The Promise of Distance Education

Just a few days ago, I was part of a panel discussion, at the Indo-US Education Conclave 2011 on distance learning’s role in expanding the horizons of education. It was evident, from the discussions, that distance learning has come a long way from the age of “correspondence programmes” which was looked upon as the poor cousin of traditional programmes. Technology clearly has been the catalyst which has transformed distance learning to become an acceptable alternative to the more traditional learning methodologies. Traditional universities are looking at distance learning to supplement regular programmes, and increase engagement with students. Online universities are creating portals that aim to become a virtual campus, and create an environment that students would expect in a physical university, complete with student lounges, fraternity or special interest clubs, counselling services, the whole 9 yards. The private sector has moved a significant amount of training and development to virtual classrooms, thus allowing for standardisation and enhanced productivity, the bulwarks of corporate training. The future of distance learning seems to be unfailingly bright.

What is missing in this fairly bright picture though, is the application of the distance learning model at the primary and secondary level education. Distance learning, in these spaces, still languishes in the dark ages of “correspondence courses”. This is not to say that there is not enough quality digital or multimedia content available in these areas. There has been significant work done for generating content for K-12 programs both in India and abroad, but it has been almost exclusively targeted towards the urban, affluent students, to work as a supplement to their regular education programmes. If we could use our existing telecom infrastructure to deliver this content at remote areas of our vast country, where students of different age groups share the same physical classroom due lack of facilities, it would have done wonders to the nation’s capability building programmes. The boogie of choppy telecom infrastructure should not stop us from designing innovative delivery mechanisms for content that could reach remote locations.

The Human Factor, this time, carries a survey on the behaviour and wants of both present and potential users of distance learning. While it is clear that DL is now perceived as a fairly acceptable mode of learning, the results of the survey also throw up important questions for stakeholders and policy makers. Other than for corporate training, as an individual choice distance learning still comes a distant second to traditional programmes. Most users think of distance learning as a mode of acquiring supplemental skills, and a significant number of students already have either an undergraduate or a post graduate degree. Very few students after their K-12 look at it as a mode of further studies. This clearly shows that we are not using a potent weapon like distance education to achieve the HRD Ministry’s stated goal of doubling our Gross Enrolment Ratio to 30. The other number that is alarming is that a very large number of users are engaged for less than five hours a week with their learning material, where in the traditional programmes the average is around 25 hours a week. This could mean that our design of content and learning environment is not yet engaging enough, or that users enrolled in programmes are not committed to their learning programs.

We sure have come a long way with distance learning, but it seems we have a longer way to go to be able to leverage its full potential. Happy Reading!

Distance Learning – The Great Equaliser

Distance learning has existed for more than a century in the developed economies, for a few decades now in the other regions of the world, and has come a long way from the days of correspondence courses. While open learning has been a preferred mode of education and training delivery for adult advanced learners in developed economies, in developing nations it has played the role of reaching populations that could not be served otherwise. In India, where the sheer geography makes it difficult for education providers to reach their target audience, the recent developments in delivery technologies, allowing access over the internet, have come as a boon. In Australia, whose geographical spread is equivalent to that of India, but is extremely sparsely populated, the School of the Air, which started about 60 years ago and uses two-way radio communications, has been the only mode of access to standardised interactive education for young learners, some of whom are as young as five-year-old.

Distribution and delivery over the internet has allowed content that is interactive and exciting to be developed and delivered according to the requirements of the target audience, whether they are young learners without access to physical primary education infrastructure, or advanced learners who need flexibility in terms of location and time.

In the new global socio-economic order, which we call the knowledge economy, distance learning has been an enabler in competence acquisition for large sections of the productive population, and has changed the economic fabric of entire countries in many ways. In the case of India, it has played a significant role in the growth of the service economy through specific training delivered over the internet. Many nations have been successful in running large-scale awareness campaigns, for example, n the area of disease control, through the use of this mode. In countries where women or minorities have traditionally had lesser access to educational resources, distance education has played the role of a great enabler. For employers, it has meant the ability to standardise and deliver high-quality training to large sections of employees.

