Podcast

Q 1. One piece of advice to your younger self when you started your career in HR, what would it be?

A. I often contemplate when I go back to the journey in a chat will get to my younger son.

I would say that do not go after money when you are starting your career. You should be the one who’s focused on what you want to do in your daily life of work. If you find that job and even if it pays you less than your competitive peers or your fellow batch mates from the college, choose that.

I’ve seen many of my friends making the same mistake which often you end up making because you see money matters more than that time and then you feel you would be left behind from the career.

Go after the passion you have for the work, you would be doing the whole day of your life, work life, going forward in whatever details you’re remaining as a career.

Q 2. HR has evolved significantly over the years from primarily being administrative to becoming a strategic partner. If you could share a personal anecdote or example of how you witnessed or contributed to this transformation in your own career?

What were the challenges that you faced and what strategies did you employ to elevate the HR role within the organization?

A. Since the last 2 1/2 decade I’m being part of this beautiful HR fraternity. I’ve seen it, as the question says HR role being transformed from the administrative one to the strategy one. And people often get confused about the strategy.

Strategy is not about you just bringing in the uniqueness but it’s about adding value to business to grow them to the faster pace.

I used to work on those sheets from decade to decades, all labor laws. We know the inspector Raj; we call it from the time you have to manually fill those forms and there were many restrictions.

And then evolving into the one touch operations as of today everything is at your fingertips and that’s to start with, I say yes, I’ve seen many changes happen.

Decades of experience remaining in IT companies- the talent market became highly competitive, the size of π remains same but as India evolved and the growth story of India start shining because we became de facto in an IT superpower of the world. It kind of created more challenges for talent acquisition functions for HR to first attract that talent and the second retain that talent.

Here the strategy function played a very important role because you as HR started devising those strategies in order to achieve those business schools and one is to start with this of course the talent management part of it.

IT job was as it said in from the management from A-Z of the talent, which meant that your job and your mind share should be in equilibrium with the mind share of delivery from the people from other function.

From promoter’s mindset, from the CEO’s mindset and you become one of the very important moving parts of the whole ecosystem when you call it an organization. I think it has become very important in this transformation to play a role from the administrator to the strategic.

When you brought the kind of shift, I’ve seen personally is the talent was known, there was needed to be nurtured instead of just being found from the market and be developed. And why I’m telling you put get this by nurturing and development means that learning and development function came very prominently during the last few years in this function.

Earlier it did not exist when you were purely administrative because many CHROs of the world did not realize that there was potential.

If you see currently all the bigger corporations of the world have a full-fledged L&D department with their respective VPs handling that’s why they speak about the static nature of the HR function.

And second, I think it should be answered in a way that the starting nature of HR did touch about building the culture aspect of whole organization.

If I remember the days, when I came out of the college, there was a subject called organization enrollment and it was a very small one or two page I think subchapter of a bigger part of my academics where cultural was mentioned and if today I speak about the strategic HR, culture becomes the number one or two slots in priority of any single charge.

I too focus on creating a culture of joy and accountability in any company I work with. You mentioned 3 from Motorola to Insight to Minfy. The common thread which I have among the three is that I never defocus from building the DNA of a company, which is a culture. Many companies have a different approach to that and that’s why it’s special and important.

This is a unique aspect to your company. Nobody can copy it. No, your competition won’t catch it because it’s inherited from your own DNA. Your company will have it again that’s becomes the attracting factor of a talent retaining move factor for you, resources to stay in or exit out.

These are the two things which now I want to share. That’s how the administrative nature of HR has evolved into static nature from seeing talent not just as a resource but as the most important piece of the puzzle where you need to nurture and develop them creating an important function in between.

Aligning everything to the business strategy and 2nd is the cultural aspects will help you as a CHRO. Start focusing to build on those building blocks which is called the culture of any organization.

Q3. In your experience, what are some of the most significant changes in HR technology that have had a profound impact on how HR operates as a function?

And if you can share a story about implementation of a specific HR tech solution that revolutionized the process or yielded any tangible benefits for massive transformation, that you carried out for your organization.

