Leadership Insights: A conversation with Rajiv Naithani, Chief People Officer at Persistent Systems
August 12, 2026
In this episode of Advantage Engage, Smiti sits down with Rajiv Naithani, Chief People Officer of Persistent, to talk about his journey from Uttarakhand to the C-suite. They dig into recognition, holistic well-being, belongingness, and how Persistent is using Agentic AI to reimagine the employee experience.
A Chat with Rajiv Naithani
Guest: Rajiv Naithani, Chief People Officer, Persistent
Host: Smiti, Co-Founder & COO, AdvantageClub.ai
Smiti
Welcome to Advantage Engage, a podcast where we talk to amazing leaders and get inspired by them. My name is Smiti, and I am the Co-Founder & COO of AdvantageClub.ai, which is a global employee experience, rewards recognition, and employee well-being platform. Today we have an amazing guest with us and I’m sure all of you will love listening to him. So it’s my pleasure to invite Mr. Rajiv Naithani, who’s the Chief People Officer of Persistent.
Welcome to the show, Rajiv.
Rajiv
Thank you, Smiti, for having me here.
Smiti
I’m so glad you made it. And I’m sure our viewers are going to love listening to you. We have an amazing podcast lined up for everybody. Rajiv, you’re a well-known name in the industry. I don’t need to really introduce you to anybody, but I think what a lot of people don’t know about you is your journey to where you have come here today. So we’d love to hear about your journey. If you could just enlighten our viewers about your roots and how you’ve reached this stage today.
Rajiv
Thank you, Smiti. My roots are actually from Uttarakhand. So I’m a Himalayan boy. I feel very fortunate that I was born in Uttarakhand, but not that fortunate to live there permanently. When I was four, we moved to Delhi NCR for all the obvious reasons. I am a Kendriya Vidyalaya product, studied in three different Central schools, and then after I did my higher education from Delhi University, my education thereafter never stopped. I’m a lifelong learner from that standpoint.
But when I particularly talk about the corporate journey, I’ve been in the technology industry all throughout my career. I’ve worked with different tech companies, mostly services companies, barring one product company, which was a French-headquartered company, Dassault Systèmes. I’ve been a fast tracker, fortunately. I was the youngest HR Head in GlobalLogic, and I was the youngest CPO in Infogain. God has been kind from that perspective.
Of course, there has been immense learning in that journey, in terms of attitude, the learning curve, and the people who were instrumental in shaping my career from the direction and pivot it took. And I feel some of the things which come from the place I come from, for example, the resilience of being a mountaineering person, that resilience has actually shaped how I deal with a lot of the perspectives that evolve and happen around us.
And in addition, there’s a lot of empathy and hard work, which is very common in the hills, you find. That has also helped shape me as an individual. That’s the journey so far, and I’m glad to be here with you today in this podcast session.
Smiti
I agree with you on the resilience and hard work, especially for people from the hills. I am also an Uttarakhandi, so I can attest to that. But what I really like about your journey is that you’re very humble about it, about your roots, and where you’ve reached today. Secondly, you say it very lightly, very casually, but it’s not easy being a Chief People Officer of a large multinational organization, or even multiple multinational organizations at an early age.
So how have you been able to achieve this, which a lot of people take years to reach? How do you think you’ve been able to navigate those challenges, especially in a world where age is generally directly proportional to the designation you’re at, especially in larger organizations?
Rajiv
Sure. First of all, sometimes people do ask me this question, and my simple answer is God has been kind, and of course, my parents’ blessing have also come along through that journey. But I think it’s not just about hard work. That alone is not enough, you need to continuously evolve yourself and challenge yourself. The learning curve should not stop. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of great people around me who enabled my journey. They’ve been mentors, guides, and instrumental in shaping my career trajectory.
I think attitude also plays an important role. One thing I always ensured in my life is to carry an enabling attitude. I would not be someone who is difficult to work with. I’m very adaptable from that standpoint. And of course, timing is always essential. Sometimes we call it hard work, sometimes we call it luck, but to me it’s timing, because you need to be at the right place at the right time to get the right outcome. That really helps. To me that’s timing more than luck.
