Pharma Veterans

HR Monitor 2025 by McKinsey Part 3 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1141 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1141 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Cedric Fauntleroy Credit: Tran Nhu Tuan Credit: Pavel Danilyuk Continued from Part 2… Preamble McKinsey report HR Monitor 2025 highlights the following trends that HR managers/leaders should recognize, understand, and work on. We took the first two in the last blog post; the others we shall take up in this and following post(s) and then conclude the topic. Five Trends That HR Leaders Must Recognize 1. Workforce planning is not approached strategically enough 2. Talent acquisition is becoming more complex 3. Employee development continues to be highly fragmented  4. Employee experience is essential 5. Gen AI and shared-services ce...

HR Monitor 2025 by McKinsey Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1140 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1140 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Gustavo Fring Credit: MART Production Continued from Part 1… Preamble McKinsey report HR Monitor 2025 highlights the following trends that HR managers/leaders should recognize, understand, and work on. We took the first two in the last blog post; the others we shall take up in this and following post(s) and then conclude the topic. Five Trends That HR Leaders Must Recognize 1. Workforce planning is not approached strategically enough 2. Talent acquisition is becoming more complex 3. Employee development continues to be highly fragmented  4. Employee experience is essential 5. Gen AI and shared-services centers should boost effici...

HR Monitor 2025 by McKinsey Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1139 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1139 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Artem Podrez Credit: cottonbro studio Credit: Edmond Dantès Preamble Excerpt from McKinsey report preface. [Quote] To help HR leaders compare their functions with others’ and benchmark their progress accordingly, we’ve repeated and expanded our HR Monitor report. Last year’s report covered Germany’s HR landscape. This year, to create a robust set of meaningful indicators across the HR topics most relevant to European organizations, we gathered data from 1,925 companies and insights from more than 4,000 employees across Europe and, for comparison purposes, the United States. This year’s report highlights developments in both what HR delivers—suc...

Evolution of HR Functions – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1080 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1080 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Anna Tarazevich EqualStock IN Credit: Ron Lach Preamble The role of Human Resource (HR) managers has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two decades. Once primarily seen as administrative professionals handling payroll, compliance, and hiring, HR managers have now become strategic business partners, culture architects, and drivers of digital transformation. This shift has been fueled by technological advancements, evolving workplace expectations, globalization, and a stronger emphasis on employee experience.   From Administrative to Strategic HR Long before, HR used to be Personnel Division which only did documentation of hiring,...

Employees’ Grievances Against and Within HR – Part II – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1032 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1032 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing our contributions here. Credit: Mikhail Nilov Credit: Thirdman Credit: Vlada Karpovich Preamble In the last post, I gave a broad review of employees’ grievances against HR. In this post, I shall present the viewpoint of HR on the situation. This is not exactly ‘Shikwah (grievance)’ and ‘Jawab e Shikwah (counter-grievance)’, but rather ‘Shikwah dar Shikwah’. It is so because HR has its own side to tell what makes their job tougher by the day. HR Position in the Corporate HR gained much significance during the last decades. It evolved and took hold of the entire organization. Some years ago, HR reigned supreme, and HR Heads were dreaded by the line managers in many ...

Employees’ Grievances Against and Within HR – Part I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1031 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1031 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing our contributions here. Credit: Andrea Piacquadio Credit: Craig Adderley Credit: Yan Krukau This topic was triggered by an article in New York Times. Link at the end. Preamble In this two-part series, I shall talk about employees’ grievances about HR department/ Team/ Function. The employees in any corporate hold a load of complaints against HR, while HR employees themselves have complaints against other corporate employees and management. It appears that both parties are unhappy. In this mini-series, I shall take up grievances that corporate employees carry against HR in part I, and the grievances of HR employees against corporate staff in Part II. Birth of HR (th...

Is Your Learning & Development Functioning? – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1030 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1030 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing our contributions here. Credit: Christina Morillo Credit: fauxels Preamble Learning and Development – L&D – is among the cardinal functions of HR. The reason is simple; it is about people/ human resource/ human capital.  In many pharma companies, L&D is either available as Training department, or worse still, as Sales Training Department. Which seems to signify that only salespeople need training which is done for products and selling skills, and no one else is a candidate for learning. Sometimes, Training department arranges external trainers for certain topics which might have come out of the standard TNA – Training Needs Analysis, as part of performance a...

Corporate HR Function – Responsibilities and Limitations II – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1014 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1014 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Andrea Piacquadio Credit: Christina Morillo Credit: Mizuno K HR – Human Resources Department – as it is mostly referred to, is among key functions in any corporate.  In this 2-part blog post, I have addressed the following points: • What are key functions of HR – in a simplified way • Is HR performing its functions the way it is required to do? If not, what are the limitations? • What should be done to make HR effective and leading? Reasons HR is Not as Effective as it Should Be Ineffective Performance Management Systems Performance management is often seen as a bureaucratic process rather than a tool for employee g...

Corporate HR Function – Responsibilities and Limitations I – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1013 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1013 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Lubomir Satko Credit: Mikhail Nilov Credit: Ron Lach HR – Human Resources Department – as it is mostly referred to, is among key functions in any corporate. Owing to its importance, the entrepreneurs prefer to keep it directly under them for as long as they can. It is the entrepreneurs’ wish to control the staff tightly, hence the love for HR function. HR is one of the two functions that are very close to the top boss/owner; finance and HR. Finance is about money matters, and HR is about people matters; both are vital areas. In this 2-part blog post, I wish to address the following points: • What are key functions of HR – in...