Ruchira Bharadwaja:

With more artificial intelligence and remote working scenario and coming up into play, do we anticipate less number of jobs in the HR in future? And if so, which areas in general folks should focus more on and add to their skillset and continue to have a say at the table.

Yogi Sriram:

No I don't expect lesser jobs. I expect that the nature of the jobs is going to change. There will be less emphasis on transactional stuff and much more emphasis on transformational kind of activities. For example analytics is going to be very important. For example, I would look at a good HR person, particularly a good learning and development person, as a good curator of knowledge just like you have curators in a museum, I would look at that person as a person who can bring in bodies of knowledge which are relevant for my people. Planning careers, succession planning all these are extremely important abilities. And to use platforms and to use data in order to do that these efficiently, effectively, quicker and so on is very important. People are talking on the other side about gig working and stuff.

There's something called countervailing power. And the theory of countervailing power was contributed by John Kenneth Galbraith. Which means that on the one side, on the demand side you have companies that need good talent and on the supply side the talent offers itself. What is very important today is the ability for that talent to reorient itself to the demands of companies. And therefore when I answer this question with respect to HR, what are people looking for in terms of employers for in that HR apartment? They're looking for multiple role handlers. Not someone who handles just recruitment. They're looking for centers of Excellence.

They're looking for persons who can analyze a whole lot of data and get meaningful insights just like they're marketed. A marketeer studies demographics, psychographics and so on. An HR person whether it's an engagement survey or the pattern of infections in the city or the company or wherever needs to get into a deep dive and submit big data which from which a meaningful insight can be derived.

So analytics, learning and development to IE platforms, the ability to recruit and in a manner where you're able to reach out to talent which is in very remote places, the ability to size up the fit of the talent for your organization are all new skills that are very important for an HR person.

So jobs will not disappear. They will become different.