Ram’s association with Godrej Consumer Products began back in October 2010, when he joined as HR business partner, sales. Less than two years into this role, he was promoted to manager-learning and OD and HRBP marketing and sales support functions, based out of Mumbai. He also successfully led the the capability development initiatives for the organisation.

In April 2014, he was elevated again, this time to the position of HR business partner, Godrej Indonesia and Middle East. Among other responsibilities, the role involved working closely with the management committee team towards HR solutions for the organisation’s growth agenda.

His next promotion came more than two and a half years later, to the role of head HR, Africa, US and Middle East. This elevation saw him relocating to Dubai for five years. In 2021, he became business head –South Africa.

An alumnus of the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, Ram’s career began with Marico, in 2007, when he joined as a management trainee, hired from campus. After his training, he took on the responsibility of plant HR. By the time he moved on from Marico three years and five months later, he had become HR business partner, manufacturing and supply chain.

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Organisations have been trying to deal with the issue in their own ways. The most common solution, however, has been to give employees time off from work to rest, relax and rejuvenate. Though companies began this practice as a test run initially, many have now created policies around it. So is it time to implement specific burnout leaves for our employees?

Bumble, a US-based dating app, has decided to give a short vacation twice a year to all employees. In fact, in India as well, the Godrej Group has made it a point to give time off to its employees. HRKatha reported last year about how Godrej Housing Finance wants to create a culture, where employees feel free to take time off from work. The Company has actually decided to give longer weekends off to all employees periodically, to make this possible.

“Burnout leave is just another nomenclature. The real problem lies somewhere else”

Reetu Raina, CHRO, Quick Heal

Even Goldman Sachs surprised its employees by granting them some time off to simply unwind and come back to work recharged.

As far as burnout is concerned, a little break may be just what employees need to refresh and come back. However, as per the HR leaders HRKatha spoke to, creating a policy around burnout leaves will not help much.

Leave policy is not enough

Merely increasing the number of leaves will not really bring about a change. “It is not as if the number of holidays being offered currently are not enough. People just need to manage them right to give themselves adequate time off work,” says Kamlesh Dangi, global HR head, Incred Financial Services.

Work on the culture

Christina Maslach, a professor at the University Of California, has done major research in this area and has also developed a tool called Maslach Burnout Inventory. This helps one measure the extent of burnout in people. She believes that the major cause of burnout lies deep within the working culture of organisations. Therefore, employers should try and change that to see better results.

Reetu Raina, CHRO, Quick Heal, is of the belief that having a burnout leave policy makes sense only when there are not enough leaves available to take. “Burnout leave is just another nomenclature. The real problem lies somewhere else,” states Raina.

Encourage employees to take leave

As per Dangi, at Incred Financial Services, the major issue has been that people do not use their leaves. In other words, they do not avail enough leaves, which can be one of the problems. He reveals that his friends in the BFSI sector also have the same story to tell. “The employees do not take leaves, and this phenomena has increased ever since the pandemic,” says Dangi.

“The problem of burnout is more to do with the individual than the company. If people are disciplined and adhere to their timelines things will get easier”

Kamlesh Dangi, global HR head, Incred Financial Services

This is quite understandable, because employees have been restricted to their homes due to the pandemic. They have had no option to go on vacations or plan trips or breaks.

In fact, even during normal situations, employees prefer to roll over their leaves for monetary benefits.

Discipline and time management

That is why, Raina also shares that Quick Heal encourages its employees to take leaves. They have actually made a leave chart and organised it such that people have enough time to rest and work. In addition, the Company strictly follows the working hours and is particular about not disturbing any employee after working hours or during breaks. “Respecting someone’s time is the most important thing. We will have to do away with a culture where everything is important even after work hours or during a vacation or break,” says Raina.

Dangi believes that this problem is more to do with the individual than the company. If people are disciplined and adhere to their timelines things will get easier for them and everyone around too. “As a company I can change my leaders and ensure appropriate behaviour or proper delegation of work,” tells Dangi.

Giving breaks to unwind is fine, but why create conditions that will lead to such a situation at all? Companies have confessed that their employees experience burnout and that is why they give these small breaks. However, the real solution to this problem is to ensure a working environment where people do not reach a stage of burnout at all. Rather than winning small battles, it is better to come up with a permanent solution.

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Ashish Chattoraj, the HR Head, will be responsible for hiring and retaining talented employees in addition to implementing plans to manage performance for the Indian unit of this South African conglomerate. Priya Cherian will be the new global HR head for the credit business. Her main responsibility will be to ensure that the credit business is aligned with the growth strategy.

Noopur Chaturvedi, former head of corporate business and alliances, Airtel Payments Bank, has been appointed as country head-small and medium business, PayU India.

The fourth key appointment has been that of Alim Khan, who will take on the responsibility of compulsive business, as senior vice president. Earlier, he was managing the government business practice for Billdesk, another online payments solutions company, before moving to PayU.

Ashish Pathak, who was the former senior manager, ICICI Bank, is the new head-legal and compliance, at PayU.

