I would call HR the Sutradhari—the role Lord Krishna played in Mahabharata, says Varadarajan Srinivasan, former CHRO and Head of Corporate Affairs, TATA SIA Airlines. A senior HR leader with over three decades of exposure to multiple HR Management dimensions, says the HR’s role in today’s business scenario is of an integrator, someone who holds it ethically and helps organisations move on with the flow. A global HR leader, he believes that HR professionals at the start of their career need to be like a clay, willing to be moulded into any shape so as to adapt to any environment. In an exclusive interview with Corporate Citizen, Varadarajan talks about his 30 years career journey and his role as the critical channel between an organisation’s HR operations challenges and its vision of growth, excellence and inclusive progress
When I started, it was Personnel and Administration, which in my opinion was a pure administrative role. The responsibilities included managing the time office, leave management, letters issuance for joining, confirmation, negotiations, managing disciplinary enquiries and proceedings and such allied routine matters. But over a period of time organisations started realising that there is more to people and there is a need to develop them, retain them, motivate them to perform to their potential—that is when human resource development formally came into focus. While you still have to do the routine matters, which are repetitive and administrative in nature (Hygiene) it is necessary to look beyond, towards capability development of their employees to ensure that organisations meet what they have aimed to achieve. Thus moving from a routine administrative function to a strategic function, helping the organisation achieve its goals, is the change I have seen in HR over these years.
I believe that every HR person needs to have a manufacturing stint. Unless you operate in a manufacturing setup and work with blue collar workforce, your basic understanding on how to manage people will not be there. I was able to manage a large BPO with over 15000 people in employee relations, at a later stage, only because of my base in manufacturing IR and HR. It is necessary for people in HR to have IR stint, preferably in the beginning of the career rather than later. It helps you in understanding people, managing issues, bringing out what is the best and optimum solution to issues, both from the employee and the organisation point of view.
For me the transition from one type of company to other was not a problem at all. I was fortunate to start my career with setting up a HR department in a running company and a stint in manufacturing, learning the nuances of employee relations. Later on, I went to specialise in compensation across the region. Combined with this was my consulting and startup experience, which made me resilient and well-rounded to take on any role in any industry. What it meant to me was that you need to listen more and you need to continuously learn in order to adapt and be successful. You cannot act high and arrogant because you are in a position but, you need to go down to the people and learn from them. Understanding business is of paramount importance and that’s what I have learnt in consulting as well.
Technology is enabling HR. HR can never die, it will change, but if you don’t adapt you will die. Technology is helping us, for example, social media—it keeps us on your toes by wondering on, who is going to be reporting on what is happening in the organisation to the public. However, rather than being reactive, we can be proactive and utilise this to our advantage by being able to communicate to our employees in the form that they are used to and familiar with, for sharing our thoughts, practices, processes, philosophy, values. All this put together helps your people understand the organisation better and increases bonding, which is so necessary for engaging employees. These channels also help in obtaining instant feedback from employees and quickly act on them to help the organisation gain credibility in their approach to employees. Since technology is such an important enabler, it is mandatory that every HR person keeps up with it and ensure that we are up to date in our understanding so that we can utilise it optimally for organisational success.
I would like to call HR the Sutradhari— the role Lord Krishna played in Mahabharata, who never looked like directly involving Himself in anything but ensured success in whatever the team wanted to achieve without taking any credit for Himself
I would call it more than a partner; it is the integrator. HR has moved beyond the business partner role. I would say that HR needs to be an integrator—needs to understand business, find out what capabilities need to be built in order to succeed in the business and integrate them all together. HR should play different roles to different people. I would like to call HR the Sutradhari— the role Lord Krishna played in Mahabharata, who never looked like directly involving Himself in anything but ensured success in whatever the team wanted to achieve without taking any credit for Himself. Similarly, HR needs to be the Sutradhari by ensuring that the aim is to ensure that the organisation succeeds through its people practices and processes and putting organisational interests over our own. I believe HR needs to be thinking as a line function, not as a staff function—leading from the front rather than act as staff function and wait for the CEO or the business head to say what to do.
I would say India is way ahead of global practices, in terms of the way we understand HR. The outspokenness of the western environment is different from what is here. There it’s black or white—in India you live in grey through your life. So, how do you manage to create a professional atmosphere with the greyness, which is part of the environment? It is necessary to inculcate the right values, were HR plays the role of creating the values, finding out avenues and tools to ensure that these values are institutionalised and practiced. Hence being a conscience keeper of the organisation and ensuring governance becomes a key role for HR.
