Tahseen Kazi: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the People Led show. I'm your host, Tehseen Kazi And our guest for today is Rajiv Naithani He's the Chief People Officer at Infogain and is a seasoned HR leader with over two decades of experience in the field. He's previously held positions in organizations like the Source Systems, Global Logic, and HCL Technologies.

Tahseen Kazi: He's also on the board of trustees at Pauri Garhwal Trust, an NGO for social and educational empowerment for underprivileged children in the state of Uttarakhand. Much like this podcast, Rajiv takes a people led approach to delivering employee experiences at scale. Welcome, Rajeev. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Rajiv Naithani: Thank you so much for having me here, Tahseen 

Tahseen Kazi: rajeev, I think, you know, like we do with all conversations with HR leaders, we want to know the, you know, the human behind the human resources. So my first question to you is, who is Rajeev outside of work? 

Rajiv Naithani: If I get to answer this, it will take a lot of time, but let me actually put a structure to this.

Rajiv Naithani: So outside of my professional space, I have a diverse set of interests that span across various aspects of life. For me, work is part of my life. It is not the only thing. Firstly, I'm deeply committed to my physical wellbeing. I've been practicing yoga for quite some time now, and I truly believe in its transformative power from that standpoint.

Rajiv Naithani: Additionally, I'm an outdoor enthusiast. I've been cycling. I've been Um, uh, I do a lot of various expeditions. 

Rajiv Naithani: Any sports outdoor. I love to give my hand. In addition to, you know, this perspective, I spend quality time with my family that gives me a source of joy for me. 

Rajiv Naithani: On a more introspective note, I find solace in delving deep into inner self. Whether it's penning down a heartfelt Hindi poem.

Rajiv Naithani: or immersing myself into spiritual readings, practicing meditation, or even capturing some of my imagination through sketches, right? So, it, it's all about introspection And lastly, I'm passionate about imparting knowledge and sharing my experiences. Most of the times, over the weekend, I would be busy spending time and interacting with the young and inquisitive minds in different colleges or speaking in different industry forums.

Rajiv Naithani: To me, it's a power of collective growth and learning. It's a wonderful feeling to inspire and be inspired every day. So these are some of the things which I do Tahseen 

Tahseen Kazi: Wow, Rajiv. I mean, those are some amazing things. You're into yoga, cycling, trekking, creativity. Those are so many things. And I think, you know, every time I speak to an HR leader, and I think that, okay, maybe I've heard everything, I hear something new.

Tahseen Kazi: And I think for me, this time, it was, you know, meditation, reflection. 

Rajiv Naithani: It gives me a lot of resilience. Absolutely. To address the situations. 

Tahseen Kazi: Absolutely. Rajiv, if I may ask, you know, going to one thing, one aspect of your life, which you have not covered at the moment, but like I mentioned briefly in your introduction, you've been part of the NGO for social and educational empowerment for children.

Tahseen Kazi: I would love the audience to know about that. 

Rajiv Naithani: Sure. So my and thanks for asking me that question. 

Rajiv Naithani: My roots are from, I was born in. When I was four, my father uprooted us and we moved to the Delhi/NCR here. And since then, you know, I've lived away from the, from the roots and the hills.

Rajiv Naithani: But I have seen the, the hardship in the hills. 

Rajiv Naithani: In some places, people are blessed, so they have schools nearby, infrastructure developing, etc.

Rajiv Naithani: But all this led me to get into a space where I want, I felt the need to do something back for the community and society. of Uttarakhand and that's where I got associated to this NGO. I'm a board of trustee of it. So what we do is that we go to different remote areas of Uttarakhand. We hold camps there and in those camps we interact with kids, we give scholarship to them, we take care of some of their expenses as well.

Rajiv Naithani: And it gives immense satisfaction to us when we are actually delivering it on ground, covering huge distance, going miles of distance from cities to remote areas of Uttarakhand and then doing all these activities and meeting these kids.

Rajiv Naithani: They give you a lot of energy when you do that. 

Rajiv Naithani: That is great. That is awesome. Rajeev, I think I'll just like, I'll pivot here a little bit and I want to ask you more about your role as a Chief People Officer, right, at Infogain.

