Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management organized a National HR Conference on September 24, 2011 on the theme “Managing Human Resource in Changing Business Scenario”. With this HR Conference, Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, aims to provide a forum to experts from the corporate, academia, and government, to share their expert opinion and insights on the theme.
The session was inaugurated with a film on the life and times of Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri. Shri Anil Shastri, former Union Minister and Chairman, Board of Governors, LBSIM, Delhi, Dr. Gautam Sinha, Director, LBSIM, Dr. G.L. Sharma Corporate Advisor & Convener LBSIM, Delhi and Mr. Nitin Sachdeva, President, Management Grid, LBSIM, inaugurated the conference by lamp lighting and by offering floral tributes to Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri. The chief guest for the occasion was Mr. Arun Balakrishnan, former CMD of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. Mr. Balakrishnan had joinedmthe Board of HPCL as Director- Human Resources in January 2002 and in April 2007 he became the Chairman & Managing Director. He is the Founder Chairman of HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd.- a Joint Venture Company of HPCL and L.N. Mittal Investments, engaged in the construction of a 9 million tonnes per annum, Rs. 20,000 crores refinery at Bathinda in Punjab.
Delivering the welcome address, Dr. Gautam Sinha, the Director of the Institute, welcomed the chief guest, speakers, delegates, media persons, faculty and the students for the HR Conference. He focused on ‘thrive and survive’ policy in an organization, leadership roles of HR managers and their need to embrace ‘change management’.
Dr. Bindu Chhabra, Conference Convener, LBSIM, Delhi, briefed the audience about the theme of the conference. She informed about the sessions of the conference. The first session was on ‘Leaders as Change Masters’ and the second session was on ‘Change through strategic HR initiatives’. She emphasized the need for leaders to embrace systems implying effective changes, restructuring systems and processes which help in surviving in a competitive environment.
In his inaugural address, Mr. Arun Balakrishnan, former CMD, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, emphasized on micro and macro levels of changes in the economy. He also highlighted the contrast in emerging changes in business scenario from inception to his retirement from HPCL. He noted that institutes like LBSIM has the responsibility of making managers adaptable to new changes and should improve expertise in new technology and ways of trying to remain competitive year after year.
The presidential address was delivered by Shri Anil Shastri, former Union Minister and Chairman, Board of Governors, LBSIM, Delhi. He discussed about cross country differences thereby emphasizing the rapid change in trends and the pace at which they were happening. He requoted Napoleon Bonaparte’s definition of strategic leadership “Strategic is an art of managing space and time. Space we can recover, time never.” Tracking the time that radio, television, personal computers and internet took to reach 1 million users, he said that leaders should be capable of diagnosing the change element and be adaptive to the pace of change.
Dr. G.L Sharma, Corporate Interface Advisor, LBSIM, Delhi, in acknowledgement of the speakers concluded that human resource managers have to convince people to go to semi-urban and rural areas and make basic facilities available there.
