January 6, 2025, About: Mr. Anand Pejawar is an industry veteran with over 37 years of professional experience with BFSI Industry. His major experience ranges for about 19 years in Life Insurance and 14 years with the Banking Industry. He has been instrumental in setting up the most productive integrated model of Bank Insurance and Micro Insurance in SBI Life Insurance which is today considered as a trendsetter in the sector. He has also represented Life Insurance sector in various committees formed by Government of India as well as by IRDI and RBI from time to time. He is currently handling the entire Operations, Information Technology, and International Business for SBI Life Insurance Company Limited. As far as his other credentials are concerned, he has also completed MDP programs from IIM Kolkata, ISB Hyderabad and is also the alumni of Columbia Business School, Manhattan, New York. Q. Where is your organisation in the digital transformation journey? What is the vision of SBI Life and what desired future state it wants to achieve, how is SBI Life communicating the vision objectives to the employees making seamless for everyone to embrace the change? Ans: Coming to today's question of digital transformation journey especially for my Company which I represent, which is SBI Life Insurance Company Limited. SBI Life Insurance started operations way back in 2001 so typically we have completed 20 years of operation in the Country in the private sector life insurance business. We are into the business of life insurance. We started as a subsidy of SBI and BNP Paribas Cardif. SBI was holding 74% stake and BNP Paribas was holding 26% stake. That's the way how the Company started and in 2017, the Company went public, and we are today a listed Company as far as the status of the Company is concerned and SBI still holds a majority stake in the Organisation. We have a lot of foreign institutional investors who have been our equity holders from time to time. Now, coming to your question about the journey of digital transformation with SBI Life. In SBI Life we understood the terminology digital transformation quite early and way back in 2017; to be precise we looked at how we could transform the various processes and systems of the company using latest digital technology. Now one thing what we found at that point of time was lot of people thought that digital means just converting the existing processes that you have into a digital format and that they said we are digital. Q. How you can better them, how you can improve the user experience and when I say user experience the various stakeholders that are there for the organisation typically for a life insurance Company; we have four major stakeholders, but customer obviously is the king so he is the centre of everything but then you have distributors as you all know in India still life insurance Company is distributed face to face to a large extent and I will come to you why I say to a large extent, so you have the distributors then you have the employees because they after all are the ones who run the organisation and deliver the service that is required and last but not the least the regulator. Ans: So, when we look at digital transformation, we typically look at all these four stakeholders that are there and based on this, the vision of SBI Life of on the digital transformation is, how can SBI Life be the preferred life insurance for the people of India? As I said, we are a subsidy of SBI. SBI is a banker to every Indian; so, naturally, the corollary goes that, can SBI Life be an Insurer to every Indian; can we offer insurance policies to every person in India who's there and that's how we have looked at the digital journey starting from 2017? Now, the question is how does SBI Life communicate the vision, objectives; the very simple thing is that this whole thing started from the thought process as I just explained to you why we wanted to move into digital transformation. State Bank of India, who was a primary distributor of insurance for us; almost 65 to 68 percent of the business is generated from State Bank of India and associate banks now, which are merged into State Bank of India and also the rural regional rural banks sponsored by SBI. So, we have 17 of them, so totally about 24,700 branches plus 7500 of the RRBs which are there. That's the entire distribution map only of bank assurance channel if I look at it. And the second, is the Tied Agency; we also have one of the most productive Tied Agency in the private sector life insurance companies; almost about lakh and sixty thousand distributors of life insurance who are tied agents with us. And if we have to look at this mass and how do we bring them through digital medium in an ecosystem that can help sourcing of the business, processing of the sourced business, issuing the business and most importantly servicing of the business. So, these are the four steps that probably we looked at, concentrated in the digital transformation that we looked at. Now, how did we go about doing this change? I think, today, I don't say this but there are a lot of studies which have happened including Limra which is the Life Insurance Management Research Association of USA who came down and did a study in our office and SBI life in 2017, set some unique concept called Digilab. Digilab is nothing but a digital laboratory where SBI Life runs a particular process, and the process is something what we called as ETPR. ‘E’ for ‘Evaluation’ of the technology so any technology which comes and which we see may be used in insurance, not used in insurance, used in some other field we try and evaluate this technology in the Digilab and it's an in-house in-built Digilab, it's not an outsourced one. So, we evaluate the technology with us and find out whether this technology can help the life insurance business that we are into and help us in some way to either reduce the TAT, improve services, give a much better user experience, have cost effectiveness so there are about five to six parameters that we look at whether this technology satisfies those things. If it happens then we move to the next stage which is the testing stage. ‘T’ is for ‘Testing’. Here we have a small team which works on this technology and sees where it can be used, which function, whether it is front and sales whether it is mid-office, whether it is back office, whether it is servicing, where this technology can be made use of. We have an IT champion; we have a business champion and then we create a small prototype. Next, ‘P’ stands for ‘Prototype’. So, we create a small prototype to see how it works and what kind of result do we get out of this and once we are satisfied that this prototype gives us the desired results that we are looking out for what we had in mind before evaluating this particular technology then we do a rollout throughout the company. So, this is the ETPR Methodology of Digilab that we have introduced in 2017 and friends I am very happy to say that as on date, almost 17 technologies have been rolled out in the organisation and another similar number are on an evaluation testing prototype stage where we are likely to roll it out very soon, very happy that this is something which the organisation gave us a free hand to do it, we could get the collaborative effort of all the people involved IT, Operations and all the teams which are working into it and bring it. So, what we have done in digital transformation is a complete collaborative effort in the Digilab that is bringing up the entire change which is today probably a lot of people are telling us that SBI Life stands at the forefront of digital transformation as far as life insurance business is concerned. Q. Now, in today's network based digital organisations are managed and structured uniquely than conventional businesses as you are talking about that you have a system where you evaluate, you test, so what is the right approach and mindset of top management to design manage and grow a digitally driven business to some extent you have explained me something but I would like to know more than what is the mindset of the top management in dealing with ‘being a leader’ and how do you take it forward? What is the road map of this digital transformation? Ans: When we started in 2017, we never thought we would be leaders or we want to be number one, that was never the vision. When we started in 2017, the focus was on how can I improve the customer experience? Life insurance is the only product I think which is with any person who has brought it and if he has bought the right product in the right manner, I think, this is one of the financial products which is for the longest tenure. Even I think fixed deposits are available only up to 10 years. Here you have life insurance policies ranging from 20 to 25 years, some of them issue whole life policies. So, we went one step backward. How do I create that customer satisfaction and that satisfaction leading to customer delight and that took such a long period? Holding on to customers’ likes or dislikes, holding on to the customer's viewpoint for such a long period itself is a big, big challenge and that's where we found that let's try and see how we can work. As rightly said by you, most of the organisations which are there have typical silos which have created over a period of time, which are these traditional structures. I am not saying they are right or wrong; just understand, when I am saying these things, but these are which are there right from beginning so every big organisation has an IT department which is there to put the IT as major function but what we did here is instead of carving out, instead of creating a separate digital vertical and then putting it against or either parallel to IT department, what we did as the first thought at the top management was that we created a technology and innovation vertical within IT. Because whatever we may do in digital, it finally has to integrate with my main systems, the main IP systems which are there. So, the people working on digital must have a clear vision, clear idea of what is available on the main systems which are there on which the company runs; for example, in an insurance company it is the policy management system which is the heart of the entire organisation, now if I have to do huge amount of digital transformation I cannot go and change the main system or the core system which is there, which we call it as PMS ‘Policy Management System’, so I need to create the digital transformation on the periphery of this particular thing. Q. Why is digital transformation required, is it because everybody else is doing it we should do it or is there some logic, some view, some thinking on the digital transformation that is required, and that was a very-very important thing that we took up in the beginning? We wanted to completely change the customer experience by bringing in the huge technological innovations that are available in the universe. How can that be done? There are various methods of doing it; the most commonly used method is Agile approach. Ans: Yes, I absolutely agree with Agile, we came up with something called ‘Phoenix Agile’ approach of going ahead, what is ‘Phoenix Agile’, we first identified the pain points which we felt are there in the organisation as far as digital transformation skills. How do we look at these pain points and how do we come out with quick logical scalable Agile kind of solutions to these pain points? For example, all of you know that Worldwide, when there is a study done on why people don't buy life insurance on their own, one of the big things that we found was that the buying process is very, very cumbersome. You need to fill up a 12, 14, 16-page proposal form attach so many documents along with it, do so many things with it, it's too cumbersome. I would probably do 10 things more than buying a life insurance. So, if I look at it from a customer side, how can this digital transformation change the entire buying methodology of the customer? How can it make it simpler; how can it make it more Agile while there are so many things available in the financial ecosystem of that person? Can these things be easily integrated with the permission of the customer and make this entire journey which the customer felt was cumbersome into a very simple process on a digital platform? That was the thought process which became the second thought process. As I said, there are 24,700 branches of SBI associate banks when it got merged with another 7000 branches of the Regional Rural Banks if physical forms had to move in from these locations and SBI as you all know my dear friends have got branches in Leh, Ladakh. I have got branches in Kanyakumari; branches have grown in Baruch and Kutch right up to Orissa on the other side. So, wherever you go in fact there is a joke almost 13 years I was in Marketing and Sale so when I used to go and market this thing, the people used to joke around that a place might not have a post office but there will definitely be a branch of State Bank. So, if those branches are supposed to generate business and send it to our offices, this required manual movement of these documents obviously when there is a manual movement a lot of dislocation, a lot of things happening, documents getting lost in transit and all this. So, this was the second way how do I create a platform where I get rid of this paperwork and then still make the life simpler for everything, so this is exactly what I meant by ‘Phoenix Agile’? No, I mean, there was a purpose and what was the purpose? Purpose was customer satisfaction, ease of operations and how do you make life simpler for all stakeholders not just the customer the distributor the employees the regulator and still give a better experience to the end user, which is the customer, so that was the whole purpose. Q. I just wanted to know, because as you said the buying process is so cumbersome; there is a distribution channel which is very huge, so, all these are existing conventional processes digitalizing them into digital transformation is a very big challenge and so what is your viewpoint on this how does SBI Life manages this? Digital transformation will always, and I will emphasize on the word ‘always’ disrupt everything whether you like it or not. So, the first thing, I think any organisation when they look at digital transformation is, this is going to completely disrupt my normal way of functioning, that should be the basic underlining principle; otherwise, there is no sensing getting into digital transformation. If I want to just transform my existing physical formats into a digital format, I don't consider that as digitization. Now digital transformation according to me is the disruption of the process starts from the disruption of the existing thought process, everyone in an organisation is used to a particular pattern of working, in digital transformation, this gets disrupted first. So, mentally, the employees must be told to practice that every digital transformation is going to be disruptive and it is going to disrupt the way how we are working today. So, first point I think what we took into consideration was disruption of the thought process itself. I was doing a particular processing of a particular file in this manner now it's completely changed I need to reskill myself to get the whole thing done and that itself becomes a resistance from the employees. So, along with the thought process, I think, making the staff or the stakeholders understand the importance of digital transformation and the benefits that it will give to them is a very, very important. Anyways, this process SBI Life did in a very, very systematic manner throughout the Company. So, the sales guys manage the sales part of it, the operations guys manage the operations part of it, the back-end people started looking at the back-end digital transformation part of it. The second disruption which happens is the process disruption and this again is very, very important. Now, the basic idea of digital transformation is that the process should be faster; there are some legacy processes which are there which takes a lot of time, a lot of duplication, so when we do a digital transformation, we look at it end to end and see what can be knocked off, how the process can be fastened if required shortened but still giving a better experience to the end user. The third and the most important disruption according to me is the system disruption. As I said, today all Companies are computerized; every organisation however big or small is completely computerized now when you go for digital transformation the system changes, the entire ecosystem in the office changes how you are processing a particular life insurance proposal at the beginning of the digital transformation how we are doing it now it's completely different. I will give you a small example about digital transformation in SBI Life and how it actually changed the mindset of the people. Transforming from this big, long proposal form and going and so many information coming and then earlier we used to ask for salary certificates income through KYC certificate, whole lot of documents and in India, a complex Country you know that everybody can't give every document so that's also a fact of life. So, in a digital transformation how do we make the whole process simpler, so we first came out with the platform to source proposals that was the first, because finally the acceptance of this digital transformation to happen from the front which is the sales guy who's bringing business for me. Today he used to go with the bag containing proposal box and different proposal forms for different kinds of policies and all that stuff so ULIP you have a different form, your term you have a different form, endowment you have a different form, so you used to also get worried about how many forms do I carry and what do I do. So, what we first did was we created something called mobile connect; so, today entire sourcing of the business happens on a mobile application of a distributor. Now look at it the very thought that the 12-page form has been converted into an application which is used on a mobile, that thought process is completely different. Secondly, distributors are of different categories; you have tied agents who are distributors, in certain official areas you have 12 standard passes who are distributors may not be knowing how to use this technology in a more effective manner. In India in certain places, we still have 2G, 3G working on so we had a big challenge on how to get into the M-Connect that is there, but I am very happy to tell you that today the entire 99.98 percent and I am not exaggerating is sourced on this M-Connect application. So, whether it's a Regional Rural Bank or whether it is SBI or whether it is any other partner bank or my tied agents, all these people are sourcing policies through this mobile application. Last financial year, which is 2021, as of March 21 we could manage more than 20 lakh proposals on this mobile application and we have gone to such an extent by getting digital transformation that today for certain category of customers, I can issue paperless, pen-less policy. Some of them might not believe some of them might laugh but I can tell you that this is possible because without this M-Connect platform that we had we went and got connected to the financial ecosystem with the permission of the proposal hold up. So, we connected this platform through NSDL for PAN verification; UID now for the Aadhar verification then various credit bureaus getting their credit scores then we went even to IIBI which is Insurance Information Bureau of India which is a repository of the entire insurance policies which are active and there we got that API integration done and today if the person has got information available on these platforms we don't ask for any paper, we neither ask for KYC paper we neither ask for Aadhar number or your financial documents or anything. We have data which flows in on real-time basis in our system and gets done. So just imagine 20 lakh proposal forms coming from all over India in physical format collection is the problem, scanning is a problem, data entry is a problem, processing is a problem, storing is an issue. Today the whole thing has been reduced in a digital format. Q. Even if you scan it the file size is so heavy transmitting that data also takes a lot of time. I would say although as you were talking about the disruption part that how it used to happen 20 Lakh policies and so much of documents now although most insurance customers in India still prefer to purchase from an intermediary wise like an agent, bank, or broker. The evolution of digital sales and service offering is changing the ecosystem of the industry. With the emergence of new technologies insurance sector which is Robo Advisors we have heard of data powered systems and much more. Ans: There are technologies available today which can compress it up to ninety percent; those are good technologies. I will be using a lot of those technologies. Now, the second, is as I said we had distributors in northeast. I have got distributors in Nagaland, Aizawl, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim way down in Kanyakumari in Bharuch and Kutch and here on this side till Bhubaneswar and Orissa and Keonjhar. Just imagine, even if I tell you the names of the kind of population which is there, the kind of people who sell policies there, how do we get the entire information at the same time what is the process where I can enable a sales guy to be up to date in whatever information is required to do a very correct sale that is very important in life insurance, as I said this is one of the longest financial product that is available in the market. So, we created something called smart advisor pool application for the distributor. Again, this is in-house in my Digilab itself no external agency being brought in to develop this. Our own people SBI Life people have developed this in the Digilab, and today entire processing happens on these two applications which are there, and we have put all the required infrastructure security features in place, so, no information of the customer can be stored on the mobile application after it is being fed in it automatically gets deleted and moves into my system. The distributor can in no way can retrieve that data or misuse it. We have MDMs and DLPs which is Mobile Management Systems in place. We have DLPs that is Data Loss Prevention Systems in place, so every possible info security systems have been put in place to ensure that this digital transformation does not allow leakage of data outside the ecosystem and this is all with the approval of the customer. So, today the customer is very happy this year as of March 21 we are the largest company in terms of number of policies issued for last so many years, but we have already exceeded 16.5 lakh active policies which have been issued only in this year of pandemic. It puts SBI Life at the number one position as far as numbers of policies are concerned. So, this is the digital transformation and the thought process that I wanted to share with all of you. Q. How this transition is happening with RoboCops we have heard these terms as you were mentioning is that this is happening 12-page document is compressed to a small file in the mobile system? So how these distributors are coping with it how they are being trained how they are taking this from traditional to more digital means of business? Ans: See, whatever digital assets a Company may introduce, I think, one thing all of us will agree that if the digital assets are not adopted and adopted in the right manner, in the right usage, it's useless. Now, if I look at the sourcing application or the smart advisor, which is an enabler for a sales guy to do the sales, how do I make him use that application? So, what we did was when we created this testing module and the prototype in the Digilab, we actually collected some very good sales people from the bank and from our Tied agency. A group of people from various locations, not only from Bombay, we had some people from all over the place because we needed to also get the right feedback before we rolled it out on a PAN India basis because once you roll it out on a PAN India basis, it's difficult to control certain things. So, we took all the people from PAN India and then we gave them this application and said, please use this application and tell us what it is, you are the champions or the ambassadors of this application. So, look at it first of all we tell them that you are the chosen few to experiment this application you are an ambassador and then you look at it and come back to us with your feedback, if it's a good feedback we will definitely incorporate this in the application. Let me tell you, this played the entire game changer for the Company to use of the distributors. The news spread that this people are being chosen to do that, so people started asking why we are not given, we also want to use create that pull factor because, in life insurance, we are always told that it's a push product nobody goes, and I say I want life insurance. At least in my experience of banking in India overseas wherever I have worked I have never seen anybody going and saying, take my cheque, say of ten thousand rupees I need a life insurance. The agent has to catch the guys at every possible place and that's one of the reasons you spoke about marriages, life insurance agents are never invited for marriages. So, coming back to the point is how do you create that pull factor for adoption of this particular technology. Now, once these small groups of people started giving feedback, we started incorporating the good ones acknowledging the fact that you have given a very good thing, and this has been incorporated the moment we said that, and we released it we found the usage going up because more and more people started using this application. Then we started loading it with more and more features today the smart advisor application that we have developed is like an SBI Life office in a pocket of a distributor. Whatever he wants information about the product, about the process, about the policies, about the proposal, which stage it is, what has happened, renewals not coming, every possible information is available real-time to the distributor. To such an extent when we went and changed my CRM next, the CRM module which we had, we went and changed and introduced a new one, we connected the CRM next with smart advisor, so if you are a customer and you call up my call-centre, the talk between you and the call-centre executive gets noted on CRM and that can be seen by my sales executive. So, if your sales guy is coming to meet you for some work just before starting from home to meet you, he just has to look at it what was the last conversation Mr Ashish Sahu had with my call-centre and what was the commitment given to him, that is available absolute on time online. So, this completely changed the mindset of the user it started using more and more so we could monitor, who is using what is the performance level, where is it dropping, why is it dropping so we also at the back end from the IT side went on improving the infrastructure, improving the back-end support and all that stuff. So, to such an extent where today my advisers whether they are bank employees whether they are Tied agents, Corporate agents, whoever they are, they don't have to even keep their customers phone number in mind, he just has to go and check the renewal status and if the policy is renewed, he has got a small icon of a phone he just clicks that icon and he gets directly connected to his customer, he wants to send some information on his email, there is an email icon he just clicks the email opens up email gets directly connected right you. If the customer has given an option for a WhatsApp communication, because that is mandatory that we get the consent of the customer so that consent gets noted and it is seen on this smart advisor he can also send the communication on WhatsApp. So, whatever greatest developments happening in the ecosystem, we try and bring it up in the smart advisors so today I am sure every advisor before he leaves his house, will look at the smart advisor application to such an extent that if today he is coming to your area to meet you we have given him GSP system location where he can be told how many other customers of his are in that vicinity of two kilometres in case if he wants to meet. So, the moment you enable your guys to use this to make them rely on this more and more, give the right information, I think, the usage goes up drastically and this is something what I think is the magic of adoption, adoption, and adoption. This is the only mantra I would say and the top management driving this entire digital transformation is the only magic that can happen in the system, without this I doubt whether any organisation can claim success in digital transformation. There are huge resistances in the beginning but once you make them understand how it is going to benefit them rather than the organisation, the usage goes up fantastically well that that's my experience in SBI. Q. Adoption is one way you had managed the distributors, identifying the best salespeople, and creating some kind of a competitive synergy among them. As, you said that some people said why we are not involved in this so that is something which actually as you rightly said it's a push market where you have to push the product. So, in this scenario getting involved with distributors is something I think that may be the biggest booster in success of probably SBI Life. Ans: I will just add, I think, the main success of SBI Life in this is, I think, understanding what the requirement of the environment is. We don't develop applications because we want to develop and throw it out in the ecosystem, no, for example as I said if your policy is for 20 years, how do I ensure that you are engaged with SBI life for 20 years. 99 percent of the customers in life insurance have got a big problem if you people don't come to us for renewal, you only contact us during renewal time. Now, how do we ensure that SBI Life is on top of mind of this customer. So, we came out with an application called Smart Care. Right from the time you signed the proposal form, not even your policy is issued I am going one step backward from the time you have signed the proposal form you are asked to download this application on your mobile and register on your registered mobile so what happens is I also look at the security features which I am providing to the customer, I am getting his mobile registered I am sending an OTP on the registered mobile he enters that and then he downloads the Smart Care Application. Now, Smart Care will be with him till the policy matures or the death claim is paid to the customer. Just imagine, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years whole life and today I have created with the help of IT digital operations team an entire ecosystem around the customer to keep him engaged. He can track his proposal. The proposal has gone to the underwriter, underwriter has accepted it, it has been issued, it has gone to my e-repository, so no physical policy to be delivered; it gets into demat format but there is a soft copy available on this Smart Care then at every month we keep on, if he is a unique policy, we keep on giving him the fund information. So whole lot of customer engagement program developed around this application, so the customer keeps on looking at this application at regular basis he is prompted to use that, he is prompted to open up and see what is happening like for example you have the credit policy been declared by Reserve Bank of India small snippets are sent the budget. They are declared snippets that are then sent all these things which are more of a personalized nature in getting created in the system and that makes the customer addicted to this particular app. Today all of us are working on apps, nobody works on big desktops and all that everybody is working, whether it's a banking app, whether it's an insurance app, whether it's a mutual fund app including manage matrimonial apps. Q. What is the emerging trend in customer preference in life insurance industry in India? Ans: I was only saying our bigger challenge earlier was how do you bring all the constituents of the stakeholders to participate in this. One thing which you found very interesting, and I think SBI Life has got a fantastic team of employees whenever you want to bring out an app, you always call for names from all the employees and the kind of response we get is fantastic. We have a difficult time choosing, which one to choose and why but you will be surprised the way these people think about the names, even Smart Care. Why was Smart Care named as smart, why was smart advisor named smart advices, and this was given by employees when we called for these names and said okay, we have come out with an app and we would like to name it, would you like to suggest a good name for it. So, as I said, a collaborative effort on every front. So, somebody is given a name he is waiting that whose name is going to get into this app and then he's going to try and see what it is. So how do we do it all the levels at the employee level; right at the lowest level obviously there is a push from the top, there is a push from the board, from the MD, CEO, and the people below it but yes, we take the entire mass of employees and the distributors who are there to get this digital transformation and that is the true sense of the adoption that is done. Which you had in mind I think that is the real sense of digital transformation otherwise it is only digital asset which I also have need to not in the other sense of need to o but yes, I also have a digital asset in place, but it is there in the shelf nobody is using it. Here is a case where you have come out with difficult transformer assets you have done digital transformation you have changed the entire process of how policies are issued. So, it is not just one small application which takes care of it and that is where the Digilab comes in play. Vendors will come and tell you I have developed this particular product for you which will take care of this but what before and after while in Digilab when we look at these applications or we look at it as an entire process end-to-end process of how things are to be managed if this thing has to go live that I think is crucial for our digital transformation journey of SBI Life. Q. How are these tools going to help the insurer in providing a hyper personalized customer experience given the fact that AI plays a very important role? What are the key technology and labourers for SBI Life? Ans: In the last almost four to five years, let me confess I think the technical advancement that has happened overall, has been fantastic, has been absolutely fantastic you may call it, or you may give it whatever name you want. You may give it machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, or any name that you call it. I look at it as to how can you as an organisation make use of this technology which is available to you to improve various functions of an organisation. Now typically in a life insurance Company, my function starts from acceptance of risk, which is my underwriting process, the proposal has been synced-in into my system through M-Connect it comes into my system now for an underwriter who is doing it; how can I give him the resources through various technological tools to make his life simple, keep in mind it's a paperless, pen-less transaction so there are no papers floating around. So, then we make use of analytics, analytics is used in a very, very big way in all the insurance companies today and it is used in almost every aspect of insurance operation; so, whether you look at new business whether you look at underwriting whether he's a high-risk customer, a feminist customer, a low-risk customer; all this bifurcation is happening based on analytical models which are inputted in the system which is there. Go one step forward. Renewal. Renewal is a very, very important parameter for a life insurance Company that tells you how good your quality of sales is, how good your customer base is and that actually helps the life insurance company to build the embedded value of the organisation. So, the more renewals I correct, the better value for my organisation. Now, here there are analytical models which tell me whether this guy is going to pay me on time, likely to pay me on time or likely to delay or may default. Earlier, every insurance company used to do ‘carpet bombing’ of the entire population by calling them. So even if you are a person who is very dedicated principled perfect on due date you ensure that the renewals are paid you would still get a call “Sir, your renewal is in your own hand” and then it bugs you. With help of analytics you can completely redesign this strategy for renewal management and companies are doing it SBI Life is doing it in a very big way since 2017 and that has actually helped us to increase our consistency. In fact, just to give you a small example, which, my board meeting which happened has also declared to the entire country in the five-year 61st month persistency that means the person who has bought policies five years back is still paying on my renewals. We are the highest in the private sector industry. So, with a large case of policies if we can manage that it is only and only because of analytics that it is possible. Analytics is today giving us the right information of whom to contact, when to contact, why to contact and how to get that contact done. Analytics also tells me whether this particular person views his email after seven o'clock at night or very early in the morning at seven o'clock in the morning, it tells me whether he likes to be contacted on mail or on phone or WhatsApp or whatever. So, now whole lot of analytical models which are running right through into renewals into wealth management are very, very important function for a life insurance Company. Even there we are using the analytical models in a big way we make use of machine learning. We make use of artificial intelligence in a big way. Robotics is going to take a big size in the coming years. It has already started companies like us have already rolled out processes under robotics and this is again going to be a game changer on the operation side. It is going to completely redefine the system, redefine the way things are done, 24x7 error-free. Everything possible that you thought of and can be made of by robotic applications which are in place. The last one which has still not entered the Indian life insurance industry is blockchain technology. Fortunately, about 14 companies came together in 2017 and we have done through proof of concepts on blockchain technology, very good proof of concepts of blockchain technology and those have been very, very successful. Let me tell you that the only question is how to take it and launch it and actually actualize the blockchain technology in the Country but yes blockchain technology is going to open up completely new vistas for digital processing in the Country and that is something which is, and I am personally looking very much interested. I am very much interested into blockchain and how this can completely turn. We have done a lot of work on blockchain but still a lot of organisations externally who need to come in and join hands and then work it out, so we are all in that, all the fellow life insurers are in the same thing of how to come together and get you done but this is something. Q. How do you think live insurance companies can prioritize upskilling and re-skilling employees and develop operating models capable of responding to changing demands as you said it's ever changing, it is very dynamic and position themselves in forefront of future proofing their workforces with so much technology? Ans: Very good question which you have asked and especially in today's pandemic scenario, I think this carries a lot of weight. What we found is that in life insurance everything depends on trading. The more you train your sales guys, the more you train your operations guys, the more you train your people the better output you get, the better things happen. When the entire thing is under lockdown, how do you train people? Training was always face-to-face. Huge organisations have created huge infrastructure for training. Today those infrastructures can't be used because of the protocols that one has to follow. So, SBI life came out with a fantastic digital method called e-Shikha; so, today we have a digital platform for our sales guys, for our operations guys, for our other than non-sales of operations people employees who can get trained on the e-Shikha module so whether it is pertaining to sales, pertaining to new products, pertaining to new technologies, new developments whatever you would like to decimate in your employees or your sales force this becomes a wonderful tool to such an extent where we have created small videos on particular subjects not actually in 20 minutes because generally your capacity to listen to more than 20 minutes. Small-small snippets, small-small capsules on different topics of interest so it could be a small capsule on underwriting how do you underwrite your term plan, how do you underwrite a ULIP plan and how do you underwrite a traditional plan, how do you service, how do you change nomination, how do you change your mode, how do you address these small-small things which are required? You create small capsules, push it through the digital mode; the person when he is traveling or even at home, he just clicks it looks at it listens to it there's a visual there is an animation which is given he understands it very well. He can keep on calling it back and re-looking at it and understanding it again and again if he wants to do that which was not the case earlier when face to face used to happen, but e-Shiksha or e-learning is something which is definitely going to help. It is going to ring fence the entire population. Not only that there is a study in US which was done earlier they used to say people used to leave organisations because of bosses, now they don't leave because of bosses; some people who have left you are ready to come back and join you if you have joined another organisation they want to be trained, they want to be skilled, they want knowledge enrichment to happen, they want skill enrichment to happen and all of this is today being done through digital methods. Q. What has been the impact of COVID-19 in life insurance sector in India? Ans: COVID has had an impact on the life insurance business, let me tell you that. I would like to reply to this question in two ways as far as the business of life insurance is cut concerned it's definitely impacted. Impacted because companies were looking at high growth, high things now that has somewhere got nullified to a certain extent but fine no problem, we also understand how the economy is and how it works and what happens. I think the bigger contribution what life insurance company has done to the economy is supporting the equity markets. So, all the money which has come into the ULIP funds of the life insurance Companies have been very well invested in the equity markets thereby giving the people the live policyholders very good returns. So, if you look at the returns which some of the ULIP products have bought; they are extremely good and much more than what probably people expected to get. That's on the returns part of it. Some of them who have put into that market obviously that will depend upon what is the economy of the country, how much is the interest rate, whether our RBI reduces it, increases it, that has got a direct correlation to all that. The most important thing what has happened in the Corona period, the COVID period is that every organisation is doing huge amounts of work and I am stressing on the word huge. I am not saying that it is something which is great; I am saying huge amount of work to support the Corona Warriors through these CSR programs that are implemented by every organisation and I am very happy that every organisation including SBI Life is doing a whole lot of work on the CSR to support the COVID measures that have been taken. Earlier it was providing the PPE kits providing so many things to the Police Force, the BMC, the Doctors, all those people who are there and getting things done. Now all insurance companies are trying to see how we can support vaccination drive, which is very, very important if all of us get vaccinated the third wave has got nothing to fear about it. Let the third wave, fourth wave come you will be vaccinated, and people will still be in a position to continue with their lives and do it well, but the most important thing is how do you ensure the vaccination drive goes to the last mile and I think that is the area where most of the insurance Companies are working today regulator has also guided us on many things as to what we are supposed to do. Wonderful guidance that has come from IRDAI and let me tell you every organisation in COVID has been doing it. Most importantly and this is something which I want to tell all the viewers, life insurance Companies have been paying COVID death claims at the fastest possible time. We have been paying it if all the documents are received on time even through a mail we need not even wait for our physical copy of the document. We have settled COVID claims in less than three working days and look at the amount of COVID deaths that have happened, we are sorry to say that money can't replace the person but at least it will allow the dependents to live a very decent life which the particular person or the life issuer had thought for his families. So, one is on the on the equity support side, the other is on the death side, third is on CSR part that we are working on especially now in in phase two, yet we are putting a lot of efforts on the vaccination drive we are wanting to do a lot of camps where people get vaccinated. We are trying to spread the information of how the vaccination can be done, how the registration is to be done. Every insurance company is sending mailers, messages to their employees to the policyholders to the distributors asking them to get registered and get vaccinated and the last and not least is how every insurance company is trying its best to pay the COVID claims at the fastest possible pace. So, I think this is the way how life insurance companies are trying to do their little bit in this difficult time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrY77_4_Wdw

December 26, 2024, About: Mr. Vivek Yadav is the Business Head and Senior Vice President at Havells India Limited. Mr. Yadav is an Industry veteran with over 31 years of experience in Electrical and Automation. Having worked in all domains from Residential and Commercial Buildings to Industries and Infrastructure, he has extensive experience in Products and Solutions from Circuit Protections in Low Voltage and Medium Voltage to Automation in Industries and Homes. He has worked extensively on Go-to-Market Strategies, both in B2B and B2C space. He is also credited for establishing Businesses and Functions from scratch in his illustrious career spanning three decades. He is currently heading Havells Domestic Circuit Protection, Electrical Wiring Accessories and Home Automation Businesses. He also heads the Projects and Enterprise Business which cuts across all Business verticals in Havells. Vivek is an Electrical Engineer with a PG in Management and Systems from IIT Delhi. Q. What are the challenges of leading through these difficult times? What has changed and what is set to change? How do businesses manage their Employees, and keep them engaged and productive? What was the impact on your business, your employees and your customers and how did you manage during 2020? Ans: The first wave actually took everyone by surprise and actually nobody was prepared. It was the Lockdown which was announced at that time; it was a feeling that things have come to a standstill. The Lockdown was very different from what it is today and since nobody knew how to react, it was a feeling of numbness initially. But then, everyone realised their businesses that they have to pass this time with minimal damage because, sales were not there, factories were closed, supply chains were stopped. Suddenly the material which was on road was there on the road, safety of that material again was a question mark. Most of our Businesses, as I said, did not know how to react. So, it took some time initially, I would say a couple of days to realise that we have to take some action and the actions would be looking at your basics. So, basics first would be that how do you manage your cost that time? All the expenses which were going on they had to be stopped. Let's say, you are spending on incoming activities altogether, Travel Administration expenses, because nobody was traveling; people were at home. What we looked at was all our fixed costs, so fixed costs for example if there were rentals etc. of our offices, we went back to the office because it was around that time they were all renegotiated also because your contracts come to end in March so it was an opportunity to negotiate them. So we renegotiated all those Contracts and then we took a lot of other steps in terms of controlling costs and we created cross-function teams across the Country to look at the various aspects of Business. In times like these, if you decentralize your decision making to the extent that you create teams which are empowered then you are in a position to address a lot of areas of the Business which you want to create an impact due to the difficult times. The other was the Employee cost, of course, Employee cost is something that you cannot do much about, I mean if you value your Employees, I think it is the time to give them confidence so we decided that we will not ask anybody to go, we will not touch the salaries of our Employees so we didn't do anything of that sort. Obviously, since the Business was not there and we had no clue when the Businesses would resume, so we only said that the incentives, the sales incentives which are there, of course, we will not consider that, bonuses and incentives were stopped and we also stopped recruitment of adding any sanctioned recruitments which were there that we stopped. On the Customer side, of course, when the Customers are also closed you're not meeting them regularly how do you address that part, so incidentally we are now using Zoom, MS Teams and WebEx always very frequently and with so much ease we were fortunate actually to start using Teams sometime in January and we didn't know the Pandemic is coming so our entire sales force were fully trained in working on these Video Calling softwares. So Teams was one of them and before that also we were using a lot of other Video Calling softwares but Teams was recently installed. So we knew that this tool can now be used extensively, so we started doing small meetings in smaller groups with our teams, we started doing town halls with our Employees and we extended that to our channel partners, also, in terms of regular engagements maybe training sessions, we even reached out to our Customers for our regular calls. So, all this started to come; this wasn't planned but then as the Pandemic progressed, week after week, we started to Innovate and thought that how our Business can run normally though in spite of that everything was stopped, no transaction was taking place but other than that what we could do, we tried to explore all that. So, this was the first initial reaction from despair to finding opportunities. Q. What was the overall impact on the people? How did they react to, for example, you had social distancing, you had to rearrange your working in the factories; you had must have cut down on people on the shop floor? How did you manage that aspect of social distancing and productivity? Ans: When the Offices re-opened sometime in May, for the first time when we came in. So, it was very restricted. All the protocols were followed; guidelines were laid down for coming back to Office, which included checks for all the Employees. We said that it is mandatory to use Aarogya Setu App, though a lot of people had questions on that App but still in my experience in the last, now over one year, it has really helped our organisation because it gives you the status if it is on all the time if you actually truthfully use it and your Bluetooth is on and the App is on actually you can find out who has come in contact with the infected person and what are the chances of risk in terms of low risk or moderate risk or high risk and that App status shows so in the morning people used to come and believe me every day we used to find people whose status was not green and they were asked to go back, so this was one mandatory thing we did. Initially, we started with about 25 percent of the people and we ensured that there were social distancing there. Another very important thing that we did, similar thing we did in the factories, our factories, of course, opened with social distancing with lesser manpower and slowly as things started to improve we increased the manpower. But another very important thing that we did was we bought a software and installed in all our premises and then what that software did is that two people if the social distancing is less, which is defined, let's say, six feet; less than six feet it will be immediately recognised and that the Employee would send a mail to the Manager of the Employee, so there is a protocol breach; so please take care! So, this was about the software everyone was told and people knew that they cannot take any liberty in this, it is in their own benefit so we had a lot of compliance to social distancing even on the shop floor and in Offices as well. Q. I am sure your Managers would have been flooded with such alerts coming from the software? Ans: Yes, they were initially. As I said, when we made people aware that there is a software and you will all be watched and if let's say you are found so there will be call-back by the Manager and you may be asked to go back home and we also said that then it will not be counted as work from home, your leave will be counted. So people were mindful and people realised that it is in their own interests. Q. What are these challenges which were not there in the first wave and how can these be addressed? Ans: Considering the first wave and then comparing with second, definitely, there were huge differences I would say. Though people knew that this is a virus and people were a little more aware of what the virus is and what it does and what are the implications but with the severity it hit, nobody realised. In the first wave, when you speak to people you would hardly hear that there is something happening in their family or relative but this time it was like everyone was impacted either directly in the immediate family or extended family or friends and it was definitely a scary situation. But our factories did not stop, we stopped our Offices, people are not coming so they were working from home but our factories did not stop. Our factories were functioning and most of the factories before we had the experience of working in the first wave with social distancing; we hardly had any cases in the first wave. In the second wave also, we managed beautifully and productions continued because markets though were closed the channel partners wherever they were open they were still buying. So, there was some Business happening; it wasn't like the earlier wave that Business was zero so some Business was happening. You would also see that in the financial year, there was huge dip in our GDP growth also but this first quarter results would be when they are announced would still be far better than what your base of last year. We did manage our production but the challenge in production minimum was because the factories were not loaded fully; they were loaded less so the fixed cost were not getting absorbed fully and we had to even work on our variable cost also. Then how do we manage? So, there is definitely a per unit cost of production which was definitely higher than our normal but we still managed with higher productivity per Employee and reducing both our variable cost. So, apart from that our supply chains also were open so we were able to manage but I think the big difference was only the fear factor. The fear factor was much higher this time. Unfortunately, Havells lost some of the Employees during this Pandemic and that created more panic. But, we did a lot of soul searching to our Employees at personal level through the team Managers. We needed people that provided in terms of help in getting hospitals, oxygen whosoever was not down with COVID in getting medicine so that kind of atmosphere was created and we already have our communication groups, even in the last level in the organisation, so we know if somebody has got impacted, so immediately we knew that there is someone who needs help and that kind of system is worked very well in Havells. So, all in all, I would say that though at the physical and emotional level, the situation in the second wave is much worse but Business-wise it's still better as compared to the wave one. Q. Can you for our benefit of our viewers, identify these physical and mental health issues and how