Smiti: Hi, everyone, and welcome to yet another session and podcast of AdvantageClub.ai. The topic for our podcast is Inspiring Leaders and Leadership, and I’m your host, Smiti, who’s also the founder of AdvantageClub.ai, which is an employee experience platform. So today, we have a really exciting guest with us. We have Vinoth Kumar Vijayraghavan, who is the global head of human capital management at Financial Software and Systems Limited. Welcome Vinoth.

Vinoth: Hi, Smiti, and everyone. Happy to be here. 

Smiti: Great. Vinoth, we’re really excited to have you here, and, we of course know a lot about you, but we’d love to have you tell our viewers a little bit about your background, what you do, and, about your journey. 

Vinoth: Sure. Well, long story short, I have about 23 years of experience, in various strategies of human resources management and resources development. I should say I’m one of those fortunate members of the human resources fraternity who’s had the opportunity to work in pretty much everything under the sun, within human resources. 

If you take talent acquisition on one side to comp and ben and payroll administration, all the way out on the other and the entire journey of employment that an employee experiences, right from talent management and performance management towards the recognition, learning and org development, leadership, succession management, I’ve pretty much had the opportunity to play leadership roles in all of these areas and in a wide variety of contexts. I find this a very exciting space to be in. At the end of the day, it’s rewarding when you can enable people to be successful in their roles. 

Smiti: That’s amazing. And what I like the most is that you’ve had experience in multiple areas in human resource management. Not just performance or not just talent, but also rewards, also succession. It’s really interesting because you’ve seen, like, almost everything which comes under the gamut of human resource management. So, when you’re obviously doing so many things, I’m sure it’s not been easy, right? It’s been very challenging. So, how do you personally navigate challenges whenever the going gets tough? Are there any examples of any failures you’ve experienced and overcome, and what have you learned from them? 

Vinoth: Well, the journey is filled with instances like that. I think the best part is, in fact, that’s one of our principles, in our value system, in my current organization, which is to fail fast and innovate faster, because we believe that, the best part of your innovation comes when you fail. And when you gather the courage to fail, and when you look forward to failing and learning from your failure and start looking at how you could do things differently so that you’re able to,  creatively move towards the solution or the outcome that you want to achieve. 

And I think there have been plenty of instances like this, where there have been failures that were remarkable stepping stones to amazing successes. If you ask me to single out one example, perhaps I could talk about the realm of performance management for instance. So, to fix gaps in performance management in organizations, invariably, you fail the first time because you’ve missed out on something, on addressing something, that was fundamentally why performance management was broken in the organization. You thought you fixed it, but you really didn’t. And you realize it once you roll out because of the resistance you face, because of the adoption that you really are not seeing. And then it allows you to really open up your eyes. You’re able to see, okay, here’s one area that I really did not fix that requires fixing. Then, you go ahead and fix it and are able to creatively implement various initiatives that will help people adopt it better. And then, make sure that it is driven in a way in which you’re able to realize the results that your process fix was targeting in the first place. 

Smiti: That’s amazing. I have the same move fast and break things mantra, and you typically see that in startup culture. But in established companies, if you’re still following it, I think that’s amazing, and I think that’s the real drive towards driving innovation and creating things which have not been created in the past. 

And one of the things you mentioned is when you are failing fast and you’re moving, again, the challenge is to fix it. The second is also to get the kind of support, not just intellectually but also emotionally, to grow and move further. And I’ve seen this with most of the senior people who have reached the best levels of their careers. They always have supporters; they always have mentors who have guided them and have helped them, intellectually and emotionally. So who has been, like, the most supporting or mentoring person in the course of your career and who has helped you out overall? 

Vinoth: Well, pretty much everybody. I think I have a different point of view there. I don’t believe having a mentor to guide you is an absolutely essential ingredient for success, as long as you are able to get mentored or inspired by the things that you get to experience. And I think to me, a great deal of my inspiration has been all of the challenges and the opportunities to learn that have emerged from those challenges. And to me, everybody’s a mentor, and everybody is a source of inspiration. 
Every second person that I talk to has a different idea. And I think every leader I’ve worked with has a different finesse, a different dimension of ideal leadership in them that they tend to get wrapped onto it, and, if only you keep your eyes open and are hungry to be inspired, and mentored, I think there are not one or two specific mentors that shape you and your path. 

In my experience, I’ve seen that it’s just every single person that you work with. I’m pretty sure by the end of this conversation, there’ll be something that Smiti will have to offer me, which I will be inspired with and be able to implement. So I think I’m sorry to disappoint you if I didn’t give you the answer that you were looking for. But to me, I believe it’s not really one or two personalities that helped it. I think it’s just a plethora of everybody with whom I had the opportunity to work with. 

Smiti: I love the spinoff, and you stole my favourite answer. This is what I always say. We learn from everyone, and we learn from our seniors. We also learn from a lot of even young folks or freshers or anyone in any domain or any department. So, I think as long as the ideology is to continue to keep learning and to continue having that hunger to grow and become a better version of yourself,  anybody can be a mentor for you. It’s an amazing perspective.

So, let’s talk about overall leadership and HR leadership in general. Employee needs are constantly changing, so what used to work pre-COVID does not work post-COVID anymore. The world has gone more and more digital and is completely transformed, and things are changing fast every year. You’re seeing that the previous year was different from what this year is today. Now, when such fast-paced changes are happening in the industry, of course, employee needs also keep changing overall. How do you think HR leaders should address the changing needs of their employees? Are there certain steps they can take to evolve, be better, and stay ahead of the curve? 