When I look at this entire context from a journey perspective, in my formative years, my self-definition was limited to competence and integrity. What was more important was to be relevant. The learning, the skills, were very important elements. Of course, holding my integrity, because that defines who I am. But over a period of time, as I got deeper into organizational development, leadership, emotional intelligence, and even spirituality, because I’ve been fortunate to get into that space as well, I realized that the self-definition has a very different meaning.
Particularly as a leader, that self-definition is to be an instrument of change and that brought a transformative perspective for me. I started looking at things not from what really happened, but from what I could do here or what I can do there. That’s a big shift, because then you stop blaming others, you stop blaming situations. You start looking at yourself as the instrument of change, what actions can you take, what can you do. As an HR leader, for example, if there’s a problem from a culture perspective, my perspective is: how can I correct the cultural aspects of the organization? How can I lead the change?
One thing I learned as part of my emotional intelligence journey is that anything I look at in my environment, personal or professional, from a relationship perspective, it’s me who is responsible for that relationship to work or not. I cannot blame anybody else for that. That actually gives me a lot of power to take charge, and that’s really how I shape many things: the way I manage a relationship, the way I look at problem statements.
So, these are some of the things that have really helped me in this journey of growing. As I said, I was fortunate to have a lot of good people around who were instrumental, and that led me to grow faster as well. So, my growth trajectory comes because of multiple reasons, not just because I bring something unique.
Smiti
I think what you’re describing is a classic case of self-actualization. We cover that in Maslow’s Hierarchy. You’re at the top of the pyramid. You have reached self-actualization there.
And it’s a very powerful statement, because it made me realize that once you self-actualize, you start getting success automatically, because then you start thinking in the direction of not “what you can do for me” but “what I can do for you.” And that itself is probably the beginning of you getting so much power in your hands, because your thought process is: what can I do, how can I make a change, how can I make things better.
This is probably one of the best leadership learnings I’ve ever heard, that when you reach self-actualization, you become a better and more powerful leader.
Rajiv
I will not go to that stage because there’s a lot of journey to cover. One day, hopefully, because of being an Uttarakhandi or Himalayan boy, I would eventually possibly become a monk sitting in the Himalayas.
But coming back to the point, the way I look at this is, most often managers or leaders make one mistake: they think they can manage people, and they look at management as managing someone. To me that’s the incorrect way of looking at it.
Imagine if I were to ask this question to you or anybody else, can you manage your kids, or can you allow someone to manage you? The answer would be no. The kids manage you nowadays! Nobody likes to be managed.
So as a leader, what happens is you end up actually leading people. If you change that perspective, instead of thinking “this person reports into me, so I own him or her” that’s not the right space as a leader. The right space is: you can’t manage that person, and that person will never allow you to manage. But as a leader, your responsibility is to lead, you lead by example, you lead by inspiration. You think, can you do something which can inspire this person? Can you influence this person in different situations?
That’s where the difference comes from. Once you have the realization that you are here to enable, you’re here to lead, it brings a lot of change. When we talk about self, my role as a leader, my perspective is that as a leader I have three responsibilities. One is leading self, which is the first fundamental, because if I’m not aware of my own emotions, my own personality, my own behaviors, how will I lead others? That is the second most important part of leadership, because first I need to lead myself, then I can lead others. And of course, leading self and others is about leading business outcomes, that’s the expectation from the leadership perspective. I think these are the fundamentals people sometimes miss out on. And if we really understand them, life is very simple.
Smiti
Yes, that makes sense. And parallel to what you spoke about, when a leader starts thinking in this direction, that “I am not owning this particular person, the person is acting out of their own will,” and therefore while collective success is something I take credit for, failure is also something I take credit for, you are technically, as a leader, disassociating that person from yourself. You’re saying, “I don’t own this person, this is a separate human being.”
Hence in HR we talk about employee experience, that person’s journey in the organization, from the day they join to the day they leave, all those moments which happened, why they mattered and why employee experience is so important in any organization. And you’ve mentioned that the day you start looking at EX as a peripheral function, you are designed for collective business failure. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Can you elaborate? What do you mean by that, and what do you think are the right aspects of building a great employee experience?
Rajiv
Sure. Let me give you the response in multiple dimensions.
Number one, let’s take a step back and look at society at large. What has really changed over a period of time is that experience has become the real differentiator.
