People & Enterprise Leadership: A New Paradigm
What is your vision for HR profession, and what transformative role can it play in the success of a company?
My vision for the HR profession revolves around creating substantial value for individuals, businesses and society at large. As organisations and societal expectations undergo continual evolution, the demands on leaders have become more intricate, calling for qualities such as authenticity, empathy and adaptability. In this dynamic landscape, I envision a new paradigm of leadership—one that seamlessly integrates "People" leadership with "Enterprise" leadership. This vision places a specific emphasis on key areas on how to:
The role of HR in a company's success is determined by its ability to impact the organisation's strategic goals. HR managers need to comprehend the company's strategy, which outlines plans for gaining and maintaining a competitive edge in the market. Once the strategy is understood, HR should identify enablers that can address business challenges. For instance, if productivity is a concern, HR can explore enablers such as incentivisation and collaborate with the business to implement structures, processes and policies that support this approach. Likewise, HR can proactively address disruptions from technology by focusing on enablers like reskilling and upskilling initiatives to enhance adaptability and agility.
How did you get interested in the HR field, and what have been some major milestones in your journey?
My passion for HR stems from a genuine interest in people and their development. Recognising HR as the heart of a company, I believe individuals should not only enjoy collaboration but also aspire to assist each other in reaching their full potential. Every day offers an opportunity for me to connect with people, guiding them through the dynamic landscape of the modern workplace.
The challenge of identifying top talent and aligning them with positions that create significant business value captivates me. Building a talent pipeline, matching individuals with developmental opportunities and witnessing their professional growth within the organisation are personally fulfilling and contribute to a more robust and skilled workforce. This benefits both the business objectives and the broader community.
HR, for me, extends beyond the workplace, creating competitive organisations through career and capability building. I value how HR initiatives positively impact the wider community, fostering job creation, skills development and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion through community partnerships.
In terms of major milestones in my professional journey, a substantial role transition marked a significant point. Moving from my position as an HR Business Partner (HRBP), I assumed dual roles as the Talent Partner for an Independent business unit and Business Partner for international HR operations. Initiatives like implementing succession planning, talent reviews, maintaining a comprehensive skill inventory, and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion have been pivotal. Undertaking these initiatives in-house has brought process improvements, cost efficiencies, and significant contributions to the organisation's growth, culture and innovation. I actively participated in multiple HR task forces and initiatives outside of my designated responsibilities to accelerate my learning.
How should HR professionals themselves envision their contribution to the world of work?
The world of work is changing rapidly. Hence it is important to devising a people strategy that maps business needs in an uncertain world. It requires HRs to identify strategic priorities, analyse emerging trends, translate priorities and trends into workforce capability needs, and prioritise those capabilities — all based on solid market intelligence and workforce analytics.
Additionally, HR's contribution extends beyond the internal dynamics of the organisation. HR professionals can actively engage in creating a positive impact on the external world of work. This may involve participating in industry forums, contributing to thought leadership, and collaborating with external stakeholders to drive initiatives that benefit the broader community.
Kindly share some path-breaking initiatives by your team in brief.
A few path-breaking initiatives are enhancing leadership development programmes, implementing talent review and succession planning for optimising talent management practices and implementing a robust diversity and inclusion strategy.
'Manthan,' is a succession planning and talent review initiative. We identified what are critical roles for present and future as per our strategic 5-year plan named Lakshya. We identified 40 critical roles for present and future, through talent council discussions, we identified 7 per cent of employees as top talents, we assessed them on our Competency framework, Harrisson assessment, provided 360 Degree feedback, developed them through hyper-personalised IDPs and capability building programme, skilling upskilling initiative, 7-Step leadership programme that we run with reputed institutions like IIM, SPJAIN, Harward, London Business school, INSEAD. They were offered career shifts and stretched assignments. Later, we started coaching and mentoring programme, filled 27 per cent of succession positions internally. This initiative not only improved our top talent retention rate to 98 per cent but also helped our business in taking people related decisions.
My business unit belongs to a sector which is masculine workforce dominating sector so our second initiative 'Aikyam,' is our DEI initiative in line with our Lakshya target of inclusive growth that focuses on increasing women participation in workforce from 6 to 10 per cent by 2026 with other diversity strands in long term focus. Initiatives around DEI framework across four key DEI pillars: Induct, Engage, Develop, and Enable increased women's participation from 6 to 9 per cent. In a path breaking initiative our organisation launched the first women-led building construction project and women employee’s attrition reduced by 2 per cent.
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