No B-School, even Harvard, can prepare a student for a particular sector. What they have to instil in student is primarily on the in-depth subject knowledge that they are specialising on, be it HR, Marketing, Finance or any other specialisation. In my opinion, the B-Schools have to ensure that learning is not theoretical alone but more application oriented, wherein they get their hands dirty with project work and do a lot of secondary and primary research in order to complete the project assigned.
I don’t think B-Schools prepared me for any sector. They prepared me for learning and making me be inquisitive on the right things when I get into any sector. Second thing the B-School teaches me is how to be focused and dedicated in whatever I do. Students need to learn to start at any level, learn and then grow. They need to learn how to adapt to environments and for that an open mind to learning plays a very big role.
What I find very disturbing in the present batch of MBAs is that they think they have arrived even before they have joined the organisation and they think that they know everything. You need to be like a sponge in the initial years—do anything which is given to you, work on anything which is thrown at you, volunteer for anything and everything, and absorb everything that comes your way like a sponge. The learning from this is tremendous and is what will help you in becoming a successful professional. Second thing is you have to ensure that you widen your horizon. HR is not about HR alone, you need to understand finance, marketing, and everything about business. The third thing is Relationships and Networking—you will realise that whatever said and done, relationships are what is going to take you places and your success will depend upon how you are able to build trust and sustain your relationships and network. Last but not the least is the amount of sharing of your experiences and knowledge which will help you to grow as an individual and dispel the insecurities in you.
After two-and-half years with Vistara, I wanted to take a break and evaluate what I wanted to do next which was more meaningful to me given where I was in my journey. I took the break to refresh and rejuvenate myself. This was a bold decision because I had not taken any break during the 34 years of my work life, not even when I was changing jobs.
During this break, I managed to catch up with my father who is 102 years old now and spend some time with him. I also went to US to spend some time with my sons, one of whom was graduating. I also upgraded myself by getting into certification programmes in Hogan Assessment and in Life and Leadership Coaching. I also attained an Independent Direction Certification through Hunt Partners and Board Evaluation, UK. I have already started on my coaching journey, coach a few CEOs and CxOs and continue to meet with students who are the managers of tomorrow to share my experiences and prepare them to face the realities in the work place.
I come from a middle class family. My father was Assistant Station Superintendent in Southern Railways, in Chennai and my mother a renowned educationist and a National Award winner for teaching, working as a headmistress in a large school. Was born and brought up in an environment where I was always told that I have to study well, put in honest hard efforts, and results will automatically come to you. Those are the values instilled in me right from my childhood and have held me in good stead through my career.
“I don’t think B-Schools prepared me for any sector. They prepared me for learning and making me be inquisitive on the right things when I get into any sector. Second thing the B-School teaches me is how to be focused and dedicated in whatever I do”
After completing my BCom, from Vivekananda College in Chennai, I went for my MBA. For my MBA, I had appeared for the entrance exams and got shortlisted for interviews at IIM-Ahmedabad and XLRI Jamshedpur. I did well in both the interviews but was waitlisted for IIM-A, and admitted into the HR stream in XLRI. I joined XLRI. I pursued education to upskill myself till almost 1991 even after I started working. All of that was through long distance learning programmes and I pursued and completed courses in Law and Training and Development, as it would strengthen my core HR area and MCom due to sheer love for accounting.
After completing my post-graduation from XLRI in 1983, I joined McDowell’s, a flagship company in the UB group in Chennai as Personnel Officer, within three weeks of my last day in the campus. The company, which was in the manufacture and sale of Indian made foreign liquor, did not have a Personnel function before I joined, so in a way it was a startup experience right from my first role. Little did I realise that this type of experience would continue to be a major part of my professional journey. It was a great learning experience especially on what was required in a corporate world. My first boss Gen. Surjit Singh was a great inspiration and I learnt discipline, compassion and customer focus working with him. I also dirtied my hands in learning the ropes in compensation administration and this experience helps me till today in getting into the nuances of compensation design. My salary was a princely RS. 1500 a month and I was one of the highest paid in my batch. I understand that the performance appraisal system, which I developed in 1985 at McDowell and UB group is still in existence with some modifications and that makes me proud.
After almost five years I moved to my second role, this time in the manufacturing sector at a factory in Chennai-Sundaram Clayton in the TVS Group. This company was in the auto ancillaries sector in the manufacture of Air Actuated Brake systems for LCVs. This was my first brush with HR at a factory level on a full time basis and was a great learning experience. It was here I learnt the importance of HR and its linkage to the successful growth of an organisation. It was also here that we fine-tuned our HR and Quality processes to ensure that we were able to face competition that had arisen for the first time in our business. One of the things I learnt from Venu Srinivasan, our MD, was the importance of continuously upgrading your knowledge through consistent learning. He inculcated the learning habit in me. Be it the Q7 tools, Quality Circles, M7 tools Kaizen, Canon Production system, Total Preventive Maintenance, and almost everything to do with TQM, I learnt in Sundaram Clayton. It was in Sundaram Clayton that I successfully designed and delivered my first Supervisory Development programme along with my guide, mentor and guru, Father E.H. McGrath who was a great source of inspiration and guidance to me. It was in 1985 that the National HRD Network (NHRDN) was formed and I have been a life member since inception thanks to my guide and friend Dr PVR Murthy who was a part of the founding team of NHRDN.
