TRANSCRIPT

Leaders Journal Ep10: HR Unfiltered (Feat. Ramani Amar)

*Text taken from YouTube captions*

[Music]

all right so welcome everybody uh this

is the leaders journal podcast and i

interview leaders in different

industries

and the best of the best we really want

to find out things from them and these

leaders are the ones that are leading

charge in their own industry and they

want to we want to be able to hear from

them and there's many things that they

can share

about their industry so

without further ado we have romani here

hi ramani

good morning jason how are you i'm very

good i'm very good it's uh

singapore is uh raining right now right

so we can hear some thundering in there

right so money just introduce yourself

um

what do you do and where are you from

all right a quick introduction so

i i have i have quite a journey of life

time and time so i've been and i have

lived and been in many places so i'm

basically from india and then it's been

10 years now i'm in singapore and um

i mean uh singapore is one place which

actually helped me to build my career in

hr um

so since last almost seven and a half

years i have been

into the advertising industry and uh you

know climbing up my ladder in

leadership um so yeah so overall in

overall a career of more than 15 years i

think precisely it might turn around

like 17 or something um i started as a

recruiter and then i had my own journey

in terms of growing up into a full

fledged you know hr uh yeah hr person uh

in terms of taking more in terms of my

job scope and anything yeah that's

that's something that's something which

is uh

which i feel like you know there's a lot

to do with there's a lot to do in this

space and that curiosity keeps me going

fantastic awesome so i'm always curious

so

i'm always trying to interview leaders

in every industry and today is really

the idea of hr i'm very big on human

capital always thinking about this whole

idea of

why are even people in hr you know

sometimes people see hr as oh you guys

are paper pushers

and things like that so we want to

change the mindset of hr and i do feel

hr should be in the forefront right

really beside the ceo because talent and

human capital is so important in this

day and age compared to a long time ago

right so i'm very curious about your own

leadership journey and origin story like

um

how did you even begin in this hr and

going being that leader in hr

all right

uh because i told you like you know it's

actually my passion in terms of

one uh i like interacting with people

and two i like to create some sort of a

difference and some sort of impact

impact when it comes to this people part

of organization culture um so the best

thing is like when you become hr i think

this is your playground and you have a

lot of what you say a lot of scope to

make those differences and bring those

changes so one thing that i consider is

like this is one of the best

opportunities when i work for an

organization and i look at the changing

trends and i try and bring out those

innovative ideas when i can make that

difference in the people's face

now talking about people as such you

know one thing i strongly believe is the

only differentiating factor in any

industry uh

for for you know for the for the

organizations competing with each other

uh is

the talent that they hold so

technologies they keep coming and going

with the trends and they keep evolving

and everybody buy and you know have for

themselves but talent is something that

is

that is something that they hand pick

that they they choose they develop and

they customize their whole skill sets

and that is that is how they create a

differentiating factor uh in the

industry for themselves as an

organization so one thing that if you

want to be that winning organization in

the marketplace um is is something that

you know you have to invest a lot in

your talent you have to focus a lot on

your talent and talking about the seat

of hr on

board or

on the leadership table i think we

already hold that seat it's more up to

us how we actually create that value

uh

you know by by being on that place so

that's that's what i believe in so yeah

in terms of my leadership journey yes um

you know it's it's not something that

you

especially for me i aim like okay i want

to become a chrono one day uh it's more

about i want to do more uh in space of

hr and when i say more is something that

to keep

myself very much up to the times uh to

keep evolving with

the times you know with the latest

trends with the latest technologies

to always be understanding about the

kind of talent that we are bringing in

and how we are going to create that

differentiating factor now this is what

is leading me to a certain level of you

know journey uh in the process what

happens is like when you tick and when

you work on certain things you always

have that kind of a feeling to share the

same thing with somebody who is already

entering into the stream of hr and that

is another thing you know when you

actually

share what you have learned in the

process with someone who is actually

entering into this field is another way

of you are actually developing and not

letting them reinventing the wheel

instead of sharing your stories and

sharing your experiences and helping

them to enhance that so so that's that's

more or less my leadership journey has

begun and i still feel i'm somewhere

very much at the start and there is a

long

awesome i like what you said about

differentiating factor i mean every

business and i coach many sme business

owners right small media enterprise and

it's always about trying to find that

itch so what is that age in your

business and uh you're right to say that

technology know that um after a while

everybody will get that we'll get to

that level and the real thing is it's

not so much of the

the tools but the user of the tools and

that's the talent and that's the people

and people are the ones that are the

most genius and the most talented they

can really 10x certain things while

somebody else a tool in another person

is just one x right so it's hugely

different depending on the people and i

like the idea that you said that

businesses needs to see talent as the

great difficulty factor

and the thing about it is like

when i coach people

leaders

sometimes they don't see it that way

