HRMIT : Mit's Human Resource Insights

We have all heard it. It is the background noise of the Indian corporate machine. "Sir, the report is 90% done, just a few small data points are missing. Chalta hai na?" (It’s fine, right?) "The logo is stretched, but the client won't notice. Chalta hai." Loosely translated, "Chalta Hai" means "It will do" or "Let it pass." In our social lives, this attitude makes us resilient and flexible. But in a professional environment, it is a cancer. It transforms deadlines into "suggestions" and turns quality standards into "optional guidelines." It is the root cause of why many promising companies hit a "growth ceiling" they cannot break through.

We have all been there. You spent two months sourcing candidates . You conducted three rounds of interviews. You negotiated the salary, got the budget approved and sent the offer letter. The candidate accepted, said "Thank you so much," and promised to join on the 1st of the month. The 1st arrives. You have the laptop ready. The team is waiting. 9:00 AM: No show. 10:00 AM: You call. No answer. 11:00 AM: Phone switched off.

If the Wage Code is about money and the IR Code is about power, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code, 2020 is about operations . It consolidates 13 old Acts including the Factories Act and the Contract Labour (CLRA) Act into one. The goal? To finally modernize workplace safety in India and drastically reduce the "License Raj" that has plagued manufacturing and operations for decades.

Think of the Industrial Relations (IR) Code, 2020 as the new rulebook for the power dynamic between "Management" and "Unions." It retires three of the most contentious laws in Indian history:  The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 ,  The Trade Unions Act, 1926 , and  The Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946 .

If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of welfare laws in India, you are not alone. Think of the Code on Social Security, 2020 as the ultimate "Welfare" update for your workforce. It takes 9 distinct Acts including EPF, ESI, Gratuity and Maternity Benefit and rolls them into one universal umbrella.

Let’s be honest: out of all four codes, the Code on Wages, 2019 is the one that’s going to impact your balance sheet the most. It doesn’t matter if you’re a scrappy s tartup or a manufacturing giant, this code changes how you structure salaries, pay bonuses, and settle dues for everyone.

For over 70 years, India's labour landscape was governed by a complex web of 29 Central laws and over 100 State laws. Many of these, like the Workmen's Compensation Act (1923) or the Factories Act (1948) , were drafted for a different era.

For decades, Cooperative Societies, whether District Dairy Unions, Cooperative Banks or Sugar Factories, have operated on a governance model that closely mirrors government departments. The current HR scenario in most cooperatives is characterized by "Order-Based" Management . Instead of established policies, decisions are often made via ad-hoc "Office Orders" or Board Resolutions. Promotions are dictated by seniority, and the "Permanent" employee mindset often stifles productivity. But the market has changed. You are no longer just competing with other societies; you are competing with private banks, multinational dairy giants, and fintech startups. To survive, you need the agility of a corporate entity while respecting the democratic roots of the cooperative. The Strategy: A "Three-Tier" Architecture The biggest mistake HR managers make is trying to put everything into one document. To build a corporate-style manual that is legally compliant, ...

In a historic move reshaping India's employment landscape, the Government on Friday (November 21, 2025) officially notified all four Labour Codes. This notification ushers in major reforms, including extending universal social security coverage to gig workers, ensuring gender pay parity, expanding safety rights for women, providing statutory backing for minimum wages, and formally introducing fixed-term employment. This decision consolidates 29 previously existing labour laws, some dating back to the 1930s into four simplified, modern codes designed to balance worker welfare with ease of doing business. PM Modi: "A Strong Foundation for Viksit Bharat" Following the notification, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to emphasize the government's commitment to the workforce. Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X on Friday 21-11-2025: "The new Labour Codes will lay a strong foundation for social security, minimum and timely wages, safe workplaces, an...