Rajiv Naithani: What are some of the top two, three dilemmas or questions that you face as a, you know, as a CPO and what are you doing about it? 

Rajiv Naithani: one of the perpetual dilemmas I face is balancing act between people and business, right? So my analytical side of the brain leads me to.

Rajiv Naithani: Business needs, which I understand is essential because, you know, we all exist in a corporate world to generate the wealth for the shareholders, and it's not in charity, not a charity, but this part of that might hurt invariably and gravitates towards the well being of our employees. And sometimes you'll have those situations, right, where you get to strike the right balance and you understand that, oh, there's a situation of a business where it's essential to take certain measures.

Rajiv Naithani: But then you have this heart driving you that, okay, so how do you manage this? What's the impact, et cetera? What will it do, et cetera, to people? 

Rajiv Naithani: And lastly, if I were to talk about you know, as a role and also as a leader, which is beyond the role it's a, it's a responsibility for any leader like me to execute positivity and assurance, right? Even when there's a looming doubt about the outcome. And this could, there could be an internal struggle, you know, you know that, okay, there is a realism or reality.

Rajiv Naithani: Which is different from optimism, right?

Tahseen Kazi: I think so I want to just go a little deeper into the first thing that you spoke about, that is how to strike a balance between business and people, right?

Tahseen Kazi: So if, you know, if you, are there any certain is there a framework or a strategy or a structure that you follow to ensure that, you know, you're doing justice to both business and people? 

Rajiv Naithani: As a professional, it's very important that employee first. Should drive the organization culture. Because ultimately, you know, who are the stakeholders? Employees, customers and shareholders Now, I if I look after my people well, and if I keep them motivated enough, and inspire them enough to go extra miles, they will actually give a positive outcome to our customers.

Rajiv Naithani: And when there's a positive outcomes from customers, they would have the sense of loyalty and association with us. And eventually our shareholders would be happy because there's a valuation,

Rajiv Naithani: I think in a tough situations, you need to remain measured. You need to see what are the right steps. But don't go extreme. I think it's important that at that stage, make a decision which is helpful. Decision both ways. I'll give you one example, real, real life example. So what had happened was during COVID, when companies were doing salary cuts, etc.,

Rajiv Naithani: because there was an impact. We said that let's not go that path because it was a difficult year. And at the same time, the character of the organizations are tested during those difficult times.

Rajiv Naithani: So we went to people. We said that we don't want to cut the salary, but we have a situation which is, you know, other than cash flow in terms of delivering what we need to deliver as a bare minimum. And we said that one option is we cut the salary, which we don't want to do. Other option is that we preserve portion of our compensation and tie that up with the Revise numbers, which we have said, which are more realistic.

Rajiv Naithani: And if you achieve that, that money goes to the employees directly, no changes.

Rajiv Naithani: And eventually. You know, we had that matrix of we said that, okay, so minimum is 50%. Then 75%, 100%, 125%, you know, we ended up paying 125 percent of that amount. So people actually, if somebody was to get 100, 000, that person actually got 125, 000, you know, so that's, that's how you balance it out in my view, you know, you don't need to go extreme.

Rajiv Naithani: Enroll people, be transparent with them and help them understand the situation. People understand they're reasonable. All right. 

Tahseen Kazi: I think, you know I told you that I want to dig deeper into your third point, but I think with this example that you just shared, you, you know, covered both the points about balancing people versus analytics, as well as, you know, building that trust, 

Tahseen Kazi: So I think this is a great example of that apart from that, Rajiv, so, you know, and this is one thing in building trust by, you know, following through your promises. But how do you add at the ground level? How do you listen to your employees and understand what they want, what they're looking for, how their experiences are in the organization?

Tahseen Kazi: What are some ways that you're listening to your employees?

Rajiv Naithani: Let me actually make it more personalized as a HR leader of the company or leader of the people function. I think the listening is at the core of effective leadership to me, especially in my role. So what I do is number one, I believe in open door policy, right?

Rajiv Naithani: When I'm in office and not in a meeting, I make sure that my door is open and people have that. and accessibility message to them. And I, I don't ask people, have you blocked my calendar? What level are you? Et cetera. It's, it's easy access for them. 

