HR's Role In Blending Human Science & Data For Effective Solutions

We need to build great workplaces. I will define great as two things – Firstly, health (business, people, values) of the organisation should be sustainably top notch. Secondly, people should do the best work of their lives in the organisation. The role that HR teams need to play is marry foundational science of human behaviour with organisation context and data and build people solutions and products.

How did you get interested in the HR field, and what have been some major milestones in your journey?  

My exposure to colleagues’ and their behaviours when presented with supervision, policies, practices, work etc. at my first workplace as well as my deep interest in people through my childhood (books, cinema etc.) was one of the reasons I was interested in the function. I felt people problems will challenge me cognitively and at a purpose level through my career sufficiently to be interested in doing work that matters in the world.

How should HR professionals themselves envision their contribution to the world of work?  

Build organisation health across the dimensions I have already mentioned. We need to stop relying on just our intelligence and intuition and start building deep functional expertise to build solutions that work. Additionally, as practitioners, we often fall into the trap of being desensitised to people issues after a point of time – this is tragic for a HR professional. Being on the ground is an absolute must to build solutions for people that actually work.

Kindly share some path-breaking initiatives by your team in brief. 

• Building GPL Alchemy, the in-house leadership academy has been a terrific success for all of us.
• We are also building Harmony, the umbrella of all work-life enabling wellbeing initiatives.
• The team has been successful in building our leadership talent at all levels (early, middle, senior leadership) from within. We recently initiated Talent War room to give this a boost.