Imagine choosing between two mobile phones. Both give you the same features, have almost the same cost, whatever you’re looking for, but the differentiator is the experience. You’ll pick the one that gives you the experience. Similarly, if you’re choosing between two restaurants with the same cuisine, similar cost, and similar quality, the differentiator is how you feel when you enter that restaurant.
Similarly, when we look at the workplace, it’s no different. When people come to the workplace, they’re looking for an experience: managerial experience, cultural experience, learning experience, even technology experience, including how applications are designed and provided to employees for navigating. If all of this doesn’t give them the experience, the compensation is just the basic hygiene. It won’t help them stay with the company.
There’s one more dimension to this, demographics. Today, in the industry I come from, almost one-fourth of the population is Gen Z, and in the next few years that will become the most dominant group. Now, the upbringing of this generation is different. Unlike my generation or your generation, where we had to earn it, this generation didn’t need to because their parents had done it and passed on convenience to them. They’ve seen experiences at the click of a button or a command. Now, when they come to the workplace, it means a very different proposition of expectations from a corporate standpoint. So as an organization, are we delivering that experience? Are we building the EX which will create stickiness for them?
I don’t call it Employee Value Proposition anymore. Most organizations say “This is my EVP, which will bring you onboard and make you stay.” I think this needs to change to Employee Value Experience. I call it EVE, because tomorrow, with AI evolution coupled with human empathy powered by human intelligence, this experience will be very different. What Employee Value Experience we show and deliver to our employees will determine what they feel about the workplace. That’s how I see the entire EX context for workplaces. EVE instead of EVP makes more sense.
Smiti
Do you think this whole shift has happened in the past one decade? And do you believe that? People say this has happened in the past decade. Why do you think that is? Is it because of the generational gap, demographic factors, or a combination?
Rajiv
In the Indian context, because I’ve seen a lot of changes happen, number one is the middle-class uprising, from a social and financial income perspective. That has helped, in addition to technology advancement.
Before we had mobile phones, we didn’t know many things could be possible. We also didn’t have free data. Now we have free data so we use it more. Earlier it used to be a big deal to use data, even for phone calls. Everything used to cost you, so usage was limited. Today you can just access information absolutely anytime, which used to be premium before. Now, on social media, information is available, but the problem is whether it’s the right information or wrong information, accurate or fake. Is it a WhatsApp University product, or is it real?
I think these aspects, technology advancement, the mobile revolution, family income rising, and better outreach, the entire world has become one because of social media. For example, when I look at my girls, I have two daughters, and they’re listening to Korean music. Imagine in my generation, it would have been impossible. They know the characters and celebrities of the Korean world, which is very different. This generation is universal, they behave the same way in India, in America, or any other country.
So the world has come closer, and from that perspective, a lot has changed. Now when you look at it, it all gets connected through experience, we all need that convenience today. Even this podcast, for example, this entire setup is an experiential setup. I don’t think we would have imagined something like this two decades back, or even a decade and a half ago. Those conversations would have been very different.
Smiti
Yes! And even like a decade ago, where will you actually disseminate that information?
Rajiv
Correct, the platform wasn’t there,
Smiti
It was just YouTube; that was the only one. Social media was just starting off; it was in a very nascent stage. The globalization of content itself wasn’t possible. But today that has completely changed. So, I absolutely agree with what you said. Do you think, because today’s generation, today’s workforce, has access to so many things, is that one of the reasons they care about how they feel within organizations, and really care about whether they’re being recognized enough, versus maybe 20 years ago, where you get a paycheck, you work 9 to 6, you go home, you’re happy, you stay in the same company for 20 years, nobody bats an eyelid. Today it’s a different thing. Do you think that also adds to the factor of why people need recognition today?
Rajiv
Conceptually, we’ll have to go back to the basic hygiene and motivation theory. When I was starting my career, getting a fancy office was a big motivation. I still remember starting my career with HCL, in a nice glass building, and many people would dream or aspire to be part of that organization. That used to be a big motivation. Fortunately, I got into that organization, and then it was about my commitment to deliver. It was not about working from 9 to 6. I remember being in the office for 36 hours continuously because I had to deliver something and I was owning it. It was my own choice, and I had no complaints.
