About Aditya Birla Capital 

Aditya Birla Capital Limited is a part of the Aditya Birla Group, a US$ 48.3 billion Indian multinational, in the league of Fortune 500. Powered by more than 21,000 employees, the subsidiaries of ABCL have a nationwide reach with 850+ branches and more than 2,00,000 agents / channel partners and several bank partners. Aditya Birla Capital has its strong presence in Protecting, Investing and Financing solutions and caters to the needs of diversified population.  

Transcription 

Welcome to Synergita’s TalentCast. The lockdown restrictions are being lifted everywhere but still folks, do follow the public health guidelines and social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I am xxxx the host of this episode. This is a special episode to discuss how to manage the remote workforce during this Coronavirus pandemic. 

And I’m here with Mr. Suresh Mani, one of the HR leaders of Aditya Birla Capital. Suresh is Multi-faceted professional with extensive exposure in working with Global Companies and has travelled across the globe for improving Global HR Practice. Suresh has over 22 years of experience as a Human Resources practitioner. He is an XLRI alumni and has worked as HR manager in companies like HCL technologies, Verizon, and Wipro. He was also the HR vice president at Polaris and GCI. It is our honor to have him on this episode. 

Suresh: Hello Ragapriya.  

Ragapriya : Hi! So, my first question, Suresh. What is the impact on business and human resources across the industry because of COVID-19 and especially in the financial services sector? 

Suresh: I think COVID – 19, brought different ways or thoughts among the various industries, as many of the industry also got impacted especially, we know industries which is into manufacturing and, we know, so forth. In financial services also got highly impacted, luckily companies which have adopted digital, digitalization at the early stage have able to see better success. Secondly what I understand is in this period, the entire community also understood importance of the insurance, how to invest, and so forth. So, it has helped, in some way, for this particular industry to look at, revamp, their processes. And I also strongly believe when an organization has, clear value, culture and processes are aligned to the values and culture, there is more alignment with employees with their goals, then you can see a different hemisphere. So, I’ve seen industry, especially in financial industry companies which have taken this as an activity, as a practice, for them it was like, a sale through process. Like how we would have seen in IT industry where, the people are used to remote management remote execution, and it’s all depends upon the culture and how they execute themselves. So, same thing happened in financial services also, where due to digitalization, the employees where, where they’re able to align to the processes and their innovation values, they were able to create, interesting piece and then able to get better success. I also had an opportunity to talk to many of the people especially in this industry, where I could see HR played a vital role.  One, HR not only connecting with employees and asking them about how the family and their employees helped, it went beyond that they started making a structured approach on reinforcing the company vision, values, what is that they want to achieve as in, in the organization, and started creating questions which will provoke employees to think what they can do better. So, by doing this, a purpose got created in employees and that purpose started getting aligned to the business, so they might be having certain tasks to do. They not only started doing the tasks, as well as they started doing something which they want to do it. And this all has been captured, and then also shared back. So, this I would say is kind of a descriptive approach happened, within the organizations, so there are a lot of new ideas got evolved. And these ideas have helped, especially in the sales force. where you need to keep connecting with customers. In financial services, it was, it was more easy for those employees to do it. And, I could see that has created a lot of success in many financial institutes, that’s, that’s one observation. I also could see, in industries of similar sort, who have done it.  For example, I experienced talking to Synergita also, and then,  it was very thrilling to see that, how you guys have put in a system, in which you track your tasks,  your activities, and then, it’s get aligned in a form of feedback, and it goes into your goals, and then feedback again it comes through a technology by your manager, and also there’s a connect with you and your HR, your manager and that could see a  lot of positive vibes, in your company, in terms of results in acquiring new customers. So, that was very interesting to hear. So, I feel, the companies which are following this process, it helps them a lot. That’s what I would like to say. 

• Absolutely, Suresh. Yeah, Synergita, in that part, has done a really great job because we employees feel really comfortable, and we always feel connected with the company. And again, HR role seems to be very crucial and the responsibility is really huge. It seems so.  

Suresh: You’re right.  

• Yeah! So, Suresh, HR industry experts, they say that remote working is the new normal now. And they also say it will continue to be even after the lockdown lifts. What are your thoughts about it? Does the Financial services sector share the same sentiments? 

