Podcast

Interview Highlights:

Q 1. If you could create an HR team documentary, what would it explore?

A. If I had to create a documentary around HR, I think I would first of all title it as “We are in this together”.

I think that will be the name of my documentary, because you see a lot of times there is a misconception that the HR function is the sole custodian of an organization’s culture and value system. Where it has been in my personal experience and as per cutting-edge research across award-winning organisations-HR is an enabler, HR is a partner.

HR is actually a co-custodian of organizational culture and value systems because. Every people’s manager of an organization becomes the mini version of the organization’s brand, the values and the organizational culture.

So how every people manager treats his or her team members, the day-to-day living of the values, the experience that they have, that is what ultimately defines organizational culture.

This documentary, I would use it as a beautiful platform to spotlight all those exemplary business leaders that I’ve had the privilege and blessing to work with, to be mentored by, and to really celebrate the kind of winning cultures that all of these fabulous business leaders have actually created through their own role model behaviour.

By being a steward of the organization’s culture and partnering with HR and genuinely taking responsibility that together we are creating a culture and therefore it goes back to the documentary title We Are in This Together.

Q 2. Walk us through a time when you had to manage a diverse and multicultural team and how that contributed to your growth as a leader?

A. I think throughout my 2 decades last career I’ve had the fortune. I’ve been fortunate. To work with many, many global teams, many cross functional teams that I’ve been part of some teams that I have led from the front and all of these experiences actually have enriched me as an HR leader because there were multiple takeaways for me both as a participating team member, a colleague as well as a team lead per se.

If you really look at it,when we are working with team members across nationalities, across cultures, from diverse backgrounds, the first thing that really resonates is the power of diversity.

The sheer richness of perspectives, the varied ideas that brainstorming sessions can produce.

The power of diversity is truly phenomenal that comes up when you’re working in a multinational team or a multicultural team, which is very diverse. Also, it teaches you the value of the magic of collaboration, the spirit of teamwork.

Now each one of you together create a bigger whole. A bigger, wholesome, holistic solution to something that you’re trying to a problem that you’re trying to solve. So the magic of collaboration and teamwork is something that has been a big take away for me.

The third is it has also taught me the value of humility, to unlearn and relearn.

Because when you are surrounded by top talent who bring such rich experiences, there’s so much to learn from each other. And that automatically gives you that sense of humility that here are, here are wonderful colleagues, leaders that I can learn from and better myself and then.

As an outcome, mutual respect automatically happens right where you feel privileged that you are able to see at something through the eyes of so many other people, and it images your own world view, your own lens of looking at things, your own professional approach.

And also I would like to underline that when you, when one is working with a diverse and multicultural team, one also starts appreciating that as a leader, one size does not fit all.

So you have to keep customizing your approach, your management style, your leadership ability based on the unique needs of each member that you’re partnering with, each member that you’re collaborating with.

Q3. Let’s now shift gears a bit and discuss a little more into core HR function areas, right, that are of immense importance to emerging CHROs and HR leaders.

What advice do you have for HR leaders who are dealing with a limited budget for employee development?

A. My first advice is don’t worry.

It’s OK if you don’t have a big budget for employee development, because there are many innovative ways in which you can still keep the learning engine running within your organization.

Just like crowdsourcing crowdfunding, there’s also a concept called crowd learning- the collective wisdom of all the employees and all the leaders, the management team members.

What is important is that as a CHRO, as an HR head, as an HR senior HR leader, what becomes very essential is that you are able to step back and look at the collective skills and knowledge that is currently inherently present within the organization so you can capture, survey or collect information on, your team members, skills and knowledge, areas of expertise etcetera and then using that you can also find a needs analysis where you can understand what those immediate requirements are as far as learning and development goes.

You know the Pareto principle, The 80/20 principle very clearly says, when applied to learning and development, that 80% of issues or problems or performance setbacks, whatever may be the area that you are looking at right now as a trigger for learning and development.

The 80/20 principle basically says roughly 80% of those consequences and outcomes are coming from just 20% of skill back, skill gaps or knowledge gaps. So go after the 20%.

Don’t try to boil the ocean. Don’t try to have a calendar of 36 different courses that you want to sort of apply across the organization because that may not be the need at all. So have a very focused line of sight on what is the top stand that you want to address. Then you start creating the mechanism.