should Businesses deal with them so that their mental health index in the Company remains high, the productivity doesn't go down, people's anxieties and fears and stress is addressed; so how would you be addressing these issues? Ans: If the organisations are performing, you have a very well distributed organisation in terms of geography so you can have your common policies and ask your Managers to implement but in a situation like this, I think it helps very little. The best person to address the Employee mental health issues or immediate medical issues etc. is the Manager and the support system which he can create in his Office. So, advantage with Havells is that it operates through a branch structure and each branch which is headed by, let's say, a Branch Manager is a first unit and people there in branch are highly empowered people, so the Manager there is very closely in touch with people and of course in the channel partners also I mean very closely in touch and the promoters of the organisation really take pride in creating that family kind of atmosphere. So, each and every Manager had a detailed view of his Employees. How many Employees are affected because of COVID, how many Employees family members are affected because of COVID and what is the stage? So, in our normal meetings, they would start with a status check of what’s the status in your branch, so he would say “Sir, ten employees have COVID and they have passed through the first seven days period they are now recovering, these many people are in hospital and their stage is so much, these many people required oxygen”. So, we arranged oxygen from there and there, so that kind of support system was there in Havells and as I was saying there are no amount of policy framework or that you create will not help until and unless there is people-to-people contact and people-to-people support available at the local level. Q. The thing is that they have also been impacted by the Lockdowns, by social distancing, their own supply chains and have been disrupted so what would be your advice to Businesses to strengthen their channel partner relationships and sell effectively? During these challenging times, how should we deal with our channel partners? Ans: Havells is actually a unique Company which actually prides in itself in saying that they have a huge emotional connect with their channel partners. Channel partner in the Indian context largely when you talk about is these small ‘mom and pop’ shops where the shop is run by the proprietor and these could be small, could be large partner, owner driven Business doing a turnover of 100 crores 200 crores plus also is the case. So, in such a situation, the direct connect with channel partner organisation, its people and Leadership is something which go a long way. Apart from this, if you really believe in the emotional and financial health of a channel partner in issues and you work with them closely, help them, then the bond strengthens hugely. So, Havells has traditionally been a very channel friendly Company. It's not just this Pandemic; in past also if there have been let's say floods, there were floods in Kerala, the floods in Srinagar in Kashmir sometime back there were floods in Bihar; so, every time the organisation has gone and worked at the grassroot level, helped channel partners. Sometimes, if your stocks have got washed out even if you don't have insurance they come back to us and we have waived off that much amount of money to those channel partners, gave a huge amount of money to Kerala Government, when there were floods two years ago and there was contribution for Employees and equal amount of contribution by the organisation. So, in this Pandemic also, we realize that there is immediate need for unlocking some capital. So, to have a unique fund where channel partners’ incentive is deposited and though that fund is managed by the organisation, so, we released money from there and the channel partners own money which is locked in there so we released that so that there is money available to them. There were the financial year last year had closed and the incentives were to be given so a lot of channel partners did not achieve their targets because the year was not full. I mean we closed at about, 20th or 21st, we closed so nobody was able to meet their targets but we still apportioned and on pro-databases we cleared the incentive and we released that money to all the channel partners so almost 200 crores worth of capital came inside the channel partners’ accounts and of course that was used in clearing our outstanding and that money came into circulation for us. So that way the channel is at the forefront and at the centre of the decision, the organisation takes and the bond between channel partner and the organisation is really very strong. Apart from that, I said, at all levels of the organisation right from top promoters to the senior management through people on the ground; they really are in touch with the channel partners on day-to-day basis and it's almost like family relations. They can actually go to their house, meet their family members and know them by name. We do a lot of incentive tours and all these channel partners and their family go on their tours and so every member of our team knows what their family members are so that kind of connect we have. So, in every crisis, we have managed this beautifully and the same thing we did in COVID also in wave one and in wave two both. Q. how did you manage your operations and what kind of lessons have you learned? How should we manage operations during these disruptions? Ans: It was a very interesting phase at the time when the first Pandemic started, when the factories were almost closed and work was not happening so the first question was that you have your Employees who are your permanent Employees, of course, we didn't touch them then you also have your Employees who are on contract and you have not much I would say in terms of your obligation that your direct Employees rather than indirect terms treat our indirect Employees. Also, as our direct Employees so we did not ask any of our indirect Employee also to go but voluntarily a lot of people went away so we managed that part by paying them salaries. We said, you stay we will pay you salaries because we knew that the moment market opens up there will be demand and we need to produce at that time, so we need to have those people so we made arrangements as far as their health is concerned, hospital tie-ups are concerned all that we did. On the shop floor, we gave them confidence that the moment you come back we have all this arrangement done and in the event of any health issue happening that time so we have tie up with hospital and in some of the our factories where we had the resources to even arrange, create temporary hospital beds, we did that as well. So we passed that period but the moment it opened up there was a huge demand in the market so some of the organised players were not able to react the way we reacted so the demand of unorganised sector also came to the organised sector and we were flushed with orders. The moment it started sometime in May and June and we needed to produce at much higher rate as we were producing earlier. Since our capacities were available so from the same assets we produced almost double of what we were normally doing and these people our Employees who stayed back with us and they worked all their heart and we were able to even ramp up our production to that extent. So we managed it very well and incidentally the last 10 months of the year we did almost 12 months of work and we grew on our base last financial year 2021 by more than 10 percent and also improved our profitability. Q. Did you try to probe the digital market online selling, online sales and what was your experience of going digital sales if you have done it? Ans: Last year online sales, e-commerce sales, really zoomed, so, we realized in the month of April itself we realized that staying basically at home, there will be a lot of stuff that they would be needing because kitchens were being operated full time by people who are sitting at home. So, there are some kitchen appliances for which we have a division which is small domestic appliances division, then personal grooming is another product category that Havells is into and that product category also products would be needed so what we did was that of course online sales were happening we created a platform which was online to offline so you book your material online and offline our channel partners will deliver not through the regular Amazon, Flipkart but own Havells delivery system. So, we mapped each pin code to our channel partner and the moment that order was given, the channel partner will get an order linked to his pin code and he will deliver to the customer’s home. So, we created this platform, we engaged with the normal Amazon and Flipkart all our e-com partners and made sure that we had these supplies available and we ensured that we were able to improve our market share even in the online delivery platform. Q. How are you managing costs; you have told us a little bit and how different is it from wave one and how do you look at it going forward in case there is a wave three or in the next one or two years so this cost factor could you elaborate a little bit more? Ans: Cost consciousness, I think it’s not something that we do as a reaction to the environment, we do it on a sustainable basis and how we do it is we in the context of factory I'll tell you first. So, we look at all our fixed costs in terms of the capex etc. We do it very diligently. The variable cost be in terms of your manpower, be in terms of improving the efficiency on the shop floor or in terms of renegotiation, so all this is a regular exercise. But what we did last year was we created a cross-function team and we asked for plans from each and every factory and every month every factory was presenting it, what are their plans and what is the status as on date. Apart from this we also looked at all our product designs and created the ideas around value engineering and how you can redesign your product and reduce cost without compromising on the quality and performance of the product. So, almost about 300 crores worth of ideas were generated last year and we achieved savings of 300 crores through those ideas last year. In spite of the raw material, there were ideas around renegotiation of raw material but in that context we failed because all your raw material commodities like plastic, copper, brass, steel everything is going up. I mean to the extent of anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent; that increase is there in the last 12 months if I see. So if I remove that still we improved our bottom line by 300 crores only because of cost saving ideas that were implemented in the last wave. So, this year again that exercise has again been started so the idea generation is almost about 275 crores and still there is negotiation going on how to take that to 200 to 350. This is a regular exercise in the organisation and we do it quite well we mastered this and the whole organisation is involved in this. When I say that idea generation, so, idea generation is like there is a brainstorming with the entire team will sit and they will identify the ideas; the ideas that will get qualified and slowly they will move to a stage of implementation. So, implementation and accrual of the cost reduction; that is what is then monitored every month. So we have started again in the wave two also. Q. What kind of ideas and innovations in the last one year, besides cost reduction ideas, value engineering ideas? Can you give us a few examples of how ideas you could capture and then implement those ideas very quickly one or two examples? Ans: Sometimes, it would be, let's say, a change of material; using a particular material so if another material available substitute material which will have exactly same properties or function which is needed for that product so it could be one. Second, could be, let's say, you are redesigning the product and reducing the cost and faster implementation is possible turnaround is possible and that should bee we do that. Third, could be that, you do the re-routing of the complete assembly line and reduce the time taken to manufacture that product it could be that. Fourth could be, looking at a product if it is a critical product, can I Manufacture it inside rather than taking from a Vendor. So it could be positive integration, as well, then how do you save it there? So, these are some of the ideas which were implemented. So, I won't go into detail but broadly that can be classified like this. Q. As you all know, it is very important for controlling the outbreak and so how are you handling vaccination of your Employees and now that these are becoming available so how have you been handling this aspect? Ans: Very interesting. How the myths about vaccination are created and how you have to break those myths is something that is very interesting what is happening today? When it all started let's say the first vaccination started somewhere in February end, March that was a time nobody realized that everyone will have to get vaccinated. So, what I would say is that organisations realised this early and in the month of March itself they said that everyone will get vaccinated and Company will bear cost though it was little at that time but still they said whatever the cost be, Company would bear the cost of vaccination, so you get vaccinated and there is an online tracker we have created on our Intranet you come and register there and you give your Certificate, put your Certificate there and you claim for reimbursement. Slowly, it started that people, as they were getting vaccinated, we saw that it is increasing. Then we said the moment vaccine policy becomes a little liberal and the Corporates would be allowed to vaccinate; let's wait for that time so that time came and last month in our Head Office and in our branches, we tried to organise either in camps or tied up with hospitals where our employees can go and get vaccinated and obviously as I said Company is bearing the cost. So, another important thing what we said was to all Employees that this is absolutely mandatory, if you say that I don't want to get vaccinated that's not a choice because we believe that if we are creating a workspace where people are coming and they can be a potential carrier so I don't want to sacrifice the health of other Employees who are there inside the Office. So, we said that if you are not vaccinated you cannot come to Office and neither you will be allowed to work from home so there is no compromise from there so you will be on leave and if your leave gets exhausted you will be without pay. But you have to get vaccinated only then you can come. So, this is the policy we have adopted and we ensured that we are tracking how people are getting vaccinated; what is the number of people who have got first shot, number of people who have got two shots? So, I'm happy to say that more than 45 years age plus, 100 percent of our population in Office got vaccinated fully means both the vaccination shots. 18 to 45, almost 70 percent of our Employees have got the first shot and now we are ensuring that the balance 30 percent also get their first shot because if you have got COVID then once window period is there in which you cannot get the shot so these are in that category they've got some medical condition and their Doctor has prescribed that you wait till your condition improves so only those kind of people are exempted at this time. So, vaccination policy has been implemented with very strong rigour in the organisation. Q. Which leadership styles are required to instil a sense of ownership and shared purpose among the Employees? Which are the most essential Leadership skills in the current scenario? What do you think the Leaders at Junior, Middle and Senior level what kind of changes they must kind of bring about in their leadership styles? Ans: I think leadership styles are essentially participative style of leadership which is something which you needed at this time. You have to be empathetic towards the situation and then take decisions. So, Havells has always been a Company where they believe that collective decision making is something which is working for the organisation and it has to continue. Collective decision making sometimes is very difficult to implement when you have to take consensus from a lot of people but we do it very beautifully in the organisation so it's like a ‘Baithak’ kind of atmosphere where the entire leadership team sits and we've translated that into even MS Teams. So, let’s discuss on agenda points, arrive at a consensus and move on. So, this Leadership style has translated even from our top management down even to the grassroots level at the organisation level and very frequently the team meets in huddles and the Leader ensures that the collective agenda is put forward and discussed and decisions taken and move on. Another thing, I think, from a Leadership point of view is execution so whatever kind of strategies we make in sitting inside your air conditioned Office but it has to be implemented on ground level, so, successful leadership I think is 90 percent about execution and 10 percent about strategizing. So, a Leader who believes in execution and follows through till implementation is the one who would be most successful across times even in normal times or difficult times. So, a lot of people can say that he's a 24 degree temperature Leader and he's not 48 degree Leader; so when I say 24, 48 that's the rule based on temperature it's not 80-20 rule but 24-48 rule. So 24 degree temperature people who sit in air conditioned Offices design strategies etc. but 48 degree people are the ones who work on the ground; your supply chain people, field people, sales people, service field people. So, if the Leadership is 24 and 48, 90 percent 48 and only 10 percent 24 then that's a more successful Leadership. Q. What has been your experience with Employee engagement, engaged Employees are productive Employees and especially in a situation like Pandemic; it's very easy for an Employer to get disengaged because of personal problems or family problems so that is a very important area we feel? So what are your views on keeping Employees engaged and productive? Ans: It is a very relevant question when remotely people are working from home and you don't get feeling of professionally engaged with your Peers, Colleagues, Customers so that connect is not there and it's very easy to get lost in such an environment. So, Business being there or not being there but still when you are working from home even if Business revives then also talking to Customers, talking to your channel partner remotely it's very different and it's a different feel, it doesn't give you that kind of feeling, doesn't give you that kind of kick. So, it's important that every Employee, even at, let's say, frontline level you expect that your Managers and senior people are fully engaged and they know because they're the ones who are to drive, so, we are assuming that those people are all fully engaged no need to talk to them but yes the promoters definitely use them in some way or the other but the frontline team members they need to be engaged when I say engaged means he has to spend his time productively even sitting at home. So, the basic rules they find was that you have to get ready in the morning, you have to come dressed sit in front of your laptop, start your laptop at the designated time nine o'clock. Your meeting calendar has to be there with respect to your internal meetings, your Customer meetings, your channel partner meetings; Customer means your direct Customers, institutional Customers and your channel partner. So, that meeting agenda has to be there and manager has to ensure that we have, let's say, our sales force confirmation and we record the visits of our Employees when they physically go, but even if you're making calls you please record it in the salesforce automation modules that there is a virtual visit that you've made what have you discussed there and what is the outcome of that. In the morning, there is a huddle meeting by the Manager to the Employees and evening again there will be a huddle meeting and they will discuss the outcomes of the day, what he did during the day. So, this was largely done, let's say there may not be too many outcome this was largely done to keep the Employee engaged so that his mind is not distracted even if he missed a difficult situation at his home or there are issues with his extended family he's hearing ambulance noises throughout the day so he has to be engaged so that his mind is occupied and he is not distracted because of unnecessary issues which are happening. Of course, if he is personally affected so he was exempted and the support provided by the Manager and the support infrastructure that we created but then we ensured that every employee is engaged like this. So, sometimes it happens that people who are self-motivated he says I don't want to be monitored, I will manage; so, they were slightly in a complaint mode that what is this that I have to be in the huddle in the morning and then in the evening I will manage my work but then I think slowly they also got to understand the issue why we are doing this. But we ensured that each and every Employee we know that what he is doing and how is he engaged in the organisation. Q. How can Companies quickly adapt to this changing market dynamics and what will define market Leadership as we move through this Pandemic and post-Pandemic stage? Could you share us with what you feel about Customer centricity competition and how do you go about it? Ans: In general, first I would say that Companies who listen to Customers who catch on the trends changing trends and Innovate and come out with products which are the need of the hour. Those are the ones who will remain in Business and continue to thrive and grow. So, it's important to listen to the subtle changes which are happening; these subtle changes in consumer behaviour which are happening so simple example I will give. For example, today, let's say, you are in a situation where there is Pandemic around you and you don’t want to touch surfaces, you don't want to physically be around and operate, let's say, even your gadgets etc. or your switches inside your home so what can you do? So, can you operate your devices through voice, so Internet of Things (IoT) has been built in a lot of our product categories? We also even looked at, let's say, switches is something which are installed at home, in commercial spaces, in hospitals, hotels and is being used by a lot of people who are coming from different places and the transmission of either bacteria or virus can happen through those touches. So, recently one Innovative thing we did was, in our two product categories, two ranges of switches, we said that we will create material which will not allow the virus and bacteria to grow. So, we found a compound which is a plant-based compound and we mixed in the plastic and the outcome was that the normal plastic that we were using we replaced it with this material and we got it tested in lab the virus was 92.5% finished in one minute. Bacteria, with the prolonged exposure on that surface gets 99.9 percent eradicated in 24 hours. So, we immediately changed all the material in our switches to 100 percent this material and, of course, we said that we will not charge any extra money though there is an additional cost the organisation is bearing but we've introduced this virus safe technology recently that we have launched this is one such example that I’m giving. But, apart from that, a lot of our products have become connected like fans, water heater, touch switches which can be operated through voice and through mobile app. So, this is some example of changes that we are bringing about seeing that consumers today are becoming more and more aware about health and hygiene and also improving their lifestyles so this is what we do. Apart from that, I would, just quickly say that every year we look at the top trends which are globally visible these could be through reports of Consultants like Big Four and we see that how we can incorporate those trends in our product roadmap and solution roadmap that we derive. So, we are very conscious and Customer centricity is absolutely at the core, not just in designing our products for them but even our after-sales service. Once our product goes and gets installed, so how do you get feedback not just that there is a complaint but even otherwise also we go and take feedback from our consumers we often do surveys of our consumers even customer voice, how do you listen to so that you incorporate all the feedbacks in your product we do that very often? We have our in-house design studio where customers either physically can come in or we do surveys and take feedback and we design products in-house so the latest products of Havells which are coming to market majority of them are designed in-house and produced. Q. May I request you to tell us how do you look into the future, the next two three years and what kind of a Business environment do you see in India and abroad of course, you have plants all over the World and what should Companies do to future proof their Business as you look into the future so that they are not disrupted by such Pandemics in the future? Ans: I think if I just draw from whatever we discussed the major point community situation how nimble and agile is your organisation. These things are really important how quickly you can adapt to the market demand either when the demand is going how you can downsize your organisation, I'm not just simply saying that removing people but how you can downsize in terms of your cost and then the moment the demand comes back how quickly you can come back, how strong is your Supply Chain Infrastructure, right from your vendors, going up to supplying to your dealers so that agility in your Manufacturing and Supply Chain is very critical. The other thing is reaching out your GTM your go to market is largely through let's say the channel partners or you're reaching Customers directly, how strong is that channel connect and how loyal is that channel partner to you? Of course, you have multi-brand channel partners today so any channel partner for his survival, he cannot just simply depend on one brand but then how can I extract maximum from his counter with respect to let's say he doesn't get there so we look at that one from channel connect apart from that what kind of product basket I can provide them. Second, is the trust on the brand, if the trust on the brand is strong then the categories that you introduce, the products that you introduce the solutions that you give to your Customers the acceptability of those would be much-much higher. So, today Havells introduces a product in let's say ABC category and introduces vis-a-vis let's say another brand which is not so much trusted the success rate of the that product becoming successful and becoming a sizable Business in a very short period of time is much-much higher because Havells is trusted as a brand so that you invest in creating a brand, so it's not just about advertisement it's about the full 360 degree approach that you take in building a brand. I believe India is a strong Economy in terms of consumption, majority of the youth less than 35 years of age; majority of that is the population of the Country today, so, India is going towards becoming hugely a consumption Economy. So I believe in that and I believe that India is going to thrive as far as products what Havells Manufactures. We also believe that the penetration of the products that we sell in every household will take an example as a refrigerator in every house doesn't have a refrigerator, you take ACs every house doesn't have an AC so there are a lot of product categories where the penetration is very low. So, we see that the potential for Growth in the Country is huge and the population dividend is itself a positive for a Company like Havells. As we move forward, connected products will play a huge role so every product category that we introduce have to have connected portfolio and we are moving that down that line so be it your consumer appliances, be it your lighting, be it your switch, switch gear, either domestic or industrial switch gear, everything has to get connected ultimately, so that homes of future are communicable, are responsive to your needs. So, we are building that portfolio as well and e-commerce is another side which is building up very strongly so we are working on this particular channel which we believe that give you about 100 billion US dollar in the next four years. We want to take the maximum pie out of it. So, in India, the opportunities are tremendous if you look at the pessimism and negative side you will go down if you look at opportunity, sky is the limit for Growth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0xDr9qW8Q  

December 26, 2024, A Conversation with Mr. V. Viswanand, Deputy Managing Director at Max Life Insurance. Mr. V. Viswanand is an industry veteran with a dynamic presence in the financial service space for over 22 years. He's working in the capacity of Deputy Managing Director at Max Life Insurance and is an esteemed member of the Board. He is the Founder Team member and has been associated with Max life for nearly two decades and one of the oldest employees of Max Life. He has consistently demonstrated qualitative leadership across diverse verticals including agency, life insurance, direct sales, product development, persistency management, operations technology, and quality of Max life. He is a veteran in the insurance sector. Over the years he has also played a very instrumental role in not only propelling Max Life to emerge as an industry leader in the conservation ratios 61st-month persistency, claims paid ratio, and customer loyalty but also win several global and national accolades in quality and technology including a coveted gold medal at ASQ, National Society for Quality and RBNQA which is the Ram Krishna Bajaj national quality award constituted by IMC Chamber of Commerce. Q. What has been the impact of COVID 19 on the life insurance sector in India? Ans: I would like to take this in two parts, first in India as a whole and what's been happening even pre COVID because COVID might be bent in the road but there's always been a story before that. What if COVID did not happen? Where would India be from a life insurance perspective? So as you rightly said the share of global insurance premiums that India had is far lower than the share of the population of the planet so we only have about 2.4% share of global insurance premiums and we are number 10 in the premium ranking of all countries on the planet. As you know population wise we are number 2 closely tending towards number one. However, a very interesting opportunity is that we are number one in policies. So, the number of the life insured at 36 crores Indians, we constitute the largest population group in sheer numbers, in terms of life insurance acceptance and retention of those policies. so that's an interesting opportunity which is showing that maybe the ticket sizes are small but many people have been covered in sheer numbers. There is a Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association called LIMRA which is based in North America the study shows that people buy at least seven times in a 35-year life span of working. So, when you typically work for 30- 35 years you will buy once every 5 years. It is a well-known fact especially when you get your first job, that is when I bought my first policy. When you get married, or first child, actually the biggest trigger, when you settle down and purchase your first home, then maybe a job or promotion which gives you a lift and then your child’s education and child marriage and then your retirement. The opportunity of this 36 crores population which has already purchased insurance, is far greater than going to a person who has not purchased insurance. So, the competency of somebody buying a policy again after purchasing the first policy is significantly larger than convincing that person to buy insurance for the first time. So that’s the opportunity we have in India. Having said that, we do far poorly in the mortality protection gap survey which is again done once in five years by reinsurers one of the largest reinsurers in the world called reinsurance. But interesting is the mortality protection gap that India has which keeps it at the rank of 9 out of 13 Asian countries. Our coverage in 2015, when the last study was done, was only 7.5%. That means if you take all of India as one household and you calculate how much insurance is required, if the breadwinners were to disappear, one way to keep the rest of the families going, if that figure is 100 rupees the coverage was only 7.5% in India including real estate, assets, PPF all kind of wealth and life insurance policies. Interestingly this moved very rapidly in the last 5 years and that is very heartening to know because the 7.5 has jumped up to 17%. It is a study that has just concluded in July 2020 and this big jump is the leading jump in all Asian countries. So that means the first point which I mentioned is in the number of policies and the fact that we are underinsured, but we are a large number of insurance policy holders in the country. It looks like now they're getting more and more clue towards purchasing real protection and that's very-very heartening as well. So now that is the India story pre COVID. Q. What has COVID done to this sector? Ans: Interestingly right after the first lockdown, I think that was on 23rd March, seems a long time ago more than 200 days now yes but there was a certain spike in Google searches for the term life insurance or term insurance and so on. The spike went up to nearly 85% higher than the previous year and this was very interesting because Google knows more about us than we do about ourselves. When you aggregate all these Google searches and with these Google Analytics reports which shows that the sudden spike is contrary to the rest of Asia. In Asia, the same searches for term insurance, life insurance saw a drop whether it is the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia. There is also a drop, a decline at the same time. However, in India, we saw a sudden spike which has been unprecedented before. So this gives me confidence that I think Indians love their families more. When you see fear and adversity we look for risk protection but the rest of Asia they are busy caring for themselves. I think there was no search for their families, family’s protection, or financial security. They were looking at other things such as how I keep my health, my immunity, my masks, and my sanitizer. While in India besides all of that we had a spike in search for family protection so that is very interesting as well. I think there are broadly two large fears, one is fear of loss of health and life, and 2nd is the loss of financial capital. If you recall in March we saw a drop in the equity market and then interest rates also started declining rapidly, so people saw that capital being eroded. Not only there was the fear of health and life but there was also fear of my financial capital what will happen to that, what will happen to these lowering returns, how do I meet my child's education plan that I have in my mind, how do I meet my retirement. Suddenly I am seeing the corpus coming down. We did a survey, India Protection Quotient Survey through Indian Market Research Bureau this was in June- July across urban India. For all digitalized customers who are digitally savvy, we asked them their reason to save and we found a dramatic change post COVID. The reason always used to be for the last five years saving for my child's education and number two is for my retirement. This has undergone a change post COVID. The number one reason has become saving for medical emergencies. Nobody knew what is true what to fake, what has happened how much is the cost of ICU what is hospitalization. So all these kinds of questions came up and suddenly 57% of India in this survey was saying that we are more interested in protecting our here and now, financial corpus, and preparing for medical emergencies. So essentially the impact of all these is that the private sector has degrown i.e. 23 life insurance companies, on the whole, has degrown by 11% in the first half of the year. While sum assured has grown by 16% very interesting phenomena, where the premium has reduced the total premiums collected new business has reduced by 11% but the sum assured that these reduced premiums have bought has gone through the go at a 16% growth. Companies like ours Max life has grown by 40% during this time in the six months. India and Indians know that they need protection. So focus on providing protection and guaranteed options is that onus falls on life insurance companies that means taking more risk, mortality risk, investment risk but with risk comes greater margins. So hopefully we should see margin profile increase insurance. We are seeing in last quarter about 6 insurers in the top 10 showing growth signs in Q2 already, which means that maybe after Q3 is completed, let’s say, by the end of this calendar year, we would see a majority of them running back into the group. I hope I answered the question. Q. How are life insurance companies which are competing not only with peers but also industry alternatives such as your asset management or pure wealth management so how does the insurance sector cater to that? How do they differentiate themselves as a value-added service which is non-monetary benefits particularly health coverage which continues to converge now? As you rightly mentioned that a child’s education was number one and now it is a health factor that has become number one. So how it has changed? Ans: That very interesting question personally to me because I spent little less than 10 years working in a foreign bank before joining Max Life two decades ago. In those ten years, we were the largest distributors of mutual funds, third-party mutual funds in the country with about 86 branches. It is way back in times more than 25 years ago. However we saw a couple of equity downturns, there was a Harshad Mehta scam, and there was a bloodbath in the BSE and then there was the Ketan Parekh scam and the market step going up and down. After some time I felt a kind of hollowness because I found that customers were buying based on our advice. It was a great idea to invest in equity because in the 1990s equity market was in the bull run largely except when these scams came. I felt a little hollowness because one of the customers got back to me asking what I sold to him. I felt a little empty inside and then this insurance sector opened up. I found that the role of life insurance is very unique compared to mutual funds, fixed deposits, and such. Its role is unique and it is embedded inside every product of life insurance and in the policy contract that is the word sum assured. This sum which is assured that is the guaranteed amount that is payable on the occurrence of the insured event be either on death or on maturity both ways this amount is guaranteed. Usually, the sum assured is significantly higher than the premium you pay, never less than 10 times nowadays because if less than 10 times you don't even get cover which means your majority corpus will be taxable. So on average, it is about 15 times an annual premium. If you pay one rupee you get at least 15 rupees of cover guaranteed on death or maturity. On top of this, you have the fund value growth, you have your bonuses declared, and so on and that is the number one differentiator that is not available in other products. In a mutual fund, you will get what you put. Here you putting only 5 to 10 rupees but you are getting a guarantee of ₹100 on maturity or death provided you don’t lapse a policy, provided you stick your part of the contract as a customer. The company is bound to stick its part of the contract through this policy contract terms and this word called sum. So as a banker I used to find it quite amusing. When we give a home loan, people distribute and offer us, sweets. But the irony is, as a banker I should be distributing it because till the last EMI the house belongs to us and that people don’t realize. However, in insurance, the moment you pay your first monthly premium, your cover and your little benefit through this word called sum assured is guaranteed. It is quite contrary and that is the risk that life insurers take. I am very happy to see that this risk taking capability has increased especially during COVID times. Essentially the role of life insurance how's it differentiated through sum assured it makes it safe, it makes it systematic because every year you are paying. Tomorrow if you stop your SIP in mutual funds no one will call and ask you to put it. No one will call you because they do not care they will move on. However, in life insurance, the insurance company, the agent advisor will be after you to pay the renewal premiums. So that is the beauty of safe and systematic and everyone needs a bit of discipline and lastly it is self-completing through sum assured. Come what may, if it matures or if you die during the policy tenure, that is the interesting part. We surveyed our customers to find out do they understand sum assured? If they understand the sum assured does it increase their bonding and customer loyalty with us? The loyalty measures that we use are NPS the Net Promoter Score. That means the promoters, the people who give us a score of nine or 10 subtracted by people who give a score from zero to 6 that is the NPS and ask the question how likely are to recommend this brand to your friends family colleagues right on a scale of zero to 10. We have about close to 4 million customers and when we did a sample we found that those who remember that policies sum assured their NPS was in the range of 40s and those who do not remember this sum assured only remember the premium that they have to pay their net promoter score is minus in the negative zone. So again it is showing that understanding this product category is very important. I find it very funny that people remember their premiums but sometimes they don’t remember their sum assured. It’s like you remember the value of your EMI you are paying for a home loan but you don't know the value of your home loan. That is the role of life insurance and how it is differentiated between AMCs or Bank offerings. Q. With the evolution of digital sales and service offerings, it is changing the ecosystem of the insurance sector more, so which has happened due to COVID 19. So with the emergence of the new digital technology insurance sector is heading towards rover advisors, artificial intelligence and data power systems, and much more. How do you see this technology is changing the ecosystem in the insurance sector in India from intermediaries to digital technologies and new ways of approaching the clients and customers? Ans: To share with you on the digital side, we use the business as two ways in acquiring new customers. One is the B to B side which is a traditional agents or bank sellers face to face model and the other is B to C side or the online site where the website is open and customers come and buy or they might go web aggregator such as policy bazaar and compare and buy online sitting at the comfort of their home or their own office. Interestingly we find that the digital split for a company like Max life is 80: 20 in several policies. 80% is B2B usually about anywhere between 15 and 20-22% in many policies is online. This is by and large quite comparable with leading companies even in China or other digital savvy economies much higher than North America and for that matter Europe. The digital online business though I think it is all purchased from the comfort of your home just like a net banking transaction I would say. However, the reality is that 80 to 85% is assisted by a human. Even in a purchase offer product like term insurance, what largely sell is term insurance, even in those about 80-85% people want to know more than what they read and see. If you know what you want to look for then you can look for it, but if you are not sure what do you need to look for you would like to know because the average policy contract is for 40 years. So it is not a decision to buy now like an Amazon purchase which you can return, it's a 40 year decision. We do provide a freedom period for one month but what is going to change in one month, they ask all those questions and typically there are 20 minutes of talk time on an average happening with the call centre executive who has been trained and licensed like an agent on the phone, but that service is required, and it is not unique to India. Only traditional offline space this digitalization and new technologies are pushed us to question some holy cause, especially in the last 200 days. I will give you some examples first one is training. It is always best done face to face, we need one trainer for office at least preferably 2 that is the question now when we check our offices and still training is happening through virtual meets. Training is shifting to learning anywhere anytime on demand. Suddenly we are seeing that we might not have a 322 trainer in 322 offices. but if you have a bunch of 5 great trainers, we can get all 322 trained at the same time. They are all in a virtual classroom and will get the best training and the best SMEs support the best subject matter expert support available in the nation. So this was a new thing that we've done. The second question was agent recruitment. We recruit about 25,000 to 30,000 new agents every year and the sector recruits about 20 lacs in total both in the public and private sector. This recruitment machinery and the newly recruited agents contribute to nearly 40% of a company’s top line in any given year. During pandemic when people were not meeting or people were scared to meet, even scared to go to the examination centre and write an agent exam, we have proven that recruitment can be done virtually. So the agent recruitment can be done virtually through recruitment webinars. We have shown significant growth than in the past and we are finally available to tap new segments. Many entrepreneurs could not come with the entrepreneur mindset. They could not come to the office every day and sit for the training and then be there for 8 hours a day and then continue visiting us here. Guess what, it is not required, they are most welcome to come but it wasn't essential because the agent recruitment can be virtualized. The third is sales management practices, these daily check-in checkout calls, the sales hurdles that happens between a supervisor and his team members.0 why should that happen in person why can't they do it virtually over WebEx, zoom, WhatsApp video? That has transformed as well so that our producers are sellers don't have to come to the office, they go to the client space directly and save all time energy, and effort, so that has changed. Our prospect consumers will not conclude sales virtually they have to see a human being, it is again a mindset. In the first quarter, nearly more than half of our sales are happening virtually, fully paperless, signatureless and the entire thing has happened virtually with a lot effort, input, and transformation. But the new technologies that are available today I can only thank our staff that COVID is happening now and not 10 years ago. If it had 10 years ago we would have crumbled. Now we are hardly sitting and it's all because of these new technologies. So we have to identify this new organisation muscle and guard and grow it because even post COVID recovery we should not lose this training process of conducting webinars and learning. We should not lose this digital recruitment capability, remote selling capability for conducting sales. Some people reverse and some digital modes will get accelerated such as digital artifacts. Now if all our training modules are available, any consumer facing modules are available do it yourself videos which we were not available. Our sellers are learning it and I think our customers are adopting it very well including do-it-yourself calculators and tools. It gives them control and they don't feel pressured when they see a person sitting in front of them. I think the quality of sales and the market contract will also improve in this kind of scenario. Q. Robo Advisors, which is a new term, which has been coined the new terms. So there is a paradigm shift, can you explain how do you see this? It is more of a customer experience than the product part. And are you come out with different innovative products? Ans: Sure. I'm going to give you an answer which will disappoint you. Having been in Financial Services now for 29 years, I still think that Financial Services is actually at the root of it is dealing with money which is a man-made concept. Humans don't understand money. What is currency, barter system we can understand somewhat, but currency money we don’t understand and not even time? Because financial services talk about money and time. Both these concepts, the human mind finds it difficult to understand. So that's why. One needs to sit, talk, and as you talk you are thinking. Robo advisory is great, and I know countries like Singapore Robo advisory is still a show piece, and that's why trust and relationship continue to remain the dominant factor in terms of choice or selection of which company, which brand, which advisor, and which product. I will give you some equations that we use in the B2C and B2B. The B2C market which is business to consumer is direct to consumer online market. There are 6 factors we look at. Experience is one of them, but actually, it is the last one. We tried various experiments, I mean, it happens now and then, we try AB testing and the number one factor is brand and not experience in financial services because they want that security. So, even if there is a poor experience, no problem, if the brand is strong, they will reduce their expectations of the bank. The second is the product feature which is an important product feature. Now it is the price, as you mentioned Amazon, Flipkart, but all of us know heart on the heart and the big days happens when the real sales take off which means the price discount. So the price has a big factor in India and so is a value conscious market. You can't take Indian for a ride and that's why iPhone purchase is there but in the lowest segment in India. So it's only the top market, which is purchasing the brand and the experience. The fourth is insurance claims. What is your claim favourite show? The fifth is your entry condition and your eligibility, there is eligibility there is underwriting and the last is experience. In the online market remember there is no agent, no customer is sitting and choosing. No one can influence the customer but we have seen that this is a hierarchy of selection. While in our offline sale which is face to face, the number one factor is not experience, it's the relationship, is that someone I trust. So you will ask a few questions maybe, but you really expect all the answers, comparison everything and when you only have 40 minutes, and then the final question is would you recommend it. Have you bought this yourselves? So the herd mentality, I don't want to be the first person. So relationship, product feature, price and benefit and then not my experience, but the experience of the seller because if the seller experience is excellent by the Insurance companies processes then the seller narrates it in their words that the customer understands saying "company is good, Product is also good". The seller should be happy and then the relationship factor takeovers. Q. I have read and heard many times that it is not about how much you're worth but it all depends on which premium phone you're using, and if you're logging in through an iPhone the pricing of the premium changes and you then things change. Is that happening at the spot? I have read many times that decides AI decides through which phone you are logged in for inquiry or something like that for premium? Ans: Interesting so this is hypo personalization if you may call it, yes, we do use it, but we do not change premiums. The good news is we are regulated. We cannot deviate from it and we don't want to deviate from it. But having said that, yes, and to answer your very specific question, if a person searches our website and gets the quotation for a policy from an iPhone versus an Android, we know that the iPhone conversion rate is higher. That's all. I think it's a socio-economic co-relation. It is just like a similar thing. If you see the Cibil score of iPhone users it's probably higher than that of the non-iPhone user. That's all. It is just a socioeconomic kind of a flag, we do anything about it well perhaps we would, our way of messaging to that consumer would be very different than the other ones. That's all. In a language other person understand or in a language other iPhone customers have understood what we try to do. That's a level of personalization. But having said there in policies issuance in underwriting we do things like asking for KYC documents from the bank. Why do you need to run again for proof of identity proof of address? So we can get that from the bank we do that. Cibil Score we can get that instead of asking you for your ITR, your IT returns, or your last 3 years bank statements all that we can avoid. and we also have an industry insurance bureau. The bureau provides us the fraud data so that we can go through it and we don't have to, there might be 1% fraudsters. The 99% people need not be put through the same checks to calculate 1% fraudsters. That database is evolving every day as we see and all insurance companies are participating in the insurance information bureaus database. Then we also try these Central KYC which I think is gaining momentum and it's a government initiative, part of the Government of India software stack and that's working again catching space. So we have a mutual fund we can link with your PAN number and get all your details and ask you even okay with it. Go ahead. So you don't have to provide fresh documents every time you go to a bank or a mutual fund, or an insurance company. So that helps in terms of anti-money laundering and terms of underwriting, Especially financials. The digitalization of health, health cards, and our health records, which the government has just begun during COVID times, will also help and in medical underwriting in time, maybe 10 years later. So, I think this kind of hyper personalization and technology enablement will help improve the overall customer experience and reduce the effort of the customer. Thanks to this we can bring out innovative buy now and pay later products. So, buy now, don't give premium now until we are ready to underwrite you, and before we're ready to accept your policy, we will say, okay you are clear. We will ping you only after the services are fully accepted by both parties, rather than you pay upfront. If we reject, we will refund you and recurring more cost. So that's the kind of work which is happening. I think there's still a long distance away from it but baby steps have begun. Q. Taking a few from what you said about the underwriting process and the things like that since you were talking about reimagining the future in the next 5 years like Block Chain Technology, Cloud Computing, and Cognitive computing. These are new technologies, and as I was reading it is like a blockchain based solution. It can combine current death registration and the death claim process into a single simplified procedure requiring minimum intervention from multiple stakeholders. This is making a quantum jump or rather what we say It is termed as "the game-changer", a potential game-changer in the insurance sector. So what are your views on, these technologies, which are like, block chain and cognitive computational? And how will it lead to customer experience what we're talking about? Ans: So, essentially, I know this is about I am going back 4 years. The industry set up two use cases and about half a dozen companies each with their specialist IT teams working on the block chain use cases. It was the area of underwriting and fraud prevention. I think it died a slow death. Again, we are a regulated industry and privacy and security are embedded in regulations. So in such situations do we need to collect all of this? We will try saying, you know, medical records may be private and personal. So let's use block chain there and this was one of the use cases as well, but guess what our medical report is not constant all the time. It's valid for a maximum of a year, after that, we need to test you again. so, then use case breaks unless it is your bank policy every month, right? So, I think that's where we are. But having said that these central databases which are secure and providing the same convenience are available, the customer doesn't mind. He doesn't care what technology you are using. Blockchain or not, as long as you are making his effort low. So, I think that is working RPI use cases are working in very mundane situations, such as bank reconciliation. Many banks are using RPI for that. But again does it result in cost takeout? Not much, because the cost of labour in India is still very cheap. But it does result in a customer experience improvement and TATs, Turnaround Time dramatically. So we're able to clear claims very quickly. Today, more than half of our claims are paid in what we call "insta claims" within 24 hours. In fact, by 3 O'clock If one confirms the documents are OK, we pay the same day the funds in the nominees account for death. So the technology is used like you said use cases to improve customer experiences, significant technologies to improve or reduce cost is still questionable, though the journey has begun. Q. In this unprecedented time how would you like to make your employees future ready? What is your thinking and What are you doing about it? Ans: I always believe that to be future ready you must present ready because if there is no present there is no future. COVID has given us a glimpse of the future which is work from home, work from anywhere. Why should we need these physical meetings and physical workplaces? We conducted an employee survey among our 15000 employees in early April. We found out of the 15000 employees about 13500 are in the field. They are in sales or sales management and their number one issue was how do I achieve my goals in this world of social distancing, how do I achieve goal? Another segment, which is the support function and our corporate support functions in the home office and so on, their issue was different. They said they want a work-life balance. And now, when work begins when the family begins it’s all merged into one thing, and that’s causing stress. So two very different problems. So, how do we go about solving it? The first problem was the field problem because that's a larger number. Our sales business and our customer depend on them. So, what we did, as they are spread out in 322 physical branches and 1500 bank branches where people are present. So it's a large distribution across the country. So, what we did was, we had to transient them from the face to face model to home to home model. From their home to the customer's client home. And somebody said it's not just home to home it might be H to H, or heart to heart because insurance is still an emotional product, because not all left brain, so emotional question has to be added into the digital world. So, what we did was we launched a kind of a mission called mission possible. Mission possible was launched on 3rd April 2020. In April week one we designed all these processes, customer faces processes, sales service everything from face to face to H to H. Second week we deployed it with our front line sellers, all are front line employees the 13500. In the third week of April, we selected our top 10000 agent advisors and top 10000 bank sellers and trained and certified them. They were all at their homes in April during the first lockdown. And then in week 4, we expanded to all our 46,000 agent advisors and our 50,000 bank staff who are licensed to sell Max life policy. Then we did a 4 by 4 training program essentially. One is on digital sales two on using digital training on a large scale third was the virtual sales management process, all our sales management processes and governance had to become virtualize and lastly, it was the agent recruitment. This was the toughest and I am most satisfied with this. Imagine recruiting a person in a very harsh career where for every yes you might get 7 or 8 no. The rejection rate is very high. So recruiting them digitally and training them and launching them. So these were the four workstreams and this is enabled through digital marketing and enablement tools. All our content from paper based and PPT based was made digital and mobile screen based. We had to think mobile-first and transient all of that. So all our onboarding, right from the payment process to the transaction process everything was virtualized to make it friction-free so that the process became signatureless and paperless. The third was the analytic engine, whom to meet when do I meet that was also driven and centrally controlled somewhat in the field. And finally, our listening pose became an active listening pose because no one knew what we were doing, will it be right or wrong? We also set up and institutionalized the same pose and continuing now. There is a big new muscle that we have developed which is large ears to listen to what’s happening from our customers and our front line. In April, we were just about 20% of our last year's sales. By the time we ended the 1st quarter, we came to 80% of the sales of last year in quarter one. Around the 3rd month of quarter two, we came to growth, we managed the growth. So that’s very interesting overall for the field. For the home office what we did was enable them to work from home, which is the laptop, or take the desktop if your computer is there in the office. After 3 months we realized people are getting back pain and spondylitis because home chairs are not meant to sit for 10 hours or 8 hours in a day. For their convenience we got the office chairs shifted to their homes. We ensured that we have a silent hour from 1 to 2 which is a lunch break, that’s the time when no phone calls no meetings. It’s called a silent hour and it belongs to all our 15,000 employees. No zoom meetings after 6:30 PM. Lights out at 5:30 PM every Wednesday spend more time with your family and your kids because even schooling is happening from home now. In the anticipation of COVID, we increased the health covers we doubled our death benefits overall from a minimum of 10 lakh we made it 20 lakhs because we found that the front line sellers are most exposed though their salary let’s say 2.5 to 3 lakh in a year. and a cover of 10 lakh seems adequate then, we said it is not adequate when we got close and doubled it to 20 lakhs. Similarly, all the family benefits on health all will continue in. Call centres and migration of the Call centres was very interesting we must follow Uber calling because no longer people working in our offices so when you want to make a call, the call centre will ping go through VoIP go to the call agents’ home, and then the call will be made. Both the caller and receiver's numbers are masked for privacy reasons. Thanks to all the interventions we took time but now I am happy that we can manage. Future-ready in such a situation yes, actually we have given up one floor in our home office because many people are comfortable from working from home. We are not forcing anyone but many people seem to be comfortable working from home as well. So this would be future-readiness actually because we are all going through a BCP situation. A business continuity program situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j5kgPT3VQk