Suresh: This is going to be a way of life. That’s what I perceive. Industries who are into services, they would also look at doing most of the tasks, remotely or it’s going to be kind of work from home. One because if you really see, today, most of the transactions, thanks, especially to look at our country, a few years ago, we went through monetization, and there we learned how to live digitally, that was a great experience and ability that we all brought together. Secondly, the experience currently we are going through also we had a learning in the past where we learned to interact with customers through technology mostly, so like, video transactions were enabled in financial services, bank account opening is highly simplified, if you look at loan today, it can happen within a click of a button. Insurance, if you want, you can do in a click of a button. You want to go and get mutual funds, it’s just a swipe. So, things have been more easier. So, when it is more easier through technology, why is that a workforce has to come into one premise and start working, unless otherwise the role is highly critical, where you need to have interactions. Those resources can be made. For example, I see leadership team, in most of the companies, would require to have in-person, maybe some infrastructure or a risk team would require. Else, I strongly believe it can be work remotely, and it can work more efficiently. So, that’s one belief I have. And most important, in this situation, what I learned from many employees, working and talking in various sectors, maybe financial services or IT industry or you talk about your essential service industry and so forth, it’s one thing I could guess that there is a humongous self-discipline is come in place. The trustworthiness has taken its own cushion in the organization, framed with technology to support employees, have happened. And, execution models have been realized in different forum, wherein I could guess that there were things used to take months together to get it done, I realized that things are happening in a faster and a quicker pace because of technology, and people are doing remotely. For example, I was talking to a delivery service company like, Swiggy, Zomato so and so forth. Therefore, there was a company called Munch. They are one of the procurement service providers, and they’ve done a technological way to support these companies to not only do the food services, also quickly adapt to other services like grocery and so forth. So, it has all happened within a week. So, that’s a level of speed in which the companies are able to work even remotely, so that makes me to feel that if we’re able to unleash the customer potential, and you have enough data to substantiate, your relationship with the customers. Well, I think it is much easier to execute things from home and make it more effective as we go along.  

• Yeah, and with technology, work from home has definitely become easier. But the thing is, many HR experts, they insist on the word ‘work from home’ but I personally prefer they would rather use work from anywhere model or their office or elsewhere. So, what do you think about that? 

Suresh: So, for me, work from home is work from anywhere. It is all about how an individual or an organization has created this technology structure as well as there is a proper self-discipline within that employee. That’s more critical. Having said that, being an HR, I also strongly believe that everything through technology, you cannot connect with employee. It is good that you can collaborate using technology and so forth, but you need to, there should be some personal connect, this reminds me of a few years ago, I had an opportunity to interact in one of the former industries, where that time the HR head was talking about to us how the technology has evolved a company and he also told that how the human touch is very important.  

The story what he shared is like, he wanted one of the women employees to travel to Europe for an assignment and this employee was a top performer. However, the employee was not able to perform, was not able to travel, sorry.  We were asking the HR Head; he was trying to collaborate through technology and she was trying to communicate through technology. Somewhere, the head of HR realized that something is wrong. Let we meet. And, then he realized and he said let’s have a meeting. When he met, he realized that emotions that the employee carried. The passion for the company that the employee carried was tremendous. That was, that cannot be felt in a collaborative, emotional, in a technological communication at times. And when he met, he understood that the woman employee is going through a personal challenge in life. Her father is not keeping well, and she had to support her father and she cannot travel. Henceforth, to do it, she was trying to communicate and to some extent, she was ready to resign and move out of the company. The HR head genuinely felt that he has to go and help the employee and had a good conversation on during that face to face and then they came out saying like it is not necessary that she has to travel. It can be worked out even working from in the country. And if it is work from the country and it can be delivered, he also said “Why can’t you work from home and you can deliver?” So, at times, yes, you need technology to interact. There should be collaborative stuff but I also believe that there should be strong human touch to assess that exactly what the employee is going through. And if you can guide and help, that would be more fabulous. So, hence, working from anywhere is not a challenge. It should have all mix of technology and human touch. That’s what I want to say.  

