The guest speaker Dr. Indranil Bose spoke about Digital HR and before beginning his session he mentioned beforehand he will be using a lot of examples to familiarize and make it simpler for us. The discussion started about how some best companies use Digitization in the field of HR and also there is the wrong stigma that HR is now more technical and less people-oriented and it is replacing the role of human intervention, which is not true. Dr Indranil talked about how earlier HR managers had to rely on the subjective aspects that were quite difficult to the manager but now with the help of digital HR managers are more robust, fast, and then again not entirely full-proof as human beings are a black box.
Therefore, a new aspect has come that is HR Business partner, before he went into explaining HR Business Partner, he mentioned how human resource is a costly resource of any organization or industry that can be IT, Consultancy, etc the reason being whatever is the organization it requires people to work. As per his words, a machine can do a lot but it’s the person behind the machine is the one who matters. He gave the example of aviation where AI does everything except the take-off and landing as these are two aspects where the majority of the accidents or mishaps take place
during air travel. So, the debate regarding that HR is becoming more technical than people oriented is a valid one
as for future HR aspirants, it is a must to be more technical. The speaker further broke down HR roles into two categories one being strategic and the other is being functional. The functional aspect dealing things like recruitment, selection, etc while the strategic aspect deals with rapid changes in terms of the offering, challenges here a business partner supports the strategy team for future challenges. The speaker an example of how SBI employees had faced issues during the digitization aspect as their employees had no knowledge about computers so SBI identified Technical ambassadors for solving this issue. He also informed us about various CIPD courses and how there is a redesign of HR
strategies from traditional to contemporary approaches. The speaker also covered topics such as brick and click and AI assistance in attendance and budgetary allocation. This example of HNBC was used as they have a global portal and how well connected it is. In the end, we learn that HR Tech can cover Capturing, Processing, and output but never decision making as that aspect will always be led by people.