetworkiscommittedtothe development of human resources through education, training, research and experience sharing. The network ismanagedbyHRprofessionalsinanhonorarycapacity, stemming from their interest in contributing to the HR profession. The underlying philosophy of the NHRDN is that every human being has the potential for remarkable achievement. HRD is a process by which employees in organizations are enabled to: • acquire capabilities to perform various tasks associated with their present and future roles; • develop their inner potential for self and organisational growth; • developanorganisationalculturewherenetworking relationships, teamwork and collaboration among different units is strong, contributing to organisational growth and individual well-being.
  • 2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our profound thanks to all the contributors of articles, who have taken time off from their busy schedules out of their passionate interest in the field of HR and Social Media. We acknowledge the excellent contribution of the Guest Editor - Elango R, Chief Human Resources Officer And Head Emerging Geo Business Unit, Mphasis Ltd. for conceptualising the entire issue and inspiring all busy experts in the field to share their thoughts. Along with the support of Co-Editors Irfan Abdulla, Dr. Tanvi Gautam, Yashwant Mahadik, Gautam Ghosh and Raghuraman M.G. this issue promises to be thought provoking and riveting. A special note of recognition for Mamta Malhotra, Susan Korath and Julian Peter who supported Elango with research and ground work. We acknowledge the support from Sunathy of Exclusive Search for passionately working with me. – Dr. PVR Murthy, Managing Editor (On behalf of the Editorial Team)
  • 3. CONTENTS S.No.      Title of Article     Author Page No. 1 Social Media 101 for HR Gautam Ghosh 1 Section I 2 Introduction to Talent Acquisition Irfan Abdulla 4 and Social Media 3 Recruiting Gone Social Savneet Shergill 5 4 Talent Acquisition: The Social Way Syeda Meher Taj 8 5 Attracting Generation Y Workforce Debolina Dutta 11 6 Social Media – Breaking Traditional David Istacky 15 Mindset and Looking Beyond Section II 7 Best Practices and Future of Learning Yashwant S Mahadik 18 8 Linking Learning to Business Strategy: William Pelster (Bill) 20 About Deloitte University 9 Social Media & Learning: A Perfect Match Gautam Ghosh and 23 Andrew Lax 10 Case Study: Social Learning @ Jardine Sunder Ramachandran 26 Lloyd Thompson India 11 The Farm Kavi Arasu 28
  • 4. Section III 12 Branding and Communication: Dr. Tanvi Gautam 30 The Essentials 13 Creating YOUR Personal Brand Anand Pillai 32 14 Reinventing Your Career for Dorie Clark 36 HR Professionals 15 Cross Cultural Issues in Branding and Dr. Vinayshil Gautam 38 Communication 16 ‘Brand’-ing Begins At Home’ Managing Roger Darashah 41 Communications from the Bottom Up Section IV 17 Balancing The Benefits and Risks Raghuraman M G 43 of Enterprise Social Media 18 Social Media Company Showcase Elango R and 46 Gautam Ghosh S.No.      Title of Article     Author Page No.
  • 5. Editorial Comments ”As you delve deeper, you will realise that at its core, social media is about conversations and connections, at an infinitely unimaginable scale and speed.” Within the first 20 minutes of waking up, I have checked my emails, fixed my schedule for the day, paid bills, found directions to a client meeting, made a reservation for dinner with my wife and wished my distant aunt for her 50th birthday! All this, with a few swipes of my finger on smart phone that weighs no more than 130 gms. As early as 5 years ago, this would have sounded unimaginable and futuristic, much like a sci-fi movie with unrealistic stunts. With 67 million users in India and growing at the rate of 52% YoY, smartphones are a ubiquitous part of our day, and often the cause of panic attacks when they run out of battery. We are indeed in the midst of remarkable times and the possibilities are limitless. We stand at an interesting juncture where technology is evolving at a speed that makes it impossible to predict which mode of interaction would be ‘in’ 2 years from now. Web 2.0 is expected to have enormous potential to change the way people interact and work, offering HR bountiful opportunities to ride this wave and actively participate in this revolution. There is already a buzz around Social Media and we’ve merely seen the tip of the iceberg. For HR Professionals, Elango R Chief Human Resources Officer And Head Emerging Geo Business Unit, Mphasis Ltd.
  • 6. the implications are tremendous – we get to impact culture and engagement at speeds and levels of influence we never imagined, but wished for. We now have access to direct 1-0-1 connect with every single employee, irrespective of how geographically dispersed they are or disparate their roles are. This is tailor made for us to reinvent our roles and take that much desired seat at the business table, only if we can figure out how to harness this beast or beauty! Just a bit of party pooper – while the opportunity is real, the hype and mystification is unwarranted. As you delve deeper, you will realize that at its core, Social Media is about conversations and connections, at an infinitely unimaginable scale and speed. Consider this: I have 500 connections on LinkedIn, whom in turn are connected to 500 each, taking my second level network to a few thousands! And the key is that they are just a virtual message away. All it takes to connect, listen, ask and respond is a few seconds to a minutes and god Wi-Fi connection. Keep it simple and you can harness this for terrific business and personal success as HR professionals. That is exactly what we set out to do, in this edition of the NHRD publication — to demystify Social Media and throw open the portals to a connected universe that is just waiting to be tapped. I have invited my peers from the industry to contribute their perspective and the collective expertise makes this hopefully, an unputdownable issue. At the cost of being called simplistic, we have kept this edition basic, jargon free and practical. No appendix, no
  • 7. reference papers – just simple 1-0-1 conversations. I hope you will appreciate this. A fitting start from Gautam Ghosh who has been a pioneer and realized the potential of the web for HR Professionals, as early as the dial-up days of the internet. He has written a great article on Social Media 101 for HR Professionals. The rest of the issue is co-edited by Leaders from our HR fraternity and beyond, who have been early adopters of Social Media, get what it takes to tap its potential and have been generous to have taken time out of their already packed schedules. They have drawn from their networks and invited luminaries in this space to write some very interesting columns. Irfan Abdulla from LinkedIn (where else) has anchored the Talent Acquisition section. Dr. Tanvi Gautam of People Tree has pulled together the Branding and Communication section. Yashwant Mahadik, Chief Learning Officer of Philips and someone well versed with the full potential of Social Media, has personally architected the Learning section. For good measure and some balance, I invited Chief Information Officer - MG Raghuraman of MphasiS to write a piece on how he views the HR communities’ Social Media aspirations from his perch, atop the server stacks and Internet pipes! And the tail piece is a showcase that Gautam and I put together with the help of some brash youngsters. They challenged us all the way, and contributed to a making this
  • 8. last section a fitting and interesting end to what seemed a long but enjoyable journey. Crystal ball gazing in isolation can be delusional, but the help of my peers, we bring to you views and practices that are forward looking, practical and realistic. It calls for a shift, and it will take time but the transition is sure to happen. And the reason I know that is because most eyeballs for this edition will be via the virtual version rather than the print version of this edition. Enjoy the read, but don’t stop there. Experiment. Don’t dip your toe in the water – dive in and swim to new shores, tweeting and linking all the way. While you are at it, share with us your stories and views. I am on twitter@agastyasays and would love to hear from you. Dr. PVR Murthy Honorary Managing Editor on behalf of the Editorial Team Dr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay Dr. Arvind N Agrawal
  • 9. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 1 Here’s the thing HR and other people need to remember, “social media” might be a new term, but what it signifies is not really new. Ever since the advent of the internet people have connected with each other in a public system (via Usernet, Bulletin Boards) to discuss and share their views and opinions. It’s just that social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have emerged at a time when internet penetration is growing exponentially in our part of the world. So what does social media comprise of? When most people think of social media, they think about “networks” – and the biggest three names are of networks. Social networks like Facebook (Friendster and Orkut earlier), professional networks like LinkedIn (and Ryze earlier) and information networks like Twitter are all networks. The networks are people-centric. My social network comprises of people who I have known, but might not know each other. The other aspect of social media is “communities” which are virtual places where people who have a common interest gather to share and engage about that subject. These can range from communities of practice (where professionals interact) to hobby communities (photography or quilt weaving, for example). The principles that drive social media adoption is when people start sharing information and creating content on networks and communities. According to an oft quoted thumb rule, a minority of the people “create” content. Some more people “curate or comment” on the created content and the majority of people “consume” content. As a person gets more and more comfortable – they start to curate and create too. These sites have also added design principles that encourage people to move from the “consumption” default. There are two main ways they do that. One is to reduce the effort to curate. This is what the “like” and the “share” buttons on Facebook and the “favorite” or “Retweet” buttons on Twitter do. The other thing many communities do is give recognition in the form of levels and designation to people who contribute. So as they contribute more and more and other members find their content useful they move from a beginner to an expert level. They also publish leaderboards two drive peer based competition so that others are motivated to rise up the ladder. About the Author Gautam Ghosh is GM – HR strategy and Projects at Philips India. In this role he owns and drives the key strategic objective of making Philips India a strong Employer Brand by leveraging new emerging media & technology. Gautam is one of India’s earliest HR Bloggers and an avid Twitter user. Social Media 101 for HR Gautam Ghosh
