Tahseen: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the People Led Show. I'm your host, Tahseen Kazi, and our guest for today is 

Tahseen: the incredible Swati Dogra. She's the HR business lead. APAC region at Amdocs and is a seasoned HR leader with more than 15 years of experience in the field of HR. She's a passionate advocate for cultivating teamwork and positive workplace culture.

Tahseen: She has been selected as the president of the HR infotech Association Pune, a nonprofit organization engaged in promoting HR best practices in the Indian IT sector. Welcome, Swati.  

Tahseen: Thank you so much for joining us today.

Swati: Thank you, Tahseen. It's my extreme pleasure to be here with you today.

Tahseen: So Swati I think one of the questions that we always ask any HR leader we speak to, and you know, I'm really keen to know from you as well. Who are you outside of work? 

Swati: Okay, so Tahseen there are so I'm a mom of a nine year old girl. So there's a lot of time that I spend with her outside of work. And I am very passionate about volunteering. I volunteer for a few causes that are close to my heart. The. The one that I'm most passionate about is empowering youth.

Swati: So I mentor a lot of children who come from underprivileged background. I'm also an executive coach. So I coach executives outside of my organization as well. And I'm associated with a few environment related causes. So with my family, we go for tree plantation drives. We organize cycling events in the city.

Swati: So these are a few things that I like to spend my time on when I'm not working. Wow. 

Tahseen: Those are, those are very, you know, very interesting and diverse things. 

Tahseen: Swati, tell us a little more about you know what is your role at Amdocs? So, I, I understand that you recently moved into the role of HR business lead APAC region. And so what, what is it that you are doing there? 

Swati: So, yeah, so I think it's been a long journey with Amdocs. It's been more than a decade here. And there are a few, I've moved from total rewards domain to HR business partnering, to talent management, to now getting into HR business lead role for a set of companies, acquired companies that Amdocs has created as a separate.

Swati: Kept as a separate entity for the APAC region. So in this role my part is more mostly to manage the post merger integration and to see how you know, we can, we can bring on board people of this acquired company into our ecosystem which is, which is very interesting work because people who work out there.

Swati: were working with the startup. Before we acquired them. It was a startup and they come. There's a certain mindset that those people have, you know, there are certain there's this fast moving, fast paced organization culture that they've experienced. They have certain titles that they hold in that organization.

Swati: There is more holistic end to end work that they do there, right? Whereas when they join an enterprise, it's a very different, it's a very different style of working. So I think how to manage that change becomes a very important part of it. Even if we are talking about onboarding them to our, you know, the core company practices and policies, if it is about redesigning the role architecture, onboarding them into the new titles.

Swati: 

Swati: It's like doing a, you know bypass surgery while still keeping the heart beating, right? So they don't have to feel like it's that sudden transition. So I think that's something that I do in this role.

Swati: That is good. 

Swati: That is interesting. Swati, I want to understand like as an HR leader right? What are two, three employee experience dilemmas or questions that you as a people leader want answers to? I think like any other organization, it always talent attraction and talent retention becomes, you know, a very the most critical part. And it's been there for years and it continues to be one of the most important dilemmas in the minds of HR people. So when you are attracting talent for that organization, how do you pitch in for it?

Swati: 

Swati: So how do you brand yourself in the market to the candidates? How do you want to position yourself? That's, you know, that's one challenge. Then how do you retain your key people?

Swati: So I think this definitely becomes an important part of employee experience. I think now it is also about the, you know, the need people are working remotely, right?

Swati: So this organization in the past, they were, they were, there was no office spaces. They were working from home, but now they have to, they have to come to office. So to explain to them the reason why they are required because people know they can work from home. So to be able to explain that rationale, to keep them engaged while they're in office, to make sure that you are able to engage them while they are working remotely, these are also some of the challenges of how you manage this hybrid work model.

Tahseen: want to understand from you, what are the employee expectations of today? At an org wide level, what are some changing expectations that you are witnessing right now? I 

Swati: think that the, now that we have more of Gen Z and millennials in the workforce, and there's a very different kind of, I think it's a different breed that we are experiencing. And I think they are more vocal than what I would say the previous generations were.

Swati: This is a different generation and those things that we're used to doing in the past. I think it won't work anymore and that's why I think it's all the more important for us to listen to them to really try and understand what will be of value to them?