HR in Practice: Mastering Performance Management & Appraisals In this HR in Practice journey we've successfully brought the employee into the organization. We mapped out the HR Plan, sourced the talent, negotiated the offer, and designed a welcoming onboarding experience. Now comes the long game: how do we make sure they actually deliver value? Which brings us to the most debated season on the corporate calendar, the performance appraisal. For a lot of rising HR professionals this feels like an administrative burden, a form to be filled out and filed. It isn't. It's genuinely one of the most powerful tools for business alignment available to you, and the catch is that what an appraisal is actually for looks completely different depending on whether you're sitting in a private firm or a cooperative. Let's work through how to build something that fits your specific reality.

HR in Practice: Managing the Logistics of Selection (Physical & Virtual) In previous guides we covered how to interview and how to select the right person, the strategy side of things. But as any rising HR professional learns fast, strategy is useless without execution, and behind every smooth interview process sits a genuine mountain of operational work: shortlisting, panel formation, scheduling, and documentation. If that backstage work is messy, the interview itself will feel chaotic no matter how well designed it was. If it's organized, the interview feels professional, and the candidate notices the difference even if they can't quite name it.

HR in Practice: A Guide to Welcoming New Employees (on Day 1) In our hiring journey so far we've done the hard work, planned our needs, sourced the talent, navigated the selection funnel and successfully negotiated the offer. Our new employee is about to walk through the door. Now what? For decades, the first day on the job was treated as a simple administrative hurdle. As rising HR professionals, it's worth recognizing this moment for what it actually is: the most critical first impression your company will ever get the chance to make. The welcome isn't a formality. It's a strategic tool that can determine whether a new hire feels like an outsider or like part of the team from hour one, and that single day genuinely shapes their productivity, loyalty, and how long they stay.

HR in Practice: A Guide to Onboarding & Induction Across the last few articles in this series we've covered the entire hiring journey, from HR Planning all the way through Offers and Negotiation, and we've successfully selected and hired our ideal candidate. The next step, Onboarding and Induction, is arguably the most fragile moment in the whole employee lifecycle. The work isn't done. The real work of building a loyal, productive, engaged employee has genuinely just begun.

HR in Practice: A Guide to Offers & Negotiation – Closing the Deal We've been on a long talent-hunting journey by this point. We planned our workforce, sourced the candidates, selected the best of them, and interviewed our finalists. Finally, the moment arrives: you and the panel are all in agreement, you've found your person. So we're done, right? Just send an email and they start? Not quite. This is actually the most delicate and emotionally charged stage in the entire process, the offer and negotiation. It's where all your hard work either pays off cleanly, or unravels in a single five-minute phone call. As the HR professional in the room, your job is to be the calm, prepared guide who brings the candidate all the way over the finish line.

I've been fortunate to spend two decades in the fields of HR and Administration. In that time one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that what we read in a textbook is often very different from what we face in the real world. A single 'best practice' rarely exists because the right approach varies so much from one organization to another. My core experience has been a deep dive into the member-driven bylaws-focused culture of cooperatives. This has given me a unique perspective to simultaneously study and understand how HR practices are managed in other worlds from the speed-and-profit-driven private sector to the formal compliance-heavy structures of public organizations. This understanding is why I'm so passionate about this topic. Theory can define workforce planning but it doesn't prepare you for the real-world conversation when your budget is suddenly cut. What works for a flexible startup is completely different from the formal bylaws-driven process ...

HR in Practice: A Guide to Interviewing Candidates In our last guide we built the Selection Funnel, taking a pile of two hundred resumes and filtering it down to four or five genuinely promising candidates. We've screened them, tested their skills, and now we're at what feels like the final boss battle: the interview. This is the part everyone thinks they already know how to do. After all, it's just a conversation, right? Wrong. A casual chat is actually one of the worst ways to hire, precisely because it's where every human bias, every "gut feeling," creeps in unchecked, and you end up hiring the person you liked most rather than the person who's actually best for the job. An interview isn't a chat. It's a structured business process built to gather evidence, and your job as an HR professional isn't just to sit in the room. It's to design and manage the whole thing.