• I totally agree with that, Suresh. Definitely, human touch, personal connect, those are important. To at least, personally connect with our managers to produce better work. That’s what I felt from my work at Synergita. So, Suresh, do you expect a major transformation in HR management? And if yes, what are they and what would be their impact? 

Suresh: I think we are going through various transformation. And in HR, today, everybody talks about digitalization or it is also said as a work called AI. Some of the organizations are starting automation. Some of them have automated and they are going towards digitalization. So, it’s all in the chain of transformation. Second thing, in this transformation, the employee adopting to, you, know, these transformations is also very critical stuff. You can have the best of the best technology, processes, systems, but if there is no proper connect and you are not able to cascade those connects to the employee, to the bottom of the pyramid especially. And that realization doesn’t come in the way one like to, then, it becomes a big challenge. So, wherein I see a lot of experiments are happening. For example, I know for good, luckily company, many companies have put all the HR tools and processes to the level of mobile with AI enabled. It has helped not only during this time for employee to, as simple as, marking their attendance, connecting with their coworkers, understanding what is the status on the payroll, what is their payslip looks like, and if they want to understand the policies, processes, there are helpdesks, AI based chat tools available to support. So, these all have been happening and it has helped the organization in a large whole for the employees. For example, even an investment support or a declaration happens in mobile nowadays as well as if you want to do a reimbursement in a click of a button has been enabled for employees. These are all the good things that have been happening. And also, if you look at a lot of AI based experiments are being put in place. For example, why to have face to face interview for a large or a bulk hiring. Everything can be done through a technology where you can have a AI based system which can source, it can interact with the candidates, take their interest, capture their profiles, their interest, and then screen the candidate using video methodology or using assessments and then give the results to the HR or the line manager to just decide whether they want to go yes or no. By doing this, there were days where people, we need to have a battalion of people to do mass hiring. Today, that has all been, can be lean. All those experiments are also been successful in many companies and if you look at onboarding, the employee has to go through various challenges in terms of giving his documents, so forth. This all has made more simple, digitalized, where he has to give only simple information and records are being gathered through forums and helped the employee to only validate his own information, and put in minimal documentation, so that the experience of the employee joining also has been fabulous. If I look at, there are companies like I know for Synergita also is working on various though process on making employee experience better in terms of how technology can leverage in getting this continuous feedback, collating or aligning to the goals of the employee and understanding those goals and making those goals come as a feedback through the AI based technology and guide employee with proper on-job sessions with a microlearning approach and also can look at helping the employee to attain his goals. So, it’s all lot of work in progress digitally, which I am aware of. I know another company called People Strong. They also have the entire technology workforce, which has been made very seamless, so there are lot of efforts are going especially with Indian based technology companies like People Strong or Synergita or there are companies like Zing HR and so on.  

• Technology and AI revolutionize the HR field. Is that your point, right? 

Suresh: Yes, it will revolutionize. There are lots of work is happening and in future, definitely, I see that’s going to be the way of life.  

• Awesome. So, Suresh, organizations, they are transforming to thrive in these unpredictable times. So, how employees are helping and supporting the organization? 

Suresh: We have been hearing various news to that, how organization is reacting to them, so forth. So, what I see is like, employees who have the right attitude, ability to learn, and want to contribute. They always look at the organization as started with what is their vision of the company and what is the value that the company carries, and what is the imbibed culture they have. So, when that alignment is in place, then the employee contribution comes in a different fold. As I said, I have seen employees, who have, are going out of the way to contribute what they are not supposed to do and maybe a support stop in an organization, its taking its time out in how to improve in connecting with the customers and helping the sales force to multiply their sales. I have observed that. I have seen sales team coming out with processes which can simplify customers, give as a recommendation to the teams and also be part of the team to implement it, also they are coming out with innovative ideas and thoughts on how to connect with their own workforce. So, it all works hand in hand together and it’s all about the leadership of a company. The leadership has the humbleness, connects with, to every employee as much as possible, understand not only how they’re feeling and help and also play a role like a mentor, it makes a huge difference.  

• That’s great, Suresh. You really are an epitome of true leadership skill. Because it seems from your answer that you really trust your employees especially in this kind of situation. So, what is HR’s reaction across the industry with this new development, Suresh? And how equipped they are to handle this sudden disruption? 

