Shivangi: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of The People-led Show. I'm your host Shivangi, and our guest for today is the remarkable Janani Prakaash. Janani is the Head of People and Culture at Genzeon. She's previously held leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting and Quantela Inc.

Shivangi: In addition, she's also been honored as one of the 40 under 40 HR leaders by Business World People. Recognized as a top HR leader by World HRD Congress and featured among Asia's hundred power leaders in HR. Welcome Janani. It's such a pleasure having you here today.

Janani: Thank you, Shivangi. It's great being here.

Shivangi: Amazing. So my first very first question is I'm curious to know what is it that you do beyond your work?

Janani: I do a lot of things beyond my work,Yeah, I think I have a philosophy of living life like how you take money and then you don't put it only in a property or only in FD and you diversify your investment.

Janani: I diversify my time into some deep pursuits that I have in life. So music has been there with me from childhood. So I'm a vocalist and a veena player, and I'm a weekend teacher even now. I I'm a yogi, a certified yoga instructor. I've been practicing for the last 15 years. Very serious and passionate yogi, I must say.

Janani: Coaching is another area I've embarked into in the last three years or so. I do a lot of speaking and writing too. More than anything, I think I'm a mother. Who I mean, my daughter keeps me engaged quite a bit. I think creative parenting is another thing I really enjoy doing. These are a few of the aspects that I am outside of work.

Janani: And I also believe that there is a lot more that I need to explore in the anonymity of life.

Shivangi: Absolutely. I love the point that you started off on, which is basically saying time is money and how you diversify it is also how you should diversify your funds. It's a great you know, comparison right there.

Shivangi: And also creative parenting. So how, how old is your daughter? You said she's 10 years old Okay. But what is creative parenting all about? Like that's, that's a very new term.

Janani: Creative parenting is I, I'm a complete friend to her. I talk to her as if I'm her age group because I think that relationship is very important, especially for this generation.

Janani: But I also like to understand what will appeal to that generation. What do they go through? And I talk to them. I mean, because I'm also a music teacher and I, I am exposed to that age group of kids. I can relate to their difficulties more and you know, I work along with them giving them everything to enable and empower them.

Janani: So they feel that they are making the decision, but I'm giving them the right ingredients. So that way it's like you know, I want to build them for life, not just for whatever skill they are with me. I mean, both my students and my child. 

Shivangi: Right. Hearing how you are in your personal life with your daughter and also, you know, your professional achievements.

Shivangi:  what I'm getting is that you're a complete people's person and you just know the pulse.

Shivangi: What has been the most interesting people's story that you would like to share with us today? 

Janani: I will share about one of the incidents that happened in my professional career. And that really opened my eyes in terms of how You cannot judge a book by its cover. Many years back, I was doing well in a particular business group.

Janani: I was their HR business partner. I was doing well. It was quite complex. And suddenly I was told that I will be moved to another group and I need to take care of that group. And in my view, the size was lesser. It was a stable business. I felt, okay, what's going to be there? but then came a series of situations like the attrition of that group was like 25 percent and we had to strategize and really bring it down over next 18 months.

Janani: The business leader was new. The organization was also going through experiments. In terms of moving to rating less performance management system. So this group was identified as a pilot group for that. And then this business group started doing really well with many of these things happening. And eventually they said they want to double the size.

Janani: So over the next four to five years, I think I just became a different professional just having worked with that business group. It gave a lot of perspectives to me and I really thought, okay, you should never judge the opportunity that's coming in front of you. You don't know what's really ahead of it, right?

Janani: So no judgments, no biases, just drop everything. If there is, if something is coming to you, then you're meant to do something great there. So pick it and run. So that's really what I thought I should share. 

Shivangi: This is the kind of advice that goes out to the younger generation from someone like you saying that if an opportunity comes your way, don't sleep on it. It could literally change the course of your career. 

Janani: Yeah. Sometimes we have to take that very myopic view of right now.

Janani: We don't know what is ahead. 

Shivangi: So having seen all of these over so many years, you know, having dealt with some, one of the most biggest challenges of your careers. What are the challenges of a CHRO or a head of people right now?

Janani: I must say the role of a CHRO has been evolving rapidly, Shivangi. When I started my careerit mostly used to be, have you hired, have you trained? And then are people happy? Attrition, go pay some additional increases or do some engagement conversations. Because when I started my career, the role of HR business partnering was just even just beginning to exist.

Janani: To now, if you see in almost everything, there is a role that a CHRO is playing along with the business leader. The expectations also have changed quite a bit and therefore the challenges. that come alongside, right? If you look at the pre COVID era to immediately after COVID within a year or so, the role definition of HR itself changed, transformed.