A. A few thousand years back, humans invented or created fire, that invention took thousands, thousands of years. Then, we started developing wheels, and when we started living as a society, it took again hundreds of years. And then came the industrial age with machines development and all that took only decades. And then came the Internet. That only took years. Just imagine from a century and then from decades and then from the years.

Now if you see, the nature of change is very rapid. It’s months, its days. One mention I will come to the answer why I’m telling you is now it’s just days. If I even mentioned something today, my kid would come to tomorrow here that you’re “talking yesterday”.

Just see the phrase you’re “talking yesterday “. It’s not you’re talking last year, decade! Because the change is very, very disruptive and very rapid. Example is ChatGPT . It was just like four or five months back and it disrupted everything. Now you see ChatGPT is on top of town. There are new tools which have been replacing AI driven revolution through the new revolution.

In context of HR and coming very specific to the question of this answer is I’ve seen, and our categorization is a post COVID and pre COVID changes.

COVID played a very important part in these changes which are faced. One example is that in within India and the global nature. The way people or employee’s organizations perceive work from home and the productivity around it, the whole perspective changes in that COVID. Now what happened?

The organizations were faced to adopt in the current time- a mix of both practices. First which they were forced to choose during COVID and then which they were free to choose after COVID. Since employees of the world has realized benefit of both the models, organization has evolved to choose the best of it and the organization who did not, are failing miserably and that’s the most important change when came from the technology transformation because it equipped people like us in HR to adapt to the changes.

I could never imagine before COVID that I would be going 100% virtual hiring. For me it was very, very important to have this one-to-one interaction, analyzing the body language, seeing the candidate, gauging those impressions. But with the involvement of AI in the tools, sassy tools available, I could go. And implement from point A-Z the whole talent acquisition process virtually.

I’m not meeting candidate to add once, smoothly everything is being recorded and then now with the facilities of this by the involvement of tools and functions and solutions you automate it to the extent you want to.

So, these are the few things that have changed with the revolution which has made life easy for people.

Q4. If you look at the entire employee life cycle or HR as a domain, there are wide range of disciplines and specialties from talent acquisition to L&D to employ relations and whatnot. How would you recommend aspiring HR professionals to identify their niche or specialization within the HR function?

A. I would start with the fact that the field of human resources is indeed very, very vast. It’s huge that we cannot contemplate the depth of it, and it offers really a wide range of specialties for all HR aspiring professionals coming to him.

You could go with your strengths and then you choose what matters to you or where you feel very strong and then no. Here are the few steps which could be beneficial for you to choose HR, what is important for you or maybe you would be in better position to help your career decision.

The first one is if you’re thinking of making your career in HR, do not restrict yourself, you should go and explore all the pheasants.

It just means that all modules, all functions starting from HR payroll from the journalist, you’ve been working on the payroll, you are working in talent acquisition recruitment part of it, then you are probably too long to mention HR analyst and many, other many other fields.

Go gain experience in any field, any functions which are there available for you and then make it a very comprehensive understanding about it. Till that time, you don’t experience. You would only be making decisions based on the biases. That means based on the people who have told you. Or maybe you have read it, but not on hands-on experience.

What I see is when you’re starting or thinking about HR, even if you’re in college, go to this industry, go to the people who are in HR or maybe can give you opportunity to work or have a feel of the function altogether and do the internship. Or if I say the not the correct word internship but expose yourself to the old functions of HR working in any capacity and I will round back circle back to the same thing.

Do not ask or just hold back on something which is called money. That unless this organization pays me this much of stipend I will not start working as an intern. Or maybe I don’t seek opportunity, and this should be a continuous effort.

Typically, MBA courses and all courses which you come out from, require you to do one internship- summers and winters and one project. It’s kind of probably a flaw of our academics that we are focused on this theory part more whereas I feel we should be more focused on what industry requires you to be or very practical part of it. Spend as much time as you can learning within the organization not outside the organization.

Your college is very, very important. It can make mistakes part of it. Theories are part of it. Do capstone projects without your professor asking you to do that, as many capstones or projects or internship you would do, it will give you more information. It will equip you with more wisdom to choose what you want and what. One part saying that explore all facets.

