The Pandemic Pushed Us All To Think Differently: Shikha Rai, VP & HR Head, Canon India

The pandemic has laid bare nuances which society is still coping with. To share insights on a few topics like permanent changes leaders foresee and a wave of layoffs taking place, BW People in Association with BW Business World organized a webinar on “Redefining HR”. The third episode of the series featured spectacular speakers from the industry who tried to navigate through the turbulent times this pandemic has unveiled.

Shikha Rai, Vice President, and HR Head, Canon India was one of the panelists at the webinar. In a discussion with the BW Business world, she expressed her views on how this pandemic has created radical changes. She stated, “It has pushed all individuals, communities, and even countries to think differently.”

On the work-from-home narrative which has come into the scenario, Shikha Rai shared that such times were unprecedented as nobody imagined this. She believes re-crafting and re-imagining unique ways on how the companies do business in the coming future will foster long term growth.

On answering the question regarding the changes she believes will become permanent in the future, Rai classified them into three buckets:

-  Strategies on how to do business in the future

-   Structure on reducing the fixed costs and exposure on offices

-   System to give a push to possibilities like automation and digitization in the country

She opined that a few things which will go unchanged, is the culture of creative thinking, innovation, and break-through which is ingrained in us.

To build good practices at work she shared that the company employees participate in a ‘flash mob dance’ at 3 pm to increase work productivity. On being asked about how she is tackling the situation of job cuts that have been triggered post lockdown. She said "We are not looking at job losses. We have frozen the entry of new employees though. We extend support through outplacement. We try to retain people by salary cuts, allowances cut but not cutting the jobs to make it less severe.”