Students Corner
The summer internship process or SIP as it is called is the
most interesting part in an MBA curriculum. It all started
with the summer placement and each one of us was
waiting for our right match (Company and profile) to work
in. Unfortunately or fortunately I was among the last few
students to get placed. Unfortunate because I had to wait
till the end where everyone in my batch got placed and
fortunate because I was offered internship at Tata Power in
HR domain my right match which was worth waiting . Being
a fresher, I constantly used to ponder on how I am going to
apply the management concepts and theories which I
learned in my first year to practice. I was nervous but at the
same time excited to taste the flavor of corporate life of
which I have heard so much from seniors, friends’ professors and relatives.
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The date was 15 April; the D-day and I headed for my
office. I was welcomed by strategic HR head, Tata Power a
very warm and humble person. He very clearly explained
what is expected out of me during my 60 days of internship
and gave me a project on “Promoting gender diversity in
the organization”. He first provided orientation on the
office environment and work culture and then he introduced me with the Talent Management team with whom I
was supposed to be working with. All these seemed normal
but it gave happiness to me and helped me to get adjusted
soon with the office environment. Finally after having an
interaction with my team I started thinking about the project which was assigned. I was puzzled and I kept recalling
what all things I learned in my first year, the topics were
mostly related to basic HRM, compensation management,
training and development, recruitment and other. But this
project was no where inline to any of these functions. With
the thought of finding an answer to my question I moved
ahead with this project. This ended my first day of internship.
while taking this survey that there is serious misperception
on the employees’ part that HR department works for the
top management and for the raising and solving their problems.
It was clearly visible that employees don’t trust HR. This is
the gap which needs to be addressed. This misperception
can be because either it is HR department fault on a whole
for not handling the issues properly or the fault of higher
authority that doesn’t pay enough attention to such issues.
As HR department is the front face of the organization it is
always at the dock. But if such dissatisfaction continues it
can lead to lower morale, lower performance leading to
high attrition rate thus affecting the employer branding.
Thus, during my short tenure of the internship I understood
where HR as a profession is lacking and necessary steps
needs to be taken to be the “People’s representative and
not top management puppet.”
These 60 days were the most amazing day of my life. Here I
explored my inner potential and had a fortune to work and
learn from such great and enthusiastic people. Now while
going back to my college I was very clear what I wanted
from myself and more positive and focused than I was 2
months before.
Days progressed and my project was taking its best shape.
Under this project I had to take an online survey where I
was needed to understand the problems female employees
encounter in their day to day life in the organization. And
here comes the role of the HR manager to handle every
small and big issues faced by its people in the organization.
It is not about recruiting right people but more of retaining
these people, not about giving huge compensation but
providing safety and security. An interesting finding came
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October 2014 |CONSILIUM