Second is align yourself to your interests and strengths.

For example, if you work with an organization and you work with payroll, you work with talent acquisition, you work with HR, analytics and many other functions, but you certainly realize- I’m very good at dealing with people. I love talking. I know I love spending time listening to problems to employees.

It tells you something. It tells that you are fit for one particular role within HR. If you enjoyed this not to be kind of countering the choices of career but then after you face everything in within function start aligning your interest to what have you done in the part of your job which you want to do.

The very important part here is job is not one day. This is the thing you would be doing every day of your life, your whole work life for the next 30-40 years or professional career. From my personal experience, if you wake up early in the morning and you don’t feel happy about what you want to do in the office or at your work. Something is very seriously wrong in your work life. Why? Either you are not enjoying the work, either you have lost that passion which you started to carry with you or there is no motivation for you to do or achieve at your work.

Instead of regretting that later I think if you align it before even you start. These are the two things which I covered hard and again are very important. It summarizes everything that you have to constantly keep learning or upscaling or rescaling yourself.

And the classic example is the old CHRO was of like the generation of us who started with paper pencil and then we adopted to excel and then we adopted to AI tools and now God knows what’s going to come and what not.

But then let’s take an example.

If I as a HR head or CHRO kind of decided to stick to the paper only. Hey, I don’t like working with excellent computers. My favorite approach is no, I want to fill paper-based sheets. I want to do my assessment, performance assessments on paper only. I don’t like doing this and that. Just imagine could I handle a function of 5000 people with that manual approach. It would take me whole year to even get the forms filled that is in context 1.

Just an example of being open to learning and what it means when you started learning or when you’re open. The Kaiser we call it in fear of the methods of HR. It keeps you with more knowledge which gives you that inner strength to handle any challenges thrown at you.

I will tell you if you see the national geography or discovery there is a one gazer and there are only 3-4 lions. In heard of thousands of that gazer or not all the hunted animal, one is chosen and being eaten by the predator. Why probably that one we can discount the effector of being him or her unlucky! That one could be the slowest runner among the herd or that was not keeping the eye open of a danger ahead. It is the same with your job and industry.

If your outlook is not open and you’re not looking at a horizon which is coming to you as a challenge you would be left out. And by left out it means that either you would be in a very standard role for years and years you won’t enjoy the work you are doing. And then again you will curse yourself.

But nobody said I did not have those means to success; nobody was my godfather to make what happen. And my friend, in this thing nobody does it’s a survival of the fittest as the same goes and here you being a HR is seen is from a very different lens because you are in one function which is any good people centric, people oriented.

You are now a strategic partner in the growth of the organization. If you yourself are not aligned to the whole motivation or yourself to do a job better, what would happen to the whole workforce? Like when we talk about creating a culture of joy and accountability, and if as an Amit I don’t enjoy even talking to people or going among my employees talking about their problems, I’m not justifying my role.

I want to tell you a story forget that quote me or unquote me and why I’m in a chart and that kind of resonates this whole journey, the experience which I’ve told. As you see I’m a physics honor graduate. When I was in 12th grade, my whole dream and my passion was to know. I wanted to go on a course in physics but in physics also I wanted to be in astrophysics. I specialized and physics was the only subject I secured more than 95% always from the start of my school days. The rest of the subjects were only the subject where I was march really passing through. Why?

Because my interest in passion lies in physics and that is a one story. I did my bachelor’s with distinction in that subject. I love doing that. But once I passed out in 1977, that was the year when we realize this is a hard fit of the job market in general, but you have to foresee what is coming as an evolving career choice of yours.

After physics if I have to really pursue astrophysics, I have to do my MSC and PhD and that was again seven years horizon from the time I start earning and that was India IT industry was catching up. MCA was the real craze of that time, the stiff competition.

So I did that because I wanted to earn money. I asked my father and friends what to do and everybody suggested computers. I did not even see the computer before that. I did not even know what a computer was. Of course, like by saying I mean that I did not have any exposure to use it. And then one fine day I gave entrance to MCA. I was lucky. I got a good college and two years of my life I spent doing my MCA with full dedication. I did it somehow. Okay and I got a very, very interesting job and a rewarding job with one of the IT giants from my campus.