Continuous upgrade of employee skills, which large organisations today use as a strategic tool, has become cost-effective, customisable, and interactive. The use of open learning has been an accepted and efficient method of delivering training in the corporate world or in the case of advanced learners. However, in the case of primary or tertiary education, open or distance learning has not been accepted as a method with the same standard as that of traditional school-based learning, for a variety of reasons. There is probably a long way to go in terms of developing quality content, as well as in the areas of customising evaluation and assessment methodologies specific to open learning students.

As a country, it will only be to our benefit to fund the development of these areas of learning methodologies, as it can help us take a quantum leap in terms of India’s gross human resource capability growth. In the corporate world, we keep talking about the lack of talent availability, and developing better open learning methodologies may be one of the answers. In this issue, we have tried to look at various developments in open learning, and as always I hope you will find the issue interesting and useful. Happy reading!

Ethnicity and Employee Expectations

The volume of literature that is generated every year on leadership is humungous, and yet leadership remains a concept that everyone understands somewhat, but no one understands completely. The present day business leadership research can be traced back to the 1940s, and yet over the last 70 years or so, a miniscule amount of time by any research topic area, several theories and hypothesis have been propounded, postulated, criticised and put aside. The challenges of leadership have only grown with the changing and fluid nature that business has assumed today, and it is only natural that research in the area of leadership has attracted the best brains of our times. In the new global order of business, boundaries of nation are fading out fast, and the new challenge that leaders need to grapple with today is that of managing and leveraging diversity in the workplace. Changing demographics caused by globalisation, technology, mobility, and changing societal norms are creating new demands on leaders. These changes cut across ethnic, cultural, and religious divides and create a workplace that is radically different from the work environment of the yesteryear. The new-age leader needs to understand the unique needs and aspirations of this multi-ethnic workforce which differ in terms of values, cultures, expectations and perspectives, and lead them to gain an advantage in the competitive business environment.

While there is significant management literature available on how ethnicity and environment play a large role in developing a leader’s worldview, there is hardly any research available which throws light on how ethnicity influences an employee’s expectation from their leaders in the Indian context. With diversity of workforce being a constant, research that can help leaders understand the effect of ethnicity on employee expectation, will certainly help leaders with their decision making process, and is without doubt a crying need.

In this issue, Professor Arindam Chaudhuri focuses squarely on the issue of employee expectations from their leaders across ethnicity and function. A large scale survey that he conducted, over two phases, across regions in India, throws up a few surprises in terms of expectations that employees have, but also validates certain perceptions that are held in popular wisdom. While guidance and support from leaders and bosses seem to be the overwhelmingly frequent expectation that employees have across India, employees whose ethnicity categorise as being from the south of India give it much more importance than do employees from the west of India. While the general perception may be that employees want empowerment, the survey shows that not too many employees expect empowerment from their leaders. Another interesting trend seems to be that employee expectations of those from the south are somewhat similar to those from the east, while employees from the north and west have similar expectations. The second phase of survey has given interesting information and insights, and we look forward to the analysis of a much broader third phase survey.

We are certain that the meaning that will be distilled from this information will help leaders to bring out the best from their people.

HR, Soft Issues and M&As

Wall Street, Dalal Street, Canary Wharf, and for that matter the world of corporate finance thrive on mergers and acquisitions. Pick up any of the major financial dailies and the odds are you will have news of an impending M&A activity. The year 2010 saw more than 50,000 M&As announced with a total volume of more than USD 3 trillion.

