Partha's Blog

Let’s Stop it! - Workplace Trends That We Don’t Want To See In 2017 As we welcome the New Year, I find a lot of people predicting the workforce trends that we are likely to see. Some interesting ones include improving the candidate/ employee experiences, multi-generational (yes, Generation Z is here!) and multi-skilled workforce, continuous assessments, HR Big-data analytics and Artificial Intelligence in HR. Very interesting times indeed if we believe the Issac Asimov’s in the field of HR! On the contrary, I strongly feel we still need to unlearn old practices before we learn and adopt the new ones. There are a lot of aspects we need to either minimise or completely stop to ensure that our people in the coming year will be able to balance their work-life priorities and also be happy and productive at the workplace. This becomes critical when we are going to see almost 4 generations of people - with different needs, working styles, and aspirations - rubbing shoulders (and brains) ...

Cabbages and Kings – the lighter side of categorizing people The time has come, the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — (Through the Looking Glass; Lewis Carroll) These lines have lingered with me since the first time I read ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ in my childhood. Though the words are simple and comical at first look, I have realised over the years the deep thought behind them once you scratch the superficial layer. As children we enjoy the superficial’, like the rhyme and the absurdity of the poem, but subsequently we find quite a few life’s philosophical gems hidden in it. It also goes to show that human nature has not changed much, though the times apparently have. Being a HR professional with around two decades of experience, I have seen this never ending segregation of people into Cabbages (average performers) and Kings (top performers) by Managers. Annual Performance appraisals are often used as ...