After completing the HR programme with the National Practice Council, his first HR role was during a time of rapid changes in India. During this time, he was involved in transformational roles that required him to work closely with CXOs in large corporations and government ministries. “We were focused on implementing Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s vision of a new, vibrant India. This involved introducing Japanese management techniques, HR technology and other innovative approaches to increase productivity.”

The process of implementing these new techniques proved to be a valuable learning experience for Ranjhan, as it taught him to implement change processes and overcome resistance from rigid cultures. Of the many lessons he learnt in this role, the first was the importance of mastering the subject, HR. He also discovered that managing people’s emotions and insecurities is a critical aspect of any HR process. Furthermore, he learned that HR must constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of the business and that HR processes must be both relevant and effective.

“Keep learning, keep growing, and find enjoyment in your work, while also taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health. It’s important to remember that while working hard is essential, it’s equally important to prioritise your overall well-being in order to achieve long-term success.”

Sunil Ranjhan, Sr. VP & director, HR & MS, LG Electronics

Ranjhan comes from a modest background, with his father working as a workman in the public sector. Despite various financial struggles, his parents prioritised the education of their children. Having seen adversity up close, he was determined to excel in academics. The family moved frequently due to his father’s job, even spending time in remote areas. Overall, his childhood experiences taught him to persevere and strive for success, despite obstacles.

During his formative years, he attended schools managed by Christian missionaries. Although he was an average student in his early years, he developed a keen interest in science and engineering, which he pursued diligently, along with drawing. He performed well and was the school topper in his board exams. Alongside his studies, he actively participated in theatre and sports, which provided him with a wellrounded personality.

The missionary schools he attended emphasised discipline and were cost effective, and instilled in him the importance of respect, loyalty and positive social interaction. These schools also focused on building spirituality and promoting honesty and grounded living, with a strong emphasis on learning the language and on all-round development, further enriching his educational experience.

At BITS Pilani, he initialy opted for civil engineering. However, he later discovered an integrated programme in management and engineering that could be completed in the same four years, leading to a master’s degree. So, he switched to that programme, where the first two years were dedicated to engineering and the remaining to management. During this time, he received his first job offer from Wipro through campus placement.

Ranjhan has had various mentors who guided him through the different stages of his career and life. His parents, who come from a humble background, always showed him different options and supported him. One of his friends’ father also helped him explore various career paths. Additionally, he had mentors in his different jobs. However, the
founder and director of Honda, NK Goila, played a significant role in shaping him as a professional and a successful manager. As a very senior leader, who was on the board of many companies, Goila was an invaluable influence on Ranjhan’s career development.

Having achieved success and gained experience in diverse industries, including automobiles (Honda Motors), Ranjhan had the opportunity to work outside India, in Japan and Thailand as well. In Japan, he worked as an expert with multiple companies, focusing on quality
control and managing multicultural workforces. He even managed to learn the local language and became fluent in reading and writing Japanese. Similarly, whenever he worked in different parts of India, he made an effort to learn the regional languages
and cultures, such as Bengali or Punjabi, to better understand the local community. Throughout his career, he has mostly been involved in setting up new projects and taking on leadership roles.

Ranjhan has been working in his current role at LG Electronics for a considerable time and has achieved a great deal of success as a senior HR leader. At this point in his career, his complete focus has shifted to passing on his knowledge and expertise to the team members who will take over his responsibilities when he retires. His primary
aspiration is to create a strong and capable second-tier team to carry forward the legacy that he hopes to leave behind. He wishes for this team to continue to drive LG Electronics
forward, in terms of staying number one in the consumer durables industry, even in his absence.

In addition to being a successful professional, Ranjhan is also a published author, with one of his books, No Right Answers, making it to the bestsellers’ list in 2011. Currently, he is writing a book titled Kokoro.

He is also an avid golfer who believes in maintaining a daily fitness routine, which includes a 10-kilometre run in the mornings, followed by other exercise routines. Another area
that interests him is 3D geometrical drawing, a hobby he has continued from his engineering days. When asked about a defining moment in his career, he recalled an experience in the year 2000, when he had just joined Honda.

He received an unexpected call from his Japanese MD asking him to come to Japan immediately. Although he had no idea why he was being summoned, or how long his presence would be required there, he just agreed without hesitation.

Later, he learned that he had been chosen to be the global HR manager for a project that
required his expertise. The original candidate from the Philippines had dropped out, and he was given the opportunity to step in and make a difference. Without thinking twice, he grabbed the opportunity.

The experience taught him to embrace challenges and trust his instincts. “This defining moment in my career taught me to be flexible, adaptable and openminded in new and challenging situations. It prepared me for future international experiences and helped me shed stereotypes and preconceived notions.”

He learned to be more accepting of new cultures, cuisines and ideas. Needless to say, this shift in his thinking and career trajectory opened up new opportunities for him. The message that he would like to pass on to young HR professionals is — “Keep learning, keep growing, and find enjoyment in your work, while also taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health. It’s important to remember that while working hard is essential, it’s equally important to prioritise your overall well-being in order to achieve long-term success.”

The post Sunil Ranjhan: The man of many languages appeared first on HR Katha.

Mehta did his early schooling from Panchmarhi, Chattishgarh, known to be among the remotest parts of India. Getting quality education in such geographies was always a challenge. Therefore, “hostels and boarding schools were the best options then,” recalls Mehta.

Being born in a middle-class family comes with a lot of responsibilities as one grows up. However, there are some learnings that one can only get in such families. Mehta adds, “I think the advantage of being in these geographies is being humble and being able to relate with anybody and everybody.” People go through their highs and lows, but still manage to enjoy every moment with their loved ones.

“Sometimes when one is pushed to prove oneself, then the outcome is equally strong.”

Rajendra Mehta, group CHRO, Suzlon Group

It’s a known fact that the environment we are exposed to has a significant impact on our personal growth and development. As children, we usually have someone whom we look up to as our inspiration. This also helps us set the course of our life.

Similarly, Mehta recalls, how his friends’ families had been a source of inspiration for him. “One of my colleagues came from a welleducated family, with members who held esteemed positions in the government, and oil industry at the time. To be honest, being surrounded by inspiring individuals who seek inspiration themselves can help to bring clarity and purpose to one’s life.”

Since his early days, Mehta’s focus had always been to elevate the level of success that his family had achieved and to multiply their achievements. He always aspired to contribute to the betterment of society and make a name for himself. “These dreams have been a driving force for me,” admits Mehta.

His focus was on building something for his family, using what they already had, and passing it on to the next generation. Mehta did not have a specific domain to pursue, when his parents motivated him to make a career in engineering. However, he never really saw success in the field in spite of the efforts he made. After a struggle of one and a half years, he dropped out and completed his graduation in commerce with top scorers.

Why HR?

“It was destined,” feels Mehta. My parents did not support me in pursuing the domain when I first talked to them. “I believe they had lost all hope in me,” Mehta recalls. As is common in a typical middle class family, they were anxious and worried for his future and career goals. However, this only fuelled his fire to achieve something in life.

To pursue his goals in HR, Mehta left town without informing is parents. When he was busy obtaining a management degree at Nashik, Pune, his parents were completely unaware of his pursuits. He never mentioned his MBA plans. “I did not wish to be a burden on them, which gave me more strength to chart my own path,” he says.

Mehta successfully completed his master’s degree in personnel management from JDC Bytco Institute of Management Studies, Nashik, Pune. He was amongst the top students of his batch and when he told his parents about the achievement, they were at peace. Mehta says, “Sometimes when one is pushed to prove oneself, then the outcome is equally strong”. This is what actually happened in his case, and he was finally able to make his parents believe that he had found his calling.

First Job

Mehta recalls his first job at KEC International, a flagship company of the RPG Group. “I was lucky to have got the opportunity to be a part of such a big and established brand in the initial years of my career, though I never intended it.” This jump start enabled him to learn a lot. The experience was highly satisfying, but there were good and bad times in his life, just as in the stock market where there are occasional setbacks.

The first job always makes people learn a lot of things. He shares, “My first job taught me that when one leads with the last mile — which includes the shop floor, employees, and other aspects of the business — it establishes a relationship that

provides one with the strength to do more. Since they are the first line of contact for customers and are critical to maintaining quality, supporting them leads to better results, which in turn benefits the organisation. This chain of support is crucial to the organisation, and it is essential to maintain it from the top down and bottom up. As long as this remains intact, everything else in the organisation will function well.”

Defining moment of career Mehta shares that joining The Times of India was the defining moment of his career. Working with the publication enabled him to align with the macro opportunities that the organisation offered and understand the roles each subset needed to play. He gives due credit to the fact that he was “always surrounded by individuals with diverse capabilities in a forwardlooking organisation”. He admits,

“These individuals challenged me to broaden my perspectives, change my mindset, and think beyond my current limitations. As a result, I developed a more forward-looking persona. These experiences have been significant learning moments for me.”

“Everyone desires to be respected, appreciated and trusted by others,” believes Mehta. It’s a great feeling when one receives positive feedback from customers or colleagues, acknowledging one’s hard work and dedication. I take pleasure in such moments, which motivate me to continue performing at my best level and improving constantly. That’s the ultimate goal.

Advice for the young folks

I always encourage new employees to work with senior colleagues as much as possible as it expands their thought processes. They can envision the future with clarity and identify opportunities that excite them. This also helps in personal growth.

The post My dreams have been a driving force appeared first on HR Katha.

At first she aspired to become an engineer, but unfortunately, she couldn’t clear the entrance exam. Her father advised her to broaden her horizons and consider other career choices, such as civil services and law. Mitra chose to be a management graduate and ended up specialising in marketing. She landed her first job at HCL through campus placement.

Recalling her mixed experience at HCL, she shares that the Company was, at the time, looking to move away from the hardware business, and getting into mobile handset, network solutions and computers. Since it was a new area, there were some hiccups in Mitra’s journey, which is natural.

Even though she found it challenging to move from one division to another at HCL, she admits that she had the support of fantastic managers who helped her through the process. HCL’s amazing onboarding programme helped Mitra get acquainted with all the nuances of the work.

She talks fondly of her dream posting with Unilever, at Kolkata, the city from where she had completed her college education. She had wanted to explore a different side of learning and development and Unilever granted her the right kind of opportunity to fulfil that desire. Not surprisingly, her time with Unilever was very fulfilling. While moving from one industry to another, as a practice, Mitra always prepares herself by researching about the kind of work and environment the organisation offers, before signing up for the position.
She also keeps a very open mind and avoids offering solutions to problems without applying critical thinking. It is her strong belief that situations should be examined
closely before rushing in to provide hurried solutions.

Every company has its own dynamics, which must be respected by people trying to assimilate themselves in it. She believes that a person’s progress in an organisation depends on his/her connections with the stakeholders. It is important to maintain such relations because it helps one traverse difficult situations.

One of the major turning points in Mitra’s career came when she made the switch from the technology space to performance consulting and training.

In her professional journey, Mitra has always been inspired by the excellent people she met at different organisations that she worked for. One of them was her manager at Unilever, with whose support she created a new business model. She cherishes the memories of how her manager boosted her confidence at work, and helped showcase her work, allowing her to win accolades.

Mitra had a mentor at Aircel as well — a lady she describes as being dynamic in nature. According to Mitra, she had all the qualities that one looks for in a mentor and supported her at every stage of her work.

For young people who aspire to become CHROs, Mitra has some advice. Since HR has many verticals, she suggests that people should learn to get a taste of each in order to gain deep and thorough experience in the field. For instance, HR business partners should also work on other aspects because it’s important to gain better knowledge of more than one area in HR.

People should always be open to learning new things, advises Mitra. She encourages aspirants to take up odd tasks that not everyone wants to do in the organisation. While people may think such tasks are beneath them, they can actually provide precious learning experience that’ll stand them in good stead in the long run.

Mitra loves travelling and reading books. Her favourite books are Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

The post From technology to consulting & training appeared first on HR Katha.

Though Banerjee loves writing, his tight schedule makes it difficult for him to take out time for this passion.

However, he is keen to resume this activity, which helps him formulate opinions and look back at his learnings.

Banerjee admits that a career in HR is not what he would have opted for, had he managed to clear his Indian civil services examination.

After graduating in political science, Banerjee prepared for the extremely tough and competitive UPSC examination, but failed to clear it. Realising how much of persistence was required to make the cut, Banerjee decided to drop the idea altogether.

From his early student days itself, Banerjee worshipped great leaders such as Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and PV Narasimha Rao, who were all known for their firm political stance and for bringing about significant change in the country’s politics and in India as a nation.

Science and maths never really interested Banerjee, but he was very passionate about understanding people, culture and history, which “made me think that in the corporate world, HR may be an area where I could add value”. Moreover, he had heard about professionals in his family talking about people related problems and their impact on the business. That is how Banerjee came to choose HR as a career. Regarded as a great orator and an excellent debater since childhood, leadership came naturally to Banerjee. “My peers, friends and teachers always praised me for my leadership qualities and some even looked up to me for the same,” says Banerjee.

Banerjee has managed to establish himself as an HR leader and professional who takes a stand in favour of change — a change for the better.

Talking of companies that advocate positive change, Banerjee cites the examples of Bata and Grasim, where there were several issues related to productivity, values and the manner of working when he joined these companies as an HR professional.

Although, he admits to facing resistance from many quarters — including the workers, union leaders and at times, even the management — his belief in making the right calls that could bring about a positive change in the organisational culture stood him in good stead.

It was rather early on in his career that Banerjee joined Bata India’s HR team. It was a time when the Company was going through volatile IR issues. “There were instances of ‘gherao’ and even a managing director of a plant being assaulted at the factory premises,” recalls Banerjee.

“It was a question of values, and as HR professionals, we took a stand and made some tough calls, which were required for the good of the business and our people culture,’ explains Banerjee. One of the toughest calls he had to take as an HR was when he had to terminate prominent union leaders from the factory at Bata. “There were strong repercussions and resistance from the workers, but we prepared ourselves for it,” Banerjee reveals.

Banerjee describes how they took all the stakeholders into confidence, including the management, some key government officials and the media, to overcome the workers’ resistance.

At Grasim too, Banerjee recalls having to deal with many problems, related to values and productivity, which had existed for over 70 years.

The HR leaders took the necessary hard calls, which did create tensions in the factories initially, but eventually everything settled down.

When Banerjee joined Vodafone as AVP-HR, the Company was going through a major transition due to the integration of Vodafone and Hutch.

Banerjee was involved in bringing about a massive change in terms of establishing the DE&I strategy at the Company. Given the large workforce

and the multinational environment, there were major complexities, and it was definitely a challenging task admits Banerjee.
Repercussions are bound to follow when one brings about change.

Without disclosing the name of the organisation, Banerjee describes an incident where some workers and union leaders stopped him from entering the factory. They were joined by many external elements and soon he found himself in the midst of a mob. “They tried to overturn my car and set it ablaze,” recalls Banerjee. He could have reversed his car and returned home, but “since I was the HR leader and the catalyst to the change which had pissed off the workers, I wanted to stand by it and face the mob, instead of running away,” asserts Banerjee.

Banerjee started clicking pictures of the mobsters and sent it to his colleagues, which scared the workers a bit. Also, the security guards helped Banerjee drive safely into the factory premises. Banerjee realised that he had been targeted only because people knew him as the “guy who had tried to bring about a change”.

Having got the opportunity to work for different sectors such as manufacturing, textiles, power, services and entertainment, Banerjee acquired the skill of adaptability. Banerjee believes that even though businesses may change and the background of workers may change, the formula of bringing about change in any company will remain the same.

There are four steps to bringing about change. “First is to identify the purpose of change. Second is to arrange for reinforcement systems to maintain that change.

“If you want to be the ‘good guy’ always, HR is not for you. You’d rather start selling Ice-Creams and make everyone feel happy”

Ranjan Banerjee, group head – HR, Berger Paints

Third is to develop the capability in people to adapt to that change, and fourth is to prepare role models for a particular change behaviour,” explains Banerjee.

