<div>Anjali Singh has been working since 1994 but it is only about two years ago that she joined as VP, HR in Genpact. More and more companies including Genpact now believe in developing people by making them move through different roles. A result-driven professional, Singh has no problem understanding business-drivers as she spent most of her career in business and front-end relationship roles in financial services. Genpact, being a global company, focusses on experience and exposure while choosing its leaders.<br /><br />Following the global downturn, management and leveraging talent across global locations has become an integral part of the HR role. For the new age HR practioner, Singh's advice is one should understand the business and key drivers as much as HR domain. Excerpts:<br /><br /><strong>What made you choose HR as a profession?</strong><br />To be completely honest I didn't choose HR as a profession at the start of my career. I have spent many years in business and front-end relationship roles in financial services. A lot of companies now rotate talent and give people many different roles as they progress through their career. Genpact is a big believer in this philosophy and we like to develop people by moving them into different roles which makes them more rounded as senior professionals. I became the HR and training leader for our financial services and healthcare verticals about two years ago.<br /><br /><strong>What has been the biggest achievement in your career?</strong><br />After so many years of experience, it is difficult to pinpoint a single achievement. I have not focused on just "what" but also the "how" in achieving the goals in every role I have done. It has always created customers who trusted and valued my opinion. Establishing customer connect and being a true partner for their business outcomes has been an achievement I greatly value. Getting company and customer recognition at different points in my career has felt good but the real achievements are when you can change or improve something that goes beyond yourself and becomes a best practice you leave behind. I have experienced that a few times which has been more satisfying.<br /><br /><strong>What have been the primary traits or qualities that helped you reach your current position?</strong><br />I am very results driven and have always delivered what was laid out. I understand business drivers and enjoy the interaction with people which has helped me build strong lasting relationships with clients and people I worked with. The underlying principle I have operated with is to do the right thing in delivering results.<br /><br /><strong>What are the challenges you are facing in the organisation?<br /></strong>In this role, the biggest challenge continues to be the ability to attract and retain top talent. We are constantly trying to make sure that we have the right people in the right roles globally to deliver business value. We are growing globally so it's important to correctly balance the overall strategic company goals with a good sense of local responsiveness.<br /><br /><strong>What are the steps a company should take to develop future leaders?<br /></strong>The three big pillars of leadership development are education, exposure and experience. While we do have tieups with some of the best educational institutes where we send our key leaders, we tend to focus a lot more on experience and exposure ...we rotate our top talent, we are a global company and we allow people to move across geographies to get exposed to different cultures and roles. We constantly review how we can focus on job enlargement and job enrichment. We set up "coaching/ mentoring" programmes across the company for women and our high potential middle management whom we want to groom into senior leader positions over the years.<br /><br /><strong>What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?<br /></strong>We hope to end this year at a 23 per cent attrition rate which is on the lower side for the industry. We have developed some best practices for retention across employee life cycles and have tools which help us measure success. The key is in how we drive the rigour across the company for execution of those practices which help us succeed. Also, we continuously grow and develop our people. The best developed theories and practices fail unless execution follows through.<br /><br /><strong>What sets your company apart in terms of work culture?</strong><br />We are a very result-driven company with a merit-based culture. It's open, honest and transparent. Delivering value to the customer is our focus and is at the core of everything we do.<br /><br /><strong>What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?<br /></strong>We have built our brand and we manage to attract some of the best talent in the industry. Since we have become a big matrixed global company, our focus is on how best to integrate leaders into the fold when we hire them in different places across the globe. We try to get a cultural fit as much as domain and functional expertise when we hire.<br /><br /><strong>How do you track employee satisfaction?<br /></strong>We roll out an employee survey with a qualified vendor every 18 months which gives us all the analytics on our employee satisfaction metric. Other than this, there are internal informal dipsticks done at regular intervals for us to get a sense of the mood on the floor.<br /><br /><strong>How has HR been important to the bottom line of the company?<br /></strong>Talent is a key component in any company. To ensure that there is a robust talent planning process in place, which is also looking at how to keep costs in control, has a direct impact on bottom line. Ensuring ready talent for key roles and delivering success across all people metrics is key to the success of the company.<br /><br />At Genpact, HR partners very closely with the business and is involved from the strategic planning stage till the close of execution. The people function has a valued place at the table and is part of all decisions about new geographies, people, client satisfaction, product development. Almost all of the people leaders have separate interactions with clients through governance models set up with Operations.<br /><br /><strong>How has the downturn affected HR?<br /></strong>The downturn has brought about many changes in the world which had a spillover effect on the HR function to the extent that workforce management needs to be planned more effectively, and the value being delivered to clients through people teams has to be tangible and measurable. Management and leveraging talent across global locations has become an integral part of the HR role.<br /><br /><strong>What three things would you change in HR practice?<br /></strong>Things to change or further improve would be :<br /><strong>Understand </strong>the business and key drivers you support as much as HR domain<br /><strong>Have more external focus: </strong>HR tends to have internal metrics and processes, how do we make them more outward focussed at every level<br /><strong>Domain: </strong>Enable expertise building in areas of growth and focus<br /><br /> </div>
