Embracing Transformative Learning To Expand Scope Of Human Capital Management

The Covid crisis has changed several things in the education industry, the most important change being a complete shift from physical classroom learning to e-learning. Digitization was the need of the hour and educational institutes across the world were in the process of streamlining systems that would help students learn and grow remotely. Even in educational fields that required a practical approach, online study curriculum and learning methodologies were established. Virtual reality and augmented reality are some technologies that are being used to enhance the learning experience even in practical courses. Any transformation is difficult to adapt to and switching completely to a digital platform for learning was quite a challenge for many students. The majority of institutes have had a distinctive rise in e-learning and have worked with online portals for students to attend classes remotely, giving them a classroom-like experience. Many educational institutes have adopted a hybrid approach to delivering the teaching-learning experience including live interaction sessions to enable peer to peer learning.

Moreover, the teaching process has transformed drastically in the e- world, adapting to keep students engaged for technical and theoretical sessions. Institutes have been experimenting with various innovative ways to increase student understanding, following are some ways in which online learning has been used to engage students and continue the learning process:

• Video Conferencing debates: students can participate in video conferencing and explore their own perspectives from different viewpoints, everyone can share their experiences and encourage others as well.
• Case Studies: involving relevant cases studied and stories can help gain more experience. Exploring different scenarios and different outcomes they can understand better.
• Question & Answer blogs: it helps overcome learning obstacles and leads to learning new ways to engage in lively discussions. This allows learners to get feedback and learn more topics.
• Online Tools: interactive tools and online platforms are used to conduct quizzes, generate discussion boards to keep students engaged.

Human capital management (HCM) focuses on an organization's practices related to human resource management. These practices are designed to meet the organization’s specific requirements and future growth strategies. Organizations implement human capital management in three categories: workforce acquisition, workforce management and workforce optimization. The focus of HCM is to strategically design and develop practices for effectively managing and developing the workforce. These activities range from workforce planning to performance management to workforce analytics. HCM is a strategic way to achieve organizational goals. Human capital management has become the front and centre for reinventing and rethinking workflow in the digital world today. It presents networking opportunities and career growth sitting at home by engaging with thousands of people through multiple platforms.

With the ever-changing face of the business world, the need for upgrading the existing workforce with new competencies and skills is definitely of great importance, but even more, emphasis needs to be given to the new workforce entering the organizations. HCM has become more important than ever because the employees hold a lot of business value. Employees with the right competencies and skills are the talent that leads the organization to success. 

The changes COVID have brought in the teaching and learning experience has definitely influenced the HCM practices. It has become vital for institutes to adapt and ensure that the student learns about workforce planning, engagement and career planning etc with the new perspectives and some permanent and not so permanent changes in the world post-pandemic. COVID has not only impacted HCM practices but has changed the way the workforce functions. Organizations and workforce expectations have also changed and this has given a new meaning to the old terms like employee engagement, talent retention and communication. Institutes need to educate students about the fast-changing expectations of the organizations and the employees. This requires understanding the changes in competency frameworks and business models to create better solutions in a rapidly evolving scenario. The new methods of e-learning adopted by the institutes have bridged this gap by providing students with live case study discussions, podcasts, guest lectures, question and answer blogs to name a few.

The future is full of hope, growth and progress. COVID has prepared businesses, institutes and students to handle disruptions across many areas. Learning new ways to source essential material and adopting new ways to increase connections helps in the better and richer engagement of students. HCM practices and strategies help students not only in understanding the business scenarios, challenges and methods to overcome them, but also helps them to navigate successfully in the times of online and virtual learning or Hybrid Learning.

Pratima Sheorey

Guest Author The author is the Director of Symbiosis Centre for Management and HRD Pune.