Banerjee has trained in and grappled with IR quite early on in his career.
Immediately after postgraduating in IR, he got the opportunity to work with Aditya Birla Cements where the HR was just being set up. People such as TV Rao and Uday Parekh, were advising the Company in the process.

Banerjee was part of that team as a management trainee. After Aditya Birla Cements, he moved to Park Hotel for a while and then to United Breweries before joining Bata India, where he managed 9,000 workers and dealt with IR challenges head on. Banerjee benefitted from all the early exposure to IR as it prepared him for the bigger IR challenges that he faced later.

Banerjee makes a special mention of Samarjeet Chakrawarty and Sujeet Sain, his seniors at Bata India, who helped him understand and deal with various IR issues.

A major turning point in his life was his HR executive training at ITC, in 2005. He was amongst the critical talent picked by ITC every year to attend the executive training at Michigan University. Having been mentored by Dave Ulrich, he was able to understand the synergy between HR and the business.

“The experience really opened up new perspectives and changed my entire outlook towards HR,” admits Banerjee. Even after moving on from ITC, the learning from the executive course helped Banerjee in his various stints, such as the one at Saregama India, where the workforce was totally different, or the challenging one at Vodafone.

Banerjee’s schooling also made a difference. He studied at a boarding school, the T&N Academy in Gangtok. The discipline and holistic development approach there helped him develop his skills in areas beyond just academics.

He advises budding HR professionals who aspire to become leaders, to first master the art of time and work management, follow a healthy routine and develop the guts to take tough calls for the larger good.

“If you want to be the ‘good guy’ always, HR is not for you. You’d rather start selling ice-creams and make everyone feel happy. When you are in HR, you have to take tough calls, make the right decisions and stand by them till the end,” concludes Banerjee.

This article first appeared in the HRKatha Magazine

The post Facing the repercussions of ‘change’ appeared first on HR Katha.

Choice

After dropping out of a veterinary course, Mohan pursued journalism for two years at Hindustan Times, as a feature writer. However, later, he wanted to get into a corporate role, and developed interest in human resources.

After a course in labour welfare from Symbiosis International University, Mohan joined an automotive parts manufacturing company, EKK Eagle Industry, in 2002. “It may not hold much relevance today, but back in those days, an IR experience was a must for any HR professional,” mentions Mohan.

At EKK Eagle, he gained some IR skills and learnt to manage people at the shop floor. He also learnt to negotiate with the union. His first manager, SR Gidwani, was a retired colonel, who always advised Mohan to be close to the workers and try to understand their problems. Mohan practised it to the T, and it certainly helped him hone his IR skills.

Chance

By 2004, two years after joining EKK Eagle, Mohan moved to the services sector with Aviva India, an insurance company. There, he learnt new-age HR practices. Having moved from the manufacturing sector, this exposure was important for him.

At Aviva, Mohan also got to use his creative skills. Back then, Aviva used different brand names in different markets and countries. The Company started an initiative to align all employees with one Aviva brand, and Mohan played a crucial role at Aviva. His journalistic experience came into play, and he got to manage communications and marketing, apart from HR.

Later, during his stint, Aviva was acquired by WNS Holdings and Mohan got to play an active role in the integration process, post the M&A. In fact, post the integration, he was even offered an opportunity to head international compensation and benefits for the company, but the role did not excite Mohan.

He was ready for another change in his career and joined BNY Mellon. This was in 2009, post the merger of Mellon Bank with the Bank of New York.

The turning point came in when Yash Mohan was offered to head HR for the global custody bank at BNY Melon, a $6 billion business which constituted about 50 per cent of the entire global workforce

Yash Mohan, APAC CHRO & HR lead for global SST,  BNY Mellon

Change

At that time, the Bank had about 300 employees in India and was looking to grow. Mohan was really attracted to the kind of opportunities the Bank would create for him and his career. “It was during that time that the major US recession happened and the US government was helping cash strapped banks recover. Though BNY Mellon also received funding, it did not really require it. I was impressed with the stability that the Bank had,” explains Mohan.

Mohan joined BNY Mellon as head of recruitment, but there was something bigger in store for him. After working for seven years with the Bank, a lifechanging opportunity presented itself to him at BNY Mellon.

The Company was looking for someone to head the HR operation for its global custody bank in New York. Without further thought, Mohan applied for the role and was then interviewed by a panel.

Though Mohan describes it as a lucky break, he was really qualified for the role. This was a real turning point in his life. “This was a role of an HR head for the global custody bank, which was a $6 billion business and constituted about 50 per cent of the entire global workforce of the bank,” shares Mohan.

Unlearning and learning has been a part of Mohan’s life.

The post Yash Mohan: The three Cs of success in his life appeared first on HR Katha.

He owes a lot to his friends as well. Abhyankar recalls that initially his communication skills in English weren’t that good, but the encouragement from his friends to participate in debates and elocutions, sharpened his skills and enhanced his confidence as well. Just like normal youngsters, Abhyankar too kept changing and shifting his dreams and goals. at one point, he aimed to become a teacher. It was because he was just fascinated with them. “Though I myself was not that good in studies, I wanted to try my hand at teaching,” he quips. At one point, while in college, he wanted to join politics, and tried his luck at becoming a student leader. Post his graduation, he got a job offer as a sales executive with Mahindra Holidays, which he chose not to pursue. Instead, he enrolled for a master’s degree in management studies – marketing and public relations, from the Mumbai Education Trust – Institute of Management.

“My parents never allowed my confidence to drop by comparing me with others. They gave me the freedom to do whatever I liked”

After completing his master’s, Abhyankar tried his luck in advertising and wanted to be a copywriter. “I applied to a lot of advertising and media agencies in Mumbai. unfortunately, I could not land a job. At the time, the advertising industry wasn’t in a great shape,” he says. Finally, he found a job in the hospitality business, and joined as a sales executive with The Ambassador Hotel in Mumbai. “I had two other job offers at the same time – all in sales. However, I chose to go with the hospitality sector. I thought The Ambassador Hotel would be apt at that point of time, even though the offer was the lowest paying one.” He has no regrets and is only glad he made that choice. “It helped me groom myself as a professional.” His first job also helped him shape up as a person and taught him to stay cool in adverse situations. Abhyankar shares how in his first job, he had to face the misbehaviour and anger of clients. However, the good part is he learnt to deal with such tantrums with a positive attitude.

Back then, his manager and his first mentor, Ajay Sharma told him, “It’s just like how great swords are fashioned, by heating and hammering them into shape.”

“I had two other job offers at the same time – all in sales. However, I chose to go with the hospitality sector. I thought the Ambassador Hotel would be apt at that point of time, even though the offer was the lowest paying one”

It is Sharma who also taught Abhyankar the importance of punctuality, to be on time, or actually before time to prepare oneself well – a habit that he still treasures. As luck would have it, The Ambassador Hotel property in Mumbai fell into some dispute. Being forced to look for new pastures within two years, he landed up at Le Meridian as an assistant sales manager.

While at Le Meridian, Abhyankar received a call from a head hunter with a job opening at KLM Airlines. When Abhyankar landed at the venue for the interview, a hotel, he saw 120 other candidates waiting in anticipation of the same role. Abhyankar claims he is still clueless how he bagged that job – being one among 120- odd applicants. “Frankly, I had done nothing extraordinary during the interview,” he admits.

At KLM, Abhyankar brushed his skills in the aviation industry, and later joined Jet airways as senior manager – a role which was specifically crafted for him. In fact, initially, Jet Airways offered him an assistant manager’s role, which he refused. However, after a few months, Jet Airways came back to him with the role of a senior manager, which was a big jump for Abhyankar. The other thing he learnt at KLM was to value numbers. His manager back then, Arvin Alagh, was very particular about numbers. He could not tolerate even the slightest of deviations, which pushed everyone in his team to do better.

“I was a little hesitant initially to take up an HR role since all my life I have been in a Sales profile”

His stint with Cathay Pacific, his current company, which he joined some 11 years ago, has been his longest. He believes that Cathay Pacific is the place where he actually got the opportunity to transform into a corporate leader and handle some key leadership portfolios — as regional head of marketing and digital sales; and as country manager for the Africa region where he was leading all the operations. According to him, “Cathay does whatever it says”. Abhyankar is now responsible for managing the people strategy at Cathay Pacific for South Asia, the Middle East and Africa region.

Initially, when this opportunity was offered to Abhyankar, he was hesitant. His worry was whether he would be able to even justify the position given the fact that he had been a sales professional all his career.

He then realised that his primary job would be to design employee experiences and carve out people’s journeys, and that lured him. Besides, with HR increasingly taking up a business partnering role and requiring commercial acumen, he felt he would have an advantage. “The HR role is actually not really new to me. as we always say, every manager is a people manager first, whether in sales, marketing or operations,” points out Abhyankar. His journey so far, leading the HR function, has been smooth and exciting. It would be interesting to see how it unfolds.

(This article was first published in HRKatha Print Magazine)

The post Transition from a true-blue sales person to a seasoned HR leader appeared first on HR Katha.

“A journalist friend of mine told me that while journalism may appear to be a glamorous profession from the outside, it isn’t as satisfying. He said, ‘If at all, you feel like writing, at any stage, nothing stops you’. That’s when I took up my first job in September, 1984. I still remember I received my offer letter on September 5 and my joining date was September 12, 1984.”

Baveja prides on remembering the joining and exit dates of every organisation he has been part of, six to be precise. Obviously thrilled and excited to receive the offer letter from Samtel Color, his first employer, he celebrated the occasion with a soft drink. He joined the Company as a management trainee in 1984. “I always aspired to join a growing company. Samtel Color used to be one in those times for young professionals. I initially joined the Black and White picture tube factory in Ghaziabad for three years. Then I moved to the colour picture tube project, for my second stint, which was a complete Greenfield project and a joint venture with Mitsubishi. There, I was involved in hiring 1400 people. I take a lot of pride in the fact that at that age, I could play a significant role in institutionalising the HR department there.”

Working with a Japanese company, such as Mitsubishi, was quite enriching for Baveja. Their working style had quite an impact on him, but it was the ‘Quality Circles Initiative which brought him maximum recognition, within a year of joining Samtel. “The organisation focused a lot on small group activities, such as Quality Circles — small teams of people performing homogenous work, such as solving problems— at the grassroots level. It encouraged ownership and decision making at the basic level. I played a significant role in institutionalising the Quality Circle movement in Samtel. We were among the companies recognised in the country for this movement. I was selected by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers to present a paper on Quality Circle in Tokyo, in 1985,” recollects Baveja. He was among the six Indians who were selected for the convention. Unfortunately, he could not travel at that time, but his paper was presented.

Baveja’s next stint was with Cadbury, where he moved as plant personnel manager, to fulfil his dream. He reveals that he could have had a long-time career at Samtel, but working in a reputed multinational company was always on his mind. Cadbury was looking for someone who could bring new prospects. It was a new plant and they wanted a new HR foundation. It was the dream company for Baveja, just as it would have been for anybody else. Although he moved from electronics to confectionaries, the kind of people he dealt with was quite similar. “Cadbury gave me a holistic experience, adding the element of learning and industrial relations,” says Baveja.

The experience that Baveja holds high up on his achievement ladder is that of dealing with the workers’ union, at the Cadbury factory. Negotiations, industry relations and dealing with authorities, all of it gave him a holistic experience, “It was my first brush with a union and I actually learnt how to deal with them. It involved a lot of external management, such as connecting with local district administration, labour authorities and others.”

“Cadbury gave me a holistic experience, adding the element of learning and industrial relations”

He facilitated many factory visits for unionised employees, and brought them to the Maruti Suzuki factory in Gurgaon To learn best practices at the shop-floor level. “Their interesting Japanese concepts were actually an eye opener for these workers. I also arranged some market visits for them, taking them around to some shops in Gwalior and Indore, to listen to customer complaints. We were producing Eclairs and Gems from the plant, and workers never believed the complaints that we received from the market at times. So I took a team to some of the outlets, which convinced them that we could improve,”Baveja Shares.

No wonder Baveja feels that real learning for HR professionals happens at the factory level, as there are a variety of experiences. Otherwise, one can’t relate to the grassroots level. Human resource professionals should have experience of HR and IR for a balanced perspective.

A family emergency made him quit Cadbury and join Dalmia Industries as senior manager, corporate HR. The stint, however, was short and lasted but one year. As Baveja rightly points out, after working in a multinational company, one gets a different experience and expects every organisation to match the same. “That unfortunately didn’t happen at Dalmia. However, even in that one year, I had a good experience of heading the HR department as a whole, being responsible for corporate, factory and sales HR as well.”
Baveja’s attraction towards multinationals led him to Gillette. There again, he served two stints. “I was at the factory outlet at Bhiwadi for two and a half years, and in the last six months, I was moved to the Gillette-Parker joint venture.”

The Company got into a JV with Luxor Company for making Parker pens. Gillette’s presence in India wasn’t in the personal grooming space alone. It had presence in several segments, such as with Parker, Duracell, Oral-B and others. I was primarily in the shaving segment. The good thing about Gillette is that even when one is at the factory, one is involved in the corporate segments,” elaborates Baveja.

Alcatel India was Baveja’s next stop, where he worked for six years. While the experience was great, the Company did face a few challenges with its young workforce. “The software centre part of it had a very young, ambitious and aspiring workforce, much like the millennials today. We faced a big problem of high attrition rate and retention was a huge challenge. On the other side, we had a highly stable workforce making telephone exchanges, comprising a very different set of people. We had to manage a diverse mix there.”

“DCM Shriram is a great blend of rationale and emotions, tradition and modernity, touch and tech. The best thing is that the senior leadership here is sent abroad to participate in advanced management programmes. I went to the University of Michigan in 2016 and participated in the Advanced Human Resource Executive Programme there. That’s the kind of investment the Company makes hereto keep one motivated”

To sort the high attrition issue at Alcatel, Baveja and his team did two things— compensation positioning and career pathing. “First, one has to be in the top quota to attract top talent. We were competing with players, such as Siemens, Lucent, Nokia and others. Therefore, we had to ensure good compensation. Second, people have big aspirations in terms of career pathing. We worked to create career ladders for them,” Baveja Explains.

Many workshops were conducted to explain to the employees what they could look forward to if they stayed at Alcatel. They were given access to the best learning tools at a global level. Rotational assignments were devised for the employees to enable them to get some international exposure, and help them work on some global projects for new skills and capabilities.

Surprisingly, for someone who always wanted to be part of a multinational company, Baveja has had the longest stint at DCM Shriram. He has been with the Company for close to two decades and that’s because of the emotional connect. Baveja says that when one joins a company, there is a rationale in one’s mind. Here, at DCM Shriram, all that changes to emotional considerations after a while. “This organisation is a great blend of rationale and emotions, tradition and modernity, touch and tech. The best thing is that the senior leadership here is sent abroad to participate in advanced management programmes. I went to the University of Michigan in 2016 and participated in the Advanced Human Resource Executive Programme there. That’s the kind of investment the Company makes hereto keep one motivated,” Baveja points out.

At DCM Shriram, Baveja indulged in a lot of talent and leadership development initiatives. In 2007-08, the organisation introduced development centres for high-potential employees who could be groomed. They were mapped to critical roles from the succession-planning perspective. Thirteen to fourteen years on, the journey still continues. “We also undertook the process of developing a senior level of leadership, such as an assessment. We were all given feedback in terms of our strengths and improvement areas.”

Baveja mentions the alumni network of DCM Shriram. He believes, “Anybody who has worked with the organisation continues to be a brand ambassador. We stay in touch with them on a regular basis and organise alumni connects in Delhi and invite people who have worked with us before.”

Apart from that, there is an event called Parichay, which is attended by management trainees and their parents. “It is an annual event for the new management trainees and their families, on completion of the intensive induction process. We talk about the company not only to the trainees but their families as well, to give them a sense of what the organisation is. We also ensure that the first salary check is handed over to the parents and not the employees, because we feel youngsters owe what they have to their parents. It is our way of recognising that the success of any child is due to the family. It’s a souvenir check that we handover, the actual salary goes into the account. This is how this organisation build emotional connect,” Braveja asserts.

