Author: Radhika Sharma | HRKatha

Company: Synapse Technologies (fictitious), a mid-sized IT services and product engineering firm with 2,200 employees, delivering software development, cloud solutions and digital transformation services to enterprise clients across the US, UK and India. Background Synapse Technologies has unusually low attrition for a company of its size. The CEO, Vikram Anand, believes he knows one reason why. Over the past four years, Vikram has deliberately built what he describes as a culture of genuine connection. Monthly team outings. Quarterly off-site retreats. After-hours celebrations for project completions, client wins and personal milestones. Participation has never been formally mandatory. But the expectation is…

Kyndryl emerged from IBM’s infrastructure services business in 2021 with deep technical capability, but also the task of building a distinct identity in a technology-services market where client expectations and skills are changing quickly. In such a business, the people agenda is inseparable from the commercial one. The capabilities inside the organisation increasingly determine not only whether work can be delivered, but whether it can be won in the first place. Rajita Singh leads people strategy across India and global delivery. In conversation with HRKatha, she explains why internal mobility needs the same rigour as external hiring, why simplicity has…

Most HR dashboards end with numbers. Attrition rates. Vacancy counts. Absenteeism percentages. Training hours. At The Akshaya Patra Foundation, those numbers eventually have to answer a more concrete question: can a kitchen open, can operations run as planned and can a child receive a hot meal? That accountability shapes how the organisation manages more than 9,000 employees spread across kitchens and distribution operations in multiple states. “Purpose is our strong differentiator,” says Mukesh Tiwari, chief human resources officer. But purpose is not expected to do the work of HR. Behind it sits an HRMS connecting payroll, biometrics, learning and ERP;…

Careers are full of moments that feel urgent. A recruiter needs an answer by Friday. A promotion has not come through and a colleague has just announced a new role. Someone from the same batch is suddenly two levels ahead. The temptation is to respond by moving, because staying put has begun to feel suspiciously like falling behind. The trouble is that careers rarely make as much sense while they are unfolding as they do in hindsight. Decisions that feel urgent in the moment often turn out to have been driven by circumstances that were temporary: envy, frustration, an attractive…

Sriharsha Achar has spent more than four decades as a people leader across manufacturing, IT, healthcare and health insurance. That breadth gives him a particular vantage point. He has watched similar people dilemmas recur across very different industries, often with organisations making the same mistakes in different forms. In conversation with HRKatha, Achar reflects on what those four decades have taught him about hiring for relevance rather than today’s perfect fit, building leadership pipelines before vacancies appear, designing careers around expertise rather than titles, and judging leadership by what remains after the leader has moved on. The ATS problem If…

The corporate career ladder has always had a hidden dependency: the manager standing at the bottom of it. Who gets spotted, who receives an opportunity and who gets nudged towards a different role often depends not simply on what an employee can do, but on whether the right person happens to notice. Myntra is attempting to reduce that dependency through SkillVerse, a skills and learning system embedded within a broader career framework called Mynfinity. The ambition is to make internal mobility more transparent and systematic, and less dependent on informal relationships or managerial goodwill. “SkillVerse is not being treated simply…

Imagine hiring a team where everyone gets along, understands the unwritten rules and fits neatly into the existing culture. It may sound ideal, until everyone starts thinking the same way. The same culture that helps people work smoothly together can, if overemphasised, become a filter that screens out the very people who could challenge assumptions, question the status quo and bring a fresh perspective. In a workplace constantly adapting to new technology, changing customer expectations and unfamiliar challenges, too much sameness can come at a cost. That is why the hiring conversation is beginning to move beyond “culture fit” towards…

There is a question that arrives, quietly and reliably, whenever an interesting opportunity appears. The role looks exciting. The project could open something new. And then, somewhere between considering the opportunity and deciding whether to take it, comes the doubt: do I actually know how to do this? Most professionals have been there. Fewer talk about it. Three HR leaders reflect on why that moment of uncertainty is not always a warning sign, and may instead be evidence that something worthwhile is about to begin. You probably won’t feel ready. Take it anyway. Amit Chincholikar, Group President HR, Hinduja Group…