Here the story starts broken and it will resonate to my younger freshers who are joining or thinking of joining when I was sitting in that company’s bigger broader, the fancy board room, the whole 4-5 days. All I see is that HR people are coming to us. We were a quote out of seven people that time from the same campus. Fill in this form, fill in that form. It’s lunch time. Go here, go there, do that, come back, fill this form again. Let’s start this induction. Let’s do that. And after four or five days I realized nothing. No, this job is nothing. The whole power center of the company are these HR people. These are the ones who hold the power. They are dictating everything from A-Z to us. We are just near as it said, dolls in their hand.

And there I realized my friends from the audience that I want to be that child, forget about everything, I want to taste this power and from the whole idea this time, of course, then I gave my CAT, MAT, all examinations and I took admission in one of the renowned MBA colleges. And that’s the story I landed up being in MBA.

I did it and I got placed in controller. Coming back to the same question, let’s see now it comes that had been the case that when I was exposed to this whole HR, when I was choosing my graduation, even PG. I talked about my journey to choose my preferred career choice but after few years, that would have made significant impact on the achievements of me as an individual.

And then of course the whole kind of experience I counted nowadays as you said with 20 plus year of experience, you would have said with 25 years of experience with Amit big this and that. So that’s again a very, very strong factor.

The last point before we signed off from this question is networking again as an important part if you really want to be in HR. And what I mean by networking is that I talked about you being an intern and all that. Here networking in your perspective means that you should start speaking to HR people more often?

So, one part is you’re taking practical knowledge. Another part is that let’s go to networks like LinkedIn and all that as this beautiful podcast. Engage more, participate more. Wherever you see something is happening in HR space, be a part of it or start knowing the people who you want to become like.

Idealize few personalities in your life as an HR then reverse engineer, go back see what they have done in their life, how they started and kind of take the quotes from their life and started replicate their career journey in a betterment of your interests’ careers, know your exposures.

So that’s how these four parts which I said I’ve discovered is that you really need to expose yourself to all facets of HR. Second is that align yourself with the interest and strengths within HR which you want to do whole day of your work life. 3rd is no, you just do not stop. It has to be continuous learning for you always, look for the opportunity which gives you more knowledge and wisdom.

And of course, last but not least is the networking part of it. Always go to events, enjoy the postcards, go to tech talks, go to the events, listen to them.

Q4. In today’s remote work environment, virtual recruiting has become super essential. If you could provide some examples of successful recruitment, virtual recruitment strategies that we’ve witnessed or implemented and how the impact was, how did the entire story go?

A. I feel as much as work you could automate or delegate in terms of the tools and then part of your life becomes easier. As an HR, you could focus on more static parts, not the transactional parts of HR and that’s what your job is as a CHRO.

With this whole recruitment game, how has it changed from the time it was forced on you that you cannot go to the market? Of course, I understand in person interaction, and it has amazing benefits. You can get the vibe; you could study that behavior in person.

You can impromptu do the questions and all which we also learned and adapted to the full complete virtual hiring to onboarding process through one of the machine learning AI driven tools or ATS we implemented.

Why? Because we are no longer required to manually do anything where the need was somebody to come to our office premises and there are few choices:

We had either we could preschedule the interview with one or two predefined questions to that candidate and ask the person to video interview and share the snip with us within the tool. And so, the beauty of this tool was based on- we did not even need to go through that video and analyze it as it was something that this tool would give you insights based on their AI, ML, whatever backend technology they were using about the fit of that role which we were interviewing.

So that one part which became again simple for us to adopt and then we started up adopting it and that’s how I think it solved few of the problem for us from time that we were using in person approach to becoming a full virtual onboarding, we implemented within the company that’s also at the Minfy.

It’s a huge admirer and the promoter and the CEO of it also feels that people enablement is the great concern for them. They are 100% of the cost, not only the complete virtual ATS, but we also have a very fancy SaaS based HRMS and HR automation tool which covers the automation of all the HR functions within that space.