Moving forward, the HR agenda will align with the business goals of the organisation, but Baveja has an agenda of his own—to drive growth, achieve cost  optimisation, collaborate with the business to create a culture of thinkin out-of-the-box, nurture a frugal mindset and respond with agility.

The post Sushil Baveja: When HR won over journalistic ambitions appeared first on HR Katha.

The transformer

Bhargava was taken on board for a purpose — to transform the culture of a PSU into that of a corporate entity — when the business management moved into the hands of private equity players. Building the function from scratch was not easy. First, it was challenging to attract competent talent from the market — a PSU was not even a third choice for many. Second, resistance from legacy employees was backbreaking. Putting up a tough front, Bhargava applied change-management principles by Kotler. He disrupted the contemporary practices followed by PSUs during takeover. Commonly, they follow two pay structures, one for the serving employees and the other to lure new recruits. The CPO insisted on a single reward structure for all employees. He promised incentives to the fresh entrants — a salary hike in two to three years on the basis of their performance. Killing two birds with one stone, he demonstrated leadership qualities that not only helped him buy-in competitive candidates, but also prevented legacy employees from feeling sour.

Road ahead

Bhargava has come a long way since then. Today, his focus is on mid-level management. “In the financial sector, especially during a growth spurt, employees jump jobs to land higher positions or senior roles, without getting the opportunity to develop competencies through prescribed learning paths,” he says. With the intention of developing a robust brand, Bhargava has taken it upon himself to chalk out the road map for developing his people. The organisation, along with its fully-owned subsidiary, has 5000 heads. His strategy involves three steps — first, to identify promising resources; second, to invest on a long-term (six months) comprehensive learning intervention, and third, to ensure meaningful cross-functional experiences.

“The strategy is to evolve people from being individual contributors to becoming team leaders, through a structured and integrated learning programme, which includes classroom learning, business simulations, and experiential learning for a period of six months,” he shares. Akin to the other human resource leaders striving to automate their function and reform the mindset of their employees, Bhargava is also keeping one eye on the future while driving the change in his organisation.

He considers it his duty to nurture his people through the unknown future with respect to the gig economy and multi-generational diversity, and also prepare his teams to become agents of change. “However, I firmly believe that although AI can bring in intellectual capabilities on to the table, softer aspects, such as, empathy, are a prerogative of human leadership,” expresses Bhargava.

Bhargava invests in himself by keeping a steady reading habit. The Future Ready Organisation, a book by Gyan Nagpal is one of the most recent books he has read. In his childhood, the Commando comics were his favourite.

Comrade-in-arms

Having grown up in a cantonment area in Mathura, Bhargava was fascinated with olive green. He was all in awe of the army leaders and their authoritative persona. He joined the Indian Army — his first profession after university — where he developed multi-faceted experiences, such as combatting from the front to learning the art of becoming a personality assessor. “The biggest learning from a 21- year long army tenure was to lead by example and walk the talk. Very early on, I learned that to become a good leader, I have to respect people and deal with them with utmost fairness and compassion,” shares Bhargava.

The jump

Prior to his last posting, as a personality assessor at the army selection centre, Bhargava was trained at the Defense Institute of Psychological Research. There, he underwent comprehensive courses to understand human behaviour, in order to assess personalities for selection of candidates in the Army. “Having qualified to be a group behaviour analyst — one who understands group dynamics — my expertise lay primarily in predicting team spirit during recruitment, akin to performance centres in the corporate world,” narrates Bhargava. He had friends in the HR fraternity to guide him. So, rightfully, he pursued an executive MBA from IIM Calcutta and landed a job in at Asset Reconstruction Company India (ARCIL) as head-HR, at the campus.

When it comes to purpose and motivation, he has tackled all his roles — be it combatting from the front for the country, transforming the stereotype culture of a PSU, or making PNB Financial Services a futuristic company — with equal rigour.

The post Anshul Bhargava: Leading by example appeared first on HR Katha.

At one point, he also planned to actively pursue a career in sports, as he loved to play cricket and badminton.

Destiny, however, had something different in store for Shashikanth. He couldn’t pursue acting as a profession, nor could he become a professional sportsperson. However, he did climb up the ladder fast in the corporate world in a span of 25 years. His over-two-decade-long career saw him dabbling in many functions, starting from cost accountancy and consultancy, to business strategy, planning, and marketing to HR, and now he holds the position of COO of the popular Indian tea-café chain, Chai Point.

Shashikanth started out as an accountant with Tatra Udyog (now Tatra Vectra Motors), a manufacturer of heavy-duty off-road trucks, after completing his professional degree in cost accountancy. Later, he moved to a BPL Group company, Electronic Research Limited (ERL).

Sharing his experience on his first job, he recalls, “Col. Shenoy, who was a top executive in the company at that time, was an ex-serviceman. I always looked up to him as a great leader and wanted to become like him.”

However, Shashikant was not content and wanted to achieve more. In 2002, he took a break to pursue his MBA from IIM Bangalore. For securing a seat at IIM, Shashikant had to go through CAT (common admission test), and prepare for the tests; he worked during the day and studied for the tests at night. He considers himself lucky to have been able to crack the examination, but the determination and hard work cannot be undermined.

Shashikant has changed paths quite often and, that too, with conviction. His father, being a scientist, wanted his son to follow the same path. Shashikant enrolled to study pure science (physics, chemistry and mathematics) during graduation. However, within one month, the young man changed his subjects to economics, statistics and mathematics.

He quips, “Till date, my father isn’t aware that I had voluntarily changed my subjects.”

Immediately after completing his PG diploma from IIM Bangalore, Shashikanth spent a few years in the IT sector. First, a very short stint with Wipro and then later, Infosys. At both these places he was into business strategy and planning. The turning point for Shashikanth’s career came at the Aditya Birla Group, where he spent more than a decade.

It is there that he got the opportunity to work in different functions of the retail business — operations, strategy, marketing and HR.

“At Aditya Birla Retail, there were leaders, who trusted my capabilities and gave me new roles,” shares Shashikanth

He joined the Group in 2007, and in 2010, he was entrusted with the task of leading the strategy and operations of the western region business.

The business in the western region was always considered tough. It was said to be extremely difficult to turn cities, such as Mumbai — where the real-estate cost was really high — into profit centres. Shashikanth took up the challenge, and as the regional head, he ensured that the western region turned profitable in a few years.

“I remember that I was working for almost 12 to 14 hours every day. I took up that role when no one else was ready to. Thomas Varghese and Ramesh Mitragotri, who were the CEO and CHRO, respectively, of Aditya Birla Retail, at that time, showed great trust in me and gave me this opportunity,” shares Shashikanth with gratitude.

Though it may sound exciting and vibrant, it’s not always an easy walk for any professional to step into different roles and functions so frequently. However, Shashikanth was able
to do this successfully, putting in efforts to understand the business and the requirement of each role.

Shashikanth mentions three things that helped him prepare for a new role each time. First, understanding what is expected differently from you in the new role; second, understanding the requirements and expectations of the managers; and third, identifying the key stakeholders that vary from role to role.

“These different experiences have given me an all-round perspective of the retail business. It is very important to understand the requirements of your managers and stakeholders when you are essaying different roles.Even though I used to struggle in the beginning, gradually, I was able to learn from my mistakes,” says Shashikanth.

After a successful stint as the regional head, Shashikanth went on to become the marketing head of the supermarkets business, and later on, the HR head.

Sharing what he has learnt from HR, Shashikanth says, “HR has helped me become a far more sensitive leader.”

“The HR experience has taught me talent management — in terms of both hiring the right talent and retaining them. And these are useful skills in any management role. While HR is soft, it is also a critical aspect of an organisation,” asserts Shashikanth.

He loves to interact with young upcoming professionals, and always advises them to maintain a learning outlook whenever anything new comes their way. He urges them to be committed to their work and always be open to change.

(This article was first published in the HRKatha print magazine)

The post The aspiring actor, who joined corporate HR, is now a COO appeared first on HR Katha.

It is often believed that HR isn’t the first choice for most professionals. Mirchandani remains an exception though, and perhaps his passion for the discipline is what has scripted his success story.

Having looked up to his elder brother since childhood, it is he who advised Mirchandani to explore the HR space as a career option.

Mirchandani’s hunger and dedication towards venturing into the discipline is reflected by the persistence he showed while studying to become an HR professional. It took him three attempts to step into the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), where he earned his master’s degree in human resource management and labour relations.

After graduating from TISS, Mirchandani stepped into the corporate world with his first job at HSBC Bank as an HR generalist. His task at hand? Hiring, retaining and talent assessment. In addition, driving HR initiatives specific to business requirements.

Today, Mirchandani is based out of Singapore after being promoted to a new role. Prior to this, he was working in London where he was the senior vice-president & HR advisor for global markets, EMEA, a stint he believes was a turning point in his career. To move from an Asia-Pacific role to handle the Europe and Middle East markets certainly was a watershed moment for him since he had never dealt with developed markets before.

Not only work but both regions have a contrasting culture, Mirchandani readied himself to learn and unlearn to be successful at work.

Mirchandani credits his time at Citibank with immense growth opportunities. From being a campus relationship manager, today, he heads the HR function in the organisation.

He believes that the experience he gathered in India and overseas has helped him understand HR and perform better. Talking to HRKatha, Mirchandani says, “The reason for my success lies in the diverse interactions I had in the company. It offered me so many different opportunities and allowed me to work in different roles and HR functions in different regions. Citi has a great learning culture where every HR professional can hope to become an HR head one day.”

“My adViSe to youNG Hr ProFeSSioNalS iS to Be liKe a SPoNGe, leVeraGe tHe PoWer oF data aNd aBSorB tHe exPerienCe oF HaNdliNG diFFereNt ProCeSSeS WitHiN Hr. at a PerSoNal leVel, i BelieVe tHat BeiNG autHeNtiC aNd GeNuiNe are tHe BiGGeSt learNiNGS iN liFe”

Mirchandani boasts of a diverse career in terms of geography. Even when in India, he worked in different locations in the country.

Internationally, he has worked in Hong Kong from 2011 to 2016 and also did a short stint in Philippines, where he went on a project. Undoubtedly, it is a challenge for an Indian to handle HR in markets outside India. Mirchandani too admits that the initial years weren’t a walk in the park. He failed miserably in his first overseas role in Hong Kong. In a bid to make an indelible mark, he rushed into making changes. However, over the years, he has developed the virtue of patience.

In a new organisation, Mirchandani spends the first few months observing the environment. He learns from his senior colleagues through regular discussions before trying to introduce his suggestions.

“I always observed, learned from my seniors and applied that knowledge in my own HR journey,” he says.

Though he has been working in overseas locations for about five years now, Mirchandani finds it difficult to put his India experience behind. He cherishes the skills he acquired while working in the country.

“India taught me to be a data-oriented HR professional,” he says

Comparing the differences between India and other locations, such as Hong Kong, Philippines, London and now Singapore, Mirchandani explains that in India, there is a lot of respect for the hierarchy but in other places one can challenge the same.

“In the places I have worked, I had the freedom of disagreeing with my seniors and express it constructively,” Mirchandani says.

Mirchandani says that the key to become a successful HR leader lies in understanding relationship management. One needs to build positive relations with the employees of one’s organisation. However, at the same time, you must be able to crack the whip when required and be ready for tough conversations.

“tHe reaSoN For My SuCCeSS lieS iN tHe KiNd oF diVerSe iNteraCtioNS i Had iN tHe CoMPaNy. it oFFered Me So MaNy diFFereNt oPPortuNitieS aNd alloWed Me to WorK iN diFFereNt roleS aNd Hr FuNCtioNS iN diFFereNt reGioNS. Citi HaS a Great learNiNG Culture WHere eVery Hr ProFeSSioNal CaN HoPe to BeCoMe aN Hr Head oNe day”

He adds that another quality an HR leader must have is the ability to coach people, even the ones more experienced than you.

“Be like a sponge. Leverage the power of data and absorb the experience of handling different processes within HR,” says Mirchandani.

Remembering the people who made a difference in his career, he talks fondly of his current manager, working with whom he began his career overseas in Hong Kong.

“She was my first boss when I moved to Hong Kong. I left her tutelage for a while to learn and grow. Now, I am back reporting to her,” he says.

He also draws inspiration from the mentoring videos of the global CHRO of Unilever, Leena Nair.

At a personal level, Mirchandani believes that being authentic and genuine are his biggest learnings in life. He never fails to share this with young HR professionals and students each time he returns to TISS.

Being a gay himself Mirchandani is a great advocate of gender diversity and LGBTQ inclusion at the workplace. Outside work, Mirchandani is a writer and an amateur theatre actor.

(This article was first published in HRKatha print edition)

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On being told to set the clock backward, and reveal how HR was different then, Sahay shared that he owes his powerful professional career to the learnings he accumulated at the public-sector power generating company, at the beginning of his career.

“Those were times when the best job opportunities came from the Government. To get into a ‘Navratna Public-Sector’, such as NTPC, was an achievement,” says Sahay. A profitable public-sector job was everyone’s dream then.

“Your heart may not be clean, your hands may not be clean, but your paper should always be clean”

There, he learned to develop the attributes necessary for a professional career, some of which are as follows:

Power of documentation: Maintaining and keeping documents should be a habit, which always stands you in good stead.

Compliance policies and processes: The Government is very rigid about compliance and that teaches you a lesson or two in prioritising and demonstrating high levels of consistency and discipline.

Audit and information maintenance: “’Your heart may not be clean, your hands may not be clean, but your paper should always be clean’. These are wise words from an ex-boss (NTPC), and I have kept them very close to my heart,” says Sahay.

He adds, “There are certain skills, such as risk and governance management, that you pick up by working in the public sector. These building blocks have helped to shape my career.”

Sahay has emerged from tough grounds. He was a part of NTPC way back in 1992, and walked the tight rope of the Company’s first acquisition in politically volatile Rae Bareilly.

A pioneering yet risky act of its time, “Posting in NTPC was ranking based. Being all India no. 2, I got a role in IR,” says Sahay. Leading them through two significant acquisitions as a personnel officer, he says, “IR teaches you to deal with people who are not classic pedigree; the kinds who are not always driven by data and rationale. However, they inspire you to develop unique negotiating and influencing skills. Moreover, the role requires you to be an expert in labour laws.”

The move to the private sector was automatic as the economy became liberal, and opportunities mushroomed. In addition, to expand one’s portfolio of work, leaving the public sector was the only choice because the Government employs a large number of people.

“IR teaches you to deal with people who are not classic pedigree; the kinds who are not always driven by data and rationale”

Leveraging his compliance and industrial relation strength, he bagged a role in Arvind Mills. The company had just started a large industrial unit in Ahmedabad, the largest in Asia. Sahay once again demonstrated innate risk-taking ability by taking up this role, where he had to quickly assimilate and establish himself.

“A personnel officer’s primary job was industrial relations, administration and payroll management. There was a distinct line between IR and HR then, and movements between the two were rare,” narrates Sahay.

In Wipro Technologies, he led the talent engagement and strategic resourcing for the enterprise solution business, followed by heading HR for UBS’ off-shore unit in Hyderabad.

Indian companies are breaking the norm and setting new standards for employee engagement. Wipro CS & L is offering a novel way of escalating the happiness quotient of their widely-distributed field workers.

The senior leaders are ditching the townhall for a field day with their sales and marketing employees, by accompanying them from shop to shop to sell. They use this time not only to get a first-hand experience of the challenges faced by the team members but also to connect with them personally.

Cricket is close to the heart of every Indian, and through the IPL programme, they have been able to generate a lot of excitement in the employees and their families. Match tickets (25 per cent paid by an employee) are given to the entire family along with refreshments.

Most of the frontline employees are not very educated, but are aspirational and ambitious about their children’s higher education. The Company takes keen interest in counselling the children and providing financial aid.