Right now, that mechanism of learning and development would be, for example, you can set up a peer coaching network. Now you have your inventory of skills and knowledge so you can exactly map those who need that particular skill. You map them with somebody who’s an expert in that skill, who’s certified in that skill, who’s trained in that skill, who has experience in that skill.

That creates a beautiful, cross functional peer coaching framework.

Then you can use all your team hurdles, your check insurance etcetera for knowledge sharing forums and those you will find that there will be stars will emerge across departments, functions and business units across geographies.

You know there will be these stars who love to share knowledge and they don’t hold back, and they help their leaders upskill, reskill other team members.

The new employees who are being hired reward them right. You create a culture of celebrating, knowledge sharing and skills sharing. The other idea is to have reverse mentoring if you have.

If you have a workforce where you have team members across different age groups. You can even create reverse mentoring where you know digital skills tech savvy team members can actually host.

You know like little clinics, not more than half hour, just micro level learning clinics where they’re actually sharing others who want to learn about digital skills. So that’s an example and one can see a lot of information in this particular area of reverse mentoring.

And then if you want to create scale and consistency go ahead and invest in e-learning today.

There are a lot of learning platforms which are cost efficient, which are offering modules that you can actually roll out across your organization.

If you look at a combination of all of these, there are Ways and Means to actually create a very robust L&D framework even on a limited budget.

Q4. Let’s say one is able to sort of get to a point where they have the foundation that they need regardless of whether or not they have the budget.

Talking about employee development, the other challenge that people might get into is how do they retain top talent by building those development opportunities.

For any HR leader to be able to do that, what should be the thought process, how should they strategize, how should they think about executing that and bringing that strategy to life?

A. We are operating across all sectors. Organizations are operating in a very tight.

Aggressive talent market where there are so many opportunities, so many skill sets that are in demand and so many organizations that are also trying to hire for similar skills at the same time. So retaining top talent definitely becomes very, very important.

And on that front strategically my advice would be to potentially look at it as a pronged strategy.

The first prong would be the organizational level or the org wide analysis where you can analyse your current and future business needs and also, your business growth plans, right organization looking to head towards in the next two to three years, five years etcetera.

And then you have to also identify critical roles in your org chart which need to be filled with the right skill set at the right time to be able to sustain and also grow the business.

And 3rd is you have to also look at some form of your employee demographic analysis to see- my employees getting periodic career progression paths? And what are the various career paths that I can offer them? Am I going to just offer them lateral, sorry, a vertical movement or is there going to be lateral movement as well?

A lot of organizations, for example, have an internal careers market like an internal job posting or accelerated growth, career path etcetera. So what are those various paths that I want to chart out? So this is at a macro level, the org level.

Now you have to zoom in into the micro level or the talent front where one of the misconceptions that one often sees is that performance and potential when it comes to top talent, the definition of what the top talent is, performance and potential is often confused or used synonymously whereas the reality is past performance and potential is what that particular individual can do.

In the future as well, in a sustainable manner, can the person continue to perform at that level in the future as well? So, one is retrospective, which is performance, the other one is future forward, future looking.

Be able to identify talent who are not just good performers but also have the potential to grow further and continue to operate at that high level becomes very important.

Secondly, the core pool of top talent has been identified. It’s also very important to diagnose what is that X Factor, that magical ingredient that has made them so successful, what are they doing differently? Because that is what you want to replicate within the organization to create more success for everybody.

And that diagnosis gets fed into your what we call hypo high potential identification process the organization must also have robust, bias free, transparent assessment.

Processes by which hypos are top talent can be identified versus managers merely selecting people and saying that they are my potentials or they are my top talent.

Which can be challenged if there is no data to substantiate why they are being considered as top talent. So that level of data becomes very important.

And then once that cohort has been identified, usually there would be a 12-month, 18-month, 24-month plan with coaches and mentors.

There would be sponsors, there would be training programs. All of that would happen and there would be a lot of communication. One very important part of retaining top talent using the development method would also be to ensure that learning outcomes are constantly being measured.

So if there is investment by the organization or top talent in terms of learning and development to prepare them for the next level, then one has to also measure continuously whether those learning milestones are being met, because it’s not just about people attending.