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Mr. Sanjay Sehgal, Chairman and CEO of MSys Technologies Mr Sanjay Sehgal is the Chairman and CEO of MSys Technologies. He is a Technology Entrepreneur, Global Businessman, Start-up Advisor, Keynote Speaker, Philanthropist, Heartful Human, a Meditation Instructor and a Self-development Enthusiast. Sanjay is an entrepreneur CEO, who's focused on helping companies look at cutting edge technology solutions. He has founded and co-founded several companies, including AMI iVivity and Centric. MSys Technologies has efficiently acquired fellow industry leaders like Clogeny, DigiFutura, Mobinius under his proven Leadership. Sanjay has been awarded the “Global CEO Excellence Award, 2019” by the CEO Monthly and TI Atlanta top Entrepreneur Award for 2018. Q. Do you think companies are investing enough in human capital to make it future-ready? What strategies need to be adapted to make HR, the critical partner in the execution of Business Strategy? Ans: This is a very good question, especially in these times when the COVID had hit us. We, in our company, when we were looking at the business continuity plan, we are a global company and we have our clients from all over the world. When we were looking at our business continuity plan, and it had three major components. Number one was employees - making sure that employees are taken care of. They all on at the right places, they all have all the tools to become productive, and not only productive from the point of view for the company, but also their family life or in some cases, you may have seen, I think I have read in India, there is one company in Chennai ‘Zoho’. They made sure that employees if they want to go to their hometowns, smaller towns as long as they have the internet or electricity available, are able to do that so that they are with their near and dear ones. Why I am saying that is that we all have seen this COVID has shown us the importance of keeping our key ingredient for success in any organisation, the key ingredient is well taken care of, and that is Employee. Now to your question whether we are investing enough to keep the employees’ future-ready, the simple answer is, we are not. Unfortunately, I would say that majority of the organisations do not pay enough, or they just pay lip service to that and I am sure even if someone were to ask, some of the employees of the companies that I am involved in, of course, some may be saying that even our companies are paying lip service. But I must say that this is something that companies need to constantly look towards or look forward to keeping investing in this and make HR. I mean the kind of business we are in, HR is very-very important in fact, every day I have a daily call, I mean sitting here I manage our teams globally and I do a staff call every morning and a major part of that call is spent actually, in employee issues or recruitment, because we are a growing company. So, to me aligning your HR strategy with your business strategy is the only way or is the best way to make sure that HR is a critical part of your success unless employees are taken care of, especially in these times. Sometimes people are asking, why this has happened in our times. Many of you people like you and me have lived through many recessions and many other tough times in our lives but nothing like this. I very strongly believe that such a thing has come to teach us a lesson, till we learn it, it will stay around. What that lesson is, it is different for different companies different people, different individuals, me as a husband, maybe it’s a lesson because I have never spent the amount of time I have spent with my lovely wife in these times. I think that amount of time I have spent maybe 20-30 years ago. So, you can imagine that we together learn a lot, how to live well with each other, how to spend time with each other I am just giving that as an example. The same thing for companies I think this such a catastrophic event has come to teach companies a lesson, teach countries a lesson, teach individuals a lesson, each humanity a lesson and to me, that very important lesson would be, how do we take care of employees for companies, and how do we make sure that HR is aligned with our business strategy and I feel and I urge every company to follow that because till you follow that, this is not going to go away. Q. Sticking on with the workforce, what kind of skills do you feel will be critical for the workforce to have by about 2030 another 10 years, if we look ahead at 10 years? What kind of skills do you think would be required by the company for their employees to have? Ans: Again, I will say the COVID these times as an example. What this time has taught us - two major things, one is technology is here to stay. I mean, right now, if I may make a statement that the whole world is being kept together, the economies are being kept together, mainly through technology, even we are all talking you are in India and I am here in Atlanta, and companies are doing business companies like ours are doing business worldwide and not just us, so many companies are doing so many Governments are doing business worldwide, and that is all because of technology only through technology. So, number one, technology is here to stay, and the second important thing in many industries, I would say that we have learnt is remote work. The importance of remote work and the readiness for remote work. Now taking those as you can say the backdrop and these kinds of events that have happened, are not just one-off, they may come multiple times in the future. What if tomorrow a virus like this mutates and becomes COVID-20, COVID-21, or something else. How do you prepare yourself for all this and I am giving that skills that people would be needed moving forward? One is regardless of which industry you are in, what your computational skills or skills to be able to utilize the modern tools of communication that would be the single most important thing, regardless of your age, regardless of your level. Even if the person is a front desk clerk or front desk person receptionist, she would be required to learn these tools. So, I would say number one would be, regardless of your role in the company. Number two, the future demand we are seeing we are anticipating a lot of things happening around data science. Now some of you may have heard in the city of New York has had the maximum number of cases in March, April and May, in the entire world. Because New York just like many cities in India is very densely populated and there are a lot of people who come from overseas to New York every day. So, this virus coming from all over. How they turn themselves around and was because of the use of data science. They were able to predict, using data science, how many cases are going to happen in what part of town and how many beds or how many ventilators or how many of this and how many of that you would need. It was all because of data science, data analytics. Now coming to the specifics of that I think that would be a skill that will be in more and more demand going forward. And I would say number four would be artificial intelligence. Now I am telling this because I am hoping a lot of people who are listening to this, our students of Amity Institutions. So I think if they can prepare themselves, regardless of any field they plan to go into and make yourself future-ready, make yourself useful by learning all the computer skills regardless of, even if you are going to be a product manager or marketing manager or something, learn as many tools as you possibly can, that are required because these things are here to stay. Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and things like that would be in great demand going forward. Q. How do companies plan for them, they don't know what is required, what kind of jobs are going to be in demand. So how do they plan manpower in the future? Ans: No, it varies from company to company, a company like ours MSys just for this reason we have our own in-house training division. When we talk about MSys Group, MSys Technologies is one of our main companies, we also have MSys training in our case and that training is specifically to ensure that we are able to train the manpower that is available to us for what is required by us and our clients. I would urge every company to be able to do that I think in house training. I mean, not to say that colleges, cannot do that but we are always closer to the market than colleges or other Educational Institutions could be. So, we know especially in our environment we know what kind of skills would be needed by our clients now and in the future. Someone like me, in my company I am in touch with fellow CEOs of my client companies, so we always are talking about what is their roadmap what they're looking at and what is happening, or what is going to happen in the future. So, some people like us, have the knack for preparing or knack for knowing, first, and then helping our companies to prepare our employees for that. So I would say if you join a company, anybody, any of the students, they should always ask them what is their plan to keep them or to make them future-ready or make them acquire new skills that they may not know today. I myself know 30 years ago when I started my career, I actually graduated from Delhi College of Engineering, which is called DTU now, those days I remember we used to be taught microprocessors I was in Electronics and Communication. What we learned was 80-85 in some of you who are in EC may know that processors are very old. My first job itself I used fourth or fifth generation later I think it was 80586. It was called Pentium or something I mean the processor that I used in my first job was five-generation ahead of what I was taught in college. So, you have to learn those things. So I think it is these kinds of skills and if colleges what they can do organisation like ours, we also are working with some educational institutions to ensure that they are training their students in the kind of skills companies like ours are looking for. I am sure Amity also does the same, they work with some companies closely because that's the best thing that any good organisation, any good education institution would do that. Q. What impact will this kind of flexible staffing have on businesses of tomorrow? What does this gig economy, where does it fit in the future of work? Ans: In U.S. we say 50% of businesses rely on gig workers, and like you said I think the 2018 number you gave. Now people think gig workers more from the point of view of Ola and Uber and all that, but I guess it's not correct. When gig workers gigs, I mean, in fact, this is very common slang in the U.S. we say ‘Oh, are you on to your new gig’. People always say a new project to a new gig. Here in the U.S., even students work in restaurants, they work in the restaurant as waiters to pay for their college or pay for their school. And so they say ‘oh I have a new gig now’ I mean the restaurant workers and the bars and all kinds of hospitality industry especially I would say rely on gig workers of Flexi staffing for the longest time, and then came the year 2000, some of you may have read his book “The world is flat”. In case you haven't, I think you should I do recommend that was the book which came out in the year 2000, one of the best sellers by Thomas Friedman, very well famous economist, and he talked about that in today's world and that is applicable even today or more today than it was that time. That anybody can do especially in computers people can do their job from regardless of where they are, they don't have to be sitting in the office to do the job and it started happening because outsourcing if you know the offshoring or outsourcing had started happening at that time and majority of the companies in India got into that and India is still number one destination for outsourcing and offshoring and at the same time and when this happened with larger companies got form like TCS, Infosys and HCL and all and its mid-sized level companies like ours. Other things that happened was that there was a huge number of these freelancers who may be sitting in Philippines, Australia, China, India sitting at home doing projects they were sites like Elance, there are bunch of sites like that, you can put a project and someone else will bid for the project and they will do it and I'm just giving you an example studio of things that happened in last several years which gave ways to this gig economy and of course in the most recent times we had these Swiggies, Olas and the Ubers where I mean in some cases I even read. Here in US I have seen every time I used to take Uber cab I would start having conversations with the driver and I'll find the driver has another full time job but he has this gig to just make some just extra money or he was going to the airport. He thought he will pick me up also along the way drop me and make some 50 bucks and like that these gigs are with the advancement of computer with the computer being in every hand, I mean they say that soon the number of iPhone or number of these smart phones are going to exceed the world population, So that is giving rise to this gig economy in a big way. They're saying in another few years it is going to be 60% of the total number of workers in the world. So, what it gives them student who was listening to this flexibility and ability to try out new things. An ability to really plan their life you don't have to just work. There was a time people say unless you are working for an MNC “Tumhari shaadi nahi hogi, Acha ladka nahi milega, achi ladki nahi milegi” unless you have a big MNC on your resume. Bank of America, HCL you will not get a good wife or good husband, but I think things are changing and if not, I wish things should change. I think there are people in this gig economy who are making a lot more money than they could make in these permanent jobs so you have the flexibility can do multiple things you can do things that you like I think it has really opened a lot of avenues. Q. What exactly is the future of borderless offices. Could you tell us the concept of this borderless office? Ans: I won’t call it a new term but I think that's exactly as you said, I mean when COVID started in March we told all our employees to go home start working from there and we already had a business continuity plan to enable all of them to be able to work from home and very soon right after that we said OK in June will look at, will come back to the office. In June we said well till September nobody's coming and now we're staying till June nobody's coming. In fact, we didn't even renew one of our office leases in Bangalore we have two offices in Bangalore we didn't renew the lease it was expiring, everybody is working from home and all the clients are servicing are in the US or in Europe. So regardless of this nationalism cry for nationalism that some of the heads of state have I think it is to me it's ballooning, it's because the global workforce is here to stay, the global supply chain is here to stay, though with all due respect to this Atam Nirbhar Bharat and all that, of course, it is needed because India has to present itself as a good manufacturing destination as a good alternative manufacturing destination over China and that to me is a very good strategy of course very good strategy from that perspective I think it's a wonderful term in a wonderful way to do this but maybe in the future borderless here means the border of even your cubicle is not needed. The world is flat 20 years ago talked about you can do SAP implementation sitting in China for a company in Milwaukee. Now we're talking about that we don't even have to be in the office on the border of your cubicle to be able to do that. You can be sitting in America we say that you can be sitting on the beach like I am sitting in my son room here where I can do whatever I need to do I don't need a border of my office or something like that so to me the concept of those things that's where that's one thing which will give rise to the gig economy. A good guy would be able to do things if you are good, I mean, and I think I tell you Sky is the limit. Q. What strategy do you recommend to companies especially in your technology area to motivate and retain talent for the future? Ans: Very interesting that reminds me of a movie that I had seen two years ago it was called Intern if I remember correctly. Robert De Niro acted in it, he was like an old guy and who lives in New York and he says now he's retired and he looks for a job, intern job and he finds a job very close to him in a new start-up, which’s CEO is 20-25 year old lady the CEO, girl is the CEO and he goes there and everybody along with him is Gen Y or Gen Z but for some reason they hire him as an intern, it's okay, and incidentally the office was located in the same place where his factory he was in the Yellow Pages business he was a sales person or sales VP of sales for Yellow Pages and the factory used to be located there but that business has now gone online so nobody prints in the printing press business and now that this new thing is there and I think I still remember when he goes to the office first day and he wear suit and tie like you and me are wearing an everybody else is in their shorts and when once he travels with the CEO the lady that girl and the girl is crying because she has a very pressure job and all that and he puts his hand in the pocket and he takes out the handkerchief and I'm sure you remember people of our generation always carry handkerchief and I'm just mentioning that I mean I think values that you talked about. I think it is though companies like technology companies it's very essential for us to have people who have the newer skill set and so that's why we go to the newer and newer kind of people or younger and younger kind of people and younger people are more flexible and they have the ability to learn newer things there is value for experience in an organisation like ours, technology organisation and I think it’s a combination of all skill set that makes an organisation, a good organisation and I'm not saying that there are companies which have the only younger workforce they're not good but they will miss the wisdom of the older generation if they don't have some people from the older generation to be able to teach them the proper set of values and I just told you in that movie in case you get a chance you should watch that movie very interesting. She in her pressure job she needed somebody to talk to her about life, about family, about what is important as this person was there as an intern as an assistant, he was three times her age but there to teach her that and she says that’s the best lesson I have heard. Q. What can be some of the real changes that trigger these companies to embrace change? Ans: Like I had said earlier the events like COVID had come for organisations or to force organisations to embrace change, if they don't embrace change, it will vanish. You may have heard that GE used to be one of the largest companies in the US not too long ago not anymore really couldn't embrace changes that were happening around them in the marketplace. Now they are perhaps I don't know what their ranking is but it's low. So, I think what organisations can do to embrace change first realise that unless they are willing to embrace change, they are going to vanish. We all talk about dinosaurs; it is not that dinosaurs had a choice, but things change around them, and they couldn't keep up with the change, so they vanished. The same thing happens to the companies, the organisations, especially in these times I think sooner they prepare themselves for such catastrophic events making sure their business continuity plans do have the employees, their clients and all everything else that is needed, they say illiquidity the liquid cash, you all need to make sure that you are saving enough for the rainy day what else what if the business goes South I mean today companies like ours are doing well because electricity and Internet are there, our employees can work but tomorrow suppose there is an event which takes away one of these we will be how what would we do then. So I think it is imperative for every organisation to prepare themselves for such events and within the teams I mean now in the remote work we are finding some people are getting into and you may have heard that in such cases when these events happen and people are working from home there are different phases people go through. In the first phase, they are just feeling bored sitting at home and that in the next phase they start feeling why this happening to them and then soon it turns into anger, they start getting angry. A lot of things that you're seeing around us, a lot of problems we're seeing around us in the US you may have heard a lot of protests are happening in the US and all that is nothing but an expression of anger that is coming out of the situation people are in these days. Now I'm just kind of taking a social thing and combining that with the organisation now the same thing happens with organisations. Organisations need to ensure their employees have the right toolset, the right support and the right team composition to be able to prepare themselves for such I would say emotional changes that are happening because people are right now facing them in the environment. Q. What do you think it should be done to ensure the physical and emotional wellbeing of our employees in these circumstances? Ans: I feel that it's a problem, I see that not only in our employees but also my friends around us here in Atlanta I see that these days they are expected to be on call including my son, my son is 24 years old and he works for one of the consulting companies they are expected to be connected online pretty much like 20 hours a day or 18 hours a day, he has called at 10:00 PM at night at times because the problem has come in and that has I think it is very essential for employees and for the company's to teach employees and employees to really implement because it then nobody is watching them so they have to implement to bring that balance in their life. Unless they do that, I think there's going to be burnout and it is happening, as you know that they're saying they're already saying the suicide cases are increasing. India can't stop talking about one of the actors who committed suicide but beyond that, there are so many other people who are committing suicide because people are getting burnt out. So I think, I tell you at my level I have made sure that I talk to my employees of my company in every office once a month and I make sure and I tell them how the company because that old means of communication are not happening now, so it is the newer means remote communication, what if nobody is talking to anybody only the work, they're talking only about work and employees start developing job insecurity. I don't know how the company is going to do like what happens when happening and he gets into a spiral. I feel like a CEO my job is to make sure that I inform them how well the company is doing, how secure is their job, how secure is their work and tell them how I'm spending my time. They say that people don't get inspired by lectures, people get inspired by seeing how others are living their life. How come when Amitabh Bachchan used to have long hair, everybody started having long hair, remember in our age people see something and then they get inspired and I think I feel that every leader, every leader, every CEO or anybody who's in the leadership position, whether they know it or not they are the source of inspiration for the future generation. If they lead their life the same thing, we are inspiring our younger generation at home so it’s responsibilities and across. Q. What support to capabilities do the HR professionals require to deliver what the businesses need today, prescriptive, analytics what’s your advice, what kind of capabilities must people have. Ans: I can tell you from our experience that the needs are growing, needs in the market for talent in the technology space, if I may say are growing exponentially. Now, being able to match the skills or being able to prepare the people with the right kind of skill set to match those requirements is that's where we are failing in most of the cases. And, being able to, especially the remote workforce, very difficult, earlier HR was able to physically see in many cases, physically able to see the employees on every floor. Now somewhere I read that the era of a huge building with 10,000 employees is a bit far right now, is a bit far-fetched rather. I don't know when we will have a huge building full of 10,000 employees. We do have vaccines, everybody must be vaccinated, and we need to be sure that people are not bringing these things. And if that is the case in the virtual environment, what they must rely on is a lot of surveys, a lot of surveys to deduce the employee well-being. And I think to me, HR professionals, I would say, at one level ensuring that people are future-ready from the skill set. A guy who knows C++ may be easily get trained in Python as an example, which is a common language used in data analytics and all but not vice versa. Things like that from the skill set, who can be trained and what skills to be able to match the future requirements and the employee well-being, I would say, that would be the most important things. They can learn these skills. I think they themselves will be ready. Q. What will future leadership look like? What qualities the skills must future leaders possess. And what are the leadership strategies, which will have the greatest impact in the future? Could we have your views on the leadership of the future? Ans: Those of you who are really interested in this topic, may want to go to my blog. I write constantly or consistently it’s called ‘Sehgalnotes.com’. I have written a lot about leadership in 2020 and I have leaderships written about – How to hire the right kind of people? I will start with that. To me, Leadership quality is not just something about managing people and I will talk about that also - what is required for managing people. Leadership quality is something that is there as a human quality because we are a leader, if nothing else, in our own life, we are leading our life, don't we say the term – lead your life. It means you are leading; you are a leader; you are born, and you are a leader. Now, how well you lead your life. That is a quality we are talking about. I think an important thing when recently we have a video released in a blog where we talked about how to hire the right people, I said okay. There is a very famous person Simon Sinek in case you guys have heard of him. He was talking about in the U.S., the best team in the U.S. is considered as a Navy SEAL Six, in case you watch movies, Hollywood movies, they have the best guys. The toughest guys I mean they say what kind of people you look for in Navy SEAL Six. And they are saying that when we draw a chart, they look for two things - Performance and Trust. They may not mind hiring a person who is low or mid in performance if he is high on Trust. You want to trust your life or wife with they say, that's the kind of guy, you want to hire. But I think in an organisation we cannot know while interviewing that the person is trustworthy or not. You can look for a person whether he has a good leadership quality or not. Again, I say here I am talking about leadership qualities means leading his life. Now an important thing to notice there is - Does the person have a victim mentality, or he has a Leadership mentality? Victim Mentality is – oh I did not know this because I did not get a chance because my college did not teach me. Or I did not know this because I used to bunk my classes, some excuse or my father did not have money, my parents didn't have this, this, or this. To me, that’s a victim mentality. A person with a leadership mentality - he takes everything that he gets in his stride, makes the best use of that what was available to him and leads his life. And in US admissions that they look for holistic things in US Universities especially the Ivy Lee. They look for not the person with the greatest number of marks, they look for the person who made the best use of resources available to him. They gave admission to a guy who didn’t score, who scored almost 90% in SAT, mainly because he was homeless, and his father used to sleep in the car. And he used to attend school, he used to take bath in a public toilet and then he used to go to school or sometimes he used to take bath in school and attend the classes and he has still scored 90%. They could have hired guys who were 100% or 99%, but they hired him. Now that to me is one quality that I always suggest in a leader. This leadership equality is the opposite of a victim. And number two, I would say when you're leading people these days, things are changing. If you look at companies like Google, companies like Apple, companies like Microsoft, what has changed in the last few years. Founders have made way for new leaders. Two of those companies now have leaders of Indian origin, as you all know – Sunder Pichai and Satya Nadella. Now, what qualities do they have, inclusive moral leadership – very very important these days. The old era of a leader being a dictator, tight-fisted and controlling the companies as Steve Jobs did, or Bill Gates did, was needed at that time. Not in today's leadership. Modern Leadership in 2020 and that's what I wrote about in my blog requires different kinds of skill sets. You lead by example; you lead with skills. And third, or last more important thing I would say is anybody can acquire knowledge. I was mentioning to you the other day, time perhaps is not far off, A child is born, you put a chip in him, and he has artificial intelligence. He is available, all the data that is out there available to him. In fact, it’s true even now, google is your face, or window to the entire world. You can google anything from anywhere. Suppose that thing becomes part of your own being when you are born, so all the knowledge is there. You have the glasses, now they say BOSE has come up with speakers which are part of your glasses. And then you have a screen here, and now they're talking about a screen which will be virtually in front of you, wherever you're doing. So, there are so many things happening in technology. Soon all the data that is out there will be their part of you, data is part of you, intelligence is part of you. What is left, what will distinguish you from another person in the workforce. Everybody knows Python and they can know Python because the chip is there. Heart – Heart is the one that distinguishes us from all the robots, from all other machines, from everybody else and that is what in the US people are looking more and more for a skill called Emotional Intelligence. I am sure you all have read about EQ, Emotional Quotient. Earlier it was used to be IQ and now it is EQ. Some people even talk about Social Quotient. How well the person deals with himself, and that's what the thing I talked about – Victim vs Mentality. How well the person deals with himself, leads himself and how the person deals with things around him. That to me is the quality of the heart. That is going to be a very important thing in leadership, any leadership position in the future. Q. How would you reshape a C-suite. What should we say a major change in their priorities, or should the present system continue or how do you look at the future or C-suite? Ans: I think that's a very good question and that's what I think, the last thing that I mentioned, I would in the C-suite, I would look for their ability to manage themselves and ability to manage others at the same time. Often, we look for people who are high performers, they may be high performers, but their personal life may be a disaster. Or their ability to deal with people maybe be questioned all the time. So, I will always look for people who are able to manage themselves as well as they are able to manage the task at hand and others. And C-suite would be in my view, that's where you are beginning to find a talk about diversity in C-suites and all that and people are finding that the women are missing and they are softer, I think they are doing certain skills that men always find difficult to acquire. So, I think that's to me, you are looking for more balanced individuals. Q. What kind of advice that you would like to give to young students, young people who are here with us today about how they should investigate meditation and other such activities? Ans: You will perhaps be surprised, I started meditating when I was 23 yrs old and nobody in my family used to do that before I did. Typically, people do these things when they are born into a family of people. I was born and brought up in Delhi and like most of the youngsters always was – khana peena, movies. That was my lifestyle till I come across this meditation and initially I was not keen on doing it. I thought ‘aankhe band karke film actress ke baare me sochte rahte hai’. I used to make fun of those people. But once I started doing it and the kind of things I realised in my life, even at that young age - that day and today I have been still doing it. For thirty years I have been doing this meditation. So often people think oh it's not for youngsters. My son has been meditating since he was 18 or 16 and he is a trainer of meditation. And when you meet a person like him you will find how well balanced it can make you even at a young age. You can have fun; you can have all the fun. I have given you so many examples – I love watching movies love going out to eat and having fun with friends and all that. People think meditation takes away all that, no it’s wrong. Meditation balances you; meditation helps you to use your faculties in the most balanced way, in the most optimum way. That is the definition I can give you. And if the youngsters and not so young guys, we should all take it up. I think it’s something that is missing in your life. There is so much you can learn, there's only so much so limited things you can learn from books, movies, and broadcasts and all that. There is a huge reservoir of wisdom within each one of us, that is ready to teach us the right things as and when needed. And that's what meditation helps you tap into. Q. What message do you want to give to our young students about Entrepreneurship and the spirit of Entrepreneurship rather than going into companies for jobs? So, what kind of advice because you have been through this in your life. You know what requires to be an entrepreneur, what are the risks? So, what advice would you give to our young people today? Ans: There was a time when I started my first company when I was 25 yrs old. If I ever have to go back, I have to redo my life, I will start as soon as I came out of college. And I would say that people should look at that not just as a means of supporting themselves. Youth is the age of risks taking, youth is the age of trying new things. And there is no time better than the current time. If you see, the people say the economy is down, GDP has shrunk and all that stuff. This is the best time to start your company. Because first, very few people will start. So, you will have less competition in the market. This is the time that is reshaping the future. Like a lot of questions, you asked about the future, being future-ready. Because we all know that viruses like Covid-19 are here to stay in 2019-20, 2020-21 something like this, is here to stay. We must prepare ourselves. So, the problem that you see now, if you can solve these problems, you are ‘king of the hill’ and I think never be afraid of failing. Fail in fact I always believe, fail fast. So, I think you can be a successful leader. Instead of taking one thing like in Hindi ‘pid pid ke lage raho, das saal nahi. Do one thing, fail fast and go to the next one. And I think at your age I mean there was a time when all CEOs were 50-60 years old, now the companies have CEOs who are 20-25 years old. You all guys are the ones who can start the next Flipkart, you can start the next Amazon, you can start the next Microsoft, next Google or even the next in Delhi ‘Bitto Di Tikki’. I mean think about that Entrepreneurship. I mean all knew, we all grew up seeing a golgappe wala in our neighbourhood and the poor guys, in 25 paisa or 50 paisa giving you this and here is the guy who has created an empire. I mean, to me this is Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not only limited to technology. In today’s market people are doing deliveries. Delivery services to your home because of new problems because. Delivery of medicine, delivery of new businesses which are coming up. Problems looking to be solved, number 1. Never be afraid to fail fast. Your age is the best age to start these things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaI-HR0shoY

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Mr. Tarkesh Gupta, CHRO – South Asia, Fresenius Kabi India Interviewed by: Mr Ashish Sahu, Vice President Training, Amity Institute of Training & Development Speaker: Mr. Tarkesh Gupta is working in the capacity of CHRO-South Asia, Fresenius Kabi India and is responsible for end-to-end HR functions and delivery. He has over 22 years of rich experience in various facets of Human Resources, Administration, Salesforce Effectiveness and Business Process Excellence. He also has a deep interest in Psychology and has numerous Certifications to his credit which is evident as he has been certified on Social Psychology from Queensland University as well as Personality Assessment from Hogan, besides several other Certifications including Professional Coaching. Prior to joining Fresenius Kabi, he has also worked with Max Bupa Health Insurance Company Ltd, Rockwell Automation India, and Dabur Pharma as well. Q. What competitive edge the Fresenius Kabi brings to the business in India where Indian competitors find it hard to copy? Ans: Yes, so, Ashish, 2-3 things which I would mention here. Number one, Fresenius Kabi’s quality of the product. Wherever we go, we talk about the quality of the products and 100% guarantee, no compromise. We can get into a financial loss, but we would not make any compromise on the quality of the product because we deal with the life of human beings. So there is no compromise on that. So that's one. Number two, people. I think that’s the biggest competitive edge which we have got. We have got internally grown Senior Leadership team. If you would have gone through our India website, you would have seen that the entire ‘my leadership team’ is homegrown and they have been working with the organisation for the last 10 years or so. So that's one of the biggest advantages which we have in India. And the third is primarily if you ask me is the ‘culture’. We have been a great place to work, we have been certified as a great place to work. Our HR practices are certified, and we have gone into the internal certifications across the region. We talk about Transparency, we talk about Empowerment, we talk about Modesty and we talk about Proactiveness and Ownership, what we call ‘TEMPO’. This is not only on a piece of paper, but every employee lives with it. And that’s where we have got value-based Leadership. Q. What do you think is the vision of Fresenius Kabi overall that these are the differentiators we are talking about? What is the vision, the overall vision of Fresenius Kabi? Ans: ‘Caring for Life’. This is our ‘punch line’ or even if you say the motto. This is ‘Caring for Life’. And this is what every employee truly believes in it. Our products are being used primarily for critically ill patients. So, when they are in ICU or maybe some kind of trauma, surgeries are there. And that’s where the motto is, we need to see that how we give the best care to these patients. In terms of, if you talk about the overall industry and then also if this Kabi, moving forward if you talk about the market and this is my opinion not only in India but even the outside India also. Probably, home treatment is going to be the keyword in the times to come. Patients may not like to go to the hospitals, they would prefer to be treated at home and that’s where the Insurance companies, the Pharma companies need to think about the logistics models, the supply chain models. Another change that would happen and which I can see today is that the market may move from health care to preventive care. So, in times to come you will see that more immunity will bring health centres that are coming up in hospitals. So, the market would move from disease care to preventive. So, you need to see that how you build immunity to prevent all those diseases. I am sure that these are the things going to have fun in the time to come. Another point which I would like to mention here is that the ‘gig economy’ is going to be the keyword. Not only the Pharma world but for that matter any industry where the roles would depend upon the projects, not lifetime employment. That is going to be, I would say the old, which would not be in fashion in time. I think, the reason behind this issue is to understand the Pharma world. That maximum number of deaths happens in the hospital because of hospital-acquired infections. So that is one of the biggest reasons not only in India but outside also. And this way, the minute you get into hospitals and your immunity is low, you may get into other kinds of infections other than the problem which you have. And that’s where the hospitals and the way the knowledge is increasing with the normal public, they are becoming more aware of it and say that who needs to go to hospitals, can I be treated at home? Or Do I need to stay in the hospital? And this is going to be, personally, I believe, this is going to be the ‘game changer’ in times to come. And then hospitals, insurance companies need to think that how they align themselves with the changing reality. So, my view here is that certain changes are going to happen whether you like it or not. And thus, what we are trying to do, we have divided the organisation into verticals because what makes sense to plants, does not make sense to field people. We have said that, okay, the plants, warehouse, supply chain, logistics is one part. And then my field force is the second part. When we are talking about plant, manufacturing; we are seeing that we where are the opportunities to automate the manufacturing processes. The warehouse also, the way you supply the drugs, the logistics are going to play a crucial role, even today within our country. And this year we are looking at what can be automated by using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Moving forward, we are looking that how we analyse the small data available to us through different sources and reducing reliance on manpower so a regular task can be automated when we talk about plants and warehouses. Field force and then the last one year that has been great learning for us. The entire year, the field was not able to move out and talk to the customers, meet doctors etc. And that gave us good learning that how would be the model in future. So, let me just tell you that the role of field people or rep is not going to move away completely. It would remain there because this business is primarily based on the relationship. And then the relationship can only be done only when you interact with the people. It’s not that machine can do that job. But it is going to be changed dramatically and then the change has already started happening. And I generally use the word ‘Phygital’. Phygital is a hybrid model of ‘physical’ and the ‘digital world. You would have seen that the doctors have, during the pandemic, you would have seen at least, the doctors preferring the video consultation. They say you need not come; you sit at home and I am also sitting at my home and let’s have a consultation. When patient consultation is there through the video, then doctors would also like to meet medical reps through the video chat only. So, in the time to come, you may assign one or two days and say that all medical reps can join, the way we are talking, and then one by one doctor is talking to different reps. And that would be supposed to reduce the travel cost. And use that time to build capability with sales reps, with your sales team who analyse the data, use the technology, he should be comfortable in using the technology. I have seen many reps and even the senior managers especially in sales, who are not so comfortable with the technology because they are never exposed to tech. Now it is high time to be comfortable with the technology, otherwise, you would become obsolete. Digital Analytics Tool will be the engine to accelerate agility and transparency because everybody is looking for transparency, nowadays. New technology like Artificial Intelligence pretty talked about machine learning etc. Those analytics focussed more on merged, already started emerging. So that’s where the industry is moving. And then we even at Fresenius Kabi looking into those elements, seeing what makes sense to me as per my strategy. I am not getting into all these fashion words, because just it in fashion and companies are trying to do, you should also do, our object is very simple that what makes sense to me keeping in mind my business strategy, my business model. My business model is slightly different from a normal Pharma company. I need to see that what makes sense to me. Q. What is your viewpoint on this because there are 3 fundamental changes taking place in the one is in work, workforce and third is a workplace? Ans: So, there is no second thought on the statement. I do believe that change is the only constant in this world. And it is only a matter of time that the systems and processes which we see today are going to become obsolete tomorrow. And that's where it is the need of the hour to reinvent and reskill not only to yourself but also to your workforce. But it is important to know that what makes sense to me. What is change with this pandemic is the pace with which the change approached us. It is just 100 times faster than was expected. So, it’s not that what we are talking about today, is something happening today only. No, it was happening earlier also but only the pace got changed. Yes, that’s why I am saying. And that’s where it caught the industry and the Leaders, I think in many cases, unprepared or unaware and that’s where the challenge is. I do believe that we don't have a choice now, not that we were having a choice earlier also rather than facing it. When I talk about HR since I am an HR professional, but honestly today I spend more time in the business because I am responsible for the Pakistan business also directly. But HR, for example, entire employee journey will have to be planned and HR gets ready for the new challenges that come along with the distributed virtual atmosphere. So, when I talk about my field team, 1200 people across different locations, forget about the entire country. And then you may not be able to conduct an onboarding exercise physically in this kind of an environment where the travels are very limited for the new employees. So, you need to see that how you are inducting your people, onboarding them, ensuring that the organisation vision and goals are percolated down and ensure that you have given a seamless joining experience to the people. We already started doing it. This would mean the modification of not only you’re onboarding process but your hiring process. Again, we are getting into virtual hiring, video interviewing using artificial intelligence to do our first level of interviews. Your recruitment practices, your termination policies, your engagement initiatives, be it your exit process and everything else in between everything needs to be redefined keeping in mind today’s reality. Our philosophy at Fresenius Kabi for years has been focused on building culture, people, and processes. And these things are inseparable. This is not something that I am talking about today, I have been taking this for the last 5-6 years and hopefully, this holistically answers your question. Q. What is Fresenius Kabi looking at? Whether Fresenius Kabi looking at job focussed, or well-being focussed? whether it is bureaucracy or self-managed teams, whether it is culture and behaviour focused or strategy/goal focus? Whether it is people focussed or technology focussed? Some of the areas you have already mentioned like technology, culture. What about enabling performance or managing performance? Ans: Okay, I will touch upon one by one. And since you asked me questions, I may not remember, you will have to help me. When we talk about enabling performance or managing performance, I think keeping in mind the younger generation, their mindset, it is not about managing, and it is more about enabling. We firmly believe that managers need to play the role of a coach which enables performance. People need to manage themselves. I have no right, or I would say power to manage others as a Leader. Let people manage themselves and that’s where we talk about Leaderself-Leadership. When I have got 1200 people who are in the field, it is difficult to make any supervision, effective supervision, I would say. And that's where it takes people mindset that they should not need any supervision, and this is what we ensure during our recruitment process also. That the entrepreneurship must be there, you don’t need any supervision. Your manager’s role is only to enable your performance. And the integration must be direct only your managers will enable your performance. untap your potentials. The second aspect, I think you mentioned ‘job focussed’ or ‘well being focussed’. I have slightly different thoughts here. And then since I am a little more analytical, I mean my personality towards the logical way of looking into things. I believe yes you need to look into well-being but while looking into the well-being of your team, you cannot compromise on the deliverables. While you are looking into the deliverables, you cannot ignore the well-being of your team members. So, it’s neither this nor that. It is somewhere you are striking a balance. You should be able to ask the right questions while ensuring the people's well-being, their stress, their pressure, their work-life balance etc. But also, at the same time ensuring the delivery. One thing I would say here while without a culture behaviour focussed or strategy and goal, again it is not either-or. My strategy has to be aligned with the culture or my culture needs to be aligned with my strategy. I strongly believe that if your culture is not aligned with your