HR & Its Ever Growing Relevance in the Corporate World

By: Anooja Bashir, Founder & CEO, Oureacorp

Holding a Masters in MTech and an MBA in international business, Anooja is a multitasker who holds 15 years of industry experience and seven years of academia.

Women Entrepreneur India questions Anooja on the growing importance of an HR in today’s corporate world, its relevance and significance.

How has the HR role transformed in the recent times?
The main role of the HR department of an organization is to enhance its employee's experience throughout the workforce leading to the strengthening of business operations. But in recent years technology, social media and the gig economy has changed our workplaces much more employee focused. Unfortunately, the problem of talent shortage is the biggest ever challenge faced by hiring professionals. At Ourea, we follow a different idea of what employment should look like for entry-level workers. Performance and productivity are the two factors that led to the seismic shift in thinking.

Being a 360-degree business management consultancy with core focus on Marketing, IT, along with HR and Training and Marketing and IT being our fortes. We have a great team with deep knowledge within and around our verticals so training becomes handy for our experts bringing in positive results. Our connection to corporates and associates enhances our reach to employment facilities. Hence, our HR is always combined with proper industrial and corporate training with a real transformation in the supply of HR.

What are your thoughts on Importance of HR leadership for corporates in a developing country like India?
As a leader myself along with my co-founders Vinod Chacko (CEO, FlexiCloud) and Naman Modi, who again are great leaders with accomplishments of their own like being CXO’s of their respective verticals, has taught me that an HR leader can enhance a company’s growth and generate revenue by strengthening their HR. In India, as a developing country, the trend and innovative techniques changes every now and then. The only constant resource of the company which doesn’t loose its relevance and importance is the Human Resource.

Human Resource’s motive needs to be enhancing the quality and efficiency of employees. HR itself being a vast area needs an appropriate and dedicated leader. In my opinion, the leaders in any HR need to be compatible to the employees and to the system. The key qualities possessed by an HR leader needs to be effectiveness, appropriate delegation and result orientation.

In Ourea, we have a deep understanding about the necessities of an HR leader, our expertise in the field allows us to get a in depth knowledge of the needs and trends allowing us to train and manage HR accordingly. We train leaders to be the best HR heads to give out the best efficient results.

In my opinion, the leaders in any HR need to be compatible to the employees and to the system

Do you think HR & People Leadership play a key role in building competitive edge for corporations across the world, especially, boardroom leadership?
I believe that importance of HR has been proven its relevance quite a many time. Skilled and efficient HR can bring out a hike in overall status of the firm itself. Creating innovative strategies for the growth can only be practiced and created by HR which in turn proves its key role in building a firm’s reputation and hold in the respective market. The increased productivity and hold naturally sharpens the edge for marketing or upcoming competitors giving a full hand.

Ourea’s specialty being high and result oriented marketing strategies and training of strategist can provide an extensive support to our associates. Our training and HR have been proven its hand for many professionals and upcomers. We hold our techniques and innovate it at every step as per the individual or organizations need to support the exact need.

After the unexpected occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are facing survival challenges. How important is HR as a core function in today's business environment?
As we are aware, the biggest challenge that COVID -19 pandemic gave the Human Resources managers is the business continuity planning. Organizations need people with the relevant knowledge and expertise. Even before the pandemic, due to some strategic failures in our internal HRM, we realized the fact that the emphasis should be placed on personnel development programs in order to achieve higher results. Whilst the rectification of our drawback, we created an innovative program LIKES- Learning Innovative Key Employability Skills, which increases the odds of hiring and enhancing HR for both organizations and individuals. We ourselves have implemented the LIKES on Ourea and other companies FlexiCloud and Digitaliz which proved the success of the program as our resources contributed towards a hike in revenue generation even during world wide recession.

Our epiphany hitting early made the Crisis management easier for us which helped us manage our business well with high turnover. This taught us that the workforce of any organization needs high skills, multidisciplinary education, so as to stand firm in the competition which is increasing day by day.