Swati: Because as an organization, you can spend, you know, thousands of dollars to, you know, give a certain kind of experience to your people. But if that is not of value to them, it doesn't mean anything. So I think the most important thing for us is to really reach out to them, understand what matters to them and then make sure that how how can we bring it for them for . 

Tahseen: Yeah, I think you're right. The the way you know, I think this generational change that is happening and especially post COVID, the stark transition that we have seen and the way people work is, you know, drastically different. 

Tahseen: 

Tahseen: What do employees want from an organization when, you know, while they're working in your organization?

Tahseen: Any such changes that you've seen? 

Swati: Definitely. Definitely. I think that learning and growth is a very important focus for people and money, I think, is losing, you know, it's charm. I mean, of course, money is important, but it is not a differentiating factor anymore. I think when people join organizations, they're looking for things which is much more than, you know monetary and I've seen people willing to take, you know, when you're looking at growth and we're talking about progressions, it may not necessarily be vertical.

Swati: I think the generation now is willing to do lateral moves. They're willing to have, you know, they're to learn new skills to not necessarily, you know, have that. Hierarchy in mind, but they are more open to do those horizontal moves. So the organization has to have provide those many opportunities of internal moves to our people.

Swati: 

Swati: So I think given, given that market reality, we are also open to people moving to new roles within one year, like after they've completed just one year. It's not two years anymore. And we've made our internal mobility process much more transparent.

Swati: Now we are becoming, you know, from being a role based, we are moving into a skill based organization. So we are trying to make it more visible that what are the skills that each person has. And that skill repository is there in the, you know, in our system.

Swati: And when the recruitment team is hiring for a new position, they first check that are there internal candidates, you know, whose skill sets are matching, you know, those open positions, they reach out to those people, just like you get a call from an external recruiter. 

Swati: 

Swati: Work life balance definitely, you know, is another important factor.

Swati: Another important thing is about them. What, you know, definitely they want to be associated to many of them want to be associated to a cause cause, which is larger than themselves.

Swati: And if they get that opportunity in the workspace, it really excites them even when they are doing their work. And it's also about leadership development. Now that we have to explain to our managers that now you can't give those piecemeal work to people. You've got to show them the larger picture. You've got to connect the dots for them..

Swati: and tell them how their work will translate into that larger organizational goal. That is something that will make, you know, their that's what makes their work exciting for people. And that's also something that we are grooming our leadership layer on in terms of how to work with people. I would also add that.

Swati: I think it's also you know While we are saying we want to listen to our people, but then we also have to be prepared to listen a lot of times, you know, when you get into senior leadership roles, you would think that okay, I know it all and I'm there. But now it's about the willingness of organization in terms of your senior leadership, middle management, to be willing to Receive that feedback from employees and then work on it.

Tahseen: So you want your people to be vocal, but you also have to prepare your leadership layer to, to be willing to listen to them when they're reaching out. I mean, that was a power packed answer.

Tahseen: 

Tahseen: I wanna understand what are some you know, channels or ways or mediums that you typically use at your current organization or you've used your previous organization where you know, you, you say that, okay, you know, these are the different avenues to which I'm gonna listen to my employees and understand what their expectations are. So what are those avenues that, you know, HR leaders should look at? 

Swati: So it is more of direct and indirect listening. So direct listening is more so when we are reaching out to people and asking for feedback, which happens through employee engagement surveys, it happens through roundtables.

Swati: That are done, you know, with the business leaders and HR partners in it. It is done through different kinds of dipstick studies that we, you know, do with our people pulse surveys that we engage in at different points in time. So I think these are the different ways in which we are directly listening to our people.

Swati: And I think there are some indirect channels through which we are trying to gauge how our people are feeling, which is more about, which is social media for sure happens to be, you know. One of them, people go and share, people are, you know, willing to talk about their experiences in the organization out there.

Swati: So we monitor that. If you also look at glass door reviews, you also look at you know, what people are posting on the different employee rating sites, which are there. So the feedback that our people are giving out there, I think that it is both the direct and indirect listening channels that we put into practice when we want to listen to our employees.

Swati: Got it. 

Tahseen: As an HR leader, what is your first I would ask, what is your you know preference in terms of anonymity versus confidentiality?

Tahseen: Which do you think works better? And I think in indirect versus direct, where have you seen the most honest feedback come out? So any views there? 

Swati: We have mostly used a confidential you know, a way of collecting survey. It is not anonymous completely because a lot of time we have to work on demographics and, you know, for that we need that because when we are drawing out insights, we need to understand what segment of people is You know, are we getting this feedback from?

