Well that’s the only headline I could think of after having listened to two luminaries on HR. One Mr. MV Vasudevan, VP HR, Parry Roca and Mr. Sam Chander, VP HR, Henkel India.

The event was a HR Meet, courtesy School of Management, Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore with BusinessLine in toe as the Media Partner.

The theme was if you guessed it – Role of HR professionals during the meltdown phase.

Both the speakers took us on an unusually delightful journey ironical to the fact that word recession is all about being long faced and grim looking scenario.

Mr. MV Vasudevan took us on a journey on how the recession was a mindset, though there might be course correction which is happening otherwise there are recruitment’s and vacancies happening.

He had a great message for the HR professionals in the crowd, to learn the business of the company they were working for. That meant leaving the comfort zone for harsh realities in the market place. He quoted the example of his company wherein the HR people were directly in touch with the shop floor and the marketing wing to see how they were faring as a company. He put it in a wonderful way when he said the door to the board room was through the shop floor.

He had a thought provoking style to start with a “0” or a circle drawn on the board, and wanted the audience to tell him what is there on the wall. Many answers after he said, it could be zero but its pretty simple if you could sense it as the first letter of the word OPPORTUNITY.

Then a break later, it was Mr Sam Chander, who took us through a cool and humorous look at the grim reality. Ofcourse we needed a thorough look and he provided that with both the positives and the negatives of what he termed as the 3G, notwithstanding BSNL’s 3G offering, it was as I found out for confirmation the “Great Global Gloom”.

One thing he sure took a dig with HR professionals was the “Indian Airlines Smile” which lacked the warmth but had to be an action….

With global pressures getting really high and more people being laid of, there was enough that HR professionals could do to make a successful organisation.

We were really convinced that these recessionary outlook is a made up mirror which we want to hold it so we can easily convince ourselves that things are really bad. But again we cannot easily write off the course correction too which is a part of the bargain which we eventually failed to read in good times.

Thanks to the School of Management and the institution which makes it a purpose to see things differently and it pulls out some real magic for those involved. Kudos !!!

R Senthilkumar