Shriram Darbha, Head, Human Resources of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) , who has carved a niche for himself in a spectrum of corporate establishments, believes that ‘Bull is considered as the symbol of Dharma and riding a bull is leading the Dharmic way of life’ and even materialistic success is an outcome of one’s Dharmic and Karmic strength, which comes through a process of self-actualisation as described in our ancient philosophy and Yoga. He spoke extensively to Corporate Citizen on his success and provided an insight into the corporate world
Shriram Darbha is Head, Human Resources of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). He has over 24 years of strategic as well as hands-on Operational HR & OD leadership experience spread across reputed services, IT (BFSI), ITES, telecom, pharma, manufacturing, consulting and financial services organisations.
His expertise covers a wide range of HRM areas such as understanding business realities and formulating HR imperatives; crafting HR policies/systems/processes; talent acquisition, engagement, development, assessment and appreciation; individual training and organizational learning and OD initiatives; effective employee engagement, organisation culture, change management and life coaching.
Darbha’s significant professional accomplishments include operational strategy for SMEs and growing organisations; developing HR road maps, organisational structures, policies, manuals/ guidelines/ training calendars/PMS/ C&B and rewards & recognition structures/process improvements. He has also successfully set systems/processes / competencies, service guarantees/SLAs and trained front line sales force and customer service staff to create customer delight with the required speed and quality.
He has introduced and implemented comprehensive performance management systems; defined JDs/KRAs and performance metrics; ensured fair C&B and reward systems based on performance and potential competencies in line with internal and external market parity; created talent pools for accelerated career and growth plans.
He ensured absolute industrial harmony by pro actively managing the IR/ER function; employee welfare, grievance resolution, trade union concerns, signed multiple wage settlements, statutory and audit compliance issues, public relations with government/industry/academic/functional colleagues and general administration. He also handled cross culturally diverse work force issues as well.
Darbha has participated in various training programmes such as Train the Trainer, Strategic HR & OD, Self-renewal for HR Managers, Leadership Development (GRID), Team Building, TQM, Balanced Score Card, Competency Mapping, Psychometric tools like MBTI, Thomas profile, Gallup, Firo-B, OPQ, 7 Habits, Emotional Intelligence, Communication, PMS, Service Quality, Service Excellence etc., in reputed institutes.
His ongoing innovative research work includes the unique Ten Commandments of Workplace Spirituality and Seven invaluable tunes for Self-Actualisation to help employees balance their personal and professional lives better.
He is the recipient of the “50 Most Talented Global HR Leaders in Asia” Award from the World HRD Congress; the “Lokmat- HR Leadership Award” and ‘HR Leadership Award’ at the 5th Asia Best Employer Brand Awards event at Singapore, and is a recipient of the Best HR and Talent Practice Award at the IWP awards.
I am the eldest from a family of seven siblings - I have three brothers and three sisters. My father was working with LIC and my mother was a great housewife. Values and education are the best things we got from our father. I started my primary education in a Vedic gurukul and later I did all my secondary schooling in Telugu medium, always with Sanskrit as my second language. In fact, even for our B A (English Litt.) degree course, our teachers would teach us in Telugu. I had to study on my own then to work on my English to write the exams. Besides, participating in various extracurricular activities also proved helpful, providing the necessary exposure. I was president of the LEO Club way back in 1986 and conducted several literary and fine arts events. I tried my hand even at mimicry, starting with imitating our lecturers, and went on to win state and national level gold medals for mimicry.
Though I had an aptitude for science, I was not much inclined towards maths, so I opted for B A with English Literature as major and History & Political Science as ancillaries. I stood first in my college at graduation and was a ranker in the University at my MA (English). There were two options before me - to do a PhD in English or start earning by getting a good job. Although I got admission for MPhil at CIEFL (Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages), Hyderabad, I got selected for LIC through a competitive exam. It was to be the first batch of select Development Officers. Since working for LIC was in the family, my father suggested that, rather than becoming a low-paid English lecturer, I should go for this well-paid, respectable job. Even though you would like to study further, at times, because of the responsibilities, you have to let your dreams go. So I did that job, reluctantly, for two years, trying to sell insurance and simultaneously appearing for competitive exams for higher studies. That’s when HRD was just about coming up, say around 1989-90. So I decided to sit for the competitive exam for TISS (Tata Institute for Social Sciences), the premier institute for HR. As I got selected for TISS in 1989, I sent in my resignation to the LIC. Thus my dream came true -- to study and excel.