  • 10. 2 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal Since many people are aware of Facebook and LinkedIn here are some other communities and sites that I thought would be useful to know about. Google Plus Google Plus is Google’s answer to Facebook with the promise that you can share your information with specific people and communicate with them. One of its biggest features is that you can have video conference with 9 other people, without installing any additional software. The chats also get integrated with Gmail chats. Slideshare Slideshare can be described as the YouTube of slide decks. It also has the ability to upload documents too. By nature of its content, Slideshare seems a very “professional” site, and businesses have found it useful to showcase their reports and viewpoints easier through this than video (which is expensive and harder to get right) Professionals also use Slideshare to showcase their expertise and build their own personal brand. After the acquisition by LinkedIn, Slideshare integration is seamless with LinkedIn profiles. Quora Quora is a “question and answer” site where people ask questions in various topic areas and others answer them. People who read answers can them vote on them, causing the most useful answers to rise to the top. So people can discover experts who share their knowledge in areas as diverse as Engineering to Management to Photography to Mythology to Economics. Since Quora originated in Silicon Valley the topics of startups, entrepreneurship are specially rich and detailed. A lot of entrepreneurs, VCs (like Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Craig Newmark of Craigslist) are active on the site almost on a daily basis. So what does this all mean for HR Content is shaping how people find and connect with each other. Organizations now have to become content creators themselves to remain relevant. They cannot rely on external media (paid, like advertising or earned, like being mentioned in mass media) alone. They have to invest in creating “owned media”. For an employer brand that means media that showcases the organization’s culture in the form of articles, presentations, videos. This is necessary as otherwise employees and alumni are rating and reviewing all aspects of an employer (from culture, to salaries, to interviews) on sites like Glassdoor and JobsBuzz. It also means that HR needs to “listen” to conversations on the social web about what people are talking about it, its leadership and even its competitors. This can be as simple as doing a search engine search regularly, or using sophisticated tools that track large number of conversations and can even judge the sentiments of the conversations. Within the organization, it means HR (along with IT and other functions) needs to get the organization ready to deploy tools that enable employees to use the principles of “participation for a purpose” to engage the next generation workforce with the larger organization. These tools can be deployed from the cloud (via the internet) or installed on company servers too. Most larger ERP service providers also offer social networking softwares these days. These tools help in employees to connect across geographies and silos to discover and collaborate with other colleagues. These are also a great tool to engage the larger workforce in larger change initiatives or communication when they are rolled across the organization. To do all this HR people have to embrace and experiment with this new medium and grow comfortable with it. It is time to stop talking about it, and to start doing it.
  • 11. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 3 Section 1 Talent Acquisition and Social Media Jobsites and recruitment agencies were yesterday’s headlines. Today, hiring happens through the power of social media, and the key to success for both recruiters and the recruitees lies in their readiness to adoptsocial media and their Social Media Quotient. This section focuses on success stories and learnings of organizations that have implemented the new way of hiring. 
  • 12. 4 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Irfan Abdulla, is currently the Director of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn India, the web’s largest and most powerful network of professionals. He joined LinkedIn as Head of Talent solutions and was responsible for building the India business from the roots. His primary focus now is in helping companies recruit, engage and retain the world’s best talent. He has worked in various hyper growth companies and enabled building businesses from the ground up. Introduction to Talent Acquisition and social media Irfan Abdulla The recruitment landscape in India has evolved immensely in recent times. Traditionally, the core competency of talent acquisition was either outsourced or left to chance but the recent foray into online social communication has created new frontiers. Employers are moving towards online social and professional networks, not only look for talent but also to build their employer brand among passive candidates. In order to acquire passive talent or employees that are the right fit, employers have to be equally savvy in their ability to communicate online. This issue of NHRD broadly encapsulates the rise of social media as an effective tool in talent acquisition across industries. Sharing her insights on how Dell approaches talent differently on social media, Savneet Shergill, Director – India Talent Acquisition, talks about the advent of the digital age, and reinforces the emergence of social media as a critical part of the recruitment and employee engagement tool kit. InaninterestingpieceonTalentAcquisition: The Social Way, Syeda Meher Taj, Global Lead Employer Branding, Infosys makes her case as to why organizations need to smartly combine conventional hiring practices with social recruiting. She further highlights how social media must be integrated into the broader talent management agenda, beyond just acquisition & attraction. In her opinion on attracting today’s Generation Y workforce Debolina Dutta, General Manager – Human Resources, United Spirits Ltd highlights how the growing war for talent that has now moved online. The article further draws a comparison between conventional recruitment and social media recruitment across various parameters. David Istacky, Head – Talent Acquisition, Elgi Equipments Limited in his article Social Media – Breaking traditional mindset and looking beyond, talks about re-inventing the conservative hiring strategy of the company, while keeping in mind the volatile and unpredictable markets and the economies. Fromengagingconceptslikecrowdsourcing talent to building an impactful employer brand, from insights on the war for talent to keeping pace with talent pools in unpredictable markets, this edition is an absolute treat. Enjoy the issue!
  • 13. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 5 About the Author Savneet Shergill is responsible for hiring across all businesses for Dell in India. Prior to Dell, Savneet was working with Wipro BPO for over six years and led the recruitment effort for Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai sites. Wipro was her first corporate stint as prior to that she was with the Indian Air Force (IAF) and happens to be a part of the first ever batch of 12 women officers inducted into the IAF in the country. Recruiting Gone Social Savneet Shergill Social networking has digitized humanity the world over, and how! Today, people engage with their colleagues, friends and loved ones through the interesting and intriguing world of Social Media. While Facebook provides people with the power to be engaged in ‘real time’, LinkedIn brings together like-minded individuals from around the world to leverage professional relationships. Twitter, on the other hand has emerged as a platform for netizens, to question thought-leaders across the globe with a simple tweet. The massive rise in the prominence of social media across all walks of life has led organizations to develop social strategies and use social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook for a more unique purpose – to attract and retain talent. As organizations adapt to the digital age, social media is emerging a critical part of the recruitment and employee engagement tool kit. Having the right set of people that fit the mind-set and culture of an organization is the need of the hour – social media can not only help organizations build, engage and foster communities for employment branding, but also for sourcing, engaging and career outreach. Ever since the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media platforms, Dell has used social media in internal collaboration, product development, social commerce as well as talent acquisition and management. Dell effectively uses social media for new talent attraction through platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. When looking to find prospective candidates, social media complements the traditional recruitment platforms. Though broad attributes or criterion may not differ vastly from what an organization would look for while recruiting in a traditional environment, organizations can in fact leverage professional social media platforms to look into background details, business achievements and skill sets. This provides the organization a holistic view of the prospective professional and their career growth over the years. Furthermore, organizations can match a job description and a particular candidates profile to evaluate whether he/she will be the right fit for the particular role. Dell has in place different ways of approaching talent on social media, broadly focused on the Big 3 – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
  • 14. 6 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal • Dell post jobs on LinkedIn on a regular basis and uses their Corporate Recruiter Licenses to source profiles. Recruiters at Dell update their profiles with information on critical positions that Dell is hiring for, and are also active on LinkedIn Groups, participating in conversations and keeping a tab on what’s brewing socially. • On the Facebook front, a very active Careers at Dell APJ page is used to engage the target audience. Facebook is a great way to disseminate career related information to candidates and interact with them. Dell has a job search widget on Facebook that helps prospective candidates find and look for the positions being offered. Interestingly, Dell has a Find Your Career Fit Widget which helps job seekers explore different career functions at Dell. Today, Dell has over 27,000 followers on its career Facebook page. • On Twitter, Dell’s career focused twitter handle @CareersAtDell is used extensively to interact with followers. Dell posts jobs, career related information and answers questions through this id. With over 1500 followers on twitter, Dell reaches out effectively to its target audience. Before taking the plunge into social media recruiting, an organization needs to take utmost care when its employees engage on its behalf on social platforms. An organization needs to ‘empower’ its employees to make sure that, both from a recruiting perspective as well as from a candidate experience touch point, the end to end process is seamless and delivers on the set expectations. To ‘empower’ its employees, an organization needs to: • Have a Social Media Strategy in place so that the designated individuals have a ground to fall back on and revert to • Have Social Media Policy in Place. Social media needs to be used the right away – thereby it is imperative that a policy be in place to inform employees about privacy, information protection and related laws • Invest in training employees on different social media platforms. At Dell, a Social Media University helps guide and render certifications across different platforms to employees once they complete their training. This way, employees are confident of what and how they need to communicate across social media. The new buzzwords in Social HR – Crowdsourcing and Gamification Finding the right kind of people that fit perfectlywiththecultureofanorganization can be a challenging task, and that is where the Worldwide Web steps in and opens up whole new avenues of opportunities. The new trend of Crowdsourcing can help organizations build, engage and foster communities that can be utilized effectively for branding and recruiting. A simple example of crowdsourcing is the Employee Referral Program. Very often, organizations have a few positions to close and send out information to employees asking them to help in the recruiting process. When an appropriate candidate gets selected, the employees are rewarded. Thereby it’s a win-win situation for both, the company who’ve found talent as well as the employee who enjoys the rewards. Now, imagine opening up this particular concept to the external world. Think about the kind of possibilities that it could create, the impact of collective networking of employees and the kind of reach it gives organizations! However, it is of prime importance to ensure meticulous planning and crafting of attainable objectives while carefully defining deliverables.
