Predictive Analytics for HR

Human Resources has long been looked at as a touchy-feely business. The stereotype of its practitioners is that they give warm and fuzzy answers to most business queries. While they put Talent Management as a priority, yet they lack the analytical tools to be able to deliver the agenda. As Zach Thomas of Forrester says, “Forward-looking analytics that push well beyond traditional metrics are the cornerstone of this effort. But siloed systems, inconsistent data, and a lack of benchmarks and tools have made this increasingly difficult to achieve. To address this problem and become more strategic, HR professionals must get their arms around the data, identify key performance indicators (KPIs), settle on a technology approach, and infuse the data into their organization.”

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Solving a Mistry

 What do you get when you combine a Web cam, a projector and a mirror, all connected wirelessly to a Bluetooth smartphone. You get Sixth Sense. It is still a mystery product that is not commercially available yet. But it will and will cost under $300 when commercially produced. The “Mistry” in question is Pranav Mistry, Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. How do we make the real world interact with information using gestures. That is a mystery Pranav and Pattie Mae have solved.Access to information that exists somewhere can give you an advantage. Hey look what having a search engine can do to the way you retrieve information. The constraint is that you pretty much need to have a cell phone or a portable computer which will give you access to the database. Read more

The Charm of Raga Desh

Classical Music from India is broadly divided into Hindustani Music and Carnatic. What I heard at home was almost entirely Hindustani Classical with a limited exposure to a few composers of Western Classical. The radio was our chief source of music.

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Work at Fun to Have Fun @ Work

Fresh out of Business School, MBA in hand, the taste of toast and mixed fruit jam still fresh in the mouth, when I joined the work place, life was very simple. We came in to work and bust our collective guts trying to work. We all hoped that the big boss would get impressed with our dedication. That had the potential of a generous appraisal rating for that year. Even when that did not happen, all of us gnashed our teeth, wrote his name on paper (in those days the boss was usually a “He”) and shred that up to express our point of view (to ourselves). There was no such thing as fun at work. Read more