Business partners need to be HR people. The job of an HR is not that of an HOD. His/her job is to act as an internal consultant or facilitator. So you help people to manage their business. The new paradigm is that an HR head has to be a strategic person or as a facilitator who works closely with the management team. In fact, 50 percent of the role of a CEO is people management, if not more
TISS, being the premier institution for HR, naturally gave me the required orientation. Here I got exposure socially too. The institute also has courses in social work (MSW) and PMIR (Personnel Management and Industrial Relations). With its four streams each with typically 30 students in a class, there would be a total of 150 students of whom 120 would be girls. Having attended boys-only schools and colleges, I was unaccustomed to this co-ed environment, even with routine things like a handshake with a girl! So that’s how the indoctrination and socializing took place, forcing me to learn and adapt the new ways. And despite starting off as a typical oil-haired, dark Madrasi (south Indian as they call) looking youngster, I went on to win the student elections and I became the cultural secretary at TISS. I used to sing, play a couple of musical instruments, and of course there was mimicry, for which I won gold medals at the national level, having delivered thousands of stage performances. It was not Johnny Lever or Raju Srivastava-kind of comedy that I was into; my specialization was producing mechanical sounds of airplanes, bombs, storms, musical instruments, characters and scenes from Hollywood movies, etc.
One of my humble contributions, in my capacity as the then Cultural Secretary, was the creation of the annual cultural festival of TISS with the name, coined by me, “QUIN’TISS’ENCE” which is being celebrated for the last 25 years.
It was through campus placement at TISS that I was offered a job with the Taj Group of Hotels. It came as a shock to many people, as I was a vegetarian, teetotaller, non-smoker, orthodox and did not resemble the typical Delhi-Punjabi man who has an impressive personality and a certain flair for the hospitality industry. In those days, the Group Head HR was a visionary called Prof. VS Mahesh, an alumnus of IIT Madras, a nuclear physicist. But through Tata Administrative Services, he worked with the Tatas and was considered a doyen of HR. Not hopeful of getting selected in the interview, I decided not to go for it at all. I was playing around in the campus when some of my friends asked me why I was loitering there instead of attending the interview since I wanted to work with Prof. Mahesh. I said I didn’t think I stood any chance at the interview. But they insisted that I must attend it. So by 5 pm, I boarded the bus for Colaba; by 8 pm I got the offer — being the only guy who was offered that position. I then came back to TISS and had a big bash that night.
Nine years, with the Taj at different hotels, starting from Bombay Taj and ending up in Bangalore.
Typically I would work on policies/ processes/culture and after actively completing that, my role became more like a consultant. Then the company started wondering why it should continue to give such heavy salaries. That’s when I got this idea that maybe I should start something on my own and provide head HR services to companies on a retainer basis
I pondered about that. Probably, he had seen some kind of humility or simplicity about me, which was required for an HR function, for a Tata company and the hospitality industry. Probably that could be the main reason, because I didn’t even have much fluency in English then. But that was what I had mastered in that period at TISS. My communication otherwise was good; he saw that. Besides, there were no ‘temptations of Taj’, I being a vegetarian and a teetotaller.
Correct, probably that might have impressed him. It took considerable time to get acclimatised to Taj in Mumbai and Delhi. After that, within three to four months I was posted as Manager of a Taj Hotel in Bangalore, from where I worked in several leadership positions.
A touch of human sensitivity and sensibility because the product is service. So HR becomes extremely important in the hospitality industry and the Tatas are known for their value system, which makes working for the Tata’s hospitality industry, a double bonanza.
Not a topper, but an above-average student with good communication skills, good attitude and humility. That, to me, is the mother of all virtues; it is something that cannot be taught. In the Western system, humility is not taught; it is considered a weakness. People are driven by personality development, leadership development, and aggression, but in the hospitality industry particularly, you need to be humble.
In the industry where I was working in, computers were not that widely used. There was much manual work. And you used to see your colleagues joining IT companies, carrying laptops and the pay was very high. Also the salaries in the industry I was working in were meagre in comparison, e.g. a chef was better paid than me. And there came a great offer from an IT company with a 150 percent salary increase! The name of the company was Primark India Pvt. Ltd, which was later taken over by Thomson Reuters. I was Country Manager HR of its BPO in Bangalore. They wanted somebody with experience from the service industry and this provided me an opportunity to work with an MNC and travel to London for the first time.
It was a culture shock, because it was a BPO/ KPO which mostly had youngsters who were brash, without any value system and long-term career orientation. And the management there was also not very people-oriented, it was more task-oriented, with more emphasis on achieving targets on a daily basis. In such an environment, I couldn’t stay long. I was hardly there for a year.
Also, nobody ever goes out because it’s a bad organization; most times people leave due to bad bosses, bad supervisors, which was the reason for my leaving the company. And there was no value compatibility. My personal values with those of the organization did not match.