Swati: So it becomes important for us to have that information. So confidentiality is usually what we go with. However, sometimes we do allow that option to employees if they want to be anonymous while they're responding we allow that feature for our employees to choose, but I think confidentiality is something that we go with.

Tahseen: So in terms of, you know, I think one of the things that you know, HR professionals typically struggle with and we've seen is, you know, getting employees to respond to the surveys, right? So you are running surveys, you want them to give answers, you want to understand what the expectations are. and act on it.

Tahseen: But till they don't respond, this whole, this whole, you know, process is moot. So from that perspective what can leaders, how can leaders build trust and ease the survey process to boost employee participation in surveys? 

Swati: So certainly you have to the attention span of people has gone down tremendously.

Swati: Now, nobody wants to sit for, you know, half an hour and fill answers to these questions that they don't even know whether they'll be looked into or not. So I think that simplifying the survey, making it shorter. You know, designing the questions in a way that you're able to capture more with less and in lesser amount of time.

Swati: 

Swati: So if they see that, okay, the organization will act on it, if they see that there is. You know, the time that they're going to spend in giving that feedback, it will definitely, somebody's going to look into it and it will be shared and acted upon.

Swati: I think that building that trust is important. That's how you will be able to encourage more participation. It has to be in the beginning, perhaps you have to push it on people. You have to make sure that you're blocking their calendars and you're asking them to push it. You're following up with leaders.

Swati: You're making sure that leaders are accountable for the participation level in their unit. You do a lot of. You know, interunit competitions to say, Oh, this unit is winning. They have a higher participation rate. So this is something that you're trying to do. So it's more of both push and pull technique that you have to apply when you are trying to solicit feedback.

Swati: But I think that as you go on and in the organization, when people see that the feedback is being acted upon, I think it will build trust and, you know, with time, then people would be more willing to do it and it will be less of push and more of pull that will happen. 

Tahseen: Wow, that is great. Okay, so now, like, in, I think the big difference you know, between going from push to pull strategy, Swati, I understand is acting on feedback. So what are some of your recommendations there? So I think that so when we do the feedback when after we have sought the feedback, what we do is that we start with analyzing it in terms of how much is the positive response. We've got how much is negative. What are the neutral comments coming? I must acknowledge that getting. Understanding what is working good for the organization is also equally important as understanding that. What are the pain points? Because you need to know that what are the things that people are appreciating and that's something that you've got to continue doing and perhaps invest a little more time in because people are appreciative of it.

Tahseen: 

Tahseen: So you've got to identify that, you know, that Which particular segment does it relate to? And then you've got to start translating or start sharing that feedback with the different layers of people. So you've got to start with the top management. Then you've got to start in, you know, and I feel that eventually you have to try and go as much.

Tahseen: Closer to the base employee level as you can with that, with the outcome of that survey, because that is something that will build the trust for people to be willing to, you know, share feedback the next time. So it is also okay to acknowledge that, okay, these are the spaces where you feel, or, you know, our employees feel that we are not good at as an organization, and we are willing to invest in it.

Tahseen: And we are happy 

Tahseen: that you've. You know, voiced it out. 

Tahseen: 

Tahseen: So we have been able to do it. We have, you know, we do these surveys and there are certain, you know, sections which came as needing more work from the organization. And when we did the survey after two years we looked at those parameters and there was a significant improvement in those areas.

Tahseen: So it showed to us that if you're putting, you know, intentional effort in some direction as an organization, we do see results and we. Do you see people acknowledging it and it reflecting in better score in those areas after a few years than you know what it was in the past? 

Tahseen: I think an importantthing here is, so traditionally, you know, an organization would run annual surveys and you know, the time to actually act on this feedback was long and maybe by the time, you know, the feedback was acted upon, you know, either people, either employees are disengaged or they've left the organization.

Tahseen: So do you think, you know, for the action to be in real time as it is happening, right, with employees is important and what role does technology have to play in this? 

Swati: Definitely, definitely. So I think that continuous feedback is the needle of the hour. You cannot rely on just one survey in the year and the pace at which change is happening, like the things that you're asking for now will not be relevant six months down the line.

Swati: Like there will be something which is very, you know, different after six months that you want to talk about. So definitely you want to have mechanism where you are continuously reaching out to your people, continuously understanding how they're feeling, continuously acting on it. And definitely this can only happen through AI enabled tools.