Rajiv Naithani: Second is what I consciously do is that I meet with a group of four to five people every week on Wednesday. I call it a coffee connect. And in that I may have. Our specific band slash grade level employees coming from different geographies within India. 

Rajiv Naithani: We also do a much more structured diagnostic intervention with the help of Great Place to Work.

Rajiv Naithani: We have this annual study. Which actually gives us the holistic pulse of our employees on an yearly basis. 

Rajiv Naithani: And at the same time, in addition to great place to work, we have people support experience survey, which is done to gauge the experience of employees with different enabler functions.

Rajiv Naithani: And then there are forums, which are demographics based, skip level forums, middle management level forums, town halls, online meetings, fresher group forums. So we keep, you know, doing these activities to ensure that you, you're listening, you're connected with the people. I think one listening. Because beyond all the structures, you actually observe.

Rajiv Naithani: That's something which is much valuable in my view than others, while others are equally important though. 

Tahseen Kazi:I think that's the maximum number of listening channels I've got from any HR  leader so far 

Tahseen Kazi: one more thing. What we are doing is you know, being a technology company we, we are actually doing and doing a. Pilot on sentiment analysis. Primarily, the intent of that is to see how our customers are, what the customer sentiments are.

Rajiv Naithani: So we're leveraging AI, which will help study the emails and actually, you know, it will happen on the server and then they will actually give us a report of the sentiments of the customers. 

Rajiv Naithani: As we progress and mature this, we may even apply this to our employees and see all employees emails which are coming to support functions or our process owners, what sentiments are getting reflected, you know, that will give you a good sentiment analysis of the company as well. 

Tahseen Kazi: I think I have around seven or eight you know, listening channels.

Tahseen Kazi: Then I, I'm, I'm sure you're doing a great job listening to the employees and, you know, ensuring that they know the pulse of employees. 

Tahseen Kazi: So Rajiv, one of the things, so you've done, you know, you're listening to employees to various you know, channels and you're like ensuring anonymity, you know, anonymity.

Tahseen Kazi: There is anonymity. There's an option to, you know, even do one on one give one on one feedback through, you know, CoffeeConnects, et cetera. So at an overall level. What have you seen that employees expect in terms of experience that they have at an organization? What are some of the expectations that employees have today?

Rajiv Naithani: So every individual and every demographic and every level of experience will have different expectations from the organization. 

Rajiv Naithani: On this particular thing to be able to actually do to see that what are we dealing with, or to present that to you since post pandemic in particular, we have seen that the working models change. Right. So today, what kind of workplace, we have, we have a workplace where 90 percent people may have not come to office at all in last three years, two third of them may have joined the organization during the pandemic.

Rajiv Naithani: So they may they have never seen what Infogain is physically right now, when you have a demographic like this, and this demographic has seen. That the change in job was the change of laptop only. Nothing else.

Rajiv Naithani: a second is you have the connecting point for this kind of demographic as a manager. Who's the bridge today? between the organization and employee. It's a manager. If my perception and experience with the organization is to be validated, it will be validated through my experience with my manager.

Rajiv Naithani: And the other thing which has also emerged as part of it, which I should not forget, is that work life balance.

Rajiv Naithani: Now, the work and life has that, you know, earlier the demarcation was very clear when nine to six used to be the working hours after six, it's my personal life, you know, leadership critical roles, who were never even taking calls, et cetera. But now that has blurred, so people are available all the time because it's a virtual thing.

Rajiv Naithani: So what do we need to do? We first need to really find out what is our brand for most of people. What is our employee value proposition? And we want to redefine it completely in this renewed working context. Point of view. 

Rajiv Naithani: So what do we do there or what can be done? So one is definitely, we need to make sure that late evening calls, if it is not client call, we should not arrange any calls like that. Late evening calls should not be done. Friday, second half onward, there should not be any calls so that people have their free space.

Rajiv Naithani: available. Now, third is help managers to become effective managers in leading virtual teams. So we invested on their development. 

Rajiv Naithani: Now, in addition to these broader perspectives, there would always be aspects in terms of people expect certain things from a benefits standpoint, you need to keep looking at your benefits.

Rajiv Naithani: proposition, policies proposition, the infrastructure solutioning in a virtual environment.

