How, where and when did you start your career in HR?
I started with a consulting firm called Hewitt (now Aon) – right after MBA. I was among the top few students of my batch so people were surprised about why I didn’t pick Marketing or Finance as my career stream – but early on itself, I chose to follow my passion, and that is how I started my career in HR.
Describe the initial years of your career – what were the challenges you faced, what were the areas you enjoyed the most, the lessons learnt during the initial years?
The initial years were a very, very steep learning curve. I was blessed to have had the opportunity to begin my career in the field of consulting – and between Arthur Andersen and Hewitt, I learnt the following four critical key pieces:
- How to quickly understand the key levers of any business,
- How to appreciate the value chain,
- How to talk the language of business with different stakeholders; and,
- Above all, the importance of ‘outside in’ benchmarking to solve any business problem or issue.
Probably, what I enjoyed the most was working with varied industries as it gave me a sense of how businesses work.
Management education back then didn’t prepare you for the corporate world dynamics as much as it does today. The biggest learning for me was the transition from being the competitive go-getter at campus to learning the art of being the collaborative win-win enabler at the workplace!
What might be described as the best moment of your HR career?
Personally fulfilling moment: Enabling my coachees realise their dreams. There was a particular lady who was scared of branching out on her own and the sessions with her helped her find her inner courage to chase her professional dreams.
Career fulfilling moment: Leading the HR track for M&A for Bharti across 18 countries of Africa. It was a phenomenal learning – working with talent from over 50 nationalities, appreciating the ways of work and influencing them towards the new work way.
The role involved enabling the complex post-merger integration between Airtel and Zain – covering organization design, talent placement and integration of policies and practices. I led the cross functional team to define standardized structures to empower opcos, job evaluation and creation of grade structures for Africa operations. Worked with Region CEOs and Country MDs to define the work-way and DoA between the Head Office & Opcos.
I worked closely with CXOs and country MDs to ensure complete buy-in to evaluations, grade structures and offshoring.
How have your formative experiences transformed you personally and professionally?
In the M&A stint, I have learnt the importance of articulating the purpose, ongoing communication and above all, staying connected with the masses : for it is they who actually deliver the business on ground for our customers. The coaching moment reinforced my belief in the power of connecting to ones life purpose.
If you were to suggest the path for current and future HR practitioners to follow, what would that be?
Solve real business problems: A new process or model is as good as its ability to help the business solve the top two or three problems it has.
Leverage analytics: To build your business case, as well as to show impact. Don’t just talk feeling – show the data. Simplify! Crush complexity: The more we do that, the bigger our impact !