  • 15. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 7 While new age recruiting is inundated with buzzwords like crowdsourcing and building talent communities online, gamification is another trend that is quickly gaining traction. Gamification is the integration of game mechanics & theory into non-game applications & processes in the workplace. Gamification is garnering a lot of attention these days with a yearning among hiring leaders globally, to increase engagement rates with their potential talent communities. One should also remember that new trends are not a replacement but a useful and additional resource to traditional methods. Building, aligning and infusing attractive incentives into new strategies will ensure a win: win situation. At the end of the day, the challenge lies in devising and implementing well-thought out recruitment methods that have the ability to go viral and yet, from a recruiter’s standpoint, provide the ability to measure cognitive abilities of potential candidates. The art of hiring heavily depends on a clear understanding of new trends, and decoding what exactly these buzz words mean and how they can be leveraged on a day to day basis for hiring needs globally.
  • 16. 8 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Syeda Meher Taj has over 11 years of experience spanning both B2C and B2B technology marketing. From strategy to execution, she has led global branding & communication programs while managing cross-functional teams. In her current role, Syeda Meher Taj is the India-based lead for Global Employer Branding and Digital Talent Engagement at Infosys. Talent Acquisition: The Social Way Syeda Meher Taj Here’s a statistic that will surprise no one : In 2012, 93% of recruiters looked for candidates on LinkedIn. Narrow the scene of action to North America, and that score climbs to a near-perfect 97%. But numbers can sometimes flatter to deceive. North American employers – 97% strike rate notwithstanding – aren’t leveraging social media to the fullest for acquiring talent. They depend heavily on LinkedIn, but not nearly enough on other channels like Twitter or Facebook, which are also quite effective, especially for mounting a soft sell in the run up to the hard core hiring process. And any seasoned recruiter will tell you how important it is to prepare the ground. Companies looking to attract the best talent through social media should plan to utilize it all through the recruitment cycle. Even before getting into the mechanics of hiring, they should be out there in the social sphere promoting their workplace among the target audience and working up a conversation. This is particularly important in entry level hiring, where incumbents are still unsure of their career goals and in real need of guidance. A forum like Facebook provides an informal yet personal environment for recruiters to address career concerns and softly promote their organization, right into their young audience’s consideration set. Videos featuring employees talking about what they love about their work and workplace can be a great source of positive peer influence. However, in the case of lateral hiring, the role of social media is clearly at the business end. Employers have the option of earned and paid routes – engaging with prospective candidates in a social networking forum, or placing paid job advertisements to attract applicants. Tools like webinars and web chats are useful for building engagement, for impressing potential hires with thought-leadership, and for fostering a sense of belonging even before a candidate enters the organization. Many companies get senior HR personnel to ‘sit in’ at events that are likely to be attended by senior candidates, so that they can jumpstart the executive search process. When hiring experienced candidates,
  • 17. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 9 who are usually in demand, it is very important to reinforce the credentials of the organization between the offer and joining dates, to make sure they don’t drop off or choose to go to another employer. It might be a good idea to invite such candidates to join a small online community of peers and senior colleagues or encourage them to participate in other social forums where they can gain a first-hand feel of the organization’s informal culture, and get to know some of their co-workers. For the organization, this could be a great way to tap into networks of networks and also in a soft, non-intrusive way, keep tabs on the candidates before they officially come on board. Although social recruitment enjoys several advantages, such as reach, authenticity, immediacy, directness, and cost effectiveness, it does not render traditional forms of hiring redundant. It is quite effective for spotting active talent – those who are actively hunting for jobs – but fails to make a compelling impression on passive candidates. Ironically, the medium’s greatest strengths can also undermine social hiring – because social networks are so accessible, job advertisements invariably attract an excess of applications, many from the wrong kind of candidates. This creates a dual problem for recruiters; one, it makes it much harder to spot the right candidates among a mass of applicants, and two, it discourages the right candidates from pursuing the opportunity. Another issue is that recruiters will find it almost impossible to maintain discretion, so important in top level hiring, on a medium that is so public. Last but not least, they might also struggle to adopt the ‘social mindset’ and nail their social hiring strategy because of the dynamic nature of that space. So, the bottom line is that social recruiting cannot work as a stand-alone solution, nor does it work in isolation. This is why organizations need to smartly combine conventional hiring practices with it. Integration is a key factor of success in social-conventional hiring strategy. Newspaper advertisements, campus presentations, and agency-led executive search must deliver a consistent message and impression about the workplace, which social recruiting must reinforce through different forums. And one must support the other, which means that posters put up in college campuses should advertise the company’s Facebook forum and Twitter handle, and jobs posted in conventional media like TV, radio, and print must be replicated on the company’s website, and in its Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter spaces. A logical extension of this argument is that social media must also be integrated into the broader talent management agenda, beyond acquisition. It offers great opportunities for inducting fresh hires into the organization by way of closed groups where new employees can meet each other, connect with senior colleagues, seek answers to frequently asked questions, familiarize themselves with the dreaded employee manual, and generally find their way around. Once new employees settle into their jobs, it is time to up engagement through means like blogs, which are very effective for showcasing and advertising the company’s achievements and strengths, for sharing knowledge across the organization, and for building thought leadership. The company can also identify the socially active and influential through such forums, and nurture them into future brand ambassadors.
  • 18. 10 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal Social forums can also be strategic in onboarding an entire organization of employees in a merger or acquisition. Acquiring companies face immense challenges in assimilating employees in these conditions – cultural differences, fear of marginalization, resistance to change, and interpersonal friction, are but some of them. Transparency, open communication, easy accessibility, and a welcoming environment can facilitate that process to a great extent. And what better medium to enable these than social?
