Speaker: Mr. Surya Prakash Mohapatra, Global Head of Talent Transformation at Wipro BPS

Interviewed by: Mr. Ashish Sahu, Vice President Training, Amity Institute of Training & Development

Mr. Surya Prakash Mohapatra is currently the Global Head of Talent Transformation at Wipro BPS and has over 20 years of experience in various leadership roles in several leading IT (Information Technology) and ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) organisations. Before joining Wipro, he had worked with HP (Hewlett Packard) Microland, FirstRing, Computer Garage and a few other organisations and he is such a veteran in L&D and has extensive experience in setting up and running L&D functions for organisations of India and international locations. He has set up the global training function for Wipro BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) which spanned across 10 locations in Brazil, Mexico, Romania, Poland, China, and India, He also led leadership development and capability development building and talent management efforts in various organisations. He was also instrumental in setting up the Management Academy and Domain Gurukul in Wipro BPO. Mr. Surya brings with him vast experience in setting up Knowledge Centres of Excellence in various domains, defining and implementing training models for Rural BPO, Tier-III BPO etc.

Welcome to today’s podcast where we’re going to get into an important conversation in relation to the rapidly changing role of HR professionals in today’s fast-moving world. Today, we are going to step into a world where HR is not limited to payroll processing and filling vacant positions but actual people planning that can be aligned with organisational objectives.

We’re going to be talking to you about how organisations can bring in and retain the right people, and also help them grow and develop as well. From adaptive learning strategies and the power of technology- AI and analytics-to precision in upskilling and reskilling, here’s how HR is at the edge of driving better success through smarter talent management. So, whether you are an HR professional, a leader, or merely interested in how companies are approaching the future of work, this conversation is sure to be packed with insights that you won’t want to miss. Let’s get started!

Q. How to develop an organisation with the future of work mindset which is more resilient coping with uncertain times and more adaptable or able to adapt and thrive I would say?

Ans: When you are talking about how to develop organisations for the future of work that are resilient. I think one thing that we should understand before talking about it is, what is the future of work going to look like. The future of work is going to be interesting. And then some of it is already here today, started happening. So, in the future of work, we will see technology playing a dominant role in everything that we do, in `what businesses organisations do, we will see the workplace look quite different.

We are going to talk about hybrid workplaces in the future. A hybrid workplace is a distributed workplace, where people some people will be working at the workplace, some would be working from their homes, some will be coming to office few days a week or a month and some people will be in various parts of the globe. It is not just going to be the hybrid workplace; it is also going to be a hybrid workforce. We will see all kinds of people in the workforce composition. We will see contract employees, will see full-time employees, part-time employees, will see Gig workers, will see freelancers, we will see people working multiple employees at the same time. The concept of nine to six offices has already gone away, I think the pandemic has expedited that change. And people will be on the go, they will be working all the time, they will be working while they are on the go, they could be working from anywhere. And a few other interesting kinds of stuff we will see at the workplace. We will see the coexistence of men and machines in the same workplace. While in the past we saw people. Today we will see people working side by side, alongside machines in the same workflow.

So, supervisors are going to be challenged to figure out how to give instructions to people and how to give instructions to machines. The machine works 365 days a year, 30 days a month, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, men and women work for eight hours a day, five days a week, and so on. So how do you do the balancing act? That is going to be an interesting thing in future. So, these are some of the things that we will start seeing in future. And in Future of Work, as knowledge is going to be the dominant player, we will see innovative technologies, we will see technologies replacing human beings all the time or replacing the work that human beings are doing. So, in a scenario like this organisations, industries will struggle to survive unless they innovate, unless they keep thinking, unless they keep learning all the time, they will find it difficult to survive. So, during change, in a very volatile environment where things are changing all the time. It requires a tremendous amount of resilience to stay on foot and survive. When we think about the pandemic. The biggest challenge organisations have, how to bounce back from this crisis, and stay alive and not just stay alive but also thrive amid everything that is going on. So, I think the biggest ask for organisations is to find out their purpose. It is a sense that will drive.

