HR will be crucial for branding in IT industry

The IT industry will remain people centric and the role of human resource (HR) will become crucial as the market will keep growing and expanding.

The HR is key for branding, say industry representatives.

Speaking at the Nasscom's HR summit in Chennai today, R Chandrasekaran, president, Nasscom, said that people are and will remain as centre for the IT industry.

"Today, the only certainty in the world is uncertainty," he said.

At a panel discussion on 'Navigating uncertain waters — Evolving to Succeed' Kesav Murugesh, CEO, WNS, said, today the entire model has changed. Around 27% of insurance policies are sold online, around 90% of OTA business is happening online.

New models are coming to the floor like Uber, which doesn’t own a single car, or Alibaba, which doesn’t have stock.

The requirement is changing and it has opened a lot of opportunities. The future will be of ‘thinkers’.

Ravi Viswanathan, president, growth markets at Tata Consultancy Service, said that after Y2K business took off differently, when ERP came, it took off further. When web technology people thought it will be the end but it was not.

Today, the HR has completely changed and it is good, he added.

Ability is fundamental and it is the base for scale.

Today, we are an entrepreneurship-based industry, said Viswanathan. He added that the market will expand, the pie is going to expand further. Technology is going to be centric and today no business can run without technology.

One challenge is going to be how we are going to handle the security issue, he said.

Sandeep Chaudhary, CEO, Aon Hewitt, said that HR is important for the brand equity of a company.

Two challenges for the industry are re-skilling and re-skilling of HR.

Murugesh added, today HR has got the latest tool kits, ability, automation, social media and they have got the ability to integrate.