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 &…
Author: Navya Rajan
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…