Author: Prajjal Saha | HRKatha

The 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal serves as a stark reminder of the consequences companies face when environmental considerations are neglected. The German auto giant’s deliberate deception shattered consumer trust, resulting in boycotts, plummeting sales and a blemish on the brand’s reputation. Similar ethical lapses have plagued other global brands. Swedish retail giant H&M has faced scrutiny for its labour practices, while the ubiquitous Nestlé has been criticised for its water extraction practices in developing countries. Today’s consumers are more discerning than ever. They hold brands accountable for their entire ecosystem—not just the products themselves, but also the actions of their…

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors are swiftly reshaping the corporate landscape, transcending their niche status to become central pillars for long-term value creation by organisations. This transformation signifies the acknowledgment that sustainable business practices are not merely ethical choices but also catalysts for operational efficiency, innovation and competitive advantage. Emerging from its nascent stage in India, ESG is gaining substantial traction, especially among large corporations and multinational companies (MNCs). While smaller companies are yet to fully embrace it, the mandated ESG reporting under the Companies Act is anticipated to serve as a catalyst for broader adoption in the future.…

We’re a decade in, and guess what? We’re just getting started! Ten years ago, HRKatha emerged amidst a landscape starved of knowledge. We identified a critical need – the dissemination of industry insights – and filled that void with a pioneering daily news service delivered directly to HR professionals. This seemingly modest decision proved to be a cornerstone, fostering a unique niche for HRKatha within India’s human resources domain. The intervening decade has been a whirlwind of transformation for the world of work. Automation’s relentless march, the white-hot competition for skilled talent, and the burgeoning focus on employee well-being have…

Imagine a massive cargo ship, the Maersk Eagerness, caught in a frantic race against the clock. The crew scrambles to load and unload containers at breakneck speed, chasing ever-increasing throughput targets. But their relentless pursuit of speed backfires spectacularly. As containers pile up on the docks, bottlenecks form, grinding operations to a halt. The culprit? Flawed performance metrics, focused solely on speed and ignoring the ripple effects on the entire system. This cautionary tale highlights the shortcomings of traditional performance measurement. Often rooted in intuition and gut feeling, these metrics can lead to myopic evaluations, blind to the interconnected web…

‘Compliance’ is a word that often triggers aversion. Whether it’s seen as a cumbersome exercise or an additional financial burden, the benefits of compliance can be overshadowed by the challenges of implementation. The Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) Act is no exception. While some companies view compliance with the PoSH Act as a mandatory task, there’s a significant number that seek to sidestep what they consider an added financial obligation. Ignorance plays a pivotal role in this reluctance, with concerns that implementing the PoSH Act may lead to an influx of sexual-harassment complaints. The fear stems from the idea that…

HCLTech, a global technology leader, announced a recruitment drive for over 500 tech professionals at its Vijayawada campus on February 17. Targeting individuals with at least three years of experience, the drive seeks Java Full Stack Developers, Java + AWS Developers, and specialists in Microsoft .Net, Oracle/PLSQL, SAP, C/Linux, and SQL/Oracle DBA roles. Established in 2020, the Vijayawada campus has rapidly grown into a major IT services hub in Andhra Pradesh, currently serving over 100 global clients with cutting-edge tech expertise. “We’re excited to welcome top talent to our team through this drive,” says Shiva Prasad, associate vice president and…

This year’s HRForecast, pulsing with the insights of 43 industry trailblazers, paints a bold picture: Skills trump degrees. While it’s true that skills have gained a certain acceptability as a currency in hiring practices, the reality, in my opinion, is that we’re still playing catch-up. Undoubtedly, there have been instances where an exceptional hacker or a victorious hackathon participant from a less-celebrated college has secured a lucrative position with a major tech firm. However, such occurrences remain the exception rather than the rule. If the landscape had truly shifted, the relentless scramble for coveted spots in the country’s prestigious institutions–IIMs,…

A casual WhatsApp request from an employee, asking for ‘late-night party leave’, has morphed into a viral discussion on LinkedIn, igniting a debate about leave policies, workplace culture, and the elusive balance between transparency and boundaries. The protagonist? Ankit Aggarwal, CEO of Unstop, who proudly shared the exchange, sparking a spectrum of reactions from applause to furrowed brows. While some lauded this unfiltered honesty, others raised concerns about professionalism, workload burdens, and the applicability of such flexibility across industries. Aggarwal’s post champions a culture of open communication, where employees feel comfortable expressing the unconventional reason behind their leave request. Supporters…

