Culture Creates a Company’s well-being / Adarsh Mishra is a passionate HR Professional and Business Strategist

Adarsh Mishra, Director and chief Human resource officer, Panasonic India, believes that it is the law of nature that what goes in, comes back. Hence, if you spread happiness and love, it will come back to you in abundance. A culture and values he imbibed from the tatas in his childhood days, he has carried it forward throughout his career as an Hr professional, be it at Jindal steel & Power, or later at LG electronics, or now at Panasonic-with tweaks to suit the changing times and challenges. For culture, is at the root of a company’s and its people’s well-being, he believes. In a tete-a-tete with corporate citizen...

"The best learning came when I used to watch my father handle critical matters related to administration and dealing with unwanted expectations of the local political parties (JMM), smoothly without any production loss. the President and office bearers of the tata Workers union respected him as he was always available and prioritized the well-being of mineworkers and their families"

With around 24 years of experience under his fold. Holding a master’s degree in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management, he started his career as a management trainee with Jindal Steel & Power. He regularly engaged with the leadership teams to align and establish country priorities, aligning global agenda with local nuances, and currently is working as Director and CHRO with Panasonic India. In his role, he is responsible for managing change and disruption, driving overall human capital strategies and building synergies across locations including manufacturing and a corporate office based out of Gurgaon.

Panasonic is among the top three consumer durable brands in the country and is recognized as a leading technology innovator in the industry. Prior to his current assignment at Panasonic, he was associated with LG Electronics as Head of Corporate HR and worked for the Korean multinational for more than 13 Years. With his utmost dedication and relentless hard work, he has the willingness to take on any challenge.

Corporate Citizen: Tell us about your childhood aspirations…

Adarsh Mishra: The most important thing in any individual’s life is the grooming they get in their childhood. My father worked as a Mining Head for Tata Steel, a company, which had the unique philosophy of giving exposure to the family members of the employees through various activities and initiatives, which took care of their all-round development.

During my childhood days, the environment in the company’s township helped me in boosting my overall confidence and propelled my extrovert and creative nature. Mr. Russi Mody, the then Managing Director of Tata Steel, used to visit the mining division from time to time and used to interact with employee’s wards. He also invited high-profile guests with proven track records from various fields including Film, Sports, Social Work to name a few. Seeing them and listening to them was memorable. Some of the names I can recall are Sharmila Tagore, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Anup Jalota and Pinaaz Masani among many others.

Sometimes on weekends, I used to join my father for his morning round in his Mahindra Willys Jeep and watched him interact with the blue-collared senior members of his team, which left a deep impression on me about the importance of having an open culture and treating colleagues with humility in an organization. The best learning came when I used to watch him handle critical matters related to administration and dealing with unwanted expectations of the local political parties (JMM), smoothly without any production loss. The President and office bearers of the Tata Workers Union respected him as he was always available and prioritized the well-being of mineworkers and their families.

Tata used to hire young engineer trainees from top tier institutes, who, during the winter holidays, engaged with employees’ kids for various activities. While some went off for treks, others took the onus of distributing food, clothes, and medicines to the underprivileged in the nearby tribal villages. As for sports, we learned rifle shooting, swimming and lawn tennis. Famous national and international tennis stars used to participate in tennis tournaments organized by Tata Steel. It was a great opportunity for me as I was selected for the inter-state badminton tournament held at the Steel City, Jamshedpur. It was a wonderful experience to be coached by Mr. Sarvesh Khanna who was associated with the Delhi Asian Games, 1982.

Why did you not follow your father’s footsteps to choose the engineering line?

My father was a mining engineer from BHU, Banaras and did his M. Tech from the prestigious ISM Dhanbad and he never pushed his views on me. He knew about my strengths and encouraged me to pursue the career of my liking. I got fascinated by some of my father’s colleagues from the personnel department and decided to work in the area which gave me an exposure to work more closely with the people and for the people.

I did my post-graduation, specializing in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management (IRPM) from Bhavan’s College of Communication and Management, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. At Tatas, there was a provision that one ward of the family can get a job, so I could have got the job there, but it was never the option for me. I wanted to start on my own and realize my dreams.

It so happened that, at a social meeting, I met a senior executive who was working for Jindal Steel & Power, Raigarh in Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh). After spending some time with the gentleman, he asked me about my career aspirations and my passion. I believe he saw the spark in me and offered to schedule an interview with his company’s President and CEO.

I was happy to get a call from him and was asked to meet Mr. GDS Sohal, who was the unit head for JSPL. The company had ambitious plans and was expanding in the areas of Steelmaking, Power Plants, Rolling mills and Coal Mines. I had just passed out of college and was waiting for my placement when I received the first offer letter to join JSPL as Management Trainee (HR & PR).