Q. Now in the process of adapting to this changing reality, every process function and role will be reimagined fundamentally changing the three key critical aspects what you were just mentioning is one is the future of work. The second is workforce and the workspace where we talk about hybrid workplace. So, can you elaborate further on this, what is your viewpoint on these three aspects, how do they integrate? I mean, future of work, workforce, and workspace, all the three. In terms of futuristic if you look at five years from now.

Ans: It is an ever-changing equation they will keep changing all the time. And I think what will be interesting to see is while the nature of work is changing, and in some cases, we will see that work itself is disappearing. For example, if I take the example of driving as we see support, or as a job, tomorrow as driverless cars coming in, driving will disappear. You do not need drivers to drive cars anymore.

So, work we will continue to change, it eliminated, new work will emerge. And work can happen anywhere, it can happen at the workplace, it can happen virtually it can happen from people’s homes, and so on. And the workforce is going to be very dynamic, the workforce will continue to evolve. And that is where you mentioned something particularly important, now is a workforce going to reimagine and rethink. That is going to be the challenge. So, in every function of every team, every individual will have to reimagine their role. They will have to reimagine their future. So, for example as an L&D practitioner. I would urge all L&D practitioners to reimagine their role as Performance Consultants as Business Partners. I would like them to reimagine themselves as members, or as entrepreneurs running a start-up while organisations would like to cut down costs. You really must look at yourself as a lean, mean fighting machine, how you can contribute value to the organisation, how can you deliver ROI (return on investment) for every program that you run. So, we will have to reimagine our role. For example, during the pandemic the cloth manufacturing companies, started manufacturing masks, automobile companies started manufacturing ventilators. So, a lot of reimagination happened they really relooked at themselves and reimagine themselves and then say hey, we were known for creating something but now in a new context will have to real reimagine ourselves.

Q. How can an organisation culture of such sorts balance all work-life, flexibility, opportunity, and growth at the same time?

Ans: There are a lot of interesting things that are happening today, so the concept of work-life balance is becoming slightly outdated and now we are talking about life integration. But most executives working from home today, then their work and life, have already been integrated. Now, how do you build an inclusive culture that is a great question. I think what will happen during the change, which is very radical, an environment which is volatile and ambiguous, some people will be ahead of the curve, they will be thinking far ahead, they will be reimagining, they will the change-makers. They will move fast. They will be thriving. And some will be surviving. They will adapt to the change quickly they will follow the leaders, when they see that change is coming, they will start embracing change and so on, they will survive. And then some would find it difficult to change. For example, when the pandemic hit us badly, many people are waiting for a pandemic to get over and then they were saying hey it is another two months, one month, three months and it will be all over and then we will be back to the old way of doing things. But the reality is that is not what happened again.

It is a new world that we are talking about a new norm. So, some people will still struggle to adapt to the change and then keep pace with the change. But in organisations, we need everybody. And we need to encourage and promote people who are the changemakers and allow them to challenge, so that they can innovate, rethink, and then take the organisation forward their career forward and then we will have to help the people who are good at adapting to the change, embracing change, and moving forward. We will also have to support the people who are struggling. That is why inclusion is important. We cannot say that the changemakers will thrive, and those who cannot keep pace with change will perish. Then we do not need HR, HR must play that inclusive role, HR will have to support people, people who cannot keep pace with change will require help. They will require additional reskilling. they will require upskilling they will require counselling and they will require support. And not just those people, I think within the organisation, people should get their own pace, who have their work style and preferences, who have their struggles, trials, and tribulations. We will have to make sure that they stand up and they enable people who are thrivers who are changemakers to flourish.

Q. How do organisations rethink their existing processes and hierarchies also to allow flexibility and agile working? Now this word agility is something which everybody is talking about these days. So how do you see the Agile working and renewed hierarchies and processes post-pandemic?

