The Scent of a Leader

Being an HR leader is not an easy task in the best of times but in the midst of a global pandemic, the role becomes more demanding than ever before. No one knows this better than Sanjoy Shaw, HR Director - South Asia at Givaudan. In a career spanning 22 years, Sanjoy has worked in different sectors like Flavour & Fragrance, FMCG, Glass and Automobile industries. He has been at the forefront of driving change in the organisations he has worked for. Sanjoy sat down with Corporate Citizen for a chat on his career journey, his role at Givaudan, and how the pandemic has brought a transformational shift in the industry.

"We rolled out the vaccines programme for the employees and their families at the company’s cost. We even ran camps in the nearby villages to provide care and support. We supplied thousands of food packets, masks, sanitisers, and many essential products"

Sanjoy Shaw, HR Director - South Asia, Givaudan

Corporate Citizen: Take us through your education journey.

Sanjoy Shaw: My journey started in the year 2000 or so, after securing my Master’s degree in social science and MBA HR. It is a journey spanning the last 22 years. I have worked in different segments such as FMCG, automobiles and fragrance and flavor industry. I have seen different parts of the organisational lifecycle, from manufacturing, to corporates, to an international stint in countries like Dubai and Thailand and the US. The US stint was a big assignment from Pepsico. I was part of the global Pepsico leadership programme, where eight of us from different parts of the world got selected internally through different processes. We were sent to Detroit, and we were to work with another organisation to transform it. This was a six week residential project. We all didn’t know each other. We had to first know each other, know the organisation, go to the city, locate their warehouses, sit in their trucks and travel with them. We had to come up with the complete business change game plan, in terms of how to make the organisation more sustainable, more effective, having the right HR culture practices and culture. We had to do all of this and then present it to their board of directors.

CC: The Covid pandemic was an unprecedented crisis. As an HR leader, how did you mitigate the challenges posed by the pandemic?

That’s absolutely true. The pandemic was a scenario never envisioned by any of us. As a company, Givaudan has a very pro-people culture. When the pandemic happened, the first call was to ensure that our people were safe. We have five factories in the country. We are in eight locations, including our corporate office and very high end R&Ds. We had to ensure that people were protected, that we took all the safety precautions and we had to also slow down operations due to government restrictions. But our operations continued to go on even during the pandemic, because we provide flavour and fragrance to all the essential industries. You need flavours for the Food and beverage industry. For Pharma and medicines, you need flavours. Even the hand washes and sanitisers required fragrances. We needed to run our operations to provide the fragrances to these critical industries. We didn’t stop our factories during the lockdowns. They were closed for only one or two days in the beginning, until permission came from the government.

We rolled out the vaccines programme for the employees and their families at the company’s cost. We even ran camps in the nearby villages to provide care and support. We supplied thousands of food packets, masks, sanitisers, and many essential products to different places in Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Daman, to help the community in locations where we had our setup. We even gave Dialysis machines, oximeters and oxygen concentrators to many NGOs. That was our commitment.

CC: There is a perception that HR is more policy-oriented than people-oriented. Do you think, post pandemic, that the empathetic side of HR is more in focus?

It depends on the company culture and leadership. At Givaudan, I am part of the South Asia management committee, along with business head, operations head and finance head. We discus all the business issues and people issues together, and we work with each other and collaborate with them. We are a close and trusted partner for the business.

CC: You have a long and storied career. What are some initiatives you have taken that you are very proud of.

My work at Pepsico is about how to upskill the complete workforce, and make them agile as well as the best performing team. I remember Frito-lay division of Pepsico. We were setting up the Kolkata plant. There is a whole scale up of getting the workforce and training them and making them very agile. A lot of work was undertaken around that and that factory at that time was supplying 40 per cent of the total Lays supply in the country.

Another thing I am proud of is adopting a village near Kolkata, which had 1000+ HIV positive people. We gave them food, nutrition, education for their children, and employment skills to their spouses to make them self -employed. That work ran for 3-4 years, and then we took it to the next level called the Employee Participation Programme. Whatever the employee would contribute, the company would contribute the same money. That was a very sustainable programme, and this work gave me an opportunity to work on a global project, and I met the then CEO, Indra Nooyi.

In my current company, we are going through a lot of change and transformation. In the last three years, a lot of work is happening. We have moved to the shared services mode.

We have done a multiple restructuring drive to make the whole go-to-market more agile. We have also taken over Naturix, a French company, and integrated it with our company. The growth journey of Givaudan is impressive, and we are working with our customers to be their partner of choice in supporting them with their flavour and fragrance needs.

"You don’t want people to travel four hours to reach to and fro from work. If your productivity isn’t compromised, if people are committed, if they are delivering what you need from them, it is okay to give that flexibility to people."

CC: You’ve worked across the world. How different are the best practices in India as compared with the rest of the world?

if you see the industry, it is catching up now. Most companies in India, and I am speaking from the FMCG perspective, are not that far from the best practices globally. You take the name of any Indian FMCG company. They have all the practices, from recruitment, onboarding, performance, potential, engagement-all the metrics are good. I see that the companies are also getting into automation, SAP and other things. As my own company, we are on par with Global 50 or Global 100 in terms of all the HR lifecycle. If we talk about Givaudan, our model is more into HR-partnering. All the transactional work has gone to the shared services, and HR is doing business partnering in terms of managing talent, managing succession, leadership development, building culture, and how to make the organisation more effective for tomorrow and more future fit.