After almost eight years of working, I wanted to become a HR Consultant and I moved out of Sundaram Clayton and joined Price Waterhouse (PW) in 1990, and was responsible for HR consulting for the Southern region. I rejuvenated the recruitment practice in Chennai and undertook a lot of HR projects many in association with the World Bank in quasi government agencies. I was also a certified trainer by the PW World Firm to train and certify management consultants in the Firm.
As you may be aware, the salary levels in the 90s in India were very low and with a view to earn more, I decided to move to the Middle East where the salary at that point of time was lucrative and tax-free as well. I got an opportunity in Muscat in 1992, with KPMG Peat Marwick, a consulting firm, as a HR consultant in the Centre of Excellence for HR and I took it up for the saving potential as well as for international exposure. It was a very enriching experience, because you are dealing with international clients and multiple nationalities, which gave me a multicultural exposure as well as additional tax free income.
I enjoyed the stint at KPMG but over a period of time I decided to get back to India, because HR at that point in the Middle East, was more of a personal admin role. This was also the time when India was opening up to liberalisation under the leadership of Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh, and P Chidambaram. I came back to India and joined American Express, in Delhi, in 1994, as Head of Employee Relations for India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. One of the first things I was able to accomplish in my role here within five months of my joining that gained tremendous visibility and credibility for me in the system was the signing of a five year settlement with the banking union that was pending for over nine months. It was a tough settlement and we managed to make it a win-win for the management and the union
Sometime, in 1995 there was a reorganisation of HR within Amex across the globe where it was decided to create three centres of excellences in HR, for Compensation, Training and Development and for Relationship Management, in order to synergise focus and enhance effectiveness of the deliverables. I successfully moved into the role of Compensation Specialist, for the ASEAN and South Asia region and had the distinction of being the first person to get a HR regional role from India in American Express, covering India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, managing the design and delivery of compensation. The biggest challenge I had was due to the fact that each country had a compensation person, who lost his/her job because of the reorganisation. I had to first gain the confidence of each of the Country Heads, to assure them that I understand the country better than the person who was working previously and will add value to their operations. It was a tremendous experience and challenge for me, where I would spend 25 days in a month, outside India. Only five days I would be in India—that was the time I had my second son and when I came back home after one of my long trips, he looked at me and walked the other way. I was very perturbed and said to myself that, before he asks his mom, “who this uncle was who comes every week”, I need to make amends. I decided to quit Amex, to bring balance in my work and family life.
I decided to come back to Chennai from Delhi, on a break of one month, when I met a director from Tata Group. He said that Tata was getting into a joint venture with Bell Canada, for setting up a cellular company in Hyderabad and whether I will be interested to join the startup team. I joined Tata Group, in June 1996, to start Tata Cellular (which later became Idea Cellular), as a head of HR.
Tata Cellular was the first company to launch cellular services outside of the metros. That time only Chennai, Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai had cellular service in the country—Hyderabad was the fifth city, so we called it the fifth metro and we setup cellular services there. We did extremely well and in one-and-a-half year we built the company from scratch, put structures in place, put policies in place, had a fantastic performance appraisal system, had employment engagement programmes, and had high employee satisfaction scores.
Then Tatas told me to take another role—they were starting the basic landline services, Tata Teleservices in Hyderabad in collaboration with Bell Canada and asked if I can manage HR of that company also and I accepted. So, I became the first employee of Tata Teleservices in 1997- 98. There were about 35 Canadians in the initial stages and I went to Canada and spent almost a month in Canada, to understand the business. At that point, I understood the business as good as or even better than the business person. That is another learning which I carry even today—to be successful as a HR person you need to understand the nuts and bolts of the business you are in so that you can add value to the business and earn your place in the table.
In 1999, I was given an opportunity to consider getting into managing telecom operations or remain in HR. I chose to remain in HR and got selected to be a part of Group HR which was being formed for the first time in the Tata Group. At this point of time I was saddling three roles as Head of HR of Tata Cellular, Tata Teleservices and the Group HR responsibility. As member of the Group Executive Office for Human Resources I was directly responsible for overseeing and facilitating the Group HR initiatives in the IT and Telecom businesses covering over 25,000 employees and 11 Tata Group companies (TCS, Tata InfoTech (formerly Tata Unisys), Tata Technologies, Tata Elxsi, Tata Interactive, Tata Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Tata Telecom, ISP India, Tata International and Tata Projects).
