Empowered to Empower

A strong belief in academic knowledge and a value system, emphasising language and communication, are the ‘forever’ skills that she picked up in her formative years, which has paved her career and life journey. Padma Gupta, Director, Human Resources and Customer Experience, Häfele India Private Limited, initiated her transition from a Chemistry graduate who gradually came into her own with a Senior Leadership Programme (Business Administration and General Management) from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. She is also armed with an MBA from the University of Allahabad.

With little or no corporate exposure during her college days, her go-to space has been books and reaching out to professors that enabled her to join the dots by applying academic concepts to real work scenarios. The journey that began in 2000 with the Academy of HRD (AHRD), Ahmedabad, as an HR Generalist, traversed across diverse sectors such as Manufacturing, Trading, Oil & Gas, Consulting, and Architectural hardware systems/interiors into her current apex role with Häfele India.

She shares her learnings on thriving in the ever-changing corporate HR environment, work-life balance and more

I would define myself as someone who has always been a fighter to the last breath and who always sees dialogue and empathy as the road to create a win-win in any situation,” said Padma Gupta, Director, Human Resources and Customer Experience, Häfele India Private Limited. Häfele India is recognised within the Häfele Worldwide Group and in the Building Material Industry as a Centre of Excellence in HR and people practices.

Founded in 1923, Häfele is an international company providing hardware and fitting systems and electronic locking systems with services expanding across 150 countries. It has a global employee base of close to 6,150 and serves more than 160,000 customers worldwide.

A thought leader, coach, and corporate trainer, Padma Gupta is also a Master Practitioner of Non-Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique. She has around 20+ years of rich experience in Human Resource Management (HRM) in diverse sectors, including Manufacturing, Trading, Oil & Gas, Engineering, and Consulting. Her expertise is in building businesses aligned to HR systems and processes, Organisation Design, Talent Management, Managing Performance, Compensation Management, capability development, coaching, driving organisational culture and change management alongside HR Operations as the hygiene factor.

She believes that it is important to respect every individual’s model of their world, which comes with the realisation that if you can add resources, it brings success. “More often than not, these resources exist within and around us, but we don’t see it sometimes. Hence, by bringing awareness to these, people feel enlightened and choose to help themselves and succeed,” she said.

THE LEARNING CURVES

"Häfele India has empowered me to come on my own and enabled my risk-taking skills while also ensuring that decisions are made with empathy, collaboration and with an eye trained towards ‘German’ perfection as with its products, processes, and people management"

Corporate Citizen: Where do you think you learnt the most in your career path?

Padma Gupta: Although it is difficult to categorise learning as the ‘most’ and ‘least,’ I picked up definitive traits and competencies in each of the organisations I worked with. In the first 10 formative years, I absorbed knowledge like a sponge and built my mind and realised my core areas of strengths in dealing with challenges. As part of Corporate Consultancy in my first job as a Research Associate with the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) – Ahmedabad, I had the opportunity to work very closely with Dr T V Rao and several distinguished professors from the IIM-A. At the AHRD, I developed my bent towards academic understanding, detailing, and subject conceptualisation. A stint at Nitco Tiles gave me the vast exposure not only into Labour Relations but also into Organisational Development (OD) and Learning & Development (L&D). My experience with RIL (Reliance Industries Ltd.) was the most intense as an HR generalist, which triggered my vision of achieving my goals, despite the hurdles. Häfele India has empowered me to come on my own and enabled my risk-taking skills while also ensuring that decisions are made with empathy, collaboration and with an eye trained towards ‘German’ perfection as with its products, processes, and people management.

CC: What were your learning experiences across diverse sectors?

A career paved across multiple industries provided a critical insight into the vast HRM sector with a strong business flavour

Manufacturing: The sector was an enabler in understanding the mechanics of production and the challenges in managing a manufacturing unit and its unionised environment. It taught me the small things that can have an immense bearing during workspace negotiations and that a simple process change can lead to significant gains.

