Leadership Insights: A conversation with Dr. Sriharsha A Achar
Team AdvantageClub.ai
July 22, 2026
A Chat with Dr. Sriharsha Achar
Here is the excerpt:
Smiti
Hi everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of Inspiring Leaders and Leadership, a podcast by AdvantageClub.ai, Season 2. My name is Smiti. I’m one of the founders of AdvantageClub.ai, and I’m also your host for today. We have another amazing person with us today: Dr. Sriharsha Achar, who is the Executive Director and CHRO of Star Health and Allied Insurance. Welcome, Dr. Achar, to the show.
Sriharsha
Thank you very much, happy to be on the show.
Smiti
We’re really excited to have you here. So, Dr. Achar, we’ll start off by telling a little bit to the viewers about your journey of how you started your career and how you’ve eventually reached a peak where you’re the CXO, you’re the ED, and you’re managing so many things. How has your journey been? A little bit about your background and your amazing, inspiring journey itself?
Sriharsha
It’s always good to talk about the past, although it has little bearing on the future, nevertheless. I was raised in Goa. I also started my initial career there. And that’s where my zest for life comes from. So, I did my bachelor’s degree in electronics and telecom from the College of Engineering, Goa, my Master’s in industrial engineering from the IIT School of Industrial Engineering at Goa University, and my MBA and HR, all from Goa. I completed my PhD much later in life, in 2006, which is about 17 years ago. So, my first career jump into the corporate sector took me to Lucknow, and that’s where I polished my skills of interacting with people.
And I’ve lived and worked in Bangalore for a very long time, almost 12 years. That’s where I honed my management skills, as I was in the IT, ITES, and pharma industry. That was the exposure that I acquired there.
And I’ve been living in the north for a very long time now, specifically in Gurgaon. The last 17-plus years in NCR have been interesting, to say the least. That’s where insurance exposure happened to me. And above all, organization-building exposure, because that’s the time I came into the CXO position.
And that is what I’m enriching myself with currently, not just people. So, over the last four years, I’ve been operating out of Chennai, and I try to be with the family in Gurgaon whenever I can, as and when I get a few days off. Having lived in the Philippines, the US, the Middle East, and having traveled to various other parts of the world, mainly for work, I have added additional perspectives, flavors, and exposure to professional life as well as personal life.
Now, to my mind, all HR professionals who are successful in their respective domains or fields or careers are the ones who have not only surmounted the organizational challenges and stakeholders’ expectations, but also have gone beyond that extra mile, thought out of the box consistently, to make a difference to the human side of the business. Even today, I wake up every morning as if it’s my first day at the office and look forward to new learning. And with all the new kinds of people joining the organization every day, there is an immense amount of learning opportunities.
So, this discipline is perhaps the reason for what I am today as a son, as a husband, as a father, a friend, a neighbor, a professional, and above all, a human being. So that kind of sums up my 38 years of career thus far.
Smiti
38 years is amazing. So, you’ve had such a diverse journey; it was geographically, not just in India, but even outside India, very varied in nature.
Like you’ve seen the culture of people in the Philippines, the culture of work in the US, in India, even in India, like the culture in Gurgaon is very different from the culture in Chennai. So, I’d love to hear a little bit about that. Did you feel that there were any challenges you had to navigate or anything interesting you felt you’d like to share with the audience?
Sriharsha
I like the professionalism in the US. And in the Philippines, it’s a similar culture to India; people are very warm. In Dubai, it’s more business-like. But then the number of Indians, Pakistanis, and Asians is so high that you start feeling at home. People will be people anywhere in the world.
As an HR professional, it doesn’t make a difference as far as the country or company is concerned. HR is kind of agnostic. So that’s my short response to your question.
Smiti
Absolutely, it makes sense. And it’s also interesting to learn from all these cultures, and a lot of it you don’t realize through the time you’re actually there, and you see those things. And you feel that, oh, this was another culture shock for me. That was another culture shock for me.
Sriharsha
I would say flavor instead of shock.
Smiti
Yes, flavor. Well, when I started off at UCLA, the first thing they did in orientation was explain to us the concept of culture shock. So that’s always something that comes to mind.