Company: Apex Logistics (fictitious), a mid-sized supply chain and logistics firm with 3,200 employees, managing end-to-end freight, warehousing and last-mile delivery operations across India. Background The search for a Regional Head of Operations at Apex Logistics had been running for three months. The role carries a two-year transformation mandate, significant travel across six states and direct accountability for a business unit contributing nearly a quarter of the company’s revenue. It is not an easy role to fill. Neha Joshi was the standout candidate. Her track record in supply chain leadership was strong, her interviews were impressive and the hiring panel…

Aditya Birla Capital operates across a wide range of financial services businesses, which makes its people challenge anything but uniform. Different businesses serve different customers, require different capabilities and operate with different performance expectations. HR has to accommodate those differences without losing the organisational identity that holds them together. For Atul Mathur, that makes a broad understanding of the business fundamental to HR’s role. In conversation with HRKatha, he explains why HR’s strategic relevance begins at the reasoning stage rather than the execution stage, why a manager who achieves a target through only two of six team members is not…

At 1:50 pm, a worker steps off a bus outside a manufacturing plant. The shift begins at 2 pm. Between the bus stop and the production line sits a sequence of small actions: checking in, changing, washing and handing over, which can at times lead to loss of critical time to start the line. Perfetti Van Melle India began examining exactly this part of the workday. The exercise shaved two minutes off the process. According to Avishek Roy, director of human resources, as per a recent study conducted, those two minutes translated into an estimated 300 to 400 tonnes of…

There is a particular kind of workplace moment that no training programme can quite manufacture. An employee who rarely speaks in meetings takes charge when a crisis arrives. A technically brilliant colleague turns out to be unexpectedly good at bringing people together. Someone who has spent years doing one thing is asked to do something entirely different and discovers not only that they can do it, but that they enjoy it. Such discoveries are rarely planned. They tend to arrive disguised as difficult assignments, unfamiliar responsibilities or problems nobody quite knows how to solve. They can be uncomfortable while they…

Company: CoreBuild Infrastructure (fictitious), a mid-sized construction and real estate firm with 2,400 employees, delivering residential, commercial and infrastructure projects across eight cities in India. Background Sanjay Verma has been a project manager at CoreBuild for four years. His work is solid. Deadlines are generally met, vendors are managed competently and his managers have never had cause for a formal complaint. What they did not know, until recently, was that Sanjay has been running an interior design business on weekends. The business is small but active. He takes on residential and commercial fit-out projects, sources materials and coordinates contractors. It…

Edelweiss Life Insurance operates in a sector where competitive advantage is shifting. Products can be replicated. Distribution can be matched. What is harder to copy is the capability of the people building, selling and transforming those products as insurance becomes more data-led, technology-enabled and heavily regulated. That makes the talent equation more complicated. Traditional insurance expertise remains indispensable, but it now has to sit alongside AI, cybersecurity, data privacy and customer-experience capabilities that barely featured in the industry’s talent plans a decade ago. The question for HR is no longer simply whether the organisation has enough people. It is whether…

Retention is usually the problem. At Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), it is not. Nearly 60 per cent of its employees have been with the company for more than a decade. Around 70 per cent have more than five years. The pipeline is deep, the institutional knowledge substantial, and the succession model largely internal. The harder question is what to do with all that loyalty. “Manufacturing is changing, technology is changing, the expectations are changing, everything is changing, but the people remain the same throughout,” says Vinay Dhingra, senior director of HR and admin, IT, CSR & corporate affairs,…

Around 80-90 per cent of organisations say they are confident about their succession plans. Stress-test that confidence with the sudden departure of one or two critical leaders, however, and it often begins to unravel. That gap between paper readiness and real readiness framed a recent HRKatha Futurecast discussion, held in association with People Business Consulting, where senior HR leaders from banking, insurance and financial services examined “The Future of Succession in BFSI: Governance, Leadership Development and Future Readiness.” Prajjal Saha, founder and editor of HRKatha, opened the discussion, which was moderated by Dr Sandeep Krishnan, CEO and partner at People…

There was a time when knowing how to use a computer was considered a differentiator. Then came digital literacy, which gradually moved from being a useful skill to an unstated expectation across most jobs. AI appears to be following a similar trajectory. But there is a more complicated question underneath this shift. If AI is changing how work gets done, should employees who do not embrace it risk being left behind in career progression? Or should organisations allow employees to choose whether and how deeply they want to engage with AI? Kashish Kapoor, Global Head – HR, Newgen Yes, but…