"Coming from a small town Raigarh to Delhi in itself was a big cultural shift. But thanks to my initial days of training under my first two leaders, I was able to adapt to the new environment in a few months’ time"

That time Hr was at an infant stage…

Yes, at that time HR was at an infant stage. We had a personnel office, and incidentally, the new HR department was getting established at that time. My boss wanted me to handle Public Relations along with my HR profile and I took the responsibility, although I had no prior experience of managing media before. I happily accepted as I was always keen to explore new areas. It was a great opportunity to work with some of the seasoned professionals and learn many things related to steelmaking, power generations, turbines, and rolling mill operations, apart from my normal HR and PR work.

It was a privilege to be a part of the MD’s secretariat, and assist Mr Navin Jindal, along with two of my colleagues. One of them was a CA and the other an Engineer. I got the chance to work very closely with business and today when I look back, I relish the exposure I got while working with the top management at the early stage of my career. I got an opportunity to work closely with Mr. Navin Jindal, who was only 29 years old and had joined the company after completing his studies from the USA. I consider myself very lucky as I got a chance to work with two great leaders like Mr. GDS Sohal, a seasoned professional, and Mr. Jindal who was passionate and ambitious. It was a great opportunity to learn and grow under the dynamic leadership of both.

The exposure included land acquisition for 1000MW power plant, setting up school facility for employees’ children, welfare camps, CSR, organizing mega sports events, working with architects for town planning, apart from my routine job of hiring, training, government relations, and communication.

"We are on the lookout for willing students from such institutes where the institute grooms them according to the industry. This also has helped us manage attrition rates as these students bring in, stability with them"

For how many years did you work for Jindal?

I worked with Jindal for five years from 1995-2000.

Why did you quit?

Dr. YV Verma, now my mentor was the group HR head for the company and was based at the headquarters in Delhi. He visited the plant at Raigarh on 2-3 occasions and spotted me during the annual appraisals. Later I came to know that he joined LG Electronics, a Korean multinational, as their head of HR in 1997. Three years after his joining, I got a call from him with a proposal to be a part of his HR team at the corporate office in Greater Noida. I was excited at the opportunity to work for a multinational organization, and also to work with someone who I consider my role model in the area of Human Resources. I joined LG Electronics in the year 2000.

How did you convince Mr. GDs sohal and navin Jindal about leaving Jindal steel & Power?

I openly talked about my aspirations and desires to excel in the area of HR with my bosses. I also got the support of Dr. Verma who is considered a stalwart in the area of organization building. This made my job a bit easy as Dr. Verma was widely respected for his extraordinary contributions by the top management at JSPL. Both my bosses were happy with my contributions, understood my aspirations, and wished me well for my career advancement. I am still in regular touch with Mr. GDS Sohal and Mr. Navin Jindal.

From a national company to a multinational company, what was different?

I joined LG Electronics as Senior Executive, Corporate HR in 2000. Joining a multinational organization from an Indian company was a bit challenging as the culture and way of working were poles apart. Moreover, coming from a small town Raigarh to Delhi in itself was a big cultural shift. But thanks to my initial days of training under my first two leaders, I was able to adapt to the new environment in a few months’ time and earned my reporting manager’s trust in no time. During my stint that spanned over 13 years, I got a chance to work on various projects from building a robust talent pipeline for the organization across multiple businesses starting from R&D, Consumer durables to Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Mobile and other businesses. The culture of LG was very demanding and the employee attrition was very high. Hence, the need of the hour was to roll out employee-centric programmes pan-India. My team was busy designing an enjoyable work culture, learning, and development with a special focus on reward and recognition program. The practices of LG Electronics earned praises at the corporation level and won many awards in the World HRD Congress, Mumbai. We competed with top global companies and were awarded the “Employer Brand of the Year Award’ in the year 2009.

"My seniors gave me the freedom to think out-of-the-box and encouraged me to make mistakes and learn from them. My profession expected me to be closer to people and be available for them 24*7. My experience has taught me the importance of communication"

A Happy Family: Adarsh Mishra with wife Archana
and children, Aditya and Aishwarya

What keeps you going at such a remarkable and envious pace?

I have always believed that one must challenge oneself because there is always a better way of doing things. I was also very fortunate to have great mentors in my professional journey. My seniors gave me the freedom to think out-of-the-box and encouraged me to make mistakes and learn from them. My profession expected me to be closer to people and be available for them 24*7. My experience has taught me the importance of communication. Hence, I have developed a habit to respond to all my emails, messages and missed calls. This practice has helped me to build trust not only within the employees but also with my external customers and associates. Finally, I think the only ingredient that keeps me going is to believe in myself and aspire to do more.