Swati: It is very difficult for given the size of the teams and, you know, how much personal you can get as an individual, I think AI is something that you want to leverage upon in order to have more of that continuous feedback mechanism in place. 

Swati: So having those customized questions for the different segments of people, I think definitely people will feel that this is more relevant to them and definitely they would want to participate and contribute. So no doubt about it. AI can play a very big role in customizing those questions and working towards the continuous feedback mechanism.  

Tahseen: So what are those metrics as an HR leader that you look at and measure to understand, you know, whether your employee engagement initiatives are going in the right direction or not?

Swati: So we definitely look at the employee satisfaction score engagement score. We look at we look at the attrition numbers. Have we have we been able to contain attrition? We look at internal mobility. Statistics. How many more people are interested have applied for more jobs internally?

Swati: How many people are moving around? We look at the burnout you know ratio. We look at, you know, if, if, if people are overworking, are they feeling burnt out? So, you know, those are the parameters. 

Swati: So we also look at, you know, how does our customer experience how are our customer experience scores looking at, looking like, which will eventually translate. So employee experience translates into customer experience, which then translates into, you know, the the productive, like the the bottom line of the organization, right.

Swati: So it's all interconnected. So we also look at if there's an improvement in the productivity of the organization. So I think these are some of the metrics that we use to measure it. Got it. 

Tahseen: I think. 70 percent of the experience for an employee maybe comes from a manager. So from that perspective, with managers being an important bridge, what are some things that you do and recommend others do as well to make managers more effective? 

Swati: So yes, so we invest very heavily in our middle management layer.

Swati: In the past, the organizations would focus more on senior leadership. There were a lot of programs, whether it is, you know, the the training programs, or it was, you know, executive coaching that we offer to them. But now we realize that it is the manager layer, which is going to make most of the difference because they are the bridge between the leadership and the employees.

Swati: And there is a lot of investment around their development, a lot of awareness sessions, which are, you know, made which is done for them. 

Swati: So I think the the senior leadership showing how important this middle management layer is to people, making sure that the managers understand that how much senior leadership is relying on them and to make people understand that your managers. You know, are very well equipped. They're empowered to take care of, you know your needs.

Swati: I think that that is something that is done in who set the expectation with the stakeholders. And there is a lot of investment in terms of grooming and developing this middle management layer so that they become capable to handle all the expectations, which is for, which is, which comes to them from different stakeholders.

Tahseen: And can you, can you think of an example or, you know an experience like in terms of, you know, improving this experience for middle managers,Is there anything like that that you can think of right now?

Swati: That is, I think that we have empowered. We have tried to empower our middle management layer more in terms of, you know, certain approval processes that we have in the organization. So let's say that if you were hiring or salary related decisions of, you know, so we have salary ranges for every role. And we say that, okay, up to this level, a manager can decide, but beyond this level is something that his manager or a senior leader, we need their approval.

Swati: But eventually we realized that we got to empower, we got to trust that our middle manager. You know, management layer understands the implications of their decisions, and we allow them more decision making power. We can, we can groom them. We can tell them what can be the impact of the decision and therefore make them more accountable for it.

Swati: But I think this is something that we have done in terms of empowering of a middle management layer, allowing them more decision making power. And we have seen good, good outcome of it in terms of them feeling good about it, them taking the accountability of it and owning. You know, their decisions. It's not something that they have to say.

Swati: Oh, this came from the top and this is what we could do.That's something we've done and we've seen good outcome of it. 

Tahseen: My last question for you is, if you would want to share one advice you could give to people leaders across India, what would it be? 

Swati: I think my advice would be to number one, to leverage on AI. And, you know, I think that we have to, as much as, you know, it is, it is considered it's something which is going to take away the jobs of people, but I think you have to see how you leverage on it.

Swati: What is the part that can be taken care of by AI? And what is the other part that you have to better prepare yourself for? And I think that it is the human side, which is becoming more important because what AI cannot take is. the human in you. And I think that as people managers, all of us have to bring that that side of ours.

Swati: When we are, you know, working with our teams and with our people, we have to make sure that we bring that humane side. And that is, I think what will make their experience better. That will make us effective as leaders. And that is what will make our organizations succeed. 

Tahseen: That is good. That is some really, you know, short crisp and sound advice Swati.

Tahseen: Thank you very much. These were some great insights. I especially love the one that you shared on, you know, the generational change for me. Thank Swati. Thank you for your time. Thank you, 

Swati: Tahseen. Thank you.