Vinoth: I think the scenario hasn’t been different any time. I believe the needs of employees are always changing. They’re ever-changing, and I think one of the critical steps that HR leaders must take is to always listen and have an open ear to the changing desires. And I think there has to be a mechanism to be able to understand the pulse of the thinking of people, what they expect, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what actually brings the best out of them. What are the hindrances that they face in the organization or in the process of them bringing their best version to their work?  

And I think if we can have structured interventions that will regularly help HR leaders be aware of these changing desires, then I think that’s the first step. Have or appoint someone, either virtual or physical, as the chief listening officer. I think that’ll be fantastic. 

The second is to actually act on the feedback in a compelling way, act in a way in which people are able to visibly see that their needs are being addressed. It could be around town halls that you create and have mechanisms to communicate with people or through mediums like email gatherings, teams, discourses,  or social media. So, use all types of mediums and communicate extensively to people that their changing needs are being addressed. I think these are two important steps that people should take to win the confidence of people and to address the sense that the organization is listening and going to do whatever it takes to make the place happy and productive. 

Smiti: Chief listening officer is a great idea. So we need to have more CLOs. And I know we’ve evolved from chief human resources to chief happiness officers in a lot of organizations. A chief listening is, I think, hits the message home that we are here to listen. 

So, if you’re talking about Chief Listening Officers and you’re talking about being more proactive in understanding employee needs,  we also talk about the people-first vision in general. And that starts from hiring to retirement. So it’s like the entire spectrum of moments that matter in an employee’s lifecycle need to be covered to really say that you’re a people-first organization. So how in FSS have you actually innovated recognition or engagement or experience programs for employees to kind of make it a better experience and a better setup for them in terms of better engagement, better retention and lower attrition? 

Vinoth: We’ve done a lot, and we continue to do so.  Of late, we’ve embarked on this mission of creating specific cross-functional tribes even within HR. And we call our HR team people success because that’s what we are here for. Even within people’s success, there are multiple streams. And what we’ve done is we’ve picked one from each stream, one from the BPHR, one from the onboarding team, one from learning and OD, one from comp and ben, and one from HR shared services. So, combined with all of them, we created a tribe called the Onboarding Tribe, particularly to address the onboarding experience. So first, minus 15 days the employee joins and up to 90 days after the employee joins, the entire experience this new hire will experience is managed well by this onboarding tribe. They have just one goal, which is to improve our engagement score by around 15 days, 30 days, 45 days, and 90 days touchpoints. So, that’s what we’ve created. 

Similarly, we have created task forces with different functions to address specific changing needs that we were talking about the last time. People have given feedback and helped us identify areas of improvement and areas that are hindrances that have to be addressed. They also make everybody aware of some of the strengths of some divisions. How people seem to be happy about a certain aspect, certain element or a driver of engagement, around, something in, in some org, in some function, and circulate it with everybody else, to make sure that they use, and benefit from that best practice. So, there are many such things that we have done, purely from the point of view of what an employee gets to experience as a moment of truth. 

So, we’ve also introduced this concept of a moment of truth, which is nothing but every small instance of either a recognition or a reward or a wow that an employee can experience, which will remain an integral part of his experience as long as he’s engaged with the organization. So we take advantage of those moments of truth. We try to do that through various initiatives like this. 

Smiti: Agreed, and if you think about it, these moments of truth are actually the moments that matter in an employee’s lifecycle. Because,  onboarding, and I love how you focused on that, is the first touchpoint of the employee’s lifecycle with the organization, the first time you’re interacting with the organization. So that’s where you can make a genuine impact in terms of employee experience. Again, when you’re looking at these moments of truth, every moment is where you can actually create an impact and you can make them realize that they’re working for a great organization which really cares about them. So I love that, and that also brings me to the last question of the day. What would be your piece of advice to HR leaders of tomorrow? 

Vinoth: I think flexibility and ability are two important pieces of advice I’ll always give. One of the easiest ways that organizations can tell people that we don’t care about you is by being unpredictable. People, for generations, it’s always been that way. And even in the future, I don’t see this changing, which is, people never appreciate when there is no predictability. I think one of the significant aspects I would encourage future HR leaders to ensure that happens is remove unpredictability from the workplace. Employees should be aware of what to look forward to, at all times. Whether it is about cycles of promotions, cycles of increments, whether it is a bonus payout, whether it is about what to expect in terms of learning and opportunities, developmental opportunities, in terms of when they can expect to participate in a town hall. So providing predictability to employees is a very, very, significant aspect of that will be appreciated by people. And here’s one thing, where if you don’t do it, if you manage to have a culture of unpredictability, it’s going to work negatively for the organization. That’s one. 

And, flexibility, which is I think, I see a lot of leaders who tend to be bound by rules.  I think rules fundamentally are made to make life easy. They are boundaries. They fundamentally miss the part that rules are there for order, but I think there has to be flexibility around those rules, to achieve the same outcome, which is to make things easy and enjoyable for everybody. So making it enjoyable for everybody and therefore bringing in flexibility in the way you design things, is important. I think these are two important aspects I would encourage and advise future HR leaders. 

Smiti: So, predictability and flexibility, I think, are the two mantras which people should live by. And predictability also ensures that especially like we live in a world today where there’s so much unpredictability across everything, there’s layoffs happening, there’s a lot of insecurity which has been built up. So, having these two pieces I think will truly help organizations retain their top talent. 

And that brings us to the end of the podcast. Thank you so much, Vinoth, for your time. It has been a pleasure interacting with you. And,  I’m sure our viewers will learn a lot, out of this entire 20-25 minutes, which we have shared with you today. 

Vinoth: Thank you, Smiti. I hope I have been true to all the questions.  and I hope in the process, I’ve been able to spark some thoughts, if not many impactful ones.  I hope to have many such opportunities to share my ideas. Thank you for being a really nice host.