  • 19. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 11 About the Author Debolina Dutta has 22 years of work experience in HR and Sales domain. She has a degree in Electrical Engineering from College of Engineering, Pune and a Post Graduate Degree in Management from IIM, Bangalore, and is currently enrolled in the FPM –Industry program at IIM Indore. A passion for writing has resulted in development of multiple research papers and business case studies, some of which have been published and others are being considered for publication in the Asian Case Research Journal, HBS Case site, etc. Attracting Generation Y Workforce Debolina Dutta There is consensus that to win the ‘war for talent’, early stages of applicant attraction becomes critical, especially in a robust job market, as potential applicants have a number of choices. Moving forward, talent acquisition leaders will be required to think like marketers when developing media and sourcing strategies. Highly skilled job seekers in a tight labor market behave similarly to consumers in a crowded marketplace (Collins & Stevens, 2002). In today’s day and age, social networking as a recruitment tool is increasing in popularity. With the current generation largely interacting on social media sites, organizations are waking up to the potential of leveraging these channels to build their brand images and attract applicants to their organizations. This requires development of appropriate metrics which measures corresponding outcomes through a different yardstick, compared to those conventionally used by HR to measure recruitment efficiencies. This then raises a question for reputed organizations like United Spirits, leaders in the alcohol beverage industry with high brand equity – what can compel them to use social media and what are the benefits it could offer them? A recent definition of recruitment by Breaugh (2013) says that recruitment is defined as ‘an employer’s actions that are intended to (1) bring a job opening to the attention of potential job candidates who do not currently work for the organization, (2) influence whether these individuals apply for the opening, (3) affect whether they maintain interest in the position until a job offer is extended, and (4) influence whether a job offer is accepted’. Social media clearly possesses the ability to influence all four actions defined above. Thegrowingpopularityofsocialnetworking websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are forcing organizations to recognize the potential it provides in attracting Generation Y workforce. With over200millionusersonLinkedIn,andover a whopping 800 million users on Facebook
  • 20. 12 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal (Hunt, 2010), the advantage of using this medium is its ability to reach a ‘targeted audience’ vis-à-vis an unwanted ‘global audience’. In their seminal paper on ROI of Social Media Marketing (2010) Hoffman & Fodor defined motivators of social media engagement as the ‘4 C’s of connection, creation, consumption and control’. This essentially implies that social media dilutes the circle of influence and control of the organization and places higher levels of control on interfacing individuals. In the context of talent acquisition, organizations also need to look at these channels as a potential area to improve employer branding and be perceived as an employer of choice among the Gen Y workforce. Prior research on recruitment has studied pre-hire outcomes (e.g., number of applicants, job offer acceptance rates), post-hire outcomes (e.g. job performance, employee turnover), recruitment objectives (cost of hire, time to hire, number of positions filled, diversity) (Breaugh, 2013). These remain the conventional yardsticks to measure a recruitment functions’ effectiveness. It therefore becomesimportanttodifferentiatebetween conventional recruitment methods and the related outcomes, from social media methods and outcomes, in terms of their applicability, strategy and uses. Organizations today place extra emphasis on two basic metrics – Time to Fill and Cost Per Hire, and neglect to sufficiently debate upon, identify and measure a new age parameter, Quality of Hire. In the effort to get the fastest available applicant, the most suitable applicant may get missed. All metrics defined in conventional recruitment practice depend on the outcome of actually recruiting an applicant. This is a fundamental difference, since active recruitment through social media reduces social media to just another channel. The power of social media exists in its ability to enhance peripheral persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Therefore, social media can be leveraged both for active recruitment, and more importantly, for passive recruitment. Social media channels clearly allow for organizations to disseminate targeted messages to a filtered audience, thereby contributing to and increasing the quality score card. Additionally, customized targeting of potential applicants of defined demographics, through social media, lends itself for affirmative action in specific areas of recruitment like increasing diversity (gender, disability, racial etc.). The fundamental differences between conventional recruitment channels and social media recruitment are given in Table 1. A recent study indicated that of the 35% of employers using social media for recruitment, 21% are using it to recruit and research potential employees, and 18% are using it to strengthen their employment brands (Hunt, 2010). The tactical choices and investments done in social media typically emanate from four strategic goals that an organization may have. Analogous to the strategies in the sales and marketing context, as defined by Andzulis, Panagopoulos, & Rapp (2012), in the recruitment context these can be defined as building relationships, building employer brand, active recruitment, and finally, cost optimization. Based on organization needs, resource availability and priorities, HR functions need to carve out their social media plan. It may be feasible for an organization to choose a few of these or all, and decide the relative degrees of investment required. In this context, recruiting suitable talent for United Spirits Limited is not much of
  • 21. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 13 Measure or Criteria Conventional Recruitment Social Media Recruitment Objective / Utility Active demand fulfillment Active and passive recruitment Channelsof communication Newspapers, referrals, direct, websites, job boards, recruitment consultants Social Media channels like blog sites, micro-blogging, websites and forums/discussion groups, social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook) Metrics Pre and post hire outcomes, operational efficiencies Employer branding and personalized engagement Locus of control HR Function Social Media Community Level of individualization Medium to Low Very high Target applicant group All individuals matching current open positions Gen Y, internet savvy, having access & active on social media channels Tenure of engagement Relatively short term, from application to onboarding of applicant Continuous engagement Table 1: Differences between Conventional and Social Media Recruitment STRATEGY PHILOSOPHY OPERATIONAL INVESTMENT TACTICAL OUTCOME Relationship Strategy Building trust and collaboration through personalised engagement Dedicated ‘Community Manager’ focussed on prospective talent lead generation and engagement Strategic talent inducted into the organization Employer Branding Establishing credibility, gaining attention, demonstrating employer value propositions. Social media monitoring, sentiment analysis, creation of purposed communities Organization perceived as ‘preferred employer of choice’ Active Recruitment Reactive demand fulfilment Maintaining a dynamic career microsite reflecting active open requirements Active recruitment positions closed Cost Optimization Reducing costs of recruitment channels Maintaining a dynamic career microsite and integrating with active open requirements. Dedicated resource to close applicants from these channel Reduce recruitment spend on more expensive channels Table 2: Aligment of Strategy, Philosophy, Investment And Outcome For Recruitment
  • 22. 14 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal became the key driver for the organization to take a serious look at the benefits of social media recruitment. Having said that, benefits accrued through employer branding, active recruitment and cost optimization become the icing on the cake. a challenge primarily due to the strong employer brand. However, with a robust succession management plan in place, it became critical to adopt a ‘relationship building’ strategy with potential, well defined and targeted individuals. This
  • 23. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 15 About the Author David has over 15 years of work experience in HR and Consulting domain. He works towards reaching out to great talent across the world and building winning relationships and valuable partnerships. His specialty lies in contributing to people’s lives in a manner and that brings new meaning to what he does everyday. Head - Talent Acquisition, ELGI Equipments Ltd. Social Media – Breaking Traditional Mindset and Looking Beyond David Istacky For a thriving Coimbatore based Indian engineering company, that’s grown brick by brick over the last 6 decades and recorded steady growth in business revenues year on year, it’s a given to expect that most systems and processes are well set and so are the mindsets. In our industry, such an environment is a boon for an employee as the sense of security is high, people have a chance to settle into their roles and become experts. Expertise brings in consistency and helps both the employee and the organization stay focused on current objectives and plan ahead. As a result employee engagement is high, attrition is low and hiring kept on a leash. Our hiring strategy therefore, could afford to be conservative, focused and specific, based on run-of-the-mill methods and practices, driven by a well-oiled HR generalist, who’s been-there-done-that and can now do it with his/her eyes closed. Hiring was earlier supported by a band of hiring partners, who developed certain competencies to support our specific needs and with time, they became an extension of the company. Hence, all the Recruitment Team had to do, while being the glorified coordinator, was to keep the hiring partner in good humor. This more or less became the norm for all the hard- to-find, mid management and the senior management open positions. Another option was to scan job boards,which were automatically subscribed to annually. The recruiter downloaded CV’s of potential talent worth engaging and ran them through the mill, while machine operators and junior level position got filled through word of mouth, contactors and employee referral. All this coupled with the Employee Referral Policy saw us through with all our hiring requirements. But enter a new era – where markets and economies are volatile and unpredictable, governments and policy unstable, new businesses emerging and older ones moving into oblivion, business plans and forecasts going haywire. We often found
  • 24. 16 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal ourselves grappling with questions that had no right answers and soon realized that, what got us here,wasn’t going to get us ahead. The era that we live in, has the ability to change,veryrapidly,thewayorganizations and people are perceived and valued, which can result in growth or declination, depending on the choices and decisions we make. Come to think of it, our families, friends, colleagues, professional contacts or their connections influence most of the choices and decisions we make. They become a free knowledge pool and a versatile intelligence network that help us think, analyze, learn, grow and choose a path, if only we can tap into it. With technology moving from PC’s to mobile devices, technology and people now go hand in hand. We are constantly using mobile devices to connect calls, video, email, SMS, MMS etc., with people or a network of people, whom we chose to connect and share information with. Imagine what could happen when we start evaluating and classifying our contacts and communication and enabling those in our networks to work for us? Imagine what would happen when you discover that there are so many people sitting in places around the world, who share your personal or professional interests or can do business with you or lend insight into something that’s even beyond your comprehension. What if they in turn can connect you with somebody who can change or impact your business beyond your imagination, or your life itself?And all this for free? That is the power of social networking. Our company is in the leadership quadrant in India and we see great opportunity for us to grow our presence in the international markets. The last three years have seen three overseas acquisitions in France, Italy and the USA, two of which happened in the last year alone. We have also established manufacturing outfits in China and have warehouses in several countries like Brazil and Australia. As this led to a challenge of finding talent in these countries, it became important for us, as a company, to be understood well by local talent and to build a framework that would target specific people with specific information and create a forum that will help them communicate with us. We picked a leading business-oriented social networking site as the platform that could help us do just this and more. Professionals who we encountered on this platform were not active job seekers unlike those on job boards, but powerful networkers who were there to learn from each other through forums and communities. This also offered a platform for professionals to introduce and get introduced to others. In our first year, we encouraged the Talent Acquisition Team to get onto the tool, understand the application better and start networking. They soon discovered new visibility, with people reaching out to them for information regarding our company, products, and job opportunities or requests to be partners or vendors. We then got a paid subscription for domestic job seats and slots and this gave the team a lot more power to reach out to people directly and network with people in our industry, on the basis of specific technologies or skills. We also started adding valuable contacts onto our networks, and by exploring their
  • 25. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 17 connections, we developed a list of followers. By the end of year one, we were ready to do a lot more. We got ourselves a Career Page, a recruitment advert, global seats and global job slots. We put up testimonials, videos, banners and updates, which helped our brand create a buzz in the market place, both in India and overseas. This changed the game for us dramatically and within a few months, we moved from ‘conservative’ to ‘viral’, with the number of followers on our company page touching 3800 people from across the globe. We’ve closed a few critical positions and have discussions in progress with potential talent from different countries. We are now creating talent pipelines thatwillallowustomapandstayconnected with critical talent, with specific plans to engage our followers more evocatively. Basedonthesuccessthatisunfoldingbefore us, we are also working on leveraging our brand on other relevant platforms, as part of global networking and branding strategy through online media. As we continue to network, next in line will be to plot returns on investment in all these avenues.