Sriharsha
As Indians, I think we’re very, what you call shock absorbent.
Smiti
Yes, very resilient, very shock absorbent, and very open, very adjustable, very moldable.
Sriharsha
No wonder so many Indians are successful all over the world.
Smiti
Absolutely. So I’ll come back to 38 years, it’s overwhelming.
So it’s been 38 years since you started your career. What is the one thing you wish somebody had told you early on in your career journey, which you’d like to share with people who are maybe early in the journey or early in the leadership path, or something you’d want to tell them?
Sriharsha
Across walks of life, across all stages of life, the one thing that I’m going to say now has become so important in today’s context is that life is a choice all day, every day. It’s as simple and as complex as that. So I wish someone had told me this in my 20s. Today, information overload makes these choices even more difficult.
When we were growing up, we were in an analog world. I keep telling all the people, from an analog world, we moved to a digital world and now to an AI world, and we’ve seen it, our generation has seen it. I am 58, and I’ve seen it all.
So, from a rotary phone to an iPhone, and what all an iPhone can do and what all a rotary phone could do, which used to never work for 15 days in a month, and you had to wait 15 years to get that connection. So in 15 minutes, today’s connections get activated. So I’ve been just penning a few things on the cell phone and its uses, and I’ve found 53 uses already.
So I’m looking for more, and I was just ending that whole article, which is going to come out tomorrow or the day after on my blog, which is #AcharkeVichar. If it had a soda bottle opener and a lighter as well, integrated into the cell phone, that would have been the kind of best thing to happen.
Smiti
I like the name #AcharkeVichar. I’m definitely gonna look that up, and it’s a very cool name for that. But as you said, life is all about choices, and that’s a very important point.
Like, even the Netflix shows we watch nowadays are interactive. So there are shows in which you have a choice, and then the story becomes as per your choices. So that’s amazing.
And I think life is all about the journey of those choices. And every choice you make could have a disproportionate impact on your future.
Sriharsha
It defines your destiny.
Smiti
Destiny, exactly. So, in the words of Achar ke Vichar, choose wisely, because it’s going to define your destiny. And, one of the things which I’ve seen in very successful leaders is that they’re always inspired by people who’ve been their mentors or supporters throughout the journey, because while you have to walk the journey alone, you can’t do everything alone.
You need people in your life who support you day in and day out. So, who has been a significant influence in your leadership journey? What lessons have you learned from them? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Sriharsha
Charity begins at home. Very difficult to give credit to any one person, as there have been a number of people who have sculpted my life. I can talk about myself, my mother for imbibing the right values and discipline, my dad for teaching me humility and meticulousness, very important. I still remember he used to maintain accounts in a small notebook. And at the end of the year, we used to tally and see whether aamdani athani par kharcha rupiah toh nahi ho gaya.
My wife for instilling in me the virtues of patience and selflessness. My children keep me a child at heart. Great bosses for their professional mentoring.My colleagues for their collaboration and my subordinates for their respect. My friends for their best wishes. And more recently, over the last two years, my toddler grandson has taught me about the evolution of life.
One of the guys I admire is President Barack Obama. I admire him a lot. And even today, he’s kind of very active as far as his professional life goes. He used to say, people will always tell you what’s unreasonable. But what defines greatness is ignoring the unreasonable impossibility and making the unreasonable happen. Does that answer your question?
Smiti
Yes. Making the unreasonable happen. So a big thanks to Dr. Achar’s family, colleagues, bosses, friends, and Mr. Obama.
So, a lot of things, as you move on with life, as you grow in your careers, there are a lot of beliefs which you have had in the past, which you really strongly feel about. But then, when you actually start experiencing those things, you start thinking that maybe that was like an immature thought, or maybe that’s something I used to believe in earlier, but it’s different now. Similarly, a lot of us have very pre-instigated beliefs in our heads, and I’d love to understand maybe one or two commonly held beliefs about your role or about life in general that you feel are very common for people but that you very passionately disagree with.
