The success of an organization greatly depends on its Human Resource (HR), where HR plays a vital role in maintaining and enhancing its human capital. As with any organization, Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) too need a solid HR base to scale up their activities and contribute towards the larger quest of achieving financial inclusion for all.
In tune with this, FICCI organized a HR conference on “Scaling MFI Activity by Strengthening Human Resource” on 21st & 22nd January 2010. The conference was focused on sharing the best HR practices across industries that MFIs can adapt to ramp up their activities.
The four broad areas that were addressed in the conference were:
- Recruitment & Training: Focused on hiring and training methodologies needed for Human Resource development in the microfinance sector.
- Compensation & Benefits: On structuring compensation and incentives in a manner, which would drive the right behavior
- Organizational Structure & Succession Planning: Creating leadership and grooming personnel to reach higher levels
- Culture & Ethics: Understanding the crucial nature of ethics and culture of the company.
The conference had a format of panel discussions followed by four workshops on the topics discussed by the panel. Bindu Ananth, President, IFMR Trust, moderated the panel discussion on ‘Recruitment and Training’.
Bindu moderating the panel discussion
The four workshops acted as a platform to brainstorm on how the corporate experiences can translate into ground realities for MFIs. Of the four workshops, one on Benchmarks and best practices in up-scaling recruitment was facilitated by Madhuri Menon and another workshop on Meeting future training demands and competencies/skills gaps of exploding organizations was facilitated by Udaya Kumar.
On the closing day, FICCI’s financial committee’s chairperson Ms. Naina Lal Kidwai moderated the session on ‘Culture and Ethics’.
The conference was extremely insightful and had participants from across the industry including key members from Fullerton India Credit company, Ujjivan, Unitus, Cocoon, Sequoia capital, Canara, HSBC, OBC, Life insurance company amongst others, who shared their experiences on different topics.
The HR and Training team from IFMR attended the conference.
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Poorna Chandrasekaran, IFMR Rural Finance (presently known as Dvara KGFS), contributed to this post.