Ans: We need to relook at the hierarchies, the processes, the structures, the policies. everything needs to be relooked, I think, without getting into the details of the changes, I can talk about the fundamental pillars such as structures, organisation structures, processes, policies, which drives the working, ease of doing business, empowerment, trust, collaboration, and so on. The processes and policies are too bureaucratic, such organisations will not survive. They will not thrive in this future work scenario. If you have processes that require multiple layers of approvals for a small expenditure, then you are not creating an environment of trust and empowerment.

There is an organisation that allows the employees to fly any class if they want to fly business class, they can fly. They can choose the airline they want to fly. They have given that kind of autonomy to people and assigned to hold the people accountable. They say each team each department is responsible for maintaining that profitability. We will not ask you to explain why you are spending so much on travel why are you spending so much on the advertisement, but you need to make sure that you meet your revenue goals, profitably goals. So, if you empower people, they will do their best, they will become responsible. People are always responsible. So, I think in an environment like this, the fundamental principles of a structure, processes, policies need to be empowerment, trust, convenience, ease of working, ease of doing business, and so on. Structures, processes, policies that hinder, all of this will not help organisations, organisations which have the right structures, hierarchies’ principles policies, practices which support this, these fundamental principles I talked about will thrive. Each organisation can decide how they want to do it.

Q. We talked about what mindset shift does this represent for the future and how different are these priorities was today, the priorities which we had in the past. Are you seeing some of them started to happen? Some mind shifts which I would like to focus on here like enabling performance or managing performance. That is one. The second is that you know the mindset should be job focused or wellbeing focused. It should be bureaucracy or self-managed team which you have said in the previous discussion, culture and behaviour focused or strategy or goal-focused, people-focused, or technology-focused? So, I think you have spoken about these. So, I just wanted to focus on what mindset shift, we are seeing now, and we will see in the future. In all these five areas?

Ans: I think the two parts to that question, the first part of the question was, what is going to be the role of HR. And how is the HR role going to evolve? Today tomorrow the role of HR is not to be multifarious, versatile. An HR leader will have to be a technology specialist, he or she needs to understand technology very well. He or she needs to understand analytics very well and use data and analytics to interpret insights that he is getting and make sense out of it and take decisions basis data and insights. And he or she must become a good marketing guy so that he can attract talent to the organisation. And not just attract but retain them, keep them engaged, motivated, and inspired.

The HR leader will have to become a finance guy, he must make sure that he or she does everything and then also in a manner where the profitability is not impacted the revenue is not impacted and so on. So, there are multiple roles the HR person is going to play in future. I was addressing a group of students in one conversation. One student told me that I chose it HR because I did not like marketing. I said hey you are in the wrong place. You are a marketing person as an HR leader. So, if you chose HR because you did not like marketing, then you are in the wrong place. Because in future an HR guy must be marketing guy, sales guy, technology guy, and analytics guy, business, and finance guy, and so on. So, I think we will have to wear multiple hats, and we will have to take off one hat out and another depending on where we are on.

Now you gave me some scenarios you talked about whether it is culture strategy, bureaucracy, or government or people-focused, or business focused and so on. Now the reality is both, HR and organisations will have to find the balance. Finding the balance is the key. You cannot be completely tilting towards one side. It is like the pandemic situation where you have a lockdown and no lockdown. If there are no lockdowns people are dying if there are lockdowns people are also dying. They are starving because they are out of jobs, they do not have income. How do you really find that balance? I think the successful line finding the balance, the true balance. That is important; they are not completely tilted on one side. As HR you will have to make sure organises earns its revenues, maintains profitability. At the same time and must make sure people are taken care of, people are given the support they need, people who are struggling, people who have health issues, people who have psychological issues who have nervous breakdowns. They need to be taken care of. So, you must take care of people, you must take care of business. You must take care of both. That is important. It is it cannot be either-or.

Q. What is your people strategy, what kind of talent you recruit and how you manage them? Do you see people strategy as a differentiator for companies? I mean does it make difference. Are there any instances where you have seen differentiated people’s strategies contributing to the impact of the company or industry?