Rajiv Naithani: And we have actually moved from push based to pull based, where we have a Infogain we call it experience, learning experience portal, where people actually go look at, they set their rules, what learning journey they have they have made available on the platform, they want to follow through that with their own ease and time, because it's not about classroom anymore.

Tahseen Kazi: These are some amazing. These are some really, really great insights, right? And I think one, one line that you said that really stuck with me is, in today's date, change of job is equal to change of laptop. And I think that kind of, you know, says it all. It kind of encapsulates why HR needs to go through some change, because the whole fabric of, you know, employee experience has changed in the past three years.

Tahseen Kazi: I think I just have last two questions left. The first one is on productivity. I think this is a constant, continuous challenge that all people leaders to face, you know, how to improve employee productivity.

Tahseen Kazi: And now, more so, more so because of, you know, the whole like the more, with us, you know, moving in with AI, so much talk about AI, employee productivity has come at the forefront. So any, any specific structure or frameworks that you have that you follow that you would like to share with our audience on how they can impact employee productivity and efficiency?

Rajiv Naithani: You know, the GAI introduces promising avenues for streamlining and enhancing the overall product lifecycle development timeline. So, you know, what customers are also, everybody's trying to find out how much of time productivity saving will happen from overall man hours perspective, person hours perspective.

Rajiv Naithani: The preliminary estimate suggests that leveraging GAI can potentially boost productivity up by 20 to 25 percent. So which means that much of saving on the time efforts will happen. Now that's, that's a shift which will definitely come on the service industry like ours, right? So some companies actually go extra and to me, that's a very extreme.

Rajiv Naithani: What they do is that they will have solutions, which they will install on their employees, computer, which monitors, where are you spending? How many hours on the, on, on your computer, which application, which website, et cetera. And that to me is a, it's like policing. You're actually, it's not enhancing productivity, but you're actually policing to see who's spending what time where in my mind or in my view, it's not important that what, how much time do you spend?

Rajiv Naithani: What is more important is, what is your output? What is the impact? What is the quality of that output? I may work for five hours and code, but my output may not be as equivalent to someone who is only coding for two hours, but giving much better output. So that way, you know, it's, it's very relative sometimes.

Rajiv Naithani: The productivity would be driven by individuals. So what's more important? Hence becomes that what is the culture of the organization? Definitely people discipline maturity is super critical because ultimately that's a self discipline. But at the same time, if the organization does not do the policing thing, but creates an environment where everybody feels empowered, empowered with responsibility.

Rajiv Naithani: and accountability, then that's the best way of managing productivity. That's how I see it. 

Tahseen Kazi:I think what I'm hearing here is, you know, the change of narrative from, you know, being time driven to output driven, outcome driven. And I think that's a major shift that we're talking about here. 

Tahseen Kazi: I think my last question to you today is as an HR leader, what is one piece of advice you would like to give all budding HR leaders out there, people who want to, you know reach the ranks of, you know, to be [00:18:00] a CHRO someday. What is your advice for them? 

Rajiv Naithani: I think, you know, it won't be appropriate for me to give advice to anyone, because everybody has their own journey, own space and own aspiration and path to that.

Rajiv Naithani: path which leads to that inspiration. But if you want to be a people leader, whether it's a CHRO, any name you give, I think the important thing is cultivate a deep sense of empathy. You know, that's very important. If you are in a people business you need to have that because truly understanding and respecting the myriad background, values, aspirations of people is a foundation.

Rajiv Naithani: You know, this is this is very important. And by fostering an environment where every individual feels heard, they feel valued, they feel empowered. I'm sure they will go extra mile. 

Rajiv Naithani: I think the most important thing is as a, as a people function leader, employee first should be a priority driven by the sense of empathy and inspire and motivate people so that they're always going extra mile and impacting the business outcomes positively. possibly would be the advice, so to say, if I were 

Tahseen Kazi: Awesome. That is great, Rajiv. I think we have like a lot of, you know, great insights from you, right from, you know, productivity, confidentiality, anonymity, employee listening. We have a lot there. So thank you very much. I think you know, it was, it was a great conversation with you. 

Rajiv Naithani: Likewise. Thank you, Tahseen