Oil and Gas Industry: It was a lesson in understanding the macroeconomics of how natural resources are procured, defined, and categorised and the importance of extracting 100% output from available resources. It gave a good understanding of working with brilliant, academic minds and working with individuals from different nationalities and how to think and dream big.

Consulting, Training and Coaching: This sphere led to lessons on responsibility and accountability to understand situations, go in-depth on issues, and motivate people to learn and perform even without executional powers. I learnt the power of influencers, such as our thought process, the positive rapport we build, and enabling these based on hard facts, data, and logic but with an empathetic touch.

Hardware & Building Material Industry: Provided an opportunity to understand how our products, processes, and technology impact our customers. It has been exciting to understand this large industry with a range of unstructured players to the most sophisticated products and setups. Mapping talent and ensuring that we make a hardware organisation a great place to work, has been a very satisfying learning experience.

"My learning offered flexibility and adaptation to move from being part of an entrepreneurial team to pitching and brainstorming for business development and becoming a process expert. One of the most important lessons learnt was Change Management in moving from an unstructured to a highly structured-process-driven environment"

Padma Gupta with team

CC: What are the HR similarities across diverse sectors?

Many things remain similar across sectors irrespective of the industry type or location, which makes an HR person successful for internal and external customers, such as empathy and a problem-solving approach. I have always used the principle of breaking complexities and simplifying and tackling each situation as bite-sized issues, and this tactic has never failed me. Once the root cause of any issue is understood, any complex issue becomes simple enough to make a substantial impact. The difference was in the culture, growth indices, focus areas of working -akin to wearing different hats across different industries but the head remains the same.

CC: How has your educational qualifications impacted your career journey?

All my alma maters have contributed to my learning-the University of Allahabad, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), and NLP Training Institutes. It was a wonderful experience to have worked with academic elites comprising of IIM professors, corporate managers, and leaders. I gained by investing time in understanding Management Systems and concepts. Initially, it was tough to connect real-life working and academic concepts. Soon, I was able to draw parallels in learning the lessons on Law, Marketing, People Management, Processes, and Quantitative Techniques. The courses I undertook at IIM-A added my skill as a holistic administrator with a strong understanding of all required functions in General Management functions. As a certified coach and an NLP Master, I was able to challenge myself to add new learning dimensions. The holistic learning has enabled me to approach each of my roles with greater insight and newness in my understanding of work-life.

CC: What important lessons did you imbibe from your work-life transitions?

One of the most important lessons learnt in the early days was that everything one learns is not individual proficiency but reflects the competence of the function that one represents; in my case, it is the Business HR function. Being true to one’s profession helps to acknowledge and accept other professions along the way and seek ways to collaborate and add value to them.

CC: Can you elaborate on being an HR business enabler?

In the process of being a true Business HR professional, one can become a vital business enabler and contribute positively irrespective of the industry, culture or organisation. My learning offered flexibility and adaptation to move from being part of an entrepreneurial team to pitching and brainstorming for business development and becoming a process expert. One of the most important lessons learnt was Change Management in moving from an unstructured to a highly structured-process-driven environment. Whether it was manual paper-based working to a most sophisticated SAP system or using Artificial Intelligence and Bots, it has been a journey of communication going from office memos to even WhatsApp Business. To embrace change and hand-hold individuals and businesses into new initiatives has been the most exciting part of my journey.

CC: How do you differentiate between your roles as a thought leader, coach and trainer?

As a leader, I believe in being visible, involved, and seen working shoulder to shoulder with my HR and business teams. I make it a point to connect at the field level and visit the shopfloor to get a realistic understanding of what happens before making any policies, processes or decisions that impact our employees and customers. An instance with RIL was when I travelled to remote Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh by road for hours to visit a drilling site to understand possible actions to arrest the ongoing attrition and unrest amongst the field staff. My visit lifted the morale of the field staff and ground-level workers and helped devise some real-time solutions that helped the teams and the management.

