Empathy and Humanness Must Be The Approach to Connect with Employees: Priyanka Anand

Priyanka Anand has been serving as VP & Head HR- South East Asia, Oceania & India at Ericsson. Priyanka Anand is leading HR strategy across markets such as India, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Philippines, and Bangladesh.

The Co-Chair Anjali Raghuvanshi, Chief People Officer, Randstad India, asked; “ How do you think and what do you foresee for HR as a fraternity in terms of technology, what are the changes you foresee?” 

Priyanka Anand mentions, “Ericsson on the technology front has been on a journey of driving technical transformation and evolution. The organization has invested heavily in technology to deliver a world-class employee experience, which has been co-created with the employee and taking into consideration the real-time value of employees and the experience as well as the association with the organization.” 

The key culture as mentioned by Priyanka Anand of her organization is empathy and humanness. In order to understand the employees better, the organization launched a real-time survey, in order to look upon the needs and expectation the employees hold from an organization. The insight gathered from the survey was fruitful for the organization, as it helped the organization to overcome its shortsightedness. As prominence in high-stress levels among employees was witnessed, the leader’s approach towards the employee changed to empathy and compassion. 

Priyanka at the end gave a conclusive reply, as she said,” Empathy and Humanness become the backbone of how we connected to our employees, but the clear culture expected on how we delivered was cooperation and collaboration.” 

Lastly, while answering the question by Dr. Anurag Batra, which talks about the requirement of her viewpoint by the senior management regarding certain things, she concluded by saying, “The whole co-creation of the journey we are on happened from the fact that we are on a strong partnership approach and there is no longer need to connect with HR, it’s really about HR integrity into the business plan and direction.”