Many people think of work-life balance only in the framework of what the company does for the individual. However, work-life balance is a two-pronged approach. The other point of work-life balance, which many individuals overlook, relates to what individuals do for themselves
In 2000, I joined as the Head of HR in Airtel in Hyderabad, a posting I was looking forward to, as my father had retired and lived there. I wanted to take care of my parents. Airtel then was a family-driven business and they were still trying to put things together. At that time it was JT Mobiles Company. After a year, Airtel took over. I handled the merger integration and was also in charge of recruitment.
They are trained, skilled people with a lot of confidence; actually they think they are a gift of God to mankind. So in a sense, they are self-centred. people, but very ambitious and hardworking. As I said, their value system is also not in place. They give more importance to the achievement of a task. For them, the end is more important than the means.
They could learn on their own, over a period of time, what we call maturity or emotional intelligence. I studied spiritual intelligence which could also be helpful to them. They should have an open mind to learn from experienced and thinking people. My mantras for the millennials are: Belief in Self, Faith in God, Humility to Learn, Commitment to Contribute and Passion to Excel.
After Airtel I joined Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd, as I wished to stay in Hyderabad. Then the company went through a couple of changes. Citi-corp divested its stake and became OrbiTech and later, Polaris. Polaris was Citigroup’s vendor and the latter despite being a giant, sold its business to its own vendor. However, the culture was totally different. There was also a high rate of attrition. I was not happy there and Hutch came my way. They needed somebody from telecom to look after the HR function in Andhra Pradesh. I was there for one year, during which time, Hutch became Vodafone. It seemed like I became a victim of a merger, wherever I went, though with significant contribution.
It was around 2008-2009, when I Joined Tally as their Head-HR & OD. Tally is an accounting software company. In the case of Tally too, it was taken over by Reliance. Tally needed its first professional HR and I was chosen. I went there and then created a policy manual. Typically I would work on policies/processes/culture and after actively completing that, my role became more like a consultant. Then the company started wondering why it should continue giving such heavy salaries. Particularly for SMEs, it is difficult to sustain such high salaries. That’s when I got this idea that maybe I should start something on my own and provide Head HR services to companies on a retainer basis. So we floated a company called Arthved Consulting. I have helped a few growing and SME organisations both in India and the US in building, operating and handing over a professional HR function.
Yes, it’s dormant now, as I can’t operate it. We had a good business in algo trading and HR & OD services. We did a business of one crore rupees in the first year itself. We were running our own company, with our home as the office. Of course, it was thanks to my illustrious brother Late Dr Gangadhar Darbha who was a domain expert in algorithmic trading and the business sponsor. I also conducted training programmes. People say I am a good trainer, as God has given me the gift of the gab and a sense of humour.
BSE was looking for a professional HR guy to strengthen the HR function, I had the opportunity through a referral and I decided to shift from Hyderabad as my father passed away and so I could move to Mumbai, where my brother was already working. We brought our mother along with us here. I moved to Mumbai three years back.
Since the last three years, thanks to our supportive MD & CEO Ashish Chauhan, it’s been a good experience setting up key policies/processes, introducing a performance management system, culture building, employee engagement events and holding personal relationship training workshops.
We have emerged as the fastest Stock Exchange in the world, setting standards in best-in-class global practice in technology, products innovation and customer service. This feeling is also shared amongst employees.
Streamlining the HR Function, having a uniform system of organisation structure in various aspects, compensation and benefits, training and development and employee engagement are some of the top priorities. We have also adopted a mechanism of an on-line performance appraisal system in order to help employees to understand their competencies, KRAs and helps in systematically monitoring and improving their performance. It’s a multi-generation workforce management that is a key feature at BSE.
I have initiated a unique sharing platform called the `The Thought Exchange’ where interested employees share a platform, once a month, to voluntarily exchange ideas and solutions to issues related to work. The main objective is to adopt a culture for open communication and sustained improvement in quality of work. It has significantly helped in reducing gossip and fostered team building and inter-departmental co-ordination.
As I have been training people, what used to be a labour function, a personnel function, has become an HR and people management function, with all the fancy titles in place. However, the core concept of the function hasn’t changed much. Now, the corporate is talking about the need for HR to be a business partner or a strategic business partner. Nobody talks about finance or marketing in those terms, as they may already be recognised as strategic partners. Many HR people generally are not business-savvy or quantitative-oriented; they are very qualitative/people-oriented. That being so, I would say business partners need to be HR people.
The job of an HR is not that of an HOD. His/ her job is to act as an internal consultant or facilitator. So you help people to manage their business. Rather than act like God, or what Jesus Christ said — `come to me and leave all your troubles to me, I will take care of them’. That’s an old paradigm of an HR person. The new paradigm is that an HR head has to be a strategic person or as a facilitator who works closely with the management team. In fact, 50 per cent of the role of a CEO is people management, if not more. You have to be an adviser, confidante, the watchdog and the custodian of values/culture. Very often though, HR function becomes bureaucratic because many HR heads try to get politically closer to the power centre or authority by becoming administratively strong and legally safe. The paradigm needs to be changed.