Most job descriptions follow a familiar pattern. Years of experience. Technical expertise. The right qualifications. A certification or two. These things matter, and they help people get hired. Somewhere between the first job and a long career, however, most professionals discover that the qualities which truly set people apart are rarely on that list. They emerge in how someone responds to the unfamiliar, how they bring others along and what they choose to value when the obvious markers of success begin competing for attention. Three HR leaders reflect on the qualities that made the real difference, in their own careers…

Raymond is not one kind of company. Its workforce stretches across manufacturing plants, retail stores, corporate offices and multiple businesses, each with a very different experience of work. Long-tenured employees who have built careers inside the organisation work alongside newer talent with different expectations of recognition, autonomy and growth. Managing that range, across legacy and newer businesses, factory floors and corporate functions, gives the people challenge here a particular complexity. K.A. Narayan has been navigating that complexity as President-HR, working alongside Raymond’s chairman for nineteen years. In conversation with HRKatha, he explains why care that extends beyond employees to their…

Longevity used to be an uncomplicated corporate asset. Stay long enough and you accumulated institutional memory, customer relationships and an understanding of the business that newcomers could not easily replicate. Then the business changed. Canon India has employees who have spent more than two decades with the company. Shikha Rai, senior vice president for IT and HR, is one of them. The challenge she describes is not how to retain these employees. It is how to ensure that what they know remains valuable when AI, automation and changing customer expectations are altering how work gets done. “AI is what we…

For years, the employer-branding playbook was fairly predictable: competitive salaries, good benefits, a strong workplace culture and, eventually, the promise of flexibility. But the employee bargain is changing. For a workforce increasingly conscious of where its career is headed, the question is no longer just “What will I get if I join?” but also “What will I become if I stay?” That is where learning is beginning to occupy a very different space in the employer-brand conversation. It is no longer simply an HR programme tucked away in a learning management system or a catalogue of courses employees can choose…

There is always that phase in a new job when you know everyone’s name but still do not know whom to ask for the Wi-Fi password. You have attended the induction, read the handbook, found the coffee machine and survived the first team meeting. And yet, somehow, you still feel like a guest. Settling into a new workplace is rarely about knowing the formal rules. It is about learning the things no onboarding presentation can explain: who you can casually message, where people actually go for lunch, what “urgent” really means in this particular office, and whether it is acceptable…

Temporary hiring in India is expected to grow by 15-20 per cent during the 2026 festive season as companies across retail, e-commerce, quick commerce, logistics, FMCG and consumer durables increase recruitment to meet rising demand, according to TeamLease Services’ Festive Season Workforce Report 2026. However, hiring is shifting from large-scale volume recruitment towards specialised frontline roles as companies prepare for a longer festive calendar, faster fulfilment expectations and increasingly omnichannel customer journeys. The report analyses anonymised employment records of 60,000 frontline associates deployed during the festive season across consumer durables, organised retail, e-commerce, quick commerce, logistics and FMCG. Companies are…

Licious is a food-tech company built around fresh meat and seafood, with a workforce that spans corporate professionals, meat technicians, processing centre staff and delivery partners. These groups have little in common when it comes to their workday, relationship with technology, career expectations or the pressures they face. Yet the people question is remarkably similar across all of them: what makes someone feel they belong here? Sahil Mathur has been working on that question as CHRO. In conversation with HRKatha, he explains why belonging has different vectors for different employees, why low variable pay can sometimes be a more effective…

Corporate AI training has created an odd new metric: the number of people who have been trained. It is an attractive number because it is large, easy to measure and reassuringly precise. It is also of limited use. An employee can complete an AI course, earn a certificate and return to working exactly as before. Genpact is trying to make that distinction central to its AI-skilling strategy. The business process and technology company, which employs people globally, wants its entire workforce operating as AI Practitioners by 2027. But its definition of a practitioner deliberately has little to do with course…

Every workplace has that one colleague everyone wants on their team. Not necessarily the loudest voice in meetings or the one with the most impressive résumé. Not always the fastest to climb the hierarchy or the first to volunteer for a high-profile assignment. Yet somehow, things run more smoothly when they are involved. Managers trust them without needing to explain why. Colleagues know, almost instinctively, that the work will get done and that they can rely on them. What separates these people is rarely dramatic. It is almost never a single breakthrough moment. More often, it is a collection of…