Suresh: I would say like, in organizations, where crisis management have been taken as a practice seriously, in terms of mock activity and so forth, they have done it very seriously understanding various environment situations, that could be one reaction, I would say like, that could help most to come out. Because they know, what to do and how to do in these situations. Secondly, when you do this crisis, for example, I used to work in an IT industry in the past and in a bank past, wherein we used to have regular mock activity of trying to work in a remote location and executing the difficult task and ensuring the critical tasks happen in the same time as it would happen in the normal time during the crisis. So, these practices were made religious. So, when we make those practices, the technology plays a vital role so we keep testing the technology whether the connectivity is seamless, whether the applications are adapting or flexible to work in those kind of environment, and also this helps to understand what are the process complication that we have created and how we can simplify the process. And this, this became a continuous activity within the organization. So, hence in the past experience tells me that companies which, where I worked, bank or in IT industry especially where I have seen this, they have been able to cope up and they came out with very bright colours. The delivery model is much more better, I would say that, they were able to excel themselves. So, that could be my reaction if these practices are imbibed in the organization in the past.  

• So, what are the strategies or processes you would use to bring back business to recapture the place, marketplace? 

Suresh: I will put across not only from my company’s perspective, but I would like to say from, more from a business, of any industry, how they should look at this difficult situation. The first thing is like, there should be a communication channel to be established between the leadership team and the last man, employee in the organization. And the Communication should give the choice how it would like to make an employee work from home, so that employee has a clarity on or give him the clarity or your help to get clarity from the employee on how he would like to make the choices in a right way depending upon the role and the expectation the employer has. Second thing is like, this entire activity, if there are lot of appropriate technology are available as I shared. So, putting those such tracking technologies in place, it will be as simple as Microsoft, or insights or you can, you can have your timesheet or activities which can track the employee, how are we looking at simple, the salesforce that you have, salesforce systems which knows how the employee is progressing on the sales perspective. And this can be imbibed with AI based because you have lot of structured data as well as unstructured data coming to you. You can create a kind of AI based coaching process, where we continuously feeds information and helps the employee as an AI coach, that will add lot of value to that particular employee to succeed especially if it is a, if you have a large organization, HR cannot connect with all employees. So, if it’s technology based, then it becomes easier, much easier for the organization to make a lean HR, so the data of critical nature where HR can play a vital role. Rest, the Ai can be good coach at the bottom level. That is going to be the one thing which I would recommend. Second thing, most of us love to achieve our KRA, but a supervisor, I don’t see at times, companies entertain what employee wants to do. Okay, there are companies which has done. I don’t know whether you have heard, there is very interesting book written by Daniel H. Pink on drive, which talks about how you contribute your time, you have 10 hours of your work, you make your employees one hour to spend time on what project he wants or he loves to work. And remaining 9 hours, he works on his deliverables. By doing that, the 9 hours of work, they have seen the efficiency has improved and the employee does more work. And in that one hour, he does what he wants to do for or contribute to the organization that created a lot of sustainable innovation or disruptive innovations. So, that is also a good way to create business in this difficult situation. And I have seen that. For example, when I was talking some of the sales force, the managers and the HR have given that kind of process and performance alignment is created. So, employees when they connect with their managers, they would bifurcate and they are able to contribute. So, for example, if anybody has enrolled as an essential service provider to that particular community, that is his passion to do it. While doing it, he is able to do the business also. And he also took some activities and he learned some of the processes how to support and he gave as his feedback to customer support team and that again evolved the organization to come out with more better processes. So, a lot of good learnings are happening and there is companies which have stronger engagement platforms, it is not only through technology, with people, with HR, and aligned to their purpose and the organization goal. I see that success is happening.  

• Great! So, will it be right to say that you insist the listeners to build an effective performance management and engagement system for their organization. 

Suresh: Obviously. Because that’s where you get your clarity and if you execute it right, it will work. Because what is your vision. What your goals are. You have your strategy; you create your action and task accordingly and put measurements. And then, it is all worked in a transparent way, each and every employee to the top level, of course, you will see a better performance. And performance not only of the employee even the performance of the technology level and you can see, if it is a manufacturing, how the product manufacturing performance happens, it is all possible.  

