Employee experience is usually discussed in the language of big-ticket benefits: health insurance, wellness platforms, learning budgets and flexible-work policies. These things matter. They also tell only part of the story. Ask employees what actually makes a difficult week easier and the answers tend to be smaller. A manager who does not call during leave. A lunch hour that remains free. An extra day off when a public holiday falls on a weekend. The freedom to take a wellness day without having to explain why. Many of these cost organisations little or nothing. What they communicate can be considerable: your…
Author: Navya Rajan
Tropolite Foods is a legacy food-ingredients business built over more than four decades on entrepreneurial energy, deep customer relationships and technical expertise. As it moves from a promoter-led model towards a more professionally driven organisation, the challenge is not simply to introduce more systems and processes. It is to decide what needs to change without dismantling the qualities that allowed the business to grow in the first place. That is the transition IVS Ranganath came to Gwalior to help navigate. With nearly three decades of experience across Asian Paints, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Signode India and Shriram Bioseed…
What if giving employees unlimited leave actually makes them take less of it? As organisations rethink traditional workplace policies in favour of greater flexibility, unlimited leave has emerged as an attractive proposition. It promises employees greater autonomy while signalling that organisations trust them to manage their own time. Yet the absence of a defined leave limit can create an unintended dilemma. When there is no clear benchmark, employees may become more conscious of how much leave they are taking, particularly in cultures where visibility, performance and commitment are closely linked to career growth. The question, then, is not simply whether…
Company: Vertex Technologies (fictitious), a mid-sized technology services firm with 1,800 employees, delivering software development, infrastructure management and digital transformation services to enterprise clients across banking, retail and manufacturing. Background For just over a year, the client delivery team at Vertex Technologies had made remote work function. Deadlines were met. Client satisfaction scores held steady. The fourteen-member team had settled into a rhythm that worked, and leadership had largely left them to it. Then came the quarterly business review with National Finance Bank, one of Vertex’s largest and most strategically important clients. Eight people from Vertex. Six from the client.…
There is a thin line between an employee who wants to go the extra mile and one who feels they have to. In workplaces that celebrate passion, ownership and hustle, employees who take on more are often held up as examples of commitment. But could the celebration of passion inadvertently create a culture where doing more becomes the unspoken price of being seen as committed? Passion can undoubtedly fuel innovation, resilience and exceptional performance. But it can also be overleveraged when organisations begin equating commitment with long hours, constant availability or an employee’s willingness to put work before personal boundaries.…
Company: Pinnacle Sales Corp (fictitious), a B2B enterprise sales firm with 1,100 employees, selling software and managed services solutions to large corporates across manufacturing, logistics and financial services. Background Rajiv Malhotra is the kind of salesperson most organisations spend years trying to find. Last year, he brought in Rs 50 crore in revenue, three times the next-best performer on the team. His client relationships run deep, his conversion rate is exceptional and leadership has long credited him with holding a significant part of the company’s commercial engine together. But Rajiv has another reputation, and it has been building for almost…
Company: InnovateCorp (fictitious), a fintech startup with 320 employees, building digital lending, payments and wealth management products for retail and small business customers across India. Background Six months ago, InnovateCorp introduced a three-day in-office mandate. The rationale was straightforward. Leadership believed collaboration, culture and speed of decision-making had suffered during the years of full remote work, and that bringing people together for at least part of the week would restore what had been lost. Most employees complied. A few pushed back initially but adjusted. The policy held. Then Priya Menon’s manager, Vikram Rao, raised a concern with HR. Priya is…
As employee experience becomes increasingly intertwined with business performance, a question is emerging in boardrooms: should HR have the power to veto business decisions that significantly affect people? The case for it is compelling. HR understands the workforce implications of restructuring, cost-cutting, work-design changes and other major decisions. But a blanket veto could also turn HR into a gatekeeper, slowing decisions and blurring accountability. The more pertinent question may not be whether HR should have the final word, but whether it has a strong enough voice early in the decision-making process to influence the outcome. Neha Gupta, Vice President &…