HR in Practice: A Guide to Selection Process – How to Find the Right Person and Avoid the Wrong One In the last guide we talked about sourcing, casting the net wide and getting the right people interested. Now the applications are pouring in and your inbox is full of resumes. Welcome to Selection. If HR Planning was writing the recipe and Sourcing was buying the ingredients, Selection is the actual cooking. This is where all the prep work comes to life, the moment you turn a stack of digital paper into a living, breathing new employee. It's one of the most exciting parts of HR. It's also, without much competition, the most important.

HR in Practice: A Guide to Sourcing in HR – Where to Find Talent In our last guide we built the HR Plan. We know how many people we need and what skills they should bring. Now comes the part that actually gets exciting: where do we find them? This is Talent Sourcing, and it's worth thinking of it as a two-stage decision rather than a single task. HR Planning was deciding what kind of fish you need to catch, say ten small fish and one big one. Sourcing is figuring out which pond to fish in and what bait actually works there. Get the sourcing strategy wrong and even a perfect plan produces an empty net.

HR in Practice: A Guide to HR Planning – Getting the Right People at the Right Time When you start your career in HR, you'll hear the term HR Planning thrown around constantly. It sounds complicated, but underneath it's really just one simple goal: making sure your company has the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right jobs, at the right time. I like to think of it as building a cricket team. You wouldn't field a side with ten wicketkeepers and no fast bowlers; you'd lose before the match even started. HR planning is how an organization picks its team deliberately rather than reactively and being prepared beats reacting to a crisis almost every time.

HR Structure and Responsibilities in Dairy Cooperative Unions: A Journey and Learning Working in a dairy cooperative is not the same as working in a private sector company or a government department. Here, Human Resource Management goes beyond administration and workforce planning. Every HR decision connects back to the livelihoods of milk producers who depend on the cooperative for their daily income. The cooperative system stands on trust, fairness, transparency and collective progress. Over the years at our Union, we have learned that HR in a cooperative requires patience, sensitivity and the ability to balance human values with organizational efficiency. Even today, after decades of experience, the cooperative environment continues to teach us something new each day. Understanding the Cooperative Environment Dairy cooperatives work within a three-tier democratic system, where milk producers are not only suppliers, but owners and decision-makers. 1. Village Level – Milk Prod...

  HRM in Cooperatives - Role & Challenges Human Resource Management (HRM) in cooperative organizations occupies a distinctive space in the world of work. Unlike private companies, which prioritize profit, or government bodies, which follow rigid hierarchies, cooperatives are guided by mutual benefit, democratic decision-making, and service to their members. Employees in cooperatives are not just workforce resources but they are also stakeholders in a shared mission. This dual role of people as both contributors and beneficiaries makes HRM in cooperatives both deeply meaningful and structurally complex. Understanding HR’s role in such organizations requires looking beyond standard policies and salaries. HR in cooperatives is responsible for nurturing a culture that balances professional efficiency with cooperative values ensuring organizational goals are met while maintaining trust, fairness, and shared growth. Role of HRM in Cooperative Organizations 1. Preserving Cooperativ...

How to Write a Job Description That Attracts the Right Talent and Scares Away the Wrong I've been in HR for a while, and let's be honest, I've seen and probably written my share of terrible job descriptions (JDs). We all have. They're a boring, copy-pasted laundry list of internal jargon, buzzwords and impossible demands. We write that we need "10 years of dairy plant management experience" for a role that the by-laws or R & S policy have locked at a "Production Executive" pay grade and then we wonder why our inbox is full of unqualified candidates.

Hiring is the most high-stakes function of any organization. A great hire can build your future; a bad hire can drain your resources for months. Yet, so many companies operate on "gut feeling." This is a recipe for chaos, bias and legal headaches. The antidote is a strong, clear and comprehensive Recruitment & Selection Policy. This isn't a short, generic template. This is the complete, end-to-end framework, covering every step from the first job requisition to the final offer letter. I've built in the approval chains, the specific sourcing strategies for different levels and the selection tools (like written tests and Group Discussions). A Recruitment & Selection policy is not a "one-size-fits-all" document; it's a mirror of the organization's core DNA. A public sector (government) organization is often bound by rigid rules, so its policy is a fortress of compliance, focused on absolute parity, fixed pay scales and a slow, methodical pro...