• Awesome. Any parting comments for our HR friends listening to this podcast, Suresh? 

Suresh: Yes, Ragapriya. As HR professionals, we want our organization to be successful, isn’t it?  

• Yeah. 

Suresh: As HR professionals, we are also custodian of culture and value of the company. Am I right? 

• Yeah, absolutely. 

Suresh: And more key is we have to be influential without authority and we play a role of HR business partner in coming out with right business decisions. Also, be an internal critic to ensure the organization moves into the right path. Am I right? 

• You’re right! 

Suresh: So, I strongly believe that, as HR professionals, most of us would normally focus on organization performance more from top performing employees if you’re a service organization also. What I strongly believe is that, we also need to start focusing on this middle performing bucket, or I would say, it is like a fat belly. It’s important because they also contribute to the organization and if you spend time with those individuals, you would really bring out the best capability and potential, which nobody would have thought. Because normally it comes out part of the exercise, but here if you focus using either a proper coaching program or having the right intervention with those resources, you can bring out their potential. And once those potential comes out, your performance in entire overall also improves as an organization and the parameter, performance parameter also gets elevated to a different level. So, I would recommend that. One of the best practices, I used to follow as one of the talent management processes in the company, we not only do performance review as a process and there is performance appraisal for the role that an individual does. What we also do is, periodically we created a program called performance, sorry, talent plan or talent growth plan or professional growth plan. This plan had three parameters. Hey ya system air boys on the basis of what at the function level they were able to do or they did any activity at organization level which is remarkable or at an industry level. We look at the contributions with those parameters what we defined and we saw that employees started not only doing the activities of the role but they also started contributing to the function or for their organization or at an industry level. This has created a lot of sustainability innovation or disruptive innovations coming out which also helped us in coming with various patents. And the organization overall performance started moving year on year to a higher level. So, we were rated as one of the best in that particular industry. So, I would recommend that we have to keep looking at the potential of this middle layer, focusing on the middle layer and help them out. I think that would be one of my parting comments, Ragapriya. 

• Okay, Suresh. Is it not because the middle performers, average performers, they form the majority of the workforce, of an organization’s workforce? 

Suresh: Yes, they are, if you look at the majority of, but if you look at from an organization’s standpoint, normally, top performing people contribution will be almost at a 80% or 70% level and the mediocre performance, could be, the contribution could be at a 30% range or a 40%. Imagine you are building up the capability, then you’ve been forced to create different parameters in the top performing. So, there will be more of internal competition and that will yield more success. In one of my operations, what we used to do is like, the technical resource who is working on, he or she will not be focusing only on their role, so look at what is that innovation I can bring for the organization, when they bring in the innovation, they make sure the innovation goes to the market without missing the protocol. Every organization has its own hierarchy. They also make sure they have the hierarchy but they ensure it goes to the market within the period. And also, as an organization we also kept those processes and systems available for them to succeed. And these were tracked. So, performance level started elevating year on year. You got what I’m saying?  

• Yeah, that’s really a great plan, like, to bring out the average performers too and also maintain the high performers to bring in competition to yield more success. 

Suresh: And more important is, this all comes in the organization culture and the value has been imbibed in those employees because most of the time, we talk at the surface, we don’t go at the bottom of the iceberg. So, we have to go into and understand what type of leadership style we have, how the culture is getting imbibed, and how the culture to be imbibed, what are the behaviours we need in to have culture and so you might experience in many organization that people talk with those values and culture. The way or their style itself would have got aligned to that, for example if I take a company like Synergita, I see the way your leadership team is, and how your leadership team gets, you all are aligned to your leadership. So, the way you show respect, the way you show that integrity, the way you show your seamlessness, the punctuality what you carry, is all comes as an imbibed culture in you. Am I right? So that’s also a key thing you all have to, as a HR, we need to keep making sure we have the right parameters and systems to keep tracking and inculcating those cultures. 

• That’s a great insight, Suresh. Thank you so much. And it was great chatting with you, Suresh. 

Suresh: Yeah, and it was a pleasant experience. And I hope everyone enjoys this particular episode. And again, once again, I would like to thank you and the organization. Thank you.