Human Resource Management... An alien concept in India?

Change is the only constant, they say and I think we all would agree to that, for any individual or an organisation to achieve its highest potential, constant changes in one’s behaviour and working are inevitable, either a small change , like waking up at a certain time everyday or a drastic change like restructuring of the organisation. But is every change, even if made for the betterment of the organisation, accepted earnestly by every stakeholder of the organisation, especially the employees? Or Do the employees disassociate themselves from the organisation at such times and start thinking about their future and their goals? Or Are the decision makers worried about just improving the profits and efficiency of the organisation and not about the actual flesh and blood working in them? Seems like two sides of a coin right? On the top of it, if you happen to be an HR student like me who has been born and raised in a business family, it is a constant oscillation in one’s mind between sustaining the profits or sustaining the human capital?

From 1991 till today, especially in the last decade, there have been major organisational re-structural changes and adjustments including mergers and amalgamations of private organisations, privatization of banks and public sector undertakings in India to incorporate all the financial as well as other institutional reforms announced by the Government of India. All these reforms have had ripple effects on all the stakeholders over the years. A lot of analysis, calculations and studies are done by the management and researchers on various materialistic resources to understand the effects of such restructuring on the working of the firm but what is usually ignored is the human element of such transformations. Existing employees are the ones who have to face the brunt of large-scale transfers and large-scale layoffs.

What intrigues me further, The Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India which has now been renamed as the Ministry of Education only formulates and implements policies on Education to ensure development,  greater access and improvement in quality of the educational institutions throughout the country, but where is the actual mechanism to deal with the Human Resource challenges of the country? What about the grievances of the public sector employees or the policies to make the maximum use of our supremely talented human capital?

In conversation on a similar topic, with one of the Professors of the HR department of a   very prestigious Business school,I remember he had asked me, what would be my area of interest if I had to pursue a Ph. D in Human Resources, I casually answered, I would love to explore the human element of all the restructuring that has been happening in the country nowadays. He was curious to know, on what factor would I like to research because apparently, a lot of research has already been done internationally on various factors like employee resistance to change or lack of trust among the employees when mergers and acquisitions happen. I was surprised, how, even the most learned men of our country talk about what has been researched internationally and encourage students to take up those topics preferably, but what about conducting employee surveys in our own PSUs or on our own government employees? What about trying to study what an Indian family goes through when the one with a “government job” in the family is asked to take a VRS or maybe is one of the many who get laid off? When a young bank employee is asked to unlearn the old ways or when she feels aloof in the informal group of the new bank, their mental well being and their need for necessary training  cannot be ignored. Instead, they need to be taken care of systematically and strategically by a specialized HRD department. There are too many factors, too many layers and too many angles with which the human aspect of such major decisions should ideally be studied. The people in the HR department of our companies, I feel, are underutilized and should be used in a more holistic way, after all, role of the Human Resource managers is the most crucial in taking up all the employees on board so that their personal goals align with the organisational goals and the policies made by the government can be implemented in sync with the intentions with which they were made in the first place.