Janani: So today, if you ask me, keeping these things in perspective, what are some of the top challenges? I think the market landscape has changed significantly. So the talent pool availability and hiring the right talent for the organization. That itself is a huge challenge. Now you might think, what is there? I mean, this has always been the case.

Janani: HR people always speak about it. Till now, skills half life used to be five years and now it's two and a half, and then you have so many new skills coming.

Janani: So somewhere people's aspirations are how am I going to be relevant and which job will keep me relevant? And therefore, they're wanting to shift from one job to another.

Janani: So it's a classic dichotomy that we are existing in. And amidst this, hiring the right talent is a huge difficulty. The second thing that I am seeing is Having that creative inventive mind, curious mindset attitude to actually work be patient and have the perseverance.

Janani: Is slowly missing in the in the incoming talent. across various generations it's not about just one set of people.

Janani: The third aspect is See, culture was always being spoken of earlier as well, but then COVID came, remote happened, people thought remote will actually last forever, but later, we realized, no, you need office environment as well

Janani: So building culture in a hybrid environment or a remote environment, I think, is a huge challenge for this technology. 

Janani: I mean, these are like. Top of mind for me right now, 

Shivangi: I have like the two very interesting points that I picked up from your response. One was, you know, having to create a set of mind and how that's going to be ever important. And then the incoming of technology and both of them being almost.

Janani: You know, like complimenting conflicting sort of with each other. Right. So that kind of brings me to my question, whether what are your views on, you know, technology and skill? Like, is having a lot of technology going to affect the kind of skills that you hire? There are two sections to it. One, you have too many varieties of technologies that are coming in. And if you're working in a IT services company and let's say you're still figuring out what your niche is going to be, then you're going to say yes for almost everything. Then you're going to pay a premium to get some of the newest skills.

Janani: Does it work for your cost? Cost arbitrage is a huge question that we need to ask ourselves. And I think as HR leaders, it's important to ask that question to the business leaders as well. Second is, It's easy to be sporadic and just take whatever comes and then do. It's important to pause and then think through as to where is it that our journey is going to be in.

Janani: And then just bring all the dispersed energy into that. If this is sounding abstract, it's like, okay, I'll hire digital engineering also. I'll hire Salesforce also. I am. Data also. I mean, I'll hire any XYZ skill also too. I'm going to keep four broad buckets. I'm going to hire only in these four, right? I think that kind of approach will create a niche for the organization as well, because people are looking at somewhere they're looking at stability, career growth bringing that newness and experience so that they are also feeling engaged in addition to staying relevant, So all of these also need to be thought through and and created in organizations.

Janani: Therefore, it's very important to take that stance saying, okay, these are going to be my areas and this is where we will play. The third aspect is AI is everywhere and everybody is selling AI. So what is it that every company should can think about when it comes to AIN. What is going to be their play is another huge difficulty I'm seeing every company is going through.

Janani: Like when I talk with my peers of both EHROs or technology leaders, I see that everyone is talking it, but what is going to be their niche? I think they aren't, I mean, everyone is in the struggle of that. And therefore these are going to pose real challenges. And Hiring for these as well because sometimes you go and get some very good talent and then you don't have the quality of work that they will want, then it's a wasted talent in multiple ways, isn't it?

Janani: Absolutely. But personally for you, have you seen an impact at your work or in your, you know you know, function that AI has sort of brought along? I think AI is immensely helpful. See, we, we need to be able to use it in the sense it can, it can be your assistant. It can augment your work. It can help you author.

Janani: It can help you do many things, but you have to be the one in the driver's seat and have it next to you and not let it drive you. It's like me planning my day versus my day planning how I spend my time. I think we have to be smart in how we are able to use it. Having said that, personally, I'll tell you, I use several AI tools because I don't work in a large company and I take up many of such assignments to talk outside.

Janani: And so I'll build my own decks. I use AI for building decks for content creation for, for thinking through and brainstorming. Because see, if you're in a very large setup, you have. Rich set of colleagues to sit and talk as well. In smaller setups, you have fewer people, but you want some brain share and conversation.

Janani: So, if you're able to master the art of giving good prompts, then you can definitely use a lot from AI, learn a lot from AI, and work along with AI. AI, right? I think those are what I'm able to think of. And yes, I'm very experimentative in my mindset. So I have tried a couple of tools that can give insights on intelligent onboarding and can we, will the person definitely join or not?

Janani: If not, why can we do something in the onboarding, pre onboarding state? You know, we are currently also doing a lot of experiments because. I mean, if you're not, it's like running on a treadmill, right? You're going to just keep running and you're not going to move forward. You're not acting on AI and technology today.