Sriharsha
See, my passion and panache have always been HR. That’s why I’ve stuck to the profession for close to four decades. I’ve always believed that the mission of HR should be to collaborate with internal customers and enable employees to deliver outstanding results, obviously aligned with the overall business results or goals.
Now, the issue is that millennials have started taking leadership roles. The future generations have already hit the workforce, but millennials have started taking leadership positions, and it’s high time that we balance our thinking and execution, keeping them in mind, because dealing with the new generations is different. I won’t say it’s difficult, but it’s different.
I disagree with the thought that having an engaged or motivated workforce is the sole responsibility of the HR function. That’s a disagreement I have with everybody, because I believe the role or responsibility of HR should always be transferred to the line. It’s very sad that only HR folks are made accountable for low engagement scores.
A delightful EX or employee experience is made when a new employee sails through the journey of his tenure in a company from recruitment to retirement or exit, and at various touch points, that experience has to stand out. That’s what I look at all the time, trying to tweak where we can do better. So I’ve always believed in this dictum that we either make ourselves accountable or we will be made accountable by our circumstances.
So in my view, managers, leaders, department heads, anybody who manages a team knows their team better than the HR person sitting a distance away. So they should be made accountable for engagement scores. That’s one belief I’ve always held about human resources as a function.
Smiti
Now, that’s amazing. And I resonate with that. So I firmly believe, and I always say that, engagement is not just an HR responsibility.
As you said, you know, everything from a manager to a leader to a department head to even a ground-level manager or a ground-level supervisor needs to be involved in terms of engaging employees, in terms of driving retention, reducing attrition, and overall creating a better employee experience for the entire organization. And at the end of the day, they are the ones who are working day in and day out with employees. So they have a better understanding and a much deeper insight into what things are going to work and what things are not.
So totally bang on point, which you mentioned here.
Sriharsha
Customer is not kasht se mar. And customers are two types: external and internal. So the same set of people who say customer, customer service, customer centricity, customer experience should also be saying employee, employee experience, employee centricity.
Only then your customer CX is directly affected by your EX. Not the other way.
Smiti
And happy employees make happy customers. Right.
Sriharsha
Virgin Atlantic.
Smiti
Yes absolutely. And talking about delightful employee experiential programs, can you throw a little bit of light on what kind of programs you have innovated, maybe in your current or in your past roles, in your wonderful years of experience where you’ve been able to drive better employee experiential programs, which you’ve seen work really well?
Sriharsha
Let me not talk about the specific programs, but let me talk about the philosophy that I’ve used. In my research during the multiple PhDs that I have acquired, I have come across five things that are common across countries, cultures, organizations, and, surprisingly, generations.
Having spoken to somebody who is in the nineties, that’s my dad, to somebody who’s in the twenties, that’s my younger daughter, and the new employees of 21, 22 coming into the system, and talking to people in the colleges where I go and speak to people, and I do a lot of leadership through storytelling. So when it comes to employees, let’s specifically talk about employees; there are five things that are common. Right at the top is trust, followed by respect, followed by flexibility, followed by empowerment, and finally, the loop closes with compassion.
I’ve asked my dad, were these important when you were working? He said, yes. I’ve asked somebody in the seventies, are these important? Yes. I am in the near-sixties mode, so it’s important for me. The next generation in their forties, it’s important to them, and for the people in their twenties, it’s important to them.
And luckily in our organization, we have people in their 18s, 19s, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies working, seven generations. And I’ve asked a number of employees, what is important to you? So it all revolves around these five things.
So my guidance to all budding HR practitioners is to use two very sparingly used senses when they design their employee engagement programs. Apart from the five senses and the sixth sense called intuition, I use two more senses, common sense and human sense, when deploying engagement programs. And that is leading to employee excellence and employee experience.
Smiti
That’s great. Common sense and human sense. And the five pointers you mentioned around trust, respect, flexibility, empowerment, and compassion, you’re absolutely right.
Irrespective of whatever generation, whatever geography, whatever community or whatever diversity module you’re looking at, everybody needs these five things to actually feel that the organization cares about them and they’re really engaged in the company. So those are really amazing.