  • 27. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 19 Section 2 Best Practices and Future of Learning With social media available as a new pedagogy of learning, the role of a Training Professional is set to evolve from being a creator of content to a curator of content. The entire spectrum of brick-and-mortar learning as well as social learning, and the progressive manner in which learning is experienced has been showcased in this section.
  • 28. 20 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Yashwant S Mahadik is a seasoned global HR professional with 24 years of experience across industries/sectors and geographies, in top-class companies like Colgate Palmolive, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson. He has established a track record of success in all his roles and assignments as part of his experience as Head and Leader of the Human Resource function at enterprise levels. He can be reached at yashwant.mahadik@philips.com or on twitter @indianyash Best Practices and Future of Learning Yashwant S Mahadik When Elango requested me to co-edit this section on Learning for the NHRD Journal, I was thrilled because I was sure that this experience is going to be a huge learning opportunity for me. I present this section along with colleagues and friends from the Industry – top-notch HR and Learning professionals, passionately engaged in transforming learning in their organizations, and yet they call themselves students of the subject. Learning is a very complex subject. Complex, because it concerns human beings and every human being is unique and different. Research in neurosciences has thrown a lot of light on how the human brain works and learns. If you read the paper presented by Dr. Lila Davachi, Dr. Tobias Kiefer, Dr. David Rock and Lisa Rock on ‘Learning that lasts through ages’, they suggest that “with more to learn than ever, faster innovation cycles, and reduced training budgets, organizations everywhere are trying to get more from their learning programs. However, to increase the effectiveness of learning, some of our intuitive understanding about learning may need updating. For example, while people generally predict that concentrated learning in one block of time is more effective, neuroscience research is clearly showing that it is far better to break up learning interventions to facilitate successful long-term learning”. Many organizations are now focusing and discussing technology as an enabler of learning, which is important. In my opinion, to understand how learning works and to become good designers of learning in schools, society or organizations, it’s equally important to first understand research and findings in the space of cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Further, it’s also important to understand the paradigm shifts that are happening in the world. The challenges and needs driving us to be more effective with learning are as follows: • Fast changing environment that surrounds organizations, such as macro and micro economic changes, implies that organizations need to build business models and businesses that can withstand economic uncertainty • Fast changing customers’ needs and demand implies that organizations
  • 29. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 21 need to remain agile with customer centricity as their mantra • Demographic changes happening in the world - falling birth rate and ageing population of developing economies, younger people entering the workforce in emerging economies etc. implies that organizations need to understand and develop the diverse work force and deal with its unique needs • The fast paced and constantly changing technological landscape implies that organizations need to remain early adopters of new technology and do it in the most cost efficient manner • Increasing needs to build sustainable businesses and products to preserve natural resources and the environment implies that organizations have to act more responsibly and innovate for the sake of customers and mother earth!! These five challenges are compelling us to learn fast and continuously. Every organizationisrealizingthatthecapabilities it required to play and win in the past are very different from what it needs in the future, and it will only continue to change further. The litmus test for learning and development professionals is to create a new mind-set of continuous learning, irrespective of whether it’s in the form of brick and mortar, virtual or social. Each have their own advantages and limitations – but when blended together in the right proportion, it has the propensity to take learning to the next level altogether. Social learning in itself may not yet be a mainstay of corporate training departments, atleast not as yet – although it has great potential. In addition to including social media in their service portfolio, LD managers are now using social media to position themselves strategically as subject matter experts. At Philips, we are busy transforming learning and building a best-in-class virtual Learning University. Our focus is shifting from class room and e-learning offerings to becoming a more leader led and action learning oriented organization, where best in class learning technology and techniques are leveraged to create more value for our learners and build their capabilities. 70-20-10 is our learning model: 70 being self-directed action learning whilst on the job, 20 being leader led learning via coaching and mentoring and 10 being traditional class room learning and e-learning offerings. We believe in providing learning to all our employees on the go and anywhere – hence we are trying to make sure that all learning offerings are available on smart phone and tablets, instead of laptops only. And there is a lot of other cool stuff happening, but we’ll keep that for another day. In this section, I am very happy to present contributions of some prominent global HR and Learning leaders and professionals, eachrepresentingadifferent,yetinteresting part of the learning continuum, one end of is classroom training and at the other, social learning : 1. An article contributed by Bill Pelster, on how his global organization has created a benchmark, the Deloitte University, and is investing in its human capital development 2. An article contributed by Gautam Ghosh and Andrew Lax on how Social Media and learning are a perfect match 3. A case study contributed by Sunder Ramchandran of JLT on how to leverage Social Learning to create value 4. A story contributed by Kavi Arasu from Asian Paints drawing parallels between a farmer and a learning professional.
  • 30. 22 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal Linking Learning to Business Strategy: About Deloitte University William Pelster (Bill) About the Author William Pelster (Bill) has over 20 years of industry and consulting experience. In his current he is responsible for the talent development experience of Deloitte’s professionals to include learning, assignments, and career/life fit. His knowledge spans the many aspects of HR to include strategy, talent acquisition and university relationships, HR technology platforms, knowledge management, strategic change, communication, culture assessment, training, and HR delivery models. Bill manages a team of over 350 talent development professionals based in the U.S. and India delivering services to over 50,000 U.S. and India based professionals. Learning and the linkage to business strategy is an on-going journey for many of us as learning leaders. We constantly seek ways to enable the overall business strategy through our learning programs and how we develop people within our organizations. In 2008, Deloitte decided to make a major investment in the way we develop our professionals as a key to meet our long- term business objectives. We purposefully chose to go against the prevailing wisdom around moving to more virtual learning and eLearning and instead invested $300 million into a physical learning facility outside of Westlake, Texas. In making the decision to invest in a physical learning facility, there were several principles that we wanted the facility to embody. This includes culture, demonstrated through the design and learning experience of what Deloitte values, who we are and how we serve our clients. This also includes giving our professionals a sense of the size of Deloitte, with over 200,000 professionals in over 150 countries, our scope of services and our history dating back over 125 years. We wanted this to be a place where our apprenticeship model is practiced in its highest form. To do that, all our learning programs at Deloitte University are leader- led with an average student to instructor ratio of 5:1. Finally, we also wanted this to be a safe place to try new skills, so we moved away from a lecture based model to an experiential based learning model. A combination of the above principles allowed us to create a facility that focuses on building business leaders and is open to all employees of Deloitte. Deloitte University – The Leadership Center, is designed to deliver up to one million hours a year of experiential based learning that will allow everyone in Deloitte from our new hires to our most experienced partners to develop and enhance their business skills through real life scenarios, business simulations and the application of their core technical skills. Throughout
  • 31. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 23 Deloitte University, Westlake, Texas, USA. Spread over a campus of 107 acres, has top-class learning environment and infrastructure - 800 guest rooms, 35 class rooms, 36 break-out rooms. Includes a large auditorium and ballrooms. a person’s career at Deloitte they will be invited to attend multi-day, immersive sessions that will allow them to hone their skills, experience a variety of business scenarios relevant to their level in the organization, and to learn more about who they are as a leader. The curriculum at Deloitte University also helps Deloitte professionals stay on the leading edge of issues impacting our clients. In addition to core programs around leadership, Deloitte University serves as the main vehicle to deliver insights around industry trends, changes in the regulatory environment, and other issues our clients are dealing with. When Deloitte professionals come to Deloitte University, the interactive media walls, information centers and our streaming of content throughout the facility, allows us to constantly update our professionals on topics that are important to us both domestically and globally. Through Deloitte University, Deloitte accelerates how our professionals are developed so that they can deliver those skills to the clients they work with. Clients expect that professional services firms not only have staff that are well versed in their particular technical areas, but also possess insights, are able to work in a global setting, and are willing to voice their views. Deloitte University provides the forum to develop our professionals to deliver exceptional client service. So why create a physical facility and not just more eLearning? Given that the core of our transformation is to develop business leaders, we needed to create an environment where we could impact behavior. This type of learning transformation is best done through a live learning event, an event that is experiential and has firm leaders in the classroom to coach and mentor. Given the amount of accelerated transformation in core business
  • 32. 24 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal High tech class room at Deloitte University, which is designed to facilitate leader led and connected (globally anywhere) social learning. skills we are looking to achieve, we needed to create a facility that could do that level of transformation and do it at a scale that has previously been unheard of among other firms. The creation of Deloitte University is a clear example of how learning and the learning function within an organization can directly impact and support the broader business strategy. Through transformational learning programs, we are creating business leaders at all levels in the firm who are well positioned to help Deloitte meet its broader business goals around serving our clients with distinction.
