Human Resource Planning

HRPH22-1
By Prof. Anita Sarkar

How To Strike a Balance Between SIP

and Academics

Group - 10
Introduction
Before the commencement of the program, we were asked to get our points verified by the CRISP. Confused,
enthralled, and excited, we entered the MBA Life with expectations of a tad of stress but were unprepared for
the same.

The bombshell was dropped in orientation week, where we had to prepare ourselves for what lay ahead. We
had to prepare our CVs with verified points, Behavioural Questionnaires (BQs), committee selections, and
academics. Consequently, a spike in students' stress levels irrespective of their background. People possessing
work experience were not in touch with the academic rigor, and freshers were transitioned into a completely
new atmosphere of competition.

Many of us struggled to gather points to prepare our one pager as some who had good years of work
experience were finding it challenging to fill points catering to other headers like Positions of Responsibilities,
Extracurricular, Academic Achievements, etc. Freshers faced difficulty gathering enough points to complete
their one-pager due to a lack of work experience.

Not to mention academics was another factor to be considered on a priority basis. Human Resource
Management Program (HRM) had nine subjects with critical subjects like Quantitative Techniques for Human
Resource Management and Managerial Economics. Business Management (BM) had seven subjects. Every
student had to manage classes, quizzes, presentations, and assignments to maintain their grades. Moreover,
in term one, we had an outbound and rural immersion program as a non-credit mandatory program.
Furthermore, we had to maintain our extracurriculars as we were rigorously involved with committee
selection and sports contingent processes.

For some of us, this was the first time away from family members and friends, who are our constant support
systems and help manage and regulate our emotions.

All these factors, in totality, led to a substantial increase in stress levels. Dr. Pooja Mohanty also claimed that
young adults falling into the age group of 20-25 years were actively seeking counselling sessions.

There will undoubtedly be stressful times when pursuing an MBA because it is a demanding endeavour. This
encouraged us to dive deep into the study of establishing a balance between SIPs in addition to academic
rigors.
Objectives of the study
● Identify the various factors contributing to increased stress while handling academics and the SIP
process.
● Analysing how effective were the different preparation resources provided to guide us throughout the
SIP process.
● Comparative analysis of stress level of freshers with respect to students with prior work experience
and the ways to effectively practice stress management.
● Conduct primary research to understand how first year students strike a balance between their SIP
process and academics.
● Understand how the academic course of term did - 1 help the students with their SIP process
● Estimate expected areas of support by administration that can be provided to students in order to
facilitate their SIP preparation.

Data collection
XLRI follows a flipped-study hall approach. The understudies should pursue the course reading material for
ideas, then, at that point, address the case and afterward go to the classroom for talking about what solutions
they have come up with. Understudies are supposed to break down a case and accompany an answer before
the class starts. There are marks for class participation, and you are consistently under pressure in the study
hall.

A lot of things happen simultaneously, and you realize something is concealing in the corner holding back to
consume you off guard. Life was never so exceptionally hard as the first year of an MBA.

Alongside the classes, there is an oppression of surprise tests, the assignments tasks and short deadlines. Then
there is an errand of making a CV focusing on various areas, getting it surveyed from numerous individuals,
finishing a few certifications. The SIP process is exhausting. The preparation for the SIP would incorporate the
utilization of a ton of understanding materials. It goes from websites, magazines to MOOCs. This is trailed by
the focusing of the right organizations, going to mock interviews, group discussions and solving cases, and
learning systems. Not to neglect, one needs to watch out for the grades to put oneself in the final part of the
ordinary bend. The student, consequently, is left exclusively with 3 to 4 hours of rest.