Employee attrition has become one of the most closely watched workplace metrics, with organisations increasingly linking retention to leadership effectiveness. As companies work harder to hold on to talent, a difficult question is gaining prominence: should managers be penalised when their teams experience high attrition? Managers undoubtedly shape employee experience, engagement and career growth. Yet employees also leave for reasons beyond a manager’s control, from compensation and career opportunities to personal circumstances and market demand. So should attrition be treated as a measure of managerial performance, or should organisations look beyond the numbers before assigning accountability? Adithiya Venkatraman, Chief Human…
Most workdays are not transformed by sweeping leadership initiatives or ambitious culture programmes. They are shaped by things far smaller and far less visible: the cup of coffee shared before the day begins, the three priorities written down before opening email, the short walk between meetings that nobody schedules but almost everyone needs. These habits rarely appear in employee handbooks. They do not feature in engagement surveys or culture presentations. Yet they quietly influence how people begin, navigate and end their day, and over time their effect on focus, wellbeing and connection is often far greater than their size suggests.…
Somewhere in your organisation today, an employee has just used AI to rewrite a client proposal, debug a piece of code, prepare for tomorrow’s presentation or draft a difficult email. Along the way, they have learnt a better prompt, discovered a more efficient workflow and become marginally more productive than they were yesterday. None of it will appear in the learning management system. This is shadow upskilling: employees quietly teaching themselves how to work with AI, outside formal training programmes and often without telling their managers. Organisations are investing heavily in enterprise AI licences, structured learning pathways and mandatory certification…
Every office has that meeting. Someone suggests “aligning on bandwidth” or “leveraging synergies”, and everyone nods with the weary recognition reserved for phrases nobody actually understands. Now a younger generation has arrived with a vocabulary of its own. Projects are “locked in”. Bad ideas “serve nothing”. Excellent work – “ate and left no crumbs”. Somewhere across the table, a senior leader is wondering whether English has quietly evolved without permission. The instinct in many organisations is predictable: ask younger employees to sound more professional. A more interesting question is whether organisations should spend as much effort learning a new workplace…
For years, employee referrals have been among HR’s most effective hiring channels. They reduce hiring costs, shorten recruitment timelines and often produce candidates who already understand the organisation’s culture. Employees benefit through referral bonuses, while employers gain access to trusted talent. As organisations place greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion, however, referral programmes are attracting closer scrutiny. Critics argue that employees naturally recommend people from similar backgrounds, colleges or previous workplaces, creating talent pipelines that can become increasingly homogeneous over time. The question, therefore, is not whether referral programmes work. It is whether organisations can enjoy their benefits without allowing…
Imperial Auto Industries, the Indian integrated manufacturer and assembler of fluid transmission products, has roped in Prashant Srivastava as chief people officer (CPO), tasking him with aligning HR strategy to the company’s growth in automotive and industrial engineering markets. His role will span organisational effectiveness, leadership development, talent management, and culture transformation for the global component manufacturer. After a decade as a senior VP of HR, admin & CSR at Greenlam Industries (2016–2026), Srivastava moved to Imperial Auto. At Greenlam, he supported massive business scale-up, managing organisational design and talent initiatives for 2,500 employees and over 12,000 dealers. Prior to…
Cipla, the Indian multinational pharmaceutical company, has named Arun Kakatkar as global chief people officer (CPO). Kakatkar joins from Microsoft India, where he has served as human resources leader since February 2024. At Microsoft, he led efforts to build an inclusive, high-performance culture while aligning people strategy with business growth. His work focused on developing leadership teams, enabling organisational agility, and creating systems that connected talent, culture and customer outcomes. Customer obsession and cross-functional alignment were central to his approach. Before Microsoft, Arun Kakatkar was the president and chief of strategy and organisation at Kalyani Group and Bharat Forge from…
Troy Menezes has been named as the chief human resources officer at Avendus, stepping up after nearly a decade of leading people initiatives within the firm. His appointment marks a move to steer Avendus’ human capital strategy and culture agenda, backed by deep business knowledge and cross-industry HR expertise. Menezes began his professional journey after completing a Bachelor of Commerce from MMK College between 2004 and 2007, followed by a Master’s in Management Studies in Human Resources from Mumbai University from 2008 to 2010. He entered consulting at Deloitte India in October 2010, spending four years and seven months…