business strategy, it means your culture will eat your strategy for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It must be aligned. When I am talking about that one of my key elements, one of my strategy innovations that innovation needs to be lived on the employees and managers but if my managers are not giving that kind of space for the team members to innovate or they are not allowing them to ask the questions, then whatever be the strategy, it won’t give you the results. I do believe in simplicity only without getting into management jargon. Q. what is your people’s strategy, the kind of talent you recruit, how do you manage them? Are there instances where you have been differentiated or your strategy has worked wonders for the organisation? Yes, I think I strongly believe that people are always a great differentiator in the marketplace especially when you are in a generic kind of a world. Every company is borne out of the same kind of products. So when I am talking about the Pharma market, paracetamol is paracetamol, whatever is the brand name. How you differentiate yourself, that’s where the people play a very crucial role. The relationship you build with your customer, the kind of services you provide to your customer, that gives you a difference. People strategy is around to create an ecosystem. When I talk about culture, I talk about the ecosystem which encourages certainty. It is something like you actually plant a seed and then you want it to blossom. There are certain rules and systems which help. You have to have fertile soil, water it, you need some kind of fertilizer etc. You have to ensure that enough air and sunlight is there. If you put that plant inside your room, perhaps you would not be giving that ecosystem to the adequacy. And this is what I strongly believe in the organisation that your ecosystem plays a very, very crucial role. And that’s what we try to do here that we develop a value-based Leadership. In value-based Leadership, I have got a certain set of values; those certain values talk about certain behaviour, what employees and the Leader need to exhibit. Then we ensure we have a mechanism to get feedback around both behaviours. So if you are not doing well on those behaviours, you would not be in a position to exhibit certain behaviours which are expected by employees of the organisation, you would not be in a position to grow in this organisation So, this is number one. Number two, Entrepreneurship, that’s a keyword here. So, we say as a Leader, as a manager, you should not show helplessness – what can I do, someone else has not done the job, what can I do, the economy is not growing, what can I do, the customer is not looking into? These are the strictly ‘no’ ‘no’ excuses. If you are an entrepreneur, how do you make things happen? This is what we talk about. Wherever, whatever the follow up is required, whatever you need to do, whether you have done those efforts or not. After that whether you get a result or not that’s a different thing altogether. But were those efforts there or not, and that’s where we talked about ownership at every level. I am responsible, accountable for what I am responsible for. I cannot give any excuse, I cannot abdicate my responsibility. The objective is very simple, to build a highly engaged and performing workforce. I don’t want to build only an engaged workforce that means you are into the comfort zone. So this is the philosophy that replies second part of your question when you talked about whether you have seen any such things happening. I can share my example here, example means my organisation’s example. In the generic market, once again I am touching upon that topic, that is how you differentiate. It is not about your product, it is not about your brand also, it is people who make difference, once again I am repeating the same line but I strongly believe. We dislodged innovators from the market and reached a cold position primarily because of the people and the relationship we had with our customers. This is what I have seen not only in one product but in a couple of products. Q. Among all these challenges being a CHRO of the organisation, how does the organisation prioritize and strike balance to accomplish these objectives in such a dynamic world? Ans: Interesting. And this is what I struggle with in many forums when I interact with many HR professionals, not only the HR professionals but others also. Because these are all ‘words’, nice words I would say. And then will talk a lot around it. For me, these are nothing beyond words. Your priority should and would always be linked with your people and business strategy. You cannot do everything, you have to decide what you need to do and why you need to do it. ‘Why’ need to be answered first. Then I will give you a very interesting anecdote. So, one of my experts, industry expert I would say. He was talking to me and he said that his organisation this year in 2020, book a theme ‘Change’. I said very good fantastic, ‘change’ is the only constant thing. Of course, we need to change. I said whether your junior person in the organisation can articulate that what needs to be changed at a personal level and organisational level. And why the change is required. If every employee is not in a position to articulate, the way you see, you articulate, change is not going to take place. So, the organisation needs to spend a lot of time answering the ‘why’ and ‘how’. If it is not clear, if your employees are not in a position to understand, then these remain only fashion words, nothing beyond it. So you decide whether you want to transform – wonderful, fantastic, you want to transform but what you want to transform, why you want to transform and how you are going to transform. That need to be answered and that’s where many CEOs, and the Leader’s struggle. So my thinking is very simple. As an organisation, what is more, important for me? Let me take one, make it cost-effective. How I am going to make it cost-effective, what are the opportunities available, whether every employee, even the office boy understands this, to switch off the lights when the room is not in use? And that’s where you bring the changes. Q. What changes do you expect as far as the Pharma sector is concerned in the workforce? I think there are certain things, not really linked to Pharma but overall I would say. I mentioned I think the ‘gig economy’ is not only the Pharma but everywhere. It’s more about the project related roles. So you have today one particular project, you hire people and then thank you very much. Unless you have another project then reskill the people. It is going to be like Bollywood, you work in a film, thank you very much and then you work in another film. What organisations need to focus more on developing the versatility with the people. So today you are, for example, if you are starting a greenfield project, maybe you are going to have a plant, so project management is a key skill. But after your plant is up and running, what is more, important than? operational topics. Whether you are reskilling those people to getting into those kinds of roles. Otherwise, those skills would be obsolete. It is something like that you have done a romantic movie, so you need to be a good actor in a romantic movie. Maybe the second movie is a comedy movie. Immediately you need to shift your role and then actually perform well in the comic role. Maybe immediately after, you get a fight movie, you need to show that kind of skills there also. This is what is going to be there unless as an employee, as an individual, I am looking into those things and reskilling and reinventing myself. Organisations need to help with this. Organisations can facilitate but the responsibility lies with the individual. Moving forward also, even today the younger generation this is what we need to understand, where we have got younger generation, even kids, those who are 14-15 or maybe 20 yrs. of age, if you have noticed they do not believe in instructions. When you are going to deal with such kind of generation at the workplace, you need to know how to coach them. Coaching is going to be very critical for managers without getting into the complexity of the coaching. Coaching if you ask me, in one simple sentence how to ask the right questions. Nothing beyond this. The second thing is ‘Technology’ of course. If you are comfortable with the technology, you call it, you need to be comfortable with that. Moving forward, when organisations are also going to be more bottom-line oriented, they would look at the bottom line because the pandemic also taught us that at the end of the day, you need to have cash in your pocket. So, organisations also need to see that how to ensure that they have got cash in their pocket and then that’s where they would investigate the technology, they would look into the flat structures going to be there. With an adequate control mechanism, flat structures, a virtual workforce with adequate control mechanism using the technology, so that we are not losing the race. Q. How do these organisations create a positive employee experience because employees are going through tough times and keep their morale & productivity as high as possible? Ans: I think the worst part of a pandemic is over hopefully. I think during such kind of times, it is about the connection and communication and what we have seen in the last year or so. The most important point here is that Leadership has to be visible. Leadership visibility – it should not happen when you are working from home and then you don’t know what to do. Leaders should give guidance and courage to the team. And that’s where what we have seen that regularly connect with the Leadership team, it is very, very important, why in the confidence and sense of security of employees and give a clear message around that what are the company's strategies, objectives and way forward. So, this is one key thing which is very, very important. What we have also done, we have utilised this time to launch our Artificial Intelligence-powered employee connect program. We have also set up a chatbot, which is reaching out to every employee asking tailored questions. So I am saying that every employee will have a few different questions depending upon the value in the organisation and depending upon the kind of move the person is executing. And that's where that gives you great insight that what is happening and what it is on a real-time basis. Another thing that we have also done is that we have also got into employee well-being, so we are reaching out every week, talking to the people or whether everything is okay, whether you are having any kind of symptoms etc. Else also organisations can do, make people or make well-being part of the employee daily routine. To encourage work-life balance, creating engagement programs around healthy lifestyles, some kind of engagement programs around the healthy work lifestyle that what we need to do, when we are working from home etc. So showing concern to the employees and makes a difference. Q. How does the organisation capture and scale up the productivity that can come with the new ways of working specifically that you would be talking about? How do you accelerate individuals’ learning curves, so that they become more productive in this kind of scenario, in this kind of hybrid model? Ans:  It is all about the clarity you give to employees in terms of the deliverables. It is also a lot dependent upon that how your managers are relooking into the goals which you have set in. It is not that you set it and forget it and then you will review it after the end of the year only. So, the world is changing. You remember the advertisement for one of the bikes ‘fill it, shut it and forget it. So it is not like that. In this dynamic world, fast-changing world, you need to see how regularly you are seeing into those goals which you set at the beginning of the, maybe every month or every quarter. Then you can see what kind of changes are required, you give the clarity to the people. For example, what goals we set in 2020 beginning, by the time we reach to the first quarter, end of the first quarter, I think those were supposed to be changed. I don't know how many organisations have looked into those aspects. Every month you need to look into it depending upon the kind of market situation is there, the kind of environment is there. So I think when you talk about how to make employees productive, it is all about giving that clarity on things. Second thing, from a manager perspective, how comfortable you are in the crucial conversation. I have seen in many cases, people – say that they have a very highly engaged team. But whether that highly engaged team is delivering what they are supposed to deliver, that is also very, very important. And it is important to develop the mechanism whether it is offline or online. Now, we are talking of technology, you have to have every manager that has to have a dashboard. So that you are on top of things. Organisations need to help by using the technology, create a dashboard for every level of managers and employees. And then regular feedback that where you are. And I strongly believe and am in love with the Gantt charts, so you keep on tracking the projects, it’s not only projects but even your regular day to day work that makes a lot of difference. I strongly believe without getting into too many complications, that clarity on your deliverables and then regular review mechanism, the dashboard. If you can develop that kind of culture in an organisation, that helps you a lot and then your managers should be comfortable looking into things, asking the right questions and enabling the performance. So everything is interlinked together. Q. There's one question which I would like to ask you which is of our interest and you are saying that what will be the role of outsourcing for HR functions and Learning and Development? My favourite topic when we talk outsourcing. If you ask me, you can outsource anything and everything. Nothing is there which you cannot outsource. Even my role can also be outsourced. But it depends on what is needed. You need to decide as to what needs to be produced internally, what you are good at. That is what is very important. What needs to be bought externally, where my skills and experience lying, whether someone else can do this job better than me, I need to take help. And then I remember some of the quotes, it says that ‘If someone else can do your job better than you, then you need not poke your nose into that. So it’s true that if you can deliver better training for me than I or maybe the resources I have got available, I would be more than happy to go there. Why should I unnecessarily try to invest or spend resources on something which is not good as you? So that’s what the organisations need to see. If I have got the system, resources, capabilities as good as anybody in the world, let me do it myself. So, I think if you ask me when we talk about future moving forward or future workplace, as a Leader or even as an employee in the corporate world, you need to be comfortable with the new technology, you need to be comfortable with the numbers. That's also very, very important no matter which function you are in. If you are in HR, you should be in a position to understand the numbers and make the right influences and create a story around them. That's going to be a critical task. Second, the critical elements that - can you find opportunities from hopeless situations when the pandemic attacked the world. There are organisations, there are Leaders who see the opportunities and then took advantage of them. This is also very crucial. The third thing which is not something new, but in the short supply always, is humility. Humility is always in demand and will continue to be needed more and more in Leaders. And I am always amazed to see that it is in short supply. Second, the critical elements that - can you find opportunities from hopeless situations when the pandemic attacked the world. There are organisations, there are Leaders who see the opportunities and then took advantage of them. This is also very crucial. The third thing which is not something new, but in the short supply always, is humility. Humility is always in demand and will continue to be needed more and more in Leaders. And I am always amazed to see that it is in short supply. Morality and humility are going to be keywords moving forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0GXE14VDpc

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Mr Ranjit Khompi, Head L&D, Reliance Retail Fashion & Lifestyle Businesses Interviewed by Mr Ashish Sahu, Vice President Training, Amity Institute of Training & Development About Mr Ranjit Khompi: Mr Ranjit is the Head L&D, Fashion and Lifestyle Business, Reliance Retail to our Leadership Studio. He is an award-winning business professional with 24 years of experience across marketing, consulting in HR. He has held leadership roles in Product Management, International Trade, Human Consulting, Human Capital Consulting, Global Value Management, and different International geographies across diverse sectors of Office Automation, Automobile, IT, Outsourcing, Insurance, Telecom and Retail. So, he has a wide range of experience and it will be interesting to listen to him. He also holds HR credentials of Senior Certified Professional SCP from SHRM, USA and CPHR which is Chartered Professional in Human Resource from Canada. He brings to the table, lot of experience in terms of his business and talent. He has offered numerous articles, has authored & presenting keynotes in international HR and L&D summits and in developing copyrighted training quantification methodology, which we also known as PQM. In his current role, he leads talent readiness of approx. 31,000 employees for the fashion and lifestyle business of India, India's largest retailer by driving businesses’ outcomes, focused on HR interventions. Q. How to develop an organisation with a Future of Work mindset and is more resilient coping with uncertain times and more adaptable to thrive in these times? So that's something which I wanted to ask you, Mr Ranjit? Ans: I think I am also looking forward to the next one, our interactions, the kind of questions that will come up from the students, as well as the faculty members. I think, to start off with the first question that you have for today; how successful a company is or maybe actually is going to be in the future? It all depends on how it is exploiting the emerging opportunities, tackling their challenges, which are coming along and how intelligently it is observing and interpreting the dynamic world in which it is operating. So, we are looking at the Future of Work mindset. The success of companies will determine, how it takes care of it ahead. Now, of course, any company is driven by their leader. So, first, leaders must define their leadership in the future that we are looking at. Leadership is like what, it's very difficult to define in terms of how it will be in future. Every leader that I come across, feels that he is doing very well. But when I am talking to CXOs across the world, they are saying that the kind of future leaders that we need, is going to be completely different from that we have come across till today. So, the leaders of today’s companies will first determine what kind of leadership that is needed and where we are today because that is going to be the pivotal point to take the future of work ahead. Are we going to capitalise on it or are we going to succumb to it? I am from the Retail Industry; we have got the same pandemic coming across the World. And I have seen some companies, because of their leadership, not only sustaining, thriving but also looking at galloping into the future. While I have seen other companies across the world who have shut shop; companies who have gone down. So, what determines basically, developing in the organisation the future of work is to develop the leaders themselves who can look beyond the horizon. The leaders must, first, see what exactly is going to come; beyond that, they must have that bird's eye view around it. Only when they have had that bird’s eye view, can they then start looking at having a mindset to start it? The first mindset that is required is called a growth mindset. In Reliance itself, for us Growth is life. If it is said about humans, it is said about organisations also. Compared to inflation, forget about the competition, you are receding. So, one of the ways to tackle the future is to have the growth mindset, how can I grow, not just about 10%, 15% but can I grow above 50%, 60% because if you have that mindset, if you want to buy a red car, you will start seeing a lot of red cars on the road. Similarly, if you have a growth mindset, you will start seeing a lot of opportunities even in the industry 4.0 that we are looking at or the pandemic or where we are looking at any kind of calamity we are looking at. The first thing that is required in different sets of people in the group mindset Secondly, I would say, it is the Digital Mindset. Compared to earlier revolutions; industrial revolutions, this revolution is not here to support humans. It is there, in fact, to replace human actions and in this manner to replace humans also. Unless until I, as an employee, as well as a leader, understand this and have the digital mindset coming in, this tool, rather than becoming a friend, can become a foe from my job role. I would go ahead and see different contours that are coming in. So, I need to have a digital mindset, I can't be sitting, saying I have got a functional skill; I don't need digital experience or digital exposure around it. I need to have it to survive it. That’s the second thing that is near today. Thirdly, the thing that is going to happen is that every hour it is getting more integrated into the organisation, we are moving away from silos to something which is an integrated organisation. If there is a change happening in some other department, it's going to impact me. Can I have a collaborative mindset to take the future and make sure that works for me? And that’s the third important thing that I have said. And the last thing, which will be required is that; gone are the days when the leaders are supposed to look at the future of the organisation. I would say that, if we must take care of the organisation of tomorrow and be resilient, the employee must be an entrepreneur, he must think about how I can add to the top line and the bottom line of the organisation which we call, in the management term it is called the ‘Intrapreneur’. So, I think these 4 mindsets, if all the employees can build together with a leader who has a vision of going beyond the horizon, I am sure the organisation will not only be sustained through what is coming into the future but also capitalising and growing through it. Q. How does the organisation prioritize and strike balance to accomplish these objectives in a dynamic World? That's my second question to you, Mr Ranjit. So many things are happening, how do we create a balance in the organisation? Ans: I think it was happening earlier also. I think what has happened is, the pace has increased to an extent that all these initiatives are now vying with each other to be resources in the organisations. So, if I must get transformation or if I want to get an incremental view of it, I need to invest some resources. And because the changes are happening so fast, all these are coming almost at the same time. I think what the leaders can do here, and I have been practising it in my organisation is, to step back, because there are so many things happening, you tend to react than respond to what it is. And one of the ways to prioritize and look at which resources would need to be going where, rather than following a herd mentality, where everyone else is going. I think, what needs to be done is, every leader must step back and do thinking. We are in a kind of system; we are not operating in a vacuum. All of us are interconnected with each other, so we will have to have a kind of system-syncing approach looking at that - okay if I am going to pull one lever at one place, maybe it's a cost reduction, how does it affect the fundamentals of other departments somewhere else. Now, if I am looking at these aspects, one of the ways are to deal with this; is to do a force-field analysis of the problem that you have with you or the strategy that you want to adopt. Force-field analysis will tell you which are the forces that are in line with you, which are helping you and which can enable you to be successful. And which are the forces that would be hindering your growth. It could be a small intervention that you are doing for your organisation, it could be OD or intervention the way you are running pan-India, or it could be a strategy that you are moving, it could be a blue ocean strategy. Once you do a force-field analysis, you will understand, out of the negative factors which might be slowing me down, I will pick out which I need to modernise, which I need to revamp, where I need to go faster in the organisation. It will also actually help you look at which are the lever that I can utilise to do that. I will tell you one surprising factor; you don’t need to look at these independent activities. I would suggest that you look at the forces which are supporting you to enable and further capitalise through a lot of areas where you don’t need improvement. You can use a strategy to find out certain improvements required and just go for a transformational thing that is required. In my experience, the force-field analysis for each of the functions of each of these categories helps us prioritise what is needed right now and what is going to give me higher bucks for money that I am spending out there. Q. That there has been a change in transformation in basically three things that we have to talk about. So, in the process of adapting to this changed reality, every process, function and role will be re-imagined, fundamentally changing the future of work as we were talking about. Besides work also, you can say workforce and at the same time workspace as well. Offices are closing; people are working from home. So, what is your viewpoint on this? Ans: In fact, for the last one year you will see, our revenue target has remained the same. There is no office space right now. Earlier, most of my revenues used to come from the stores and the way it used to happen is – customers used to come to the retail market and then they will buy from there. Suddenly, with Lockdown, everything stopped. Right from cars to garments to food everything went online. So, your workplace has shifted. The way your business model has shifted, your financials have shifted completely, and the kind of role performed by people have completely shifted also. And same with my L&D team, I had to shift the way I am thinking of building capability. Now, each function will try to change differently. However, as a leader, if I look at it as an independent view, if I look at it as a part that is changing then I will, be missing out on the acylate that the part has hit other departments. So, I need to think, when I am talking about stepping back, I need to see that as a whole system. It's an entire gearbox that exists. So, if each department says that I am going to re-imagine differently, then the gears will be out of sync and they won't be able to move in properly. So, as a leader, who is orchestrating the entire thing? First to look at, move from looking at independent individual departments, from disconnection there to look at interconnection or look at the relationship because if I am changing a process, changing a function, what and how the relationship with other functions sync, what are the implications? It does not go from raw material to output, that output also comes back as money for the raw material. If I am going to change only one part, I am going to change my entire loop. The leader does not understand that he would still work, or she would still work in silos. When you start stepping back and look at the entire orchestration around it, the new methodology emerges. And I think that’s what we need to look at. I think that’s the leader’s role; when each function would like to reimagine themselves, is a leader’s role to put it together and say okay while you might have evolved individually, how does it all add up to the organisation’s output and how organisation move. The organisation is a creature. Incorporate law also, we say it's an entity. Now, imagine if I have got 4 legs and all these 4 legs are going in different directions at different speeds, the organisation will not move, it will collapse. So, it must work together. Q. Automation will reshape business models and the broader value chain creating organisations with fewer layers and a better trained and trusted workforce empowered by real-time data analytics. So, as you rightly said, people used to come to stores. Now, most of the things are happening online. And the role of data analytics has become so critical, so important, Artificial Intelligence.So, what do you think, would be the emerging trend in the retail sector in this kind of situation? Ans: You have heard of Amazon Go in the US where you go and check in with your phone, you pick up what you want and then you just walk out of the store. They just removed the entire cashiering system, the order management system, everything out. The automation and the data analytics that happen at the backend enables a seamless customer experience. Now what it is doing is not only getting a better customer experience but is also somewhere rewriting how the organisation is designed. For example, if I look at Amazon Go and if I look at Walmart, here entire frontline cashier staff, out of which almost in Walmart is about 72% women, will be out of a job. Let's look at another automation. There is automation called a Progress Shelf. What it does is one of the main jobs of retail people is to tag merchandise on each of the shelves. Now, what Progress Shelf does is it automatically tags whatever merchandise that you kept on the shelf, checks the barcode and price, the calorie value of that thing, any item will be blinked on that shelf. Now, the entire role of the people who are arranging the shelf is gone. Or you look at autonomous cleaning robots or you look at pickers. In many warehouses that we have where the distribution happens, we have fully functional robots who go and pick up the merchandise that is required to be dispatched either through e-commerce or through the direct route. Now, what I am talking about is that real-time data analytics all are now become autonomous making sure that the process is becoming very, very similar. Now, in this part, what happens is the traditional roles are somewhere going to get taken off. I will give you an example of this. This example is about 3 yrs. old. In the telecom sector earlier, if you had to go and buy a sim from a retailer, you had to submit your Aadhar card. Now, that form would be checked by an officer, he would check if the photo matches with the identity card if the address matches and then they will sign on that. Now what happens, we have the automation happening in that last mile where rather than having all these documents, you just need a fingerprint sensor and the Aadhar card connected UIDAI network and that’s it. You don’t need any third person to really agree with what exactly you are saying. Overnight in an organisation that I was working on earlier Tata Tele, 600 people lost their job. Now, what will happen is because of automation the regular work that is happening, will get automated and the way it is happening. I will give another example; one of the ways to tag merchandise in a Retail sector is called RFID – Radiofrequency Identification Device. So out here you can just scan the entire rack with just one sensor in about 30 seconds and you know what kind of merchandise you have. You don’t need any physical inspection; you don’t need so many people to know exactly what is happening. Now, because of the earlier role, the layers are going to be taken out. So, what our role will be when we are structuring the organisation and the way we are structuring the ways of working, the way we are structuring the information flow must be centred around not our current processes but how the information will flow tomorrow. And that's a huge shift I have seen across. I am not seeing only here but I have seen outside. There are so many companies who are investing effort into just getting this restructuring in place so that they can be ahead across. Exactly. One of the things always said is, because of automation people will lose jobs. And that's true to some extent, I think every industrial revolution we had, this kind of job shift happening. But at the same time, I see the redeployment of labour as a strategic opportunity, because if it is done well, then you can get your already aligned, culturally aligned, team members to give all their focus on getting a better customer experience. So, you move them out of all the transactions which are mundane jobs which are not value-added job into something that they make a customer happier. I will give you a couple of examples. For example, let's say customer support. If a customer comes to return a garment, in the retail sector 34% of garments worldwide or the electronics sector, has returned. What it means is, customers can return a product, no questions asked. Now that must be dealt with in a particular manner. I can't automate that. I need to have a human who understands, who checks, displays empathy, understanding concern and at the same time enables a person to buy a different product so there is no cash outgo. Let's take another example. Let's say, Ashish, you go to a particular shop, and you are buying a T-shirt for yourself. Now an automated system can't suggest would that t-shirt, blue colour t-shirt, a beige colour trouser will go. We need humans with that. So, what people can do is use automation to lower their errors. Use the analytics coming in to understand the customer buying pattern, what exactly the customer is doing and then make sure that he or she uses this information to give better customer service. For example, with automation, the workflow around the entire store has improved. Walmart is a classic example. Last year Walmart spent 400 million dollars by improving the workflow at the same time improving customer satisfaction. In our organisation, we improved the way we interact with the customer, not only has it increased the revenue but also it has increased the net number of scores around it. In this way, we can, using automation plus better customer service if I can train my people to use automation properly, then I can reduce the number of complaints that are coming in because I can proactively eliminate the complaints that might come in. So, it all depends on the organisation’s focus on skilling, reskilling on a large scale. Q. How the Retail workforce is going to change. As you have mentioned just now about the reskilling part and what we call it, we run workshops on Performance Enablement, how do we enable people, empower people to do the task which is required. Ans: I think the big shift that will happen basically is how to balance in this unprecedented time, the short-term crisis with a long-term uncertainty. Honestly today none of us also know how Retail is going to go which way. For example, if you look at footfall across the world in the brick and mortar or the offline store that you are looking at, the footfall is less than 50% compared to last year. And it's not only India, but also not only just the Electronics Stores or Best Buy, that you can look at. So, we don't know what the future is. But what we need to look at is how do we balance it out together. One of the first things we need to look at, whatever you might say from an HR perspective, is how we plan the entire manpower for next year, we want to see how we really look at the manpower planning, what are the assumptions that we are building in. We need to have three kinds of assumptions that I look at. I look at the best-case scenario, the worst-case scenario and everything in between. And you need to have a talent acquisition strategy required to upgrade. Now, you can look at someone like our platform. Coke has been using it for some time. You have a couple of other companies who are using it very nicely in terms of planning their acquisition strategy for tomorrow. Uniqlo, our global competitor is using this which enables them to really plan what kind of hiring that I am going to do for it. The second, is basically, how I am going to engage. We are in a truly kind of not so happy scenario today. So, when you are talking to an employee, when HR is planning around it, they need to plan engagement with some positive purpose. There is a very large pizza chain worldwide. What did they do was, they got all their employees together and said let's give free pizza, physically go, and give it to all the hospitals? Now what it created, it created a very positive purpose for employees to be associated with the organisation and the engagement score went up. So, what happens is there must be a purposeful approach for HR in whatever they do. It could be as simple as connectivity calls; employee connects calls that we are doing or if we can get family in the call. In fact, I know a couple of IT companies which are doing, couple of retail companies, what they do is in their office calls, they also invite their kids, their families, to be there, because we all know that we are not an office, we are at home and people around. What happens is then there is a kind of comfort that sets in. And I think that's what HR can do because HR must maintain culture while maintaining distance. And if that HR can manage this in planning and ensuring that employee well-being and performance are set, automatically the balance thing happens. Another thing that can work is basically, we started doing is remote development. You can't get people into the classroom. But what you can do is you can take the classroom to the person. Now either it can be self-learning, it could be virtual instruction based or it could be remote coaching that you might be doing. Anything that you can do, if you keep on feeding him, there must be growth. See we all are human; we must grow. If you can't grow monetarily because of some reason, what you can do is you can feed at least the intellectual growth part of it or the emotional growth part of it. And that's what you can do with remote development. We also see that a lot of organisations, because of the changes that are happening, have retrenched people or they have got some other people. Now organisations would have saved money. My suggestion, in fact, my viewpoint around this is, if this idea can be reinvested in the people who are there, that further motivates the retail sector employees where you don’t see actual things around it. So rather than ploughing back of profit, distribute the profits saved into our people and that’s another way of ensuring that you keep on maintaining the performance of the people. Q. How does the organisation capture and scale up the productivity that can come with the new ways of working specifically in a hybrid model like our organisation Amity also starting that 50% people will be working from home and 50 will be coming to office. So, we call it a virtual and hybrid model. How do you accelerate individual learning curves so they can become productive in this kind of scenario? Ans: In fact, being in education University globally, if you guys think about the corporate who are focused on the bottom line all the time. In fact, you would have heard of TCS, a vision of 25 by 25. So, it’s the same with everyone. Everyone is looking at how I can get ahead because while the leaders want their employees to come, employees don't want to come back to the office. And it's a mix of both the things that are happening. Yes, there are some pitfalls of working from home. In fact, you don't meet people, you don't connect and say how it is and in fact, traditional leaders have this comfort of having people around them. And they say that's the only way to really communicate their vision, their goals and what they want to do. And that’s why we used to have all the strategy meets all the time in April, May, and June corporate India. This year we did not have it, but people are still making money. So, I think the shift that leaders must go back and say if I don't have my person physically sitting here, how can I still set clear objectives and milestones for the person, so that even if a person is physically maybe 1000 kilometres away, knows what to do, knows how to do, know how he or she will be evaluated and how he will be rewarded. There are of course multiple tools that can be done, a balanced scorecard is one of them if it can be done properly. OKR is another one that we have seen happening well. In fact, there is a classic case of Intel vs Motorola where OKR helped Intel to outright Motorola. And that's not one of the classic cases where we can look at it. One of the most important things that I have seen across is, if there is a clear objective for someone there is a higher possibility of that person performing. Ambiguous goals mean ambiguous results. Secondly, I have seen is, when people are aware while people would know what they are supposed to do. What happens is that people are not sure that whatever they are doing is right or wrong. Now, they might be coming to the office, they might be coming one day in a week to the office, or they may not be coming to the office. One thing that they require more than anything, is coaching on how it is going and how the person can cope up with the entire shift that is happening because the subordinate himself or the employee himself is not physically going in meetings somewhere. Suddenly people have realised that they don't need meetings. The work can be done on emails and phone calls. Now, not everyone is after doing it. Some of us are good at it, some of us may not be good at it. I think the second thing that the leader can work upon is ‘Remote Coaching’ for their subordinates. You don’t need to really give coaching only for the bottom. I believe everyone needs coaching. In fact, when I sit with my supervisor, I also ask him okay this is how we are going to go ahead with that. I have this view, but do you think it's appropriate, do you think it will work, do you think it will fly? So, at every level, people would want the most of whatever they are doing around it. Earlier it was very easy. I could just walk up to my boss’s cabin, anytime sit with ‘chai’ and I can work. Today it's not possible because he is in a meeting, I am in a meeting. So constant coaching by the supervisor is the second thing that I talk about and lastly what can drive individual performance as well as individual learning growth is ownership of well-being and engagement of the team members. Earlier people are to believe that HR was responsible for conducting engagement, games and ensuring that employees were happy but today, in fact, we are pushing it basically that your employee's well-being and engagement is completely dependent on you. For even a leader owns it then in this kind of hybrid model or maybe a remote working model also, we will be able to drive development as well as performance. Q. Do you think that this requires a new demand at the workplace in terms of skilling, lot of skilling because I was reading a report which says that 80% of people must be reskilled now with the advent of so much of digital transformation? What is your take on this in terms of reskilling and upskilling employees? Ans: There are a couple of websites one of them is BDUK and another one is NFWM where you can go and put your job out there and check out how much of your job will get lost because of automation over the next two years. It’s a very interesting insight, in fact, people can go and check it. I can tell you about the right thing in the world, the industrial revolution is not here to help humans, it is here to take away their jobs or part of their jobs. Now all of us as employees even facilitated as L&D team, you will see that some of it will be going out. So, if you look at this, from an organisation’s perspective when these changes are happening and even if the organisation doesn't want to do it for themselves, there will be competition, there will be markets, there will be customers to be forcing them to do it. Now, because of this, there are three scenarios - there are job losses that are happening what I talked about earlier. In fact, World Economy Forum 2018 report talks about that more than 30% of jobs in the manufacturing and service industries will be lost by 2025. Now, of course, on one end there is job loss happening, on another end, you have new jobs coming in. You have the app creator, you have got cloud sustained, you have digital marketers coming in. Now, these jobs were not there about four or five years back. So, you get job loss at one end, you got new jobs coming in between and then there is everything in between that is there. Now the organisation must see challenges, one is to also check if I am running automation and there is, of course, the pressure from the CEOs, CXOs, CTOs about getting new technology in place, what do I do with my people. Some of us will skill for the new thing that is coming in. Some of us have upskilled because they don't know it. I will have to reskill some of them who don’t have any other opportunity in the organisation to do something else. I will give you a classic example. In the organisation, when you had the offline business since it is locked out, we had the online business coming in and we had to reskill our people to start doing online training. Now these guys who were doing customer-facing roles, now are doing online order consignments. But now they must be reskilled. My own team went in from doing classroom training to doing virtual training to doing something which is now getting into complete performance management which is based on analytics. So, this is something that is required for survival. So that's the reality. Now whatever you might say, that’s how it is coming in, you don't know how people want to take it. But there is a churn, we are there, fortunately, unfortunately, we are living in the best era of humankind, but it also has its own set of challenges. And I think as an HR leader you must see it coming in and we must be the enablers to make it happen. Q. What should be the role of Human Resources? What mindset shift does this represent for the future and how different are these priorities vs today what they used to be earlier? Are you seeing some of this already been happening? In the very first instances, we talked about possible mindset shifts. To deep dive into certain things is like it must be, whether it is enabling performance or managing performance? When it must be job focused or well-being focused? Like we talk about the task and people-oriented leaders. Is it about bureaucracy or self-managed teams? Is it culture and behaviour focused or strategy/goal focus? Is it about people focus or Technology focus? So, a lot of questions are there in front of HR. How do you focus on these areas?  Ans: We call Human Resources, and this term has evolved over the last 100 years from being an admin team to personnel team to labour relations. Now in the last 30 years, people were human resources, unfortunately, the resources are not managed well, is becoming a liability in the organisation. And the HR’s biggest role is to ensure that the resources remain resources, do not become liability where a finance team or operation team come back and say – your people cost is way higher than what we can afford to move out people. For HR, the biggest role that HR must do is make sure that HR has a vision to really take people through it so that not many people are left behind in the journey. This is a time when it can be where we can move everyone through it. We have seen that in the outsourcing boom that happened about 20 years, this was not managed that well. In fact, that's why you had a lot of pushbacks happening as outsourcing and in fact, outsourcing also became taboo in the developed countries, and India was on the receiving end of it. But today it's not only an outsourced company or outsourcing company or it could be a manufacturing or retail company. HR must play a role where the resources to remain the resources. And for that, what they need to do and in fact what I have seen, a lot of developed companies doing it, has a look at over the next 4-5 years. It's not going to happen overnight. It's like keeping a frog in slowly warming water. It will not hit you today, but slowly in fact it is eating away yourself and one fine day it will impact you badly. So what people, the last companies have done like Walmart. What Walmart's HR department has done. They have set $4 billion for the next five years to take care of their employees. What I talked about is basically where the cashiering which is 72% are women, if that role is going to go, what you are going to do with that. If you are going to get autonomous robots to pick up your cargo in the warehouse, what am I going to do with the pickers? What they have done is, they have investigated the future, and they have discussed with the leadership. If we got 1000 people and I need to take care of them because they stay with me. Now, how many of them can I make sure that I can take it ahead? So, HR must do two parts. It is possible to take care of people for readying them for tomorrow. One of the ways to do it is basically, there are three ‘S’ principles - Scout, Shape and Shift. What does Scout mean? HR must investigate the horizon and understand the business strategies and look at what kind of skills would be required or what kind of people enablement is required to enable revenues to be coming in over the next couple of years and how people can contribute along with technology coming in. Technology is not going to come in, in fact, it is coming to you already. How can I coexist with it and still make sure that the new skills that are required, I get my people to do it? So, they must have a visibility of what skills will be required over the next 4-5 years for my industry, for my organisation, for the resources that are coming in for the revenues that are coming in. That’s the first part. Secondly, they have to ensure that we segregate the current resources into who is shapeable and who are not shapeable to get to the skills. And that's the second part of shaping up which we call ‘Upskilling’. And third, they have to shift out people to roles that do not require technical skills but can move on to other skills so that they can sustain themselves and they can be taken care of. So, three things, Scout, Shape and Shift. So, by doing this, what HR will be able to do is sustain what exactly is going well. Also, what they can do, for example, what has Best Buy done in the U.S., is they have looked at how many of our people are good communicators. Best Buy is into full furniture and getting office equipment, all these things. Now people have stopped coming into it, they are buying online. Now what they have done, the way you have UrbanClap, as a company which has come and set up. They have extended their services into these areas where they can use their technical expertise to go and fix things in people's houses. So, I can upskill someone, what I can do is I can side skill him. For he knows something well, I will just add communication skills so that he or she can go to the customer’s house and fix things that are required. So, what HR has to do is keep on scouting, shaping, and shifting people so that they remain resources because training on the resource is almost 1.5 to 2 times cheaper than buying a new resource. So that’s business can be catered and pushed to management also. Q. How do you think what portion of outsourcing will be taking place in terms of Learning & Development? Ans: From HR & L&D perspective, I see one is kind of complex technology that is coming in. Let's take augmented reality or virtual reality. We need to build a lot of content around these products to make sure that the customer comes to our stores and goes to experience to buy something new. So complex technologies which are not available in-house, and they need to be trained for people is that’s where outsourcing can happen. The second is Scale, in fact, you guys are already good at it. Getting a scale in place, maybe we have to get 20,000 people trained on a new way of doing something, new software that is coming in or new processes that are getting rolled out. And that's another outsourcing that can happen. The third is basically the regular work that does not require a lot of technical competencies and that can be done by an outside facilitator also, is another area that can be outsourced easily. It does not require continuous connection with the client organisation or employee. So, these three areas which I think are clear opportunities for outsourcing and cost-saving as well as building upscale for HR & L&D. Q. What will be some of the key themes on organisation culture that corporate India will need to embrace in the future because things are changing, their dynamics are changing and where are we now on these themes? Have we started implementing it right now because people who would like to join in future, the organisation would like to know so that’s what I wanted to know? What will be the theme of the future in terms of the culture of the organisation? Ans: I think the theme of the future would be completely based on what kind of the target group that you have for the employees that you want to attract. Different organisations run with different sets of employees. And the reason why I am saying this is even a company like Google which provides almost everything under the sun to the employees, can't really attract the best of the employees and retain employees. In fact, a lot of these employees have left Google and Facebook and have joined a lot of start-ups in the US as well as in India. So, I think I would, rather than giving or responding to a very generic kind of answer, I would suggest that kind of theme that we need to build up, will be built upon the target group that I have, the kind of employees that I want to attract, retain, and grow, to kind of employee value proposition that I want to build. So that I can sustain the theme not only in attracting but sustaining and growing also. The reason I am saying is I have seen a lot of companies started a lot of fanfare kind of theme and not able to carry it through because that has not become part of the DNA, that is not really bought in, that is created to showcase to the world. In fact, I know organisations who participated in great places to work or a lot of these things just to get accolades on the website. But is it really to ensure that employees come, stay, sustain, and go ahead? That’s the biggest question. I think the theme, evolution will depend on three things - the target group, the EVP that you want to create and of course, what is your biggest long term people strategy around it? Q. What do you think, what will the future Leadership look like? What qualities & skills must future leaders possess? Which leadership strategies will have the greatest impact? We have been talking about so many leadership strategies and there is a question which has come in about leadership style, how do we see in the future. What kind of leadership style will be there? Ans: I think it's a very interesting juncture, the reason I am saying is that when I talk of the future of leadership, there is a lot of discussions that are happening worldwide on what kind of leadership do we require for the next decade. And the key thing that is coming across and the one word that arisen across is ‘Agility’. Unless and until leaders keep that in mind that tomorrow is going to be different than today and unless, until I am agile enough to take on that, whatever domain, functional, people skill or strategic skill I might be having, all will be in vain because I will be applying yesterday’s tools to tomorrow. So, I would summarise it in one word - ‘Agility’ and that's the key thing that is coming in across. If you look at yesterday’s news, Jeff Bezos stepping down. If you look at his journey. I was just reading through it. Just imagine AWS which was nothing, in 2001 they launched it and today it's in the cloud. Now, just think about it why I am talking about this. It's not about how much of the grey hair that you have, how much education qualification that you have or industry expertise that you have today, it is out of the window. What is required for today and tomorrow? Do we have the capability to understand what is required? Can I create tools and team around it, and can I go ahead and conquer it? And the genesis of all this is Agility which is if you go back to the tip of the Iceberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S948jrAoGhc