  • 33. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 25 About the Authors Gautam Ghosh owns and drives the key strategic objective of making Philips India a strong Employer Brand by leveraging new emerging media and technology. He is one of India’s earliest HR Bloggers and an avid Twitter user. Andrew Lax specialises in managing and implementing HR Strategic projects, from Learning and Development, Change Management, Organisation and People Planning, HR Mid Term Plans, HR MI, Recruitment, HRIS Strategy Design and Implementation, Organisation Design and Leading Instructional Designers. Social Media Learning: A Perfect Match Gautam Ghosh and Andrew Lax If you were to survey business professionals with one clear question – “What has been your most memorable learning experience?”, it’s very unlikely that anyone would respond by saying “corporate training/learning event”. The reason for this is typical learning/training approaches used by corporates are not really learner-centric. They are typically event-based (a day or two) and driven by a facilitator. People come with different and varying skill levels and when they finish the course they go back to their workplace/ team and struggle to implement what they have learnt, as they are stuck in the stage of ‘conscious competence’. This phase is characterized by experimentation and repeated failures before the person can move to the ‘unconscious competence’, where learning becomes a part of doing without thinking about it. Most training delivered fails at this crucial transition. Additionally, according to a paper presented at ASTD in 2007, two weeks after the course, recall and retention of learning comes down to about 10% of the training delivered. How could social technologies help? • Social technologies can help create a community of fellow learners before they attend training. This would help them learn from each other’s experiences • Shifting the focus from competencies needed to people sharing their expertise and strengths • Sharing content and theory before the training, so that face to face time with facilitators could be used for practice and feedback • The community of learners could form support and ideation groups when they go back to the workplace and implement their learning. This would help reinforce concepts and practical application in the context of the workplace
  • 34. 26 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal • Managers could also be a part of the community to understand how best to support their team’s learning and translate it to the workplace These methods not only support the learning process but also reinforce key take ways, pre and post the event, making learning more memorable and far more cost effective. Examples of content that could be put together using social media: • Basics on the subject – files, websites, videos, list of books that act as a primer for gaining knowledge • Additional reading material – documents and aids that people can download • List of resources – agencies, thought- leaders andpartners, all collated at one place • Listofpeople(yellowpages)–employees who have worked on initiatives, along with their coordinates (email, Skype, IM) • FAQs – A series of basic questions focused on what a new employee needs to know, like best practices, eBooks, videos, power point presentations. All the above artifacts should be editable by key stakeholders, like the course facilitator and instructional designer. In fact, the role of the facilitator changes from ‘content creator’ to ‘content curator’. Other employees can add comments and their ratings against the published content. Once employees have gone through this, they can then be tested on their knowledge using a quiz or survey tool, which acts as a measure of learning effectiveness. Coaches, subject matter experts and mentors can be invited at a specified time, or requested to answer queries via social collaboration tools like wikis, threaded bulletin boards. Updating new information Keeping content dynamic by updating what is new in the domain, the buzz around the firms’ products/services/ operations and what is the market/ competitive intelligence, can be done by using: • RSS feeds of Google Alerts: with key words around the brand name, competitor name, and market name • RSS feeds of thought leaders’ blogs and websites:- to ensure new ideas come directly to the employee’s desktop. • Twitter updates by subject matter experts: so that employees can keep track and even interact with them • Using list curation services like http://listorious.com/Competitive Intelligence: a dynamic page which is updated with news/tweets about major competitors, based on publicly available data which is collated and shown on a specific site. Comments would enable employees to add their personal views and experiences • New videos and slideshows: using a keywordtrackingprocesses,newvideos and slides updated on the specific subjects (like Financial Modeling or Consumer Behavior or HR Trends) could be embedded in the dashboard of the employees. Collaboration Is about enabling employees to learn from each other using learning logs and ideation platforms to connect. Some ways this can be done are: • Ideation platform: a blog/wiki in which senior management asks for ideas around a certain campaign, initiative, problem statement or even new policy
  • 35. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 27 • Status updates: would let other people know what the employee is working on so that, if anyone has any ideas/lessons to share, they can do so via the tool • Lessons learnt: similar to the ideation platform, it focuses on past initiatives, what worked and best practices learnt from them • Sharing project plans: getting other employee’s feedback and views • QA: with partners, senior management or consultants, which are then archived • Discussion around events like conferences, trainings that employees attend and come back to share their learning with the rest of the peer group. Implication for Learning Professionals If learning professionals have to leverage social technologies, they must get comfortable with new skills to become online facilitators and move from a ‘we will build content’ mindset to ‘we will find the best content and curate it along with facilitation’ mindset. Understanding why people share content online and how to design interactions that help them connect and learn as a community, is the key skill facilitators need to build. These skills are known as ‘community management’ skills in the digital realm, and LD professionals need to transfer this offline skill to an online skill. It’s an exciting period for the LD function, as it moves from event-based focus to continuous learning focus, finally impacting the 70% and 20% of the 70‑20‑10 model. Hopefully, the next time professionals are surveyed about their key learning moments; they would look back and say “the learning in the community facilitated by our LD team”.
  • 36. 28 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal Case Study: Social Learning @ Jardine Lloyd Thompson India Sunder Ramachandran About the Author Sunder Ramachandran is a highly energetic training leader with extensive experience in building capabilities for large teams in the offshore/outsourcing space. His articles on workplace learning have appeared in Indian International media including - The Economic Times, Hindu Business Line, Times Ascent, National HRD Newsletter, Rediff.com, Askmen.com, Top7business.com, Human Capital and HrmAsia.com. Sunder was an entrepreneur for five years and has gained valuable experience on both the ‘Buy’ ‘Sell’ side of the training business. He brings an entrepreneurial spirit a profit maximisation mind-set to all business endeavors. JLT Group (www.jltgroup.com) is an international group of Risk Specialists and Employee Benefits Consultants, one of the largest companies of its type in the world. The India office is home to over 850 employees engaged in operational knowledge service roles. To focus and grow in specialist areas, JLT partners with CII (Chartered Insurance Institute – www.cii.co.uk) which is the world’s largest professional body dedicated to insurance and financial services qualifications. Success in CII qualifications is universally recognized as a global standard. Social Learning @ JLT India A team of 40 employees from JLT India were preparing for the CII professional qualifications in May 2013 and were supported by social learning. It has become increasingly clear that employees are hooked onto the virtual world, and social networking, micro blogging, YouTube videos for learning are realities that employees embrace in their personal learning space. The idea was to use the same engagement principles and support these employees to prepare for their professional qualifications. Social learning involves participating with others to make sense of new ideas, using technology platforms. To meet this goal, we used chatter (our internal collaboration platform from Salesforce.com) to provide these engagement opportunities to all the learners. The following were the key mechanics of this engagement - • Communities of practice: We created a CII Exam Community on our internal social platform. This became the epicentre of all discussions pertaining to the exams. Participants were encouraged to share content, tips, answer questions and post updates on their own progress. The training
  • 37. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 29 team watched from the side-lines and moderated where required. It was amazing how peer to peer information sharing and learning was adding speed to the knowledge sharing process. The group was learning at will, by getting questions answered at their workstations. • Off-line meets: A strong sense of ownership led to offline meets. Participants met once every week, for 45 minutes, to discuss key updates and share tips. Any key points made on the online forum that involved further deliberation were brought up in the offline meets. This was also an opportunity for senior managers to address the participants which further encouraged them to succeed at the exams. • Chatterthons: We used the widely popular tweetathons concept (used on twitter) and launched Chatterthons. Each week, a topic of importance was picked up and chat sessions were organised within the online community. This enabled us to drive engagement within the community and learners responded well, with over a dozen questions answered in a 30 minute slot (which is very difficult if done in an offline classroom environment) • Gamification through Fastest Finger First - Contests were launched within the community which focused on the ability of learners to provide correct answers with speed. This was an important skill for the exams as well. A list of questions was prepared and all the participants were invited to be a part of these events. As the activity kicked off, the response was absolutely overwhelming and we were elated to see participants answering questions in the spirit of competition. The winners were rewarded with goodies and incentives and as were learners who were the quickest to provide the correct answer. We saw an evident change in the way learning gets delivered, with 84% success rate in the actual exams held in May 2013. Social Learning was clearly the most pragmatic and effective way to ensure that participants take ownership and engage in peer to peer learning. The key benefits of social learning @ Jardine Lloyd Thompson India were: • Improved knowledge sharing • Fostered collaboration • P r o v i d e d i n f o r m a l l e a r n i n g opportunities • Ease of finding resources relationship building