As a Coach and Trainer, I practice absolute honesty and compassion around people. While I do not pamper them, I always choose the path of compassion than direct aggression. Creating a buy-in to garner support and commitment has always been my approach for successfully driving change and, most importantly, undoing stuck mindsets. I spend hours helping people see the larger picture, and I am personally committed to the causes I undertake. While delegation and empowerment are critical and not to be ignored, I do not delegate accountability.

NUANCES OF AN HR LEADER

"My spouse was always available, donning many hats-that of a house manager, parent to my children, and a son to my parents. He was our social representative in social gatherings even if I was absent and took charge of the home-front just like I have been his silent supporter. He left a very lucrative corporate job to pursue his career interests as an entrepreneur"

Holi festivities with son Anand, daughter Naina and husband Yogesh

CC: What have been the most challenging aspects of your career, and how did you overcome them?

There have been two challenging fronts in my career. One was to build credibility and ensure that the teams see value in the HR person’s work portfolio and acknowledge the role as a businessperson and not merely a representative. I have had to work twice as hard to take a keen interest and learn everything about my industry and the business from scratch. It was about learning the cross-functions, the interdependencies of macro and micro factors within the organisation. I had to understand the HR Budget and the organisation P&L, Margins and Profits, the nuances of linking employee productivity to profits and other crucial business functions and marrying it to HR functions. The second is the silent challenge of being a woman and taking particular pride in being a woman. As you grow to the top, balancing your worklife to succeed without resorting to any special gender-based privileges is a win in itself. It may also prove that you are a better professional because you are a woman.

CC: Do you have a challenge management mantra?

My way of dealing with the challenges was to have absolute clarity that I would learn and adopt all the knowledge on how people work, respond and get them to become their best-engaged self which I imbibed through HR insights, coaching, and my practice of NLP. In doing so, I gained confidence and observed people more holistically. Besides, I have taken a keen interest in understanding the workings of factory machinery, new product development process, supplier management, and the different channels of sales viz our products and services.

CC: Do you also connect with the sales and technical teams?

I engage in interactions to understand our customers from the viewpoints of our field sales team, the technical teams, and site managers. I also gained inputs from the financial controllers and learnt the Working Capital Cycle to receivables and Payable Management. Initially, I was met with surprise and frowned upon and, in some cases, indulgent smiles in my attempt to engage with multiple stakeholders. But my supposedly curious nature evolved as part of the entire business and I received due recognition.

CC: How do stakeholder engagements enable your HR leadership role?

Such engagements are critical, otherwise, how else will you be able to hire the right candidate? How will you ensure that proper training and grooming are provided to the teams? How will you be the second voice of your Sales and Finance Teams when you interact with customers and employees by driving the same business plan through synchronised goals and KRAs (Key Result Areas)? Therefore, detailed knowledge allows an HR person to contribute effectively to Strategy Meets and Annual Operating Plans. I have always believed that one needs to earn the place at the table, and when you get your place-you establish your profession as the one to be reckoned with. I have taken this as my biggest challenge, and I am delighted to have changed the definition of conventional HR and HR persons in every organisation I worked with. I am creating teams that go beyond becoming transactional support teams.

CC: How important is campus recruitment?

We create strong teams hired from campuses as Management Trainees into building a solid leadership team, most of whom are handpicked and personally chosen. The strategy is to choose across industries and hire competent people to stay on-board, which has been an achievement. In fact, Succession Planning and creating a culture of Team Development has ensured a strong pipeline of internal talent, which has grown and continues to take up new roles as they mature within the individual growth matrix.

CC: Do share some memorable moment/s in your career.

Häfele has been a rewarding experience with multiple recognitions as the Leader for HR Excellence Centre, our training and OD initiatives, and recognised as a ‘Great Place to Work.’ Receiving the ORBIS Häfele Woman of the year Award 2012, was a significant career moment. My most memorable career moment was working alongside IIM professors in the early days of my career at the Academy of HRD- Ahmedabad. At RIL, although I was a junior, I was exposed to the scale of operations, which made my learning multi-dimensional. As a very young HR person, I was responsible for designing, training, and executing a new performance management system (PMS) for RIL’s all India Oil & Gas teams, and interestingly working with a multi-generational workforce and individuals from diverse nationalities.