On November 12, the auspicious day of Diwali, tragedy struck as 41 construction workers found themselves trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi due to an unexpected collapse. Their ordeal lasted 17 days, culminating in a successful rescue on November 28. During this period, these labourers endured darkness, isolation, and the uncertainty of their fate. Their ordeal, however, served as an extraordinary display of human resilience and unwavering leadership, epitomised by Gabbar Singh Negi, the tunnel foreman. Amidst the chaos and despair, Negi emerged as a beacon of hope and a pillar of strength for his fellow workers. His calm…

A few decades ago, it was impossible to imagine a CEO or a CHRO coming down to the shop floor to interact with the workers. Today, however, this has become regular practice. The age of Industrial Relations (IR) 3.0 is here. Mutual acceptance, harmony, gratitude, and respect for each other have replaced volatility, exploitation, confrontations, conflicts, strikes and lockouts. Both parties — the workers and the management — are now well aware that growth and survival cannot be possible without each supporting the other. Zubin Palia, chief group HR & IR, Tata Steel, shares an interesting observation. “Previously, there were…

Q. How satisfying has been your professional journey of 39 years? A. It has been a bagful of mixed experiences. At times I have been very satisfied, and at other times, not so much. However, I think I have been extremely lucky. My professional journey started in 1984 at the age of 21. My first salary was Rs 1950, a princely sum in those days. I had a very interesting start, with an Eicher factory at Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh, some 36 km from Chandigarh. I was supposed to join on 1 June, so I reached Chandigarh on 31 May,…

For decades, the HR budget was mainly about salary and wages.However, with the evolution of the workplace, HR budgets are also becoming more exhaustive. This is because, earlier, only the knowledge-based industries considered their people to be their assets. Now, even other sectors are moving towards a knowledge-based economy. This has brought about a change in mindset, and of course, spends on people and HR. In addition to salaries and wages, a typical HR budget now allocates funds for hiring, benefits, talent management, learning and development, training, succession planning, workforce engagement and employee-wellness planning. It’s true that a lion’s share…

Q. You spent 16 years at LIC before moving to a corporate role at ICICI Prudential. Now, 22 years on, I am still curious to know, what cultural differences did you experience while shifting from a PSU to the private sector? A. A big difference for me was the shift from a large established company to a startup which was still in its building phase. Back then, the licensing process at ICICI Prudential had just started, whereas a year after I had joined LIC, it had celebrated its 30th year post nationalisation. It is essential to understand that people who…

The equation seems to have changed. Among the direct reportees to the CEO, the CFO used to be the closest confidante. The reason being, apart from the CEO, the CFO was the only one aware of the happenings across functions and handled a very important portfolio – decision making pertaining to all financials, budgets and costs. Now, the CEO and the CFO are teaming up with the CHRO to transform their company into a talent first organisation. Chief executive officers and leaders at talent driven companies are as focused on talent as they are on strategy and finance. They make…

Q. How would you define the culture at GE? A. Having been present in this region since 1902, GE has been around for 120 years. It can be divided into three big businesses—aviation, healthcare and energy—which together employ 19,000 employees across 14 factories and 30 offices. Out of these, about 6,000 would be engineers and technologists, working out of Bengaluru. Similarly, there is another large set of employees from heavy engineering and manufacturing. We also have employees who work on project sites, which are remotely located and may have difficult working conditions. A wide variety of employees are part of…

Q. In today’s times, what’s more challenging for a CEO like you — profit & business growth, talent & people, diversification, compliance or managing shareholders? A. I think these are not independent of each other. Whatever is good for our teams, for our employees, is good for our business. Frankly, every company makes a business continuity plan, but what has happened in 2020 is unparalleled. Normally, one would prepare for mishaps such as a fire in the IT server room, or a factory temporarily closing down for some reason, but no one prepares for a complete shutdown. In 2020, we…

On February 12, Tata Motors announced Marc Llistosella as its next chief executive and managing director. A month later, the automobile major made a second announcement. This time, it was to declare that Llistosella will not join the company from July 1 as was originally planned. Besides sending shock waves and being a hot topic of discussion, this appointment that stopped short of materialising must have taught many organisations to not get overexcited about their senior appointments. It was a rare occurrence, but many must have resolved never to reveal the names of high-profile executives before they are actually on…

