In Conversation with Roli Singh, Head HR, Tata Cancer Care Foundation

Roli, congratulations to your organisation for winning the Excellence in Emerging HR Strategy at the BW People HR Excellence Awards 2023. How does it align organizational vision at Tata Cancer Care Foundation?

The organisational vision of Tata Cancer Care Foundation is that of building an accessible, high-quality, affordable and inclusive cancer care ecosystem in India. Winning this award provides us with a perfect opportunity to showcase the vision and promote it across a wide audience, which we would not be able to do, through our efforts alone.  

How do you ensure that the HR strategy supports and enhances the company's culture?

The organisation is young and evolving; the HR strategy, therefore, focuses on a flexible organisation structure, and transparent HR Processes which are assimilative of the regional requirements. We follow a Doctor-led organisation approach, as we feel this gives the most optimal healthcare outcomes. These over-arching concepts create an unprecedented value proposition for our critical talent and help us achieve optimal cost & operational sustainability.

How do you approach aspects like talent acquisition and retention as part of your HR strategy?

The approach at TCCF is focused on training & research, with long-term, value-creation in our talent through customised exposure in clinical, technical & functional aspects. We achieve this through:

• Agile Recruitment, which, is finely tuned to the larger business plan, with the talent supply chain following a systematic & sequential pattern. 
• Broad Basing of skills which allows retention of talent as mobility along with local skill building helps us sustain our workforce. 
• Mentorships & Specialist Coverage – We have tapped into our network of large-volume cancer centres like Tata Memorial Hospital, Tata Medical Centre, and Centre for Onco-pathology. Mentorship and specialist coverage from these institutions adds to the skills of our technical staff. 
• Fellowship Programs – for Doctors and Nurses – which provides exposure for managing complex medical cases and helps the organisation build the mainstay for trained medical staff. 

The above mix has helped us attract good talent and also helped in retaining them. 

How do you measure the effectiveness of your HR strategy and its impact on the organization?

We believe our HR strategy is not only making an organization-wide impact but is mobilizing cancer care prevention, early detection and wider care delivery access in India. 

Our work is not contained within the walls for one enterprise, we work at amalgamating different entities within the healthcare eco-system, and look at ways to help scale our efforts while keeping the costs optimized. 

We work at skill development to address one of the largest issues that India faces today, which is a deficit of healthcare professionals. Our training programs are extended to every cluster and every unit within the cluster. 

We have in the span of just 5 years (despite 2 years of pandemic)– 

1. Helped operationalise 11+ Cancer Care centres setup in Assam, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh & Maharashtra – the most populous states with the highest incidence of cancer cases. 
2. Added 539-bed capacity.
3. On-boarded & Trained 30 Super Speciality Oncologists, 157 Nurses & 210 technicians across these centres. 
4. Conducted 2,99,633 Public Health Screenings & Sensitised 5,15,245 People.
5. Trained 61,005 Health workers for early detection.

We have managed to build momentum in our workforce towards a collective purpose based on common goals, through the same/similar HR processes and policies across the geography with progressive, transparent, well-understood HR processes.   

How do you handle succession planning and leadership development as part of the HR strategy?

Since we have multiple organisations and regions under the Cancer Care Program we are able to give in-depth exposure as well as the opportunity for lateral as well as horizontal growth. Likewise, we follow and ecosystem-driven approach with the leverage of large institutions. Therefore, scale-up support or development of talent is well-defined and integrated. 

What role does technology play in your HR strategy, and how do you leverage it for efficiency and effectiveness?

We leverage technology to align with employees at all levels & functions effectively:

• For Public Health, Patient Services: we have deployed the concept of a Digital Nerve Centre (DiNC) in some of our projects. The public health team updates the data of all suspect cases in the DiNC where the KPIs and protocols of the clinical functions are mapped. The tele-callers then take up the work processes and ensure that the patients and their caregivers are navigated through the entire course of the disease. Likewise, each healthcare team has been issued a Tablet which enables them to record data during their field visits immediately. Since public health is mostly donor driven – with specific KPIs against each unique role – it enables authentic work to be executed & recorded thereby giving credibility to work executed to the donor. This is helpful in planning budgets, utilizations & grant requirements.y
  
• For Medical Centre, Patient Services: we have deployed the entire work cycle digitally on Clinical Information Management System – the software enables all the clinical & HR processes along with the role & authorisations to be managed digitally.
  
• Employees: All HR processes like manpower planning, recruitment, onboarding, probation, attendance, leave, salary & payroll, travel, and reimbursement have been put on the Enterprise Resource Program – therefore communication of all HR processes & their alignment to the HR Strategy has been in-built in the design of the ERP.