Tahseen: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the People-led Show. I'm your host, Tahseen Kazi, and our guest for today is Praveen Ratna. He is the AVP of People and Culture at Muthoot Fincorp and is a seasoned professional in the HR space with two decades of experience in the financial services and NBFC sector. Praveen is a firm advocate for data-led decisions and has previously held leadership positions at Bajaj Capital and India Bulls.

Tahseen: Welcome, Praveen. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Praveen: Thank you, Tahseen, for giving me this opportunity. It's completely my privilege to be a part of this conversation. Thank

Tahseen: you. Praveen, I'm going to start with something, very simple and something that we all ask all our all the people leaders who we speak with.

Tahseen: Who is the human behind the human resources? So what is Praveen like outside of work? 

Praveen: Outside my work, I divide my time into two pieces. That is me time and free time. So in me time, I always go for some meditation, yoga and to evaluate myself, where I am today and what I want to be in the future.

Praveen: So that is one piece of my me time, obviously, and in the free time I used to connect with a different professionals networking, reading books.

Praveen: So, it gives me the opportunity to understand what this new generation thinks about. And yes, watching cricket is again, one of my hobby. So I spend some time on that. 

Tahseen: Of course, Praveen.

Tahseen: I love the way, you know, you explained this, me time and free time, and I think this is something I've heard for the first time. 

Tahseen: Moving on, praveen, as an as a people leader, as an that you are facing at the moment or you see other HR leaders in your space facing? 

Praveen: So if we talk about the three dilemmas Most of the time it is you know, aligning HR with the business objective, creating culture and employee experience and well being because we are in a world where everything is moving very fast, right?

Praveen: And everyone wants to be a part of that fast moving organization or fast moving space and nothing wrong in that. Because. the entire world is moving at that pace.

Praveen: So, I think these are the three challenges which we should address as an HR professional to make the world better.

Tahseen: That is great Praveen. I think these are three, you know, absolutely important especially considering the way the work styles are changing with remote hybrid coming into the picture with Gen Z coming into the picture, all these things are becoming increasingly important.

Tahseen: So you mentioned three things aligning HR with business objectives, you spoke about culture and you spoke about employee well being and all three are so, so important. So, you know, I just want to go maybe a little deeper into each of these along our conversation. And I think the first one I want to, you know dig a little deeper on is the culture aspect.

Tahseen: Because I think culture is so subjective to each organization, to each individual. So how do you define culture Praveen. What is culture for you? 

Praveen: Culture for me is what you are doing regularly, right? That becomes your culture. 

Praveen: So when we go to someone's house or when we meet someone elders or so, so we need to pay respect. So that becomes our culture. Right. And the culture starts building looking at your elders.

Praveen: So in the terms of organization, also the same thing is because culture as a word is same for every space, whether it's your personal life, it's professional life. It's a combination of values, attitude, behavior, right?

Praveen: And yes, of course you know, discipline, trust, and transparency are the integral part of that. So when you are creating a culture, all these you know, things should be kept in mind. And in creating culture, obviously the leaders play an important role. Leading from the front and cascading the same culture into the first line of the organization.

Praveen: Most of the people what I have seen is they think that creating and defining and driving culture is the core responsibility of HR.

Praveen: This is not the full responsibility of HR only. HR is a driver for driving the culture, creating the culture, democratizing the culture, but everyone has to take the collective responsibility. to become the torch bearer of that culture and cascade the thing to the bottom of the 

Tahseen: line. 

Tahseen: Praveen, you have shared some very important nuggets there in your response, and if I may, summarize it, the, the first thing I liked the best was, your analogy about how leaders in an organization are just like elders for children, whatever culture and value they project that is going to be passed on to the other people in the organization.

Tahseen: And that is so true. I also like the fact that you mentioned that, you know, culture is a collective responsibility. 

Tahseen: It's not about what the culture is, rather how it percolates through the organization is what is important. 

Tahseen: Moving on what are some things that you focus on and you would recommend other HR leaders to focus on when you think of, employee experience strategy or plan? 

Praveen: One liner, make it simple and transparent because the simpler the things, the transparent the things would be, it will be very easy to create a better employee experience, right? People need not go here and there to understand what does it this line means or what does this mean, right?

Praveen: For every, every individual is different. Now we are living in a much diversified, uh, era where gender, education, experience all the things are there in one organization.