CC: Apart from essential industries, all other industries, for the most part, had work from home. Yours’s didn’t’. Was there some resentment among the employees?

I wrote an article on the same topic. As with any other company, we also adopted Work-From-Home (WFH). We only needed to run operations and R&D physically, but the rest of the support functions, like HR, IT, Sales and Finance were given WFH during the pandemic. Post pandemic, we are flexible with work timings. We are allowing them to work from home one or two days a week. Globally, we have rolled out the flexi-work arrangement guidelines, which many countries have adopted, and which allow one to two days WFH flexibility. This is the need of the hour.

You don’t want people to travel four hours to reach to and fro from work. If your productivity isn’t compromised, if people are committed, if they are delivering what you need from them, it is okay to give that flexibility to people. Otherwise tomorrow you won’t be able to attract or retain or engage the right talent. It is the right thing to do, and we are doing so.

CC: Are you able to strike the right work-life balance?

I don’t call it work-life balance. I call it work-life harmony. It is largely driven by the person themselves. I find no challenge there. It is all about how you plan your day, how you plan your week or month, which one you are most passionate about, and you are driving it. If I love my job, I don’t mind working a couple of hours extra, and I don’t think the environment is such that I feel pressured to work in the evening or late hours.

CC: You visit a lot of educational institutes. Do you perceive a gap between the output of the Indian educational system and the needs of the industry, and if so, what can be done to bridge this perceived gap?

I was listening to a speaker from Australia recently, and in one of his talks the topic of education of India came up. Historically, we all have studied from degrees and knowledge, but the practical part was missing, which is much better in the US and Europe. They put more emphasis on case studies and practical knowledge, and they focus on internships. In India, largely, this was missing. But in the last decade, it is picking up. Many universities are now emphasising on internships in the industry, and the interface of academia and the industry is becoming more engaging. This is the right thing that is happening. I still feel that there is more need for students to be in the industry, or like we see in the US, going for a part time job. The more you do it, the more you will learn it. The new education policy of the Government of India is doing exactly this. It is promoting more skill, more exposure, which is needed more now than ever before. We are going in the right direction, but there needs to be much more work that needs to be done by Universities to push students more towards the practical aspects of the knowledge they are learning.

The placement model of India has changed too. If you see, industries now don’t go to students for final year placements only. They go for summer interns, test them for 3-4 months, if they like them, they engage with the student and place them. The final placement is happening in the first year during the summer placement itself. Otherwise, in the traditional way, it is difficult for companies to assess candidates just through a couple of rounds.

"I don’t call it work-life balance. I call it worklife harmony. It is largely driven by the person themselves. I find no challenge there. It is all about how you plan your day"

CC: Students are starting their careers at an unprecedented time. We are seeing inflation, an economy hit by recession, and large scale unemployment. What advice would you give to students in this situation?

The pandemic is almost over. We are now permitted to travel without masks, and I hope it will taper down even further. If you look at the unemployment rate, which went to double digits during the pandemic, now it is back to approximately 8 per cent. Mostly, all sectors are back in action. The GDP of Q1 is 13.5%. All sectors are optimistic about the coming quarters. The IT companies are scaling up, Fintech, ecommerce and startups, all are gearing up for a boost in their business. There is a lot of opportunity for students to be a part of this workforce.

CC: Givaudan is into manufacturing. Traditionally, manufacturing has been a male dominated domain. Do you feel that there is sufficient female participation in your workforce, and if not, what are the steps you are taking to increase participation?

We are calling it better balance. Our company is driving better balance, which means more female participation in the workforce. In India, our female workforce comprises 26 per cent of our total workforce, which is almost proportional to the total women’s participation percentage in the country’s workforce. We are looking, over the next 10 years, to take it close to equal. There is top level management focus on hiring more diverse candidates, grooming female talent for leadership roles and also grooming the high-growth market talent into the leadership goals. Out of our new hires, 30-40 per cent are female hires. For roles that need to be replaced, we are trying actively to hire a competent female leader. After I joined, we have set up a D&I council of India, which is doing a lot of work around diversity, inclusion, workplace bias and getting more opportunities for specially-abled individuals.

CC: Is HR looking for different skills in candidates post pandemic?

From my perspective, in our industry, we are looking for talent which is more agile. When I say agile, I mean agility in dealing with people and dealing with change. Pandemics, floods, or any crisis may come tomorrow. As a talent, are you willing to learn the new ways of working? New processes, new technologies, new automations. We are looking if the talent is willing to learn faster, and unlearn the past, and adapt themselves. In the middle and top management, we are looking at new qualities in leadership. Are you empathetic, are you able to engage and connect with people? Can you drive a team which is geographically dispersed? As a leader, are you able to connect, inspire and engage with people?

We are doing a global mentoring programme. We are taking the internal talent and senior leadership people and coaching them in the new way of working.

CC: What is your idea of relaxation?

I like to go for jog. I do Yoga. I also listen to music. I love reading motivational books. But most of all, I love to spend some quality time with my daughter.

CC: What is your philosophy of life?

Keep learning and adapting to the needs. Contribute to the industry, society and the next generation, and lead your life happily. Travel the world, meet people, and learn about cultures.