Now, current thinking is that people believe in holistic well-being. They think they have 24 hours: eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work, eight hours for the remaining part of life. When they have that holistic perspective in mind, they expect organizations to behave in a particular way. Sometimes this may appear like a relationship of convenience, almost transactional. Something like, “I’m doing more than what was expected, so I should be recognized.”
If we step back and look at this from an organization perspective, I think one mistake we make most often as leaders is that we don’t really understand the difference between acknowledgment, appreciation, recognition, and rewards.
My recommendation to leaders has always been: when somebody shows the behavior of going the extra mile, acknowledge that behavior, appreciate that behavior. Of course, you need to appreciate it in public, but don’t recognize it. Just acknowledge it: “I appreciate you stretching yourself to help the team.”
But if somebody is actually stretching, going the extra mile, and also impacting the outcome in a positive way, then recognize that person. And if that behavior is consistent, then reward that person differently. It has to be a three-step process. These are distinct. Sometimes we make the mistake of rewarding somebody for just going the extra mile, or recognizing a person for going the extra mile. Then we set the wrong expectation.
We need to appreciate the different demographic expectations on the floor, but at the same time, set the right perspective so people understand what kind of behavior will be appreciated, acknowledged, recognized, or rewarded differently.
Smiti
And talking about following organizational core values, you’ve mentioned that values are like music, consistent in melody and varied in expression. Amazing quote.
But how can an organization match the right values, the right behaviors, to the framework they’re creating for recognition? This is about linking it to values, but then you also have to tag it to managers, ensuring the right behaviors are being rewarded by all managers consistently across all units. It’s a complicated process, especially in a large organization like yours or the previous ones. So how can one attain that correctly?
Rajiv
You rightly said values are like music. You’ll have the same melody, but the instrument will change. Even if you change the instrument, you’ll have the melody. From a larger perspective, whether it’s a global organization or a distributed organization across geographies, certain things should be common. For example, how you look at appreciation, acknowledgment, recognition, and reward, that should be consistent.
Secondly, the value should be consistent. People should know what behaviors you’re appreciating in the company, which are unique to the context of the organization. Third, you need to link the ultimate North Star to the performance behaviors that are expected to be recognized. This should be consistent, and everybody should be aligned to that.
Where you need more localization is in things like: how do managers, cities, and geographies celebrate? The process of celebrating success could be different. Some like to celebrate over lunch parties, some like cake cutting, and some like different flavors and ways. At the same time, different localizations may have different expectations of recognition; in one geography, it could be driven by instrumental value, and in some, a certificate could be a great thing. A social media spotlight could be a great value-add, while in another geography, they don’t care about it.
So the localization should be allowed based on the context in which you operate, but certain things should be non-negotiable. We should always orient our managers to the power of recognition. Everybody likes to be recognized. It would be impossible for someone to say they don’t want to be recognized; you would like to be recognized, I would like to be recognized too. Recognition is a very fundamental expectation of any role. So if someone is exhibiting behaviors worth recognizing, please recognize them. That’s very important and essential.
Smiti
And do you think digitization helps in creating these localized flavors, or giving a personalized experience to people to pick and choose whatever they want?
Rajiv
I think it’s both yes and no. It’s a blend of technology and human touch. Recognition is a feeling. What makes you feel valued? Who is making you feel valued? Is it technology? No, it’s human. Technology will give you consistency, scale, efficiency, and means, but the human element is more important. If I’m recognizing somebody through a very good platform, and it generates a very good email with flowery content, an out-of-the-world message copied to many leaders and colleagues, is that enough? Possibly no. Because what I need to do as a human intervention is to really celebrate that as a human and make it authentic.
Recognition has to be authentic; it cannot be just technology-driven. Both are important, and as I said, it should be localized. Let people celebrate recognition in the context of their culture. Don’t enforce centralized policies and processes around that.
Smiti
Yes, that’s a very good point. Even though you create a generalized policy, if you’re a global organization, every region might not agree to that exact same mechanism of recognition. So while technology can help enable those different flavors, it is mandatory, almost essential, for every organization to first identify those flavors, talk to those regions, and see if they want to add a different flavor to it. Because if you don’t create that structure and you’re doing a generalized policy, that’s where managers don’t really recognize people in those regions, because they don’t feel it, they don’t associate. And then the empathy piece doesn’t get connected at all. This is very interesting.