How did you move to Panasonic?

I came to know about the vacancy at Panasonic India for the level of Head HR through a friend, who was working with the company at that time. I remember meeting Mr. Dizo Ito, President and Mr. Manish Sharma, MD, Panasonic India, to explore the opportunity.

While Panasonic has always been a ‘people’ oriented and a transparent organization, what impressed me the most was how willing the leadership was to hire someone who would continue the cultural legacy at the company. At Panasonic, we understand that ‘our people’/employees are the biggest advocates of our brand, which makes it imperative for us to create an inclusive workplace environment where employees feel motivated, thereby maximizing their productivity.

I took up this role at Panasonic, knowing that there is one thing I had in common with the company’s leadership-they were as passionate about their culture and people, as I have always been.

Tell us about your various initiatives…

At Panasonic, we launched a campaign called `Vibrant Panasonic’. I always believed in the fact that work culture is not the sole responsibility of only the HR department, but that of the entire organization. We need to collectively work towards it. We defined a ten-year plan for our culture journey which focuses on Engagement, well-being and finally translating that to a Happy Work Place. This was further supported by a concept called SPEED, which meant driving agility and way of working-Speak, Process, Empathy, Educate and Discipline. The second step was to identify promising youngsters from the respective departments who were willing to be a part of the drive and we called them Culture Innovators and Culture Drivers. They were the cultural ambassadors for the organization and helped drive various initiatives across the organization. The initiatives like Good Morning meetings, Fun Days, Knowledge sharing sessions, Fast Re-engineering projects, High- Tea with CEO for top-down and bottom-up communication, Inter-department team lunches-to name a few-brought employees together and channelized their energy in a very positive way. This helped us to bring vibrancy in the overall culture and in return brought down the employee attrition from 18% to 14% in just three years of the launch of Vibrant Panasonic campaign. Finally, the result reflected in the annual Employee Opinion Survey. It is important to keep the culture team inspired and motivated, so we also announced a fun trip to Japan, and fast track promotions along with special salary increments that were extended to the top three Culture Innovators as a reward for their exemplary work.

"Youngsters are adapting to technologies very fast and they need to become smart and techno-savvy. In the near future, four generations will be working together from baby boomer to Gen Z"

Panasonic is a big giant in electronics, what is in store, in the near future?

Panasonic is a diversified technology company that has a long-term commitment to India’s growth.

India is a vast market with different market requirements and over the years, we have tailored our offerings accordingly. This has helped us penetrate deeper into Tier II towns in the country.

Being aligned to the Government of India’s manufacturing programmes and supporting Make in India, Skill India, and other initiatives, we have steadily invested in setting up manufacturing units in the country.

As part of our global strategy and vision, we have realigned our business priorities in India to focus on five strategic pillars to drive growth – Energy, Supply Chain, Living Spaces, Life Solutions, and Consumer business. We are also increasingly focusing on providing end-toend solutions across our offerings as part of this renewed strategy. This year, we are further looking to capture the opportunity in the hinterland of the country and with the help of our India Innovation Centre, we are confident to cater to these localized requirements.

We, at Panasonic, manufacture 60 per cent of the batteries for Elon Musk’s Tesla. We have a factory in Nevada, USA to produce them and have just started a similar business in India. We have hired 2400 people at our Innovation Centre in Bengaluru. Two years back we even hired a Chief Innovation Officer to make our company techno-savvy.

What CSR activity do you have?

We have a unique CSR activity called Ratichatra, where we identify 30 underprivileged students from the IITs every year for a scholarship programme and sponsor their study for four years. We have a factory at Jhajjar, Haryana and we do many CSR activities for the local communities there as well.

What are the future job opportunities for youngsters with everything changing so fast?

It is a VUCA world. Youngsters are adapting to technologies very fast and they need to become smart and techno-savvy. In the near future, four generations will be working together from baby boomer to Gen Z. It is a challenge to provide an opportunity for everybody. Youngsters need everything automated now and the most important requirement would be adaptability. One has to accept that things are changing, so they have to align and upgrade themselves. They have to re-skill themselves. One has to get out of their comfort zone by taking risks. Unless one does not come out of the cocoon, one will not be able to see the real world. Unlike a decade back, things are changing too fast-be it the way we commute (Uber for example) or the way we stay on vacations (Airbnb for example) and of course, the smart phones which slowly and gradually are making televisions redundant. Things are changing therefore, adaptability is very important.

What do you think of today’s economy in India vis-à-vis job opportunities?