  • 38. 30 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal The Farm Kavi Arasu About the Author Kavi Arasu specializes in Training Design and Delivery, Individual Coaching, Organization wide Training Processes and Strategy and Psychometrics. The core anchor of his life and career is a firm belief that people and teams can do better than they are doing now. Igniting and facilitating people to discover their potential and help move their dreams closer to reality has been an area that has been fulfilling. We meet after several years. We were in school together. We bumped into each other. In some time, we are sipping coffee. Catching up on lost years that have quietly slipped by. He tells me he is a farmer and quickly asks, “What do you do?” I answer slowly, “Learning Development”. I pause. “A variety of programsfordevelopingleaders,capability building, preparing the organization for future challenges...” My voice trails. He quips, “I live in a different world. Plants, livestock and land” We sip our coffee. I notice he sips it with a certain care. Savoring each sip. I speak gingerly. “I know you put it simply. There is a lot that must go into farming”. “We begin with a piece of land”. His voice oozes confidence. “Decide what crops to grow when. Each crop has its own cycle” I am all ears. “I plough the field. I need to get it ready for the seeds to germinate. I can’t plant the right seed on an unprepared surface you see”. “And then, there are choices to be made. The season. The land. The water. All these components determine what I plant. I have suffered both with the wrong seed for the right land and the right seed at the wrong time, because I kept my eye on what the merchant will give me” The striking similarities in his work and mine pique my interest. I warm up. “That’s a big decision. But who tells a farmer what is the right thing to do for his land?” He places the coffee cup on the table, soaks in some air, and says quietly, “If the farmer doesn’t know his land and the seasons, he isn’t a true farmer.” My mind runs back to office and to the leaders we deal with. Leaders and managers, who are self-aware and own their development, are the ones who go a long distance. I look at him for more. He continues. “Mother Nature keeps it simple. But you can’t just plant the seed and wait for
  • 39. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 31 Mother Nature to do the rest. You need to know when to water and how much water. Too much water can kill too! “ “So is the case with fertilizer. As is with pesticides. Just the right dose, at the right time, in the right sequence. And that is very different for different plants in different soil. Just because something works well with the rice crop, it doesn’t mean it will with millets. We need to find the right mix. In fact, every farmer needs to” I smile. And say, “So, it’s a question of finding the blend? Right?” He smiles. “Finding the right blend EVERY SINGLE TIME! A true farmer nurtures. He nurtures by walking the fields. He nurtures by talking to his crop. He nurtures by doing the right thing and not over doing it” “So how successful are you in growing your crops?” I ask. He laughs. “I don’t grow the crops. The crops grow by themselves. I am just there”. I realize “I am just there” conceals as much as it reveals. Yet it sinks in clean. The elegance of his description makes me wonder how we miss the most obvious in the quest of the new / shiny / fancy! “A good farmer is patient. To him, who sows the right seed in the right soil and does just that much to nurture and watch them grow, a good yield is a given”. That night I stare into the skies. And his words keep coming back to my mind. “I don’t grow the crops. The crops grow by themselves. I am just there”. I want to write that down and put it on my desk. Perhaps pass it on to our leaders and managers. Development is nature’s way of ensuring all is well. And yes, true development is a natural process. **************************** The Farmer’s story is perfect for concluding this section on Learning. It’s clear that it’s all about value creation and not just value addition via learning. The importance of the third building block of Social Learning, next to the two blocks of formal informal learning is fast gaining importance. Creating learning organizations has become a strategic imperative for organizations to stay relevant, perpetual and competitive. Learning has a lot of art and science to it and the science is becoming more important for designing the right and relevant learning experiences. The challenges are tougher than ever before and understanding and developing human capital effectively is an area ripe for research and experimentation.
  • 41. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 33 Section 3 Branding and Communication – The Essentials Personal branding is a personal choice, brought alive by many aspects of our behavior, including how we show up online. With no effort at all, our connections, comments, engagements, or lack thereof, matched with our experience, expertise and skills, creates a perception that may not represent the true self. This section focuses on making ourselves relevant to others, in a manner that does justice to our purpose and their need.
  • 42. 34 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Dr. Tanvi Gautam consults and trains on innovative talent managementpractices,leadership;crosscultureteammanagement, as well as diversity. She was recognized by the Business Manager magazine as one of the leading women HR professionals (July 2012), and also serves on the boards of ARTDO international (a pan Asian HR consulting and training organization headquartered in Malaysia) and D.K International (HQ: India). She has written for, been interviewed and quoted by international publications such as Harvard Business Review (On point, 2013) and Forbes, USA. Branding and Communication: The Essentials Dr. Tanvi Gautam 60 seconds. What can be done in one minute? While it does not seem like a lot, consider this: In less time than what it will take you to finish reading the next paragraph, Google would have attended to more than 2 million search queries, YouTube would have had 1.3 million video views and 204 million emails would have been sent globally. If you are still not overwhelmed consider the prediction that by 2015, five years’ worth of digital video will traverse IP networks each second (yes, per second not per minute). These predictions come from the popular Intel info-graphic on the topic. To say that we are living in the age of information overload is to grossly understate the issue at hand. The rise in the volume of data, while in and of itself is overwhelming, to my mind it is not the core issue. The real challenge arises from our ability to personally professionally cope with living in this information rich but insight poor environment. For instance, in this diverse and overloaded environment, how do we powerfully capture the attention of relevant others? How do we communicate in a manner that the meaning is not lost in translation? How do we create organizations that cut through the noise to resonate with the best talent out there? While there is no one or universal answer to these questions, much depends on the frameworks we adopt to find and define our solutions. Given my own work in employee engagement, cross-cultural teams and corporate storytelling, I tend to lean towards solutions that emanate from that space. In this particular section that I am anchoring, the authors approach these questions from the lens of branding and communication. And hence the proposed solutions lean towards creating of personal and professional brands and challenges of communication in a global and diverse world.
  • 43. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 35 The articles provide some important insights and a road map on how to approach some of the questions raised earlier. The first article underscores the importance and value of having a personal brand in capturing the attention of relevant others. The proposed model and clear steps to success provide much needed clarity on the issue of personal branding. The second article on reinventing your career is a very timely one — as HR professionals acquire new knowledge and competencies, we may find ourselves in roles that may not have existed a few years ago. Reinventing our career in a manner that enables success in the information age depends on creating great content, taking on leadership roles and having the ability to embrace the quantitative. Indeed, the act of reinventing your career is related to the idea of creating a powerful personal brand. The third article, examines what it takes to create an employee brand that attracts and resonates with the talent we are trying to attract – an issue that is close to the heart of all HR professionals. And the final article, reminds us that while creating a brand is critical, being mindful of cultural boundaries when trying to communicate in global world is an imperative that simply cannot be ignored. I am positive that the articles will only whet your appetite for more and so I would like to share with you some amazing insights generated through #indiahrchat (India’s only twitter chat for the HR community). In the tweets from this particular chat on the topic of personal branding for HR professionals, Anand Pillai (one of the authors in this section) was the guest. I do regard #indiahrchat as a space where the HR community learns together and communicates in a manner that allows us all to grow as professionals, a model of ‘communicating’ and learning that will become even more common in the years to come.
  • 44. 36 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Anand Pillai has more than 31 years of rich experience in the corporate world, having handled challenging assignments in general management and as head of operations in companies such as TATA Group (10 yrs.), Hughes Network Systems and Bay Networks and HCL Technologies Ltd (14 years). He is a much sought after speaker in many national and international forums. Given his thought leadership in the field of leadership innovation, Anand has been recently appointed as Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership 2011. Creating YOUR Personal Brand Anand Pillai Every individual brings a unique combination of strengths, passions, gifts, and purpose to the workplace, a combination that coalesces into a unique brand; a brand which exemplifies the unique him/her, inside as well as outside the organization. Not many people recognize that they are unique, and even in case they do, they fail to do anything about it. When they try doing something about it, they may fall victim to doing it ineffectively. I ask people “What is your Personal Brand?” Most of them end up defining themselves based on their nationality, ancestral origin, qualifications or achievements. People often confuse their identity with the way they look, the community they belong to or the position they hold. They think that their identity is fused with their achievements. They associate their identity with a specific circumstance or instance of success. Creating your Personal Brand So what is a Personal Brand and how to create it? Your personal brand is what people would say when they hear your name, or the results Google would throw up when a search is run in your name. Personal Branding is about knowing your uniqueness, discovering your strengths and leveraging them. It is about making a full-time commitment to the journey of defining yourself as an individual. To quote Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale of Funky Business – “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, working in similar jobs, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” The world we live in presents everything as anequalizer;theoneandonlydifferentiator is YOU. Creating a personal brand involves showing genuine interest, which radiates outward and engages others.