Q. RPG is a diversified group with businesses spread across sectors and domains. however, its brands have a strong individual identity unlike other business conglomerates, such as Tata or Reliance. Was the Company shaped in natural progression as it expanded through acquisitions, or was it a strategic decision? A. Yes, you are correct, the RPG Group has grown through acquisitions. In fact, our founder, Rama Prasad Goenka, was known as the ‘takeover tycoon’. Growth through acquisition has been the primary reason for retaining the individual brands. There is another side to the story as well. you see, the old Reliance,…

It is no longer ‘survival of the fittest’ but ‘survival of the quickest’ which is the big differentiator in the post-COVID era. This implies, both people and businesses will have to adapt faster to the changes – the one who is swift enough will progress rapidly. Let us take the example of Tunisian taxi startup, IntiGo, which temporarily transformed into a delivery service overnight because passengers were low during the lockdown. We can say that Intigo’s adaptability quotient (AQ) is high. Adaptability quotient or AQ is the ability to adapt and thrive in a fast-changing environment — such as a…

Q. You have been shuttling between HR and manufacturing roles. Was it a well-thought out strategy or did you just go with the flow and take up whatever challenge life threw at you at different stages? A. The HR portfolio was always there with me along with something else. For instance, when I was working with JSW Steel at the Vijaynagar plant, I was the HR head as well as the TQM head. Later, I was heading HR as well as R&D. So, in a way, I was never away from HR. I realised that as a leader, the biggest…

In early 2008, senior managers at the Finnish telecom company, Nokia, were celebrating a 67 per cent increase in profits. Three years later, the Company’s mobile business tanked, and it had to lay off 18,000 employees across 13 countries. What we are trying to establish is that it’s an uncertain world out there, and layoffs are inevitable. The reasons could be many – sometimes external business scenarios, at other times, the company’s individual business performance, or even a company’s attempt to relocate or re-strategise. Shantanu Banerjee, CHRO, Bajaj Allianz Life Layoffs are a reality, and so is the hiring process,…

Picture this: While briefing the team on an important project, the manager notices one of the team members fiddling with the phone. Although an unintentional act by the subordinate, the manager presumed the junior wasn’t interested in the project. The executive was, in fact, responding to a client’s mail, but the behaviour did not go down well with the manager, and an opinion was formed. This was an instance of how a boss built a perception based on the junior’s behaviour, but the reverse can also happen. Picture a junior all excited about a new idea. He drops a mail…

In the mid-90s, when South Korean companies started capturing global markets from Uzbekistan to England to Vietnam, they often encountered a unique cultural issue. The expatriate Korean managers in the foreign land were often misunderstood by the local subordinates due to their rigid attitude. On the face of it, they appeared to distrust non-Koreans, apart from being hard taskmasters. It was also perceived that they barely listened to their local subordinates. As a consequence, Korean companies in offshore lands often faced talent-retention problems. Not to blame the Korean managers, the problem was linked to the hierarchical society back home, where…

Over the last five years, Citibank shrunk its global workforce by 18 per cent. This may sound like downsizing, but there is a silver lining — during the same period, this New York-headquartered banking and financial services company added 23,000 technology specialists. Its current strength still stands at a thumping two lakh! That is not all. Citibank now plans to add 2,300 coders and data scientists to its team. These technology professionals will be housed at its major centres in London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto, Dublin, Tel Aviv, as well as in Pune and Chennai in India. The new hires…

In the organized sector over 52% of employees report being hyper stressed, however, and 94% report being stressed out, Mental Health Expert – Prakriti Poddar, while addressing the webinar August 2020: At a time when mental health support has never been more pivotal, Mahindra Finance in association with Dabur Stresscom curated an integrated session on mental health and wellness. The session delivered by renowned mental health expert and Trans – personal therapist Dr. Praktiti Poddar focused on wellbeing at the workplace and helping employees identify, understand and manage stress in these ever-changing and unprecedented hard times. According to a recent…

These days, it’s quite fashionable for large traditional organisations to make a bold statement by adopting a start-up work culture. The intention is to make the world believe that the traditional bureaucratic setup has now transformed itself into an agile organisation, and given up on its conventional practices and way of functioning. Whatever be the claims of these old-fashioned companies, the reality is that many of them have still not given up on one bad practice — long meetings with no consequential outcome. This age-old practice doesn’t go well with the new-age workers. In fact, it acts as a big…