plugHR Career Cafe, An experience!!

As I entered the building, my phone started off and I answered to Bulbul on the other side, “Hey, I have already reached, where are you? Are the others too coming?” She asked me.

“Ya, just reaching in 5”, I replied promptly.

While I met Bulbul at the Café on 3^rd floor , Nikhil  and Paras too joined us.

No, we were not long lost friends but total strangers and only thing in common was that we were all passionate HR professionals coming from different industries but similar frame of mind, to be part of plugHR career cafe. Initially there was a momentary silence and as a host I initiated with a small introduction which simply took us to next level. One thing is for sure you are not in HR if you can’t talk like old friends to new ones. Meanwhile some more like minded people joined in along with Manoj, plugHR COO, who brought lot of value and aggression to the discussions.

Honestly I have organized many career cafes PAN India but never had personally attended one, so this being my first one I was not sure how would the discussion turn around. While I kept wondering my talking friends made it very easy. We had people pouring in the challenges and industrial grievances. Some discussed how HR role have been diminished over a decade and mostly sums up to coordination. To this one commented that it’s important for HR to align itself with Business the make the role and job more respectable and important. Common issues were on why it is important for HR to take a stand and what stops them for taking that critical call. Incomplete and ineffective dashboards and why have they not been able to move beyond attrition numbers too was a point to ponder.

But it’s foolish to be part of such event and miss out on self learning. Latest feedback practices of ‘Sandwich’ discussions and unique way to control attrition though effective and intelligent hiring was indeed something to imbibe personally. One of them was frank to comment on PMS session as a “Bajate Raho” time and another one told us how they would have two chairs during review time and when a non performer would sit, it would fall and he would know that it’s not his day….inspired from Mogambao of M. India. So next time don’t question HR on their sense of humor for you might not know the implications of the last night movie.

Well observing all of them engrossed in a great discussion was an experience. We had people with varied age group talking candidly like old pals. Funny thing was they all had apprehensions to attend career café initially and I had countered questions like “How will we break the ice?” “Are there any charges?” “What is the agenda?” “Why should I attend?”And here without any charges we kept talking for good 2.5 hours without a single awkward moment and the agenda was nothing but ‘be yourself’ with a mutual learning exercise.

Such are plugHR Career Cafes, where we provide platform to HR professionals to share experiences and unlearn to relearn with plugHR!!

We will soon be there in the café next to your place, just join in by writing to rakshita.dwivedi@plughr.com