And you also spoke about holistic well-being, and how it’s a very important part of the whole employee experience. I think there’s a MyLife@Persistent framework which spans individual, collective, and community well-being, and I know you personally have a lot of commitment to physical, mental, financial, and spiritual well-being. You mentioned you’re a spiritual person yourself.
So, as leaders, you might have your own personal philosophy towards well-being; how do you encompass it within your organization? How can a company really convert holistic well-being from a personal philosophy into an institution-wide practice, and what’s the right way of really disseminating it when you’re looking at well-being in any company?
Rajiv
First of all, I think wellness will not work if it is driven by the calendar. That’s the number one factor. Number two, it will always work when there is role modeling, and that’s very important. And third, of course, as an organization, you have a commitment to well-being.
Since you mentioned my personal commitment, my personal philosophy of life is that my life is based on four pillars of well-being: physical well-being, intellectual well-being, emotional well-being, and spiritual well-being.
Physical well-being is all about fitness. This body is my responsibility; I need to look after it like a vehicle. If I don’t maintain it, it will break down at some point. If I’m able to come to the studio to talk to you, it’s because I am mobile, and that’s my responsibility. The second aspect of physical well-being is what I eat, but that’s very personal, so I won’t delve into it.
The second pillar is intellectual well-being. I sometimes struggle with people who say, “I’ve done enough academically. It’s all about the job now.” I think as human beings we should never stop studying. My mantra for learning is “I don’t know.” That brings a lot of humility to learning even from kids. I learn a lot from my daughters and from youngsters. A few days back, I was having a review with one of the younger team members, and it was a first-time learning opportunity for me. I was asking like a kid to understand more about the model this person was presenting.
In my definition of learning, there’s a 70:20:10 model: 70% on the job, 20% is all about the environment, mentoring, and coaching, and 10% is the most important one, where you’re investing in your own development and growth, spending your time, money, and effort. If you’re doing all three, it gives you an amplified learning and growth proposition.
Emotional well-being is all about being aware of your own emotions and how you leverage that by understanding others and building relationships with them. My spiritual well-being has actually helped me understand the power of resilience. There are always pressure situations, but the pressure is outside. If my inner resilience is high, I won’t have stress. That’s a formula for stress too: pressure divided by resilience. Any object, if the pressure is higher than the resilience of the object, will break. Similarly, as a human being, if my inner resilience is higher than the pressure outside, I will not break; I will always find a reason, and I will be able to do it.
Now, in the context of corporate, role modeling becomes very important. As a leader, am I actually talking to my colleagues, team members, and employees about paying attention to their physical well-being? Am I practicing that first? If I’m not, how would I even role model that?
Similarly, for emotional well-being, am I creating a psychologically safe environment for them? Can they speak their mind? Can they challenge me on some of my perspectives? Of course we’re all professionals and respectful to each other, but challenging doesn’t mean being disrespectful. It’s about a different perspective. Am I giving voice to the most marginalized person in the team setting? That is psychological safety.
Now, since you mentioned MyLife@Persistent, it’s interesting that you could figure that out about Persistent. Credit goes to my marketing research team; they’ve done a great job. Persistent has a dedicated function we call MyLife@Persistent. This function is curated to ensure it is really dedicated to the holistic well-being of our employees. It’s not part of HR Business Partner roles, not part of HR operations, and not a part of L&D as well. It’s a dedicated team, and the leader of this team directly reports to me. So as an organization, we are committed to the holistic well-being of our employees, across every dimension, including physical, emotional, learning, financial, and social well-being too, because we live in a community; we work in a community.
I have not found any other organization in the tech services industry, or the tech industry as a whole, with a dedicated function on holistic well-being. That’s very unique at Persistent, and I take a lot of pride in it.
Smiti
And that resonates with your ideology around not making EX a backdrop function, and letting it have the “main character energy,” one of the recent Gen Z slang terms- very interesting. And typically, while talking about EX, we spoke about recognition and about well-being. I want to talk a little bit about culture and belongingness. You’ve mentioned that the future belongs to organizations that not only focus on measuring attrition, but actually focus on measuring belongingness.
