Last January Anudrutta Fouzdar, Chetan Dubey and I, students of MBA – HRM of Xavier University Bhubaneshwar got the opportunity to visit Singapore for an HR conference through our International Relations Committee. It was a conference being conducted for the students of Magellan Institute pursuing MBA in International HR management. (The Magellan Institute, based in Paris, France has entered two years ago into an official partnership with XIMB).

The three of us belong to different professional backgrounds and thus could exchange our diverse experience and relate to HR and its practices in different industries. While Anudrutta has worked for a media advertising firm, Chetan, an engineer by profession, has an experience in Industrial Relations. I, on the other hand, have pursued Bachelors in Management Studies and worked in a Transaction Advisory firm as an Analyst. 

The areas of Human Resource Management that we covered over the 4-day long conference were: HR Practices in Asia, Global Learning and Development Management, Compensation trends in APAC, Immigration and relocation in Singapore and management of a Global Employment Company. The discussions were highly engaging and gave us a plethora of practical knowledge about how HRM is practiced in the world around us. The practical knowledge was a lot easier to follow and understand due to a strong theoretical base that we have built up over the past year at Xavier University Bhubaneshwar. 

We also came to know about the similarities and differences that exist between Indian and French practices and the way they are perceived in their respective societies. 

Each of the speakers came from a diverse background, not only in terms of their nationality but also from diverse industries. This gave us an interesting perspective to the challenges faced by each industry in different countries and how we as future HR managers are supposed to design the solutions. 

The visit to Schneider Electric’s plant in Indonesia added a new lens to our vision of how a factory operates. We were given the freedom to ask many questions to the staff in the factory. The staff was also glad to answer our queries.