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Cerebrus Consultants was the knowledge partner for the 5^th Compensation & Rewards Summit held at the 15^th edition of the Asia Pacific HRM Congress at Vivanta by Taj, Bengaluru on September 2^nd, 2016.
 
Ms. Anita Ramachandran, Founder & CEO of Cerebrus Consultants welcomed the participants and introduced a video featuring India’s top CHROs who expressed their opinion on the challenges in the current business environment and how HR can enable business to prepare for and address these challenges. The video set the context to the rest of the day’s insightful discussions on Performance management, Rewards redefinition, Millennial management and Analytics driven people management.
 
Mr. N. Krishna Kumar, Executive Chairman, Mindtree Ltd, delivered an invigorating opening address on how the HR function can propel an organization’s growth momentum. He touched upon how the meaning of a “job” has changed dramatically over the years, how organization’s context and lifespan has shrunk and how the workforce of the future will see a shift towards a floating model. These three reasons, he believes, makes it an exciting time to be in the HR function and Krishna Kumar went on to explain what HR professionals should do prepare their organizations to deal with this change.
 
The Panel discussion on “Performance Management – Changing Approaches & Implications on Rewards” had Ms. Sunita Cherian, SVP – Group HR, Wipro Ltd and Anish Philip, AVP – People Function, Mindtree Ltd, express their views on the topic. Sunita described how the organization transitioned from a bell curve based appraisal system to a feedback oriented performance management system. She emphasized the importance of doing what’s right for the organization’s culture rather than adopting an ongoing trend. Echoing this sentiment, Anish explained how at various stages of an organizations growth and maturity, it’s possible that the construct of Performance and Rewards systems may differ. He went on to describe the evolutionary journey of Mindtree’s performance management system that corresponded with various stages of the organization’s own evolution.
 
Cerebrus consultants recently conducted a survey on aspirations of Millennial’s in the workforce. Ms, Suman Shankar, Associate Director – Cerebrus Consultants presented the results of the study. This was followed by a Panel discussion featuring Mr. B Venkataramana, President Group HR, Landmark Group and Mr. Naganagouda S J, Head  HR, Global Edge Software. The speakers, together with Anita Ramachandran, corroborated the survey findings with their very own light hearted experiences and anecdotes on dealing with millennials. Venkataramana explained that flexi timings, targeted benefits and faster decision making were aspects that improved millennial retention in the Retail sector. Naganagouda pointed out that a challenging work, instant gratification and work life integration was the way to go in managing, engaging and developing a millennial workforce.
 
The Panel discussion on “Compensation management: Tools to track Metrics that Matter to Business” featured Deependra Mathur, VP – C&B at Infosys BPO, Subhash Khare, VP – HR, Wipro Technologies and Anjali Nair, Sr. Associate at Amazon. Anjali explained the importance of data driven decision making in today’s world. She described why and how organizations can adopt Analytics in HR and derive maximum benefit from the HR analytics team. Deependra spoke about the importance of applying one’s mind to data and shared some metrics and indicators C&B professionals may use to identify and track compensation expenditure as a function of organizational performance. He narrated real examples of organizational impediments that could easily be isolated and resolved by mining the wealth of data available to organizations. Subhash provided insight into the various levels at which People Analytics can be applied. He described a framework based on Design Thinking that can be applied to solve HR challenges with data.
 
The eclectic mix of speakers who shared insights and anecdotes on rewards practices and actual organizational strategies to combat the challenges posed by the modern day business environment, made the event an enriching one for all the participants. The event was attended by over 100 junior, mid and senior members of the HR fraternity who were thoroughly engaged and further enhanced the discussion with their questions, experiences and suggestions.

The CHRO videos on business context and redefining rewards that were played during the event can be accessed here:

1. CHROs make a Business case for Redefining Rewards in Challenging Times:

1. CHROs views on Compensation and Benefits in a VUCA world: