Author: Radhika Sharma | HRKatha

Company: Pinnacle Retail (fictitious) A mid-sized chain of department stores with 3,500 employees across 40 outlets, retailing apparel, home goods, and consumer electronics. Background Neha Sharma has spent two years as a category manager at Pinnacle Retail. By most measures, she has been a strong performer: her merchandising decisions have been sound, her relationships with vendors solid, and her category numbers consistently above target. She has also spent two years watching her supervisor take credit for her ideas. Her supervisor, Rajeev Bahl, is considered one of Pinnacle’s most effective senior managers. His results are strong. His visibility with leadership is…

Indo National has been manufacturing batteries in India for more than five decades under the Nippo brand, with Japanese discipline and process rigour deeply embedded in its operating culture. It is not a sector that attracts headlines. Batteries sit quietly inside devices, noticed only when they fail. Yet the workforce challenges facing the business are anything but quiet. Long-serving plant employees work alongside younger professionals entering with very different expectations around technology, careers and growth. At the same time, automation, AI and newer battery technologies are reshaping how work gets done. Amit Sharda, CHRO at Indo National, sits at the…

The Haryana government is exploring the introduction of sugar industry-focused courses in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) as part of its efforts to enhance employability and create a dedicated talent pipeline for the state’s sugar sector. The proposal was reviewed during a meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi, where officials discussed the need for specialised training programmes aligned with the operational requirements of sugar mills. The initiative is aimed at equipping young people with industry-relevant skills while addressing the workforce needs of the sector. Discussions centred on launching technical, vocational and diploma-level programmes that would prepare students for a range…

Global organisations face a familiar temptation as they grow: standardise everything. Uniform policies. Consistent behaviours. A single cultural template applied across every geography. The logic is obvious. Consistency reduces friction, simplifies management, and creates predictability. PDS, a fashion infrastructure company operating across more than 100 offices in 24 countries, 40 business verticals, and among employees representing over 40 nationalities, has chosen a different path. “My job is not to have one culture, but get all these distinct country cultures remain as they are, while still threaded together with a single identity which is PDS,” says Prakhar Shrivastava, global HR lead,…

Organisations have spent years refining employee engagement strategies, introducing wellness initiatives, recognition platforms, learning opportunities and culture-building programmes designed to improve retention. Yet despite these investments, one theme continues to emerge in exit interviews across industries: employees often leave managers, not organisations. This has prompted a broader question for business leaders. If managers shape an employee’s day-to-day experience more than any policy or programme, has managerial capability become the biggest determinant of retention? Or is it simply one part of a much larger equation? Three HR leaders share their perspectives. Rishi Mohan, Chief Human Resources Officer, Iscon Balaji Foods Yes.…

Motivation is one of management’s favourite subjects. Entire industries have been built around measuring it, improving it and presenting it in colourful engagement dashboards. Yet most organisations tend to look for motivation in the same places: promotions, pay increases, bigger responsibilities, prestigious titles. These things matter. Anyone claiming otherwise is being disingenuous. But they are not always what keeps people going. Ask someone what helped them push through a difficult year, recover from a setback or show up on a particularly exhausting Monday, and the answer is often something no workplace survey would think to ask about. A family member.…

Company: GreenRoot (fictitious), a sustainability-focused social enterprise with 150 employees, working across renewable energy access, ecological restoration, and community-led conservation programmes. Background When GreenRoot hired Kavitha Nair eighteen months ago, the offer letter described her as someone who “embodies our purpose.” It was not corporate language inserted for effect. Leadership genuinely believed it. Kavitha came with deep community experience, a strong reputation for grassroots mobilisation, and the kind of personal commitment to sustainability that people inside GreenRoot admired instinctively. Her hiring was celebrated internally. She felt like the kind of person the organisation wanted to become. Her manager, Suresh Menon,…

Nippon Koei is a Japanese engineering consultancy with deep roots in infrastructure development across Asia. In India, its work spans high-speed rail, urban mobility, water systems, energy and large-scale public infrastructure, sectors being reshaped simultaneously by digitisation, AI-enabled engineering and unprecedented investment. The HR challenge in that environment is not merely hiring engineers. It is building a workforce capable of handling complexity, operating across generations, and adapting to technologies evolving faster than traditional career cycles were designed for. Himanshu Sinha has been helping shape that workforce as CHRO. In conversation with HRKatha, he explains why retention begins where compensation stops,…

UBS Group has reportedly eliminated several hundred roles across its operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) as the Swiss banking giant continues to integrate the business of former rival Credit Suisse. According to media reports citing Bloomberg News, the latest round of workforce reductions has primarily affected support functions rather than client-facing positions. The reported layoffs did not extend to the bank’s operations in the US where UBS maintains a large wealth-management business with approximately 5,700 financial advisers. The job cuts represent another milestone in UBS’ multi-year restructuring programme following its acquisition of Credit Suisse during the…

More than one lakh contract-based officers and employees in Madhya Pradesh are set to receive a salary increase after the state government approved a 4.46 per cent revision in their remuneration. The Finance Department issued an order implementing the annual increment under the state’s Contract Employment Policy, bringing relief to a large section of the contractual workforce. The revised remuneration will be effective from 1 April, 2026, with eligible employees also receiving arrears for the intervening period. The increase has been determined in accordance with provisions of the Contract Employment Policy notified by the General Administration Department in July 2023.…

Employee benefits once followed a simple bargain: pay people reasonably well and they would work. Healthcare coverage, provident fund contributions, perhaps a subsidised canteen. The rest was considered personal life. Amazon India’s approach starts from a different premise. “The employee is an internal customer, because unless an employee is happy, there is no way our customers are going to be happy,” says Shantanu Chakraborty, Director (HR), People eXperience and Technology, Amazon India. The company applied its customer-obsession philosophy inward, designing benefits by working backwards from employee realities much as it would for external consumers. That exercise revealed something obvious but…

For decades, retirement followed a predictable script. You worked, reached a certain age and stepped aside. The model was built around shorter lifespans, linear careers and the belief that professional relevance naturally declined with age. That assumption is now under pressure. People are living longer, staying healthier and continuing to contribute meaningfully well into their sixties and seventies. At the same time, organisations are balancing talent shortages, rapid technological shifts and the need to create growth opportunities for younger employees. The result is a growing workplace dilemma. Should organisations continue to enforce fixed retirement ages to ensure renewal and succession?…

Every workplace runs on two sets of rules. The official ones, written down somewhere and largely ignored. And the unofficial ones, which nobody writes down but everybody follows. For years, those unofficial rules came with a familiar set of anxieties. Speak up and look presumptuous. Disagree with the manager and risk your prospects. Admit you do not know something and appear incompetent. Most professionals carried at least one of these quietly, whilst assuming everyone else in the room was entirely comfortable. That assumption, it turns out, was wrong. And slowly, so are some of the fears. The hesitation around speaking…

Company: PrimeEdge Financial Services (fictitious) A mid-sized asset management firm with 400 employees, managing institutional and high-net-worth portfolios across equity, debt, and alternative investments. Background Six months ago, PrimeEdge hired Aryan Shah as Head of Investments following a competitive search. He was selected over several strong candidates, partly because of his MBA from a well-regarded business school – a credential the hiring panel viewed as a strong signal of analytical rigour and leadership potential. Aryan has since exceeded expectations. His team trusts him. Clients have responded well. He has closed deals worth Rs 80 crore in his first two quarters.…

Coal India has announced the retirement of Goutam Banerjee, executive director (HR), upon attaining the age of superannuation, bringing to a close a career that spanned more than three decades in the coal and mining sector. Banerjee retired after serving in several senior HR leadership roles across Coal India and its subsidiary operations. In his role as executive director (HR), Banerjee played a key role in workforce management, industrial relations and human-resource strategy for one of India’s largest public- sector employers. Before being elevated to executive director, he served as general manager (personnel, manpower planning and industrial relations) at Coal…

Titan shaped much of Raj Narayan’s leadership journey. Over decades as a people leader across industries and organisations, he observed at close quarters the difference between companies that genuinely live their stated values and those that merely display them. In conversation with HRKatha, he reflects on what organisations consistently get right, what they consistently get wrong, and the few leadership behaviours he believes matter more than most executives are willing to admit – among them the distinction between kindness and softness, the organisational cost of cultures that discourage dissent, and why active listening remains one of the most undervalued capabilities…

Infosys has recorded its lowest proportion of employees aged 30 and below in at least 15 years, signalling a significant demographic shift within India’s IT services sector as hiring patterns evolve and workforce priorities change. According to an analysis of the company’s annual disclosures, employees aged 30 and below accounted for 50.7 per cent of Infosys’ workforce at the end of FY26, down from 53 per cent in the previous fiscal year. The decline extends a trend that has been visible since FY23 and indicates that the company’s workforce is gradually becoming older and more experienced. Infosys ended FY26 with…

Hybrid work debates usually belong to technology companies arguing about badge swipes, desk ratios, and office utilisation. Manufacturing firms rarely enter the conversation. Machines cannot operate remotely. Production lines still require people on site. CEAT, one of India’s largest tyre manufacturers, occupies an awkward middle ground. Its workforce spans corporate offices, sales operations, factories, and shop floors. Some employees can work flexibly. Others cannot. Instead of forcing a uniform policy across fundamentally different realities, the company chose something more unusual: it removed attendance mandates for office roles whilst redesigning factory work itself to make participation broader and more sustainable. The…

For years, employee referrals have been HR’s favourite hiring shortcut. They are faster, often more cost-effective and frequently produce candidates who understand the organisation’s culture before they even walk through the door. But as diversity, equity and inclusion become stronger business priorities, referrals are facing growing scrutiny. Do they quietly reinforce existing networks and create workplaces filled with people who think, behave and hire alike? The tension is real. Referrals can signal strong employee trust in an organisation, but if left unchecked, they can also perpetuate homogeneity. The real challenge, therefore, is not whether referrals should exist, but whether organisations…

Annual performance reviews are carefully constructed things. Documented, calibrated, discussed at length — and often forgotten within days. The feedback that actually stays tends to arrive differently. In a corridor conversation. At the end of a meeting that was supposed to be about something else. In a sentence spoken so casually that the person saying it probably never realised it would matter. Two HR leaders reflect on the comments that stayed with them longest. Neither story involves dramatic criticism or career-changing appraisals. Just the quieter kind of feedback that slowly changes how people work. The dot-connector who needed better file…

Company: InnovateLabs (fictitious) A startup incubator with 200 employees, supporting early-stage ventures across fintech, edtech, and consumer technology. Background InnovateLabs has been looking to fill a Senior Product Manager role for two months. The position sits at the intersection of technology and business strategy, requiring someone who can work closely with founders, move fast, and navigate ambiguity. After three rounds of interviews, one candidate stood out on every technical dimension. Arjun Khanna has twelve years of experience across two large financial services firms. His problem-solving was precise, his product thinking sound, and his answers to scenario-based questions among the strongest…

Piramal Finance is a young NBFC with ambitions that do not behave like one. It has scaled rapidly across sales, underwriting, collections, credit and digital functions, with a distributed workforce that spans everything from branch operations in tier-two towns to data science teams building the models that increasingly shape lending decisions. In a sector where regulatory discipline and technological disruption are accelerating simultaneously, the HR challenge is no longer simply about hiring and retention. It is about building a workforce capable of operating at the intersection of both. Manjul Tilak leads that effort as CHRO. In conversation with HRKatha, he…

Fast-growing companies usually respond to pressure with more hiring. Demand rises, headcount follows. Licious, the meat and seafood delivery company, initially operated the same way. Then growth became more expensive. “At some point, the conversation changes from asking how many people are required to asking what outcomes need to be delivered,” says Sahil Mathur, the company’s chief human resources officer. That shift sounds managerial. It is actually structural. As margins tighten, labour stops being treated as expandable capacity and starts being treated as a productivity system. For Licious, HR increasingly moved away from pure recruitment and towards operational efficiency: onboarding…

The race between technology and talent has become one of the defining workplace tensions of this decade. Skills are becoming obsolete faster than annual hiring plans are approved, and organisations are under pressure to stay relevant while controlling costs. On the surface, the question appears straightforward: should companies invest in developing existing employees or bring in ready-made talent from the market? But in reality, it is far more complex. The decision today is shaped not just by cost, but also by urgency, capability gaps, cultural continuity and business context. While upskilling often appears more economical, HR leaders increasingly argue that…

There is a specific workplace feeling that rarely makes it into career conversations. It does not arrive after a bad appraisal, a conflict with management, or a sudden hatred of the job. More often, it appears on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Maybe you finish a presentation in half the time it once took. Maybe you walk into a meeting already knowing who will speak, who will push back, and who will suggest “taking it offline.” Maybe you answer questions before they are asked. Everything is going smoothly. Almost too smoothly. And then a quiet thought appears: Why does this suddenly…

Hiring in 2026 reflects a deeper recalibration. Educational qualifications still signal learning depth. But as roles evolve rapidly, employability is increasingly being determined by demonstrated capability. The shift is not about replacing credentials with competencies. It is about integrating both more intelligently. Sudakshina Bhattacharya, President & Chief Human Resources Officer at HDFC ERGO General Insurance, believes the defining change will be in how organisations assess, develop and sustain capability. “In 2026, hiring decisions will increasingly centre on proof of capability, with education enriching context.” Several signals suggest how this transition may unfold. Signal 1: Capability frameworks will enable structured assessment…