An online healthcare app—Visit App— is launched for employees and their families. “It is highly beneficial in the Indian context, as sitting at home they can consult an MD, order medicines and more,” says Sahay.

“Government officers and bankers have always demonstrated their superiority and authority, but Premji is uniquely humane”

Sahay is a collector of books, a long-distance runner and a passionate teacher. He is ever ready to step into a professor’s shoes, be it internally in the organisation or as a visiting guest lecturer in management institutes. Teaching and running keeps him mentally and physically agile.

Sahay says, “While I am aging every year, I am still able to complete my run in a reasonably good time. One of my all-time favorite book is We the people by Nani Palkhiwala — a compelling read with the most extraordinary anecdotes.”

Says Palkhiwala in the book, “While we know knowledge is power, in India people who have knowledge have no power and people who have power, have no knowledge.”

Some other books that have greatly impacted him are Kishore Binani’s It happened in India and Line of Control by a professor from Delhi University.

His grandfather was a senior government officer in the civil engineering department in Bihar, with a flawless reputation for honesty, which was a rare virtue in that department.

Fundamental discipline and uncompromising integrity —that he learned from his grandfather— combined with the supreme humility of Azim Premji have influenced his personality. “In the public sector, I interacted with senior government officers, at UBS bankers from New York. These people have always demonstrated their superiority and authority, but Premji is uniquely humane,” concludes Sahay.

Today, he is getting the next-gen millennials ready and for that he is learning at home from his 22-year old son.

The post Rajesh Sahay: It’s all about discipline, integrity and humility appeared first on HR Katha.

Michelle Obama writes in her autobiographical memoir that she studied law without knowing what she was getting into. Her decision (checking boxes) was influenced by what people claimed as the formula for success. Aziz has a similar story. Though he comes from a family of doctors, he did not want to become one. His decision of ‘becoming’ an electrical engineer was influenced by conventional thinking.

After engineering, he chose to do a management programme in marketing and HR. His first job, which he landed at the campus, was with Kinetic Engineering. There, he was fortunate enough to work under the able leadership of Sullaja Firodia Motwani, the joint MD of the Company. Kinetic was undergoing transformation in business at the time, and Motwani wanted him to play a dual role of being an HR manager and also helping with the business.

“An opportunity came my way from GE, and that was like a dream come true for me. I had laboured with some of their case studies in the management programme. GE was then setting its operations in India, and I did cross-functional stints toiling in sales and manufacturing, and flirting outside HR for a couple of years”

“Being broader than a single stream and establishing a direction in those challenging times was a great learning for me. I worked beyond the role of an HR manager by getting closely involved with the marketing, sales and manufacturing teams,” recollects Aziz.

“An opportunity came my way from GE, and that was like a dream come true for me. I had laboured with some of their case studies in the management programme. GE was then setting its operations in India, and I did cross-functional stints toiling in sales and manufacturing, and flirting outside HR for a couple of years. However, I returned to HR just as a ship sails back to the port for anchorage,” shares Aziz.

This quick landing back into the HR space was because of the immense satisfaction Aziz got from the function/role that helps people build their careers. Aristotle said, ‘Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work’. These words best describe Aziz’s career growth — starting out as an HR manager (technology) and ending up as GE’s global HR head.

“When I say ‘helping’ people, I mean making a difference in the lives of people around me. The equation around culture is another facet of HR that keeps me excited. I have derived a formula— ?CULTURE = Behaviours x System & Structures x Matrix x Interventions”

“When I say ‘helping’ people, I mean making a difference in the lives of people around me. The equation around culture is another facet of HR that keeps me excited. I have derived a formula— ?CULTURE = Behaviours x System & Structures x Matrix x Interventions,” alludes Aziz.

Leaders are so overspent and caught up handling systems, structures, matrices and interventions that they have no time for behaviours. According to Aziz, behaviours are ambiguous and it takes time to articulate and change them. Therefore, it is the power of behaviour that forms the most important element in creating culture.

“Power of coaching is the biggest differentiator I have been able to bring in as a leader. Changing the leadership DNA, creating a talent pipeline and building a culture has been possible with the coaching tool. My ability to learn from my mistakes has helped me do so,” explains Aziz.

“I have made a difference by showing empathy and respect, and creating possibilities for employees going through a layoff. In 2002, I was assigned a project in one of the businesses at GE, which was going through a significant downturn. I had to not only execute a downsizing to reduce the workforce by 31 per cent but ensure that every single individual was re-deployed to protect the company’s brand and credibility in a new market (India)”

The reality of our business is that one must stay competitive to survive. Business situations, such as losing market share, discontinuing products, and so on may demand a downsizing. The power of HR comes to play as it learns to handle these circumstances with empathy.

“I have made a difference by showing empathy and respect, and creating possibilities for employees going through a layoff. In 2002, I was assigned a project in one of the businesses at GE, which was going through a significant downturn. I had to not only execute a downsizing to reduce the workforce by 31 per cent but ensure that every single individual was re-deployed to protect the company’s brand and credibility in a new market (India). We created opportunities for these employees outside the business and ended up not firing anyone at all,” says Aziz.

This not only helped him create great employee value proposition in the company but was a milestone in terms of learning experience. His tremendous success in this difficult assignment provided wings to his career and he was promoted for a role in the US.

“Sometimes one must terminate because of performance or compliance. I have been able to demonstrate empathy with the help of two ‘Rs’ — reality and respect. Genuine empathy comes with knowing that humans are prone to making mistakes and they should not be judged or disrespected for it,” reasons Aziz.

“My first boss at GE has been a mentor and I still seek advice from him. There have been many other people who have supported me in my career”

Each new chapter in a person’s life requires a new version of himself. Did the same apply to Aziz who took the role of CHRO at Diageo, a couple of months back? “I love the focus the Company has on brands and people. It is making investments in the field of technology to make it a path-breaking Company. I am very excited to be a part of a consumer-facing business. It makes the HR role more dynamic. I need to be proactive and think strategically to be able to meet the demand of the business. I look at this move as an opportunity to take this already successful company to greater heights,” remarks Aziz.

Experience is the teacher of all things. Aziz has done his share of walking on the tight rope many a time. In one of his roles at GE in his early career, the business got into a dispute with the union. He was sent to make peace with the union leader who was known to be a ruffian. This was his first role in IR, and that too at a time when he had not even completed a week in the new role.

He peeped into the restaurant, where the union leader was sitting with ten bulky and fierce body guards. Just a single one of them would have been enough to handle his own four body guards who appeared to be babies in front of them.

“I walked inside alone, shook hands with all of them and sat down. I spoke to them with respect and applied the listening tool. After eight hours of chatting, we not only resolved one important matter and built a relationship that helped us immensely in the future,” narrates Aziz.

“For my good work at GE, I was sent to the US for an assignment. My confidence was at its peak and I engaged with the business leader with that frame of mind. However, he ignored me, which frustrated me no end. The more I tried to warm up to him, the more hostile he became. Then, I changed my focus at work using all my energies for the benefit of the employees. After a few months, he called me and chatted with me for an hour or so before work. That broke the ice between us and he told me that that he felt I was trying to impose matters on him even before I understood the context and the new work environment. I learned to be connected to the ground and understood the importance of getting a feel of the pulse before starting to tell people what to do,” relates Aziz.

“My first boss at GE has been a mentor and I still seek advice from him. There have been many other people who have supported me in my career. Recently I read the book, Humans are underrated, a creative and insightful volume on leadership. Yet another great read is The Birth of Plenty. These two works have influenced me a great deal.

Being a good orator, a coach and a manager at work, as well as a runner, teacher and devoted father at home, Aziz wears many hats. He looks at challenges as a learning opportunity, and the passion comes across very clearly in his voice.

“The evolution of industries has been dramatic in the last few years. It is very important for leaders to learn and unlearn so that we don’t become dinosaurs,” concludes Aziz.

The post Aarif Aziz: “It’s essential for leaders to learn and unlearn, and not end up as dinosaurs” appeared first on HR Katha.

CFO’s role

Murali’s role as the chief fun officer is to ensure a smile on the faces of the thousands of Capgemini employees working in India. It is an extraordinary goal, but the free-spirited CFO relies on the ‘F’ words to shoulder this responsibility, namely fun, family, food and fairy-tale experience. He has crafted a new style of ‘employee engagement’ that ensures enthusiasm and excitement amongst employees using innovative, yet deliverable ideas. The CFO adopts a positive psychology to achieve this and says, “I love my work, and for me vocation is vacation.” His passionate energy is directed towards creating a culture of fun in the workplace so that there is a positive environment conducive for growth and loyalty. “Fun is not just an initiative, but one of the seven core values of the organisation,” says Murali.

“My biggest challenge is that I keep questioning myself and am always in search of next big thing. Finding avenues for fun that ensure maximum participation countrywide, is an impetus and a challenge at the same time.”

The CFO’s Team

Murali works in close association with Sarika Naik, global director, marketing and has a four-member team. His potential as a people person, orator, leader and well-wisher has him connected to all employees at Capgemini, India.

CFO’s achievements

Murali says, “Fun has different meanings for different people, and this is kept in mind while planning activities. We offer a varied palette of activities to involve a wide spectrum of people.”

Rubberband

This music band is for the employees and by the employees of Capgemini. “I created this band keeping in mind the talent and passion that people have. It is about ordinary people having extraordinary passions. In due course of time, the Rubberband was doing shows not only in office but at other corporate events,” says the CFO.

TGIM initiative

The ‘Thank God it’s Monday’ (TGIM) initiative was started to tackle Monday Blues and keep employees’ spirits high on the first day of the week. In about 8000 campuses, every Monday during lunch, a band plays music which engages employees in a pathbreaking way. In these shows, songs are sung in many languages and employees meet after office hours to passionately practise and improve their performances. They have been featured in the Limca Book of Records for the longest-running corporate show. “In our Gandhinagar office, there are not many singers but there are dancers, so they perform dance shows. TGIM has raised the bar for employee engagement as music is the biggest stress buster not only for the performers, but also for the listeners. We have completed 600 shows and continue to get stronger,” says the CFO.

Murali applies the horses for courses approach to design activities suitable for people with different interests and skills. The idea is to engage maximum number of employees in the organisation.

Battle at Basement

This is the name given to fun cricket matches played in the office garage. There are 650 teams, with each team comprising minimum three girls, who play fun cricket with tennis balls. For the intellectual and nerdy ones, there is an exciting quiz (puzzles, riddles, trivia) happening across the country online. “We call it Thank God its 3(pm) and chose that time to curtail the mid-day slump in people. All questions asked are original in nature so that the solution cannot be found online.” There are other activities, such as a talk show, innovative rugby game and so on, which Capgemini employees can choose to participate in to destress and energise themselves.

Why is Murali the CFO?

Murali likes to call himself a happiness mascot. He is passionate about his work and strives to help people in his organisation experience the peak of happiness. He says, “I went through a temporary grieving phase in the past, due to a break up which changed me. It made me hungry for sowing love and creating fairy-tale experiences for the thousands of employees at Capgemini.”

Bring in a whole new experience for your employees with the best employee engagement solutions from Vantage Circle

Challenges faced

“My biggest challenge is that I keep questioning myself and am always in search of next big thing. Finding avenues for fun that ensure maximum participation countrywide, is an impetus and a challenge at the same time.”

The chief fun officer, a designation created by Capgemini, shows the spirit and values the Company stands for. Through this office, it is creating a wave of happiness in its people.

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It was a great and challenging start to her career indeed. She gained a bagful of experiences in the one year that she spent at the plant. The assignment exposed her to the functioning of a plant, handling contract labour and witnessing business action at the ground level.

It was also the time when the HR industry was going through a transition. Personnel management was being redefined as human resources, with the scope of the HR function expanding and the true value of HR starting to come to the fore. With each passing day, she cultivated more passion in people and witnessed the sector growing in leaps and bounds.

Suryanarayan’s interest in the business of people management started during her college. She graduated in psychology from Lady Sriram College with a specialisation in organisational behaviour. It is here that she delved into the people aspect of the organisation and gauged its significance.

After a year at the Kanpur plant, Suryanarayan moved to Gurgaon for a national-level project focussed on the consolidation of waste plants acquired by the Company. She gained further insight into the business, as she worked with the logistics team and got involved in the national productivity benchmarking exercise. She had to work in multiple areas and study every aspect of the organisation from sales productivity, complexity of the market, revenue, market share, and penetration to be able to figure out the manpower required to be most productive for the area of business.

“The idea was to marry practicality on the ground with templates and models that are required to implement, and yet remain human and responsible for the outcome. It was one of the best learning experiences,” Suryanarayan shares with HRKatha.

However, after Coca Cola — where she spent close to seven years — Suryanarayanan has had a long stint with Nokia and she still cherishes the experience. She spent five years at Nokia and those were her true learning years. She learned how leaders can create a culturally strong organisation and how passionate employees can be for the brand. She joined Nokia in 2008, when it had a market share of 75 per cent.

It’s here that she got the opportunity to carve a niche in the domain and gain a solid understanding of the business – how to influence people and create individual space, how to drive critical HR interventions with a small team and how to partner with business leaders to drive the business agenda.

In her career, Suryanarayan has worked across sectors and companies — FMCG, IT, telecom, pharma and electrical.

Her experience across companies and industries makes her believe that change is the only constant. “The world is so dynamic nowadays that unless an organisation finds ways to stay agile and adapt, there is a high risk of threat to survival in the near future. Hence, having the right people and leadership is the best insurance for a company to stay agile and nimble footed in this VUCA world,” she reiterates.

Suryanarayan grew along the journey to emerge as a true blue HR professional. The relationships she built across different companies and roles define her, and she counts them as her biggest achievements.

She believes that strong people leaders are those who strive to make themselves redundant, by letting people grow under them, encouraging them to live up to their potential, and providing them enough platforms to hone and exhibit their skills.

Her advice to novice HR professionals is that they should immerse themselves in the business and also speak that language, because HR knowledge is irrelevant without this. It’s important to listen and be authentic and most importantly have the will to take on different challenges.

In this fast changing corporate world, Suryanarayan says, “How HR professionals can use technology to create and provide unique experiences to people will be the key building block for HR in the future.”

As a new mother, most of her time outside work is currently spent with her 10-month-old daughter. She enjoys reading about different cultures and times, and the experiences that mould them. Her interests include watching movies and travelling.

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Rachna Mukherjee is not an HR professional by default. This engineering graduate from BITS, Pilani spent a significant number of years in engineering—designing and developing software—before she plunged into HR.

In the mid-1980s, after attaining her degree, Mukherjee began her professional journey with Blue Star, a Hewlett-Packard company. It was a hardcore techie’s job. At her next destination, government-owned National Informatics Centre (NIC), she continued with her technology profile. At NIC, she got a wider exposure of leading projects, managing the technology team and also training the workforce.

As luck would have it, an opportunity came knocking when in the mid-1990s, the Escorts Group forayed into the telecom sector. The Company needed a person for leadership development; someone with a technological bent of mind. It was a new sector for the Group, which was known for manufacturing tractors and motorcycles. Also, telecom was at a nascent stage in India.

Though Mukherjee was initially reluctant to take up the job, once she did, she never regretted the decision ever, even for a moment.

Primarily, there were two reasons why Mukherjee was hesitant. First, her children were still young and she thought working in a newly born company, would be rather hectic and demanding. Second, in those days, it was considered a mindless act to quit a secure government job for one in a private company, that too a newly launched one. On top of that, the role offered was in an unfamiliar territory.

Despite all odds, Mukherjee took up the challenge with some determination. It’s here that she emerged as a true blue HR professional. The Company not only allowed her to upskill and build her capabilities, but also enhance her knowledge and understanding of HR. It gave her the opportunity to experiment, work, learn and turn things around.

At Escotel, she captured the expectations of the customers and worked on a system and process for employees to achieve customer satisfaction.

Life at Escotel for Mukherjee was full of experiences, and till date she considers this to be the most fulfilling job of her career. It is here that she realised how important it is to understand the business, so that interventions from HR remain critical and idealistic.