And I think you also personally feel a lot about belongingness, like you feel connected to your roots, you really care about how you feel when you’re in your organization, and obviously as a leader, that culture also disseminates across the organization. So from a journey standpoint, what do you think are the cultural signals or belonging indicators you’ve seen work in the past, or what would you recommend leaders should focus on?
Rajiv
We always look at attrition, but to me, attrition is always a lag indicator, but belonging will be one of the lead indicators. Generally in the industry I come from, we mostly have a hybrid working context. As an employee, I always see the organization through the lens of my manager, because I have that connection regularly with my manager. So the experience I receive from my manager becomes the reality of the organization for me.
The managers have a significant role to play in actually building that bridge, connecting, and creating belongingness. How do the managers come across? How do they make the person feel? How do they communicate? Do they allow people to speak their mind? All of these are very important aspects of building belongingness in the organization. Otherwise it becomes very transactional.
You can’t actually measure belongingness with an instrument. You measure it with a feel. If you sit in a meeting room, you’ll make out whether people feel they belong in the organization, because they first belong to the manager. If they’re not speaking in the meeting, not questioning, not challenging, that’s an indicator, as silence is the worst enemy of belongingness. People need to speak; they need to express, not out of fear but out of a feeling of belongingness, that “I belong to this place, this is my company.” It’s like at home. We have all generations; we’ll have different perspectives, we’ll disagree with each other on certain topics, but when it comes to coming together, we’ll always belong. Why can’t we replicate that at the workplace?
I know it’s not easy, but that feeling of belongingness can only help us bring everybody together, and that happens when we recognize the space of every single person. Recognize that every single person belongs to the organization, has a voice, and we respect that; we allow them to speak. That’s the way we can actually create much more belongingness.
Smiti
Absolutely right. And adding to your point, in a healthy relationship, people always talk to each other. The problem is when people stop talking to each other, and there’s dead silence at home; that means people don’t feel like they belong there.
Rajiv
This reminds me of one of my ex-bosses. He told me: you should be able to know when your team member will resign, before he or she does. That was a very powerful statement, but it’s so true. You can see the behavior change, you can sense the body language of the person, and the modulation. You can sense it, even before the person brings the reason or logic to that behavior themselves and starts exploring something outside; you’ve already seen it. So as a manager, if you’ve conditioned yourself to know that, only then can you actually help create more belongingness for such people. Otherwise, you’ve already lost that person.
Smiti
Yes, that’s true. We feel and know that this person is going to leave, but we choose to ignore it or don’t do anything about it, and then two months later, when they’ve already made up their mind, it’s too late.
The last piece I want to talk about, especially because I’ve seen Persistent speak about it in a lot of forums, is that you’ve moved towards an Agentic Talent Model. So, I would love to learn what the Agentic Talent Model is, and the ideology behind it, moving the mindset from people being a “task doer” to actually being an “AI orchestrator.” What does that mean? What is the Agentic Talent Model? If you could enlighten us all.
Rajiv
So you heard me talk about Employee Value Experience. If I want to deliver that, I cannot do it based on human potential alone. I need the power of Agentic AI. In our context, the vision is that I want people to actually find solutions as per their convenience, whether it’s information they’re looking for, a work request on any people function, or anything else they want to understand. Why do they need to run and chase people? Why do they need to raise tickets? I want to completely do away with the ticketing system. It should not exist, because agents should be able to help address all of it.
At Persistent, we have our “Assist Framework.” We call PiAssist one of its agents, which helps employees find answers and solutions. It’s progressing and maturing every day, and adoption is increasing significantly; gradually, we’ll reach a point where there won’t be any ticketing system, because PiAssist will address everything for our employees.
I’ll give you another example from a career perspective. Today, as a fresher or early-experience person entering a bigger organization of 26,000 to 30,000 people, trying to understand your career trajectory is very challenging. You don’t know who to reach out to or what to talk about. Should you wait patiently for someone to eventually bless you with progression?
Smiti
And that someone might only have half the knowledge, might not have the entire thought process themselves.