India is going to be the destination for people across other countries because the average age of India is going to be around 29 years by 2020. In Japan, it is 47 years, in the US, it is 42 years, in Europe, it is 46 years, and China is going to touch 40. In India, we have a market for all kinds of segments. As infrastructure is coming up, the entire world is looking towards India and with the Modi Government coming for the second term, the economy seems very promising.

What is your philosophy in Panasonic about learn, live and achieve?

We made a ten-year plan that extended from engagement to well-being and happiness. We believe that if one engages with the employees and gives them a feeling of well-being in terms of their financial needs and health; they become happy employees and give their best at work. So one has to keep learning and be open to new ideas, new thoughts; and in the process learn, live and enjoy. It is important that one enjoys in whatever one does. It is important to have a hobby and achieve it. Once you learn and live, you will achieve and when you achieve, it is important to celebrate.

What about gender diversity at Panasonic?

One of the key tasks assigned to me when I joined Panasonic five years back, was to ensure a diverse and inclusive environment at the workplace. We believe, organizations have greater responsibility and a stronger role to play in adopting a holistic and integrated approach in empowering their employees, and contributing significantly to gender diversity and equality. Women’s contribution is essential to drive business innovation, productivity, risk management, market growth and achieve the organization’s sustainable development goals.

At Panasonic, we are committed to creating equal opportunities for men and women alike and have progressive policies and practices for all our employees. We nurture talent and provide a supportive work environment for individuals to grow and help achieve their professional dreams. We actively identify priority areas for accelerating gender equality and contribute to women’s growth and development significantly. We will continue to forge newer practices in order to bring a systemic change to benefit all women, internally as well as externally. With an aim to employ 30% of women in the workforce, Panasonic provides a number of facilities, designed specifically for women employees like flexible working hours, security measures, maternity policies and crèche among others. We are willing to go the extra mile to understand the needs of our employees and help them realize them and better their quality of life!

"India is going to be the destination for people across other countries because the average age of India is going to be around 29 years by 2020. In Japan, it is 47 years, in the US, it is 42 years, in Europe, it is 46 years, and China is going to touch 40"

What about crèche facilities for young mothers?

We invest in the well-being of our people and have crèche facilities at the office to extend maximum facilities and comfort to new mothers.

What is your observation about women employees?

My biggest observation is that they are very meticulous and very high on dignity. They follow deadlines with sincerity and have the ability to handle complex situations maturely.

What skills do you look for in potential candidates?

It is very simple. I look for only two things; first that the person has to be ambitious and second is humility. I believe that attitude is more important than aptitude to achieve any altitude.

How often do you find these qualities?

We have hired many employees who demonstrate great levels of humility and ambition and are excelling in their roles. While there are times when we do not find the right fit for the job but most of the time, people meet our expectations as we make it very transparent with them since the beginning.

What do you think of millennials?

I support the youth because today’s youngsters are the leaders of tomorrow. They are a part of a bouquet in a society where you have people from diverse age groups. Without the youth, you cannot have a beautiful bouquet. Our expectations are also high from them. They should introspect where they want to go and what they want to achieve; they need to manage their time in such a way that they not only active in terms of social networking, but they should take advantage of social media to grow and learn. Millennials are also always in a hurry and so they need to be dealt with accordingly. In the role of seniors, it becomes our responsibility to guide them, to spend time with them and understand them and give them the right direction. We need to help them to strike a balance between their aspirations and expectations. We have a programme called HR Business Ambassadors, wherein twice every month, HR team members spend time with the young minds of the organization and lend a ear to understand their aspirations/needs and in turn guiding them on achieving it.

What do you think about MBA education today? Do you hire mainly from IITs, or from second-tier MBA schools as well?

Since the past few years, we have been hiring from IIMs because we want to build a strong pedigree in the organization. There was a thought that came from the management, as to why not hire from top Business Schools? Students from IITs and IIMs are great, but now even second-tier business institutes have dedicated students. We often find that second-tier institutes like Sri Balaji Society which churn out MBA students through rigorous discipline and dedication are hardworking and efficient. We are on the lookout for willing students from such institutes where the institute grooms them according to the requirement of the industry. This also has helped us manage attrition rates as these students bring in, stability with them. Having said that, the attitude of the student comes foremost, no matter from which institute they come from.

Tell us about your family.

My wife Archana is a homemaker and I am blessed with two kids. My son Aditya, is pursuing engineering and my daughter Aishwarya, is in the fifth standard.

What is your philosophy of life?

Ethics and discipline are the topmost qualities of any successful professional. As an HR professional, one needs to be approachable. What goes in, comes around, this is the law of nature. Spread happiness and love, and you will get it back in one way or the other.