When Mukherjee plunged into an HR role, she realised lacked a degree in HR and that could hinder her success in the sector. Circumstances did not allow her to quit her job or take a sabbatical to pursue a full-time course in HR. Instead, she found ways to gain knowledge through smaller capsules of learning. She attended short, week or 10-day long modules to clear her understanding on HR.

Wherever Mukherjee worked, she maintained a close proximity with technology. From Escotel, she moved to IBM Daksh and then to Microsoft, where she was head of people and organisational capability. She spent around five years with these two companies, but was back in the telecom sector with Aircel.

Aircel was at that time emerging to capture the national market from being a regional player. The Company launched its services in 13 circles within a very short time span.

The challenge here for Mukherjee was multitasking and achieving multiple goals, all at the same time. She had to hire people, develop talent and also make them ready for the market almost instantaneously. She had to achieve all this while keeping in mind the harmony of various cultures, as the workforce comprised people from different geographies. And binding them together into one organisation and a uniform culture was no easy task.

In her current role at Schneider Electric too, she stays well connected with technology.

Her mother has been the greatest influence in her life. A career woman herself, Mukherjee’s mother taught her to be determined in what she wants to achieve.

Mukherjee believes it is the individual who has to set expectations and work hard and contribute towards it.

She enjoys gardening and loves to spend her spare time with her plants. She also plays table tennis and badminton, besides enjoying swimming.

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Hari TN has spent 14 years at Tata Steel – first as an engineer and then as a senior HR executive – he was head HR, new initiatives. However, what Hari is now better known for, is his successful stints with goal-driven start-ups. Hari is currently the head-HR at Big Basket.

Hari is also a successful author. He has co-authored three books — Back to Basics in Management-A critique of the fabled management mantras; Cut the crap and jargon: Learnings from the start-up trenches and Cutting the Gordian Knot-India’s quest for Prosperity.

An IIM degree for this IITian wasn’t an escape route from the shop-floor, instead he preferred Tata Steel at the Campus and started as a mechanical engineer on the shop-floor. For Hari, IIM was to get a broader perspective of how organisations work. This is also why at Tata Steel, he worked in various functions starting from procurement to corporate planning to design and also at construction sites before finally moving into HR, which he says wasn’t a planned move.

For successful mergers and acquisitions, mutual respect is critical for both companies, especially between the senior management teams.

It so happened that post liberalisation in 2002, foreign steel producers were dumping steel in India below the company’s cost prices. At this point, Tata Steel faced an existential crisis and had to restructure and right-size. Hari was chosen to be part of the core team that worked with McKinsey on making this transformation happen. It was a challenging task to create strategic business units, evaluate employees, right size the company, and find outplacement services for employees who were sacked because of the exercise.

It was unlikely that Hari would have continued in HR if he had stayed on at Tata Steel. However, the experience gave him the required exposure to pick up new skillsets.

Coming from an engineering background with an analytical approach, Hari took a non-traditional perspective to the HR role. He was actively involved in shaping the company’s strategy and analytics function, and HR was a case holder for him.

However, Hari found the bureaucratic set up at Tata Steel, a little pinching. He realised that it moved slow in terms of decision making and by nature he was a rule breaker with a bit of an entrepreneurial streak.

He decided to explore greener pastures, and his love affair with start-ups began with his next move to Daksh in 2002 and, in the process, he rediscovered himself.

A good HR professional becomes a good leader when he/she can balance employee advocacy with business realities without hurting either.

Hari discovered the kick in working for high-growth companies. At Daksh, he was instrumental in growing the employee strength from 2000 to 25,000.

Later, when Daksh was acquired by IBM, Hari got the exposure of managing the workforce during a merger and acquisition. The integration was a new learning experience, but given a choice, he says, he would not get involved in a similar process again. “For successful mergers and acquisitions, mutual respect is critical for both companies, especially between the senior management teams,” he says.

Hari believes that any change in reporting relationship from one organisation to another can lead to chaos. Hence, it is important to insulate the reporting relationships except for the top management for at least 12 months.

Next Hari landed up at Virtusa, a global IT services provider. Here he got the opportunity to work with a truly global organisation. It’s at Virtusa where he learnt that leadership flaws are exposed far more quickly in a global context than while working in a lone country.

From Virtusa, Hari moved to Amba Research and then to TaxiforSure (the company was later bought over by Ola) and later to his current role at Big Basket.

Sharing his experience of working with start-ups, Hari says, the biggest challenge has been to create the right culture and also stand by it. In a high growth start-up environment, those who are delivering terrific business outcomes begin to violate the culture in small ways. Hari feels dealing with blatantly deviant behaviour isn’t difficult, but dealing with the subtle violators is the biggest problem.

HR leaders need to stop hiding behind HR jargons and demonstrate a deeper understanding of the interplay between human psychology and business performance.

So far, for Hari, the biggest personal challenge has been to let go of people due to business challenges despite their good attitude and good performance.

Hari feels, a good HR professional becomes a good leader when he/she can balance employee advocacy with business realities without hurting either. He says, “HR leaders need to stop hiding behind HR jargons and demonstrate a deeper understanding of the interplay between human psychology and business performance.”

Startups are extremely chaotic and fast paced, with uncertain goals. “Here HR needs to be agile,” Hari says.

He believes in the idea that those who can learn, unlearn, and relearn will be more successful than those who are well educated.

He has learned continuously, exhibiting a child-like curiosity at every stage in life, and still reads Feynman’s lectures in physics as a pastime.

In his spare time, he likes reading books on contemporary science, start-ups, history and geopolitics.

Hari is also a strategic advisor at Fundamentum – a growth fund established by veterans from Indian start-up system. He likes to offer a helping hand to budding and seasoned entrepreneurs, by being their sounding board. He enjoys connecting the dots and finding patterns, whether in business, history or science.

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For someone who began his professional journey in finances and then moved into HR, Chaitanya N Sreenivas makes for a perfect leader in HR as he understands what goes on at the other end, and hence, can truly partner well with business, taking balanced calls backed with a holistic perspective about any situation. Currently, the vice president and HR head for IBM India and South Asia, Sreenivas has over 25 years of experience in HR and Business.

He began his career journey in the financial sector with a prominent accounting firm, Arthur Anderson (now Accenture), in New York City. He was a fresh MBA graduate when he joined as a senior consultant there and was a part of the team that handled mid-market corporate finance. Thereafter, early on in his career, he turned an entrepreneur. Thus was born Crossdomain Solutions in 2000, which offers services in the HR outsourcing space.

Although he was managing the transitions business at Crossdomain, it was the starting point of his journey in the HR space. Post this, he joined IBM in 2003, as an HR service delivery leader and was responsible for the larger transition and transformation business, enabling solution delivery, CRM and HR processes. That paved the way for him to truly enter the HR arena.

It was neither by chance nor pre-decided as Sreenivas says, “It wasn’t a pre-determined path for me, but it was my grit for finding opportunities of interest and doing something different, that has designed and determined my career path so far.” Crossdomain gave Sreenivas a flavour of HR and then since IBM happened, he has been dedicated to the HR space.

Amongst business, finance and HR, finance and HR are no longer just support functions but core to business and especially in a people- driven business, HR is a key team member.” 

Sreenivas shares he was always good with numbers and unlike everyone else, back in his academic days, he did not want to be a doctor or an engineer. So, he automatically chose the financial stream. However, he was also always interested in people and that is why the shift took place with ease.

Having seen and experienced things at both ends, Sreenivas says, “Amongst business, finance and HR, finance and HR are no longer just support functions but core to business and especially in a people- driven business, HR is a key team member.” He believes that collaboration amongst the three arms and working together in symphony is key to organisational success. “There needs to be a good balance between business, finance and HR and they all need to drive each other,” he adds.

Having seen major shifts in his career, from starting off with one of the big five global consulting firms, to joining a small company and then back into a global organisation – IBM – Sreenivas shares that the decisions were not easy. But, there were a few things that helped him move on and keep growing.

“Keeping an open mind to try out new things, always being open to learning, questioning the status quo while balancing out the organisational agenda are things that keep me moving in my professional journey,” Sreenivas opines. He strongly believes that if one is open to change and to doing things in a new environment, is agile, responsive, fair and balanced, everything will just fall into place on its own.

Talking of challenges in his professional journey, he admits that there are certainly enough challenges when one is trying to fit into a new place, and while trying to learn as fast as one can. But what keeps one going in such times is one’s own attitude and ability to quickly understand and know the team, and fill up the gaps quickly, if any. “It’s important to ensure that you’re always running, but make the right kind of changes at the right time,” he suggests.

Sreenivas has a unique leadership style and he sees great power in building a strong team. “Don’t hire your replacement, hire your boss,” he says. He feels it is important to facilitate learning and growth of the team. “If you’re too prescriptive, your team may not push for itself,” he opines. He believes in providing cover for the team—helping them see the big picture and connecting the dots to find meaning and purpose in what they do as part of the organisation.

According to him, a leader must trust his team and help them grow such that they can achieve what they aspire for. Going forward, he asserts that HR will not be replaced by technology, but HR professionals certainly need to keep up and embrace changes quickly. “HR needs to appreciate data as it helps synthesise information that enables better and faster decisions at work,” he says. There are numerous data sources now as compared to five or ten years back.

An open mind, openness to learning and trying new things is what will help HR scale the change. Technology, tools and the available amount and access to information has ensured more transparency in processes, thereby raising expectations for faster decision making with reduced response time from HR.

In these fast paced, competitive times, nothing gets Sreenivas stressed. He says “Don’t get stressed!” He feels it’s all about being resilient, bouncing up, getting to the root cause quickly and finding out appropriate solutions to it. “Be a problem solver, a solution to the problem and not the problem itself,” he advises.

Being a sports enthusiast from his early days and inspired by its dynamism, Sreenivas says, sports teaches you to celebrate your win, but more importantly, it teaches you to get back up when you lose. He applies the learning to work as well and believes that it is easy to try to do everything right but still be unable to get it. “What’s more important is to keep trying,” he says.

Sreenivas, fondly known as Chinni at IBM, is a very revered leader and is a strong case for constant perseverance and resolve for learning. About his motto in life, he says, “Learn, share, give back and the rest will follow.”

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They say, to achieve things that you have never achieved, you will have to do things that you have never done, and Manoj Biswas—a firm believer of innovation, digitisation and technology— vouches for this thought as he talks about his new healthcare venture, Salveo Healthcare. He provides insights into the ways in which HR processes have to be revamped to be relevant in an ever-evolving corporate scenario.

“HR needs to break its typical ‘structured’ approach that worked for us in the past. It has to be more strategic and more predictive than reactive. It obviously would have to be more technology friendly and innovative. To put it simply, all the structured work that HR does today in abundance would get digitised, and AI will take over and do a ‘better job’ of it. However, the human elements would require greater skills, insights and strategic intent. The HR of the future, would be more ‘humane’ strategic and intelligent,” says Biswas, who has been at the centre of HR processes at Accenture India and South Asia, IBM and Wipro. He is credited with pioneering large-scale hiring at these firms and infusing HR processes with transparency, swiftness, efficiency and dependability.

“In India we have seen HR go through big transformations. We have evolved from personnel management to business HR to centre of expertise, to HR consulting and advising. HR in the country is now set for the biggest disruption,” says Biswas.

He feels that every juncture in his life taught him something. He calls himself a learner. While his stint in the army taught him that everything is possible, his business role in the IT industry gave him the confidence to succeed in different parts of the world. Similarly, his HR career gave him the confidence to lead transformations, to grow large organisations, succeed in different geographies and to lead a successful IPO as the CHRO. His role as the CEO, gave him an opportunity to return to Bangalore and also understand the ecosystem of new-age tech companies. And finally, his father’s illness and eventual death lead to the genesis of Salveo Healthcare.

“I have learnt from many stalwarts and so called novices in the industry. My inspirations have been from different walks of life. I have been inspired by many soldiers in the army who were responsible for the foundational competencies I developed, and also some great business leaders, who taught me to pursue the passion of building your dream. A few creative colleagues fuelled my desire to be curious, and foolish and thus be constantly innovative,” he reflects.

A lot of his key foundational learning has been from the army. “The Indian army is the largest human resources organisation that runs 24×7. Therefore, it is but obvious that many of the best practices that we know in HR today, existed in the army long ago— the importance of teams; how training is key for successful projects; the significance of a plan and a counter plan; and most importantly, how to remain unflinchingly calm in crisis situations, and handle them aptly. I learnt numerous lessons from my seven-year stint in the armed forces. I could go on and on about it,” he reminisces.

Biswas recently turned entrepreneur with the launch of Salveo Healthcare, which provides health care services in the comfort of your home or at the nearest Salveo centre. The idea behind Salveo germinated after his father went through two major operations in 2015 and 2016. “After the operation I realised that the post-operative care, that one needs to go through is very painful, and tedious as that part of the healthcare industry is extremely disintegrated. To get the right physiotherapist or nursing assistant at home, one has to rely on a ‘hit and trial’ method unless one is lucky to get one through word of mouth. These are small-time vendors, but are vital.”

The second instance that further strengthened his determination to give it a shot was with a very dear friend of his. This friend and family were vacationing in the United Kingdom, where the son who had an accident about five years back and had to undergo a surgery and prolonged care, suddenly complained of problems, that probably were a reoccurrence of some symptoms of the accident. The family was on vacation, and obviously they had no records of the earlier history with them. They had to spend a huge sum just to get all the tests done, before the medical treatment could be started in the UK.

“That was the genesis of my interest to research more on the healthcare needs and gaps in the country, and thus was born Salveo Healthcare Solutions. Salveo is a Latin term for ‘good health’. We aim to bridge the need of healthcare, using innovation and disruptive technology. Our platform, MySalveo (My Good Health), aims to bring cost-effective healthcare, within reach of everyone. And that’s why our business plans are to expand to tier 2 and tier 3 locations,” he asserts.

In the first year, he intends to expand the reach to the tri-cities of Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. And the long-term plan is to have a presence in 25–30 cities, he shares. To achieve this, Salveo looks at collaborating with the right people and companies. “The key to success for any business today is to collaborate with others. We believe that leveraging the strengths of this industry and building upon the strength of the healthcare providers would be our key differentiators. We aim to move from reactive healthcare to preventive and holistic healthcare, with a focus on a great end- user experience. After all, getting appropriate healthcare should not be a painful experience,” believes Biswas.

Biswas has been in the corporate world for more than 20 years, in various roles in the IT industry and HR fraternity. Prior to that, he was with the Indian Army for seven years as a short service commissioned officer.

Biswas has never been a typical HR professional. After graduating with marketing as his major, he started looking for marketing opportunities (after his stint in the armed forces). He holds a dual degree in MBA from IIM Kolkata and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

“I always thought I was a great ‘business guy’. I would go to these interviews, where on realising that I was an ex-army officer, the interviewers would promptly offer me a security officer or administrative officer role. I went to 37 such interviews and did not make it,” he recalls.

Then one evening, while discussing the situation with a very senior marketing industry expert, he discovered that this was the ‘social perception’ in India. “Young army officers are great security and administrative managers and many of my friends were doing well in such roles. But I did not want to do it, and wanted to fight this social perception. The expert left me with a great advice— that I should fight the system from within and not from the outside as I was trying to do. And that’s how I took up a personnel manager role, trained myself and then moved on to be a business analyst and a successful product manager,” he adds.

After an effective business stint, he got an opportunity to use his business knowledge and HR skills to create the first resource management function, and he grabbed it. Thus began a fruitful recruitment and HR career for him.

He believes that sharing knowledge is very important and that is the reason why he immensely enjoys networking and speaking at various events. “It keeps the ‘learner’ in me alive,” he adds. He also runs The Unsung Heroes Foundation, which aims to help ex-servicemen and their families.

His word of advice to the youngsters and mid-level executives is to never stop dreaming and be passionate about your dreams. He encourages everyone to “..be brave enough to hire different people, and not your mirror images.”

When not working, Biswas loves to travel with friends and family, spending quality time with loved ones. Biswas and Shibani are doting parents to their daughter Ipshita.