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Mr. Prashant Kamal, Head Global Procurement and Supply Chain, Flex Mr. Prashant Kamal is presently handling Global Supply Chains for Flex. Mr. Prashant Kamal is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in Supply Chain management. He is Head Global Procurement and Supply Chain at Flex which is the third-largest global electronics company. He with his 2000 plus team is supporting 80 manufacturing locations worldwide. A graduate from IIT Kanpur, Prashant earlier worked with Nokia, LG, and Microsoft. Q. Flex is a global player with operations across geographies. Could we begin by understanding what Flex does and how does it do it? Our participants would like to understand the supply chain management of a global company like Flex. Ans: Flex is known, as you already shared, as the largest PMS, an outsourced manufacturing service provider. We pride ourselves on being the right function in terms of innovation, in terms of design, building, delivering, and managing the entire supply chain. It's about delivering the right products based on how the customers want and request and how we can as quickly as possible respond to that. So the first step is in terms of technology innovation. The technologies and terms of the early design sketches, simulation, and modelling set us apart. The rapid prototyping and design for manufacturing processes give a very strong advantage. But in larger advantage we get is in terms of the built, looking at the manufacturing capacity that we have and the footprint. We are currently working in 30 countries with over 108 manufacturing locations, which is massive manufacturing across the globe. The other key strength that we have, essentially in terms of the delivery of the supply chain modelling and the supply chain strength that we have is quite solid to talk about. And of course, managing the reverse logistics and spare parts, that gives us the other advantage. If I want to put that in numbers, what you are looking at is enough, this is an expectation for this year. We are going to have a revenue of 24 billion. We are in the top 500 in terms of global companies. But in terms of the size, we are looking at 160,000 employees out of which we have 4000+ designers and engineers. From the supply chain perspective, we have 10,000 supply chain people as well. So we have 1000 customers and for each customer and the way they behave, we have technically 1000 supply chains as well because not all of them are in the same segment. We have to handle 16000 suppliers and as I said global operations which consisted of 108 manufacturing facilities and the remaining design and finance centres. In sense of the key segments that we operate in, we have classified into 8 key industries – Auto, Healthcare, Cloud Computing, Communications, Energy, Industrials, Lifestyle, Consumer Devices. That is not all, there are a couple of more which we have not mentioned here, which also includes Defence. So Flex is currently active in all the industry segments that we speak as of now. We are looking at 1000 supply chain, we look at a million components of the stock keeping units suppliers. But more importantly, we are talking about 10,000 supply chain professionals and 25,000 purchase orders which we execute on a daily level. So that’s what I have given you a scale at which Flex is currently operating. Q. During this year's first 10 months, do you have a ringside view of the impact of COVID-19 19 and the disruption it has caused to businesses? Can you help us understand this impact in different regions of the globe, different countries and how do you see the impact on different industries going forward? Ans: I will answer it in two steps. One, I would say what happened and how the Flex responded to it. Given the skill, we were massively impacted. I will also talk about how we see things going forward as well. Now for that, let's look at the first section that I have. The outbreak happened, which was Govt recognized, which happened somewhere around 27 January. So the action happened one hour later that's how Flex responded. We have seen lots of companies that have responded a week later, a month later but we were able to respond almost immediately and I will tell you how and why. So at that time when the total confirmed cases crossed the 2500 limit, that’s when we started to put the issues, things that we are concerned about right now. If you look at the total, as we spoke about, in terms of the total manufacturing and the total suppliers that we have i.e. 16000 suppliers. Quite a large amount of them have a pretty strong footprint in China. Now, this entire thing began in Wuhan, Central China but there are lots of manufacturing units quite close to it, Shanghai area, Shenzhen area. All of these areas are highly populous and moving areas. So we guessed that entire China would get affected quite soon. What we had slightly missed at the beginning but we have to post correct, we assumed that the issue will remain endemic to China and not become a pandemic. What we have seen is, all of us are aware of how that happened. We used that by putting in very strong Flex management and response. So we set up this immediate war room team where we had people from every function. But then we also have the Indirect Procurement Team, Legal Team, the Resiliency Advisory Team, the Supply Chain Solutions Team which are developing IT solutions so that we can fix all the issues at the same time. This was a day level communication at the war room that we had. This is highly possible to do if you can centralize many of these activities. In quite a few areas, in quite a few companies that I have been with, each factory works quote and unquote independently. In this case, the idea is to putting all together and responding at the same time giving the same solutions starts to add a large amount of value. Going back, talking about the systems tools, the total amount of tools that we have has given us a really solid advantage. Somewhere down the line, we will talk about how the tools help in supply chain resiliency. The one thing that I wanted to talk about here again is that we are talking about is all of these issues that we have where companies have to respond, they are addressing the key topics of supply chain resiliency, how resilient is your supply chain. Now for the first topic of resiliency, we are trying to understand how large the impact is and how we can react to that. There the key concerns become – do we have wide sets of data, do we right people to respond to that in place so that we call about a decent amount of change in terms of organisation. When we started at Flex for this, there was not a single manufacturing site that was not affected. I will first probably talk about that from the people's perspective. The priority of course is that people are safe. Despite a huge amount of orders that are coming in from various customers, we had a very transparent and a very honest discussion with the customers often that these factories are impacted so your deliveries would be slightly later. The other conversation that we had is with all the suppliers that we need to reconfirm every delivery to look at are they able to deliver that or not. Again, to get that scale in place when we started, we had 67000 purchase orders which was circumspect and that later expanded to 2,00,000 purchase orders. So, we have to manually track through call every supplier and fix 2,00,000 purchase orders. We began to see gaps in the information system that we have. When you place a purchase order to a particular supplier the address that we normally have is the finance address, who are we going to bill to, address, and shift to address. In many of those cases, we are not sure that we have all the information in place. So the gaps in data, we can find very quickly and also those gaps in data as well. Quite a few of the people realized that the key difference between the coronavirus outbreak that we had, particularly the disruption and all the previous disruptions is that, this disruption has been worldwide. It is not limited to a particular area. We had Tsunamis before that, we had earthquakes in Japan, some of the experienced people would remember the flood in Thailand I think in 2011 when worldwide we did not have hard drives available so computers and phones had problems, I think memory chips. But those were endemics to those particular areas and most recently we had this massive disruption in terms of the trade war, the tariffs that Trump Govt imposed on the Chinese Govt. So all the materials that were coming from China to the worldwide moving onto the US immediately got impacted. But again this was a large disruption but still not of the scale of Corona Virus. Because here the impact was across everything. The first step that we will talk about - do you have the right amount of data and how quickly are we able to get that data, the existing system of using ERP and downloading the data from ERP, creating excel files, and working out. That would not work because we have to work on a 24-hour cycle to ensure that we can move forward. I will stress the data in a bit. Now, this is how Flex has come out if you look at how we look at things, there has been a huge amount of study on it, forecast and how we are going to look at the world. Q. The first half of 2020 saw global GDP nosedive and we have seen some recovery in the last few months. But again, second and third waves are hitting many countries. So how do you see things plan out in the next few years? Ans: Nobody has a crystal ball to answer that. But again in the Supply Chain, what we need to do is forecast and work based on the forecast. We are making the best guess based on all the information that we can get. The idea is how quickly we can put the information together. So what we expect to see at least a couple of months, we are anyways seeing a worldwide drop in the annual expectations. The second quarter has been massive but if we put it up for the whole year, the expectation still was that India would still do okay, but now the thing changed quite a bit in the last month, we have looked at what the latest published numbers are. But one thing is clear we have seen quite a strong downtrend in the whole world. But what is troublesome is the job creation, the unemployment rate that we expect is going to go quite massively high. How that is going to impact. That is going to impact very strongly, first, the customer demands in quite a few sectors. But this is what we expect right now. And I will probably move on to where we are looking at. In terms of segment-wise, there are two ways of looking at it. I will just put it in a summary here. There are some segments or some industries which are going to get a positive impact and there are a few which are going to get massively negatively impacted. Look at software services and E-commerce. We have work from home, all of us are listening, working from home, we are still able to fix. The software services are still working as it was before. The demand has only gone up even more. E-commerce, all of us are well aware of how Amazon, Flipkart all of them have done. That is again on a pretty strong upsurge. So E-commerce and Software are looking quite positive. Financial Services, not many have free cash to invest and frankly, the companies are also not very clear as to what the future holds. They are trying to hold back their investments at the moment. The Stock Market is of course behaving quite differently. The Auto Sector was impacted very strongly in the first quarter, from March onwards. March, April. June, we have heard a huge number of shutdowns of almost every auto industry, and also the pickup of the auto segment has done okay but it is still not to that of the pre-COVID-19 level so we still expect what auto will be a slightly short-term negative impact. But Oil & Gas and more importantly the entire Tourism sector be it hotels or be it air travel, has been massively hit. We also expect some quite downturn here unless we have Govt interjections, we don’t see serious problems in both of these sectors. But one of the ways of looking at it, we have classified these into 5 key segments in terms of the advantage of future manufacturing. There we are going to see is, in the beginning right now we are going to see massive material shortage which we are dealing with right now and trying to get that in place. At the same time, in the segments for which we do have materials, we are going to see a drop in demand. We are going to see workers shortages, cash flow issues and finally, we are going to see planning issues because nobody can frankly forecast as to what is going to happen soon. We have additions in terms of what the midterm and long term would look like, the near term future is going to be troublesome. Now if you can look at all the 5 segments, Consumer Segment, Transportation, and Logistics, these are the areas where the massive hit is in terms of the drop in demand. Now because of the scenario that we see for right now in Q3 and how that will plan out in Q3, Q4 is something we need to keep a pretty close watch on. However, it all depends on how the Govts, how the hospitals, how the WHO, and more importantly how the pharmaceutical companies react to the requirements of the new vaccines. Everybody is quite massively optimistic about looking at the V shape curve overall. There are quite a few segments that will take a much longer U shape curve. But we see a pretty strong V shape curve for Q3 for quite a few segments. However, it still depends. Now we can look at the 5 top scenarios that are coming up based on quite a few of the consulting companies. All of this depends on the health impact and how soon and how quickly, we can get the vaccine in place. The most likely scenario looks like where we have seen recurring health impacts, controlled by somewhere around mid-21 that is when we are expecting to see the vaccines effectively deployed across the world. And that’s why we are potentially seeing enough that this area could be where we could be. This is what we are looking at in terms of the short term. Q. Pandemic is not the only threat or risk to the supply chain. But this pandemic has opened our eyes to many other risks that can threaten our businesses. Could you help us understand some of these risks and how can companies respond to these risks to mitigate them? Ans: One of the key things that we have learned and picked up from the challenges during COVID-19 are: first, identifying which are your single points of weakness. The second key thing becomes geographic overconcentration. All of our electronic manufacturing across the world has a pretty strong base in China. I would not put a number to it but I wouldn't be remiss if I spoke about 45%, to 70% of most of the electronics supply chain across the world are based out of China. The third thing that we're seeing is more visibility to second and third-tier suppliers. We know exactly what our suppliers are doing but what are their suppliers doing, we are looking at. Given the supply constraints are we able to manage those demand surges? And again, more importantly, what we are seeing some very positive some not so positive but unprecedented Government involvement so the Government is getting in quite strongly into all of this. I put all of these together, and then we talk about where all do we see these kinds of scenarios coming up again? So the one thing that we are quite clear, we were talking about force majeure kind of scenarios like a natural disaster like for example, for whatever reason, if you were not able to have this discussion today, I would call it a force majeure, we had a cyclone, we had lost the connection we are not having it, so that will be presentation risk that we potentially could have happened. Most of the thing was quite clear that none of us actually expected a worldwide pandemic but somewhere at the back of the mind we knew there was a risk, we never addressed that risk, but we were aware that no such kind of risk could potentially happen. But the problem right now is looking at the entire world scenario now the economic shocks, the geopolitical tensions, we expected the large economies again most of the experienced players in the supply chain fields, do not look at geopolitical tensions between large economies to continue because the economic impact is quite massive or the geopolitical tensions and tariffs, to a large extent go hand in hand. Now we have seen some scenarios where we have tension between Japan and South Korea, in terms of the trade war and tensions that we have. Now Japan and China-US and China, South Korea and China so the geopolitical tensions and therefore tariff become tighter. Brexit, there are quite a few of us have been hearing about Brexit we have also been working on mitigation actions. But what would the new border restrictions mean for manufacturing in the United Kingdom? Would we still want to move materials from mainland Europe, all the way through the border through the channel have two border checkpoints one exporting out of Calais and the other importing into Dover? Are you interested in getting into that rigmarole or can we just pick up all the manufacturing out from the United Kingdom and put it up in Poland, Hungary, or maybe even Romania? Now this kind of perplexed interest by putting up these border restrictions, what is the long-term plan? Regulatory changes, Make-in- India has been quite decent and actually can be a much stronger impact in terms of how the manufacturing and import are happening in India. We all know about how the regulatory system in Brazil is forcing all of us to start manufacturing there. For example, if you import a mobile phone you end up paying 35% duty, a PlayStation five attracts 40% duty. So all of these companies go there and start manufacturing in towns like Manaus or Sao Paulo. Similar rules coming up here have been called for example. Even Flex has set up the entire manufacturing facility in Chennai, and quite a large business rule moved in because of these policies by the Modi government, in terms of putting in the additional tariff for importing of the PCB assembly. Now, a PCB assembly attracts a tariff, however, manufacturing in India does not affect tariff. It becomes so much better and that's why movement happens. The point is, how quickly can a company respond to this? Malicious actions are known cases so they are very difficult for us to estimate but it's not a secret issue that we should be able to fix that, as we move along. I would like to add just one thing in terms of organisational eco-system. When we look at the pandemic kind of scenario, the one thing that we miss is the financial health of our suppliers. So when we say, a fragile supplier what we are talking about is what is his resiliency in terms of surviving a one-month lockdown say, for example. If a supplier is comfortable with a small scale and let's say his financial health and quick ratio debt is at one. Would he be able to survive one month of lockdown? And what is that impact if the supplier goes down, how does that impact our supply chain? So, as of now, that is literally what we are dealing with. Labour unions, I have seen cases of strikes are up, stick to India the Nokia manufacturing facility in Chennai had one key issue in terms of the labour union. And that's how that process. So, if you look at supply chain risk there is not a single area, which is not a risk. And now thanks to COVID all of us including you, because you bring this topic up, how are we able to have a supply chain risk, earlier the point was execution, execution, execution. The supply chain target for all executives across the world was executed. Now, resiliency, mismanagement, and this structure has made it so much clearer. Q. I just wanted to clarify one thing. You said COVID recovery will happen in waves. And I just wanted to understand from this risk chart that you showed, is that a ripple effect of COVID that we may experience which may result in more shocks. For example, some of these big companies that may be short on cash may not be able to survive for much longer they disappear and then that starts to send a ripple effect in the market. Do you have a perspective on that? Ans: You are talking about a dangerous area; I think that's something that deserves to be discussed. When you have large suppliers, in terms of the large companies going under because of financial issues. This is where the governments also step-in in terms of how much support they can give in terms of the short term. If you look at the Airline industry the US Government is funding quite a large amount of bailout packages for Airlines. The bailout packages in terms of Supply Chain manufacturing at least for us in the electronic and mechanical industry are not that large. The Governments don't look at that, however, we are the largest in terms of job providers, so to speak. Now this is where the role of the customer and supplier come in, and there are a lot of suppliers where flex is taking into account that we are already upfront paying, we have all of us on the payment term. So, in an industry, nobody pays unless it's very specific. We have to supply with whom we have payment terms of 60 days, and we'll get the business and we'll pay them within the next 60 days. Looking at the financial situation and also the criticality of those suppliers, we begin to pay cash in advance. We “loan them” so that they can fight over this period. Now, this is where we start to get into extremely strong relationship management. The way SRM, CRM used to be seen before. What does the way SRM CRM is seen now? Both of these managements have now undergone. I would not be remiss if I call it, it's a paradigm shift. Talking about two things. One is the level of transparency and honesty has gone up because right now we know we are in deep trouble. We know the supplier is in deep trouble. The customer is in deep trouble, or they're having the same discussion. One of the key issues in the supply chain always remains to forecast. How do you forecast the demand? The customer guesses we double guess, our suppliers' triple guesses. But if the customer wants 10, I prefer an upward 12, because the supplier will try to manage to get 15. Now, the supplier still thinks I need 15 what is it that you want. So that is in the short term, we have been this pretty strong is honesty and transparency built in saying these are books, these are data, I can get you nine. Does that work for you? Give me 8 that is good enough, one you give me for the next month. So that's one level of relations development but more critically is this. If you have fragile suppliers, but we need our suppliers and I'll probably get into that in a bit. So why do we need multiple suppliers? Because again, as I said a minute ago, earlier this supply chain was all about execution. And one way of execution is to be at the lowest cost. Supply chain resiliency does not come at the lowest cost. Each company has to decide where do they want to go. Are they going to go for a spot or longer survivability? What is your resiliency factor 10 years ago? Let's look at India specifically, or let's look at it worldwide, how many of these happen. Few, if at all. Last 3 years how many happened. I have a chart here this is purely just in the US. Look at the account of Hurricane, US-China trade war, LA port disruption, flooding in Mississippi, Syrian war, the Mexican drug war, MERS happened, SARS happened, COVID happened. We have been talking about globalization and now we are talking about the exact opposite. We are talking about regionalization. Dr. Batra, I'm sure you have been to Rome a couple of times. Now in front of the Spanish Steps, there is an Mc-Donald restaurant, it looks extremely odd, but the most cultural places in the world with Bernini designing the Spanish Steps and you see a McDonald's there. It looks odd also when you go to the pyramid of these and pyramid eating the burger at Mc-D actually who wants to go to Egypt to eat at Mc-D but people are doing it. So that's something called a slow food movement. You have heard fast-food movement with its natural growth in stops like McDonald's and Burger King. The Italians have something called a slow food movement. And from there we began this concept of slowblization, so I just didn't want to use that phrase slowblization to confuse people but it's nice to discuss. Globalization was focused on essentially to get economies of scale. Even something as simple as registers let's take the simplest part, registers in the electrical industrial one factory in China would probably manufacture 20% of the world requirement of registers. Now, imagine this because of that scale, what kind of cost they get. That has been the drive since the 70s 80s 90s anyone in the mid-2000s, would get economies of scale, and therefore get costs. We have seen the impact of geopolitical concentration now. China is not on the best of terms with the quiet of its neighbours for various reasons. Let us not get into politics but we are aware of that as a supply chain professional must be aware of what is happening to his neighbours. With the Philippines with Vietnam, with Malaysia, what if something flares up, would we be able to get our materials to Mexico or India or Europe. That is what is causing this “Slowblization”, which is regionalization, the supply chains are now getting shorter. The entire US take for an example is now looking at manufacturing everything in the US itself or looking at manufacturing in Mexico looking at labour costs. So they're trying to move, manufacturing locations from China to Mexico. The actual manufacturing costs might go up, but your response rate is so much faster. Even in the kind of digital world that we are in, communication happens so quickly. They demand change to see how you're able to react, strictly for that regionalization becomes massively important. That's one key change that we are seeing and that's also one of our predictions that you know you'll see a lot more. Globalization has to a large extent, ended. It makes sense for every consumer to the manufacturer to be as close to the consumer as possible. In terms of data analytics now, I told you about the scale that we have in flex in terms of million components and 45,000 questions out of a day. How are you putting all of this information together becomes an absolute necessity? If you're not able to put all the information together, “real-time”. We are in a deep problem that I just probably look at the one particular chart if you allow me, is this the Data Architecture. This is a little complicated but what I am trying to show here is something like Tera data and Hadoop to ensure that all the information that we have crossed the hundreds of manufacturing locations across all these countries with 15,000 suppliers is all in one single place. And we can draw information from this on an hourly basis. So if there's any change any impact anywhere you can react immediately. And more importantly, it also starts looking at business intelligence In terms of artificial intelligence and machine learning, you can also look at where is the trend going to what is the potential risk, and are we in the right place to react. We have also start simulating scenarios we have done quite a similar thing in the case, China production is down. What is the impact in one month, what's our impact going to be in phase three four, or five short-term periods? So data analytics becomes extremely critical for all of us. And that is something that, that we should be working on. The regulation on the supply chain, this is quite a talk on the government regulations as well. I briefly entered about you know the trade war or other issue between the US and China in terms of the tariffs. That was the first step to having this kind of regulation in terms of tariffs. The second thing also is, how are the manufacturing locations centralized and how much local control do those governments have. Japan for one has almost raised a billion dollars to ask for its suppliers to move away from China to move to Japan they get an additional budget and getting support in terms of moving to Vietnam and also moving to India. So, the UP Government has tied up with the Japanese government to set up a Japanese manufacturing village somewhere near Noida, which is also coming up. So, there is a pretty strong governmental push from Japan to move the Japanese supply. Similarly, you are seeing a push again from the US, and according to European manufacturing as well to move the pharmaceutical manufacturing out of China. The criticality of health has become extreme, no matter, I can only understate the criticality of the health requirement as of now. So all of the pharmaceuticals which are focused in China and India and then also looking at the manufacturing locations in each of those countries because health becomes a top priority for every government. So again, a pretty strong regulation coming in electronic manufacturing auto manufacturing almost every manufacturing now we are seeing a lot stronger supply chain regulation coming in from the government. Now before we are talking about free-market cost whichever works best to work best we have stronger regulation. Again Dr. Batra asked that we touched already “transparency”, a deeper structured assessment of the supply base, and we have honest transparent communication, and you also need to understand not only supply but supply second-tier third tier, we have a case live right now that are talking about we had the third tier supplier who got fired that now he is roughly 70 to 80% of the manufacturing of that particular component, not a big impact. Now, flex has a large fan base we are not seriously impacted based on that. Think about quite a few other companies in that particular area and imagine their supplier’s supplier is shut down. They entirely completely shut down. So, firstly it's also about for each manufacturer to look into their supplier and other second-tier third tier places, the amount of sourcing study that has to go down, has to be much more stringent and has to be a lot more transparent. Otherwise, cannot handle disruptions and cannot talk about resilient supply chain issues if you have blind to a spot. And finally, it would be the organisation. Now the CEOs and boards, the CPOs, all the CXOs need to start looking at residency, totally different levels because this one is going to take a hit rate on your profit. It is not going to be the lowest first however, it's going to be the most sustainable. So a short term cost impact is something that the CEOs would have to take into account. So that's what I meant by preparations from the CXOs. Q. We discussed resilience, we discussed risk management, but suppose coming to the point number 5 CEOs and Boards to make rigorous contingency planning, this is exactly what we want to come to about. What kind of crisis management planning can companies, what kind of framework and system they can put into place. I have videos of a very good example of how in January, February, March when we discovered that no more endemic it is pandemic, how you handle the whole thing, but for smaller companies and medium, smaller enterprises how do you suggest that they effectively manage these crises. Ans: In this case again we can talk about or show you a broad perspective because again it will depend on your geography and it also depends on your segment in the area in which you are working, however, we can definitely look at, look at your supply chain risk that you have and then see how is it is going to respond. I am just putting in some examples. For example, labour disputes, changing customer requirements today. I like Nirma detergent powder, tomorrow I might like Ghadi Detergent Tikiya so those are some kind of changing customer requirements. Now those risks to anticipate are comparatively limited but we can react to them much easier because the amount of time that we have to react to those is comfortably large. However, if you have some of these Black Swan events like a war or a flood, and these have a massive impact. We have extremely no way of anticipating them with the current way of collecting gathering information and the information setup that we have. If we can improve that, that would help, but a chart in terms of when you anticipated then what is the impact for your business it might be different for different companies. For a global company this works, for a local company, something else should work but also in terms of a company in terms of which segment they're in it should behave. The auto industry will behave very differently from let say a health industry manufacturing MRI scanners or cap machines will behave very differently from the way let's say Maruti Suzuki works. What is your ability to anticipate and what’s your impact, based on those we can start looking at how is it that we are dealing with. Very obvious we need to have reactive mitigation strategies where anticipation is much lesser. You're not sure when what will happen so it will come to you as a shock. In that shock, you should be able to have a very quick reactive mitigation strategy. You would never know when it is going to hit whereas in the bottom case you can anticipate comfortably but you should have a much better proactive mitigation strategy. In terms of Black Swan events, I would call this entire COVID pandemic was a Black Swan event. We can look at that the tariff between China and the US was again a semi Black Swan event, however, Brexit we know is a brewing storm. If you look at this problem with something like Black Swan all of us would always propose and maintain a healthy reserve for part of the long recovery time. The problem is the moment you have a reserve, it is inventory, which is money. That’s a call one company or factory need to make. None of the mitigation strategies is free or is cheaper than before. Are we willing to take that hit for the long term? what is that hit? That cannot be decided by an outside agency. That the company’s call that needs to be made. I just want to touch upon one of the points is in terms of business challenges. Now can we switch from A to B from B to A this is a comparatively much easier process to work on? The problem also comes here when the risk is lesser but we can and our anticipation is also lower is again a culture scenario or dual social strategy. We have the example of one supplier who failed. We should have had a second alternative or maybe looked at changing the design of manufacturing so that we work based on that. The key 3 blocks, if we talk about, would be visibility, flexibility, and collaboration. We have spoken about these 3 in different languages. The basic problem in terms of visibility, do you have the right information data flow system? Every large company works on an ERP. You have your sales setups in different systems, you have your reverse logistics or transport management in a different system. How are you able to put all of it together into one common structure? We have something called PULSE in Flex. I have been across quite a few countries, I would say this thing has been by far one of the most powerful tools that I have ever seen and our PULSE is not only in terms of computers, but I can also look at the entire company data right now on my phone, I can look at what my inventory was one hour ago, how many purchase orders have been released, which are from which country which supplier, in case anyone calls me right now and says we have an issue with that supplier it will take me 30 seconds to say what the impact to Flex is going to be and that is how I can react that quickly. The first thing to be able to react quickly do you have the right amount of visibility? Once you have the visibility, do you have the right amount of flexibility? You have information, what are you going to do with it? There are 3 ways where the supply chain can create flexibility. The time you can react later, can you afford more time is your call. The second is the capacity. You can always have excess capacity and start keeping items but that costs you capital expense. Third, you can talk about is in terms of managing inventory. You have excess inventory, inventory again inventory carrying cost, surplus cost, scrap cost. These are the only 3 ways any supply chain can be managed. Flexibility, time, capacity, and inventory. None of the supply chain executives wants to have any of this. You need to define what could be your best setup to be able to manage things. All the 3 have the right level of flexibility, of course, collaboration. Honest, the transparent discussion throughout the supply chain otherwise if we keep double-guessing each other we are never going to be resilient. We can have the 3 verticals customer, supplier, and market, what are you going to do in terms of visibility, flexibility, and collaboration of relationships. This is a kind of framework that you can look at how you want to start getting resilient. I would touch upon 2 other points now. Look at these 5 areas how is your planning and supply network, logistics for example many of you would be impacted. Shanghai shutdown 2 days ago. Shanghai hub is now under COVID and the Port Authority has an airport. Now we are seeing how the transport and logistic hit in Shanghai has going to impact worldwide. Financial resiliency, do you have the right amount of money to be able to handle so that's why every company talks about cash reserve and nothing is more important financially today for any company than cash reserve and cash reserves are driven, or we talk about cash conversion ratio, which is driven essentially by supply chain, there is payment outstanding, a sale is outstanding, there is inventory that is what going to view your cash reserves. Product complexity and organisation maturity are ones in terms of operations look at levels ratio, cash ratio, operating margin in terms of finance. This will then define how resilient your suppliers are. This is something we need to look at for every supplier and then you can choose which are the top ones. Imagine that your integrated circuit is a risk, then your frequency is the one chipset that might be a problem if you look at RF transceiver, there is only one guy who can manufacture your RF transceiver. The supplier landscape is basically in red. What are you going to do to handle the supply landscape for the RF transceiver? That is the kind of job that the sourcing professional is now getting into and try to get the resilience back into shape. These were the basis of points about resiliency. I would like to go back and stick to this particular slide when we talk about how we are going to handle all of these 5 points, We are going to talk about solubilisation or regionalisation. Do you have the right data in place? All talk of artificial intelligence, ML, big data which used to be academic is extremely important right now there is nothing academic about these three, extremely practical right now, government regulation, how transparent we are, what is organisation structure? Q. Could you tell us a little bit more about what are new technologies that have now entered the supply chain organisation? What new things are coming up in other parts of the world and what has come into India? Can you tell us a bit about the new technologies which will help people manage their supply chains better? Ans: In terms of the supply chain, one of the fundamental shifts that has happened in terms of the basic tools which is ERP now you can use PE. Now, none of these technologies is new. We never had paucity or scarcity of individuals to stand alone. I would probably focus on aLoop MicroStrategy and Teradata. The focus has never been on artificial intelligence and ML-like it is right now. In the data management toolset Phyton is coming up strong is because of artificial machine learning that is required. The restaurant state of the supply chain has to be much stronger. The system can pre-empt what potentially happens, so you are doing proactive supply chain management. If you are looking at the Sugar CRM, the customer relationship management from the customers' side so Sugar is one of the new things. That is for quite a large level of computing very strongly with salesforce on the customer side. The operational side does not have to see which kind of ERP you have but LOOP is now coming into very big shape in terms of data warehousing. Micro Strategy Pablo is a data warehousing tool used in terms of how you going to visualize and crunch data. From data to information, information to influence, and from influence to action. There is no shortage of data in the world but how you convert data to information that’s the first step and that you are working very strongly. Now and from information to influence and that's what presentation tools like Tableau help. it's officially from NIIT side which has been a fundamental shift in the business. Q. I think you talked about pre-COVID Era and Post COVID Era and there is this huge shift in mindset on contingency and safety and so on. I just want to get your thoughts on this, there was this movement 3 -4 years back, and before that supply chain created new business models, can we innovate around the supply chain right, so the poster child is Amazon and so on. Has that time now gone or postponed, will we start worrying about the safety of the supply chain and not innovation what is your perspective on that? Ans: The existing businesses would be looking at surviving but they would be looking at creating this resiliency and trying to maintain so the existing businesses that we have would be that. But I would be with you Dr. Batra in the sense that we should be looking at and we should be aware of and hopefully, we are a part of the new disruptive technologies of the disruptive supply chain that are going to come up. One of the key things if you look at in terms of the slowblization or regionalization is that there is going to have a massive impact in terms of how it is going to happen. It's going to create a huge amount of opportunity as well in terms of how we're going to look at setting up new manufacturing facilities across the world. But all of this is not the existing models, with database minor variations in the ways those are going to happen but stuff like Ecommerce and also in terms of other delivery models now also you look at I would also say education is quote-unquote in as supply chain. How are you reaching the end customer into their house that entire model I would be probably jumping the gun in saying that you are going to have massive changes there as well. If anybody believes that the supply chain in 2021 would be the same as supply chain in 2025 I would like to smoke what he is saying. Q. Your definition of resilience is not just bunkered down it is actually to figure out how you can innovate to create resilience as well. So resilience is both the path of safety as well as innovation. Ans: Visibility, flexibility and then moving on to collaboration none of this means that you create an inventory, or you start to create multiple partners. So once the supplier fails others would come up. What is the other way for you to create a much risk-free supply chain? For example regionalization or solubilisation is one of the key resiliency factors. Say, the bread for the burger is coming in from China for the chicken burger in India. The chicken is coming in from Malaysia and then mayonnaise is coming in from the US. How confident can we be of getting a burger in 20 minutes? Being the owner of this business how would we talk about having the lowest cost and make the most amount of money it's true for every business. Now Dr. Batra maybe we could have worked with this Pre COVID Era. Flights were not a problem, people were moving around and there was an economy of scale. Do you think we will talk the same thing now again given that I am your customer and if you are not able to deliver to me it might cost you heavy for whatever reason? That is the kind of innovation that is not coming. Now we cannot afford to not deliver and that would create quite a few different avenues and directions in which we need to go ahead. Do I know what they are I would want to venture into that area but I would expect it to be a lot different if you're talking in five years I'm sure we'll be talking different models here? Q. We are in November 2020 and all of us have COVID fatigue. We are still looking at a few more months of COVID. What keeps you awake at night? What is it that you are worried about? I looked at everything that you are doing which for me is huge learning in terms of how to manage cutting edge supply chains so thanks for that. What keeps Prashant still awake at night? Ans: From my work perspective, first of all, we are seeing that we are a pretty large part playing in this entire COVID health field. We'll talk about ventilators, masks. Flex is playing a pretty critical role there and that makes sense. It makes me happy that I am part of something that’s fixing the world. But more importantly, what keeps me going on in the market dynamics is the way they react. What I was doing yesterday is not what I will be doing tomorrow. So you set up a process and I am sure that it is going to fail one week later and then we will do something else again. So that's how you keep improving rather you keep changing. This is what interests everybody in the supply chain world. It is so dynamic. and associate today is changing so much that is what is the most interesting. Now there's nothing but a single boring hour in supply chains in Flex. Q. I have the good fortune of knowing you for over 20 years and we are reconnecting. I wanted to check two or three things which are perhaps the life philosophies that have helped you to succeed as a leader and be where you are today managing so many SQUs but also so many lives and so many professionals rely on you. So what has caused you to be a success as a leader? Ans: I am not sure whether I am successful as a leader. I have two or three life lessons that we can probably discuss, now one thing is I am not afraid to fail this is what I've been telling my entire team as well. It is okay to fail what is not OK is not to try. People don't try new ideas because they think they might fail and that is why again Dr. Batra you and I as engineers we hate two numbers zero and hundred. If any fellow has achieved 100% the target was way too low. If you have achieved 100% you are playing a little too safe. Never play safe. Here again, you need to find the right organisation and you need to find the right environment as well to take risks. You can't take a risk with the ventilator. When you decide where is it that you will experiment learn, you will learn only if you fail. If anybody says they have attempted a new technology or a new model and they were right the first time they did not take the right risk. But I think I would say I have taken risks and I would propose and advise take the risk, take a little harder call, let your manager know your system known to try on a pilot scale, do not try at the whole company level, but experiment and fail. I thought I'd probably stick to that but also in terms of the other leadership skills which I would like to see more in people and almost everybody or the people who I am impressed with this as well. It deals with the level of transparency and honesty. I will show you the big picture, never ask someone to do something say what is scenario is and how to look at it, and let the other person decide what needs to be done and how needs to be done. If a leader explains what the concern is, shows the big picture. Identify three or four people out of your 100 who can say okay for this picture. This can be a potential direction to go ahead and then you coach and mentor them. They are the ones who are going to take the company to the next level. What happens is many people many managers point to this trap they will say exactly this is this then you do this, then you report to me this after approval then you do this. He's the manager he can never be a leader. A leader says this is what it is how do we go ahead with it. That’s what I would say is a leader, which I would be interested, and I hope I would be doing something similar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw0OKQlG4w4

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Dr. Rahul S Dogar, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Holisol Logistics Pvt Ltd About the speaker: Dr. Rahul S Dogar is the Co-Founder and MD of Holisol Logistics Pvt Limited. He has over 20 years of experience in supply chain domain, handling supply chains of Global and Indian Retail and Automotive brands, international and India operations, Strategy, Business Planning, New Set-ups, Business and People Development. Dr. Rahul S. Dogar: Very well warm welcome to all of you, Friday afternoon. All of us or few must be looking for the weekend now. Before we jump into the topic straight away let me prime it with some challenges that all of us Supply Chain Professionals can relate to, the challenges that we face in our lives. There is an increasing complexity in the supply chain. We all see that there is a race to please the consumer and in that race there are lot of things happening which is making supply chains more and more complex, is a SKU proliferation with a view to provide unlimited choices to the consumer. There are more sourcing options available to us, there are more selling options, multiple channels to sell options that are available to the companies today. And on top of that there is a race for instant gratification which needs to. Q. Let me prime it with some challenges that all of us Supply Chain Professionals can relate to, the challenges that we face in our lives. There is an increasing complexity in the supply chain? Ans: All this is driving a huge complexity in the supply chain which we as supply chain professionals must behave in day-to-day basis. And then on top of that is the accuracy of our forecasts. This has been a question out there for so many years and this remains a question. Everything, all the planning that we do in the supply chain depends on how accurate the forecast is, and when forecast accuracy itself is a question, then you are left to deal with the fluctuations in the forecast and handling them on a day-to-day basis. Then there is a lack of visibility. We all want to know as to what is happening in our supply chain, where is our inventory, where are our products etc. But because of not all the supply chains being digital or being able to throw out that data and even if that data is coming, the sources of data are quite disparate, you are leading to the lack of real time visibility coming in from the supply chain. Then of course, there is a bigger question of managing the inventory across the supply chain, allocating the inventory across the supply chain, and hence you know trying to optimise. With these kinds of fluctuations and with these kinds of complexities, it always remains a challenge for a supply chain manager as to how to allocate the inventory across the channels and get the best out of it. And then of course the million-dollar question – Balancing, doing a tightrope walk. All the time to balance the service levels, provide a great product availability and then the costs associated with it. So, this is a balancing act that we as supply chain professionals are doing, day in and day out. And all these challenges bring in a lot of hustle and bustle in our daily lives. We continue to remain busy throughout the day, we get calls late at night. The events like Covid disrupts and turn our lives upside down with a lot of expectation from everybody for us to be out there and do things and change the scenario and make us still get back to the normal as soon as possible. Q. What's the solution, is something that we all need to think about. Is there something that can be done which can help us make our lives better? Ans: That's where the Cognitive Supply Chain comes in. Definitely, there is a lot of work that can be done around the supply chains to make them much more cognitive and what do I mean by cognitive, you can liken it, I always give this example, you can liken it to child growing up. As a child when he is growing up, there is a lot of input that is given to the child, to make the child learn. The parents, siblings, people around it, inanimate objects. Kids are getting lot of inputs as they growing up and then they use that input to essentially build on the experiences of their own and then of course build it into their own learning rather than following what has been told to them. A simple example is that the parents would always tell you not to touch something hot. So, that's a generic statement but over a period, the kid even if the parent is telling not to touch something hot would end up and touch it and over a period build intelligence around it as to how hot can be touched and how hot cannot be touched. And what can we touch with the hand for example, what can be touched with the tongue etc. So those all become a part of our learning, understanding, and using all that learning and understanding we start predicting, adjusting, and acting. And that is exactly what Cognitive Supply Chains can do, can do with the help of technologies that are available now, with the help of these new technologies, we can start getting all those inputs. We all know that the smartest or the most cognitive kids out here are the ones who are seeking a lot of information through talking to people, through observing things around them, through reading, through having discussions and conversations. So likewise, if we are able to build our supply chains and give it lot of inputs and use technology to analyse those inputs then we can definitely build supply chains which can almost mimic the human brains and that’s what are the cognitive supply chains. These are the supply chains which can think on their own, which can learn on their own, they can start predicting, they can start adjusting and start acting. And some of the things with cognitive supply chains are that they are highly aware, because of the computational ability that they have using the new technologies, they are in a very heightened state of awareness, they know everything that is happening around them, they have inputs coming in from all the directions, from their internal environment, from their external environment and they don’t need rest. I mean these are the machines. Like human, they don’t need rest, they work 24 x 7, and they have these inputs coming into them 24 x 7 which makes them highly. Using those inputs, they can anticipate, adjust, and adapt. And then eventually what we believe is that they will also become autonomous, once they have built enough learning of their own that they are able to visualise different scenarios and prescribe that this is the best scenario, this is the best decision to be taken, this is the best action to be taken, they will become autonomous and start taking decisions on their own. So, these are the cognitive supply chain that I am talking about which come handy, which can as Brig Sharma said earlier, can help us can help us improve our performance and most importantly make our lives easier and simpler. So, the advantages that can come out of building these cognitive supply chain of course help us overcome all the challenges. We can make much more accurate decisions with all these inputs and data coming our way. They can be automated monitoring; we don’t need to be on phone all the time or we don’t need to continue follow up with the stakeholders in our supply chain. There can be automated monitoring, there will be automated alerts that will get generated. We can be much more proactive in the way we work around; we would know what will happen in the coming times, what is it that need should be done today. We can look at optimising our supply chain of course to provide the real time visibility and at the end of the day, it will lead to improved customer satisfaction and of course higher growth for the business with satisfied customers. So why is that with so many advantages, it’s not happening as fast. So, let's look at the present scenario as it is today. Where are companies when it comes to building cognitive supply chains. About 70% of the companies are still at the descriptive and diagnostic analysis. If we still look at the data and most of this work is happening around the lagging indicators or at the best what is happening at the present. This analysis is done around what is happening currently not with what can happen in future. 