Classroom sessions or attending e-learning modules or going for coaching sessions. It’s about has the needle moved? What are what? What is the difference in terms of proficiency of that particular skill? Has it moved from intermediate to advanced?

If there’s a competency map for your next level, then the skill set must also move to that level for the top talent to be ready to perform in that level. So competency mapping also becomes the very important aspect of it.

And then finally the last part of it is.

Whatever commitments and promises are being made to top talent, it’s very important to follow up, follow through on that, whether it is rolling enrichment, whether it’s expansion of assignments, whether it is job rotation, career promotions, whatever be the recognition system that needs to happen.

So promises must be followed through on.

Q5. Let’s shift our focus to another critical aspect of workplace dynamics- inclusive leadership and ally’s ship. What is your perspective on how technology can assist in building a more inclusive workplace?

A.When I think of technology from an HR angle, I think about speed, I think about efficiency and I also think about data.

Data is the new oil as they say.

So at different points of time one has to from an HR standpoint, it’s very important to continuously again monitor and measure whether we are doing everything we can as an organization to make sure that as a company, our workplace and our work culture is truly inclusive.

Analysis has to be both again at a macro level and a micro level so that we are able to use the data through technology, through the HR automation, whatever data we are able to arrive at, they should be able to give us actionable insights so that we are able to make more informed decisions.

The purpose of bringing in HR technology for creating inclusive workplaces would be to identify and remove unconscious biases in decision making throughout the entire talent life cycle. It could be recruitment related decisions, it could be learning and development-related decisions.

It could be in talent engagement or career progression and career paths, policy frameworks that we that we build compensation strategy, benefits administration.

So it would basically touch data points, would be captured at every level of the employee life cycle or the talent life cycle. And when the metrics are identified right and we collect data the right way, then those numbers which are gathered will help us with accurate analysis and that will help us understand the true story.

Now especially with more and more organisations embracing remote work and also hybrid working models, it becomes even more important to adopt technology for us to be able to gather the right data, so that we are able to ensure that all employees across levels, across departments, across roles and functions and geographies are experiencing a truly inclusive work culture.

And again, I’ve always been a very big believer that the metrics have to be designed right. Only then can HR technology actually help us reach the objective that we are looking to achieve.

So when we talk about inclusive work cultures, equity and diversity and inclusion, we need to identify what are those target metrics that we would like to achieve and bake that into our workflow, bake that into our data analysis systems with our HR technology partners.

So that we are able to derive effective, simple but high impact dashboards on demand to be able to observe, monitor, measure and take the right interventions.

Q6. Having discussed the role of technology in fostering inclusivity in the workplace, let’s now delve into, some practical side of the things. I’m talking about ROI.

How do we measure the ROI of HR initiatives? What advice do you have for HR professionals who are looking to build a business case for their initiatives based on ROI?

A. I would say that the first thing that you know is that the concept of HR business partnering is very popular and the very term HR business partner says it all.

It’s about being a true partner to business, to operations, to delivery. Empathy therefore becomes a very important skill while trying to build a business case for HR interventions where we are looking at ROI because we need to put ourselves in the shoes of business.

We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our CFO, our Finance Manager, our business heads, our CEO, CTO. Basically, all members who will be part of the decision-making panel for budgets in case there are investments required for specific HR interventions.

Because we have to respect the fact that every intervention that we come up with as HR members, it’s important to identify what problem are we trying to solve with this solution? What is that particular problem statement that we have observed, which we now want to address through this intervention?

Therefore, the first step would be to identify that problem statement and to articulate it very clearly.

2nd Is the solution that we are proposing how would that move the needle? How would that make an impact? And when we talk about impact or the solutions impact, it’s very important to talk numbers.

What is it that we’re observing now and what is it that we believe we would like to achieve or that we would be seeing as an organization after the intervention? So there is a before and then there’s an after column.

And that I think is very important because numbers are a beautiful way to actually share the compelling value that a solution can create more than paragraphs and text. It is numbers which speak the story and therefore the before and after becomes very important while building a business case for HR interventions.

Third is it is important to balance the heart with head. And what I mean by that is mere emotions around solutioning to address a problem.