Ans: People strategy is important. It is a key differentiator. And because today we are living in a knowledge economy, where 90% of what we see in organisations is knowledge. The rest 10% could be buildings machinery etc. So, it is in a knowledge economy human capital is extremely critical and the success of organisations depends on the cumulative knowledge of the organisation and the organisation’s ability to unleash that knowledge. So, there was a McKinsey report recently in a study that was carried out. It says that situations like pandemics, another black swan event put a lot of pressure on organisations. And there is pressure to innovate, there is pressure on them to automate, there is pressure on them to kind of drive innovative programs and so on. And during chaos organisations struggle to figure out how to respond to these changes that they see around them. And the real success lies in the reaction time. How quickly do organisations respond to the changes?

So pandemic situation COVID-19 challenged many paradigms but organisations which responded quickly, I think, survived. And many of them thrived and they became more profitable than they used to be before the pandemic situation. So, what is important for organisations and for individuals to understand is to have a robust talent strategy that is built around knowledge, and why I talked about change and the ability to respond to the change because it depends on the ability, the collective capability of the organisation to respond to the change. So, when the external environment changing the internal environment also must change, but that is not enough. The internal environment must change faster than the external environment. It must survive and thrive. We talk about the GAFA companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and so on. They are the organisations that have demonstrated that they can pre-empt change, they can see change before it comes, and they take advantage of that. And they become the front runners. So, when during volatility, ambiguity they thrive because they can see change coming and they are better prepared to deal with the change not just to deal with the change but to sometimes to drive the change themselves. They become change-makers. So, then what is the crux of that, the crux of that is people talent. You do not have the right talent then you will not be able to respond to the changes it is it boils down to capability. So, talent strategy is important.

So, in today’s world, there is an important thing that we always talk about there is a talent war, the war for talent. During the war for talent, organisations need to have a robust talent strategy otherwise they will lose the war for talent. They will lose to the competition. So, it is particularly important that organisations need to have a very robust people strategy and talent strategy at the core. People are at the core of everything that an organisation does, and that is important. How do we attract the right talent? How do you retain them, how do you develop them, how do you grow them, how to provide them career opportunities? These need to be fundamentals of any business strategy. People at the core of the strategy is important.

Q. You talked about like knowledge economy and we are talking about attracting talent we are talking about retaining talent. And there the role of HR becomes extremely critical. And the one thing which we are being a learning and development organisation where we are working with various organisations as a knowledge partner. And one thing which has come out very strongly is the concept of BEI (Behavioural Event Interview) interviewing skills which is Behavioural Event Interviewing Skills which is very-very important, and we are working with a couple of organisations regarding this. It is emerging and we have experts who have researched for 10 years or so in this technique. And it is extraordinarily strong because until and unless you can attract the right kind of talent, retaining them, nurturing them becomes much more difficult. And like you had mentioned earlier, and we talk about it later also about the role of re-skilling.

Ans: Can I add something which I missed mentioning in that. While it is important to have a robust strategy to attract talent and then develop and grow them etc, what is also important is to create an ecosystem where they can thrive. We need to create a culture where people are not afraid of making mistakes. They are encouraged to experiment try out new things, their growth mindset is encouraged. That is important.

Some organisations spent millions of dollars and getting immense talent to the organisation, but they do not know how to take care of that. And they fail. Those the talent who comes in, the people who come in either become unproductive, get demotivated, and they quit after some time. So, I think creating the right ecosystem and culture is also equally important as part of this people strategy.

Q. It is especially important that once we track the right talent, how do you groom them to take out the best potential is very-very critical and very-very important? I am agreed with what you rightly said.

Ans: There was a discussion with Mr. Ratan Tata, they were talking about a manager, and his manager was being reviewed and there were some performance issues with that manager and a senior executive mentioned to Ratan Tata. Sir, it is a skill issue. And Mr. Tata replied, is it a skill issue or a grooming issue, a senior executive may not have an answer.

