Work Is Challenging, Creative & Fun

When Pavitra Singh took over as Chief Human Resource Officer at PepsiCo — an organisation she has been associated with for close to 10 years — in October 2019, little did she know what was in store few months later. For HR professionals, it was the most challenging, and learning experience that one could think of. Hoping that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime event, Singh recounts her numerous learnings during this phase.

"I learnt that there was no playbook, no one to talk to , no previous experience to learn from. One learnt by doing the right thing irrespective of cost, one learnt by exchanging notes with the peer group and collectively brainstorming." She adds, "In a crisis like this, both business and people are impacted. Business results are impacted, business eco- system is impacted. So, HR had to be more of a business partner and also a people emotion facilitator."

Sense Of Surety

At another level, the learning was in terms of managing emotions. "I think managing the emotions on a daily basis became important. Normally , one manages emotions around events like appraisal cycle, promotion cycle, annual conferences, annual offsites. Suddenly we were managing emotions on a daily basis. The biggest emotion was ‘unsure”. You had to provide some sense of sureness in an unsure world," Singh remembers.

As regards change in work patterns, she says, "We had to rethink the digital impact on business and look at how we work digitally, in planning our meetings, our reviews, our office and our business. Everything was up for discussion. Digital is a horizontal way of working that challenges the conventional hierarchy of organisation charts.

This is the area where her focus is on, as, "the digital wave is an opportunity to reskill the organisation, rethink the old cost and talent structure.... Digitisation is an opportunity to reduce complexity in an organisation it is also an opportunity to drive more horizontal collaboration."

Another area of focus is coaching the leaders to be better communicators, including the ability to indulge in small talk breaking the ice conversation in a remote call.

She is also focussed on fairness in organisation. "We cannot have an inner circle that gets rewarded because they are in the line of sight of the boss and an outer circle that gets neglected since they are not seen regularly. This will be a real challenge of the hybrid work world. Making feeling feel included in a hybrid setting will be the other one."

She realises that an increased emphasis on health and wellness is shaping up and organisations will need to keep this at center stage. "Employees reevaluating their own life in the context of what’s happened and in the context of the security of a job is a trend," she states.

Value Creation All Along

Looking back, Singh remembers, "I never started out by career journey saying I want to be CHRO or whatever in a career. I wanted to be a good contributor, someone who can be trusted to do the right thing by the employee and the organisation. After I had my daughter, I wanted to be a good friend and mom to her. What drives me is my goal to make a positive impact in whatever I do, without the negative thoughts of comparison or ‘what if’ situations. I do my best and hope that everyone recognises me for it — as an employee, as a friend, as a mom, as a family member."

In this journey, the organisations she has been part of have also played their part. She expresses her gratitude to them, especially to PepsiCo.

"PepsiCo has offered me a wide variety of roles - local and global in my last 16 years. I have always felt challenged to do better, to do more and to contribute more. So, intellectually I never stagnated in any role." In particular, it shows Singh's personal trait when she says, "I will always be grateful to PepsiCo for offering me a sabbatical when it was not the norm so that I could take care of my family need and equally come back into a fantastic role."

On the whole, she is happy about her professional journey, and says, "Each of my roles has given me an opportunity to create something special and impact employee and the organisation in different ways. I have enjoyed my work on culture transformation, I have equally had great fun in managing campus recruitment. We went digital with campus recruitment way back in 2007, when no one did it, we ran exciting contests for our target students to build talent pipelines etc. Equally roles like leading DEI have been personally very fulfilling as it gave me an opportunity to pave a path for the next many generations. Work has been challenging, creative and hence fun."