Janani: So it's important that you are, you are doing everything that's possible. 

Shivangi: Absolutely. I would say definitely that, you know, you are one of those HR leaders who are actually thinking in the direction of future, which is how how AI is going to define the future of HR and other functions, right. 

Janani: The kind of enablement that is unharnessed as of right now, that AI can bring along, especially for an employee's productivity is, you know, is, it's yet to be explored and, right?

Janani: Like, is that focus for you? You know, like. Productivity and efficiency. And I mean, it's a focus for everybody. That's, that's not even a question. That's almost like a rhetoric question to ask, but my question is like, what, what steps do you take to make sure that your people are feeling motivated, are feeling productive and bring their best selves to work every day? Productivity is a huge topic, Shivangi. A lot of productivity cannot be driven externally. It is intrinsic. And people will have to also watch out their own schedules. How are they spending time? How much are we simply browsing across different apps that we have? How many apps do we even have on phone that are useless but we are still using?

Janani: Spending our time there and mindshare that I think these are important questions that one should ask themselves, right? Having said that in our organization we are flexible in terms of when people work There are four hours when everyone works together, right? Because you have your team meetings and your availability is definitely needed certain hours across the teams There are four hours where people come together they work and they solve things together or have meetings all of that You otherwise, like if you say I'm a very early morning person, I start my day like 7 a. m. also sometimes and then in between I take like two hours break so that, that is the time I need to take care of some of my domestic chores. So in the night I will have a couple of calls. So it's left to the individual to design the day so that they are also productive and the circadian rhythm also works, right?

Janani: Of course, we have a lot of conversations on wellbeing, on productivity as a topic itself because it is on everyone's mind.

Janani: It is a concern area for many people. They don't know how to be productive. Everyone is looking for that magic potion to come from somewhere. So we do help people on some of these. And yes with respect to performance management as well, we have looked at how we can make goals very smart. Or OKR based performance management system, strength based performance management system.

Janani: See, all of these, if you see, OKR based performance management system will help people to look at how you can become very focused with respect to what you need to achieve. And that also drives productivity. Strength based performance management system is what you like to do, what you're good at doing, and that also improves productivity.

Janani: So some of these is not straightforward, but you do things and then your outcome automatically happens. It's, it's like you eat, right? You exercise, you walk, you drink water, you keep your stress list. All of this will invariably lead to weight loss, right? They say this. So I think it's just doing several things that may seemingly look unrelatable doing right.

Janani: And then you get your productivity right. 

Shivangi: So many things that you said, right. And I related to a lot of them, especially something that you said about how one brings their productive self is kind of also on them. It's a very subjective thing. I mean, as human beings, we know what to do. We just don't know where to start.

Shivangi: And how to be consistent with it. Right. 

Janani: Yeah, absolutely. 

Shivangi: Yeah. I think that's a, that's a human challenge that we're going to be kind of solving for as, as and when distractions start to build up as well. 

Janani: Yeah, I think, I mean, I can. If I get started on this topic, I can speak a lot. 

Shivangi: I know, I know, me too, me too.

Shivangi: But coming back to the point of the conversation, which is you know, productivity and efficiency. What are the, what are one or two tasks in HR function that you think should be automated? Like, today? 

Janani:  I think the query management has to completely be automated, create an internal chat GPT. It will learn by itself. And then further conversations can happen.

Janani: Second is these large organizations where things are managed centrally, but you don't have insights. 

Janani: Like I remember I mean, because I've been in large companies for a longer time many things get driven centrally. And then we suffer with not having visibility into smaller groups. Right. So somewhere if we're able to use AI to decentralize things and have things managed, but you get a centralized view also saying, this pocket, this is happening now.

Janani: To give power enablement to groups of thousands as well. And then have everything culminated at the top and create insights and reports. So what happens is you're able to provide that level of personalization to the respective business groups. But you're also able to get at a corporate level.

Janani: What are those big things that are happening? What are patterns across like. 1500 groups in the organization which one is like the team that we will need to select centrally so that we will drive it for the years to come. I think some of those insights can definitely be generated and it's actually possible if organizations definitely want to do it.

Janani: And what is the organization kind of looking at when, when they think about people, right? What, what, my question is like, what is the, what are the metrics that The organization wants to look at when it comes to their people? 

Janani:  Multiple things. A lot of focus on cost, a lot of focus on everything finance. is there now, I mean, it's just accelerated in the last few years.See, the large organizations go through their challenge of new competitors, or suddenly one company stems from somewhere and becomes, makes it very big in a particular area, becoming a huge competitor.

Janani: So they are also watchful. Smaller companies are always thinking about funding and everything else. So you're for hiring. How is your cost per hire? What's your retention? Cost of retention versus cost of rehire or cost of hiring. And then how can revenue leakage be prevented by improving your joiners come in faster, right?

