The Future of Work Conference – Hyderabad was held at the Westin Mindspace on 25th October 2017. The inaugural session began with Dr. Kiranmai Pendyala, Chairperson – Hyderabad Chapter, AMCHAM and Corp VP HR EMEA, AMD, welcoming the audience. Consul General Katherine Hadda from the U.S. Consulate Hyderabad spoke on the need to bridge the gap with educational institutions geared up as the future of tomorrow. Mr. Utkarsh Palnitkar, National Head Infrastructure – Government and Healthcare, National Head – Life Sciences Practice, KPMG, and one of the founding members of the AMCHAM India Hyderabad Chapter, spoke on managing geographic diverse work teams and the challenge of data security across digital networks. He mentioned that the way employees are treated will become more important as it will become necessary to treat them as customers.

The first session was ‘Future of Work/Technology’ moderated by Mr. V. Laxmikanth, NEB Member, AMCHAM and MD, Broadridge Financial Solutions. The panelists included Dr. Balaji Utla, CEO, Kriya Health, Mr. Jaideep Agarwal, MD Talent, Deloitte Support Services and Mr. Ramesh Loganathan, Professor Co-Innovation, IIIT Hyderabad. The discussion focused on how data is the new oil, helping economies drive a new set of things, and how to leverage data.

The second session concentrated on ‘Future of Worker/Jobs.’ The session was moderated by Mr. Abhishek Tomar, MD India Operation, S&P Global, and featured Mr. Ranjan Patnaik, Director South Asia & ASEAN, E. I. DuPont India, Mr. Reddy Malledy, MD, CDK Global India and Mr. Arijit Sarker, VP Global Ad Campaign Operations, Google India. They discussed how this revolution requires a different skill set to have. Earlier there was time to train and re-train employees but the current revolution is fast paced and organizations have to augment themselves to match the markets. It was emphasized that investing and re-skilling people is important.

The post lunch session was ‘Nex Gen’ where Ms. Rajita Singh, HR Head, Broadridge Financial Solutions interviewed Miss Ishita Katyal, the youngest Indian author and TEDx speaker. The fourth session focused on ‘Future of Leadership’ and was moderated by Dr. Kiranmai Pendyala along with Ms. Sheila Vinczeller, Chief Diversity Officer & VP Talent, International Paper, Mr. Prakash Bodla, VP Engineering and Centre Head of Hyderabad Research & Design Centre, UTC and Mr. V. Laxmikanth, MD, Broadridge Financial Solutions. It was noted that leadership needs to change according to the change in work dynamics and how to steer the extremely creative Gen Z workers.

The last session for the day was ‘Future of HR’ moderated by Mr. Mukund Menon, Director HR & Communications for India Region, International Paper and the other panelists included Mr. D.P. Singh, Chairman – HR Committee, AMCHAM and VP HR India & South Asia, IBM India, Mr. Sunil Bijlani, Sr. VP HR Asia, Synchrony Financial and Mr. Sushant Dwivedy, Sr VP, Aspiring Minds. The discussion centered on how cognitive technologies are very powerful technologies that enable humans to perform at a different level. Hence HR will have to focus on how to simplify, how to differentiate talent in the marketplace and help businesses navigate through that talent to enable higher business outcomes.

Mr. Shashidhar Reddy, Vice Chairman – Hyderabad Chapter, AMCHAM and VP Qualcomm, gave the vote of thanks and thanked the sponsors, CDK Global India, United Technologies, S&P Global, International Paper, Belcan and Broadridge, for a successful event.