they see that ah you just fit that role

and that's it but they don't give that

opportunity to hey i want to try this

out can i do this all that so thanks for

sharing that um good great perspective

what i hear from you also i mean your

journey 15 over years

so many things that you've learned right

so many lessons to learn about human

capital development and just hr in

general

what do you think are some learning

lessons for you personally that made you

the leader that you are now

all right so so one thing i mean uh one

thing that i keep telling uh is hr is

not somebody who can work in isolation

or in xylo i know yes

we we have our own uh you know a body of

a a body of education and that we bring

on table and and this whole subject

matter experts that we claim ourselves

to be in comp and then in employee

engagement and learning and developing

stuff so there's a lot to do and there's

a lot that we bring in the organization

as a part of compliances processes and

policies and stuff but beyond that when

you really have to create a value or

within the business the one big learning

that i always

had is you have to understand your

business

if you don't understand uh you know what

is your organization business how you

actually generate the revenues for it

and who are those uh you know those key

roles or those critical people who

actually work and you know make this

happen unless and i don't understand all

these things i won't be able to make a

or create any sort of a value in the

process i might come from a school of

thoughts when i have learned a lot in

terms of different coaching methods

different training programs different

reward systems but is that something

which is relevant to the organization

that i'm working for so knowing my

organization knowing where the revenue

comes from and knowing how this industry

is evolving and what is the future for

it and what is that we as an

organization uh have a vision to grow

and go in a certain direction

only then i can translate and work

you know in terms of aligning my hr

strategies to make

them to achieve their desired outcome

so i'm a big fan of dave albridge and

i i really appreciate the new school of

thoughts of hr that he brings on the

table and i always listen you know i

learn from him so a lot of things that i

see might resonate off or you know what

you have heard from him as well but i

think this is something which is very

much true to the times and this is

something how hr can create a difference

and this is one of the biggest learnings

like know your business know your people

know your stakeholders and know from

where the venue is coming from

awesome that's quite rare that somebody

really

pinpoints the revenue streams and all

the coming back to talent development

talent management compensation because

it is a universal truth if i talk to any

sales person best sales people if i talk

to the best leaders out there it's

always they they have the same mindset

and their mindset is what different

folks different strokes

right it's always different if you're in

a different industry they want something

different from another industry and as

hr we want to be able to

understand that they have very unique

needs

and that is different from the past

company that we worked with absolutely

right so having that differentiating

ability to understand the person

the industry the team

is definitely a huge learning lesson

thank you so much for sharing that

pleasure i mean i absolutely agree with

you i think this is this is something we

all should literally start focusing on

yeah

yeah

and one thing interesting we talk about

hr a lot of times

i don't know whether you notice that but

so many leaders um especially when i

work with hr business partners going to

the some of their business units so

sometimes the leaders will have

they see hr as um

oh it's a hr problem i have an issue

with this person it's a hr problem go

and talk to hr so the funny thing is

that whenever i do

leadership coding

they push the blame and they push the

responsibility to hr a lot of times and

i see that that's really wrong

they have a role to play as a business

unit leader and don't push it to hr

do your job

if there's an attitude problem it's not

hr's problem is your leadership problem

do you see that sometimes i mean see

anything which is related to people

cannot be the hr problem and exactly is

where

managers and hr business partner and

work together so when we say

they have to work strongly

that means that we have to really work

like hand in glove so their team is also

equally hr's team and we have to

actually enable managers with all sort

of tools all sort of resources all sort

of techniques and strategies that we can

give them that will make them more

capable of managing their team

efficiently it's not about

me as a person in hr stepping into and

being closer to a team and deriving some

sort of credits like yes all your

problems i'm there to solve it's more

about

i will actually enable your manager

because he or she is the person on

day-to-day basis who's working closely

with you and they are the closest one

who can make difference to your career

and your every day-to-day work life

exactly so so totally yeah so once we

start doing that obviously it will never

be an hr problem unless until they need

some sort of employment certificate yes

that is hr problem so

yeah certification of that yeah but i do

see that a lot of business unit leaders

they will come to hr and says hey what

is new uh i want to train my guys what

is new they're always looking for you as

the perfect partner to develop their

talent to grow their talent and

sometimes uh even an advisor advisor to

some of the people issues that they have

but advice is very different from being

a nanny

right

we shouldn't be nannies they should we

should empower them exactly no nannies

we work for organizations and we

actually set standards uh towards

organization behavior so when we say

that it's yes talent and at the same

time there's an equal responsibility of

how you actually develop those processes

and systems in the organizations how do

you make them

as sophisticated as they can be the best

in the marketplace yeah and that is when

you know our people are happy and the

new people who want to come and join us

are more excited about doing that