Last month, Jitendra Gupta, MD, PayU India had quit after a three-year stint. Shailaz Nag, co-founder and MD, had followed suit.

Presently, PayU caters to more than 3,00,000 merchants in India. With the new leadership team in place, the Company is all set to steer itself towards growth.

The post PayU India strengthens leadership team, appoints new HR heads appeared first on HR Katha.

O’Brien, who joined the Company in 1988, became VP-HR almost three decades later. In addition to all her HR responsibilities, she will now also lead the running of 35 online stores and 506 brick-and-mortar stores.

Meanwhile, Ahrendts, who is five years old at Apple, describes her satisfying tenure at the Company as challenging and stimulating.

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Cargill’s global multi-function shared services hub providing services across multiple business functions and processes, Cargill Business Services has just got in its new HR lead. Raj Karunakaran, joined the firm as the global HR lead, early this month and is now based out of Bangalore. Karunakaran was the director HR/ global HR business partner for Philips Mobile Surgery business, before joining Cargill Business Services.

According to his LinkedIn profile, as a member of the Cargill Business Services leadership team, he will take direct accountability for translating business strategies and challenges into human capital strategies, plans, HR actions across six global strategic locations at Bangalore (India), San Jose (Costa Rica), Uberlandia (Brazil), Nanjing (China), Sofia (Bulgaria), Rosario (Argentina), Gurugram (India).

In his last role at Philips, Karunakaran was the global HR Business Partner for Image Guided Therapy (IGT) Mobile Surgery business. His role included developing HR Strategic priorities based on critical business imperatives and deploying key initiatives around leadership capability, business critical competence, creating a high-performance culture for the business across geographies in various functions like Product Development, Marketing, Customer Services, Procurement, Manufacturing etc in India and Netherlands.

Karunakaran began his professional journey with Tech Mahindra as a HR generalist in 1998 and then moved to Astra Zeneca as a manager HR after three years. He has also worked with Fidelity Investments before he joined Philips in 2009. He stayed with Philips for almost close to a decade and grew through the ranks before joining Cargill Business Services.

An experienced HR professional with over two decades of managing leadership roles, he has a rich and cross cultural exposure in handling the entire gamut of HR including strategy formulation, organisation development, HR business partnering, culture building interventions, change management, talent acquisition, talent management, compensation and benefits, training and development, performance management.

Karunakaran is a business management graduate from Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya and completed his post-graduation in human resources from Savitribai Phule Pune University.

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Reckitt Benckiser has just elevated Gurveen Singh as the global head of human resources, after it announced the exit of four of its key executives last week. The British consumer healthcare company told employees that its chiefs—for information technology, human resources, developing markets and category development—from its 10-member executive committee are leaving.

The company claimed that the four simultaneous exits are a mere coincidence and were all voluntary decisions. The company confirmed the movements to the media this Monday and said that Deborah Yates, head of HR, who is leaving at the end of this year, will be replaced by Singh, who is currently head of HR for developing markets.

India-born Singh, is based out of Dubai, in her current role which she has been serving for three years now. Prior to this, she was regional human resources head for South Asia. Singh is a management graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur, and an honors graduate in Philosophy from Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College.

She is one of the few talented HR professionals who have risen up the ranks to reach global leadership roles. Some of the other Indian officials in global leadership roles within HR are, Tanuj Kapilashrami, global head of talent at Standard Chartered Bank; Leena Nair, senior vice president for leadership and organisation development at Unilever; and Bhuvaneswar Naik, head of global talent management at SAP SE. Recently, Sameer Khanna, who was the head-HR, India at Ericsson, took up the role of the global HR business partner for product area (PA) managed services (MS) network, PA- managed services IT and MS strategy.

Singh takes over even as the company integrates the acquisition of US baby foods maker, Mead Johnson, amid other challenges. Yates is apparently returning to her home, Australia, to be with her aging parents, by the end of this year, which is when Singh will supposedly join her new role.

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Nucleus Software has appointed Rahul Krishna as the global head of human resources and administration. Krishna, whose career spans over 17 years, is one of the youngest CHROs (chief human resources officer) in the country.

In his previous stints, he has worked with big names, such as the Tata Group where he was head of Tata Administrative Services as well as Coca Cola India, Seagram Distilleries and Oberoi Hotels. His recent stint was with the Avantha Group, where he was vice president and group head, organisation development and talent management.

“Rahul is an inspiring mix of strong leadership qualities, passion and deeply-held values. He has an impressive experience of leading people initiatives in diverse industries,” said Vishnu R Dusad, CEO, Nucleus Software, in an official communique.

“Rahul’s rich experience in nurturing high-performance teams and a strong belief in building a culture of development, will enable the company to achieve growth worldwide by unleashing the potential of its people,” commented Dusad.

According to Krishna, “HR has a critical role to play in an organisation’s successful transformation by aligning the organisational structure with the organisational strategy, and hence, creating a real sense of shared ownership. I am very excited to be a part of Nucleus and to drive change that will enable the entire company to become an even better place to work.”

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