Q. How do you accelerate individuals learning curves, so that they can become much more productive? So, we are talking about grooming as you said you are grooming about a conducive environment. So how do we improve the learning curve and make them much more productive, particularly in the post-pandemic era?

Ans: So earlier at the workplace, people were sitting in front of the manager, the manager used to allocate work. So, the manager had an innovative idea of who is productive, who is efficient, who is producing what, he or she is expected to produce but today managers are concerned because people are in a distributed environment. So, I think productivity has become a matter of concern. But I think the way to address that is going to be giving them the right opportunity and empowering people.

So, managers need to stop micromanaging they should stop looking over somebody’s shoulders to figure out how much progress he or she has made. Managers will have to manage by objectives and managed by outcomes, that is the only way to drive productivity. The second thing is how do you have people come across the learning curve quickly, especially people who are not in a classroom, not in a production environment that they can build an SME and today there are technologies which have evolved. Now we come to adapting the strategy when I talk about adaptive learning which is a new concept that is emerging. Adaptive learning adapts to the learning style of the learner. If I am a quick learner. It adopts a style it starts pushing more content to me. It knows that I am moving faster. If somebody is a slow learner. It gives that learner the space. It gives the learner more time to learn.

In a physical classroom environment that does not happen because every individual gets similar treatment by the instructor or the trainer. Adaptive Learning Technologies today are helping organisations drive speed to proficiency. Speed to proficiency is challenging, how can new people become as productive as the existing staff.

I answered my question. But concisely, I wanted to say that adaptive learning strategies today are driving speed to proficiency and productivity.

Q. How do organisations leverage artificial intelligence and analytics to infer current skill levels and provide personalized learning experiences for every employee like fostering a culture of perpetual learning that rewards continual skills illustrious career and learning paths, if I must see from the perspective of the adaptive learning strategies?

Ans: This is a great question. So how are we using technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) analytics etc to drive personalized learning? I think what I said earlier is linked to that question that you are asking me. So, I talk about something remarkably interesting. I would use this metaphor, I say “buying your sandwich” so when we walk into a subway outlet. The guide there would ask you to choose your bread, choose your cheese. choose your sauce and at the end of it, you come back with your sandwich. Every everybody who walks into the same outlet walks away with a different sandwich highly personalized customized. Learning an organisation must become like that. Learners should be able to choose their sandwich and I say chose their sandwich I mean they should choose their learning path. Learners should understand what their career aspirations are, what is their calling. The learning system which is powered by AI and analytics should enable that. It should push content to me, basis my aspirations and interests and styles like I go to a subway and then choose my sandwich and I make my sandwich. I should be able to create my learning path using my LMS which is powered by AI and analytics. I use another example, often in conversations like this.

Today when we switch on our smartphone, we keep getting notifications, it says the moment of switch on it says 30 WhatsApp messages waiting for you, 20 messages on Facebook Messenger waiting for you, it says that this is a news item that you may be interested in and so on. So, in the good old days, people used to go and look for content. They were going out to find content. Today content finds you. Content comes after you. Messages come and tell you hey messages waiting for you. Hey, you may be interested in this. That is how learning must evolve. Learning must evolve to that level of personalization when I switch on log into my learning management system, it should so tell me, Mr. Mohapatra, we think you are interested in this model. This is all that you have been reading all these days we think you will be interested in reading this book.

We think that you will be interested in this training module. That is how content should find the learner. In the past learner used to try and find content. It has reversed. That is how I see AI and analytics driving personalization.

Q. We have designed very specialized programs which we call performance enablement solutions which are bite-size programs we run 90-minute workshops every week which is very-very popular among the corporates, they take care of these things and upscaling well-being, performance enablement. How do you use these in rescaling and upskilling and enabling the performance of the employees as an HR person?