While emotions are a very powerful and positive force, we want to complement, supplement and balance that with financial numbers, with quantified impact, with data. So heart with head, that is how our presentation should balance it out. And when we talk about business impact, business reasoning, we’re talking about how does it impact the top line how does intervention help?

You know, what would be the impact on the bottom line what would be the margins? What about the employee engagement satisfaction, employee engagement scores? Are we going to see an uptick on that? How does it help with customer engagement? Whatever are those key business metrics? How does our HR intervention actually support that?

Because it is very rare that an HR project or intervention sits very in seclusion in isolation, does not have, does not impact others. When we deal with human capital, what we do as HR intervention has and has a beautiful effect and impact on all of these areas that we just talked about.

It is important for the HR team to step back, analyse and speak that language and first of all for themselves to understand how I am moving that needle. It’s extremely inspiring to see how HR actually as an effective business partner can do wonders to support business.

And that is what HR needs to look at and that’s what HR needs to articulate when they’re preparing a business case. And most importantly, even the best ideas can fail.

The best designed interventions can fail if it is not backed up by a rock solid implementation team.

When building a business case for an HR intervention, it’s important to also include content around who are those rock stars that have been identified who will actually drive this to fruition to make sure that the outcomes that we are promising genuinely to get achieved.

Because that’s what everybody’s going to bet on, and that’s what we need to make it happen.

Q7. Let’s hop on from practical advice to real life challenges.

Let’s now discuss the common pitfalls that the HR professionals might encounter while they attempt to demonstrate ROI for their initiatives.

According to you, what are the most common mistakes HR leaders make while trying to demonstrate that ROI.

A.Sometimes HR members do not ask for information and that is an area I would encourage HR professionals to consciously address and say if I need some data so that I can connect the dots and create the compelling business case, then it’s important for me to ask the experts within the organization so that I have access to that data.

Now obviously if there is something which is company confidential or if there are specific restrictions to data, that is fine, it’s important to respect that.

However, if there is data that other departments are willing to share, then it is perfectly fine for us in HR to go ahead and make that initial contact and explain why we need that data and to request for that data. So the first point is to safeguard ourselves from the pitfall of not wanting to check and ask internally.

We need to go and ask because when we ask, we receive and most departments, most functions if not all, will be very happy to support us as long as we give them the context as to why we are requesting for that data because they also want to support and help us.

The 2nd is in terms of what metrics we want to capture to substantiate the ROI that we are presenting. And the pitfall there is that sometimes we may over research it and have a master list of about 40 different metrics that we want to present which is probably not just time consuming but also maybe a waste of effort because maybe not all of those metrics are important to demonstrate ROI.

Instead the suggestion would be for HR professionals to actually critically review the various metrics that they are looking at and again go back to the drawing board and say what is the impact that I want to create and what is it that makes business sense.

What are those top three or four metrics that I want to talk about?

Because that is what defines the outcome in terms of resolving the problem that they’re currently fixing. So not going for a master list and going for copious amounts of data, but being very razor sharp, focused on having executive dashboards and executive summaries and hitting the nail on its head with just a few data points which are self-sufficient, and which actually tell the entire story.

The 3rd and final suggestion that I would have for HR professionals would be to correlate data sets.

When we look at data, sometimes we do not look at it enough to be able to see that they’re all interrelated. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say for example, in an employee engagement survey or in an employee satisfaction survey the question on career progression or compensation and benefits has received low scores.

Now very importantly. So this data comes from the employee engagement survey or the employee satisfaction survey. Now we need to correlate this outcome with our recruitment data and see what the time has been to fill specific roles or what has been the the experience of recruiters who are constantly sourcing talent. Has there been an issue with the current salary ranges that we offer?

So for example, if there wasn’t, if the feedback from employee engagement survey is that the salaries are not good enough and people are feeling little disengage because of that, are we struggling?

The answer to that is quickly look at recruitment data and see our recruiter. Are recruiters struggling to get people for those positions at the salary levels that we are offering? If yes, then maybe our salary ranges are not necessarily in line with the market.

Similarly, immediately correlate that with exit interview data. Are we seeing whatever attrition we are having our people? Is one of the trends compensation is salary related? Are people leaving for higher salaries in an organization in other organizations? If yes, again that speaks back to the engagement data, engagement survey data.

