IIM Indore’s HR Festival – IIMINENCE 3.0 Begins at IIM Indore

IIM Indore’s HR Festival – IIMINENCE 3.0 Begins at IIM Indore

IIM Indore aims to remain a contextually relevant business school and offer opportunities to its participants to participate in and organize activities that help them develop into socially conscious leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs. The role of human resources has changed drastically over the last three years, leading to several challenges for human resource managers and organizers. In line with this, the Post Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management – PGPHRM Batch 2021-23 has again come up with its insightful HR Conclave – IIMINENCE 3.0. The theme for this year’s conclave is Brace/Embrace and will witness numerous guest lectures and competitions over a period of two months. The inauguration of the conclave took place on October 12, 2022. Prof. Saumya Ranjan Dash, Dean – Programmes; Prof. Amitabh Deo Kodwani; and Prof. Jatin Pandey, Chair – PGPHRM, shared their views on this occasion. Prof. Ranjeet Nambudiri also addressed the gathering online. Prof. Abhishek Mishra, Chair – FPM, and Col. Gururaj Gopinath Pamidi (Retd), CAO, IIM Indore, were also present. Prof. Shruti Tewari, Chair – IPM, attended online.

Prof. Saumya Ranjan Dash mentioned that PGPHRM and IIMINENCE – both are in line with IIM Indore’s mission. ‘PGPHRM is specifically designed to nurture budding managers and help them upgrade skills, specifically in the human resource management domain. The post-pandemic work culture has changed drastically, and retaining and engaging employees is challenging. The challenges of HR are multidimensional, and it is imperative to gain competencies that help the HR managers balance their static knowledge and implement their ideas, plans, and strategies in the dynamic workplace culture, which includes offline hybrid and online mode’, he said.

Prof. Amitabh Deo Kodwani shared his views about the emerging challenges in the last three years. ‘Earlier, the HR managers were responsible for retaining and engaging the employees. However, during the pandemic, they grappled with solutions to effective work-from-home and employee outputs. Today, in the post-pandemic world, HR managers have identified problems like great resignation, quiet quitting, and moonlighting’. He said that we have shifted from a reactive to a proactive approach in terms of Human Resource Management. He mentioned that with the emergence of quiet layoff and policy changes, a new set of challenges are bound to change the priorities of the HR managers. ‘Events like IIMINENCE provide a platform for the young minds to discover opportunities in this crisis and come up with innovative and substantial solutions’, he said.

Prof. Ranjeet Nambudiri spoke on the conclave theme – Brace/Embrace. He noted that the current scenario offers the organization food for thought about whether we should continuously evolve or wait for the situation to stabilize. HR plays a vital role in this brainstorming. With the advancement in technology, data analytics, data science, and other innovations, it’s high time HR finds ways to put the ‘human’ back into the organization. ‘This doesn’t mean that performance or productivity should lose their importance; instead, attention should be brought to understanding the challenges of the employees at the workplace’, he said. With so many external shocks, organizations are now giving importance to their employees’ mental health and well-being. ‘When employees perceive the workplace environment to be supportive, it benefits their mental and physical health too’, he said. Rather than considering the employees as a contributor or a producer, it’s time that organizations help them identify their strengths and weaknesses and create solutions and opportunities to maximize their competencies and reduce their stress.

The two-month-long festival would witness a variety of speakers from diverse backgrounds like – Talent Acquisition, HR Analytics, M&A, Performance Management, and Organization Development and Change. The event will also include workshops on current trends and new developments in the field of HR and Leadership. The conclave includes a series of case competitions, wherein 4 domain-focused cases will be followed by a case encompassing all aspects of HR and Business for the grand finale with a prize pool of Rs. 2,00,000/-.

Prof. Jatin Pandey delivered the vote of thanks.