CC: How was your experience at Ingenero?

At Ingenero, my growth entailed many fun elements of working with entrepreneurs and a very young workforce but it was also empowering and had accountability. Nitco Tiles recognised me as the HR person who brought in Learning and Development (L&D) and Organisational Development (OD) to the system, which thereafter became inherent components within the organisation.

VIEWPOINTS OF AN HR LEADER

"I have always believed that one needs to earn the place at the table, and when you get your place-you establish your profession as the one to be reckoned with. I am creating teams that go beyond becoming transactional support teams"

Padma Gupta with her husband Yogesh

CC: How has corporate attitude changed towards second career opportunities for women?

While there has been quite a change, much more is still needed to enable second career opportunities for women. In my stint at Ingenero Technologies, we created unique platforms for women with second innings into their careers. In 2006-07, we provided flexi-hours, remote working, and welcomed female technical team members with unique opportunities to work on international projects. At Häfele, too, we have been able to offer a few of our women team members the opportunity to Work From Home (WFH) across different cities, long before the Covid-19-induced WFH patterns had set in. The step saved the careers of some of our team members who had to relocate to other cities or who have spouses with continuous job mobility.

CC: What about re-engaging women above 50 years?

Wherever possible, I have attempted recruiting women who are above 50 years after a long break and who are enthusiastic about learning and earning back their past accolades. I have personally executed a few such returnee plans, especially for ex-employees to work for us. It has been a win-win situation as women above 50 years are more calm, collected, and mature. Most have learnt the art of managing their work-life balance, thereby, benefitting the organisation productively.

CC: Are you engaged in women-centric/inclusivity programmes?

Yes, I am part of multiple Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) sessions and forums. At Häfele, with a conscious decision to have women hirees in specific teams, we have successfully maintained a 20% female staff ratio across the organisation. We keep particular cognisance during campus hiring as well as lateral hiring. While there is no gender bias, the step is taken to ensure that the best of Yin and Yang contribute to the organisation’s success, which is also our contribution to the larger society development.

PERSONAL PANACHE

"The contributors in my life have been two types of people-the ones who inspired me to be like them and some who ensured that I never become like them. My learnings can be directly attributed to my managers and bosses, who have always given me opportunities and learning scope"

Padma Gupta with mentor, Rajendra Sinh, Former Exec,
Reliance Industries Limited

CC: Who are the prime contributors to your career journey?

The contributors in my life have been two types of people-the ones who inspired me to be like them and some who ensured that I never become like them. My learnings can be directly attributed to my managers and bosses, who have always given me opportunities and learning scope. Being an NLP Practitioner from the early days of my career and growing as a Master NLP expert, I always believed that I never have bad bosses and bad organisations in my life. Once you decide to take everything in your stride, you can choose and get the best out of the available options.

CC: Who are your prime influencers at work?

Once you are a seeker, knowledge always finds you. In most of my organisations, I have had my professors and colleagues who, irrespective of their professional levels, have adopted me as a student and taught me the ropes of the business and industry quite well. My first mentor, subsequent bosses all shaped me. My current MD, Jurgen Wolf, has been one of the most extraordinary influences in shaping my career as a leader and a coach. To empower and to be empowered is one of the finest lessons that I have learnt from him.

CC: How has your spouse supported you in your growth?

I owe my career success to my best friend and my spouse, who led me to do an MBA rather than a pure Master’s degree when marriage was my only focal point. He continues to be my most vital support and cheerleader. Gender-based responsibility has never existed in our relationship. I have never felt alone in my journey, no matter the stresses on personal or professional fronts. My spouse was always available, donning many hats-that of a house manager, parent to my children, and a son to my parents. He was our social representative in social gatherings even if I was absent and took charge of the home-front just like I have been his silent supporter. He left a very lucrative corporate job to pursue his career interests as an entrepreneur.

CC: How has your family juggled your corporate journey?