So, it simplifies life as we say and it frees up my time, my team’s time to do more productive work other than just engaged in the transactional work, all that which consumes their time and energy. That’s how I think the whole transformation happened from the tool point of view or from the recruitment point of view.

Q5. Now let’s transition and go a bit macro when it comes to implementing technology at a holistic functional level, HR functional level, which is where we’re going to discuss HR automation and technology at workplace. What unexpected benefits have you observed from implementing HR automation beyond the obvious time and cost savings?

A. With these tools and mechanisms at hand, the whole HR data analytics has acute me with more insights I could use to make it better decision making.

Analyzing the training effectiveness of my employees, how do I forecast my future hiring trends and also know by the quality of decisions. It’s not like we were not making decisions before, but the quality of decision making has also improved with that is the first one.

And the 2nd surprising benefit I’ve seen is that it increased employee satisfaction and overall employee experience. Automated systems have made HR services more accessible and more responsive to employees.

So earlier you come to Amit, I will give you, my time. It will take days, weeks, this and that. The representative will say OK, I don’t have time today, let’s meet tomorrow, but these are the tools- it’s instant. You just go to the calendar and see OK, if Amit is free, put 15 minutes call and you will be there. This has given more unexpected benefits in terms of employee experience and satisfaction, the importance of which hardly very few CHRO relies on.

Ultimately you are in the people business. Their happiness is your happiness, and I strongly believe in people’s power. I had once created the title- chief of Rockstar happiness and we used to call rock star to every employee. Just imagine I had a person reported into my scene by the role of chief of rock star happiness in a general like chief of employee happiness. That was a dedication we had and then these tools only enabled us to do that.

And I’m talking about almost like 7-8 years back, I had one device at the exit gate of my US office at that time, which was called as a board integrator. When you were leaving the organization, after working very hard in the day, you saw these four buttons at the gate and that was a device which was very happy, just satisfied, super excited and super, super happy or maybe or sad. There were five light- green amber and it went to red in the category. This device was at the exit gate, and this was an automated device which was linked to our servers, our HR systems. At any given point of pull gate I had this insight on any given day that how my employees or rockstars were feeling.

So that’s kind of power these tools give you and this is the unexpected benefit that I could get the pulse of my rock stars within seconds. Forget about running those surveys for days, getting those outside then seeing what is not and all that. So that is one thing I think I’ve already given.

But one more thing, one benefit I also see and realize is that now it it’s an area of talent acquisition as well. With these tools, the use of AI power tool has shortened the whole journey of talent acquisition, talent experience and the core of it is candidate experience. So, for me what has kind of benefited most is it gives a higher level of candidate experience quotient with the help of these tools.

Visit this if you don’t have that because many of the times in the manual approach you tend to miss the important aspects of how the other person should be made of. Filter that, so these are I think the four or five things which I feel personally benefited from the advent of technologies and tools and to all HR of the world.

Q 6. Are there any books that have significantly impacted your leadership journey and left an impact on you? We’d love to hear more about those transformative reads that have shaped your professional growth.

A. The one book which I never stop thinking about is a book by the Dr.Paul Karanti and it is about his personal journey from the experiences of life till he disappears from this beautiful planet. And the title is, it’s called “When Breath Becomes Clear.”

It’s a very touching book. It’s my CEO or Minfy CEO Vikram Manchanda who referred this book to me, and I never stop about it. It’s to the point that you started to question your existence and the purpose of life you have as a person, not as a CHRO, but as a person who is.

And I would tell you, if you had any questions or realization why you are here on this planet, read that book. It will give you some new perspective about your happiness, about your purpose, about how do you deal with life, how you see life.

Closing Note

We extend our heartfelt gratitude for being very generous in sharing insights and talking about all the things that CHRO aspirants are the strategic mindset of CHRO Things.

Thank you to all our incredible readers. We want to extend our deepest appreciation to each one of you. Thank you for tuning in and being a part of our remarkable community until we meet again.

Take good care and stay tuned for more captivating episodes of the CHRO Mindset Podcast.