India itself saw more than 50 M&As announced totalling to a volume of about USD 65 billion. Recent years have seen a significant rise in cross-border M&A activity, and Indian companies have played a crucial role both as acquirers and targets. Inorganic growth strategies like mergers and acquisitions have been championed by both Corporate Managers and Investment Bankers as important engines that help companies to grow fast, enter new markets, expand customer base, and acquire technology and expertise. Traditional wisdom would suggest that M&As should be able to unlock shareholder value through economies of scale and consolidation of assets and human capital. Research, however, shows that approximately 70 per cent of mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve expected results and about 50 per cent actually destroy value. While there are hundreds of reasons for the high failure rates of M&A, ranging from CEO ego satisfaction to incoherent due diligence methodology, a London Business School research points out that most of the key reasons can be termed “soft issues” which is management parlance for Human Resource issues like cultural differences, mismatch of leadership vision, differences in remuneration structuring and HR policies. An acclaimed McKinsey study on mergers stated that the overwhelming reason was “something loosely called culture”. Organisational culture determines and legitimises what sort of behaviour is rewarded in an organisation, and since no two organisational cultures are same, a merger announcement inevitably confuses employees as to how the new entity expects them to behave. Clearly the need of the day then would be clear and timely communication, and defining the cultural identity of the organisation. When it comes to culture, employee communication and other so-called ‘soft issues’, the Human Resource function has a role to play in making an M&A activity successful. Most experts believe that getting HR involved at the very beginning of an M&A decision would help employees deal with the culture shock post merger or acquisition. This edition of The Human Factor seeks to unveil the HR-related reasons for M&A failures, and find ways and means which could help HR managers to successfully nurture a merger or an acquisition.

With this issue, we also proudly introduce Theory i Management, a quarterly supplement to The Human Factor. Theory i Management will carry case studies and case study excerpts focused on the Indian business landscape. Going beyond just Human Resources we intend to carry case studies that cover a cross-section of industries and management functions in this supplement. It has been a long-standing complaint from students, academia and industry professionals that India lacks a good case study repository. With Theory i Management we take our first step towards fulfilling that gap, and we look forward to your support and feedback in making the supplement a success.

Pros and Cons of C&B

From the hourly rates and daily wage structures of the 1800s to today’s total rewards, it has been a long journey for the discipline of Compensation and Benefits. The changes in the methods and practices of payment have been typically triggered by imbalances arising out of an economic crisis or by shifts in the demographics of the employee pool. Recessions and depressions, as well as epidemics and natural calamities, changed the objectives of the compensation philosophy, and kick-started social security legislations in many parts of the world. The participation of women in large numbers in the workforce brought forth the need for restructuring of leave days. Advances in transportation and communication helped in the globalisation of businesses and led to transnational C&B packages.

Modern day compensation structures have been credited with the power of enhancing performance through increase in sales efficiencies and improvement in the quality of products and services. HR professionals love to tell stories about how Xerox increased sales of a particular model with a tweak in the incentive structure of the sales division, and many such stories abound. In the recent past, compensation has also been cited as a reason for failures in corporate governance and business ethics. The recent meltdown in the finance industry in the United States and in Europe has opened the eyes of the general public to the fault lines in today’s compensation practices.

This issue of The Human Factor looks at the various facets of compensation structures across industries and around the globe, both in the public and the private sectors. We have spoken to a number of experts, both in the industry and academia, to bring to you the best practices in the discipline. I believe you will find this issue to be a worthy read.

Also worthy of note was the SHRM 63rd Annual Conference & Exposition in June 2011, which took place in Las Vegas. The Human Factor was a keen participant at the world’s largest and greatest HR event, represented by Planman Media’s CEO, Deepak Kaistha. He confesses to us that it was a thrill to be one amongst the 18,000 strong contributors, over the three days of the event. Not only was this an enormous learning experience, interacting with the likes of Sir Richard Branson and Michael J. Fox, it also shed light on how HR leaders of tomorrow can tackle hurdles to emerge as HR champions.

Moreover, in this issue of the magazine we rub shoulders with Harshavardhan Neotia, Chairman of the Ambuja Realty Group. Hailing from a business family may have given him the additional jolt of confidence, but this real estate baron built everything else from scratch, as he talks to us about the foray into other sectors like hospitality, education, and healthcare. A must read.

You will be glad to know that we have been awarded “Asia’s Best HR Magazine” this year. This is a proud moment for all of us here at The Human Factor, and I would like to congratulate the entire team for their untiring efforts to keep improving the magazine. My sincere thanks to all our patrons and readers; you keep motivating us to give our best.