The post Why Manoj Biswas is betting high on disruption in HR appeared first on HR Katha.

An extremely successful, yet humble HR leader, DP Singh started his HR journey 37 years ago, as a frontline HR executive, and rose up the corporate levels to his present position of vice president & HR head-India/SA at IBM. Soon after he finished his graduation, he led HR for the marketing division of an automobile giant, which was then well-known for its people practices. “It helped me understand the role and impact that the customer and marketplace play on business, and of course, it built my confidence to work as an empowered professional.”

By 1985, he was leading the HR for one of the manufacturing locations of the same company. This gave him much exposure enabling him to handle larger and more complex situations. Early on in his career, he had the opportunity to gain experience in labour relations and plant workforce implications that also included tripartite labour settlements.

Singh shares that the next chapter in his career was at an agrochemical firm, where he learnt and handled the dynamic changes of downsizing and scaling, and the complexities related with workforce re-balancing within different businesses of the company. There, he also got the opportunity to collaborate with various global professionals, who were the company’s joint venture.

“In 2000, I became a consultant and this was a particularly exciting part of my career. However, being the HR leader for MEA at IBM in Dubai gave me the experience to lead HR in a multicultural environment, as I worked with employees from 26 countries,” Singh shares.  By the end of this role, he had garnered immense experience, working with employees from across 70 nationalities, before moving to lead HR for IBM India/ South Asia.

Develop a high learning quotient, while being open to unlearn and relearn.
Possess and exhibit an ownership mindset. Trust will always get you trust. Be inclusive, and share your expertise. The more you share, the more you will get in return. Never forget to learn and know your business, as that is imperative to success of all the actions and decisions that you may take during your career.In all these years, the one thing that helped Singh in his consistent growth was the fact that he kept a keen eye on the pulse of business and felt that it enabled him to get better at his job making him a superior HR leader. Reflecting on his journey, be it in the enterprise space or the entrepreneurial one, Singh says, “I have been open to learning from the marketplace, competition, leaders, my team and everyone around me.”

Splitting his learning into three phases, he shares that he learnt the importance of ethics and integrity, mutual respect, dignity of labour, listening to people and being inclusive, in his formative years. “In the second phase, I imbibed the skills to manage scale, deal with diverse people, the need for a strong culture and importance of leadership for the growth of an organisation,” he says. His recent learning, however, includes working with people across geographies, appreciating diverse cultures, leveraging analytics for business insights, and transforming personally to leverage social and digital technologies.

Singh believes that some of his learning has come from outside the job — from his theatre engagements, which taught him patience and adaptability. Singh, who speaks at various forums, feels that this adds humility to his personality, enabling him to see how knowledge sharing adds to self-growth.

A true leader at heart, Singh has faith in co-creation. He says, “It is not about who gets the credit, but the credibility of the idea that matters to the organisation. In my experience, ideas and work, owned jointly by a team, always succeed. Appreciating people for their work, being transparent with feedback without impacting the self-worth of a team member in front of their peers and appreciating the outstanding contribution of a team member is something that, I say with conviction, is the best way to empower people.” While this leads to mutual respect, transparency, acceptance of each other, it also nurtures a culture of innovation.

According to Singh, every significant shift in his career brought in new challenges and new learning that developed his professional expertise. What led him to be successful in each of these stages was an understanding of the business reality and working to find practical solutions to complex situations. “Hard work; continuous learning; putting in place processes; seeking help; thinking out of the box; exposing my vulnerability to my teams; leveraging technology; not compromising on ethics;   and taking calculated risks helped me overcome many work-related and workplace challenges. Finally, it was the quality of the talent in my team that made me succeed,” he states.

At IBM, Singh has been able to implement and leverage technology into HR practices. This has resulted in efficiency and effectiveness, while adding to the experience of an employee. Singh asserts, “Rethinking workforce strategies and employee innovation during turbulent times is always important.”

He suggests that a pertinent question HR professionals need to constantly ask themselves is, “How can I do this better and differently, such that it is meaningful in the future and helps make a difference?” After all, talent is one of the most important elements in ensuring the continuous success of a company. Singh, a harbinger of technology in HR, firmly believes that, “As organisations go through the digital shift, HR leaders need to take the lead in digitising the HR functions.”

With technology changing the entire landscape of how HR functions, Singh advises that HR professionals need to have an open mind, be experimental and remain committed to continuous learning. “They have to adopt the attitude of working to learn and not just learning to work,” he says. Adopting new techniques—of working; leveraging data to provide insights; being transparent— is the way to go in the current times. “They cannot just say ‘trust me’; they need to show outcomes and behaviours, such that they can be ‘trusted’,” he adds.

A constant learner, Singh believes in hard work, persistence and continuous skill building. “One must see building careers not as a 100 metre dash, but as a marathon. Good careers are built on a strong foundation. So, focus to build the fundamentals. And as you rise in your career, focus on your strengths. It is much easier to leverage yourself with this approach,” he says.

It is his passion for work, a positive mindset and complete faith in his teams that help him sail through, even during tough times. “The other thing that keeps me going is my family support, be it my mother, wife or children. They are very understanding and play a big role in making me comfortable when they sense stress,” Singh shares.

Singh now endeavours to write more, and may even publish a book. He revealed his interest to do something in the area of education in the future— either by teaching or helping an educational institution to grow and set higher standards within the respective industry.

Singh’s motto in life is—“Enabling people to work on their strengths, be open to learn from all; be respectful; be transparent; and create an energetic and enabling work environment.”

The post Profile: DP Singh: Building careers is not a 100 m dash, but a marathon appeared first on HR Katha.

“No opportunity is big or small. If it is small, it can be made big and if it is already big, it can be made large enough,” says Rajendra Mehta, currently the chief people officer at DHFL. For someone who accidently chose HR as his career and has been able to make the most of every opportunity that he received during his career of over 21 years, this statement certainly stands true. With a deep understanding of expectations, of both the management and the employees, from the very beginning of his career, Mehta has been able to strike a perfect balance — creating an enabling environment at every organisation he has worked.

Mehta shares the story of how he accidentally came into the world of human resources but made a significant mark. It was during his academic days when he used to visit a family friend; one of the members of that family worked as a personnel head in an oil company in India at that time. That is when he briefly understood the role, and got influenced to choose HR as a career.

In his first job at KEC International, he had the chance to work with one of the leaders who was exceptionally great in terms of both business thinking and the ability to lead workmen — someone who could not only navigate the conversations but also perfectly balance the interests of the management and the workers. Mehta says, “That learning really came handy, enabling me to manage people, empathise with them and still get the work done. That formed my initial grounding in the HR space.”

“Working with the Times Group requires even more orientation for HR to be business partners.”

“As a management graduate, I had heard at that point of time that it was really crucial for an HR professional to possess the ability to understand industrial relations and to be able to build a cohesive and friendly environment, ensuring success for business. That is where KEC International provided the primary exposure in the industrial relations space,” Mehta shares.

Thereafter, he got to work with L&T, which was at that point one of the greatest places to work. Being a process-oriented organisation, it helped him understand the importance of implementation capabilities. Moving industries, Mehta then worked with the Times Group gaining a deep understanding of how promoter shareholders (which was Bennett Coleman & Co. for the Times Group) view businesses. “Working with them requires even more orientation for HR to be business partners,” Mehta explains. The promoter shareholders have high aspirations and there is an opportunity of really leveraging various levers of HR that one can implement well, starting from hiring talent to building a talent pipeline, to ensure the desired business outcome.

Switching industries across construction, media, textile, and now BFSI, Mehta gained rich exposure in managing complexities in an organisation, strategic hiring, building organisational structure, supporting people aspirations and deriving business results with a P&L perspective. Mehta’s rich experience also spans across geographies, such as the US, Europe and Latin America, where he learnt that language is very important to be able to connect with people. “These were some of the finest experiences I was able to get in my previous organisations,” Mehta says.

Having always tried to ensure that the environment he builds in an organisation is in the interest of business at large, Mehta strongly focusses on giving people a comfortable environment, building programmes for their growth and creating opportunities for their movement upwards. He agrees that although most businesses have similar sets of functions at the core, there are finer nuances specific to the product or industry. If one has a decent understanding of the levers that drive businesses, most jobs become far easier.

“If HR is a good business person and has the ability to influence the population of the organisation, there is no bigger thing than that.”

Mehta explains how working with multiple industries allowed him to discover how context varies for different industries and what sensitivities are required to deal with different situations. “If one has a good understanding of business at large, one can be successful in any industry and this is what helped me move across industries,” he says.

Mehta believes that in the present time most companies have a younger demography and every person has broadly three aspirations — learn, earn and grow. If one is able to set the context right and build an environment for these three needs, one can be successful. He elaborates that it is crucial for HR to have empathy, people skills and the ability to understand the challenges of an organisation and its people to build a path for success and navigate it through culture.

Organisational culture is about how an individual behaves and acts in a specific scenario. For instance, Mehta cites that customers always look for a perfect response to their needs, and an HR leader should be able to build a culture that offers an environment where people are customer-focussed. He says, “As an HR I need to be focussed on two aspects—Do I do enough in terms of establishing employee connect with the environment that we’ve built up? Do I encourage employee connect with the roles that they are assigned to? If we are able to get the right answers to these two questions, we can be successful as an HR professional in any industry.”

Coached by Dr Ram Charan, Mehta shares that it was he who taught him how to manage the interdependencies of people on the top and how one can culturally change the leadership collaboration as that impacts an organisation at large. Mehta feels that HR professionals need to be aware of the contextual differences in businesses and navigate through them accordingly as people have different goals and aspirations.

Having said that, what he likes the most about the function is his ability to impact the lives and careers of people. “If HR is a good business person and has the ability to influence the population of the organisation, there is no bigger thing than that,” he opines. One has to be the right kind of facilitator to impact people’s careers. “My ability to help people in their career advancement and aspirations and push them into futuristic opportunities is what I like about the profession,” he adds.

Mehta likes to put relationships first and believes everything else will turn out to be successful then. In his words, “Create smaller impacts and give value to your managers or the key stakeholders and they will then come around and seek your help.” It is the ability to build a connect first and show smaller values boosting belief in your abilities to deliver, that helps get buy-in from the key stakeholders.

Mehta aspires to continue to impact workplaces, as his belief rests on the fact that success comes from being able to manage the happiness of people in an organisation. When organisations put in so much money and resources, the disengagement of employees could prove harmful to business aspirations. Therefore, he says, “My biggest aspiration is to create an environment where 100 per cent of the people are happy and engaged.”

Mehta shares his mantra in life— “One should remain positive about business and optimistic about the opportunities one gets irrespective of how big or small they may be. One should dream big and aspire high as that will lead one to do something really impactful. Thinking big is my only mantra.”

The post Profile: Rajendra Mehta: Creating smaller impacts for a larger success appeared first on HR Katha.

Here’s the perfect story of a small-town boy who had big dreams and the perseverance to achieve them. The story of someone who began his career in full swing in a generalist HR role and from thereon, has been able to make wise choices, hone his skills and strengthen his impact on the business world, outdoing all the challenges that ever came his way. Meet Subhankar RoyChowdhury, currently global head-HR strategy, M&A and analytics at Lenovo.

RoyChowdhury, an economics graduate, further pursued his MBA in human resource management and kick-started his career as an HR generalist at L&T. Considering the scale of the organisation, he had the privilege of learning from pioneer HR practices and getting hands-on experience working in different business units. Recalling his first job as his most memorable one, RoyChowdhury shares how he enjoyed being a part of a strategic team — that evaluated the HR technology solutions for 40,000 employees — and working in different units along with the added fun of staying in a fancy accommodation in Mumbai.

After having spent three years in L&T, RoyChowdhury felt more inclined towards HR technology. That is when, in 1998, he decided to move to Siemens Information Systems (SISL) in the US, by joining their PeopleSoft HR Team in India. He joined SISL along with 10 other HR functional consultants from various companies to be a part of the newly-formed PeopleSoft HRMS practice. At SISL, he received training on PeopleSoft, project management, cross-cultural working and other skills needed for the new profession. Along with the training a lot of excitement regarding the new role also built up.

“Sitting on the ‘bench’ is a terrible feeling especially when you have left a career to pursue a new one.”

However, hope turned to despair as after 10 months of waiting, SISL could not find opportunities. “Global software investment was focussed on Y2K implementation (1999) than ERP, and SISL also did not have any direct projects. Sitting on the ‘bench’ is a terrible feeling especially when you have left a career to pursue a new one” RoyChowdhury recalls.

Without losing hope and wasting more time waiting for a miracle, RoyChowdhury handled the situation with a strong heart. He walked up to the SAP practice head and offered to work on SAP HR domestic projects. After receiving training on SAP HR, he implemented a SAP HR project before moving on from SISL to join PwC in Mumbai, in 2000.

Talking of his new beginning at PwC, RoyChowdhury says, “PwC gave me an entrepreneurial opportunity by sending me to PwC Tampa, Florida for a month to be trained on their new B2E (Business to Employee) portal solutions and build that in India.” As soon as his wheel of work at PwC set in motion, PwC Consulting was sold to IBM and he was subsequently moved to IBM Business Consulting Services.

As they say, nothing comes easy – there was a sea change in the culture and style of work of the two companies waiting to test the level of acceptance one has. “Culturally, PwC and IBM were chalk and cheese. While the former was a partner driven, nimble, niche and entrepreneurial setup, the latter was publicly traded, colossal, complex and process focussed. It was a very interesting learning to navigate through the merged entity that had different cultures, leadership styles, structure and talent. Slowly, I started appreciating the strength of the processes that IBM built to manage the complexity,” RoyChowdhury says. IBM provided him a wonderful opportunity to work on a wider canvas of HR areas, such as e-Learning, HR outsourcing, organisation design, HR shared services and change management.

“It was a very interesting learning to navigate through the merged entity that had different cultures, leadership styles, structure and talent.”

The last consulting assignment he took at IBM was with Nokia — to build a Sales Competency Centre for Nokia Asia Pacific. Little did he know that he would soon switch to the then mobile phone giant itself, moving from consulting to generalist HR once again. “An invitation to join Nokia came in, and after eight years in HR consulting I again wanted to go back to the HR generalist role. So, I decided to join Nokia,” RoyChowdhury recalls.

Consulting is different from core HR, and talking of the shift, RoyChowdhury says, “In consulting as you grow, you get more revenue generation responsibilities and less hands-on consulting. In HR generalist roles, on the other hand, you continue to have a direct impact on business through your HR knowledge and skill. In consulting, you would always be considered a ‘consultant’ or an ‘outsider’ and that would be less fulfilling than being a part of an organisation and getting a stake of both its success and failure.”

This switch was a very difficult decision to make — on one hand RoyChowdhury felt that consulting had given him the opportunity to work in multiple countries, industries and HR functional domains; on the other hand there was a corporate HR role that could provide him a sense of belonging and the ability to experience the direct impact of his work. Although RoyChowdhury decided in favour of switching to corporate HR in Nokia, he still feels that his consulting experience is invaluable and has significantly added to his career.

Nokia, as everyone knows, was once the leader in the mobile phones market but had a bitter fall with the coming of other smartphones. RoyChowdhury joined Nokia in 2006 when the company was a market leader. It was at Nokia that RoyChowdhury faced the most challenging situations in his career when his roles were made redundant three times in five years because of multiple reorganisations in the company. However, in each situation he feels that he was given another role which was always better than the previous one. Recounting his learning, he says, “If you build a strong credibility through your work, success will follow. The frequent changes in PwC, IBM, Nokia and Lenovo have made me highly adaptable to change and given me the ability to take risks, which is very critical in today’s VUCA environment.”

“At Nokia, RoyChowdhury faced the most challenging situations in his career when his roles were made redundant three times in five years because of multiple reorganisations in the company.”

