Great Companies: How did you begin the HRAI? When and how was the idea born?
Vikas Vats: We formally begin with HR Association India in 2012, before that we were a group on LinkedIn of like-minded HR professionals to share knowledge and assist each other in various HR processes with latest Tools and techniques.
Soon we realised that we need to have a formal body to meet the needs of the associated professionals. in 2012 we organised our first meet. There were three major agendas which was finalized to guide the future of HRAI
To update HR Professionals with latest in HR Tools, Technologies and Conferences worldwide.
To upskill HR Professionals at minimum cost.
To recognise and appreciate best practices and make them benchmarks.
Great Companies: How did you keep your firm Non-Profit? Because the services you give are top-notch and they have the potential to make good money. So what is the aim behind being Non-Profit?
Vikas Vats: Our guiding principle is from Vishva Puran :
सा विद्या या विमुक्तये।
The knowledge is that liberates
Our prime mandate is to spread knowledge at zero or minimum cost. At HRAI our work is that of a facilitator. We bring those people together who can create something new, innovative and useful for all HR fraternity.
We have helped many national and international organisations take their products and services to HR people because we found them good and useful and we did this without any monetary association. You would be amazed to know that in our programs we have never allowed any sponsor even a single minute of stage time.
Great Companies: With 22,000 and growing members, how did you grow so vast?
Vikas Vats: To be candid we grew exponentially, and this was much more than what we expected. I believe this was majorly due to the fact that we collaborated with almost all like minded people we could find in India.
We consider all other at HR Forums as our Associates and not competitors, and we help them in their activities.
Today we are in touch with many HR forms and bodies internationally and next year we will be we give our members International exposure in many countries. Again our aim is to provide HR Association India members free of cost or heavily discounted passes of international HR conferences.
We also aim to provide our senior members with speaking opportunities in international forums in coming year.
Another reason of our fast growth has been new initiatives we take regularly. Last year was dedicated for women employees in corporate sector. We worked for the “Returning Women” employees who come to world of after a long gap, recently in Association with Kalam Centre we organised award function for women empowerment.
Our focus this year is on Employee’s Health and we are very soon launching Organizational Health Index – An Index of Employee’s Health in any Organization. ( OHI )
OHI will help organisations compare their employee’s health with employees in other organisations. These kind of initiatives have helped us establish ourselves as research based organisation and a destination for HR professionals who want to do something new and innovative in their organisations.
Great Companies: Is your platform suitable for a novice or is it just for professionals? What kind of skills can be inculcated in a HR professional if they become your member?
Vikas Vats: Our platform is suitable for novice and professionals both, but we are trying our best to do more and more for our young generation. Almost all our programs are complementary for our members or heavily discounted. These programs are on topics like
1. HR Analytics Course
2. Competency Mapping
3. Assessments in HR
4. Competency based L&D
5. Coordinating Result guaranteed Training Program
6. Psychometrics for HR Professionals
7. Gamification for HR
8. AI, Robotics, Tech HR etc.
Any HR professional can take benefits by becoming our member www.hrd.online.
Great Companies: The HR Analytics course you offer seems to be really good, so what can one expect to learn out of your HR Analytics course?
Vikas Vats: We researched almost all HR analytics courses and the need of the industry before designing this course. It has best of all the worlds like pre-training material, instructor-led training, live projects and online learning.
One will learn almost everything related to HR analytics in this course but more than that our focus is what somebody will be able to DO after attending the course. We intend to incorporate six skills via this course. What the participants would be able to do is:
1. Work in / Lead HR Analytics Team OR Establish HR Analytics Function.
2. Data Analytics Based Alignment of All HR Processes with Organization’s Vision and Mission.
3. Work as Focal Point and Coordinate among all HR Analytics Stakeholders e.g. IT, Business, etc.
4. Create, Various HR Metric , Take Decisions and Do Predictive Analysis.
5. Optimization of Your HR Processes and Yield best ROI
6. Able to Develop Internal Business Cases for Various HR Processes, e.g. Impact Assessment of any Intervention. More about this course can be found at www.hranalyticscourse.com
Great Companies: One can volunteer on your site for various teams like the event organising team, the jury, the outreach team and many more. What qualities should one possess to be a volunteer of your team and what can one expect out of it?
Vikas Vats: The purpose of having volunteers is to create engagement and give HR professionals opportunity to be a part of something that interest them. This makes HRAI programs not a one-way process where we organise the program and our members attend.
To become a member of any team one needs to have relevant qualification & expertise and passion for that team.
For example in even event organising team we would like to have somebody who during college days been organising various kind of programs and functions and has it zeel for organising events. Likely in the Jury team we would like very senior HR professionals with hands on experience on one or more HR processes.
Great Companies: The HR DISTINCTION AWARDS is a platform that awards professionals for their outstanding contribution of Human Resources. When is the next award ceremony and if there is any HR out there who believes he/she is capable of winning this; then how do they send their entries?
Vikas Vats: HR Distinction Award, Inaugurated by Hon. Prime Minister of Mauritius has today become most prestigious HR Award in India, thanks to our evaluation criterion, transparency execution.
The next ceremony of HR distinction Award is on 23rd of Jan 2020. Professional who have done anything outstanding can send entries at our website www.hrdawards.in . Their entries are evaluated on 6 criteria mentioned on the website :
Innovation
Replicability
Scope
Impact
Sustainability
Execution
It's a completely automated process and still if somebody needs any handholding we can be contacted at phone numbers or email id at our site.
Great Companies: What are the next Big steps initiative is HRAI coming up with
Vikas Vats: As mentioned earlier we are Launching Organisational Health Index. The employees of the organisation will be assessed using an app on health.
Employees will get detailed analysis and prescriptions for their health. The organisations would get detailed report about the Organisation’s and Employee’s Health on various parameters like how many of them are obese, have blood pressure, diabetes, on medication, or different kind of diseases etc.
This would help them not only tailor make their welfare programmes but also they will be able to compare themselves with other organisations. They would be able to link their OHI ranking with their spending on employees health, their productivity, efficiency, rework, absenteeism, motivation and various other data points.
This year we intend to cover only 100 organisations on First Come First serve basis.
Great Companies: How can you help HR professionals who are not in big cities there not many avenues are available for their development
Vikas Vats: We would love to help and upskill these HR professionals. They can anytime get in touch with us and we would guide then how we can organise conferences and training programs at their location. And need not to say most of this would be free of cost. Anybody who wants to take lead to organise such events in small cities we welcome them to be in touch with us.
Vikas Vats, vikasvats@vikasvats.com
President – HR Association India ( www.hrd.online )