  • 45. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 37 Building Your Personal Brand In today’s competitive market, building a personal brand is critical to any individual, particularly HR professionals. The seven steps of building and leveraging your personal brand are: Believe in Yourself Discover Yourself Re-Invent Yourself Build Yourself Let Go of Yourself Renew Yourself Be Yourself Believe in Yourself: Do you believe in yourself? Do you accept yourself the way you are, the way you are made? That is what will enable you to establish your identity and build your personal brand. Believe in your self , because if you don’t, nobody else will!! Discover Yourself: Once you believe in yourself you need to get into the journey of Discovering Yourself. Gallup gives us five simple tests of discovering ourselves. The first one is Yearning which is, the unspoken desire to do things that naturally appeal to you. For example, for me, it is People Development. You will be making me much happier if you wake me up in middle of the night and ask me to facilitate a session on Personal Branding. Ask yourself, what kinds of activities are you naturally drawn towards? The second test of discovering yourself is Rapid Learning. There are things which you don’t learn at all, even if a best teacher in the world is teaching you. But there are things which you seem to learn rapidly, the things which you enjoy learning. You learn those things rapidly because you are hard-wired for that. Ask yourself, what kinds of activities do you seem to pick up quickly? The third test is Flow. In what activities did the ‘steps’ come to you automatically? As if they were programmed in your mind, though you may not necessarily be qualified for it. The fourth test is Glimpses of Excellence. As you are doing your work, you suddenly get a WOW feeling!! You feel proud of yourself and commend yourself for doing that fantastically. Glimpses of excellence come to you. Reflect and ask yourself, during what activities have you had moments of subconscious excellence, when you thought, “How did I do that?” The fifth and the final test of discovering yourself are spotting signs of Satisfaction. Doing some things,even when you are tired and completely knocked off, gives you a sense of satisfaction. That energy validates the Chinese proverb which says “Find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day of your life”. Ask yourself, which activities give you such a ‘kick’? Either while doing them or immediately after finishing them, you think, “Oh, when can I do that again?” Reinvent Yourself: Once you discover yourself or become fully aware of yourself, you should not stay that way, you have to get into the next step which is Reinvent Yourself. Unless you reinvent yourself, you are going to go back into a blue game; you’ll have to move with the changing time. Becauseyou need to progress with time. You can reinvent yourself by working on your courage zone. Come out of your
  • 46. 38 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal comfort zone and challenge yourself in unexplored territories of work and life, what I call, the areas of risk, difficulty and discomfort. You need to keep reinventing yourself once every 18 to 36 months, and the pattern you’ll have to adopt is: 60% of your day to day activities should be in comfort zone, while 40% should be in your courage zone. Venture out; try things which you have never tried, because that is how you’ll reinvent yourself. Once you reinvent yourself, you’ll then be able to rediscover yourself, be able to build your identity. Building your identity means creating your individual signature. Personal branding is not an easy job, you need to work hard, work smart and stamp mark whatever you do. It requires mapping your passion to address new opportunities or threats within the organization’s walls, benchmarking self, having a dream company/position in mind and decisively working towards achieving it. It involves networking with value adders, and creating your own blue ocean. That is, creating bandwidth for doing things which are high in value, and by eliminating or reducing things which are low in value. 4. Let Go of Yourself: The next step towards building a personal brand is ‘Let go of Yourself’. You need to learn to give up to go up. It entails making three exchanges with self: Affirmation for Accomplishment – Stop being a people-pleaser. If you always say yes when you would rather say no, then you will find yourself unhappily going through the motions of living, giving control of your time, energy, and spirit to anyone who asks for it. Fundamentally, leadership involves serving others and adding value to them. Security for Significance – Security can be tough to pass up and yet, significance usually calls for risk. It involves stepping away from familiar territory in order to explore new lands. To be a pioneering leader, you have to change your attitude toward uncertainty; otherwise you will confine your influence Immediate Victory v/s Long-Term Sustainability – To excel as a leader, you have to change the timeframe in which you view success. If you measure your performance solely in terms of immediate results, then you run the risk of giving up when times are tough. Invest in .yourself: Make SPICE the way of your life. Invest in yourself Spiritually, Physically, Intellectually, Community and Emotionally.
  • 47. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 39 Renew Yourself: Continuous learning, renewal, refreshment and re-invention are key to remaining at the cutting edge at all stages and ages of your life. Be Yourself: Be yourself, because everybody else is taken. Never let go of the unique, special qualities that define you as an individual. Maintaining your Personal Brand Once you go through the seven steps to building your personal brand in a systematic focused manner, you will be able to differentiate yourself from others in your field and that’s when you get to, not only branding yourself, but maintaining and evolving that brand. This is a life-long exercise. God has made each of us as a f ir st class or iginal. Don‛t die a second gr ade copy! It is difficult to cover personal branding in just one article. However, some of the simple and basic steps covered can ensure that every interaction is an opportunity to create, build and maintain your personal brand. Discover yourself and let the world discover. Happy Branding!! To know more on Personal Branding, follow me on twitter @Anand_Pillai.
  • 48. 40 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the Ford Foundation. She is also the author of the newly-released Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). You can listen to her podcasts or follow her on @ dorieclark Reinventing Your Career for HR Professionals Dorie Clark You’ve worked hard to build your reputation as an HR professional. But what if you now want to reinvent how you’re perceived by others? Perhaps you’d liketoworkinadifferentindustry,handling talent management in the technology space instead of pharmaceuticals. Maybe you’d like to move to an even more senior level at your company, where you need to showcase your leadership abilities. Or you may simply want to demonstrate that, as the industry is changing, your skills are both keeping up and moving forward. Here are three strategies you can employ to ensure others recognize your true capabilities. Create content to demonstrate your expertise: The single best strategy for demonstrating your value to others is creating online content – whether it’s in the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, or even a smart Twitter feed – it shows you’re engaged in key discussions and you know what you’re talking about. Particularly if you’re moving into a new industry, this is your opportunity to allay any concerns from your new employer; they can see with their own eyes that you’re thoughtful and have a smart perspective to contribute. Take on leadership roles: Being the leader of a professional organization sends a powerful signal to others – your peers have agreed you’re a worthy leader. So if you’re involved in a group, make the extra effort to become a leader. As I recount in my new book from Harvard Business Review Press, Reinventing You, a U.S. consultant named Alan Weiss took on a role, in the mid-1990s, as the New England Chapter President of the National Speakers Association. He thought he’d make less money in those years because he was devoting extra time to volunteer. On the contrary, he made an extra US $250,000 directly traceable to his role, because his visibility and network increased so much during that time. It pays to be seen as a leader. Embrace the quantitative. As I’ve written about in Forbes, the new frontier for HR
  • 49. July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal 41 may be Big Data and how to adapt its insights into measurable performance gains for your organization. Many HR professionals aren’t trained in analytics, but given its growing prominence, diving in now and establishing your expertise may be a smart way to stay ahead of the curve. For instance, eBay uses analytics to identify departmental and managerial hotspots where employees are leaving, thus allowing them to discover and address problems at an early stage. They’ve also turned to analytics to help them adjust their maternity leave policy, enabling them to better retain top female employees. HR – like much of the business world, is rapidly changing. If you want to reinvent your career and how you’re perceived by others, developing insightful content, taking on leadership roles, and mastering Big Data may be your ticket to advancement and future success.
  • 50. 42 July | 2013 NHRD Network Journal About the Author Dr. Gautam (IIT-Delhi) is an internationally renowned management thinker and consultant. He was the First Head Management Department; IIM-K (Founder Director), IIM-S (Leader, DPR consulting Team) DCM Engineering and Electronics Division (Head, Management Development Centre). He is a past Director of International Federation of Training and Development Organizations (London) and Past President of ARTDO International (Manila). He is, along with other decorations, the recipient of the ‘Hall of Fame’ Award 2013; Devang Mehta Life Time Achievement Award 2012; G51, Millennium Award; Outstanding Contributions Award of ARTDO International and Industries. Dr. Gautam’s deep expertise in management has been sought internationally in places such as USA, UK, Germany, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. He has represented India in UNESCO and APO events. Cross Cultural Issues in Branding and Communication Dr. Vinayshil Gautam My ‘brand’ which underpins all my roles, is not something I actively created. It got ascribed to me with over four decades in the profession, buttressed by the image that literally thousands of my students, trainees, those in the audiences I addressed, and others, gave to me. My brand was being created and conveyed as a spontaneous response. It is not a method I am advocating but rather elaborating a reality of what field conditions can be like. It needs to be recognized that a brand is created not only through all that you say and do but also by what you don’t say and don’t do. The brand defines the expectation in each interaction, and in my case it has come to be a brand that conveys operational expertise And what do you do Dr. Gautam?’ came a perfectly valid question from a casual acquaintance at a recent dinner gathering. I paused for a moment because the reply may have ended up raising more questions than it answered. My profession requires me to wear several hats – a researcher, a consultant, a teacher, a trainer, a mentor, a counselor, a public speaker, a committee man, an author and much more, with the aim of meeting the needs of my international client base. Yet while these are all my roles, I am not just about my roles. My roles are a response to the context. My brand is my essence. My roles are what I do while my brand is who I am, as perceived by others. It is true; image can be no different from reality! ‘