RoyChowdhury’s stint at Nokia as the head-HR, Middle East and North Africa, Dubai, took him places. He had the responsibility of building Nokia’s organisation in more than 15 countries from Morocco to Pakistan. Having spent over four years in the company, across nations, working with some of the best global talent and experiencing and building a great ‘Finish’ culture, RoyChowdhury felt the need to be back in India. So, in 2010, he joined Lenovo and moved back to Bangalore. Lenovo was then a $22 billion company compared to $45 billion today.

Sharing the scope of his work at Lenovo, RoyChowdhury says, “At Lenovo I had the opportunity to once again build a strong talent base for India and MEA regions that included building up the leadership teams, the HR Teams, middle management and business graduates from B-Schools.” In 2014, he was offered to lead global HR strategy, M&A and analytics. He is now responsible for due diligence related to mergers, acquisitions or divestures, partnering closely with the corporate development team. In a short period of time he has built HR analytics in Lenovo from scratch, and has made significant strides in developing strategic people insights in the areas of talent management, labour cost, strategic workforce planning, sales compensation and HR RoI measurements.

RoyChowdhury has had his share of experiencing organisation re-structuring, mergers and acquisition but he kept reinventing himself to be relevant. He believes that success is a journey and a state of mind where one needs to be always curious, restless and relentless for the next goal. He grew up in a very small town/Tata colony in the western district of Odisha that had a population of not less than 20,000 people. It had a happy, carefree and stress-free environment, which was oblivious to educational opportunities or career choices. Looking back at his childhood and early aspirations, RoyChowdhury says, “To me, success that time, when I was in high school, was watching the graduate engineers that Tata hired and just getting a job like them. But as I grew up and started working, my goals kept transforming.”

A true fighter, winner and an incredible leader, RoyChowdhury continues to inspire as he says, “If you have the right attitude, integrity and ethics, you will eventually be successful and overcome any challenges in work and life.”

The post Lenovo’s Subhankar RoyChowdhury: The art of staying relevant appeared first on HR Katha.

A confident risk-taker and a people-focused leader, he shares his interesting journey with HRKatha.

Only a true people’s person can get attracted to people-related issues while having a successful career in an altogether different stream of work. A genuine human resource professional at heart, Vivek Kumar came into the world of work equipped as an industrial engineer. He began his career with ONGC back in 1984. Little did he knew, that his first job itself will present him a bouquet of people issues that will drive him towards choosing HR as a career.

Working with a large PSU such as ONGC provided him an exciting and challenging experience. The sheer scale of operations and market leadership position of the organisation taught him the importance of processes and uniform ways of working, and its impact on productivity.

Soon enough he also realised the importance of people in the success of an organisation and developed a belief that the right focus on people will not only create a clear competitive advantage, but will also become a real game changer for any business.

Kumar who is currently the chief human resources officer, Indus Towers, made his biggest shift quite early in his career, when he realised that human resources is the soul of any business.

“When I started as an Industrial engineer, I observed that the focus of the company at that time was mostly on people related issues such as human resource planning, identifying productivity measures, optimising number of people, designing incentive schemes and working around motivation and development of workforce,” he shares.

“As I spent initial 4-5 years on these aspects of human resources in the organisation, it made me realise that increasing focus on the people function leads to creating larger impact on people’s life as well as the business at large”. This is when he decided to shift to HR function.

When I started as an Industrial engineer, I observed that the focus of the company at that time was mostly on people related issues such as human resource planning, identifying productivity measures, optimising number of people, designing incentive schemes and working around motivation and development of workforce.

Having worked with ONGC for 11 years in a business profile, Kumar gained a rich experience that helps him as an HR professional even today. Aligning HR with business and talking the strategic language for delivering people related agenda comes naturally to him.

It was a risky decision, when the IIT-Kanpur graduate, decided to step into HR. He had to quit his job with one of Maharatna PSUs and shift to a small private sector company. Back then leaving the comforts of a secured government job which was also well paid must have been a challenging decision.

His biggest learning from the transition, though, was the importance of establishing organisation culture, and a climate conducive to people engagement and growth for success of any organisation.

He also learnt along the way that driving high performance through people should be the key priority of an organisation and here, the HR team has to play a very critical role of a facilitator and a catalyst for achieving the same.

“On the personal front, my belief further strengthened that taking risks in life, by making the right choices, is key to long term success”, he said.

In a career spanning over 30 years, Kumar has had the privilege of working across both the public and private sector and to learn from their differences.

Based on his diverse experience across sectors, he says, “The basic difference between the two sectors comes more from the way an organisation is managed by its leaders in terms of people and business practices. Many progressive public sectors can also boast of very good practices, which can be replicated in private sector and vice versa”.

In his view, while in the public sector, one experiences relatively longer term orientation in decision making, private sector displays higher speed, sense of urgency, risk taking ability and hunger to grow.

“At B2B companies with with low visibility and brand recognition, leaders have to play an important role in sharing the larger purpose of the organisation on a continuous basis, at internal as well as external forums to enhance awareness and respect.”

Kumar believes that being in HR function, it’s a great privilege to move across industries. He says, “I have seen six of them namely oil and gas, engineering, pharmaceutical, IT, ITES and telecom, and each one is a different world altogether in terms of business models, peoples profile, working styles, HR priorities, structures and culture”.

Kumar’s rich experience is not only spread across sectors, he has also tasted both sides of the business world working with both B2C and B2B companies. This exposure in fact makes him a successful leader that he is now, as he understands the different needs and expectations of people across these two sectors.

“From the people standpoint, the major difference comes from lesser visibility and brand recognition of B2B companies, as they do not directly deal with the end customer. In such a scenario, leaders have to play an important role in sharing the larger purpose of the organisation on a continuous basis, at internal as well as external forums to enhance awareness and respect”, he quips.

Managing HR leadership at a B2B organisation has its own set of challenges. It is to create brand awareness among employees and potential talent. Kumar opines, “Through its mobile towers Indus Towers touches the lives of more than 600 million people, multiple times in a day, however people at large are not aware about the organization. This is why it is important for leaders to put extra efforts in making its people feel the pride in being associated with the company”.

Adding to his versatile experience, an interesting phase in his career was his stint at Chicago when he was with Tata Infotech as the director-HR for the US & Canada operations. He was part of the company’s merger with TCS which was a successful one owing to the transparency of the process.

“At the time of merger between Tata Infotech and TCS, We worked systematically to map organisation structures, levels, grades, compensation, systems, policies and practices of the two organisations, for effectively bringing them on a common platform. This was followed by extensive communication and connecting with almost every person of the merging organisation, to address their concerns and apprehensions.”

He says, “We worked systematically to map organisation structures, levels, grades, compensation, systems, policies and practices of the two organisations, for effectively bringing them on a common platform. This was followed by extensive communication and connecting with almost every person of the merging organisation, to address their concerns and apprehensions”.

A confident risk-taker, Kumar believes that moving to different geographies and industries throws up new challenges and learning opportunities, which keeps you on your toes and enables you to make a unique contribution to the organisation, while continuously enriching your profile with new learning and experiences. In times of difficulties, it is his passion for people and the love for his work that keeps him charged. On the personal front, he values his family time the most.

He strongly believes that while it is important to deliver high performance in the current role, every professional should continuously visualise his intended future professional journey, invest time and effort to develop competencies in line with that, and keep on looking for appropriate opportunities.

On his motto in life, he simply quotes the famous old Hindi song by Mukesh from the film Anari – ‘Kisi ki muskuraahaton pe ho nisaar; Kisi ka dard mil sake to le udhaar; Kisi ke waaste ho tere dil mein pyaar; Jeena issi ka naam hai…’

The post Profile: Vivek Kumar: Finding soul in HR appeared first on HR Katha.

If destiny had had its say, she would have been a practising doctor today. Instead, she chose to move away from the conventional path of certainty, to do something completely different, even if that meant walking away from what her parents always aspired for her.

Though, Anuranjita Kumar had enrolled for a degree in medicine, in a few months’ time, she realised that this wasn’t meant for her. Kumar, who is now MD, CHRO, Citi South Asia chose to pursue industrial psychology, instead. Like they say- ‘If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.’

Letting go of a seat in a medical college to pursue psychology was nothing less of a disastrous decision in the late 1980s – a ‘blunder’ as many would choose to term it.

However, driven and firm as she is, Kumar paved her own path, and her perseverance led to success.

“We all start with the same drive and emotions when we are born, but what’s truly important is what we manage to make of ourselves as we traverse through our life’s journey. I truly believe that all of us are a result of our choices made with courage and conviction,” she asserts.

One thing led to another, and she finally landed at XLRI for her master’s.

“Post my graduation, the choice of next step was a critical one. On the advice of my mentors, I chose to join XLRI, to connect psychology to the corporate world,” she adds.

Kumar’s career kick-started with a large FMCG major, Procter & Gamble, in 1994, but she quit within a year to join Citi in 1995, her current employer.

Kumar had made an early shift from FMCG to BFSI. However, her short stint with the FMCG sector also had its share of learning as each industry and company is unique in its own terms with respect to the culture, people and processes.

“The basic difference between the two sectors was in the role and stage of maturity of the HR function in each. While the people practices in FMCG are stable, the BFSI sector allows more experimentation with the role of HR, thus paving the way for new ideas and techniques,” Kumar opines.

Though, Kumar has worked with only two companies in her entire career, she has had the good fortune to work across markets, be it in the US, Europe, Middle East, or Asia.

“Each culture or geography comes with its own work ethics and practices, and while you may not like all of it all the time, it’s yet another opportunity to expand yourself as a professional and an individual,” she observes.

In each role, there were challenges as well. Each experience and situation has played a part in shaping her career and life. She feels that though the decision to work across the globe was tough, it has really defined her as a professional.

“Working with one company for long helps one understand the system, workplace politics and become more adept at navigating one’s way through all of this, yet build a circle of trusted advisors and mentors.”

Exposure to diversity has taught her to be open and flexible, yet retain the core of her own identity. “It has also defined the values and ideas that I bring to the workplace,” Kumar says.

She recalls how she broke the ice with a group of male colleagues in London.

“I was in a newly appointed role in London during the financial meltdown, and the business I was managing was a boys’ club. They had a fortress around them, and it was not easy to break through. As I entered the boardroom, I saw it was full of white men in their mid-40s. Post a formal introduction, I smiled politely and said, “Gentlemen, I add colour from every perspective here—be it my gender, colour of my skin, the way I talk. And also I don’t always wear black or grey… so this will be a hell of a ride!”

In the last 20 years with the company, her climb was fast. Opportunities poured in; diverse roles across geographies and markets beckoned and it all helped her evolve further.

Working with one company for two decades is as rare as a unicorn in current times. While it has become more of a norm to move around, Kumar believes that hanging on does have its pros and cons.

“Working with one company for long helps one understand the system, workplace politics and become more adept at navigating one’s way through all of this, yet build a circle of trusted advisors and mentors,” she asserts.

On the flip side, the disadvantages include “succumbing to complacency that might arise out of knowing the system too well and inflexibility to new things and approaches,” she adds.

However, one can always keep these at bay by taking on new roles at regular intervals and working in different geographies and cultures, as Kumar did.

Feisty and self- reliant by nature, Kumar’s professional growth has been fuelled by her drive to tread newer pastures.

In fact, she has fluidly shared this experiences in the book she has authored — Can I have it all? — where she writes how it is really important to constantly challenge and push oneself out of the comfort zone each day.

Through her journey, spanning 20 years as an HR professional, she has been witness to women struggling to juggle their families, life and work. Most of them get caught up in the web of marriage, maternity and mobility and often give up their careers due to societal pressure and expected gender roles.

Her book is a reflection of her personal and professional life and the learnings that have helped shape her. It draws from her personal experiences as a corporate professional, mother, wife, and daughter and hopes to leave the readers with a sense of hope.

Like any other individual and professional, her journey is fraught with crests and troughs of successes and failures. However, her inner strength, courage and conviction pushed her to make clear choices. “As for any woman, marriage, maternity and mobility have been challenging crossroads in my career. However, they have shaped me as an individual, as well as a professional,” she affirms.

Her journey has been influenced by her parents who provided her the best of education, even though, she grew up in a small town.

“I was moulded by the trust my family put in me when I made choices contrary to conventions and studied in the best educational institutions in the country,” she concludes.

The post Anuranjita Kumar: Courage of convictions appeared first on HR Katha.

Rajesh Padmanabhan loves people. Everywhere. And, this is reflected in his style of work as well. Getting together a team and breaking through stereotypes gives him his adrenalin shot. For this HR executive, taking risks and stepping into uncharted arenas has been the mantra all along his professional life.

Padmanabhan’s career graph is impressive. After completing his Masters in both Human Resources and Finance, from Mumbai University’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, he joined ICICI bank handling systems on Cobol platforms and went on to become a corporate banker with the ICICI Group. As the nation entered the era of financial liberalisation, Padmanabhan worked as a corporate banker with the ICICI Group. This gave him considerable exposure in systems and financial services.

However, for Padmanabhan, the world out there was just too big to restrain him within stated parametres. He had to move on. So, in 1997, he took the big plunge to shift to HR and managed HR startups within the Group itself. By 1999, he was vice president, Human Resources, at ICICI Infotech.

“I saw a fantastic convergence between business and HR right in the late nineties. I looked at a classical HR Manager who was so distanced from financial realities that I saw this as a unique opportunity to bring my heart and soul together. It turned out to be the best decision of my life and the two I held enabled me do this. I thank the ICICI Group for giving me a startup opportunity in this space. Growth came rapidly and I could convert belief to action. There was no looking back.”

For Padmanabhan, though the ICICI Group was his Alma Mater that fine-tuned his skills and took him across systems, corporate banking, leasing and HR, his restive spirit would not allow him to sit pretty on his achievements. The world beyond called out to him. Change was the only constant factor in his life. “I realised that HR was a nice new world of people and little did I realise the fascinating synergy finance and HR would bring to my life. I could combine HR and business in my Essel Propack role. I was one of the first HR guys in India to globalise HR in countries and geographies like the US, Latin America, the UK, Germany, Egypt, China, South East Asia, Russia, Nepal and in India,” says Padmanabhan.

“I saw a fantastic convergence between business and HR right in the late nineties. I looked at a classical HR Manager who was so distanced from financial realities that I saw this as a unique opportunity to bring my heart and soul together.”

He then took over as executive vice president, group HR and Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development, the Oberoi Group, in 2004, where he served until 2007.

“It was here that I ensured that I could converge people learning holistically for business value and excellence creation,” says Padmanabhan.

This was followed by his tenure as the executive vice president & CHRO at Patni Computer Services. In the three years that he was with the company, he created customer – centric global HR models across geographies with world class learning skills, building frameworks and running complex yet efficient organisation structures with the single objective of customer and shareholder value creation.

His stint at Patni came with its dividends. He picked up three awards in a row— the Golden Peacock for Training in 2007, the ET Smart Workplace Award in 2008 and the DQ Preferred Employer (rank 7) in 2009.

Padmanabhan’s core competence lies in blending the various aspects of professional management. “It is not enough to just execute. You have to get the team together and make things happen. To have a global mindset is imperative. Influencing skills, and utilising the technology available is what will steer businesses,” he believes.

Padmanabhan exploited all these aspects to chart a new graph in HR at Capgemini, where he joined as corporate vice president & CHRO, in 2007.

“Scaling heights of growth with learning frameworks that were developed to facilitate success and growth for the organisation, the entire HR transformation journey was charted out for the organisation with roles like HR business partner, Centre of Excellence and HR Shared Services envisioned and implemented. Leadership building was a thrust area and I was privileged to work on creating an IP in that space for the company,” says Padmanabhan.

As a man, whose work took him across the globe, Padmanabhan has conditioned himself to be a true global professional and used every opportunity as a learning experience.

“Travel for work, takes you to many countries and acquaints you with different cultures. You realise that there is one flat world where you live as a corporate global citizen with no opinions, judgements, or views about anything. You learn to live the moment, do the right stuff and embrace the situation and the world at large,” says Padmanabhan.

