Q. What has been your journey like as an HR professional?
A. The journey has been fruitful so far and I have experienced three different transition phases of the HR function. I started in the 1990s and at that time HR was more an administrative function. A decade later (in the year 2000) I saw a transition in my role. From being a good administrator and executer I was now expected to frame HR processes and was responsible for attracting talent to the organization.
Today my role in HR has moved beyond this and I am now responsible for adding value to the human capital, increasing its efficiency and helping the firm achieve its bottom line.
As businesses and business profits move up and down in this very volatile market place, HR today is seen as a key player in helping to bring about stability within the organization and in developing a long term vision and focus of the company and its employees.
Q. What were the biggest challenges you faced?
A. The biggest challenges was to bring the ‘Outside In’ approach into the organization. The employees need to realize that the customer is the king and work accordingly. What actually organizations follow is the ‘Inside Out’ approach. Teams work in silos and lack coordination. Making them work together, making them change their approach, aligning everybody to the common goal and at the same time teaching them how to keep a customer-centric focus has been the biggest challenge.
The other challenge is managing people’s aspirations. People at the peak of their career are looking for growth while the overall growth of organizations in India is declining. So trying to strike a balance between both is a challenging task.
Q. What are the challenges HR faces in the new era of the ‘digital age’?
A. Digitization and automation are going to be the key aspects of HR and will help in making it a more efficient and lean function. HR needs to move on from manual to IT enabled and automated processes. Big data will play a crucial role in the way HR functions. Learning to manage and understand that data properly will be critical.
The digital age has its advantages too. With India still being the most cost effective and at the same time most competent nation the digital age will open up new opportunities for the HR sector here. Global companies will find it profitable to invest in India and make it a hub to provide their services across the world digitally from here.
Q. Any advice you would like to give on how to manage people/teams as the workforce becomes more diverse, as the ways of working change.
A. It is always a challenge to balance relationships and work when we are handling a team. The whole purpose of the existence of HR in the organization is task achievement through relationships.If we can align individual goals with the organizational goals, then achieving results is not difficult.
Everybody knows ‘what’ to do to manage teams. The most difficult part is ‘how’ to execute it. Team dynamics need to be taken into consideration which makes the task very challenging.
I believe if the leader ‘walks the talk’ he sets a great example and soon the team also follows. Once the team members believe in the leader and trust him managing them becomes easy.
Q. How effective and how important are rewards and recognitions in strengthening employee engagement and retention?
A. My experience with R&R is that people surely expects to be fair and at par with the market and at the same time the most important aspect is the “Right differentiation” between the high performer and average performer. The dissatisfactions comes from the comparison. Recognition contributes a lot to an employee’s engagement and retention. The best way to build the confidence of an employee is by recognizing him for the right thing he did for the organization. This also spreads a positive message around the organization and helps to create more success stories. On the reward front, we need to be very fair with the framework. For rewards and recognition programs to be truly successful we need to ensure that the right people are identified using fair means. This brings about a huge level of satisfaction among the employees and increases their productivity.
Q. How can a company attract the best people?
A. I think building a strong corporate brand is the most important factor in attracting passive candidate from the market. The second one is the company’s ability to offer challenging assignments that can keep the candidate engaged and help him use his unique skill sets.
Q. What is the secret to hiring the right candidate?
A. The candidate needs to fit in to the culture of the organization and not just be a ‘Job Fit’. Every organization has a different culture and being able to perform in different sets of cultures is the key. Flexibility and adaptability are the most important factors that need to be seen and analyzed in any potential candidate.
Q. What advice would you give young candidates if they want to stand out and get noticed during an interview?
A. Be clear in what you say and demonstrate the uniqueness of your personality and experience in the interview. The passion and energy with which you sell your idea will help you stand out.