Praveen: So, this is not a one size fit for all kind of strategy that you will put because every individual, every organization, everything has a, different you know, structure and every organization is unique in terms of their culture, structure, and challenges.

Praveen: So while you're creating the strategy, you need to understand what, employees are looking for. What is their expectation? Because experienced employees, their expectation, might be, job stability.

Praveen: Just one example, but the person who is into mid or start of their career for them, growth, learning curve would be the priority. So aligning with all these things. would be required to create a better employee experience strategy. 

Tahseen: It Moving on Praveen in terms of listening, so now, you know, the, these are, these expectations are there you know, there is a requirement for transparency.

Tahseen: You need to be aligned with what employees want. But how, how are you, as a people leader, what are the various ways that you're listening to employees, you know, understanding what their requirements are, what their expectations are? And what are some, you know, what are some channels that you found most effective in your two decades of experience?

Praveen: The first thing which I would say, and no one can beat that is employee connect, you know, human employee connect.

Praveen: When I talk about connect, it is not about that you know, having a call with them, right? The connect means casually you are connected. So at times what happens and even I you know, in the early days, I did also that thing I followed because I was in that cohort.

Praveen: So like whenever it is required, then only you make a call to any of the organization employee, otherwise we don't get bothered about that. But lately when I realized that some of the things, okay, we should do. So I started connected casually, right? That connect is important. When you, if you're connecting in that way, I think it will give you better insight from any of the formal connect.

Praveen: So informal connect or you say casual connect is always better than the formal connect.

Praveen: The second thing is you can roll out some surveys. You can you know drop some you know, for the employee engagement perspective, you can create some team building activities that, but that is itself that will give you the insight. I'm not saying that it will not give you the insight.

Praveen: It will give you the insight, but let's say if I talk about employee survey, the survey data interpretation need to be done in a proper way. Otherwise, it will not make any sense.

Tahseen: Are there any ways and I just want to understand from you even like a lot of HR leaders, we speak with HR professionals. In fact, also they struggle with getting employees to respond to surveys because maybe there is a lack of trust with the employees.

Tahseen: What are some things that can be done proactively, to, you know, build this trust and improve that, you know, connect with employees?

Praveen: Building trust is not a overnight thing that you think today and tomorrow it will get developed. It's a process and it will take some time. When you are saying that how to build a trust is crisp conversation. I would say. If you're talking about any feedback and all, whether good, bad, ugly, I'm not talking about that how the conversation, how the feedback is or what about it is, but it should be a crisp feedback.

Praveen: Then respect. As I said respect is important. Transparency. Transparency. Absolutely. is important. Confidentiality is important, right? When you are building trust, that is important. 

Tahseen: Praveen, shifting gears a little bit in terms of employee experience. What are some key you know, indicators or KPIs that HR professionals should keep track of to ensure the health of the organization or the employee sentiment is good?

Tahseen: What are those key indicators that you would recommend people should, you know, keep track of?

Praveen: So if I talk about keeping track on the employee experience, so you can start from the employee, you know from the interview stages. So how the interview stage was. Let's say you know, many many candidates wait for two hours, three hours for getting interviewed. Right? Then after that, what is your onboarding experience?

Praveen: How you how is smoothly the onboarding done? What is the training process and is scheduled like training calendar? Sometimes the calendar gets so busy, so clumsy that people don't get the time to attend that or if they attend this thing, then they will miss another thing. So that is scheduling of the training process and calendar is important again.

Praveen: What is the technological support you are getting? Because as a human being, we are working in the area where Most of the things are based on the technology and how the technology is working for you. Then again culture. How you are finding the culture of the organization. What is the work you know, work space environment, physical work space environment.

Praveen: Then you can talk about transparent communication. Relationship with the colleagues and manager that is very important metrics that need to be taken care and satisfaction level. Employee referral can be one of the key metrics, right? Then unplanned absenteeism that is again where you can chip in.

Praveen: So employee referral if I talk about might be every employee is not having that referral. So you can use it as a one of the indicator, but. It is not always at. Okay. You who's over is not giving is not engaged with the company. 

Tahseen: But at an overall level, you would want to see if employees are, you know, referring others to the organization or not.

Praveen: Yes. So if you are satisfied with your organization, then only you will refer anyone, right?