yes he also has that role of talent

attraction how do we make it such a way

that we we are able to attract talent

because the best talent will give us

best results awesome right awesome okay

i i i'm actually curious because you've

been you've been doing this and i want

to understand from you personally what

is the best practices you personally

adopt or some of the focuses that you

have when it comes to just people

development what what what doesn't work

right just curious that's my favorite

area of

and i think at this stage where i am in

my career right now uh picking up a new

role i really recently had my discussion

with my new ceo

and he was asking me like romney how can

i support you and i said like no it goes

other way it's it's more about how can i

support you and

answer for that is

what are you aiming for the next two to

three years which direction do you are

you going as are you taking the business

into okay and that translates back in

terms of what sort of skills that we

need to build and do we already have or

do we need to hire or we need to develop

so that defines my strategy

as hr to support you in this journey um

so yeah so we always work that way again

again it comes back to the same thing

when you know your business and you know

the direction of your business uh

obviously then you can work in terms of

your learning and development strategies

you can look at your skill sets you can

look at the competencies and

capabilities and what you need to do to

hire or develop with what you have right

now

second thing is in terms of

giving that workplace and again i'll

quote dave over here is you know making

your organization that winner in the

marketplace now that is very important

uh when people come and join the

organization there will be a list of

things that they will expect cool office

space amazing

uh maybe some sort of great engagement

activities and now a lot of sponsorship

for work from home office and there

could be 110 things

and while all these things are very much

considered to be hr's

uh

problem or our age to provide to your

provider having said that i think the

association to uh organization

which is competitive

which challenge your current potential

and push you to do better and which

actually raise your capabilities now

this is something that brings a level of

job satisfaction in a sense of achieving

any person

and when we can hit that no for every

person working for the organization i

think we are doing a good job and for

that obviously we need to be more

ambitious as an organization we need to

be evolving with times and you know are

very much up to the be the winner in

that market so that's that's something

that brings up so yeah

it just translates the focus areas

obviously are very much

over here

yeah yeah yeah so i like the best

practice that you mentioned about this

idea of asking back the ceo like what do

you really want uh because uh people and

human capital is always

it's always there to support business

goals

right it's always about that and it's

about jones just develop people for the

sake of developing because you have a

budget this year you need clearing right

a lot of hr

hr do that but really it's like what is

the business goal and then what it

trickles down and what's the talent

either the talent needs uh development

the developmental needs or even when it

comes to hiring what do we need

to be that what do you call it that

that ideal i don't know you mentioned

that

something about the ideal

workplace or something like that right

to be that leader in the market to be

the winner in the market

winner in the market yes yes yeah the

idea of being a winner in the market

awesome awesome

really want to hear from you when it

comes to so many different things in hr

right well we we got this whole pandemic

coming uh here and the whole idea of

work from home

uh there's this

resignation that's happening because

people just don't feel fulfilled or

talking too many things about work but

don't talk about the connection

so the hr landscape looks

quite different

in the future now coming out of the

pandemic you know singapore we are now

like wow everybody is no mask and all

that what is your view when it comes to

the filter of hr

what what does that look like and what

do we do as hr leaders in the future to

adapt to that change okay so so one

thing for sure i mean before even the

pandemic hit we all were talking about

hr being replaced by hr bots

and

so

imagine interviewing with a hr bot

what is your salary what do you want

yeah okay go for it i mean yes i i think

for every function and then for every

profession there is a certain level of

ninjas and

i think that's that's something that we

also have to understand that how uh

we as

human beings are you know

advancing or evolving over the times uh

one thing which is for sure is

digitization and i think digitalization

is something which is which was taught

even before pandemic but something which

has affirmed to all of us that yes you

have to now embrace it you don't have

choice okay and i think that's that's

one thing that suddenly it's it was

digitization it was pandemic and then

suddenly hr also started realizing that

there's a lot with technology that we

should know yeah uh we should be on top

of it and suddenly we were working very

closely with it team which was never the

case before

yeah yeah yeah

that's true

so yeah and and you you go to any hr

conferences you'll see

loads of hr technologies which are right

out there in the market there are so

many things

which we find as the innovation in the

hr field and are we trying to capitalize

on it

for you know for our profession or for

our organization yes or no so it's high

time you know we should start thinking

and we should start thinking in terms of

the amount of information you know the

hr analytics is such a powerful thing

that has happened

to us in last one decade now this is

something that how we are capitalizing

on all the information and the data that

we are getting

and how are we finding the relevance to

uh for for our organizations in terms of

deriving certain outcomes and helping

them in terms of you know assessing

certain things and making their plans

for the future

so yes when you call digitization it's

it's something which is embracing the hr

