Changing Probability Into Possibility

Hiring is a standard process but a slight revision can impact the whole outcome. Choosing and hiring the right set of people for the specific job is an art and talking about campus hiring Mittal mentioned that “We regularly hire from India’s top ‘B-School campuses’ and they became one of the sources of our middle management bench strength.” Adding on to the same he shared that he revamped the campus hiring system introducing ‘Employer branding at the campuses’.

HR is known for ‘human connect, employee relationship, open culture of communication’ in the organisation. During the recent massive disruption; everyone was anxious & stressed, a few left unproductive, disengaged due to the absence of laptops & confined at home. Explaining his experience Mittal mentioned with all the pride that we ensured over 1700 employees of Aviva India stay connected, engaged & continue their learning journey in just 3 days.

The Pandemic took all of us by shocking surprise but ‘quick and rational response was the need of the hour’. Mittal strategized and focussed on keeping employees well connected with the doors open for communication. People Function had a crucial role to play here; it required quick actions almost every day.

“Our employees were provided access to over 8500 learning resources to identify their learning needs & enjoy on-the-go learning. 50+ webinars & podcasts were shared & received excellent feedback,” shares Mittal. Along with his team at Aviva Life Insurance emphasised utilising the lockdown time judiciously; hence they introduced various extensive L&D programs for employees.

Keeping employee engagement at the centre Mittal and team innovated connectivity practices to make employees more fruitful. Campaign at Aviva Life Insurance was launched to ensure that learning never stops & engagement activities don’t let anyone impact their mental wellbeing during the testing times. Through this 4-week campaign, run on WhatsApp, best practices were shared with employees to help them balance their mind, body, heart & soul as they continued to work from home managing additional responsibilities & household chores.

Despite how flexible and comfortable remote working may seem, it still carries its own set of challenges and hence introducing room for new definitions of work-life balance. Ashish opened up about ‘sticking to the working hours’ limit’ and the team decided that as an organization managers will not send emails to their teams post 6.30 PM or during the weekends. Also, we gave a two-hour lunch break since we knew that everyone was on their own for cooking.

Sayings are impactful always but acting upon them will always be unexpectedly more fruitful. Mittal believed in ‘actions more than words and mentioned, “Whenever there is an opportunity for doing something new or going out of the comfort zone, I grab it.”