“HR Must Talk The Business Language”

Abhilasha Modi is an enthusiastic leader with a passion for making a difference in the HR space. She has extensive experience in business partnering, HR operations, dealing with unions and fostering a diverse work culture. Excerpts:

What are the key areas that you intend to focus on for your organisation to run effectively and efficiently?  

Being in a manufacturing environment that runs 24/7, it has become essential to build focused talent according to both their needs and the company’s needs and develop people holistically. The focus is mainly on three prime areas: Diversity representation, upskilling people managers and creating purpose-driven organisations. Our reskilling and upskilling programmes at GE are very robust and we maintain a database for our talent which serves as a reference point for our upskilling initiatives. This is done in a number of ways, including on-the-job training/ learning plans, ‘bubble’ assignments with cross-functional projects outside the daily responsibilities, as well as programmes to support employees with learning opportunities at external universities.

As a people person, what are the goals you strive to achieve in an organisation apart from management goals? 

My mantra is to continuously be aware and assimilate for acceleration. The idea is to stay updated on what’s going on in the industry, and how it may impact my organisation and its people; and decide what can be adopted or customised to create a value proposition that benefits the workforce.  

What is your approach to solve employees’ problems and achieving an organisation’s goal? 

This is two-fold: The first is business acumen and the second is trust & empathy. Both these go hand in hand. For an HR professional, it’s very important to understand and talk the business language. This helps map employee concerns to the organisational goals and involves employees in the development of solutions to make them feel the impact they are making and strengthen their sense of belonging to the organisation.

HR has the power to influence, but building that muscle requires HR leaders to spend enough time on the shop floor, building credibility with workers and leaders, and connecting with them personally and professionally.