Tips from Top - "Impact of Technology on Human Behavior in Industry: Human Behavior and the Future of the Corporate World”. Mr Prateek Dubey, Director – HR, IDFC Bank

On the bright morning of 25^th February 2017, the students of MBA, IIT Kanpur had the opportunity to interact with the HR Director at IDFC Bank – Mr. Prateek Dubey. Mr. Dubey, with his work experience in various major firms of the country – Coca-Cola, Suzlon Energy, and Jindal Saw Ltd to name a few – provided invaluable insights into the world of human relations and psychology. Sir covered a variety of topics in his talk and kept the seminar engaging with many activities and brainstorming sessions.

Mr. Dubey started off with engaging the audience with a rudimentary question – what is MBA? He went on to explain that MBA can be defined as the most beautiful attitude, as it is the attitude of the manager that makes him a leader and makes all the difference. As an example, he claimed that a Chartered Accountant would probably know much more about how the finances of any firm work than an MBA would, but it takes the decision-making ability and aptitude for quick thinking that makes him/her the manager.

Talking about the impact of technology on our lives, Mr. Dubey talked about how in today’s world, we tend to think about how another person can benefit us, and only then do we consider spending time with him/her. We have social media like LinkedIn and Facebook to reveal all such information for us, and in future, everyone will have access to psychometric profiling software that will enable us to gauge another person’s usefulness without even meeting them. This has long term impacts on HR and recruitment, as psychometric tests will enable a firm to hire or reject any potential candidate. Here, Mr. Dubey gave a disclaimer: however intelligent AI becomes, the need for humans will always be there in order to consider all the contingencies before making a final decision.

Another aspect that Mr. Dubey talked about was leader-follower dynamics. More often than not, it so happens, that we tend to blindly follow our leaders. This is a dangerous attitude, as it can have grave consequences. The leader might falter, but more than that, the followers will not have a chance to grow themselves. Showing the audience, the other face of the coin, Mr. Dubey told us about the followership theory: a successful leader comes only out of diligent followers, which is to say, the ability of the leader is limited by the attitude of the followers too.

Mr. Dubey kept the talk an engaging one by carrying out many group activities throughout in order to elucidate many concepts relating to psychology and human behavior. He also touched upon a variety of topics such as moral duties of humans, cognitive biases, group dynamics, placement scenarios in colleges, the history of IDFC, and a lot more. It was on the whole, an enriching experience with innumerable lessons that the students got to learn on a simple Saturday morning.