Youngsters are skilled people with a lot of confidence. They give more importance to achievement of a task; the end is more important than the means
Self-actualisation is the key to the highest level of performance in any pursuit. The meaning and purpose of life is to realise your own actual self, which is the spirit, the consciousness, the chaitanya as we call it. There is something called universal consciousness in our system in India - you call it God or Brahman or spirit or whatever. So, that is the prime mover of our existence. Like electricity, which is the energy behind all appliances, our body is an appliance and the energy is the chaitanya, the consciousness, which is part of universal consciousness. I do an advanced practice of daily meditation/ contemplation on the Supreme Consciousness and seek energy for the pursuit of eternal happiness rather than temporal success.
A holistic work-life balance model is the need of the hour. Because if you have observed, in the last 30-40 years, people who were high performers and high achievers have often burnt out early in life due to immense stress.
My younger brother, Dr Gangadhar Darbha, is a recent example. He was a great achiever, a well known global professional and a scholar, he passed away recently at the age of 45 years. He was a Post Doc fellow from Wharton, an Executive Director with Nomura Securities, a Japanese investment bank. He was Global Head of algo trading at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London for long.
He was recently appointed consultant and economic adviser to the Governor, Reserve Bank of India where he wanted to serve public policy, leaving a highly lucrative job. In fact, he suffered a massive cardiac arrest in office, just a week after he joined RBI and suddenly passed away in his office in September 2015. There could be several reasons for his death, but I could see that he worked too hard and was unable to maintain a holistic work-life balance.
Everyone has four aspects of life: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. We all play different roles. Life may not have any meaning by itself; it is an opportunity for us to add meaning to it.
So, you should excel in your action and achieve peak performance - that’s self-actualization - but while carefully balancing all aspects of life.
Traditionally, small and large Indian organisations have either consciously or unconsciously followed the holistic Dharmic and Karmic approaches in running their businesses and managing people for a long time. Indians have cracked the contented way of living and letting others live, for many centuries. The Indian work ethic has been one based on loyalty and commitment to one’s own duty -- one’s own dharma (swadharma) -- so employees and employers are primarily contented, and not greedy. Entrepreneurs have been predominantly philanthropic in their approach to business, like the Tatas and Birlas. The purpose of business is not only for profit but also pursued with the highest levels of Corporate Social Responsibility. These organisations could win lifetime loyalties and retain employees for longer time by taking care of their overall welfare. Employees had a stronger sense of belongingness, ownership, duty-mindedness, balanced approach to life (samatwa) and satisfaction. On the other hand, current global corporations seem to be struggling to attract, engage and retain talent in spite of their so-called mastery over scientific management principles and practices.
My personal and professional experience has been that all western theories of motivation/ behaviour modification seem to have focused on diagnostics based on symptomatic, pathological and reactive behaviour in general, giving an elaborate account of certain traits. Whereas the holistic principle-centered Indian scriptural wisdom seems to be more prescriptive and proactive for the positive attainment of success and satisfaction in all spheres of life of the self and others by the balanced pursuit of four important aspects of life, viz., Dharma (righteousness), Artha (wealth), Kaama (fulfilment of desires) and Moksha (liberation and bliss).
This creates a context and need to study the relevance and usefulness of such traditional Indian-wisdom approaches (concepts propounded in the Karma Yoga of the Bhagawad Gita) for better management of the self and the people, to unleash their latent talent for an effective work-life balance and overall well-being. This has been my ongoing Ph.D. thesis about to be completed this year.
I have initiated a unique sharing platform called the `The Thought Exchange’ where interested employees share a platform, once a month, to voluntarily exchange ideas and solutions to issues related to work. The main objective is to adopt a culture of open communication and sustained improvement in the quality of work. It has significantly helped in reducing gossip and fostered team building
Many people think of work-life balance only in the framework of what the company does for the individual. However, work-life balance is a two-pronged approach. The other point of work-life balance, which many individuals overlook, relates to what individuals do for themselves. According to Jim Bird, CEO of Worklifebalance. com, “Work-life balance is a meaningful achievement and enjoyment in everyday life.”
Yes, my first published book was “Vibudharaama Shatakam”, an anthology of 108 poems written in Telugu (along with English translation) on moral values for the benefit of young students. I have distributed 1000+ books to school children free as a charitable/social cause. I have also written over 50 evergreen songs of Kishore Kumar in Telugu (translation of the meaning, to tune). I have personally rendered them on a Karaoke system and uploaded some of them on YouTube.
The other was the national HRD quizzes that I conceived and conducted along with Siddhartha Basu of KBC fame, under NIPM 18 years ago.
Generally I am happy with myself and what I do.
BY VINITA DESHMUKH