So now you have recruitment data, you have engagement survey data and you have your exit interview attrition analysis data and they’re all telling us the same story. Therefore there could be an intervention designed around it.

Now let’s say that is not the case. We are able to fill positions. Recruiters have shared that there is no challenge in finding people at the current salary ranges and we are saying that there is no trend really of people leaving for higher salaries.

Then the engagement data needs to be addressed through focus groups and the HR team would need to talk to delve a little more into where exactly you know are there any interventions required in specific areas versus a more generalized intervention.

Now similarly on that same, in that same vein, career progression, let’s say again an employee satisfaction study or an employee focus group tells shares that people employees are feeling that they’re not enough career paths available.

Again, you can go back to different data sets, different points to look at what’s our internal promotions data looking like? What percentage of our employees have been getting promoted year on year? How many of our open positions have been filled from within versus from the external market? Are we giving the first preference to our internal talent? What’s our learning and development metrics looking like? How much of upskilling have we done because of which are members able to move through the internal job posting system to other positions.

So all of these actually talk to each other and therefore reading the story behind the numbers correlating different data sets becomes very important. So that’s the third suggestion.

Q8. With the advent of HR automation and lots of new technologies coming into workplaces, as HR leaders, I think we have to draw a line somewhere and I’m talking about where. How do you strike that balance of using automation with maintaining personalized employee experiences and interaction. What’s your perspective on that?

A. My take on this is that technology is an enabler. It can never really replace human interactions in personalized touch from HR. Technology helps us be faster, better, more efficient. It helps us with economies of scale, unit economics.

However personalized human touch is about dealing with feelings and psychology and providing support and empowering people and demonstrating care and nurturing talent. So this requires human interaction. This requires a focus on what are those employee touch points where you know technology cannot replace HR?

For example, if there are large scale routine tasks, right, that can be definitely automated.

But then if there are mentoring sessions and counselling sessions and coaching sessions and grievance redressal, you want to provide career guidance, you want to hand hold talent, share appreciation, rewards and recognition.

There’s a big difference between appreciating somebody in a team meeting and then just sending an automated note. The two have completely different outcomes, although both are linked to reward and recognition and also how we communicate in different organizational forum.

When there are brainstorming sessions for ideation, these are areas where technology can enable, can take away routine work, processing of information, etcetera. But then the unpredictability and the richness of human emotions that that can only be supported by personalized employee experiences, HR interactions, etcetera.

And there’s all philosophy of where we bring in the human touch and where we can bring in technology to support. It’s based on the shared variety of human needs. And again, you know as I was sharing some time ago for another query on the other question that one size need not fit all.

So there has to be customization in terms of the approach. There has to be customization in terms of how we communicate based on our valued employees, unique needs, their aspirations, their motivators, etcetera.

Technology is a fabulous tool. It’s a fabulous enabler, but the real deal is in human interaction when it comes to HR.

Q 9. Walk us through any piece of literature that has shaped your leadership journey.

A.What comes to mind is a beautiful little book called Who Moved My Cheese by Doctor Spencer Johnson.This particular little book actually was fascinating because it’s a humorous parable on change management.

And as they say, change is the only constant in life and in a very beautiful metaphorical way, the author, Doctor Spencer Johnson, has written a story about two little mice and two little people in a maze and somebody takes away their cheese. That’s why the book is called Who Moved My Cheese and how, you know the reactions are so varied to that change and how each one of them deals with it.

It’s quite an eye opener and it’s very simple but very impactful. So I highly recommend this book.

To anybody you know who wants to sort of know how to anticipate change, the very fact that it’s good to anticipate change and good to embrace change- The treasures of Change management, this book is definitely right up there in terms of inspiring and motivating us to look at change with new eyes.

Closing Note

Hope you enjoyed reading valuable insights by Smita and the kind of perspectives she brought to the table. A lot of them were very practical and were backed by real life anecdotes, and that’s what appealed the most.

Thanks again to our cherished audience.

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to each one of you.

We appreciate your presence and the journey you have taken with us as we uncover the mysteries of reshaping modern workplaces until our paths cross again.

Take good care and be sure to stay tuned for another threading episode of the CHRO Mindset Podcast.