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As HR leaders grapple with 'Great' everything - from resignations to quitters to lay-offs and AI's footprints; there is a new way emerging to look at what HR does, expects, fixes-and how. Avadhesh Dixit, CHRO, Acuity Knowledge Partners gives an honest look at his new dashboard. And also gives some 'more than brochure' insights on DEI, and a candid take on India's Demographic Dividend.

- Pratima H

The pendulum could not have swung any more suddenly than how we saw it moving from the 'Great Resignation' to the 'Big layoffs'. How much has all this changed life for HR?

Yes, you are right. I have never seen a shift as rapid as this in the last 25 years of my life. We have abruptly moved from one extreme to another. The industry was just trying to figure out what to do with the volume of offer drops. And now we are looking at surplus manpower. The tech meltdown in Europe and the West cannot be ignored. Managing this shift is definitely challenging for HR. The second challenge is to deal with new models of distributed workforce and hybrid workplace. It's not a reversible trend. It's a structural shift. We have to embrace and facilitate flexibility in a completely new way now.

You had announced significant hiring plans in early 2022 along with a global expansion spree and India headcount targets for next three years. Would that change?

No. We have been lucky. And the credit goes to our sales and delivery teams too. We are still on track with these plans. We have never come to layoffs and hopefully, never will. The plans are still intact, we have not revised them - we can't put a number to it though due to changing circumstances.

What has changed - if anything - for your L&D strategy - like at Acuity Training Academy? 

We are training campus hires to bridge the 'campus to corporate' gap. We try to fill in the requirements that customers have through specific trainings in 6 to 10 weeks. Especially in areas like financial modeling and analytics.

Is AI going to help or shake up the ‘skills’ game’? will AI change hR’s focus on human skills – in terms of software and hardware?