On demergers -quoted in the Business Standard @bsindia

The folks at Business Standard did a story on demergers and asked me for an opinion on how organizations could do it better, some excerpts:

According to independent HR consultant Gautam Ghosh, "A corporate spin-off is not necessarily bad news for employees. The problem is that many organisations do not communicate a demerger strategy to their employees proactively. In fact, in my experience, even some MNCs, known otherwise for their professional management practices, fail to share a clear roadmap with their country or regional offices making the whole process painful and fraught with risks." Ghosh warns communication that is one-way is not good enough. "A company that runs a global business should consult the leaders of all the countries to assess the HR implications of tough business decisions. This will help them avoid bad press," adds Ghosh.

Some Twitter conversations on Social Media, Job Hunting and HR

Today was an interesting day - I was invited by Tech Mahindra to be a guest on their #TechMChat on Social HR. 

Just an hour to go for #TechMChat with @GautamGhosh & @SucharitaPalepu sharing their thoughts about Social HR pic.twitter.com/ISsdpricJb
— Tech Mahindra (@tech_mahindra) October 17, 2014

So here are some thoughts I shared and the questions I answered

A1 @tech_mahindra Social Media can amplify the positive experiences of employee advocates #TechMChat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

Internal social media helps is social recognition and learning & development @ankur0906 #TechMChat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

The starting point is a great org culture and internally open org so that employees don't go out to vent @Ashima_TechM #techmchat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

For internal social to be effective an internal community manager is critical - and employee engagement @a_washikar @spandalai #techmchat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

A4 Understand that "socially active" people might be in a minority and their views might or might not be representative #TechMChat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

A5 In India it is. In the future we will see Talent Community Managers, internal and external as HR competencies @tech_mahindra #techMChat
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

A6 social is not generational, but a mindset. Any person who is collaborative and shares openly can levergae #TechMChat @tech_mahindra
— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

Earlier in the day I also jumped into CareerBuilder's tweet on Social Media for job search. Some tweets are here:

@ankitagaba @nimu9 I know of a software programmer who got hired because of code and hacks he shared on Quora #AskCBIndia

— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

@sprashanth yes it is :) Tools like Entelo and TalentBin automate the process of making a candidate's digital profiles #AskCBIndia

— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

@nimu9 @ankitagaba it's changing slowly. Airtel saved more than a crore in recruiter fees thanks to social recruiting #AskCBIndia

— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

@AlankritaNagar I know of a hairdresser in US who got hired thanks to Instagram! @CareerBuilderIN @ankitagaba #AskCBIndia

— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

@AlankritaNagar Lots of programmers are hired thanks to GitHub and StackOverflow @CareerBuilderIN @ankitagaba #AskCBIndia

— Gautam Ghosh (@GautamGhosh) October 17, 2014

Looking for my next gig

So after one and a half years with Philips in two roles I am ready for the next challenge. What can I do?

• I can help HR teams leverage social technologies for employer branding, social recruiting, social recognition, internal communications and social learning
• I can help HR technology vendors craft their marketing strategy, find partners and get to the right decision makers
• I can connect vendors and clients to influencers in the media and social media world to make an impact

Interested in what I can offer? Email me at gautam dot ghosh at gmail dot com 

Twitter and Blogging for Learning & Development Leaders

Last week I was invited to present to a group of global learning leaders of a BPO/KPO firm on my Twitter and Blogging journey.

This is the presentation I made.

Looking forward to your feedback

Social media for learning leaders from Gautam Ghosh

Indian HR is ready for the Tech Revolution - thoughts from #TechHR14

Around 10 days ago I attended India's first ever Tech HR conference organized by People Matters in Gurgaon. I was privileged to be invited to speak at the unconference track in the event and host a Google Hangout with analysts Alan Lepofsky and Holger Mueller. It was also an opportunity to listen to industry leaders like Abhijit Bhaduri, Frank Ricciardi, Debjani Ghosh, Anand Pillai and Sameer Patel. I was also looking to catch up with innovative learning professionals and friends Kavi Arasu and Sunder Ramachandran.

Here's my takeaway:

• HR Technology is simplifying. The large players are moving to the cloud from on-premise and HR's dependence on the IT function is reducing. Most of this tech even between solutions by different vendors is becoming easy to integrate.
• HR leaders are increasingly seeing technology not with the earlier view of "eliminating inefficiencies" but understand that tech will transform HR and the workplace.
• There was a lot of talk about big data and analytics - but I missed the sessions. However I believe that soon we will see a lot of different kinds of people working in HR, like data scientists. 
• Employees will expect technology to be easy to use, intuitive and not go through a learning curve to use it, and for it to work across devices.
• There are quite a few HR Tech startups in the Talent Acquisition and Employee Engagement space. Some that caught my eye were Jombay, Talent Auction. Now it is incumbent on HR leaders to try out such innovative Indian startups.

Do check out the PDF report put together by the People Matters team about the event. Also read Sameer Patel's perspective on difference between the HR conversation in India with the US. A post by Rakshita on my session.

Panel on Social HR at @SMWMumbai on 23rd Sept #SMWMumbai

So I'll be speaking on a panel discussion on "Social HR" at Social Media Week Mumbai 2014.
My fellow panelists would be:

• Heather Saville Gupta - Chief Talent Officer, 120 Media Collective (Moderator for the panel) 
• Madhur Ramani - Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Stratum Consulting 
• Ranjit Nair- Founder and CEO, Germin8 
• Suveer Bajaj - Co-Founder and Director, FoxyMoron

Do check out the other panels and talks here, and the list of speakers here. If you are in Mumbai do try to join us!

Hangout with @alanlepo and @holgermu on "Emerging Trends in HR Tech & the Future of Work"

During the recent TechHR Conference organized by People Matters I had the pleasure of interviewing Constellation Research's analysts Alan Lepofsky and Holger Mueller

Here's the Google Hangout video of the conversation with Alan and Holger