Tahseen: Absolutely. This is great, Praveen. Praveen can you think of, so you spoke about a lot of things that, you know, you would recommend HR professionals to track.

Tahseen: Any example from your own you know experience where you've seen that acting promptly on employee feedback made a significant impact on their experience? Any such thing that you can think of? 

Praveen: Yes. I have. So, as I said, the employee connect is important, right? And the second most important thing is how you are interpreting the feedback.

Praveen: These two aspects I have spoken about earlier also. So again I would go back to another, in the past of my experiences where the person was not so much engaged, the productivity was not good. We have connected with that person. So, just a casual connect, okay? Have a tea and all.

Praveen: Start discussing. So, I spent two days, three days. On the casual connect only and during the conversation, I came to know that he is not happy with the road, what he has been looking for, what the area of interest is, this is completely different. So when, while drilling you know, more. I understood. Okay. And this person is having the better interest or you know, alignment with some other department. After that, we have shifted that person to another department through internal communication and all. We have shifted to another department and he was happy and he did a good job. After that, he stayed somewhere around two or three years.

Tahseen: That is great. So I think in a crux of what you know, you said in the beginning, keep it simple and transparent. At the end of the day, I think, you know, this is what it is all boiling down to to have simple, transparent conversations. 

Praveen: Yes. As I said in the middle that communication without agenda is very fruitful.

Tahseen: Yes, absolutely. And as we close out Praveen one last question for you here is what are some things that you recommend HR professionals can do to keep attrition numbers in check, especially for their top talent? Like, what are some things that you can do to keep your top talent, you know, going on further in your organization? 

Praveen: If you're talking about only top talent, so I will give you the holistic thing because attrition is attrition and is important for every organization. 

Praveen: So, it is always good to set a a realistic you know, expectation of appreciation even for a small achievement and not in terms of you know monetary. I'm not talking about the monetary terms, just some appreciation certificate or not even a certificate is required. If you stand up on the floor and appreciate the person that is well enough to build the confidence in that person, right?

Praveen: Treat humanly and recognize the effort of the employee, fair compensation. So these are the few things which are you know, which. You might have heard from so many professionals. The challenge is show them the path, show them the career path, provide them the opportunity to grow. Involve if you're looking at the top talent, involve your top talent into the decision making you know roles, decision making capacity , groom them for a future as a future leader because that is going to be a future leader for you.

Praveen: So your succession planning and all you can do from here. Then of course you need to analyze the power data, the exit interviews and reasons. To you know, of resignation to analyze that how the things are not working for you, right? The employees are going. So at what tenure they are suppose one employee is leaving after, let's say, 15, 20 years, there will be some trigger point that after 15 years, if the employee is leaving.

Praveen: What would be the reason or if even the employee is leaving in six months.

Tahseen: Identifying trigger points. 

Praveen: Yeah, identifying trigger point is important. In one of the conversation I was having with someone in regard to some other different company. One employee left in within I think four or five months. So he was a little worried about that. When we more dig into that, that, okay, what is the problem?

Praveen: Why it has been done that the picture was completely different. The role which was offered was completely different. And what the profile, which you have given to her, that was completely different. So, there is a misalignment of the role offered and profile that should be avoided because on the hiring time, effort, cost, which you are putting for bringing one employee after three months, four months, five months or so, you again have to put the same time.

Praveen: That's right. So it hampers the you know, productivity or so these are the few things. So compensation, wellness, these are the very generic things which everyone speaks about, but you know triggering getting the trigger point is more important. 

Tahseen: That is great. Yeah. You're absolutely right.

Tahseen: I think that's it, Praveen from my end. For me, the five keywords that I took away from this conversation, and you know, I cannot agree more, you know, on this is, first is to keep your employee EX strategy simple.

Tahseen: Keep it transparent, respect everybody, casual conversations, have casual conversations and use technology to enable your team, you know, to have the, you know, have these casual connects to, you know, to enable them to provide better experiences to employees. So I think sometimes, you know, we get stuck in the whole race of strategy and, you know, overthinking things that we kind of forget the basics. And I think what you've spoken about today is so much to do with the basics of, you know, employee experience and employee engagement. So thank you very much, Praveen. Thank you for, thank you for your time today. And it was great having you here. 

Praveen: Thank you, Tahseen and once again privileged to be the part of this conversation. Thank you once again.