My husband and I are both into the corporate world, and travels are an integral part of our lives. Therefore, our travels and leave sanctions, our free time, and ‘me-times’ have been easy to plan with my husband as the voice of reason behind our success. I am blessed with two kids who have been most cooperative throughout my journey. They are grounded and realistic. My children understand my dreams, my passion and yet ensure that we remain close and tight together as a family. That is the type of contribution I am blessed with, and therefore, when I have to stretch and strain and multitask- it is a labour of love. My most significant moment of truth was when my teenage son told me to “take on new roles because you deserve it, and you has prepared us to support her.”

THE HÄFELE JOURNEY

"As you grow to the top, balancing your work-life to succeed without resorting to any special gender-based privileges is a win in itself. It may also prove that you are a better professional because you are a woman"

Padma Gupta unwinding at Varanasi

CC: How do you spell your opportunities with Häfele India Private Limited?

At Häfele India, I have had the opportunity to apply all that I learnt in the first decade of my career into my current role, in my 10th year with the organisation, I believe I have significantly managed to build a sustainable organisation with the most engaged workforce in the sector. When I joined as an HR personnel, the HR function was almost non-existent, invisible, and very transactional. I began when proper documentation of employee files was non-existent and transcended to recent times where a sophisticated HRMS system has witnessed many wins in my journey.

CC: Do share your experience with Häfele.

I have been engaged with workforce dynamics since joining Häfele India. We experienced mass exodus and very high attrition rates in the initial stages of my journey with Häfele, and today, we have one of the most engaged workforces, which has been a small win. It is a matter of pride for us that top placement consultants in the Industry meet us to try and understand what keeps our employees gratified. We have transitioned from a non-entity employer brand to being recognised as one of the ‘Great Places to Work’ and receiving a few rewards. In recent months, I have taken on a more significant role as the Director for Customer Experience (in addition to HR), which includes Customer Care Services, Service and After Sales Support, Product Engineering, Spare Part & Claims management, and Business Excellence Digitisation.

CC: What has been your key contribution to Häfele India?

My most important contribution has enabled HR dynamics as an essential business function. I have contributed by creating an HR System and a robust and dependable team operating as true business partners with a significant ‘seat at the table’ for the organisational decision-making process. Although the process has taken ample time, energy, and discipline, the HR contribution is looked upon as a ‘Business Partner,’ creating a ‘real’ impact and acting as ‘change and turnaround’ agents. HR as a function has proved that it can make any organisational initiative a success-irrespective of departmental diversities, whether finance, marketing, or sales and operations.

CC: What HR strategy did you incorporate during the pandemic?

We adopted all possible cost-saving measures except Employee Salary & Benefits Cost to ensure that none of the employees suffered during the pandemic. We were forced to undertake a minor salary cut for a few months, but as the markets opened up and everybody put their best foot forward, we were able to restore the pay package. We hired only critical roles and focussed on making our teams better trained and more productive. Hundered per cent digitisation of all HR processes and addition of Professional Counselling and EAPs aided support to employees in this tough time.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

CC: How do you keep stress at bay?

I am a regular Vipassana Meditation Practitioner which takes care of my moments of restlessness. I do get stressed out with travel and work pressure, but what has worked best for me is compartmentalising and dissociating myself from these when I can. When I step out for work, I am totally into the mode of a working professional, and unless emergency beckons, I do not spare much thought on issues that are not work-related. Likewise, when I shut down my office work, no matter how late, I try to let go of thoughts related to work until the next day at the office. My NLP learning enables me to relevantly ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’. I invest some time in ensuring that I get my own space and time between my hectic schedules, even if it is for a few hours. Such breaks rejuvenate and provide me with new perspectives and the energyto tackle the next challenge.

CC: What are your hobbies and passion beyond work?

I love reading books, mainly fiction, and authoring poems and articles. I am an avid social person, and in my free time, I keep in touch with my friends and family. I enjoy tradition and the paraphernalia around these celebrations. When time permits, you can catch me making rangolis, cooking traditional cuisines, or preparing for the festivals and various occasions whole-heartedly.