Late in the year 1999, I met Raman Roy with whom I had worked in American Express, when he was the Director of Operations and Finance and with whom I had worked very closely. Raman asked me if I would be interested in joining him in a startup, a BPO. I had faith in Raman, and decided to take his offer to be part of a startup compared to the large Group level role I had. There were few things which made me decide on this—here was an opportunity to create an organisation from scratch with close to idealistic policies and processes possible. This company was going to create jobs for multiple graduates in this country, because during that time the IT companies and public sector banks and companies had stopped hiring and the graduates in the country had no place to go. They were all wondering what to do next. The private banking had just started, but not so much of intake. We were among the first to start a third party outsourcing in India. I had worked for 17 years by then and I said to myself on what could be the worst thing that would happen—if I fail, I will go back and join at same level in some other company.
I moved to Delhi in 2000 and joined the startup company Spectramind. I would say that the five years journey with Spectramind, was the best thing which I accomplished as a HR professional. Because, we had to actually sell the concept to the people, as no one understood what outsourcing was, be it the customer or people who are to join us. So, it was selling them a dream and selling them what it is to be in outsourcing. We created world-class facilities so that people don’t complain. People were apprehensive and BPO was not a very well known industry at that point of time. I have had parents of prospective employees interview me at length before allowing their wards to join us. It took us a lot of effort and energy, and we accomplished a lot of pioneering initiatives in Spectramind. For example, we created earn-while-you-learn scheme, we tied-up with institutes and engineering colleges to have parttime education while they were working and we funded them so that they could pay us back on later date. We also created high standards in employee engagement and Spectramind was in the top ten best employers in the country, of many engagement study. Nowhere in the world, has a BPO company been in the top ten for any engagement study year on year, as they were meant to be sweat shops but we made it a great place to work.
It was in 2002 that Wipro was very keen on setting up a BPO of their own to extend their service offerings. After a lot of deliberation and due diligence, they decided to acquire Spectramind since they saw a lot of synergy in terms of the organisation values and the future of the organisation. We remained with Spectramind for the initial four years and which later became Wipro Spectramind. In 2005, the same startup team of Spectramind decided to move and set up a new organisation Quatrro Global Services, which was predominantly in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) area. We grew through acquisitions in India, US and UK and it was a great honour not only to create jobs in India but also overseas. I learnt that M & As would be successful only with a clear integration of best practices of both the organisations rather than the acquiring company playing the big brother in the acquisition.
“The five years journey with Spectramind, was the best thing I accomplished as a HR professional. Because, we had to actually sell the concept to the people, as no one understood what outsourcing was, be it the customer or people who are to join us”
After six years in Quatrro, I decided to move for bigger challenges. The CEO of Tata Teleservices called me, (he and I had worked together in 1997-2000 in setting up Tata Teleservices) Tata Teleservices was not performing well at that time and they were looking to turnaround the organisation. Since the CEO wanted someone who he could trust and would be able to help him in the transformation, he wanted me to join hands with him to help in the turnaround. So, it was a sort of homecoming for me when I joined Tata Teleservices in 2011. We were able to, within nine months of my joining, plan and implement the reorganisation of the company and over a 18 months period we actually reduced the strength of the organisation by almost 3000 people by managing the redundancy in the system. I would call this one of the best transformation exercise that I have been part of across all my roles. What I learnt here is, if you are able to communicate, what you and your organisation was going through, the support will come from the employees themselves, rather than you trying to do anything. We kept on communicating about what we are doing, where we are, the losses we are making, how we have to turnaround, and how only the ideal fit will stay. We gave a fair and equal opportunity to every employee who was affected by this reorganisation by taking them through at least two sets of interviews to assess they are fit and also utilised their performance history over the last couple of years to ensure that the best fit was selected for the revised role in the organisation. As a result of these as well as changes in business processes, we were able to turnaround and become EBITDA positive in about two years since we kicked off the reorganisation.
In 2012-13, the government relaxed the FDI policy for airlines and a joint venture (JV) was formed between Tatas and Singapore Airlines for operating a domestic airline in India. Tata Group were looking for a person from within the Group to lead HR in the startup joint-venture. They zeroed in on me since I had been a part of two startups within the Group and were confident in the successful setting up of the JV. Yet again, I was employee number one in TATA SIA Airlines (Vistara). We, in a record nine months launched the airline—again it was totally different industry and I had to learn things from scratch. And my strong belief and how it is absolutely necessary to learn the business nuances and then adapt HR processes and practices to ensure success helped me.
By Rajesh Rao