15-25% companies have moved to predictive analysis where they are using Sophisticated Predictive Modelling, Statistical Techniques or Mathematical Modelling to be able to say as to what can happen in the supply chain in the future with different factors that can have an impact on the supply chain. The best thing is that about 5% companies are moving towards is, what we call as Prescriptive Analytics and that's where the full value of the cognitive supply chains kick in. Predictive can still tell us that this is what possibly will happen in future but Prescriptive is telling us that if this is what will happen in the future, what is it that needs to be done, what is it that can be done and that is where these supply chains will work with least human intervention and start becoming autonomous and start acting on their own. But yes, there are challenges to get there, these are some of them, the biggest one is that there is a shortage of talent. It's not that any of these things are not doable but there are not enough data scientists and AI specialists out there. This is a relatively new field, new skill that people are still learning. So, the availability of professionals is a challenge right now. There are not enough people again to implement and manage. People needed with similar skills with the understanding of the technologies that need to be implemented within the organisations. We also see that a lot of companies work with legacy system that there is a now a way of working with those legacy systems which played a huge cultural roadblock per se within the organisation to accept these technologies and adapt the new technologies. Then availability of data, yes as I said in the beginning, availability of data is a new challenge and not all our supply chains are digitalised. So, the data is available, there are blind spots within the supply chain which make it difficult for us to have the data available for the analytics and cognitive supply chains. And then of course there is also a lack of management commitment. Not all the companies or all top-level executives are convinced, and it takes a lot for them to be convinced about that this is the future, and this is where we should put our money in. So, these are some of the challenges which are being faced right now which can help our transformation quickly into building the digital and cognitive supply chains. But yes, the prerequisite that we need to have to be able to get there is to first build digital supply chain, this is a precondition. Without having a digital supply chain, you would not be able to build cognitive supply chains. Q. What do we mean by having a digital supply chain? Ans: We all know that what is the physical supply chain. By digital supply chain we mean that we build a digital twin of physical supply chain, we get all the data coming in from physical supply chain, about the product, about where they are, in what condition they are etc in a digital form and then nowadays there are technologies available across, plenty of them available across which can be deployed, or used in the different components of supply chain for us to be able to convert the existing physical supply chains into the digital supply chain. And then once we have the data coming in from these digital supply chain using technologies like big data, AI, machine learning this data can then be analysed and used to convert into the insights, predictive analysis, causal analysis, get the real time visibility, improve the forecast, generate insights etc. There's a lot that can be done with this data, which can help us to really make our supply chains cognitive. In today’s scenario I would say there is still a lot of action would have to be done by the humans, we are still at early stages, there is still a lot of proof of concept that needs to be built in. And the reason also at this point of time for the human intervention is that there is still a lot of input that needs to be given to these technologies, to these systems for them to become smarter. I would say that they are still infantile, they are still smaller child right now, they are still not adults who can think on their own, they still need that input right now from us for them to become self-learning intelligent and smarter. But yes, in the future we believe that in next 5-10 years these systems will become intelligent enough, they would know what needs to be done and would become autonomous, would start taking their own decisions and would start acting on their own. Q. How does it work really in the real world? Ans: So what happens when we go about building these AI enabled cognitive supply chains is that we tell the system that this is a supply chain decision making framework within which it has to work, coming in from the company's competitive strategy business model, what is their priority etc, there is a framework and this is also, I am not saying that this is a standard thing, this can change for different companies. It really depends on what a particular company wants to achieve but coming in from all that, the system is trained on this framework within which it must work. And then of course the system is told about what are the KRAs, what are the different components of the supply chain, what are the KRAs and KPIs of each of these components and then their huge relationships built as to what gets impacted by what. And how does one thing lead to other into what we call ‘Neural Network’. This is something which is very similar to how our brain functions. These Neural Networks look at the external factors, they look at the internal factors, you find the relationship, causality among the different factors. And then over a period as we go about it this starts becoming stronger and stronger, it's a child now growing up with more and more inputs coming their way. The child is now growing up and have started learning on its own and that’s where the initial work with the system, the intensity of giving inputs to the system, the intensity of the discipline of transferring our own human intelligence onto the system by the intervention and inputs becomes much more important and much more relevant. If we must derive maximum benefit out of the cognitive supply chain, we can very well have these systems implemented but if we don't really interact with these systems, if we don't really give them the inputs then it’s a dull child growing up and money going down the drain. Q. How these systems work, this is how these things can take us towards building cognitive supply chains. Let me further illustrate it with the help of few examples? Ans: If they are coming in from the different components of the supply chain, just to highlight as to what kind of benefits have come in from different parts of having used AI enabled certain parts of the supply chain. Right now, I don't have an example from end to end. It's still both in progress, the management wants to see the proof of concept before they put the money on the table. So, these examples are from the company's wherein taken a leap of faith on head and done something in some parts of the supply chain. This example is from a global retailer where they monitor their sourcing operations, just sourcing operations where goods are being contract manufactured. And these are the examples of insights that the AI enabled system has thrown out. Otherwise you have to take a big team Army or big army of people or analysts to come out with these kind of insights, but using AI enabled system these insights come in within the seconds and they continue keep coming in. So, this is an example of pushing operations of a global retailer where you know they want to monitor what is order cancellation happening, what is the deviation in what was ordered versus what was delivered, house inventory situation and stuff like that and then you know the system goes to the next level, as I said, it is still in the learning phase, it is seeking input from the user of the system using human intelligence to make it more smarter. So, it gives data in support of specific insight, says that ok fine, for the insight number 11, what is the reason that I have brought in this insight. And then further goes deeper down into what is the correlation and what is the causality, why is it happened? And how's it correlated and this is all for seeking the human input, the system has an option for the humans to really intervene and say okay I agree with this I don't agree with this, these are the additional things that need to be seen. These are the additional factors that need to be considered. These are the additional constraints which need to come in etc. and that is all a part of the system, then taking all those inputs and becoming smarter on its own. This is another example of an Indian retailer. This component is from distribution centre to the store. So here if you look at it, the system is saying that there is a possibility of sales of reduction. It's a predictive insight. And it is also giving as to why this would happen. And what is it that will get impacted. So, SKU wise, which are the SKUs which can possibly face to shortage. Another insight is that there is an opportunity for transport cost reduction because I am seeing that this transporter is charging this much on this specific route. Whereas the other transporters, if I look at other transporters are charging that much and this the mileage stuff like that. Another one is on inventory rationalization here again it’s a predictive and prescriptive insight. It is saying that ok fine I see that so many pieces of 17 SKUs have crossed 45 days and there's a possibility of these going into obsolescence. So, these are the stores, wherein you can push these SKUs and get rid of them or sell them in the next 30 days. So, this is a part of the prescription. Here again this is a sales loss prevention that, yes, this came in 2019 we had this famous Odisha cyclone coming in, so the system really predicted that because of this cyclone there will be a traffic disruption on NH 16 from this date to this date. And then it is recommending that you should rather build up the stock in Hyderabad and the supply from another Depot will get impacted, beautiful example of predictive and prescriptive both. Likewise, this is another example of how to prevent service level failure. Next example is about the fraud detection and this is another area where AI can help. So here in this example, what the system has done is that it has studied the ordering pattern of individual customer in normal situation and suddenly the system sees that there is a change in pattern. The way this consumer wash shopping earlier has suddenly changed. And then this consumer is now shopping more frequently, all orders are prepaid and then you know finally what came out was that the consumer is using the same promo code again and again to buy something and what came out was that there was an idea leading to multiple use of the onetime coupon. And this is something which this consumer has been able to figure out and was really hacking the system. And this is another example where the AI help improved the forecast of the fashion retailer. You see the forecast accuracy improved from 65% to 90% for the regular style, which is very high and 50% to 75% for the seasonal styles been very high. So, what was happening earlier was that this fashion retailer was using time series method for forecasting which was built into the machine learning algorithm. And there were lot many other business specific factors that were brought in the consumer characteristics, consumer segmentation, the price points, the fashioning profile etc. So, this was done in a very specific way for this fashion retailer because they had a very different business model. And that's where the machine learning algorithms was able to do much better modelling and come out with a much more accurate forecast. Of course, the initial savings came out to 1.84 billion dollars. This next example is of a slightly wider supply chain where the customer had digitalized the upstream supply chain as well. Here the customer wanted in fact the insights coming in from the right from the raw material procurement, going over inventory, capacity allocation within the plant, and within the plant on different lines and there were multiple plants and stuff like that. Here, the benefit also was that the supply chain was even was digitalized even up to the upstream suppliers using good sophisticated ERP systems and there were other systems also being used. So, in a way, there were much better insights that that were coming in and much wider insights that were coming in right from raw material, going over to the inventory and the capacity allocation. So, the system is continuously now here looking at the forecast or the sales forecast deviation or the sales trend or even going up to the social media to see what is trending, what is being spoken about the product of that particular company and predicting as to what can be the impact of those discussions happening. System even went on to sort of look at the competitive data, what are the new models that the competition is launching and what can be the impact of launch of those new models on how we should produce. So, looking at all those factors there was a continuous change in the capacity allocation, which was happening among the plants, and within a specific plant among the lines, all lines could produce all kind of models. So based on these signals coming in from the market, the capacity allocation would get adjusted. And then likewise going back up to the raw material procurement, the whole lot of insights that would get generated and just to make sure that there was seamless fulfilment happening across the supply chain. So slightly wider example of getting insights, AI enable insights from the supply chain. So those were some of the examples hopefully you have been able to understand the use cases right now prevalent I would still say that these are early stages, a lot of work is in progress. But yes, we started seeing the results on the ground. Yes, digitalization per se, is one theme that a lot of companies have picked up, lot of companies have allocated budgets, there is a huge management buy in, at least to take the first step towards digitalizing their supply chain and then of course, once that happens once more and more supply chains, start getting digitalized. I am sure the use of these new age technologies like AI, ML and Big Data also start coming in to get the benefit of the data that is being generated by these digital supply chain. Q. Some of the companies, as I said earlier are early adopters and these are the examples coming in from those set of companies who really think that these technologies are must adopt and they will change the way they operate? Ans: This next slide is a little bit on the funnier side but you know at the same time, this is the reality we fast forward to 2025, we would realize that COVID-19 is one event, which really forced, at least, if not, digitalize our supply chain but at least start thinking in that direction and we have seen in the last three four months of this situation that the companies which were digital first or higher up in the digitalization effort, were able to actually quickly adapt. Maybe they change business models or pivot quickly because they were sitting on the data, they were sitting on the data that coming in from their supply chains and were able to quickly analyse the data and say okay fine, this is what we need to do in this scenario and these are the companies who have come out or emerged with us in these situations, a lot of them pivoted, a lot of them started new businesses, a lot of them started doing different things etc to really come out of this situation. And the situation continues but we are seeing that companies which were more digitally adapt have been able to do things quicker and faster. This is a credo, which I very much like. We live by this freedom within our organisation and all of us as supply chain professionals have to start living with this credo, whether we want it or not but this change is coming, the digitalization is going to become a part of our lives. We need to start looking at bringing in more data from our supply chains and start looking at the entire data to help us to improve our supply chain and you know eventually move towards building these cognitive supply chains, the thinking supply chains or intelligent supply chains, you can call them by different names. And within our area of responsibility, within where we are working for the customers, either for the customers or for our own companies. So, this is something that all of us need to get into and become demanding from our suppliers from our ecosystem.  Q. Which businesses stand to gain the most by adopting cognitive supply chain is it really for the multi brand giants, or normal small and medium who are the businesses which are stood to gain the maximum? Ans: I would say that all businesses, stand to gain from building the cognitive supply chains. Of course, it really depends on the ambition of the leadership and how quickly they want to be ahead of the curve. But yes, if we say that businesses which have a lot of complexity already there and the businesses which are operating at a huge scale, the ones who gain the most at this point of time. Of course, there's always a question of getting the ROI, I would say that technology adoption or technology providers face that question all the time. So yes, in the current scenario I think the businesses, which are scaled up and have a lot more complexity can bring in the ROI fast track. Q. Can you share some examples of predictive and prescriptive analysis which these systems can generate? Ans: I have covered some of the things like the prediction of cyclones coming in Odisha. Every year we have these heavy rains coming in Mumbai. Then there is a lot of stuff happening. So, what is currently happening is that as supply chain professional we still able to look at internal things and do some planning around that. But external events, for example COIVD for that matter, it’s an external event, no body took it seriously in that sense. So, there are a lot of such things happening in the external environment, which can cause disruptions to our respective supply chain. And these new ways technologies can go out and develop a correlation and causality with those events, tell that this is what is coming. This is the buzz that I am seeing somewhere in the news or on the social media. And then there is a possibility that this buzz, this news, this data can have a disruption, on how you plan your supply chain. So, things like the competitive activity for that matter. What can happen with the weather, where can the floods come, where can the cyclone come, where will be the heavy rains. Things like even for that matter, very high summer I mean, the fashion retailers need that input that, it's going to be 40 degree plus in, let’s say Delhi or Mumbai for the next five months, so don't plan for the monsoon season, produce more of the cotton shirts. So those are the things which can be predicted using these technologies and of course, as they become smarter, they will start prescribing also. Q. Can you please share some areas where AI can impact warehousing? You have partly done in your presentation, but can you give little more about the impact of AI on warehousing? Ans: Yeah, warehousing is one area where you can look at in fact each process in the warehouse and you can find a use case for the AI. So let's say inventory optimization, how do you store inventory within the warehouse, how do you optimise the space, which are the SKUs that you maybe need to store far away because they are not selling as much and which other SKUs you need to store close by and bringing in a predictive element in it. I am not saying this doesn't happen today, it does happen where this ABC analysis is done when you are planning the storage in the warehouse. But are we doing it on the real time basis, are we doing it in a predictive way right now, no.? So what AI can do is to bring in those signals from the market who say that it looks like that these are the SKUs which may sell more in the future, in the next seven days, in the next one month so it makes sense to bring them closer from where the picking can happen faster, so that we are more efficient and we can fulfil faster. We can now fulfil the order faster. It can go even as granular as looking at the data of people working in the warehouse and say okay this person remains absent most of the times on these dates, the team is able to deliver this productivity between these hours of the day, this team is more productive in this, this team is less productive in this, this human being is more absent, so all those things can be built into and can be used to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the warehousing operations. Similar things can be done in the picking strategy where AI can really let you know which picking strategy to use at what point of time, for what kind of products, which picking strategy would be most efficient at any given point of time. Right now yes we do plan picking strategies but they are most static in nature so you decide in the beginning and then say OK fine this is a picking strategy that we are going to follow for the rest of the life of this warehouse or maybe you change it once in two years but with AI coming in you can make it more dynamic. The whole idea of bringing in AI in the supply chain and using it for predictive and prescriptive analysis is that we can align much better with what is happening in the market. Eventual aim of the AI of the supply chain, eventual objective of the supply chain is to make sure that there is a seamless fulfilment and there is a product available in the market must be sold. So, lot of use cases for that matter. Q. What are the challenges to data integration from various customers in the supply chain are there any legal issues in getting the data, are there any problems one can encounter in data integration? Ans: So data integration firstly not all the players in the ecosystem are digitally enabled, not everybody is adopted the technology so they are not using as much data or they not at some of them are not even capturing the data but if they are capturing the data, they may not be capturing it in the digital form and even if they are capturing it in the digital form, they may not be capturing it in the way where you can really exchange the data with someone else. I mean there are lot of companies capturing data for example in excel files and these excel files get exchanged over the emails. So, there is a need to do a real time integration when you go about trying to do all these things. Yes, there are challenges, of course everybody looks at what is the benefit, what is the ROI of doing it and then of course the second question comes is that whether this data can really interact with each other, the systems can really interact with each other. That question is solved with the new technology. New technologies are very flexible, we can get data from anywhere in any form and still convert it into form that they want to use it in but yes remains a huge challenge. And then there is a legality involved, of course everybody wants the data to be protected, nobody wants their own data to go out. So, they are very strict, security expectations from everybody involved in the supply chain to make sure that their data is properly protected and is not misused. So yes, those things are there, I mean there can be legal issues coming out of it doing it in the right and proper way. Q. These are emerging technologies and what is your suggestion for companies who want to adopt cognitive supply chains. How should they approach this adoption especially in the small and medium enterprises with limited budgets? So how should they start adopting the cognitive supply chain? Ans: I would say that there is, as I said, the first step, the first precondition is that you need to digitalise your supply chain and for that to happen you need to create a digital road map. I would say that companies who really intent to do that, need to sit down and see or do in as in analysis as to what is the current state and what is the vision with creating a digital supply chain or a cognitive supply chain, what is it that they want to achieve. Of course this is a comprehensive work that needs to be done within the organisation and then the second most important thing that needs to kick in is a management buy in and that would get displayed by creating a team who would run this within the organisation and then allocating a budget to it. Sort of these two things really communicate whether the management has really bought into it or not. Without this thing will not work. The third thing that needs to be done is to set the priorities. You may have created a huge digital road map with maybe under things to be done but what is also important is to say that these are the priorities that we need to work with and within those priorities, identify some lighthouse projects. The projects which can bring in early success and can display to the rest of the organisation that if we really adopt this, our life will change, we will be much more successful in future and that's where the cultural shift within the organisation will start coming. Of course changing attitude of the people towards using or going digital is a huge project management, change management task or project in itself which of course needs to come in but yes moving in people showing early successes will really help people to get adopt to the new technologies and go about it. And then of course there is a continuous journey that one needs to follow up yes, the follow up needs to happen from the top management. Q. If a company is a first mover into cognitive supply chain, how does it talk to other companies who are yet to adopt Cognitive Supply Chain, so people are scared I am the first mover while others are still on legacy system. So how does he communicate with others? Ans: So that's a very good question and that is I think one of the biggest challenges out there and that's the reason the example that I gave in were from the components which were more or less within the control of the organisations where the digitalization has already happened and then they were trying to get the proof of the concept of using the AI within that so that there's a larger project or the programme that would be created around it. The fact remaining that the lead must be taken if let’s say we say that OK fine in India we must for creating cognitive supply chains and become a leader in that sense, so the lead must be taken by the large corporations which have a bigger influence in the ecosystem. So, these are the companies who can demand from their suppliers that they must quickly get onto this. We can demand from the service providers like us and then they can of course make it their business criteria that you get to work with us only if you have reached a certain utilization. I think the lead must be taken by some of these big guys. Q. Anything new, the human tendency is to resist the change, so how can companies manage that change that comes with adopting cognitive supply chain and specially the cultural aspect, there is a cultural issue involved in adopting a change? Ans: I think, the cultural aspect of it, yes it can be a huge roadblock. There are people who resist change within the organisations. I think this important consideration very much must be the part of the digital road map which the company would create before embarking on this journey. Every company has a different culture but yes considering what is the culture that exists within the organisation, a separate change management project to adopt to this technology, has to be envisaged and then based on what is the culture that exists. Let's say that there is a new age company, which has a team of engineers. They would be early adopters, they would already be working with lot of technology and stuff like that and then we compare it with, let's say a large corporation which is like 60 years old, 50 years old and 40 years old. Of course, people working over there would be less open to adopting the new technology. So, in both the organisations, things must be driven very differently, very specific the culture that exists within the organisation and while going about designing this programme I think it's very important to see the need of the people. I mean largely either there's complacence that is already built in, there's a familiarity and there's an inertia of rest that has got built because you are using certain kind of system for so many years and suddenly you have now to do something new. There can also be, let's say insecurity that this new technology will come in and I will lose my job. So around those things the plans have to be created, maybe there's a upskilling programme that needs to be created, there should a comfort that needs to be given to these people about job security and stuff like that and I think most important thing is that, you need to have a very strong leadership, top level leadership backing while going about it. Without that I think most of these programmes can fail or they can just be in. We have seen that companies wanted to do it, but their lot of things are in backburner for couple of years, for three years just because leader doesn't think that this is a priority right now. Fortunately, things are changing now with COVID, lot of eyes have opened. Q. If we take examples of a few companies in India and abroad who have successfully adopted the cognitive supply chains and what has been their experience as the volatility of the logistics really increased, what has been the biggest gain of these companies? Ans: I would say that there are many examples out there as I said in my presentation that we are not here yet, it's a work in progress. We are moving fast in that direction, there lot of companies who per se are early adopters who have really put money in building these supply chains and the biggest benefit that these companies have been able to get out of this is that they have become leaders within their own industry verticals. Amazons of the world, I mean Amazon - there's a lot of work around it. Our home-grown Flipkart does a lot of work around it. I think one of the reasons why Walmart got interested in this is because Flipkart was doing remarkable work with the technology. Alibaba does wonderful work. There's a lot of good examples from automotive industry also. The biggest benefit that these companies who are actually early adopters, who are really putting their trust and their money into building the cognitive supply chain, the biggest benefit that they get is that they stay ahead of the race and eventually they start sort of giving the direction to the whole industry. Talk of Tesla for example, setting the direction for the whole automotive company, automotive industry per se. So likewise, every industry has few leaders who are up there and putting lot of effort in building the cognitive supply chains. Q. I would request you, in next few minutes, have your concluding remarks whatever you want to say in the end. You have answered all the questions I know but we would welcome your summing up remarks before we finish this. Ans: As concluding remarks, I would say that 2 things. I mean two different set of stakeholders here, one is of course for the companies that whether we like it or not, it is coming, it will happen and I think the best thing to do is to adopt it as quickly as possible, put it on the top of your priority. Events like COVID has taught us even more that we need to get there faster. So that’s for the companies. For the individuals again I would say that I keep meeting lot of people who were little sceptical about it, that it will take lot of time and stuff like that. I would rather say that we need to quickly upscale ourselves, we need to quickly invest in our understanding these technologies, we need to start building a network which can help us to get there quickly because there can be lot of jobs at stake if we don't quickly adapt. I would say that it's not that the jobs would be lost but the companies would like to have you within upgraded skill, you need to be able to understand the technology and how to use it in the most efficient way. So yes, for the companies quickly get onto it and for the individuals quickly upgrade yourselves so that you stay relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5FpD9FfQrQ

January 6, 2025, Speaker: Major Pallavi Shivanna, Vice President HR at Fincare Small Finance Bank Interviewed by: Mr. Ashish Sahu, Vice President Training, Amity Institute of Training & Development About Major Pallavi: Major Pallavi Shivanna brings in 23 years of cross-cultural experience in the defence and corporate sectors. Currently, she is working in Fincare Small Finance Bank in the capacity of VP-HR. She's an ex-army officer and worked in various capacities with different industries and she has travelled all across the country and abroad. She's a highly skilled professional in the areas of negotiations to budgeting, talent management system administration and recruitment. She's a strong Human Resource professional and a Post Graduate in HR from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. A University topper and recipient of Gold Medal for bachelor’s in psychology. She is a trainee in Psychotherapy for the last six years and is a very passionate human being about creating awareness on mental and emotional well-being. Q. Is employee wellness important? Why employee wellbeing is more important than ever before?’ Ans: Employee wellness is important. Yes, I completely agree. I would also like to take it one step forward, saying that it's not as important only as ever before not only now. And it’s been a continuous process. And, unfortunately, no other organisation, or no individual, no society as such, recognize the importance of well-being, all-around well-being. So, well-being is, physical well-being is what everybody looks at it. But for a person to be well-being, it has to be all-rounded well being-ness, emotional, mental, and physical. So, in the current scenario, if I look at the current relevant situation, the relevant scenario is what we are in, so there was a sudden shift that happened exactly 24 to 26 months back in March. So, I would like to give thumbs up and kudos to all the people who have braced through these last 26 months and wherever we are sitting here today. It is because of their resilience and because of their never-give-up attitude that we are sitting here today. So, why it is important because people starting from children, middle-aged and working women, women working from home, men, all sectors of the people from different sectors of the society, different strata of society have braced through this in their ways. And I have seen in close circles how people have battled to manage things and how to prioritize and how to do it. This particular topic is still a stigma. So, that is the reason why I am saying it is very, very important not only today. Yesterday it was important, today it is important, it is important even tomorrow. And that is how it is evolving. And people had to really-really, why I am stressing this word ‘really’, worked hard to adjust to the current new normal. And it required a lot of change in the mindset, the dynamics change, both from the corporate, professional life as well as personal life. So that's what I would like to say about the importance of mental well-being. Q. What are the factors which impact employee’s well-being and what are the ways to support employee’s health and well-being generally and particularly, I mean in COVID-19 era which we are seeing all across? Ans: As I said in the previous statement, I would like to not restrict to the COVID-19 era, because the subject itself is like that. So, only recently we are talking because of the COVID-19 in a way. Thanks to COVID, at least it has given a lot of lessons to all of us, and it has given a perspective to look at things in a different way for all of us. So, most important you asked, what are the factors that could impact the employee well-being. The most important factor is empathy. So, there was an article a few days back I was reading, ‘Is empathy very important in the recovery of well-being or getting back to the road of well-being’? So, I will share the link, maybe you can just glance through it. So, I would like to just read one statement that I read a few days back. It was on LinkedIn. One of the employees had shared it; it was just a caption, what was shared by the employee. She said, my boss called me and said, “How are you feeling”? So, I didn't know how to answer. Just reflexively, I said, I am fine. Such an empathetic boss, I must say. She was like “no, start over, I am not fine, you are not fine, none of us is fine. And it's okay, let's have a real conversation, it's okay not to be okay”. So, then she again asked me “How are you? So, then I said I am super terrible”. See the shift from ‘I am fine’ to ‘super terrible’ and my boss finally concluded, “yeah now it is much better. So, you are being your real self rather than putting up a brave front and saying that things are fine”. Unfortunately, that is what is happening in the daily realm of running around, these daily chores are what we run around, we forget to acknowledge that we are not okay, and it is okay not to be okay. And that's a challenge. And I have braced through it. I have personally gone through this journey of mental well-being so that’s the reason why I talk with conviction here. So, it is a topic which I have personally experienced. That’s what I would like to say; “empathy, an empathetic manager can make a lot of difference in any organisation”. So, if I am calling my team members, I would say okay – tumhara number Kitna Hua, Kitna hiring Kia, tumhara Kitna sales login Kia. Not once in a while do you call up your team members and ask them ‘how are you feeling, how are your family members, and it is very important not only the COVID, not only the work from home scenario, but it’s also very important to have a human connect’. So, when you have a human connection, a lot of things, your teammates, your employees share with you. Not looking forward to the solution, they just want to be heard. And we are all social beings, we cannot live in isolation. So, we would like to have ‘connect’. And that is what is important in any organisation. So, I always go back to my army days when I was in the army, for me to connect with my men, my seniors used to teach, you have to understand the pulse of your men whom you are commanding. So, then they will look up to you and they come and just to look up to you and they will do anything for you. So, for that, you need to build a rapport and you need to have that connection with them. And that is one thing that I have learnt in the army and I continue to do so. Although many people say why do you have to connect with so many people or the team members that you are working with. I said for me to understand my team members, I would like to know them better as human beings, as people, not only just limited human resource in my team. For me, that is very, very important. So, I proudly say that in the last 15 years; whether I have worked in the corporate now, and before that nine years in the Army, even today, I still have people who connect up to me and they fall back when they need some advice or when they need some help. And that in itself is the biggest achievement. I feel good about it. So that's what I would like to say connect, human connection is very important. Q. What are the challenges faced by employees working from home because we see a lot of challenges day in and day out, what challenges people are facing working from home? Ans: Everyone has their own set of challenges. This particular thing has nothing to do with gender. Just to give you an example, I do have neighbours who have small kids and incidentally, I have three boys, two are very young and one is elder. So, parents managing children at home and managing the meetings, it’s just like Murphy’s law they say. When you are actually in a very serious or important meeting, something happens to the kid or you have to run around for some errands or something. So, that is quite a challenging thing. Even though I know my friends and colleagues have braced through it and they managed it. But the amount of stress what happened to them inside, they are not even able to identify it. And that is the very sad part here and it is also important. One more point, the challenge is overwhelming. So, I can give my example; when last year or even at times when we were working from home and kids were there around, you have to toggle between the office work and the home chores or the homework. That is quite an overwhelming experience and at one point in time, I didn’t know where to draw the line because this is also important, and this is also important. How do I do a hard stop or hard cut? That is a challenge. These are all the challenges and how I do things to prioritize, how I do things to self-care and see how I can manage things around. These are the main challenges. Maybe as we progress, I have few more pointers to share. So, this is what is for this question. Q. What do you think? The way we have been that banks and all organisations have embraced digital transformation and they have embraced to the extent that what was supposed to happen in the next 5-7 years, has accelerated and it has been done in 1-2 years, the same way EAP or Employee Assistance Program would also accelerate due to these unprecedented times? Ans: Yes, I would like to say here. Yes, the organisations are recognizing the importance of EAP. So last year somewhere around July or August, we also entered a partnership with another organisation that provides online services for both emotional and physical well-being. It's called ‘Doc Online’. So, we partnered with them and it is purely on an app base thing. And an employee can add multiple family members. And, most importantly we ran through a lot of teasers before even making it live because talking about mental health, it’s still a stigma in our society. And if you have seen this movie of Shahrukh Khan ‘Dear Zindagi’, he is invited as one of the speakers and he mentions ‘jab ham logo ko pet dard hota hai, ham dawai le lete hai to dard theek ho jata hai, par jam hame dil mai dard hota hai to ham kya karte hai, thodi der mai theek ho jayega karke chhod dete hai”. And it’s not an okay thing to discuss you are not feeling okay, you are not feeling alright, that you are feeling sad or angry. So, that is where our management. There was one organisation who came and gave a presentation to us and that is the time management, actually sat back and looked at it, we can also actually partner with it. So, I see there is a lot of traction happening in this field. And I also see a lot of people openly coming up and speaking about mental health and what is the importance of it and how it affects you as a person when it is affecting you as a person, me as a person for example. If it is affecting me as a person, it is affecting people at home for me; it is also affecting people at work for me. So, it has so much cascading effect around me. It is not only going to affect me. If I am having so much turmoil inside me, I am going to throw the tantrum to the outsiders who are immediately around me, my children, my family, or my colleagues. And, it is very, very important that we bring in this aspect and see how we as an organisation can help employees to recognize and take help. Last year what happened, even before getting empaneled with ‘Doc Online’, I am part of this group called SAATA volunteer group. SAATA is a South Asian Association of Transactional Analysis, I am doing my training through SAATA. TA is a framework that I am working there. We have a volunteer group. Last year, we literally collated the list of Pan India trainees who are there and made a list, give them telephone numbers and multiple languages and what time they are available, and we put it into the SAATA website. So, the same thing. I took the liberty, took one step, and shared it with all our employees in case someone wants to reach out. I removed my name from that, because in the organisation if they see my name, they may not feel comfortable calling me. So, that is the reason, I removed my name. And, the same thing, when the second wave happened this March-April, the same volunteers again congregated, and we made a group and in that group; it was not to provide any solution. People were looking with a lot of research what they found. People were not looking for immediate resolution of a problem or solution. They were looking for someone to talk to. Because the last two months what happened in Bangalore or in and around places, we were not able to even step out. So, because of that, we created a group called ‘Listening Only’. They can just talk to you and they just listen unless and until it becomes like a very serious case. So, otherwise, that went well. And as a trainee, if I have to say, it’s not that it does not affect me. So, I am listening to somebody. I am also taking a lot of input into my head and it is also affecting me. So, I also need an outlet to talk it out. So not because I am into training, into psychotherapy or hypnotherapy, I am also learning that morality as well, it doesn't affect me. No, it's not that. I am a human being too. I do a self-maintenance every month, I also go and share out my turmoil, what I go through and I do my maintenance. That’s what I would like to say, it’s very, very important. I would just like to read out a one-liner that there was a report recently done in Europe on mental well-being by AXA where in 64% of the respondents said their stress level has increased post-pandemic. And 80% said that they had a state of mental stress due to lack of social contact, due to lack of financial stress and also due to a lot of job insecurity. So, these are the main three things which are going on. And if some organisation is doing a survey and sharing the report, it means there is a need to give importance to the well-being, Emotional and Mental well-being. Q. How to manage work-life balance during these unprecedented times. What are the tips to manage work-life balance? First and foremost, it is ‘self-care and ‘self-love’. When we talk about self-care and self-love, people say ‘how can you be so selfish? you can't be taking you first and then others. I say sorry, it's important for me to be contained, me to be healthy and happy for me to spread that to others. If I don't have food on my plate, I will just give an analogy of food on my plate, if I don't have food on my plate, how can I share half of the food with somebody else. So, if I am not contained within my cell, if I am not happy within myself, if I am not feeling whole and complete, I will not be able to deal with that similarly with others. So, it triggers down and boils down to the entire family or members. I am not saying that I have not been there. When too much stress was there, I had forgotten the boundary. And if I would not have done the self-maintenance, if I would have not done self-care, I would have taken out all those things on my children and I don't feel shame in expressing that and sharing it. And, at one point in time, I realised what I am doing. I was not myself when I was not taking care of myself. I took a step back; I said something is not okay. It is important to identify that I need to take care of myself. And I went through my share of depression in life. It took a lot of courage for me to even stand up and recognise that I do need help. And it was okay, but I was the same, even though I am a psychology student, I have travelled the world. But for me to go and seek and share my problems with somebody else was a big, big challenge. But I am telling you, it makes a lot of difference and it is magic. The moment you stand up for yourself, the moment you love yourself, the moment you take care of yourself, things change. The entire dynamic changes. Most importantly, the only tip I give is ‘Self-Care’ and ‘Self-Love’ and it all starts in the mind. And, the mind is very, very powerful and I have learned over a period how I can process the thoughts in my mind and make them happen. So, it all depends upon the input I am giving in to my mind for the output that I desire. If I have the desired output for example, if I have output here, I need to give appropriate input to my mind. So, if I go somewhere and say oh what if I fail, I am already giving a message to my mind for me to happen there as a failure. I have been there, I have done, personal experience I am talking. I have done my own, I have faulted, I have fallen, I have picked up and I have learned, and I am proud that I was able to take care of myself. This is the message I would like to give to everybody. And it is okay. You come first before anybody else. And that is what I would like to give, that is work-life balance. Then automatically things will fall into place. Q. How to recognize and release stress? What are the stresses that are affecting us and then what are the ways to release it’? Ans: I would like to extend this question not only to stress but also to depression as one of the main causes. So, the stress that is not addressed at the right time, then actually will get into depression and depression is I am telling it's not a bad word. So that is the first thing we need to accept. And when my normal behavior, when I am not feeling okay and it is very important to take a step back and sit, okay what is happening to me. And, then the first and foremost thing that will come is ‘identify’. I identify what is it that I am feeling. I am feeling miserable and feeling frustrated and feeling angry and sit and take a step back and allow myself to feel it. What we generally do Is that I know I have friends around, I have people around in my circle. The moment they get angry, they immediately divert their attention to something else so that they don't have to deal with that. Have the courage to deal with then and there what is the feeling that you are going through. That is the identification, and then you are aware. Identification, awareness and vocalizing it. I would like to read one thing. One of my friends; is doing her M.Phil. in Psychology. She had written in one of her statuses, I just loved it because this is for both men and women across genders. She has written ‘Love to all the men who were told to toughen up to suppress their emotions to play the role of the man of the house when they were children, love to the men who are working to heel the pain that society denies’. And I can resonate, I know many of my male colleagues, male friends who feel that ‘I am the man of the house’, how can I even feel sad, how can I feel upset, how can I be vulnerable, how can I sit and cry. Crying or the feeling does not come with gender, it is irrespective of gender. It was okay for Ashish to cry, it's okay for me to be strong, and it is okay for me to be a tough boss, not necessary that I am being a lady I need to be soft, I need to be very nurturing. No, not necessary. 15 days back, I don't remember the date exactly, a tennis player Naomi Osaka if you have read on the paper. I am so proud when I read so many people coming out in support of her even though the French authorities fined her. Another organisation is into EAP; they said that we are going to fund that fine for her. And it was so important, such a prestigious ornament. She did not buzz at that. For her, it was not important. For her, her mental state, her state of mind is very, very important. And most importantly, seek help and it’s okay to seek help. I keep talking to my elder teenager, he said “no, no I am okay, I am capable of managing myself.” I said, seeking help is being brave, it is courageous. It’s not a sign of weakness. Most people do think if I go and ask for help, it's a sign of weakness. It’s not a sign of weakness I would like to say that. Even three years back Sachin Tendulkar had written in an article on Sunday Times. He said ‘the previous night of a most important match, I never used to sleep because of anxiety. Even Rodger Federer has also openly expressed it. There has been an article on him as well in the previous one, not currently. Currently, only Osaka is the one who is talking about it. And the most important thing, one thing I would like to say here is that ‘Develop the emotional vocabulary.’ We have vocabulary but do you know how are you feeling? To know the feeling, what you are feeling, it is important to develop an emotional vocabulary. So that is what I would like to say and seek help when you feel it’s okay to seek help. Q. How is prolong work from home affecting women and their mental health because there are a lot of my women colleagues and other people who like to know?  Ans: So, there are pluses as well as minuses in the current scenario; working from home or how it is affecting women. So, women are conditioned when they are growing up, always take a back step for your self-care or you never come first. This is the conditioning put in us when we are growing as girls. Whether it is cooking, whether household chores, this is a life skill, it is not limited to women. And I have seen my colleagues saying that I go and lock myself in the room so that no children, my spouse doesn’t come to disturb me. But as a working mom, I cannot do that. I cannot say that I am shutting my door and from morning till night, I am sitting in a room. It’s not possible. And that is where the mindset has to change. Women are also individuals, woman is just a gender, man is just a gender. I am an individual first. So, I also aspire, I also have dreams to do well in life. It’s just that was I born as a woman; it cannot stop me from achieving what I want to achieve. So that mindset has to change and the expectations from any organisation for a working mom. For example, you are my boss and you are sitting in a home, locked inside in one room and the type of expectations ‘muje yeh chahiye etc. list of things. But I, sitting here have to manage my children, have to manage my domestic chores, there is no help. I am not cribbing on something. These are the harsh realities that are there. The mindset has to change. It’s okay even for men to do the household chores, it’s a life skill. And, I have been through so much stress and I was sitting and working and taking care of children and in one place, physically I could not move too much. And I ended up putting on so much weight. And it’s important for women, that’s why this question again boils down back to ‘self-care and ‘self-love’. It’s not that I am biased against men. I said we all are individuals and at the end of the day, everyone takes care of themselves. That is the idea. So, it's important to teach our boys, especially moms who have boys at home to take care of household chores. Don’t teach only your girls the household chores and it’s okay if your daughter doesn't want to learn cooking and if your boys want to learn cooking, perfectly fine. So, that mindset has to change. Women need not have to do too much multitasking. And it’s okay to step back, sit and relax, things will happen on their own. It's only the mindset that women have to change. Unless and until I decide how I want to be treated, you cannot treat me the way you want to treat me because I am allowing you to treat me the way you are treating me. It’s a two-way process. And the positive aspect of work from home is a lot of women who have taken a break for their maternity or XYZ reason, sabbatical, we all have this opportunity to return to our career. And that is one good thing which has happened, and they have got an opportunity to contribute to the GDP of the country. This is what the Tata Sons Chairman Mr. Chandrasekharan has said two days back, ‘this is the new norm, this is the new normal, this is how it is going to be, we are not going to revert to the pre-COVID times at all. Technology and digital automation have enabled us so much in such a way that women can get back to their career, and it has accelerated the Country or in general, the working workspace 10 years, one decade further. I know there is always a silver lining in the dark cloud; it all depends on how I look at it. Q. What are the positive sides of the new normal, one you have already talked about, we have been discussing about gender equality at home and take more responsibility. What other positives you think which has come out from this new norm? Ans: As I said, about working women getting back to work. And also, there's a lot of automation and the digital technology has improved in such away. What was not possible, maybe 12-16 months back, is possible today. And, it has changed the way we look at the workspace and it has given the flexibility like a hybrid workspace that is the topic as you said, the hybrid workspace has allowed people to work from anywhere, not necessary that we have to sit in one place and work, but yes there has to be connected, there has to be communication, the contact and also the most important thing from the infra or the cost perspective, is the reduction in the operating costs. There is one AT&T which is a telework company. So, they did a survey and they said it has helped them work from home, or the hybrid workspaces help them reduce 30 million US dollars in real estate costs. That's a positive aspect. So, it’s a very, very important pro of the hybrid workplace. And also redefining the collaboration. So, the collaboration, what used to happen earlier in the boardrooms, it happens sitting in my home, you are sitting in your office or sitting at your home. It was not possible earlier. So, I have not thought that I would sit and give a talk like this, you are sitting in Delhi, I am sitting in Bangalore. It is used to be there earlier; I am not denying that it was not there, but it has become more important now. And, also, the employee prioritization by the organisation. So, all the managers have started doing this skip-level meeting, for example, I do a skip level meeting with one down and understand, talk to them. Earlier it was not happening. These are the positive outcomes of the new normal, what I can say, and the most important thing is people have learned the life skills as I was mentioning. So that is what is the positive outcome of this. Q. As banking being a tedious job both mentally and physically, what interventions women have adopted for stress management for themselves and family? Ans: I would not say it’s a tedious job. It all depends upon how smartly and how you are prioritizing your way and how you do it. Yes, the initial few months have been challenging for our even women colleagues as well even in our organisation. But, throughout times there have been managers who understand and who have been talking to them. I call my team members not only that I call them. I also ask, how are they doing, how are they feeling, how is the family member doing. So there have been instances where the team members, family members succumbed to COVID. So, just talking to them and asking them, these are the interventions which need to be written in books. This is again coming from the human connection, the empathy. And, if at all we were going to the office earlier and then we used to talk it out in person. But now it is all virtual. What is an organisation, we can do and understand? these skip-level meetings And, one more thing, most importantly the intervention since you asked, I will tell you, we started this ‘silent hour’ in our organisation, not to call people between 1.30 pm to 2.30 pm because all the time, lunchtime, dinner time, everything was getting overlapped between work and life. And I used to get up in the middle of 3’o clock and go and have lunch or something. So, that is why we started this ‘silent hour’ and we started following that so that nobody gives a call between 1.30 pm to 2.30 pm that is the time for them. And we also started sharing posters on ‘after 9 pm no calls. Earlier it used to be 6 pm, 7 pm but we have been into corporate, so after 9 pm no calls. And, also, we started stressing, specifically, not only for women, to across everyone that during your free time, sit and spend time with your children, help them in their homework, do some activities with them. These are the things that we actually started promoting and I also had the ‘Kaizala’ app that we have; it's a Microsoft app, a mobile app. And we use it extensively for collaboration and communication, internal communication in our bank. And we used to have these engagement activities, physical engagement activities. But then when there was no physical meeting, we thought how we go about it. So, a lot of people brainstormed and said that let’s do an activity on Kaizala. So, we created a group called ‘Chalo Kuch Karoo Na’. Every day our engagement team is to share what are the dos and don’ts they should follow from the COVID perspective and what are the activities they can do with their family. We started even awarding people sharing their yoga tapes and there were cooking competitions we were doing. And, we also had painting competitions for the children. And last year without an exam, many children got promoted. So, from our side we also gave a certificate to all the people, kids of staff who got promoted, we did that as well. So, there were a lot of engagement activities on a virtual platform that we carried out. And that is what kept our men and women, staff engaged and all in the Centre. Q. There are a lot of examples you gave about yourself. It has been a very, very interesting, insightful session and due to the paucity of time maybe we will talk to you again, we will invite you again for these discussions. Ans: There is a list of questions that are getting popped up in the chat. So, just to summarize, I would like to say one thing for them. I can control things what is happening inside me. I cannot control what is happening outside. So, I would like to say for people who have asked questions here, introspect and see what it is you need to change. Are you reacting or are you responding? And the mind is very powerful and make use of it. So, I cannot change things what is outside of me. It starts with me and ends with me. And that is ‘my walk the talk’, I always keep saying to my family, my children, and my colleagues. So that is where I would like to sum it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40yol0jwneM