Rajiv
That’s where I want to leverage the agent model, under our Assist Framework, to give that empowerment, because I always believe that as an employee I own my career, and as an organization, we need to enable the ecosystem for the employee to be successful in that trajectory. This should help the employee understand where they stand in the hierarchy, what their role is, from a roles, clusters, and taxonomy perspective, what learnings are attached to the role, and how it spans across different job families and levels in the organization.
The next logical question is, do I want to grow vertical, diagonal, or horizontal? What does it mean if I have an interest in a different role? What learnings do I need, what does that role mean to me, what will enable that to happen? For that, I should not be dependent on people; I should not need to ask anyone else for that information. But of course, once I have that perspective, I need human intervention; that’s the best synergy of AI with humans, which will make the difference in experience delivery in any organization.
I can then go to my manager and have a conversation, create my IDP (Individual Development Plan), or go to my HR Business Partner and talk about opportunities beyond my existing role. That’s the kind of change I want to bring from a career perspective, but it can’t happen without Agentic AI for us. So we’re leveraging agents in big ways to deliver a differentiated experience to our employees, including their own transformation from an AI skills perspective. So, there are numerous things we’re doing, and it’s a journey that will achieve much more than what I’m imagining right now.
Smiti
And I think leadership would play a big role here, deploying this in their daily approach, and more importantly, not being afraid of the fact that this is a way to push people out of their comfort zone, move them into another mindset. So educating the leadership and ensuring they’re on board would be of paramount importance.
Rajiv
This is our fiscal year-end. April 1 is the new year beginning, and I was working with my direct reports on goal-setting for the next year, particularly the corporate HR, ops, and experience team. The discussion we’re having is: how will you leverage AI in creating a differentiated experience for your employees? We need to start looking differently, even at the strategy and KPI level; otherwise, we won’t be able to achieve it. What surprised me pleasantly was that every single vertical lead within this function came up with thinking and solutioning around leveraging AI to create a differentiated experience, starting from the beginning of the employee lifecycle all the way to exit. That’s a positive change, in my opinion.
Smiti
Yes, I truly believe Agentic AI is the future.
Rajiv
Everything will move into a human-plus-agent combo mechanism. We can’t hide away from it. It’s going to happen anyway.
Smiti
Now we move on to the next segment. I have a bunch of rapid fire questions for you, and you have not seen these questions, so let’s see.
My first rapid fire question: if you weren’t in HR, what profession would you secretly enjoy pursuing?
Rajiv
Other than being a monk in the Himalayas, that could possibly be one of the responses. Mostly, when I think about it, I think I’d be a professor of organizational behavior, or possibly someone teaching spirituality in leadership.
Smiti
Wow, yes, you have very professor vibes.
Rajiv
Is it? Then I should pursue this one after some time.
Smiti
I’m sure you’re doing that already in your day-to-day life in some way or the other.
Rajiv
Not as a professor, but through teaching and training, maybe more of a coaching-based or counseling-based conversation.
Smiti
And what is that one habit you have personally built to protect your own well-being as a leader? Because your life would obviously be very chaotic, how do you maintain your own personal well-being?
Rajiv
As I said, the four pillars of my well-being are something I practice, and for me none has a higher weightage than the other. All four have equal weightage. The other important thing I try to practice is that every morning when I wake up, I want silence for some time before I get into any gadget exposure or any other activity.
Smiti
How long is that silence every morning?
Rajiv
It depends; it could be a few minutes, depending on the day, whether I’m traveling. On weekends I mostly go cycling, so I may not even have that time because I wake up at 4, 4:30, 4:45 am and I’m out cycling. On weekdays it’s usually a few minutes.
Smiti
A lot of people these days get up and go straight to the gadget. They want to see what they missed in the past 8-9 hours of sleep. I think keeping silence every morning is a nice way to slowly accustom your body to the day.
Rajiv
That’s the best moment of the day when you can reflect, even have gratitude. Thank yourself that you woke up when maybe thousands of people may not have woken up that morning.
It’s funny. I’ve seen this with kids. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old, and one of the things I noticed is that before she goes to sleep, she winds down. She stops playing, lies in bed, rolls around, rests, and relaxes herself to sleep. And when she wakes up, she does the same thing. She doesn’t want to eat food, doesn’t want to play; she’ll first spend a few minutes on the bed.