Ans: I think all upscaling rescaling now needs to be relevant. We should teach people what they exactly need to learn. I do not think we should spend time teaching people nicely to know stuff that is anyway available on YouTube and Google and all that people can figure out. Our strategy should be very precise. We need a precision strategy where we exactly hit a nail on his head. That is important. So, making learning interventions razor-sharp and making it very-very relevant to the needs of the job or the new job that the person is going to pick up. University, Educational Institutions have professional courses which run for years together. But people are losing jobs at the workplace. And they are not expected to come into a new university or a B School to enrol for a two-year program and then go back and get a job.

They do not have the time, especially people who are suffering from a midlife crisis, who are in the 40s, 30s late 30s, early 40s mid-40s. They cannot step out with so many commitments, financial commitments and then do a two-year course. Our education needs to become more modular. I am happy to hear that you have 90-minute workshops. They need modules like this, extremely focused razor-sharp truly relevant teaching them practical skills, that is the need of the hour. Organisations need to drive that. Organisations need to engage in such programs and their curriculum really must become bite-size, microlearning, available on-demand, map to people and their roles that they are performing today, or they are going to perform tomorrow, is important. Another important aspect is outplacement, out skilling, we talked about rescaling, upscaling, we also need to talk about out skilling, where organisation not only should prepare their people for new roles within the organisation. Some people will not find opportunities within the organisation because of whatever reasons.

They have the responsibility of skilling them, providing they do not work outside. It is not enough to tell them Hey you worked here for so many years, now your skills are not relevant, we tried to find a job for you we have not found a suitable opportunity for you, this is the notice period you find a job. It is not enough. Organisations have a moral commitment to people who have worked with them for a longer period. Then it will be more important to provide them with the skilling so that they find opportunities outside.

Q. What will be the role of outsourcing for HR functions in learning and development like as you said that the capability is not always within the organisation. I mean this is something of our interest, how often do you think that for L&D functions outsourcing is there or it should be done?

Ans: Outsourcing will be in the back end. Organisations will not start with this. Organisations will first figure out what they can eliminate but what they no longer need to do. After eliminating what they find, they still have had to do a few things. The second question they will ask is can we automate these things. And if they find opportunities to automate those tasks, they will do that.

So, they will eliminate them they will automate. Then what cannot be automated, will be outsourced, except the core. Outsourcing will be at the end of the spectrum. It will start with elimination, automation, and outsourcing. Everything that is non-core, in my view, will be either automated or outsourced both in HR and L&D and it is not new it has started happening.

Q. What will be some of the key themes on organisation culture that IT sector will need to embrace in the future. Where are we now on these themes?

Ans: The themes of organisation culture, I think we have talked about some of the discussion during the discussion. We have talked about inclusiveness, we talked about collaboration, we talked about customer-centricity, organisations, and individuals will have to demonstrate a great amount of ownership, a sense of accountability, respect for each other. These are going to be the hallmarks of the Organisation culture, and this is extremely important for organisations to focus on them because all of us know there is an incredibly famous saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” So, if we want, we need to inculcate the right culture.

Culture is a sum of what you get to see in the organisation, the way people talk, the way people engage with each other the way people interact with the customers, with their suppliers, their behaviours, their demeanours, habits, all this form the culture of an organisation. And the challenge with culture is if your culture is non-responsive for a guy who comes from outside, who has a great deal of responsiveness and accountability. If he or she gets into the organisation and then figures out that people are not responsive, even that person will also transition to the culture that is prevalent in your organisation.

So, I think bad culture and a good culture both are learning opportunities. We will have to walk the talk. And everybody else will have to consistently demonstrate. The leaders will have to demonstrate, and then if they do the others will also start demonstrating.

Q. The final three things which you would like to tell the audience, as far as the Rethinking role of HR is concerned?

Ans: Today we are living in a world where knowledge is evolving amazingly fast. The knowledge that we acquired in the past in our schools, colleges, universities, we are not using at the workplace today. The knowledge that we need, we shall need tomorrow, does not even exist today, that knowledge, must be invented. It must emerge. So, all of us need to become lifelong learners. That is the message that I would like to leave with you is to invest in yourself and be a lifelong learner. That will take you far in life and your career.