December 26, 2024, Speaker:  Ms. Amrita Sharan, Director (Personnel) Air India Interviewed by: Mr. Brig R K Sharma, Director of Amity Institute Training & Development About: Ms. Amrita Sharan, Director Personnel, Air India Limited, starting out as a management trainee in the erstwhile Indian Airlines in 1989, Ms. Sharan has grown to become the first lady Director Personnel of Air India and a member on the Board of Directors. She manages the full range of HR functions to drive Employee engagement, morale and performance of Employees in an environment which has been perpetually undergoing change, both external and internal. She has rolled out Policies that include changes in the organisational structure, corporate governance and protection of Employees’ interests in view of the disinvestment decision of Air India. She has also put in place, cost efficient policy for HR Efficiency and control of wasteful expenditure. She was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for HR excellence in December 2019 by Professional Networking Group of India. Q. How it is keeping its Employees engaged and its customers satisfied? How it is keeping its workforce motivated in view of the impending disinvestment of the Government? Finally, how Air India has managed to rise to the occasion during this crisis? So, what has been your experience in the pandemic and how has Air India dealt with various challenges since March 2020? Ans: For us, the pandemic is, you have stated the state of aviation in India or the world, you have beautifully captured the difficulties and the problem that this industry is facing, and we are going through a very tough time. But in this tough time, when we are going through a fiscal, there is no operation everything, we had to rise to the occasion and do something which a nation, we are basically second line of defence. So we have certain responsibilities. And this COVID pandemic, even before that we had a fiscal issue, we were not doing very well, this industry was not doing very well and then COVID happened. So the fiscal status has gone worse. And then our responsibility has doubled. So, to handle this fiscal situation, we had cut salary of Employees, we had reduced their perks. But we have not terminated the services of Employees. That’s one thing we have done. But now these Employees who are as it is in a cost cutting situation, as it is facing all COVID, all these Employees had to fly in the most infected area Wuhan. First flight started on 31st January and 1st February 2020. Air India operated two back to back flights to Wuhan to bring back about 647 passengers. That time it was fine. Because, that time the pandemic has not reached the extent and the effect was not there all over. But after that, the continued evacuation exercise that we did and we had taken up, about 4 million passengers have been brought by Vande Bharat Flight. 4 million is a good number. And this kind of medical evacuation exercise was something very new for us. This was a major challenge, and to have my own Employees take up this risk job because my air hostess, my crew, they all have to really interact. My frontline staff, they have to interact with these passengers, their requirements, you have to fulfil as a human being, these people were there in the most infected areas, inviting and greeting people who are most infected. The way my employees have taken this forward, it is amazing, simply amazing. And we have gone to about 79 new destination cities. You would not have even heard of the name of the cities, we have gone to. We also had not heard of these cities. But with this pandemic, all closing the offices, there were 10-15 of us in the office. And we were trying to arrange this. And there was lot of procedure required to operate to a new destination. We needed lot of clearances. So, the work which was to be done by full 10000 employees, it was just 10-15 of us sitting in the office organising everything. And then just directing my crew to do this. Believe me, not a single crew said, “I will not do it”. They had to go there, after that we had to be quarantined because they were scared of going back home and carrying the infection home. So whoever flew had to be quarantined for 14-15 days and still they were very scared that they will infect these people. And even before going they used to be subjected to about 3-4 layers of tests. They were confined to hotel rooms, there will be one test and again four days later, there will be another test and then they used to go. And when they come back, again this is followed. So it was not a pleasant exercise for everybody to do but all my Employees did it. I had not a single employee saying that “I won't be going”. Q. How did you manage to motivate employees for such as stellar performance which is really praiseworthy of a national carrier. What was the trick that you employed? Ans: The only trick was that we were there with them in the field and we were communicating. We did our best to take care of them. So the first thing that you realise is how important is Human Resource to an organisation, how important it is. You may have the same kind of digitisation, machine, everything is equal. And in aviation, everything is equal because you got to have one standard kind of machine, standard kind of equipment. Everything is standardised. The only difference a person makes is your HR. And this was so well projected in this particular exercise of ours. The total difference that happened in the whole ‘Vande Bharat Flight’ was the difference made by a human being. And it’s very uncomfortable to be there in the suit, it’s very warm, it itches, you just can’t take it off. But all of them wore it for 12 hours flight, 8-11 hours flight. And they had gone to a very strange state that they could not go down to hotel and relax. They had to come back immediately. All this happened, when I had to cut my salary, salary of a pilot was cut nearly by 60%, near 40-45% deduction they had. So, they had no monetary benefit, they had no physical comfort but all of them rose to the occasion. As a Director HR, they will come to me and complain and show their face but they never disrupted the flight, they never did anything or showed their disgruntlement to anybody around. And if you ask me how it happened, I can only say it happened only because of the communication. We have always been a second line of defence, be it any exercise that happened. Do you remember the biggest evacuation that happened in 1991 in Kuwait? We had evacuated lakhs of people from Kuwait. If you see Kabul, if you see Kandahar, Kazakhstan, we have done all that. And right now also we are doing it. And it’s very interesting because we started these flights to Kabul and we scheduled it thrice a week but our Insurance Company said they are not very comfortable sending the aircrafts there, lot of hazards, it’s very, very unsafe to be there. I remember our first flight hovered for about 45 minutes before landing. Yes it is still very difficult. But we have changed the entire system; of course, we are going to different stations, airports. But we are still going and bringing back people. And because the airport is closed so we can't do much but we are on standby and within three hours’ notice, we will be able to resume the flight. We have already done 3-4 flights there. But because of closure of airport, we are not able to continue. So, if you see internationally, we have done Yemen. If you remember 2015, Libya? We have done Nepal when that earthquake happened. Even in domestic whenever there is crisis, the Chennai floods, Uttarakhand landslides that happened. So, for domestic and international, we have done it. And again, coming back to your question, how it happens. It happens because in airlines we really don’t have attrition rate, people don’t leave us. We are there together. And may be the feeling, you go with the name of your organisation, even Indian Airlines, Air India. The name gives you a major boost to rise to the occasion any time and every time. Q. How do you keep people motivated and how do you keep them ‘don’t worry, we will look after your interest’? How do you convince them? Ans: Air India, the kind of dynamism this organisation has faced. There was monopoly, Indian Airlines, Air India, there was no competition. It was a ‘Raja Maharaja’ flying. Then, one fine morning, there was an open sky Policy. So, these Employers all of a sudden were faced with competition, our market share went down, the salary went down and then my pilots started leaving. So, there was one stage when there was open sky policy. The ‘competition’ word was introduced in this organisation. The same crew, the same Employee. I have seen the open sky Policy and then there were three attempts of merger. Then there was merger happened which was a very difficult decision to implement and to take forward. So that merger happened. And after that we went through three exercises of disinvestment, this is the third exercise. So every year things used to come to us. So there used to be no promotions, no recruitments. We have not gone through a proper recruitment for decades now because there was so much of dynamism happening. So, you are talking to this group of people who have seen this kind of dynamism and have really been with the Company throughout and have evolved with all these changes. Now, we are competing with the best of the airlines, we are competing with Indigo. And my average age of employee is 52, my average age. So these people are competing with the generation next, computer savvy and all those people. They are competing with them. They are able to do this. So, something in the DNA that they have used to this kind of evolution and dynamism. Q. What is this business process of re-engineering that you are planning to do? How do you plan to bring in this change because after all you are in a very competitive industry? So, how are you managing this change because we don't know what is it going to look like after a few years, we are still going to preparing for the change? So, what all kinds of modernization and technological changes you are bringing out? Ans: We are right now in a mode of disinvestment. So, basically we are okay. We have had to have put up a plan for our future and keeping in view the COVID and number of aircrafts I have, the financial situation I have, I have to put in a projected plan. But, right now these changes are basically coming to the market which are there in the market, in the aviation, we are doing that. Now, the only thing is, because by 15 of September we will be able to know whether we will get a good bid or not and we are going through this privatisation exercise. By September, we will have the bidding process simply started. So, whatever changes are these regular changes that we are doing. Right now my problem is what we have to address is that for next two years my aviation does not look very prosperous. It will take time to come back to normalcy. I am not reducing my manpower; I am not reducing my cost because my cost is fixed. So what we are working at is how we survive for next two years, three years? This is the engineering that we are going through. And we are a Government sector and we have got all the legal obligations of the Government sector, everything, all the laws and regulations that were given to us. So, how do we, with tied hands, take forward and survive. We are right now in the mood of surviving. That is what we are working at. That is all these exercises to survive, to be able to pay my employees every month. Q. But I would like to hear from you that how you in your career span of so many years, as a woman in the role and to reach the board, I would like to hear what were the strategies personally that you adopted and how did you manually do this professional glass ceiling that definitely witnessed because you had been into industrial relations which I get to understand so far? Ans: I am also on the board of Hotel Corporation of India and AIAS and there are two other Companies which are again ground handling Companies. Now, the only thing I can tell you is that I never felt that I am a woman and I have to compete with a male. I have worked as a person, as a human being throughout. May be I have joined an organisation where 30% of my employees is women. So, there also was never a hesitation of me being a woman and rising in the hierarchy, and the hierarchy superseded many men and women. All of them have been superseded. So, right now the only thing I would like to say is that if you want, you have to be yourself. What takes you forward is your inner skill, your skill, your personality. You need not be a man or a woman. This is simply material and people see there is lot of distinction of problem with women. They are not the problem, they are such things which really mature a woman, you have kids, you will have children, you have to look up, in the middle of meetings your child call up, your maid will call up. You cannot snub like a man that this is not my responsibility, don’t disturb me, I am in a board meeting. And the best thing about the men and women diversity is that you act like a woman. And I believe, I am repeating myself that ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’ and when they come together on a table, they bring the diversity and they bring the holistic approach. So, I have always been a woman, I never wanted to be a male and go forward but it's just that when you go for work, you be yourself. You do not identify yourself as a male or female, you be yourself, you perform yourself and as a female you should bring out your femininity in the atmosphere, in the workspace. This has been what I have felt. And the only thing is that as a mother, you should also bring your daughter and your son. They should be exposed to the, they should not be a difference in their growth; you should not give importance to their gender. But give importance to the quality, to the lives to the ability. I have been brought up, I have come from very middle class family, and I have been brought up as a woman, as a girl. I was used to a few biases. My parents always said and they have never done that. My brother went to college, I had to stay back. All these things I tell my people but it has never inhibited you. So, my only lesson to every woman and man is that be yourself, just be yourself. Come up with your own originality and that will take you forward. Q. How do you, as an HR professional manage these high performers within your organisation? Ans: In a Government organisation you are governed by the guidelines. There are no major carrot and stick rules here. So, there is a difference here. As I said, I really believe that if I make leaders, I encourage them to come out and become leaders. I develop them. You recognise them, you talk to them. Yes, there have been instances where we have recognised them. In Wuhan, the staff that operated, Prime Minister gave awards to them. So, we do have incentives and before the merger there were incentives. There were parameters laid down and based on that people were incentivised. That has come down after merger. In Government sector, there are many things you want to do but you cannot really, you do not have the liberty of really awarding somebody because of the excellent performance and taking action against somebody who have not performed. But yes, we have our ways of appreciating them, recognising them, taking them forward. And yes, I have also come through. So, there are people who have, in this network have come up based on performance, simply based on performance. This is something difficult to take forward. And when we get privatised, this is something I would like to address. Lot of ideas I would like to take forward with this. Q. What has been your experience of dealing with these Unions, engaging with them, bargaining with them because most of them are against this disinvestment plan of the Government and they are all worried about the future and they want to save the best for their Union members? So what has been your experience dealing with this so many Unions in Air India? Ans: Dealing with Unions that have been in industrial relations for over 20 years. So dealing with unions gives me a kick, talking to them. I love to talk to 20 people all. And dealing with Unions within organisation does not pay you well, not able to give me a better facility, has a different colour altogether. It is difficult to convince them. See we have a problem because we had a merger. So, we have erstwhile Air India Union, we have got erstwhile Indian Airlines Union. And this new fabric that has come up in the Union has been very difficult in the sense of our higher point of view. And our Unions are very strong. Our pilots, engineers, they are very strong because they can really disrupt, stuck the organisation. It can come to a standstill left by pilots which we used to fly. But so far in this disinvestment exercise they have been quite cooperative. And with them we first analyse the issue that we have. All the HR issues that need to take forward and we learned from our mistakes. During merger HR issues were not addressed properly. So, we took 13-14 years to really settle down after the merger. It was a Political decision and then the two organisations were merged and then optimally we started addressing the HR issues which was very difficult. It was a very difficult exercise but we have gone through that. After going through that, disinvestment we are still waiting for. But basic issues that they had about their Provident Fund, their security, gratuity, all we have been able to address. So again I had a Union meeting with them about transfer of Provident Funds because from the fabric of a Government organisation to go to a private organisation, there are lot of things to look after, lot of issues to be addressed and especially now when my workforce is such, I mean my pilots and crew, they will get a job but otherwise it’s basically a ground job, they don’t have that kind of employability outside. So, we are genuinely taking care of them, we are looking at it. Even the Government, the Ministry is quite supportive. So all the HR issues which we feel will be a showstopper, we are able to address that. That is how we are taking it forward, addressing it, genuinely addressing it. Q. How are you preparing your people for a culture which will be different in a few months? Ans: The only thing I can say, the main thing I can say is that these people who are going to be privatised, the competition is on private players. Indigo, SpiceJet people who are ex-Indian Airlines, they are all there and pilots. So they are basically aware of what’s going to happen and they all are basically waiting for this disinvestment. Because otherwise we are in a very bad state. But preparing them, is something, what we all are saying right now is, one blessing is that this is going to continue as an airline. As an airline when you continue and you have this kind of experience, this kind of workforce which has brought up all the private airlines, they know the quality of these people and these people know that now they have to perform to be there. And they know that in one year time you can't have total employee change. You cannot replace the entire workforce. So, my highly skilled sector, my flight dispatchers and my flying crew they know that they have to work in a different way but they know that they have a security. My other people, who are there at the airport, they know that if they perform, they will continue. That conviction they have. So, that is what we are saying that if you go on doing your job, maybe a little bit of Upskilling is required; we may have the edge on redeployment of people. But as long as we are very positive and proactively taking this competition, you will be able to survive. Q. How your organisation Air India will deal with this problem, taking care of the well-being one side, taking care of managing the stress and having all the tender positivity because in your organisation employees feel lot of challenges, bringing the citizens from the different parts of the world, risking their own life? So, you being the HR head, what did you do that you continue to build the Employees to deal with these uncertainties and to make them high performer, positivity all the time? So would like to hear from you couple of initiatives which has been taken? Ans: COVID has been a major educator. We have learned a lot from this COVID. First of all, it's an ‘aha’ moment for HR because personally board members of the HR are the most important persons handling HR, we realise that; I mean first we have to deal with that internal customer. Employees are given the major importance. So, what we did initially was, first of all, within two days we had to shift work from home, within 72 hours my IT department was able to shift not totally but we were quite operational. And lockdown for us has not been a lockdown. We have been coming to office throughout. All of us, most of us have been coming to office especially executives, they have been coming to office throughout because the ‘Vande Bharat Flights’ were there so we could not just dump our flights and people to do the job and we sit at home. All of us have been there, totally at the airport and at workplace. So basically there were few things that we wanted to do before. I wanted to know, before COVID accelerated, my digital learning, my Upskilling through digitisation. There was lot of resistance before but my pilots and my cabin crew used to be refreshed regularly. There was a DGCA requirement, they have to be trained. There is a time table laid out. So, they have to go for a refresher after one month for certain trainings. The good point of COVID was that we could digitise it, we could do things online and my interviews were online. There were major changes which have come in the organisation and we want to carry it through. We have started having meetings online the way we have interaction today. Earlier for one meeting we had to go to London, US and to sign one paper. All that is now happening on Zoom and on Webex. So, it's been a major learning for us and digitalisation is something that we have been after. We were really lagging from customer point of view. But this entire thing got accelerated because that way handling employees is better. My interviews were online and I have not spoken to my Employees the way I have spoken to them online. It was so easy to talk to anybody sitting in Chennai otherwise you had to go to Chennai to speak to them. But the whole group used to come to my office and I could speak to them. I have spoken to people sitting in New York. And this I would have never imagined. The communication is very strange but it has become better because I could communicate to people sitting at home. I could communicate to them when this work from home happened. So, just communication has been one which has really taken us forward. We have been able to digitise as a Government Company and my employees with 50% background. There were little resistance but that aspect has been taken care of. So it has been very positive side of COVID. Second thing was my priority for medical attention. So we had COVID centres made. We have made arrangements with their hotel where people after flight, they used to go there. Anybody infected, they had a COVID centre. We have a medical department. So health of my people was very important to us. So we have COVID Centres. We have made sure that everybody is taken care of and their family is also taken care of. And vaccination is another drive where 70% of my staff has gone through vaccination drive. So, that's how we are taking care of. We are also giving medical assistance to our retired Employees. There's no limit, the numbers are very high. Taking care of them is again one aspect we have looked into and we have tried out best. And again it's because our concentration was on computers, we could talk to them at home and speak to the people. So Zoom and WebEx have been a boon for us. So COVID has been a major educator for us although we paid a major price for it. We are learning a lot from this. Q. What message you would like to give to young women in the country in the corporate world, what clicks to come to the top and how to maintain your goal set right? And what strategies to adopt? But the development should be the, because you have the responsibility of the family, managing the family, managing the career, reaching to the leadership role, all kinds of things. How did you manage it, what message you would like to give to the young future leaders? Ans: First of all, don't think of glass ceiling. There is no glass ceiling. So don't have the restrictions of anything controlling you or stopping you. Don't even think of there is any glass ceiling, you just up reach to anything and believe me the kind of ‘Shakti’ we have inside us, the kind of magic, a woman can do, just rely on your ‘Shakti’ and go forward. I would like to say that you have to do a job when you are passionate about it. It’s difficult because many people have to do because of economic reasons. So, if you are not passionate, make it passionate. If you do not bring in positivity, if you do not enjoy. Once you start enjoying being a mother, definitely you enjoy, you enjoy being a wife, a housewife and you enjoy being what you are doing. As long as you are just in the present moment and you don't think of any excuse of leading a life, you will be very happy and everything will come out. As a woman, I really feel the ‘Shakti’ that we have, we just have to rely on our Shakti and it can do wonders. There is no doubt on that. And there is no competition with men. Men are men and women are women and both of us will take this forward. It's not that a rise of woman is a fall of man. No, it is not that. Basically, women rising is an economic issue. 50% of the population will start contributing to the economy if the women come up. And I think here again I have a major role as a mother to play. How we bring our children, how to bring both girls and boys and how to educate them. So, our role as a mother, as a professional mother is very important. But yes, I repeat there is no glass ceiling, there is nothing a person can’t do. And believe you can do much better. I see my husband handling my children and house and kitchen is not done. This is not what we want but we can handle all of them together. It's just live your life, enjoy every moment, I really feel that. And if you start having believe in yourself, you will not look for excuses. You will look to anything coming to you in a positive way. So, its lots to do in life and each moment can be lived to the fullest. And as long as you don't think there is a glass ceiling, there is something covering you up, there is a compartment which you have to break through. Q. Is it possible that it gets privatised but still remains a national carrier? So how do you see the brand being retained even after privatisation? Ans: See it's just as an employee of the Company, I feel that we will be able to do this; we will find the same Air India, same values that we have to continue with that. But yes, sitting in this position I can't really think of what my new boss will think and how do we take it forward. But the brand of Air India will continue. We will be an airline flying as Air India. And Government has certain obligation of propagating the same values of continuing the integrity, the sincerity with which this Company has contributed to the nation. We hope that Government also support and we as an Employee of the Company, we still have few years to go, we cannot turn out to be very indifferent to a national cause in two years. Thirty years of service. All of us are very elderly in this organisation. I really believe that we will continue to be like this at least for few years. Q. What the future private owners, how will you make them change their minds? Ans: I really feel that people who come to buy a brand, Air India has a very powerful brand. So, they will buy that brand and with the brand they have to buy the culture also. But let's see, believe me it’s a very difficult question. I think if there is a call of nature and as a natural reaction, all these existing Employees would like to go forward. So, there will be only 20-25 people who would not like to go forward but if we will make profit and service together, it will be a win-win. We need to make profit; there is no doubt in that. So we may ask the Government to pay us and then we continue with the same service. Yes, profit and our duty can come together. Q. As a young leader, what are the 3 things that probably these potential managers to pick up and learn so that they can actually do very well in their career. Any 3 quick tips? Ans: Tips can be 1, 2, 3 but it’s very difficult to confine to the tips. I just want to have one message conveyed, that is again I am repeating, ‘be passionate, be sincere in whatever you do’. If you don't want to do it, don’t do it. But when you do it, do it with a passion and just be yourself. We need not compete with others, we need not copy others, as long as we are passionate about our job and we do with our sincerity and with the hope of achieving the goal, so the goal is something very important. We should have a vision and work for that vision, without any constraint or any inhibition of not being able to do the way you want to do it, just go forward. Believe, I have seen people, again I am repeating, with the Covid experience. A junior person, the way he came forward, he had gone to places he can’t even name. I can't pronounce the state but the guy how he managed to do that and come out with one simple idea whom to talk to. That's what I want to say when crisis comes then you realise what your worth is. So I won’t say that people should go on crisis. But make every day a one day that you live for. Just live for the day. That's all is required. The only thing, one message that I have is, you have to be positive because whatever comes in your life, all of us has gone through. Life has to teach you lesson. You just have to be positive and take it forward. And in my age I can say that inner peace is what can take you forward. But believe me; you should give the remote of happiness to yourself. It should not be that because boss has snubbed me so I am unhappy, my son has snubbed me so I am unhappy, my husband did not speak to me, I am very unhappy. Happiness should be there inside you. All these variations if they are there, if you are happy and if you are pleasant, you will change all the variations. If you are smiling, your son will smile properly, your boss will not snub you so much, so you can spread happiness but have control of your life. Not the external circumstances, no promotion, 1%. This happens in life, it does not mean that takes away, steals away your happiness, all your pleasures of life. Happiness is to be happy. Just look for happiness and positivity inside you. Life is beautiful. Everybody has to go through the turmoil of life. I really want to talk to my youngsters these days. Astrology is good; I am not saying it’s something incorrect. There are stars. But I believe that your own Karma that whatever is destined, you can really change it. If you work, if you have positivity, if you see the challenge and want to work it, whatever obstacle, whatever destiny has written for you, you have the power to change it. I really feel. Karma really works. I really feel that your Karma will take you forward. Whatever happens, there is no fault, astrology is a science, I believe in that. But astrology restricts you, tells you that this is going to happen. This is spirituality of your own positivity that liberates you. So, you are liberated by your own positivity, you are able to be what you are by your own positivity and the Karma that you do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJr4jnDyRcs

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Mr. Sriram Krishnan, MD & Co-Head, Global Transaction Banking India, Deutsche Bank AG Interviewed by: Kapil Wahal, Banking and Financial Head, Amity Institute of Training & Development About: Mr. Sriram Krishnan is a very distinguished leader from the Banking industry. He brings on board, more than two decades of experience in the Banking industry and his current role, he is the Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Transaction Banking Business with Deutsche Bank. Along with that, he also helps the Security Services Business for Deutsche Bank. Prior to his stint with Deutsche Bank, Mr. Sriram held very senior positions with Citibank, HSBC, Franklin Templeton & Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd. Q. What will happen to the future of these Industries? So, Sir, I request you to please enlighten us with your thoughts and your opinion on what’s happening at the Global level right now? Ans: It's indeed my pleasure and privilege to be with you all today and to share my thoughts on how we see COVID-19 and the way forward. I would like to begin with a story that I read about 2-3 weeks back. The story is about a place called Choluteca. This is a small town in the Country called Honduras and I think it's the seventh-largest Town or City, whatever you may call it. In 1930, Choluteca had a bridge that was built. And this bridge was rebuilt in 1996. At that time, a fine bunch of Architects were brought in and they wanted to build a bridge that will withstand the most difficult Hurricane. And the best Architectural minds came together and built this bridge. And sure enough, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch destroyed Honduras. Large scale destruction of the health order. But this bridge, the Choluteca bridge survived Hurricane Mitch. It was a truly phenomenal Architectural achievement of the highest degree. And people were thrilled. But there was just one problem. The bridge was on top and the river was beneath the bridge. The Hurricane had shifted the river away in all its fury, so the bridge is still left standing today. If you go to the Internet and look up Choluteca, Honduras, you will get those images, it’s really funny. So, the bridge has no use whatsoever. Think about it. Isn’t it remarkable how things can change and how quickly they can change? Knowing fully well that a Hurricane will hit Honduras, it’s just a matter of time. Even so, the designers of that bridge could not accurately anticipate potential future conditions. So, here we are today gathered to anticipate potential future conditions in the aftermath of COVID-19 to see what it has in store for us and what we need to do today. This is because successful Innovation is also about correctly predicting how markets and behaviours will change. And in the process, how these changes can invalidate certain previous assumptions. COVID-19 is probably the biggest Black Swan event of this Century. Even Countries and Cities with superior Health Infrastructure, are struggling to cope with COVID-19. Germany is perhaps the one country that has dealt with COVID-19, very, very well, wherein, they have a very superior Health Infrastructure. But, a lot of other countries, if you look around, are struggling with issues ranging from availability of testing kits, to what is the right quantum of testing that one should undertake, availability of medical equipment, PPE kits, Hospital beds, ICU beds, Oxygen, availability of frontline Medical personnel, etc. So, let's examine some of the key headlines in terms of changes in behaviour that we can already see in front of our eyes in the current circumstances. Probably, that will be a good starting point. So, if you look at headline changes, the first headline change that I want to speak about is the change in consumer behaviour. If you look at consumer behaviour during the pandemic and post the Lockdown, we can already make out certain changes. Q. These days is ‘Will savings dampen consumption’? ‘Will people start spending or not?’ or ‘Will they just keep it aside for a rainy day?’ Ans: That in itself is a big behaviour change. We were not like that before the crisis. Secondly, there is a distinct preference to shop online, and nobody wants to go to the brick-and-mortar shops anymore. So, there is a big fear of catching the infection. So, everything has become online. If you look at the reports, the data seems to suggest that this year the volume of E-commerce transactions in India would be about 26% more than what it was last year. And the CAGR that is being estimated for the period 2019-2023 is about 20% for E-commerce transactions. So, already there is a perceptible change in the way people are conducting their transactions. Even if you look at the US, the current year's volume of E-commerce transactions is already about 22% higher than what it was last year. We are all seeing the impact on travel. Tourism is expecting in India to make a loss of 1.25 trillion rupees this year. Also, there is a distinct preference for two-wheelers. I saw a report the other day, which seems to suggest that two-wheeler production is almost back to about 70% levels. That's because a lot of people are feeling more comfortable and safer in two-wheelers, where they drive themselves than going in a taxi or any other mode of transport. So, that's another distinct change. Also, people don't want to eat out anymore, but they are okay to pick up packed food or home order the food provided they have a certain level of comfort with a delivery service. People also do not want to go out and see movies; they want to see movies at home. And so, you see new movies are getting released on the OTT platforms. In the UK, it has been reported that 21% of consumers have increased Bank balances because they just have reduced their shopping significantly; either, they have not gone to the shops or they don't feel the need to do so. Everyone is keeping money aside for a rainy day. Q. If you look at Industry behaviour, the fundamental question that comes to our mind is ‘Will the industries, completely recover and bounce back and come in the clear in all cases. Ans: Of course, some of the industries and sectors might be back to normalcy, but then there are some others who have to make certain amendments and changes, and then there are yet others, who have been born during the crisis. Cost models are being reviewed by many industries. A lot of organisations are speaking about working from home, more going forward, because that will help reduce the cost on commercial Real Estate. Also, corporate treasuries are beginning to review their lending arrangements and define target leverage with larger safety cushions. Supply chains are being reviewed globally. So, all of this, points to a distinct set of outcomes that we must carefully monitor based on which we can decide what action we need to take. The third change in behaviour is around the digital push. Everyone and everything is going digital these days. Obviously, during the Lockdown, all of us working from home, some of us continue to work from home, even though the Lockdown is slowly coming to an end in some way or the other. During the Lockdown, people had no other choice but to undertake all communication online, shopping online. So, cashless payments are on the rise, digital currencies are in demand. Even the relationships are less in person and more through the video mode like how we are interacting today. So, all of these are significant changes from an overall standpoint. Q. Now, let's look at the impact of COVID-19, on the World Economy and also on various Countries.  Ans: If you look at the World Bank report, which was just published a few days back; World Economy is expected to grow by about 5.2% in 2020. The US economy is expected to grow by about 6.1%, Eurozone by 9.1%, and India by about 3.2%. This is the World Bank report. Of course, there are different Economists, different estimates and the numbers might vary, the scale and size might vary marginally, but we all by and large agree, that this is the year in which Economies are going to shrink, not grow. Now, let's look at some of the Countries and how they have been impacted. Let’s start with the US. The US has a big crisis on the table which is the crisis around jobs. It's estimated, that, about 56 million people have already lost their jobs. And that's a big one for the Economy to deal with. Also, 33 million people have filed for unemployment benefits. The unemployment rate is almost 20%, or thereabouts. And, the number of people who have tested positive, seems to be increasing all the time. So, a V-shape recovery seems very challenging even for the US. Look at the European Union. The World Bank report says European Union is also going through a tough time and predicts a huge amount of job losses. Again, it's estimated that about 59 million people will lose their jobs. Then, let's look at Germany. Germany is perhaps one of the best countries when it came to dealing with COVID. They have great Health Infrastructure, they did an amazing job in terms of putting money into the hands of people at the right time, helping small businesses, also their levels of testing were very, very high and they continued to treat people who had tested positive. So, I think Germany was probably an example in the entire crisis. They had great laboratories; they had solid Research going on in terms of finding a solution to deal with this virus. And the only two parameters where they were probably struggling was one on exports where clearly exports are dwindling this year, and it's expected that there will be a 11.5% drop in exports in Germany. And in terms of unemployment, it’s estimated at 5%. Still, that's very, very reasonable if you look at it in a comparative measure with the other Countries. Look at what's happening in the United Kingdom. Again, they have been hard hit. They took a very different approach. Initially, they thought there is no need to shut the Economy and people will simply develop the necessary level of immunity – they called it ‘herd immunity. Unfortunately, the strategy backfired and then they had to go into Lockdown. Their Education sector is the hardest hit and most of the International students have cancelled their enrolments. So, there's a 90% reduction in the output. The construction industry in the UK has been significantly hit, apparently 70% down compared to last year. Factory output is down about 55%. Travel has been impacted and that's not good news because they also have a significant chunk of revenue coming from Travel and Tourism. Look at China, what's happening in China. China is probably one of those big street-smart Countries when it came to dealing with the crisis. They managed to restrict the crisis or the spread of the virus significantly. The virus never went beyond Wuhan and Shanghai, for example, or Beijing. They were never impacted by this virus at all. And, in terms of their challenges, their challenges are around the Aviation industry, which has been badly hit and the Real Estate industry which has also been significantly dented. But they managed to be very, very clever when it came to mass manufacturing masks and other protective equipment and supplying these two rests of the world, particularly to the European Countries, which badly needed these during the peak of the crisis. China has also smartly captured a bigger share of the Steel demand in the world, this year. So, last year, they had a 54% market share of the Steel output. And this year, they are expected to have about 62% market share in Steel. So that's very, very clever of them to capitalise on this small window of opportunity. Let's look at South Korea, one of the best Countries, when it came to dealing with this crisis without shutting down the Economy, without going into Lockdown, unlike many other Countries. South Korea went into rampant testing mode. Still, they couldn't protect their large Revenue contributors – one, is, of course, the Automobile industry for them – Hyundai and Kia Motors, put together have suffered an 84% drop in Revenues. Also, Samsung, which make memory chips, they have seen a roughly 20% dip in the Revenues. Jobs are getting hit because they are an export-oriented Company and the unemployment rate in South Korea is about 4.5%. Then, look at a couple of other Countries which are also entrusting - Australia and New Zealand. Australia is heavily dependent on Tourism, just like New Zealand. Australia also has a lot of international students, particularly from China coming into Australia for study. A lot of those were cancelled and that led to an impact. And they realized that Travel was a challenge, and they were trying their best to increase Domestic Travel. New Zealand, for example, they have decided or is in the process of desiring to have a four-day work week so that more people will travel at least domestically, if not internationally, and that can also help the Economy during these times. Australia and New Zealand are also talking about a travel bubble, among their two Countries; given that those people are relative, not so badly impacted by the Coronavirus. They think, that if there is a pact for people from either country to visit the other for Tourism purposes then that will help both those Countries, which is a very smart thing to do in these times. In terms of action taken, the rest of the country, obviously, have tried various means to ramp up the expenses plus the Central Banks of the World have increased liquidity significantly. Those are the large steps, and of course, the big announcement including from the Government of India on the massive package etc., that has happened in every Country. Q. Now, let's come to India. And, before I get into what the impact is in India on various sectors, will probably take a couple of minutes to just understand how COVID-19 is different from the global financial crisis from India’s standpoint. Ans: If you look at the global financial crisis of 2008 India was not directly impacted, India was impacted indirectly on the rebound. At that time, India was obviously very-very robust as an Economy. We had very low levels of non-performing assets, maybe 2-3% NPAs. And by and large, the Economy was in reasonably good shape. So, we were obviously much, much better placed to deal with that crisis. However, if you look at the moment in time when the COVID crisis hit India. At that time, I think, in comparison the Indian Economy was on a slightly weaker footing, I am saying this because, in the last couple of years, while the Banking system is being steadily cleaned off the non-performing assets. We have had a non-banking, finance company problem, so the banking and NBFCs sectors are both relatively weaker today. And not just the banking and NBFCs, but the housing finance companies, the micro-finance Companies, the whole system is a little bit impacted at this time. As for data available in the market, the level of NPAs in the Banking system is about 9.3% of advances. And I think, recently, the RBI made a statement in one of the announcements that this could very well be about 10.5 and 11%, now, because 9.3% was as of September last year. If you look at the NBFCs again the data suggests that there's about 6.3% of the advances which were probably NPAs. 6.3% looks a little bit on the lower side. So, if you collectively look at it, we are talking about 15-20% of the assets have gone back, which is a huge number in comparison to what it was in 2008. So, the challenge for us during this time has been the fact that we haven't created that magical output that we always thought we would, unfortunate for a variety of reasons. The demographic advantage, which is so significant for India given that we have a very large young population and that can speak English as well fluently. This was expected to fetch bigger dividends, than what we have actually seen in reality. So, job creation is one area where we have some work to do still. Now, coming to the impact of COVID-19 in India if you look at various sectors. Take Textiles and Apparel, for example, I think they are looking to make, they will end up with losses of about 13,000 to 14,000 crores this year. Take Aviation; at minimum, it is estimated that they will make about 25,000 crores of losses because Travel has been badly impacted during this time. Take roads and highways, the developers and toll operators are expected to make a loss of about 3500 to 3700 crores every quarter. Take Real Estate Infrastructure and Construction segments, there are Infrastructure projects to be the extent of 59 lakh crore rupees that have got impacted because of the Lockdown. And we will have to revive those projects and find a way of finishing them. Take Steel and Mines, for example. The demands for Steel and Metals have come down. And it's estimated that the demand would be about 13-15% or so; that means there is too much Inventory piled up and unless Manufacturing activity picks up and things get back on track this segment is going to be again struggling. Take petrol or diesel, diesel is expected to grow for sure. The demand is expected to come down by about 8-13% anywhere between that range. And in the case of petrol, hopefully, it will pick up, the demand for petrol because the Lockdown is coming to an end in most parts of the country and people are slowly coming back to work and so on. So, the growth in demand for petrol is expected to be between 5 and 12%. Take Healthcare. We will be fine in Healthcare; unfortunately, there is a bit of dependency on China, because we import a lot of stuff from China in that space. So that's the one area where we could have been okay but for this dependency. Had we not been dependent it would have been brilliant. Telecom is probably the one sector that technically is not impacted at all by the crisis, but then they have the old problem of 90,000 crores past dues that creates uncertainty for that sector. Power has been always a challenge, the distribution companies are State managed, they have never been able to do a full-proof job, the leakages are costing every year, and this year because of COVID, another 20,000 crores of losses are estimated. And then look at chemicals; that space is struggling. So, if you look at it, the key sectors which are badly hit - are Banking, NBFC, Power and then there are certain sectors like Apparel and Textiles, which have a large number of jobs and MSME of course. And, then there are several sectors which are very badly impacted like Tourism, Hospitality, Entertainment, Gems and Jewellery and so on. So, some of these sectors like Building and Construction, for example, also give jobs to another 200-250 ancillary Industries. So, there's a lot of impacts, they have lots of damage during this crisis. Now let's come to the big theme for India, and what and how can you come out of this. If you look at what is good in India today, I think, compared to let’s say 10 years back or 15 years back, we have better infrastructure, we have better airports we have better facilities like metros and better infrastructure overall, we have WIFI, we have all kinds of things. We also have relatively lesser poverty. We have greater financial inclusion. We have some key measures, reforms which have got done for example GST, IBC etc. And investors, particularly foreign investors, like to see the democracy-based setup in India. There are suitable checks and balances which gives them a lot of comforts. Also, India has been a preferred investment destination now for more than 25 years. And there's been always that comfort in terms of repayment of principal, India has had a great track record. Government bonds are looked at as hugely attractive because of that aspect. The track record is impeccable and the recent reaffirmation of SNP that there is no change in our rating is a big comfort during these times. Q. What does India badly need to come out of this rut?  Ans: India needs two things amongst others, if I have just been speak two - one is India needs to have robust demand back in place. We need people to consume what is made in India; we need vocal for local to come true. And today while people might say because the crisis is still looking around and not fully gone, I think it's a matter of time, the festive season is around the corner and hopefully, people will start spending. Even if we start taking vacations within India and not travel abroad for example. Even things like that can make a big difference. India secondly needs apart from robust demand; India needs robust investment flows. And when I say investment flows it's not just the domestic investment flows but also the foreign investment flows. And the investment climate while it might have gone a little bleak over some time because growth hasn't materialized in the way in which people thought it would India still remains very attractive. What we need to probably do during this time is capitalize on what we have seen in the last 2-3 years. Post the demonetization initiative of 2016, we have seen a lot of money come into the financial system in mutual funds in insurance and so on. So, I think people need to be encouraged to bring out the gold, bring out all the non-productive assets, convert the land into financial assets and help the country and help the economy during this time. I think the government can also look at options like making land lying with the bank as collateral, making that kind of land work, buy it out and give it to those companies who want to set up in India. We hear that a lot of companies are looking to move out of China, so it's our chance now to capture those companies. So, we have to give them land, we have to make it for them easy to come to India and we have to help foreign investors in every possible way. Also, probably we can take the land from defaulting companies, those who are in various stages of disputes. Take that land out, Government can acquire it under the law and then make it available to such investors who are here for the long term. So, in terms of key focus items for India, one, is of course, we need to solve the stress in various sectors whether it's privatization of Public Sector Banks or giving more autonomy to banks or maybe we should look at creating a bad bank. Maybe we should look at a different kind of an initiative like it happened in the US and even in India during the financial crisis. The Prime Minister has spoken about land labour reforms for sure law, as well needs changes everywhere. Some of these laws are very old and they need revision. Labour reforms have already been announced by some States so that's exciting. So, we need do a lot of stuff to solve the stress. That's the first and foremost thing for us. And, then the second thing for us to do or to focus upon would be to build self-reliance or the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” concept that the Prime Minister spoken about. I think that's a very, very promising one and very strategically perfect initiative to go with. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has made a statement that they will be able to cut down the deficit with China by about 13 billion dollars by December 2021, by avoiding the import of about 3000 items which we are today importing left, right and centre. Our trade deficit with China is in the range of 70 billion dollars, it used to be 2 billion in 2001. So, what we import from China is hilarious, everything starting from plastic, batteries, everything is imported from China. But, if we were only to be a little bit conscious and aware of this aspect and if we were to build self-resilience in India, and start consuming Indian, so, India for Indians should be the mantra and if we start doing that, I think this can be easily reversed off. Also, vocal for local is an important theme. We should travel within the Country, if possible, for instance and stop importing, exports can follow later on but it’s important to stop importing, regularise the trade deficit to various Countries, reduce it rather. And focus on ease of doing business. India has already made significant strides and Worldwide ranking of Countries and we need to get into the Top 20; maybe it should be very, very easy to operate in India, to setup and do stuff. We should also focus on building a robust Healthcare system, so that, we are able to deal with any such crisis in the future, focus on Education and last but not least be Innovative, to whatever extent we can. I will just talk about one website today which we bumped into. It's called covidinnovations.com. If you go to that site, you will find that there are 900 plus Innovations which are already listed. These are all Innovations that have come up during the COVID crisis Worldwide. And you can go through sector-wise and see what Innovations there for us are today to capitalize on. I can't see why we cannot latch on to Innovative ideas, this is the time when we can make the change, and this is the time, and we will find a support that we want to make these changes. One last bit, before I wind up is on the shape of the recovery. The shape of recovery can be V-shaped, but for a V-shape recovery, we need to do a lot of testing, we need to make people feel very safe, feel very comfortable returning to the Office. The Government has to protect jobs, the Government has to protect small businesses, and do a lot of things in order to get the Economy back on track very, very quickly. It looks challenging for us to achieve the V-shape recovery now. Will it be U-shape to take a much longer time to recover, probably 2021 is when a U-shape recovery will deliver, that also is arguable? Probably we will be a W-shape recovery, that's what I think, where we will recover but then we will have one more dip. Because, I can see the number of cases, again going up, as we start to open up so that the unfortunate part about the recovery process. I just hope that we don't turn into an L-shaped recovery which will be very long and very painful. Japan went through in the 90s. And we all know how they are languishing even now. So, in terms of return to office protocols, for example, when people start coming back to the Office. I see many organisations; they are making a list of people who are willing to come back to the Office and then they are doing some Engineering around it. If we do that, I think we will never be able to achieve V or even W-shape recovery. What we need today is Innovation, to help us make the right decisions. So, the Innovation has to be around where the employee is coming from if he or she is coming from a containment zone and we don't want that person coming to the Office, because the others are not so safe there. So, that's the kind of intelligent software that we should be probably used to achieve faster recovery from this crisis. Innovation can buy a lot of time during this time of recovery process. And during that window of opportunity, the Government can support businesses, pump in more money and already they have announced a lot of measures to boost the supply side, and around the time the festive season comes, hopefully, we will see some more announcements from the Government to perk up the demand. And if that happens in a timely way, I think we are in a good shape to recover soon. So, I want to stop there. And back to you Kapil, for any questions that the audience might have. Q. The rally that we are seeing in the markets despite the Weak economy, will it sustain, given the challenges that Corporate earnings will take over the next three to four Quarters. And, if not, when are we likely to see the next Bull Run in the market? Ans: I am not a markets person, but I will still try to generally answer this question. I don't have any exposure to the market, so I am just disclaiming that at the very beginning, I only have a few investments in Mutual Funds, I don't have any direct stocks at all in my Portfolio. So, in terms of how I look at it - markets behave based on, not just on the intrinsic value of the stock, but also, our function of many other aspects including how global dependency is going to impact us. You see any Globalized framework which has been in operation for the last several years, Countries of the World have got used to depending on one another in order to find the most efficient way of doing things. So, that's why we never blinked an eyelid before importing from China and before importing things like small plastic bowls. We have gone down to that level that we don’t even produce even a small plastic bowl in India. So that's the kind of dependency we have built. Now, if there is certain information or certain announcement around what's happening in China that also tends to affect the stock market in India, to some extent, because of this dependency which has got so complicated over a period of time. Also, there is a concept of ‘Hope Investing’. A lot of people react to just a factor called ‘Hope’. For example, if there is a certain announcement around a vaccine being invented to deal with this virus, tomorrow you will find that the market has completely gone up like never before. And that's because again while the fundamental value of the Companies has not really changed, there is newfound hope in the markets about Growth being possible in the fore-seeable future. So, there are several factors like this, and which is why the market keeps going up or down. As far as I am concerned, I am a long-term investor and I stay put in the market for a very, very long time and when I look at my Portfolio after a couple of years and generally, I see that the CAGR has been around 15% or so in India over a period of time in the Equities market. So long time investors don't have to worry too much about the period fluctuations. That's how I look at it. Q. What are your views on India emerging as an alternative Manufacturing hub, as compared to China, given that there is a larger negative sentiment towards China, so how does the world see India as an alternative to China? Ans: India has always been seen as a good investment destination, there's no doubt about that. Like, I mentioned the fact, that we are a Democracy, we have our checks and balances, you can't run away with anything, no Government can run away with anything in India. There's just too much complexity in the way we operate. So, people are much more comfortable with investing in India and setting up India a manufacturing plant for example. But what puts them off is the number of approvals, licences, and the number of complexities that they have to deal with. So, luckily of late, we are seeing some good news on that front. The UP Government, for example, has announced that there will be no Labour Laws, but we have to learn from other Countries in this respect. If you look at Bangladesh, for example, you can have three shifts in Bangladesh and the entire Textile business that India used to have, a significant chunk of it has moved away to Bangladesh, simply because, they have permitted women to work in three shifts whereas we don't. There are Labour Laws out here. Also, in Bangladesh, for example, if you want to hire someone today and sack the person in three months’ time you can, nobody will stop you from doing that. You can't do that in India. So, these are the challenges which investors want to be addressed and also there has to be a proper quick redressal process in case of any difficulties; so, in the past, we have probably not been that competitive on some of these aspects with the other Countries, but I can say that we are learning, and we are changing so there is hope. Q. A leading question to this is, does India have the right kind of Infrastructure and Human Resource capability to support and enable India to become the next Manufacturing industry? What are your views on that? Ans: India certainly has a lot of lands, India has a lot of people, so, land and labour can easily be made available without any difficulty whatsoever and capital the manufacturers of the World are ready to pump in the capital and set up the facility out here. Some years back, if you see when the Tata's wanted to move out of West Bengal and Mr. Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he said just come here I am going to help you in every which way. And, I think within a short period, within a few months if I am not mistaken, they had set up the plant in Gujarat and they had also manufactured the first car. So, if you have the will, you will be able to make it happen. So, that's the kind of attitude that the whole Country needs to demonstrate today if we want to capture the business coming out of China and I do believe that the Government is having discussions with a large number of manufacturers who are looking to shift out of China, so, there is every hope for us on huge levels of success this time. Q. Our Honorable Prime Minister was recently addressing the meeting of Indian Chambers of Commerce where he was speaking to the Industry leaders and he gave the mantra of 3Ps - People, Planet and Profit; where he was talking about taking the Economy from more of command-and-control mode to plug and play mode. Do you think that we are ready for that kind of a shift, the way we approach our requirement? Ans: We need to get ready for that kind of a shift. I think the Prime Minister's message is very clear and he's always been very simple in his use of abbreviations, which are not only catchy but very powerful at the same time; so, I think we have to be grateful for the fact that we have a leader who has laid down the blueprint, which, if we implement, we are sure to succeed. Now, a lot of it depends on the execution capability but I do believe that we have very many smart people in this country, who can make it happen. His job is to lay down the blueprint and help in every other way possible through the policy and through the support needed from his Government. Ultimately, it's the Industry that has to deliver; so, if industry has some other asks, we should go back and put them down and get them done. But we can't just keep sitting and just talking about it. We have to get into action mode. Q. Honorable Supreme Court has asked the Reserve Bank of India and the Finance Ministry to explain on interest on interest. Everybody is talking about three months of lifeline given by the banks or credit cards or loan payments and some section of the experts feel that this is like giving undue advantage to the Banking industry because they are earning interest and now, we are talking of interest on interest. So what are your views on that? Ans: We have to understand that out of every ₹100, there is a CRR requirement, there is an SLR requirement and there are other costs in the industry and what we lend out is only the balance first of all and out of the balance given the environment there's a lot of loans going bad and the level of NPAs like I was saying is probably anywhere in the range of 11- 12% in the banking industry alone. So, it's quite an unfair statement to make to say that banks have made huge amounts of interest. Banks have also suffered a fair share of the losses. So, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that criticism that has been levelled. On the contrary, I think the moratorium that's been announced it’s a fair one from the point of what people are going through. Obviously, this crisis has been very harsh on a large number of small businesses and also the migrant labourers who do not get their salaries and who have nowhere to go, unfortunately, so it's very harsh on a lot of people because they have possibly not got their salaries or wages on the one hand and still they have to pay their EMIs on the other. So a three-month moratorium given that the lockdown itself was 68 days long and then we are slowly opening up gives them some respite. But obviously, the money has been lent and the interest is due to the bank so I don't know how that can be seen as unfair. So we will have to help each other and come out of this. At the end of the day, it's the banking industry that's going to provide the liquidity that's going to support the Government's measures through the guarantees and help the same businesses grow back to their glorious past and get better there than that. Q. One of the questions which have come is around the Global Rating Agencies, how they are perceiving India and very recently we saw in the newspaper, in various headlines most of the rating agencies have rated India as BB minus, a negative rating that they have given. So from the long term perspective will it not impact the FDI investments and overall investments that India was otherwise expecting? Ans: We are at a level of the rating where one level below is ‘junk category’, that’s the level at which we are now across all the three rating agencies; whether it's S and P or Fitch or the third one ICRA. So, the problem now, for us is, we cannot afford to fall below where we are, number one. Because, if we do, then certain long term-oriented investors like Pension Funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds etc. and uneven Endowment Funds, University Funds - these types of investors don't want to invest in ‘junk category’ bonds, ‘junk category’ Countries. So, we will have a challenge when it comes to such types of investors and investments from those investors. However, if you look at where we can go from here; I think the only way we can go from here is up because the credit rating agencies do not downgrade a Country straight away, they first talk about the outlook and then they go ahead with the downgrade after another six months. We roughly have about one year on hand within which time if the Economy recovers from the crisis and starts promising Growth, as it used to be, we should be back on track and our rating can even improve in the next couple of years or so. So, we have to wait for those things to happen. Q. Do you see a possibility or a trend where the corporate sector would like to move to Tier 3, Tier 4 cities and maybe help the Economy of those Tier 3, Tier 4 cities and also the respective States? Ans: Moving to the Tier 3 or Tier 4 kind of Towns is a tricky decision and I will tell you why; because, in those Cities or Towns, you don't have enough eligible population from the point of view of the corporate. Let's say a Multi-national Company, let’s say, a financial services sector goes to a Tier 3 or a Tier 4 Town, then, they may not find a sufficiently good number of English-speaking candidates to service customers, for example, that may be a challenge. However, if the Company is a manufacturing company, they may not mind going to Tier 3 or Tier 4 Towns, because they are just going to have a factory probably and they just need labourers who can work in that factory. So, it's a function of how good the Infrastructure is, in that particular place, and how the licences and other stuff, is it easy, are there any challenges in terms of access from the nearby port or how do the raw materials get delivered there and so on so forth? So, all those things have to get ticked then yes, these Towns also have the required level of attractiveness about them but at the moment my sense is that India's Tier 3 and Tier 4 Towns need to improve. I think the ‘smart city’ concept that the government had spoken about, needs to be implemented and we need to create about 200 for 250 nice ‘smart cities, then yes, those Cities have a lot of opportunities from this perspective. https://youtube.com/watch?v=bpxGbfWWN8I

December 26, 2024, Speaker: Ms. Pooja Bansal, CHRO, Piaggio Vehicles Interviewed by: Mr. Brig R K Sharma, Director of Amity Institute Training & Development About: Ms. Pooja Bansal is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Piaggio India. Pooja is an experienced HR professional with demonstrated history of working in the Automotive industry. She is a modern-day professional with multi-disciplinary experience of MNCs, Corporate and plant HR. She provides strategic leadership in HR Strategy and has vast experience of HR delivery and developing Industrial and Trade Union relationships. She is a recipient of 25 National and International awards including Women HR Achiever, HR Super Achiever and Women Leadership Award for Excellence in Automobile sector. Pooja holds a MBA in HR and was awarded the Gold Medal in Psychology. She has deep interest in Psychometrics and its applications in Talent Acquisition. Q. Do companies need to relook at their work, workforce and workplace plans? How can they become future ready? I can see a wonderful picture behind you. I think, it is something to do with Vespa scooters. Can you tell us what is this old historical picture all about? Ans: Yes, this picture is basically of the 1st Ape that was designed and executed after the IInd World War. If you look at the picture, it has the Vespa that’s the two-wheeler in the front and it has two back vehicles, so it’s a combination of Vespa, the two-wheeler and the Ape which is a three-wheeler, and this is one concept which has open rickshaw and it stills operates in New York and it’s one of the oldest products of Piaggio. Q. During the year 2020 what was Piaggio’s experience and how was the business affected and how were the operations continued, could you tell us little bit about the last year? Ans: 2020 has been quite an unpredictable year; the first Quarter started in January 2020, it started very well, so we were actually on the peak of the manufacturing. The organisation was really gearing up; the response in the market was extremely good. Suddenly, in the middle of March, we realized, due to the pandemic, there are lot of changes that would have to happen. The biggest shock that the organisation had is that the manufacturing facility had to be put on halt and when you halt a manufacturing facility, there are many obstacles as an organisation; even more challenging, because you have raw materials, which are pending, which have a shelf-life, so you need to exhaust the raw materials within the shelf-life, otherwise, it’s a waste. You have finished goods, that have to reach ‘x’ number of dealers, so they were stuck up in the plant, more than I would say raw materials, finished goods. It was challenging for our employees. We have more than 4000 Employees in Baramati itself and most of our Employees come from all over India, they come from different States and suddenly those migrant workers felt that they can’t reach out to their families and there was lot of anxiety, lot of fear, so it was quite a challenging period right from mid of March until we re-started the manufacturing operations, that too in small areas and small patches. But I would say with the kind of intervention, the focus was completely on employees at that point of time. The first agenda that the Organisation had is keep the people at peace, support the people, ensure they have to travel back, back to their families, back to their hometowns, plan as to how we can help them to reach out to their families. Very difficult, but we all sailed through. Because of this pandemic, work from home helped in business continuity, in a manufacturing company like yours, you have to man shop floors because manufacturing has to continue. Q. How did you adapt to these challenges, how did you manage to continue with your work and then pick up the production? Ans: In our organisation, we have got two sets of people; one is people who are actually working in the manufacturing on the shop floor and the second are actually facing the Customers viz. Sales, Service, Back Office, Back-end support functions. While we speak about the Manufacturing set of people, obviously, when the manufacturing is not operational, technically there is not much that you can do on the floor with them. So, the first agenda that we adapted at that point of time in the organisation is why not leverage on the opportunity and the time that is available to us. Generally, when we have this routine activity, routine operations, most of our manufacturing team is so engaged on the shop floor because every minute of production matters to them. We tried to leverage on the opportunity by doing ample number of learning coaching assignments and we did some brilliant interventions during those two months where we could use all the time that the team had on manufacturing side to fix up several projects that we wanted to aim for future of the organisation which included a lot of cost-cutting projects, lot of cost-optimizing projects. We did a lot of skill-building for them so that they could use their time to prepare themselves for the future Technology that the Automobile industry has a lot coming up and of course we used a lot of their time in real engagement, we actually connected with their families, we did a lot of virtual engagement, where not only Employees were part of the virtual platform but even their families were engaged. We used that time to bond with them. So, practically from Manufacturing, I don’t think there was anything to do with the deliverables, but we used those two months for anything, otherwise we wouldn’t have got the opportunity. So, it was an opportunity even in the problematic area that when it comes to the other team, which is, people who are facing the Customers for them to work from home worked because we were preparing ourselves so that we know that in the future, our Customer preferences are going to change, the way the Customer is going to buy your Product is going to change, the way the selling model is going to work in the market is going to change, we are aware of the changes that are entitled to happen at the Customer end, the market end, the team was preparing itself that how they were going to reach out to the Customer in the new normal that means setting up by e-commerce platforms, setting up digital media solutions, setting up lot of other interventions which they did in two months to reach out to the end Customer. So, again the period, the two months we had actually actively got into Operations, the period was used by the sales team to design and execute a lot of new systems which can help them to reach out to the end Customer and it was fruitful again. We, as an Organisation are now reaping the benefits of all the systems that we executed at that point of time. Q. As we enter 2020, the new decade, what changes do you foresee in the next normal, may be beyond that in the next 2, 3, 4 years, particularly, I am referring to the Manufacturing Companies? What kind of changes do you foresee and how are you planning to embrace these changes? Ans: Changes are looked at as Growth Opportunities. In the Automobile industry, in particular, even the transition to the new Technology, VSX Technology, in itself is a big revolution and we are all gearing up to adapt to it and to cater to the revolution in the Automobile industry. To adapt to these, we need to quickly gear ourselves, we have to be quick in Marketing; what the end Customer requires, our response time is going to be reducing in the sense, that the time you require to reach a Customer earlier. So, that has to be reduced, it has to be faster. Technological changes have to be quickly adapted, we need to adapt not only to Technology but also to a part of your Product Portfolio as a Company but also guidelines that are coming from the Government in terms of Regulations and that has to be quick. Your Customer preferences are changing; so, in your hand, for all customers, as to what they are looking for now and how are you adapting to them. These are certain changes that we are expecting in the future. As an Organisation, we are definitely working towards achieving them and gearing up to work on those changes. Of course, the new normal has taught us a lot of other things and things are quite good, I think be it work from home, be it the behaviour, the sudden crisis has to overcome a lot of agility that has come into the workforce, a lot of learning ability and attitude has developed in the workforce and these are certain things which you have to take it to a larger and longer extent. You cannot be just left with the new normal situation, because if we are saying it’s a new normal which means that we are continuing with the new normal. We have to learn to live with the new normal; I would say, leverage every good thing that the new normal has given us. Q. I know you have good expertise and experience in the area of Psychometric assessments for Talent Acquisition, so which tool do you feel are most appropriate for Talent Acquisition today and as we look into the future? Ans: When we speak about Psychometrics, one thing that I would recommend that whenever you want to use Psychometrics, we need to follow a Process in selecting a right Psychometric for your Organisation. Use of Psychometric completely depends upon the Objective why you want to use that Psychometric and it also depends upon the Organisation in which you are operating. There is no one tool that could suggest that it will fit with every Organisation, while I will talk about my experience that we use in Piaggio. I would surely recommend anybody who wants to be going for a Psychometric must ensure three things. One, is to ensure that the Psychometric test that you select is reliable and something that is valid. There are lots of Psychometric tools available in the market. If you go for a search, there are 100s of them available. But as a professional, selecting a reliable and a valid tool is the most important. Do a lot of Research on the Psychometric and also the Business you are offering for the Psychometric before you apply the Psychometric. Second is, to be sure about that you have gained the expertise and skills to study that and to read that Psychometric. Because there is no tool that can give you a written analysis that this is how the person is. You need to gain the expertise and it’s a skill that was developed over a period of time. There are lot of Certifications which different Institutes cater to when we use the Psychometric, I encourage the Certification but that’s not enough. We need to use it, practice it and then analyse the content of the Psychometric. Third and the most important is, when we use the Psychometric to ensure that during your Interview Process; actually, using to give, feedback to the Candidate. When a Candidate sees value in the Psychometric that he has attempted it goes in building a brand of the Organisation a long way. Because at the end you will not select the Candidate, but you have added something to your professional Knowledge. So, we do these few steps. Now, coming to your question as to really how the Psychometric works. I said that there are ample of Psychometrics. Selection of a Psychometric depends on the Objective. Why you want to use the Psychometric, you want to assess the Cognitive ability, you want to assess the value system, the personality, the motivation, there are different reasons and there are certain Psychometrics that cater to that particular Objective. My recommendation would be when you use the Psychometric, for example, if you are using the Psychometric to assess the Cognitive ability of an individual to try to supplement that with another Psychometric which could be a motivational Psychometric or a Personality Psychometric. When you use two areas from a Psychometric, it gives you more information; it gives you more insights about the individual. Another thing to remember is that the Psychometrics are never decision-making tools. Please never use Psychometrics to take a decision of hiring or not hiring. Psychometric is a tool which helps us to aim in making a decision. So, while it’s not a decision-making tool, so, in hiring when I use the Psychometric, I don’t reject a Candidate or select a Candidate based on what I see in the Psychometric. But Psychometric helps me to make an informative decision. Even though the Psychometric test is not giving me the data which is fitting into my job requirement and I am still making an informative decision that’s okay but I am aware this person has those gaps but I think there are other competencies and skills which are complimenting him, so I want to get him on board or vice a versa if you don’t want to select a Candidate you know for what you are not selecting the Candidate but never base your decision just on Psychometrics. Psychometrics has to be coupled with other areas of various tools of Interviewing which could be behavioural Interviewing or it could be an assessments reports or it could be a simple technical and behavioural Interview that generally HR and Technical Managers take it. It has to compliment with some other Interviewing tools which is more important. In my Company, we are using for the past almost 8 years a Psychometric tool for Recruitment and Talent Acquisition which is known as a ‘Predictive Index’. I must share this here, when we started executing PI 8 years back, there was hardly any use because it takes a lot of time, its takes a lot of time to adapt, it takes a lot of time to build skill from using the Psychometric results and then, of course, it takes a lot of time to create a platform from the Interviewer, why should we make a decision based on some information that has come from Psychometric. We use so rigorously actually that our Stakeholders, the Directors, keep passing us, “Ok Pooja, tell us what type of Psychometric tools tell about this person”. So, that’s the kind of response and that has taken us 8 years. So, be patient when you use the Psychometric in an Organisation. Q. What is your experience as we are working in virtual environment? Can we do a virtual assessment? What has been your assessment centre experience and what is your overall recommendation to fellow HR professionals who are listening to you today? Ans: I would say, an assessment centre is a very strong tool when it comes to evaluating, developing. Again, we need to be very clear as an Organisation, why do you want to use the assessment centre? The Objective or the execution has to be very clear. Let’s assume that we are using an assessment centre because we are doing a fast-track development of identifying high potential of a development success in the Organisation. Assessment centres definitely provide ample amount of information. As in the past, you rightly mentioned, that there are a lot of classroom assessments that have happened because it’s a very closed Process. It’s a Process that requires a lot of expertise on the side of assessor and it’s a very time consuming process as well. Besides time and expertise, I would say it’s also a pretty expensive Process as well so if you want to apply in an assessment centre in your Company be prepared to have the cost investment but it’s worth the cost that you spend. So, coming back to your question of whether virtual assessments are successful, we have used virtual assessments in the past 6 months in this Company. So, with my real time experience, virtual assessments definitely help. Because today we have got Companies who have designed such fantastic tools, whether it is in practicality or case study; even role plays which are virtually done now, depend upon which competencies you want to evaluate depend upon what is the Objective of running the assessment centre. Which are these Companies which have the right tools designed for your competencies? In addition to the Companies, they are also offering to you the customised tools based on your competency requirement, based on your Objective, it’s really time consuming because you really need to work on them and get the tool customised but yes virtual assessments are useful. We have experienced it; in fact I would say it can be done in 30% of the cost that actually was taking for classroom assessment. So, you can do it in a very substantial reduced cost, if you are using the very right tools, with the right Organisation, right partner, I would say virtual assessment can give you exactly the results that actually a classroom assessment could give. Only one thing that is missed in the virtual assessment is the human interface. In the classroom assessment, we would have some expert assessors who are actually observing the pool of people being assessed and there are lot of observation skills and lot of data that would come from the observation. That’s the one thing that you would miss in the virtual assessment because we don’t have anybody watching the Candidate but at the same time, if you ignore that part of human intervention, if you just consider the authenticity of the tool probity of the tool, I would say virtual assessment can be applied but again it has to be applied. Do not forget, please to use one of the important tools as part of the virtual assessment which is the Behaviour Event Interview. Do not compromise on the process by just keeping machine intervention, but do have BEI interviews for one or two competencies that can add the human intervention flavour to the whole process. Q. Would you feel that one of the big focus areas for the future would be rethinking skills of the future in the Organisation and making people ready to deliver on those skills? What are the challenges that organisations are facing today in Upskilling journey and how should this be done? Also can you indicate some of the L&D trends and how can a learner be enabled to carve his own learning journey? Ans: Like I always say, that I believe, development is an opportunity for personal and professional lives. So, coming to the first question about how rethinking or creative thinking would be important and how you would cater to that. I would say that it’s extremely essential because now we know that we have gone through a phase which requires you to work with very different mindset and very different skills. We all have experienced that transition that happened from Pre-COVID to COVID and now I would say Post-COVID and the future and the kind of challenges we faced; even a lot of people have not been emotionally, mentally would be able to adapt to the future because there were different impacts that happened for them. Keeping that in mind, so much is changing into industry, we need to encourage we need to have interventions supporting employees around innovation and when I say innovation, I am not really saying that everybody in the Organisation is expected to create a new Product or turn around the system or turn around the Business. No, but innovation at different levels can be contributed in their own capacity. I share this example of Piaggio with you. When we actually spoke about right in the beginning after COVID started, we said the first thing we need to do is gear up the people to think differently because we knew that the situation is going to change. Everybody knew about it. So, how will you do things differently then what you did pre-COVID and we did run a Company-wide intervention right from the CEO and the first line till the last person in the level, how do you think differently but the customisation of the training was done based on the position, and the contribution that the person has to do your overall business and that way we as learning partner play a very important role? We need to remember, when it comes to mindset, when it comes to adapting to a new way of working, there is no training program that can be a one fit for all, it cannot be. You have to put an effort to customise the content so that the participant & the receiver are able to use it in their present capacity and that’s what we did here. I would say, you don’t see the impact immediately that another thing, you need to be patient when you want to see the ROI of such interventions. We can’t expect answering “Ok, I spent so much of money where is the result of this training program”, that does not happen. You need to consistently follow up with the learners ensuring that the learners don’t forget that they attended the program. Another thing which is interesting to know as a learning professional is that the spam of retention of any participant, any learner anything that they have heard you is actually not more than 57 minutes. After 57 minutes possibly the learner has forgotten half of what was delivered or what was heard. So, when you know that the span of retention is medium or low, you need to put an extra effort to keep delivering the same message to the people with different methodologies and to keep them employed to look that this is important and this is the new skill you have learnt and you need to apply this in these ‘XYZ Projects’. So, as an HR professional you need to create the opportunity for the Employees. Just having an intervention, having to attend that will not give you the apt opportunity. So, remember even that you lead an intervention ensure that there are small snippets, now that we have Technology we should bring in, use the Technology you have mobile app, you have digital platforms, you have lot of snippets that can go as part of your emailer, using all of it to ensure that people are learning and getting used to what is learnt. To conclude, I would say that critical thinking, parallel thinking, yes it’s very important and we have to play an important role as HR professional just to ensure that the employees are prepared for it and they are applying what has been learnt by them. Now, coming to your third question. There, I would say again, today Technology has progressed so much and we don’t need to rely on classroom sessions too much. We have got platforms where you have open source platforms that we call; you can actually give the gear of learning in the hands of the participant. So, in this way the ‘push mechanism’ has been replaced with the ‘pull mechanism’. When you allow the learner to hold the gear of his own learning and carve his own learning the person seems to be more excited and involved in the learning. What does that mean? It means that you have got platforms that actually worked on AI and allows the learner that as and when the learner is looking into the content the platform is capturing the interest of the learner and proposing the modules or the training content that person should learn. You are allowing the learning then ok it’s not just we as HR professional are proposing you this learning intervention why you want to go and carve your learning why don’t you think that it’s good for you. Learn what you think you can benefit and apply that is equally very exciting for the learner. One thing for sure we need to propagate and this has to come right from the top that there is mindset shift from know it all to learn it all So, you may be once upon a time can say that I know everything that I have to do. But today the situation has changed, today the demands of the external environment are different and when everything is different you have to re-start learning it all. So, this way when you allow the learners to prepare your own learning journey makes it exciting but at the same time remember that when I say that learner is to create their own learning journey, but we are not experts of the learning domain. As learning, as HR, as a training expert, it is our job to handhold them, it is our job to ensure that there is a lot of Knowledge which is being shared before the takeover of learning journey, there is a lot of Knowledge after we complete the learning journey. There is something that is to be kept doing with the learner so that the learner knows that it’s a serious job actually not just that one of the activity that he has to complete. Q. How will Employee experience be designed in the future and aim would be to achieve balance in well-being, performance and his career? How can HR provide this balance and experience? Ans: I always say that when we have Employees working with us; we look into three areas with them, the ability, the aspiration and the engagement. That’s what you are saying balance their well-being, their performance and the career. So coming back to well-being, in the past months it becomes even more important that we as an organisation, develop and learn and we also support Employees in their mental and physical well-being. For Piaggio, focusing on well-being was not just adequate because squared up so we have to change the momentum, in fact there are Employees’ assistance programs when you partner with the third party agency and they have got professional Psychologist on board which will provide your Employees the confidential, professional personal counselling services. First time, Piaggio partnered with an Employees’ assistance program, partner of facility provider was 9 years back, so we actually looked into these facilities even before we were in this kind of situation. So well-being of an individual is definitely a priority and I would strongly propagate that when we talk about well-being, it’s not just about having yoga sessions or having Zumba sessions or having some kind of lectures on mental and physical well-being, those are important, informative but it’s also important in an Organisation provide the Employees with a platform so that they can go back in the field. Remember, when it comes to Psychological issue, when it comes to issues which are personal in nature, Employees may not want to really come back to HR and back to a manager to share and discuss. We need to respect the personal space of an individual and that is the reason where you have partners specializing into providing and aiding the Employees to come out of such problems. Why not leverage in those partners facilities, why not leverage on the expertise that all our Psychologists and specially certified counsellors bring on the table. One thing we need to remember when you have these PA interventions, even you plan to implement in your Company never think about why. There is nothing that is objectively going to show you this is the ROI partner with the AP consultant, forget about it. So, if your organisation is interested in an ROI for every cost or every money that is invested do not execute it. Because this is a facility which is extended to the Employee in their well-being and it is completely confidential, there is no information coming back to you as an Organisation and neither you be interested, if you really want to build this intervention in the interest of the Employees. But I would say what you gain as an organisation is the brand and the reputation with your employees. That what you gain which cannot be measured but it can be seen and felt. Q. How do you encourage such culture in an organisation? What has been your experience? Ans: Creating any kind of Culture requires the said three parameters, viz. Creativity, Collaboration and Communication but Culture is driven from the top. It has to be the Leadership team which is propagating as to what kind of Culture they need. Anything that is cascaded from top to bottom is the Culture that is created. Collaborations: we are all social animals that’s what I keep saying that we as human beings always need social interactions whether they are virtual, physical social interactions are absolutely important. But using that social instinct, social needs of the people and how to leverage as an Organisation that instinct and need is what is left to the Organisation. For collaborations, I strongly recommend that one should have a lot of inter-functional, functional Projects. We should have a special task force assigned. We should have Projects which are led by the Leadership team and members of cross-function and this is the way in which a collaborative workforce is created and today with the Technological mix that we have plus social needs of human beings if you put this thought together it can be miracles. But for Collaborations there has to be a Culture where we were given Opportunities to Collaborate. Collaboration doesn’t mean going for a drink or going for dinner or parties; that is not Collaboration; that is friendship that we can have outside the Organisation. We are actually talking Collaborating for benefit of the Organisation and Collaborating for professional development. When it comes to Communication, I strongly feel that any kind of Communication, if you wanted to be positively taken whether its bad news but it has to come openly and transparently from the Leader, to that has to come from them and eventually cascade down. We need to accept that not our entire workforce, not all of our managers, I would not say excellent Communicators, but it’s an art to articulate what you want to present to the listener. So, take advantage of the Leaders who can Communicate and articulate and send through the message. Again, I repeat, that, that message is not good news. It has to reach to the people around because that gives more trust and it creates a Culture where people can look up. Of course, Creativity and Culture, that is something that we propagate a lot. Mindset Creativity, Technological Creativity or any area, everything is going through a change and we are helping the Organisation to adapt to the change and to trigger the Creativity thinking and for that, of course, you have to take efforts you just can’t tell people or the Manager that now you need to do things differently, come back and tell me what are your ideas, you have to aid the Employees with some tools, with some new learning so that person can think differently. Q. What should be the approach for driving a successful digital transformation in a Manufacturing Company like Piaggio? You have some legacy systems, you have some traditions which are not easy to replace so how do you plan digital transformation in an organisation like yours? Ans: ‘Digital transformation’ is a blessing for any kind of Organisation and one of the areas I would touch upon is the ‘Artificial Intelligence’, which are transforming the entire HR practices right from Recruitments to Employee Engagement to Employee Development. These AI, Cloud Computing these are basically tools that just can’t make life easy. Earlier, you had lot of people doing manual data, computing, analyzing, evaluating. When you have the AI, you have the Cloud Computing and other thing that is going to make the non-value added activities and we can actually focus on your expertise and areas which can add value to Business. We are going to use that in fact, we have been using a lot of Technology within our Organisation, we are gearing up for new Technology implementation, whether it is Recruitment or Development or Engagement or even in the blue collar space because we know that it’s going to help us as an Organisation to get rid of non-value added activities. Also, it’s going to help us with the ‘Digital Transformation’; it will make it easier for us to reach out much easily to Employees pan-India. So, it’s not going to be that we need human interface to respond to the day to day queries that comes from the Employees who are not may be in the Corporate or the Manufacturing Plant but they are located across India, Nationally, Internationally etc. So, it will become easy for them to seek responses, it will become easy for us as an Organisation to cater to their responses, call out data about Employees, make informed decisions will be the most important when you have this ‘Digital Transformation’ happening, when you have this Technological executions and because of informed decisions the time saved in executing will also be easier and faster. I would say ‘Digital Transformation’ is an Employee friendly shift; it’s going to be a boom which will be a benefit for the Employee as well. Q. How do you overcome this problem of people who are experienced but not fully geared up to change and be prepared for the future? Ans: I was about to add, that a lot of times you can’t replace experience. It’s absolutely essential that we as an Organisation, we need advancement, but we can’t deny, and we can’t overlook the experience that some to these managers come with. In my Company, when we have such instances that one thing that an Organisation can do is to look into the Organisation structure and processes because you want to use the experience which is in the benefit of the Company but at the same time you see a misfit because you want to progress or do something different in a particular department. So, what you can do is, try to look back into Organisation structure and Processes and try to find a suitable area for these people who can continue to contribute and their experience is something that can be leveraged by the Company. So, not necessarily that they have to be doing something extraordinary or something different but even with their experience, they have come for the last so many years so they are useful to the Company. That’s one thing. Second is of course, needless to mention, these managers have to still upgrade themselves. The Organisation would try to find the opportunities of using their experience but we can’t deny that we need to continuously upgrade and update ourselves with new learnings and new requirements that are coming and that is why these people have to be hand-holded and there has to be special interventions for these people which is with the special attention on them. With that what really works is giving them continuous feedback as to how is it going to help them, how is this change going to be in their benefit as well. While the change could be little slow, but ultimately what we want is that we are moving towards that change requirement. The feedback mechanisms where they could have this continuous understanding and they need to start accepting that the Company is doing it in their interest as well and one thing for sure we need to accept is that how things are changing in the Industry is that earlier, people who were associated with the Organisation and plan that I would retire from this Company. But now things are changing and Employees also know that I am going to be associated with this Company till the Company is investing on me, is upgrading me, is updating me, teaching me, giving me challenges. At the same time, the Employees also know that till they are adding value to the Organisation, till then they are associated. When you know both the sides of the coin I think as an Employee that shift already starts happening. Always, there is a self-awareness that you need to change with the requirements, you need to contribute to the company, it happens. But as an Organisation, yes I agree, we definitely need to hand hold them. Q. What kind of competency and capability do you think are required for the Leadership of today and tomorrow? Ans: One competency that I feel that Leadership as you rightly mentioned is changing. One thing that Leadership needs to do is helping and creating agile workforce, so agility is something that is nowadays most essential competency. Adapting to the rapid change, contributing in rapid change and still you are going through a breakdown that is something that as a Leader, you need to create. Agility is one of the core competencies as a leader I look for. Another thing, a Leader needs to do is continuous Employee engagement with the team. Especially important, if your company has moved into virtual working, now they are working from home, there is a need, that the Leader needs to further engage with his/her team. The level of engagement and the intensity, what engagement with the team has to increase which is in itself a shift competency for the managers. Q. What kind of culture is required to be built in an organisation to make 360 degree appraisal successful? What is your experience in this kind of appraisal system? Ans: 360 degree which is generally like talk of the town within the Organisations. 360 degree comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. But, coming to your question, what kind of Culture we need. We need a very mature culture if you want to execute 360 degree. It has lots of benefits but the execution of 360 degree if you want to introduce the 360 degree as part of the appraisal system. If it’s not done properly, it can actually be damaging for the Organisation. The first thing that we need to remember is 360 degree is successful where Communication is very important. Why are we using the 360 degree needs to be very clear? A lot of time we say as a part of the appraisal we are using 360 degree, but, how much of that 360 degree feedback is going to be used as part of my future should be very clear. Also remember, 360 degree is not performance assessment, it’s a perception. 360-degree feedback, stakeholders’ feedback and anybody giving a feedback because feedback is perception. Making a decision, if it’s a very important decision part of the appraisal process, putting a decision completely on 360 degree feedback will not be taken in the right spirit. So, be clear why and how you are going to use that 360 degree feedback. Second important thing is, do not forget to close the move a lot of times we launch the 360 degree, generate the data as HR and pull everything out of that. Important is the feedback which has to go back to the participant as to what was the 360 degree collated data and what is the analysis about it and that data has to be real time. If you have an appraisal system which is once, annual I would say 360 degree will not be the right tool to just make your decisions the annual decisions, but, if you have your appraisal system, you have quarterly feedback or half-yearly feedback. 360 degree could have various effects. But, 360 degree is definitely a fantastic tool if you are trying to do lifelong development or we are running a developing intervention as part of the succession plan. It definitely helps and the data is very good. Third thing is, to keep as part of the culture is anonymity, its confident. We, as custodians of running the 360 degree processes has to ensure that no way, the participant gets the feeling that data is going to be shared and is going to be misused. Anonymity confidentiality by running a 360 degree process is a prime and most important for the Organisation. If something happens, your entire process will go for a toss. It will damage not only the process; it will also damage the reputation of the department and the organisation. Lastly, how are we going to using that information and HR doesn’t run the 360 degree because your experience counts. But it’s important to have the end result in mind. What are you aiming to achieve by running this 360 degree process is very important and going back and also sharing what have you done with this data is equally important? Q. Your thoughts, anything you would like to share, any concluding remarks you would like to give? How would you look into the future? Ans: As a person, I am pretty optimistic and I look at this way. My only advice is that we have got an opportunity as a HR professional to partner with Businesses and try to work as closely as possible with Businesses. Try to cater to actions and interventions which are benefiting the Business and once we are able to create that credibility as a HR professional, Businesses will definitely support anything and everything that HR wishes to do in the benefit of the Organisation as an Employee. I am someone who loves to study business, who loves to know what the Organisation is doing because more and more, I know where the Organisation is heading, I can actually provide solutions which are in the interest in future of the Organisation. So, my final advice is, partner with Businesses more and more and be inquisitive about what your Organisation is doing and how is your HR going to look there.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zmr0mMhtHE