Sriharsha
That’s why, initially, I also alluded that human beings are the same everywhere. If you go to the US, these are the same five things that are important there as well.
Smiti
Absolutely. And one of the things that you also pointed out very rightly is that today’s generation is a little different from what my dad or my grandfather used to think while they were coming to work. And earlier, I think work was primarily about creating a sense of security and stability in life. Today, work is all about the next level on top of it.
How do I feel? Do I feel I have a purpose? Do I feel that I’m valued in the company, and that’s where I decide to stay, or I don’t? So what kind of things do you think are the key responsibilities of HR leaders?
Because today’s landscape and today’s employee needs are very different. And post-COVID, it has been literally changing every year. Every year we see new needs of employees, and every year there’s innovation required, which was never there earlier.
So, what are the main roles and responsibilities of HR leaders to manage these changing landscapes very efficiently?
Sriharsha
Just before I go there, let’s just go back to trust, respect, flexibility, empowerment, and compassion. At some point in time, it was probably 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, making it 100%. From generation to generation, that 20 may have become more or less, but the total has remained 100.
Why I’m saying this is that a 21-year-old today will be a 26-year-old in five years. And in that five-year journey, the percentages will start differing. And what he wanted as a 21-year-old and what he now needs as a 26-year-old are completely different.
And the same guy at 35 will need completely different things in life. So management has to evolve with that kind of thinking. Now, coming to your question, I am a firm believer in the power of three.
If you have more than three things to do, the fourth thing gets affected. So having more than three KRAs or KPIs or whatever you might want to call them does not serve anybody’s purpose. So as far as HR is concerned, my three picks are capacity building, developing and strengthening the skills of people, instincts, their abilities, processes, and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world.
The second pick is capability building. Developing a scalable plan for how an organization can identify, develop, and nurture the capabilities that are critical to the business success. And finally, most importantly, which is the glue, culture building. Developing a plan to promote the values, beliefs, and actions in an organization.
End of the day, what’s culture? It’s a potpourri mixture of people coming in from different organizations, and it’s a semi-crystal structure. The CEO changes, automatically the culture changes because the organization is always a long shadow of the CEO of the company.
It’s top-driven. It can never be bottom-up. So, as an HR professional and as a human being, my passion, purpose, and panache, as I said, is to make a difference to people’s lives. And that has to be the passion, purpose, and panache of any HR professional: to make a difference to the lives of his or her employees.
Smiti
Absolutely. And like you rightly said, typically leaders focus on capacity building, which is developing skills, processes, and resources for all the communities so that they can not only survive but also adapt to these constantly changing requirements. And adding to that drive and that purpose of why you’re actually doing something.
Sriharsha
Then you will thrive.
Smiti
Yes, you’ll thrive as well. And in terms of capability building, they get a lot of people in the companies, but then they don’t really work on building capabilities for those employees, and that doesn’t help anyone because eventually growth stops for employees, and most of the employees who leave and change organizations are because their growth has paused.
And lastly, culture building, most importantly, imbibing all your company’s core values and cultural values into what you’re doing so that employees also know why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s not just about having three KRAs; it’s also about understanding why I have those three KRAs and what the long-term and short-term impact that work is doing is to build the organization and the overall impact of the company in general.
And I think with that, we’re also at the end of the podcast, and it has been such an enriching conversation, Dr. Achar, and I love your energy. And I’m a person who thrives on energy.
So, if the person in front of me is having additional energy, I get more energized. So thank you so much for this amazing podcast. And I’m sure our audiences will also get super pumped up and super energetic after listening to this.
Sriharsha
I’ll just end with a couplet. Cheete ki chaal, baaz ki nazar, achar ka HR aur vichar par sandeh nahi karte, kabhi bhi maat de sakti hai.
Smiti
Wow. Very nice. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Achar.
Sriharsha
Thank you so much.
Smiti
Lovely interacting with you.
Concluding Thoughts
**This podcast was recorded during Dr. Sriharsha A Achar’s tenure at Star Health & Allied Insurance Company Ltd. and published on YouTube on Sep 7, 2023.
