Alumni Association of Xavier Institute of Social Service (AAXISS), Mumbai Chapter, organized the 16^th Mumbai Chapter Reunion on 15 October, 2022 at Mumbai. The event saw more than 150 attendees, few even travelled from Indore, Ahmedabad, Pune, and others.

The reunion saw energetic and insightful exchange of dialogues among the panel members moderated by leaders like Prashant Parashar and Manish Kumar. 

The session started off with discussion on “Enabling Career choices- Myths and Musts”, where Mr Amit Prakash, HR Head at Avenue E-commerce, Mr Ashutosh Srivastava Head HR India at CLSA, Ms Puja Sengupta HR generalist at Wella India, and Mr Aaron from Financial Management from XISS participated and talked about their transitions and career ladder and lattice, what worked for them and what did not.

Mr Parashar emphasized on the possibility of anything that one could master and may become obsolete. Hence, the learning becomes a continuous process and we need to focus on the possibilities that it brings to the table. The panel also focused on how career choices impact people around and especially their families. The discussion also saw insights on how the definition of growth and career choices are unique and personal to individuals and no other person is qualified to judge the same. With a fresh perspective Mr Aaron, a current student from XISS spoke about what the current MBA students would look at, from good pay packages, cultural orientation, reputation of the company, and empowerment to name a few.

The second panel discussion for the day, threw insightful conversation on “Moonlighting, the dilemma, ethics and balancing art”, where Mr Rajorshi Ganguli, President and Global Head HR at Alkem Laboratories, Mr Rajeshwar Tripathi CHRO for Automotive and Farm Sector at M&M, Ms Poonam Burman CHRM- Beauty & Well Being and Personal Care Business at Hindustan Unilever, and Ms Tanya from HRM, XISS talked in detail about relevancy to different segment of the industry, market, talent pools, customer information, data privacy, securement of various fragments of the organisations, and leaders influencing the process and policies at board level, and the ground reality addressing the challenges and the opportunities.

Perhaps, the pandemic redefined the scope of moonlighting and ways organisations deal with it, and now it is not limited to IT industries only. The members talked on how manufacturing industries, pharmaceutical industry and FMCG looks at it, the ethical part bounded by the code of conduct and the bigger questions why people do moonlighting maybe the level of engagements and fear of unemployability. Today the industry is talking about the flexibility in approach, endorsement subject to employment contract between employees and employers and the future of the workplace with gig workforce coming in. The pandemic, great resignation and retention, and the future of the workplace is all about agility and hybrid model of working. Today it is not only about ethics and information sharing, it’s about mental health, wellbeing, relevance of skill sets, and productivity that HR leaders should look at while addressing in their organisational context and dynamics.  

It was also discussed that individual’s space augmentation, on fundamental dialogues on how to practise an additional skill set out of their bounded working hours and when there is no conflict of interest to the current job role and organization. As it may be inevitable with an evolving economy and reduction in days of work from 6 to 5 and even 4 days a week, which may be non-conflicting and freelancing in nature and flexibility in approach.

Ms Tanya, current HRM student from XISS emphasized that today it is no longer financial or just passion, but it is more of learning new skills and aspirations to grow quickly with additional skill sets and applying at the individual’s behest with more digital orientation and accessibility. It may further be taken as a win-win situation for both employee and organisation where additional skills might directly or indirectly impact better productivity and better holistic engagement.

But with time we may see how leaders face this as a challenge or an opportunity to redefine the policies and way of working, and keep the business priorities on top.

Further, Mr Ashok Priyadarshi VP HR & CSR at Alkem Laboratories addressed the delegates on the vision and way forward of AAXISS Mumbai Chapter. The event saw many veteran and senior leaders from the industries participating and relieving their college days memories among their friends, batchmates and fellow college mates.  

To name few leaders who attended the reunion were, Dr Jayant Kumar, CHRO ACC & Ambuja Cement, Dr Sunil Singh CHRO Stellar Value chain, Rajesh Derhgawen CHRO Nippon Life india Asset Mgmt, Mr C K Singh, XISS Alumni batch of 1979, Mr Prabhat Sinha, Director Government and Public Affairs Boehringer Ingelheim, Mr Amitabh Singh, Head Business HR ICICI, Mr Arjun Singh, VP HR Ceat, Mr Shyamlee Minz Director HR MBCC Group , Ms Swapna Bandopadhyay, GM, HR Bank of Baroda, Mr Amitava Mukherjee, Director Greentree learnings, Ms Vinita Charles, Jt President & Head HR Birla Copper, Dr Partha Raut HR Advisor, Mr Niraj Agrawal, Head HR, Wockharth Ltd, Mr Dinesh Prasad, HPCL, Mr Jaidip Chatterjee, CHRO SREI, Mr Jayanta Saha, CHRO Indira IVF, Mr Tirthankara Raychaudhury, VP HR Times Bennett Coleman, Mr Pauline Coutinho VP HR Interactive Avenues and many more.    The evening culminated with lots of memories and good times among the Alumni/ae and students from XISS. The event was partnered by DarwinBox, Mentoria, SSNR, Thomas International, Mindstream Consulting, Arrayjobs, and HRKatha.