So, gathering data from the students when there were already a lot of google forms floating around for the
projects was a difficult task. What we applied for the project then was a differential technique where we
floated forms for the people during the time, they could easily fill the data asked by us. We collected the data
using online google forms floated on social media like WhatsApp to gather as much data as possible. Post the
data collection part, we did the clean-up of the data which was one of the most important aspects of the
project. This data we had collected had numerous outliers and studying those was the crucial aspect of it.
Data analysis
From the responses received, on a surface level analysis, we found that the majority of the students thought
that the SIP process was not transparent. They also believed that had the process been more transparent, it
would have led to lesser stress.
Another factor was the Rural immersion and the Outbound program. Most of the students thought that if the
programs could be moved to another term, it would have caused less stress to them.
We also asked students regarding their views on CV preparations and GDPI preparation assistance. From the
data it seemed that most of the students were quite satisfied with the help.
Lastly, regarding the academic burden and support from faculty, data seemed to be skewed a little on the
negative side. A lot of students believed that there was lack of support from faculty for SIP preparations.

From the above data, it seems that we can continue with the CV and GDPI preparations that are provided to
the students. However, we should consider making the SIP process more transparent. We should also see if it
is possible to move at least one of the Rural immersion Program or the Outbound program to some other
term.

We also asked for some other factors which added to stress to students. Time Management seemed to be the
major problem followed by Academic Pressure.

Post this surface level analysis, we used the following two models for further analysis: Linear Regression and
KNN Classification

Linear Regression:
Linear regression plays out the errand to predict a dependent variable (y) in light of a given free & independent
variable (x). Thus, this procedure figures out a straight connection between x (input) and y(output).
Subsequently, the name is Linear regression.
In the figure above, X (input) is the work insight and Y (yield) is the compensation of an individual. The
regression line is the best fit line for our model.
Prior to attempting to fit a linear model to the dataset, one ought to evaluate whether there is a connection
between the factors. Obviously, this doesn't imply that one variable causes the other, however, there ought
to be some apparent connection between them.

KNN Algorithm:

One of the simplest machine learning algorithms, based on the supervised learning method, is K-Nearest
Neighbour. The K-NN algorithm makes the assumption that the new case and the existing cases are
comparable, and it places the new instance in the category that is most like the existing categories. A new data
point is classified using the K-NN algorithm based on similarity after all the existing data has been stored. This
means that utilising the K-NN method, fresh data can be quickly and accurately sorted into a suitable category.
Although the K-NN approach is most frequently employed for classification problems, it can also be utilised
for regression.

Since K-NN is a non-parametric technique, it makes no assumptions about the underlying data. It is also known
as a lazy learner algorithm since it saves the training dataset rather than learning from it immediately. Instead,
it uses the dataset to perform an action when classifying data. The KNN method simply saves the information
during the training phase, and when it receives new data, it categorises it into a category that is quite similar
to the new data.

After applying the prediction model for different number of neighbours on KNN, we got the below array of
prediction on our test data, where our dependent variable was “Stress”, while independent variables were -
Age, Academic Background, Gender, Transparency of process, Support from administration, Subjects, CV
preparation, BQ preparation. We tried multiple combinations of these independent variables with our
dependent variable of - Stress.
We got the below graph for different number of neighbours for KNN
From the above graph, we realized that our model is a little overfitted. As the number of neighbours increased,
the accuracy decreased, but it increased again. We believe with more data; we could run the model better
and create a better classification model.

The steps taken for the analysis

Recommendations
After Conducting a thorough analysis across the entire batch, we analysed various factors affecting the ability
to manage SIPs and Academics across various students. Some folks felt that they were quite comfortable going
through this entire process because they were efficient multitaskers, however, most of the others
(approximately 65%) students confessed that the initial 4 months at XLRI were extremely stressful and they
found it very difficult to manage multiple things on their plates that couldn’t be avoided. Considering all the
responses generated post conducting surveys based on demographic, academic, and environmental factors
we suggest the following Long-Term and Short-Term Recommendations:

Short-Term recommendations focus on solving the symptoms and the primary factors causing the problems:
 1. Transparency in the SIP process is a major problem caused by factors like lack of proper
communication channels amongst juniors and seniors as well as other concerned placement
authorities, so in order to treat that we recommend routine meetings organized amongst all the
stakeholders where everyone can come at a common forum and address each other issues. Lack of
transparency creates an unnecessary power imbalance and establishing proper flow of information
can serve this purpose to a great extent as well as reduce uncertainty in the junior batch.
2. The first term is rigorous for both BM and HR students on campus. Due to this even brilliant student
suffer academically because they are not able to handle the stress. In order to treat this, students
should be given more time and space to adjust to their external environment and rather than focusing
on being strict, the administration and seniors on campus should offer support to these students in
various possible ways. The aim here is to develop responsible managers who can think strategically,
act ethically, and at the same time show empathy towards others.
3. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) or the feeling of being unaccepted in college, in case one doesn’t summon
under peer pressure is another thing that bothers a lot of students initially due to which they end up
unnecessarily overexerting themselves and feel emotionally and mentally sick. In order to treat this
counselling facilities should be provided to students which are more accessible than what exist today.
This initiative shall be promoted by student representatives holding an authority on campus. Mental
Health is equally important as Physical Health and its high time to initiate certain measures on campus
to build awareness amongst the young minds.
4. Inability to manage time better than their peers and fear of missing deadlines was another factor that
added an additional stress. Activities like Rural Immersion and Outbound Programme are indeed a
very critical part of our curriculum, but they could easily be shifted to the other two terms in the first
year and not necessarily be conducted in the first term when students were already juggling between
lots of other things. This problem can be very easily treated by the student body communicating these
concerns to the relevant authorities. Open House should also be arranged more frequently where
such concerns can be addressed.

Long-Term Recommendations focus on solving the bottleneck of the problem and establishing approaches
that will be beneficial for our future batches:

1. In order to maintain transparency during the SIP process, we recommend an online application where
student’s queries can be addressed directly by people handling the process. This will benefit in three
ways:
(a) Students will get authentic information from credible sources, therefore redundant data and
rumours would automatically be avoided
(b) Since, they will receive an update about their status, students can plan their preparation for
the upcoming interviews and assessments better
(c) The Placement committee will have the entire authority to decide on the amount of
information to provide so that the privacy is maintained, but since there will be a common
platform, the feeling on uncertainty and anxiety amongst students will be much less
2. A thorough repository should be provided to the students explaining feedbacks about mock interviews
and GD’s given by students on campus. This can be incorporated on the currently existing REVAMP portal so
that the students can refer to the mistakes incurred by them and not repeat the same things on the D-Day.
3. In order to establish a parity between engineers and students from other academic backgrounds, the
college administration should modify the curriculum in such a way where both the parties feel equally
benefited with respect to the number of subjects coming from various backgrounds. Apart from this formal
peer learning structure should be promoted by the authorities at the same time.
4. Learning can be made more interesting by organizing on-site visits for the students on campus where they
can go and study the problem situation on a real time basis and develop a practical approach. Apart from this
group assignments, and case study-based learning curriculum should be promoted by professors on campus.
5. The Feedback requested by students at the end of each term should be done twice, one while the term is
going so that administration can better understand student problems and devise effective solutions to solve
those issues while the students are still left to give their end term exams. This will also build trust of students
in the institution and at the same time students will feel that their opinions are valued.

Future Scope
Difficulty in striking a balance between SIPs and Academics in the first term is a major problem faced by B-
School Students across the Country, so in order to develop a better understanding in the future, the scope of
this analysis should be expanded across various management colleges by conducting inter-college surveys
considering all the internal and external environmental factors. The data thus derived would include a large
target audience, and thus will help us to come up with advanced recommendations.

Conclusion
According to our analysis we can conclude that currently students are facing difficulty in striking a balance
between SIP and Academics at XLRI and effective measures need to be taken in order to improve this condition
in the near future. Primary analysis focused on gathering relevant student perspectives through surveys and
steps involved in the thorough secondary analysis conducted by the team are mentioned are that “Stress is
real in B-schools & proactive steps should be taken through effective time management sessions. These
sessions can be conducted for the students pre joining the MBA program.”