I think it’s a human thing. When we’re born, we’re born with it, but with all the gadgets and stuff, we forget it over time. Humans are designed to wind down and slowly wake up, not do what we are currently doing.
Smiti
Correct. Very good practice. What is one common corporate habit that you would happily get rid of?
Rajiv
Getting into meetings without any outcome, or non-agenda meetings. An agenda is always there, but then there’s a lot of discussion without reaching a conclusion or having an outcome-oriented approach. Time is invested, but not productively.
Smiti
And if your calendar suddenly cleared for a week, I think I know the answer, but where would you go first?
Rajiv
I have two answers. One, of course, I would love to travel with my family and plan a vacation. Otherwise, if I need to go solo, or don’t have much of an option, I would go back to my hometown in Uttarakhand and stay there for some time.
Smiti
And that’s why I knew the answer! Your favorite moment in your career when you got recognized?
Rajiv
There are many, actually.
One of the moments was when an employee was leaving the organization. As I was on a call in my office, he was standing outside and kept looking inside to see when I would get free. When I got done with the call, I asked if he was looking to meet me. He said it was his last working day, and he had come to thank me. It was a very emotional moment. He had tears rolling down his face, and he said something very heartfelt: that I had done something that really helped him in his career. For me, it was a very small act, but I felt it was a big recognition.
When I look back and see people coming to me telling me that I listened to them, or helped them come out of a particular situation, that’s the biggest recognition. It’s not about title growth, not about appreciation from leaders, not about industry recognition. It’s actually this kind of recognition that touches me the most.
Smiti
And a lot of times, as leaders, what we feel is a very small issue; we feel we’re solving a very small problem. It’s small for us, but for the person coming with the problem, their whole life depends on it.
Rajiv
The problem is that we stop looking at humans as people and start looking at them as resources. You realize that one-liner, that small act of kindness, makes a huge impact as a leader. Sometimes we may not have the best solution because of various constraints, but just by listening, we actually resolve half of the problem. And that listening has to be empathetic listening, active listening, and intentional listening. It should not be just listening.
Smiti
Next question. One thing you consciously do today that you wish your manager had done for you early in your career?
Rajiv
Talk to people regularly, and wherever possible, have the aspiration discussion proactively.
Smiti
And do you think for a lot of managers it gets very exhausting to do this over and over again, because, as I said, it’s a small thing for us, but a big thing for the person. But a lot of managers get it wrong because they feel overburdened with their own work and then have to add this on top of it. Why do you think it happens?
Rajiv
I will not get into the intention here, because nobody has bad intentions. Also, at the same time, people are so much outcome-focused that they look at relationships from a task perspective. They don’t look at the relationship from a people perspective. That’s where we miss out sometimes. The balance of the two is possibly the right space to be in.
Smiti
Great point. Last question. If AI wrote your daily to-do list, what would be on top of the list in terms of time consumed?
Rajiv
Oh, meeting people. Ensuring I have a lot of space for talking and interacting with people. That should be on top.
Smiti
So, Chief People Officer in the true sense, not reviews.
Rajiv
I would have guessed reviews too, but yes, this is better. If you have competent teams, you don’t need a lot of reviews, because they know what needs to be done. Of course you need oversight, guidance, and perspective. That is essential. That’s a value-add, but not micromanaging.
Smiti
This is awesome, and I think this has been a great podcast session. Thank you so much, Rajiv, for your time. I’m sure the audience will love to hear your insights. We touched upon so many topics, a few very close to your heart as well, and I’m so glad you could take the time out to talk to us today.
Rajiv
Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate your time and all the reflective questions you asked me. Those were very interesting. I hope people find some value and meaning in this discussion.
Smiti
So this was Rajiv from Persistent, and I’m so grateful he was here today. This was such an amazing session. Thank you so much for watching this session, and we have many more such sessions lined up for you. So keep watching and keep getting inspired from Advantage Engage. Thank you.
Concluding thoughts
From redefining EVP as “Employee Value Experience” to building a dedicated well-being function that reports directly to the CPO, Rajiv’s insights offer a grounded, people-first take on leadership in the AI era. It’s a conversation that reminds us recognition, belonging, and empathy remain irreplaceably human, even as AI reshapes the workplace.