Janani: That's why this early joiners are being looked at in the market. So if you look at it, this is all related to finance and money. The second is a number of people that have concerns in a certain area or broadly what is coming out and what are we going and doing about it and therefore what's the score like ENPS of sorts how much are people happy about something versus not happy about something.

Janani: Then third is let's say we are coaching some number of people within the organization, depending on the organization stage. How has coaching enhanced someone's performance? Now this might be very difficult to metricize, but we can find ways to metricize this as well.So engagement index, attrition rate all of these are constantly existing learning hours and how is learning on the job improving and therefore the ROI, all of that, I think those are already there, but I just wanted to give some of the newer aspects that are trending these days.

Shivangi: No, absolutely. And of course, cost is an issue as is. for the entire world. Yeah. And 

Janani: the technology spends, not to forget that.

Shivangi:  I feel like this warrants a question here, which is about change management. 

Shivangi: Of course, it's it's a hard sell for internal champions, internal stakeholders already to get a new tool in, but when it comes to having to explain it to the organization and get their buy in and also getting them to use it what are your change management hacks that has kind of worked? Because, more difficult for a larger organization.

Shivangi: Right. And you, you've seen it all. So what, what are the tips that you have in mind? 

Janani: The first is to talk about the current pain points, pain points in the existing system that we have not been able to solve, and then the several hours that are wasted. Or, you know, resource wastage that happens with respect to people or cost.

Janani: And then what does it end up in? Like, what's the result that comes out of it? That's very important. And if you are able to pick this and whatever tool you're choosing as well, if you're able to, see to it that all of these or most of these are getting met, then I think fundamentally we gain conviction to have the change management happen.

Janani: The second is once we are convinced, we know we want to implement something and these are the reasons why. Talk to critical stakeholders and get buy in and Help them be the advocate. Most of the times it's not that HR leaders want to drive this because they like it. It's because it's solving a business problem.

Janani: And here comes a magic mantra, which is going to solve. All of this. And then you're immediately going to win the hearts of people. The point is, we have to do the implementation right. All of this is good and possibly we can do good selling. But the implementation the last mile closure, those are extremely important when it comes to any kind of changes.

Janani: And how are we able to take the various levels across the chain of command? You have the CXOs and then the next level leaders, next level leaders, and then you have managers and then you have employees. There has to be something for everyone. If it's going to, if it's going to touch the lives of everyone, then we need to articulate the what is in it for each one of them.

Janani: It's important to say, Hey, we heard you say all of this and this is what we have done. And therefore these are the results. People really appreciate it and they trust us more. So I think these are some, some ways that I have seen success while managing changes. 

Shivangi: Understood. So one thing that you said is about building advocacy and I completely relate to you.

Shivangi: What is one viewpoint that you think you hold, but most of your viewers or your friends disagree with? 

Janani: Okay.

Janani: I think everyone has a place in the world and we create our places. Nobody does it for us. So we own our lives, we own our careers, we own everything, so it's our responsibility. Like I want to take 100 percent responsibility about my life, my career, my everything. But most people I've seen may not agree with it because they think somebody has some role to play.

Janani: Yes, they all have a role to play, but it's up to us to navigate, right? So that's one area I would say. Second is, I think we don't prioritize health quite a bit. We will have longer lives for sure, because medication has improved and all that, and what we are putting in as food, we are not even aware of many times.

Janani: So I'm extremely conscious when it comes to nutrition and how I take care of myself and I lead an extremely disciplined life. A lot of people don't subscribe to it, but I think it has benefits in the long run. 

Shivangi: The two things that you said absolutely marry each other because you're saying that, you know, you build accountability and then take care of your health.

Shivangi: You will only be able to build take care of your health if you actually think that you are responsible for it, right? Like no one else is going to come and solve it for you. 

Janani: Very well said. And that leads me to my last question. If there is one piece of advice that you would like to give to people leaders in India, what would that be? Constantly keep your learning muscle exercised. Just that. Learn anything but keep learning. Because who we are today, ten years later we will not be this and the world will not be this. One thing that will stay is our ability to learn and we cannot we cannot survive if we are not learning. 

Shivangi: Nobody can take that away from you.

Shivangi: Not even ai. Absolutely. 

Janani: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. 

Shivangi: Awesome. That was so mind opening of a conversation and you know, nothing short of what I expected with having this, going into this with a person who's into people business and also is a yogi. I expected nothing less. So thank you for those wonderful gems, Janani.

Janani: Thank you. Thank you, Shivangi. It's been a pleasure having this conversation with you.