Inclusive Economy and the Unorganised Sector

In most forms of government, the state machinery’s stated goal is to serve its citizens. People are pivotal for the success of both corporations and nations. Nothing can be mobilised and no progress can be achieved in the absence of this essential resource. And yet when we as Human Resource professionals discuss issues of importance it is almost always with reference to the corporate sector. In the context of India, however, the corporate sector employs less than 10 per cent of the total workforce, and therefore development in employee benefits and social security in the area of corporate HR remains out of reach for the population that needs it more. The prevailing wisdom is that trying to draw up legislation to bring the large unorganised sector workforce under the regulatory framework applicable to the organised sector would create inefficiencies and market imperfections, which would, in turn, negatively affect our fledgling market-driven economy. Moreover, our cash-strapped government would have difficulties in financing the infrastructural and institutional requirements that an endeavour of this proportion would require. While the government would have to realistically play the role of a facilitator in trying to provide a safe and secure work environment to this population, it will also be to the benefit of the corporate sector to engage and uplift the employees in the informal sector. In this era of “inclusive growth”, if we fail to provide a semblance of social security and employment benefits to this large section of our fellow people, we might see our dream of double-digit growth fizzle out soon. This year we have already seen civil unrest across a large number of developing countries, both in the Middle-East and in South-East Asia, as well as in China. The root cause of these unrests remains the inability of the respective governments to give a secure and stable socio-economic environment to a large section of their population.

In this edition of The Human Factor, we have spoken to a large cross section of public policy and HR experts from academia and industry, in the United States, in Europe, in Japan, Russia, Singapore, China and India. We have tried to bring forth the experience of government and industry, in developed countries as well as developing countries, in dealing with developmental economics and human resource development. Our endeavour was to understand the impact of public policy on human resources around the world. There are stories of both success and failure, but there are learnings for both legislators and corporations, that should help us in developing a strategy to contribute to the upliftment of human resources in the unorganised sector.

The feedback that we have received from our last issue, from the entire fraternity, and especially from those involved with XLRI has been phenomenal. The legacy that XLRI has created cannot be covered in a single issue. In this issue we continue the XLRI story, featuring alumni who could not be accommodated in the last issue either due to constraints of time or those of space. We hope the community will find this issue equally engaging.

Happy Reading!

An Experience called XLRI

When a private business school with no government subsidy whatsoever is able to match the reputation of the revered IIMs with their enormous financial clout and government support, you know that there is something exceptional about the institute. XLRI has, for decades now, been recognised as the best institute for human resources in India, and has consistently been ranked amongst the best in the area of business management. The journey of XLRI from a small institute operating out of a couple of rooms in Jamshedpur to the now large campus has been steady though not entirely smooth. The institute grew in the face of adversity and fund shortages, and came out stronger and better every time.

For this issue we interacted with XLRI’s illustrious alumni, many of them at the helm of affairs in India’s largest organisations. The school has, over the years, consistently produced managerial talent that is much sought after in the country and beyond. Specifically in the areas of human resources and industrial relations, XLers have acted as change initiators, and a significant amount of the evolution of the human resource function in India, can be attributed to them. While there are quite a few excellent business schools in India, what makes XLRI stand out is its emphasis on social justice, ethics, and values. XLRI has also been at the forefront of globalising its footprint. At present, it is spreading its wings through international tie-ups and satellite programs, and is at the cusp of a great leap of introducing joint degree programmes with the Case Western University. XLRI is also unique in the way that all the stakeholders; the students, faculty, administration and alumni, are closely knit like a family. The reason possibly is the small cohort size which allows everyone to know each other, with students visiting faculty at their residence being the norm rather than an exception. This environment of collegiality and emphasis on ethics have helped XLRI to produce business managers who are socially conscious and willing to contribute to a cause that is larger than their individual needs, and that probably is XLRI’s greatest achievement.

While business schools in India keep attaining great heights, academicians of Indian origin have been creating ripples in business schools in the United States and Europe by taking up leadership positions at some of the best schools. In this issue, Professor Yash Gupta, the inaugural Dean at the Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, shares with us his insights into the changing face of business education and speaks about the larger responsibilities that business schools have in creating a society free of corruption and greed.

India is an economy that thrives on family-owned businesses and their contribution to the GDP. CII recently pegged this number to be at around 60 to 70 per cent. To bring to our readers a better understanding of the unique HR challenges and intricacies that a family-driven business faces, we have introduced a new section, Family, Inc. As always, we look forward to your feedback to keep improving our magazine.

Happy reading!