Today, as president & group CHRO, Vedanta Resources, which he joined last year, Padmanabhan plans to strongly enable business and build people efficiencies at optimum costs. He firmly believes that building excellence and simultaneously anchoring on productivity are symbiotic processes for building a strong institution. At Vedanta, Padmanabhan has found the platform for enabling growth with cost-effective strategies and driving towards building excellence for the organisation. “The scope lies so clearly in running a business of people and it is a complete line role creating a differentiation and building world class businesses around people. I lead culture building, enable growth through people, with a clear vision to build world class practices, and thus make the Vedanta Group the best place to work for,” he says.

“There is one flat world where you live as a corporate global citizen with no opinions, judgements, or views about anything. You learn to live the moment, do the right stuff and embrace the situation and the world at large.”

Taking lessons in empowerment, humility, disruptive thinking and the power of belief, from role models, such as Narayanan Vaghul at ICICI Bank, Cyrus Bagwadia at Essel Propack, Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi at the the Oberoi Group, Narendra Kumar Patni of Patni Computer Systems, Paul Hermelin at Capgemini and Anil Agarwal at Vedanta Resources, it comes as no surprise that Padmanabhan has himself placed one milestone after another in his journey as an HR leader. Bagging several awards, some as coveted as the HR Professional of the Year, World HRD Congress 2010, and the Most Respected Global HR leader in Asia (top 30), World HRD Congress 2013, Padmanabhan is not one to rest on his laurels. His vision of building organisations for tomorrow, has determined his strategic blueprint.

“One major focus area for the Human Resources function is to understand the futuristic organisational needs and work towards preparing the organisation to take up the challenges head-on,” he believes. His organisational game plan is to prepare ‘Leaders of tomorrow’, for which it is necessary to source leaders using big data and HR analytics, hire leaders through social media, use customer presentation as a value creation for the end stakeholder and tap on unrealised potential, to encourage every career transition and HR transformation. He aims to build new HR designs of HR business partners, CEOs and HR Shared Services and walk the change. He wishes to plan end-customer outcome and use mobility as a technology platform for employee engagement and put in place a multi-currency compensation model.

At age 52, with over 29 years of professional experience and 16 years in HR alone, Padmanabhan sees his global exposure as a strong influence in honing his acute planning and execution skills, managing a global workforce and helping develop a sense of empathy and global leadership. His social skills, which play an important role in the execution of his professional choices have been nurtured through his varied experiences with different cultures and cuisines.

At the core, however, Padmanabhan remains a simple man for whom family and treasures of the heart outweigh material matters. Although striving for recognition, Padmanabhan believes that life should be well-balanced. In this, his wife, Varsha, is the steadying factor who has stood by him through all the vagaries that life has put him through. Deeply influenced by his parents, Padmanabhan believes that there must be a deep sense of purpose in life. Fond of biking and cricket, this HR veteran likes to travel and go on vacations along with his family.

There is no end to Padmanabhan’s dreams. Despite his achievements, he nurtures the dream to be an entrepreneur. He knows that there is a lot out there in the industry that needs to be addressed. “The leadership building process leaves a lot to be desired. A planned approach of internal growth versus external hires is required,” he says. He feels that HR Analytics can add tremendous future enterprise value, build functional expertise, and contributing to business value and customer excellence. It is also important to have a flexible digital modern workplace. For someone who has always advocated career transition, Padmanabhan feels that it is important—for both the individual and the organisation—to take risks.

He plans to put into practice certain operational models which will enhance organisational growth. Among these, to look externally at the best and blindly copy without assessing whether it will work in the organisation or not, to rely too much on past data instead of plotting a future journey, to not adjust to mistakes made and thereby lose credibility, and not refresh timed-out policies are major mistakes that organisations make, and thus, hinder growth.

Armed with the prestigious UN Award as CHRO, Capgemini, for building diversity and inclusive practices, Padmanabhan wants to change everything that poses a hurdle in the growth process of either the individual or the organisation.

An avid listener of AR Rahman’s music, Padmanabhan’s motivating quote in life remains HW Longfellow’s, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”

He toils, yes, and lives his dream every single day.

The post Rajesh Padmanabhan: The people’s player appeared first on HR Katha.

With an experience of over two decades in human resources management, it is difficult to imagine Singh in any other role. However, in reality, entering this domain was never his plan. After completing his schooling from a military school in the small town of Hazaribagh, Singh came to Delhi because his parents wished to see him become a successful civil servant. However, he soon realised that being a government official was never on the cards.

Currently employed as the chief people officer and director of Max Life Insurance, Singh has been responsible for developing and implementing successful human resource strategies that support long-term growth. He took his first step towards success when he qualified for the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), in Gujarat. After the completion of his course, Singh was determined to contribute something worthwhile to the society. The course at IRMA, which focussed primarily on the non-privileged members of the society, helped to give him an insight into the environment in rural India, the lives of the less privileged and the ways in which they can be helped.

On the completion of his course, Singh chose to join the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). As a part of the talent developing programme in NDDB, he was deputed to Eicher Tractors for a year for direct exposure to HR. In Alwar, Rajasthan, he learnt the concept of total quality management (TQM), which became a milestone in Singh’s quest for the search of quality in every foundation.

His need to constantly challenge himself intellectually led him to quit NDDB and join SRF Finance. In a couple of years, when GE Capital overtook SRF Finance, he grasped the chance to explore his talent. Singh went to the company’s HR head, Raghu Krishnamoorthy, and asked him for a chance as the market HR head. “I told him that I knew he was looking for a market HR head and asked him to place his bet on me since he could still hire anyone he wanted if I did not deliver my goals in six months,” Singh recalled.

After spending over 17 years with GE, transitioning from the capital sector to the energy sector and then finally to the supply chain sector, Singh realised that the skills of an HR professional can be transferred across categories. During this time, he began to appreciate the importance of humility and diversity. Working with senior leaders made him understand the importance of people agenda. So, when he moved to India after a brief stint in Dubai, he knew that he needed trustworthy and dutiful people on his team.

The merger of SRF Finance and GE was a difficult period for Singh. He had to let go of hundreds of people and live with the realisation that the families of these individuals were equally at stake. One day, when he was sitting with the CEO, a gentleman walked in with a bunch of letters addressed to the HR head and handed them over to him. “I was so touched by his gesture that it has left an indelible mark on me. We are in a situation, where this person knows that i am going to ask him to go. But he is so dutiful and so duty bound that even in that hour, he does what was required of him.” Shailesh realised that he is not just an HR professional, but an employee advocate who cares for his team.

The result of Singh’s skill with people is apparent in the way he has handled Max life Insurance since he first joined in 2012, after quitting GE. On his arrival, the company was ranked 88 on the Economic Times list of top 100 workplaces in India. Within two years, in 2014, it jumped to the 58th spot. Singh’s ambitions are high. “We are sincerely hoping that we can get into the top 50 this year. Our goal is to ultimately be among the top five by the year 2020,” he says.

The humble, popular and approachable Shailesh Singh has raised the bar of performance for himself with each passing day. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Jack Welch, who was the chairman of GE when he joined GE, Singh has grown into a person with strong convictions and values. Shailesh has also been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, “He inspired millions of people and he helped a country achieve independence. His ability to practice what he preached is what inspires me the most. I am and will forever remain a fan of Mahatma Gandhi,” he says.

The post Shailesh Singh: An accidental entry into HR appeared first on HR Katha.

In a career that spans over two decades in managing human resources function across sectors – manufacturing, consulting, IT & BPO industries – achievements and applauses have been a part of Paneesh Rao’s career progression – as much as learning and accepting change in most challenging of situations.

Having worked in several top notch organisations, Rao has managed to create a niche for himself. Attributing his success and values to his teachers, parents, colleagues and his family, Rao is humbled to say that up till now, life has been a great learning experience.

An alumnus of Symbiosis of Business Management (SIBM), his professional life kick started with VIP Industries in 1989 as an executive – personnel & administration. He was based out of the corporate office in Mumbai and was subsequently transferred to the Leo Mattel toys factory in Nagpur. His next move was in 1992, to Climate Systems (Ford Motor Co.). Post this, he moved to Noble & Hewitt and then Aditya Birla Group, till he finally joined Atos, a sizable and growing IMEA offshore unit of Atos SE (Societas Europaea) in 2013, as sr. vice president & head of human resources.

Recalling the IT boom, Rao reminiscences of the major mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that he was lucky to witness in India and in the global space, which gave him immense learning and exposure.

“My stint with Noble & Hewitt and Aditya Birla Group has been on a high learning path and I attribute a lot of value to have worked with industry stalwarts during a high of booming IT industry,” he says.

In all these organisations, Rao grew with an evolutionary curve that involved an array of rich experiences into various domains and companies. He got the much needed push and inspiration from his superiors under whom he worked and progressed. “My professional journey has been an exciting one! I have cherished every change in my professional life and continue to do so.” Rao says.

Embracing cultural nuances
In all of these years, Rao has been fortunate to have worked across different domains and travel through geographies. These experiences enlightened him with cultural sensitivity and gave him comparative insights and instilled confidence. He realised that while the difference lies in the professional challenges, competition, psychology, expectations, skills and ways of living, the common factors in these variances are the wants, needs and work life balance of people.

Rao believes that travelling is an exposure to technology, systems, people and this symbiosis reveals various dimensions of the society, which can really help in generating insights. He strongly suggests that young people should start travelling early in life, when the minds are fresh and are receptive to embrace new ideas and notions!

Building a futuristic vision
Having set up the HR function from scratch in several organisations and having managed well-established HR frameworks, he maintains that all organisations, big or small, have ‘people’, whom we term as human resources. Any organisation progresses when they have capable people running the show, and hence the key for any HR function is to leverage on its people. “The difference in starting from scratch is in setting-up – where you are the architect, hence the satisfaction is more manifest,” he quips.

He further explains that in an established organisation, the HR function takes centre stage in driving change. It aligns with new organisational requirements, which are guided by dynamics that might challenge established frameworks to create ways for new opportunities. There is always the challenge of rethinking and re-architecting to suit the new needs.

His experience has also given him the insight on the importance of having a futuristic vision in HR. People now have more choices in their career progression and mid-way career diversity as compared to a decade ago. They rate and judge companies with their HR policies, practices and overall employee sensitivities. Companies need to be aware of these aspects, while strategising the future of their HR vision.

“In the early days, HR function was more about rule-making rather than strategic business extension. The contemporary HR function not just involves supporting a business, but has lately grown to become an intrinsic arm of running a business as well,” Rao says.

The future vision for HR practitioners and strategists would be to value people for their intellectual capital and value and gauge the driving principle of a company, while balancing and nurturing this relationship to turn it into a self-sustaining model. “Atos is driving this imminent transformation aimed to propel it as a future organisation that will be an ideal place to work. What can be a better time and opportunity, that this change is led by me!” says Rao.

Overcoming challenges
As he continues to bask at the glory that he has earned over the years, he pauses to mention that while he learnt and achieved a lot, he also faced several perplexing situations that challenged his skills and understanding. “People think and behave the same, irrespective of their nationality – but they appear to be different contextually. Firstly, they work for themselves and coincidentally they work for the company as well. Reversing this outlook and stance is a challenge.”

However, his confidence and belief instilled in him pushed him to face each challenge head on. For him, challenging times are the most exciting times. And, each job progression has given him lessons and sown seeds of professional wisdom, making for interesting career headway.

One aspect that has helped him all through is upskilling and continuous learning. “I firmly believe that one cannot delineate upskilling and learning – it is a curve of continuous learning or unlearning for me,” he asserts.

Being a family man
A family man, he considers his wife to be his biggest support and morale booster. Since his hectic schedules hardly leave him much time to spend with his folks at home, he credits his wife for steering the family and managing all by herself, when he is away from home for weeks and months. He eyes swell with pride as he speaks of his children. “My daughter is in performing arts and the darling of the house. As for my son, I find it energizing to debate and discuss several topics with him, as he brings in the Gen-Y perspective.”

Miles to go
At the moment, he is enjoying his stint at Atos, striving hard to make it a great place to work, and helping double the size of the company in India to meet the group’s business goals. “My focus is to do things ‘differently’ to set apart Atos as one of the best places to work for, where colleagues regret the weekend and welcome the beginning of the week,” he concludes.

The post Paneesh Rao: On a learning trajectory appeared first on HR Katha.

When this fresh engineering graduate, joined Tata Motors (then TELCO) at its Jamshedpur plant, he was totally inundated by the sheer scale of operations at the automobile manufacturing unit. This was a learning phase for him; his focus was on to relate his knowledge in engineering with the plant environment, where people from varied backgrounds worked together. But soon enough, this young engineer, Amit Das, felt the need to do something which was different; something more.

Das, who is currently the president and CHRO at Reliance Communications, enrolled himself for a management degree in human resources. Meanwhile, he also joined the Kolkata-based power distribution company, the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC). It’s at CESC where Das learnt the difference between doing a job and pursuing a career. He learnt the finer intricacies of people management during this seven-year stint. CESC provided him the steepest learning curve in personnel management.

He also had his share of learning at the B-school where he gained a holistic view of various facets of business and instilled a great deal of confidence to face the ambiguous business environment.

The discipline of ‘managerial effectiveness’ – elements, behaviours and enablers that give life to and create effective organisations – has always fascinated Das ever since the early days of his career. He strongly believes that his keen interest in this function has played a crucial role in shaping his career further.

At ITW Signode, a Fortune 500 company, where Das joined as the regional HR head, he got the opportunity to work on two disciplines simultaneously – industrial relations (IR) and human resources (HR). Out here, while he was responsible for all the white collar employees located across the 12 branch offices in the eastern region, he also had to deal with 3000 contractual workers located at various plants. In this role, he learnt to deal with uncertainty and also with situations, independently. To ensure the non-disruptive and smooth functioning of business operations, he had to simultaneously deal with both political and government stakeholders, and that too at a very early stage in his career. This experience added to the steepness of his learning curve as far as environment management was concerned.

For Das, the next destination was the biscuit major, Britannia, where he joined as the head of industrial relations at its largest manufacturing plant in Kolkata. In his new role his primary mandate was to change the people management practices from the IR end of the continuum to the HR end. Despite the environmental challenges, due to the volatile industrial relations climate prevalent in the eastern part of the country during those times, Das successfully steered this shift, with collaborations and partnerships with multiple trade unions. This experience taught him that relationships nurtured during stable times, can be leveraged effectively during crisis situations.

His wide experience across sectors has inculcated in Das, the sensitivity to effectively deal with employees and stakeholders belonging to diverse cultural and demographic backgrounds. He has learnt to appreciate and manage business agenda driven by diverse talent. His first global exposure came at the Indian Hotels Company (Taj group of Hotels), where he served as the head, HR, for the ‘leisure’ strategic business unit (SBU), which had 26 properties, both inside and outside the country. Here, he successfully conceptualised several organisational development initiatives to build a value-based organisation culture, which was imperative to the creation of a competitive advantage for business success.

Similarly, at Vodafone, when telecom was still a sunshine sector in the country, he got into a much wider global role of managing functions across Budapest, Cairo, Pune, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. He recalls this experience as being exciting yet challenging. The nine years he spent in this company, transformed him into a true global manager – responsible for both global HR strategy and execution, with the mandate to build and lead large and diverse HR teams across multiple countries.

In between these assignments, Das also worked with a start-up software company during the early part of his career. He had to start from scratch to set up an HR organisation along with necessary people processes and systems to support the fast growing business.

At Reliance Communications, his current place of work, Das feels it is a new learning everyday. This 47-year old, who is 25 years into his professional career, still finds it exciting to step into the organisation and drive the business agenda in a collaborative manner.

An ex-student of La Martiniere, Kolkata, he is actually a gullible, small-town guy at heart, having grown up in Batanagar, a small mofussil town 25 km away from Kolkata. His active participation in multiple events and forums, right from his school days has not only sharpened his leadership competencies, but also influenced his outlook towards life.

He says, “Overall, it has been a very satisfying journey. Each day, I learn something new, which caters to my inherent learning agility, and that is what makes this professional journey a most engaging one.”

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