technologies making it or using it for

your benefit when employees feel a

seamless you know experience another

thing is more about innovation what are

we doing in terms of by capitalizing on

these kind of technologies and bringing

some sort of innovation at workplace and

making it again a very easy user

friendly life for all the employees yeah

another thing is big

and this is very big you have to if you

want to understand the pulse of your

organization you should have all the

information that you need it starts from

the demographics you know it starts from

very little things like how many female

how many meals do i have how many

millennials do i have or baby boomers

for that matter and how many of them are

in leadership role how are they going

with their career path what are their

expectations in terms of employee

benefits rewards and compensation does

that change with every generation um

what is that the new gen if for example

in advertising industry you'll see mid

to junior level most of the millennials

in this and their expectations out of

the role is just not restricted to the

reward itself but they come to office

because they have a passion to work in a

certain way and they look for the

community over there the community to

work with a similar passion and grow

yeah so this is how we capitalize a lot

of information or something as simple as

how many cat lovers and dog lovers do i

have how many vegans and avocado

guys do i have everything else so how

i'm capitalizing on my information and

am i actually staying on top of it

so way forward is

make the best use of what you have in

terms of these kind of tools and

technologies and seriously we really

don't have to do reiki now or read some

sort of a pulse to know these things

it's so much there and it's so much easy

to access

that make the best use of it and and

these are the things which will actually

help you to derive a relevant customized

plan for your organization that you're

working so suddenly the value increases

you can measure a lot of things when you

do employment survey you can measure a

lot of things you know

in terms of engagement score in terms of

their belongingness score in terms of

the value proposition

all these things i think i think this is

how we create about the future of hr is

actually capitalizing on all these

latest tools and technologies and not to

ignore the information that we have

fantastic it really comes back down to

what you said at the start the

differentiator factors the talent but

each thailand's almost like my example

is always for leaders is you are a

gardener and you have plans

if you don't know

each plant needs what because each plant

is very different same right as a hr

leader same thing

if you don't know that this plan needs

this to thrive and this plan doesn't

they want something else

then you don't know your people but if

you know that as a good gardener then

you know that hey can i create the

environment which is what you're

actually saying using technology to get

that data to understand the plant or the

person so you can create an environment

where that person feels that they can be

more engaged

right feels that they can thrive and

naturally output and performance

increase

i think yeah you actually got exactly

what i wanted to say

[Laughter]

fantastic yeah same thing i think that's

that's the mark of a great hr leader

this mark of a great

business leader and that's the mark of

a great sales person always about trying

to figure out for that person what is

that three-year plan for that person

what's that five-year plan what do they

really want in life and how do we how do

we overlap what they want in life with

what we want in our business goals

and then we really know that person and

then we can

bring that whole idea of human back to

hr right by understanding the person

they're not

[Laughter]

all right fantastic um i just want one

more thing if there's anything that you

feel that if there's something like for

example if um

new people want to join hr right and

they're wondering what on earth is hr i

thought you guys just do this this this

right is there anything that you can

share with them new people who are

looking forward to one thing i really

really encourage all the undergrads to

consider hr as a profession we really

need

we really need you know in future a good

batch of hr's coming in and uh take it

over um yeah one thing for sure like the

curiosity to make

a difference in

in in any person's life i think hr is a

very closest road so when you sit in

organization

you really have the opportunity to

create that difference in those people's

careers

you know in their lives and that every

day-to-day well-being so i think this

this brings a lot of satisfaction and

even after so many years of my career i

still don't have entire day and and that

is something that you know is a kind of

a passion that you need to stay with

stay social stay around with people

be curious about innovations and and and

and just just be passionate about what

you're doing so if this is what which

will keep you equally excited even in

your 40s and 50s i think that that is

something that uh hr is a kind of a

career to be considered and it's one of

the i i i'm like uh yeah so i'm very

happy with it and i would like to

promote this as one of the uh careers to

be picked by people

definitely but it's very rare usually

you know asian parents

doctor doctor lawyer engineer and now

it's hr patchmaker full of engineers

most of

it industry i think it's me and then

there are few who choose marketing

but but it's up to you right you have to

enjoy it

and

i was enjoying when i was in my early

20s i'm enjoying

in my 40s and i keep enjoying this even

when i'm in 50s i think that is the

profession that i picked it defines me

and defines my career in my life so

yeah

yeah so that's a i mean you you

it comes across as um

it's really the idea of if you're

passionate about the topic that you're

doing and it can be hr for you as hr for

me is coaching leaders and all that but

if you are passionate about it then you

don't really feel that

you feel that it's a lot of innovation

always you feel a lot of passion that

fire always burns and the beautiful

thing is that engagement is linked to

that

right so if we as leaders are not

engaged one more other people right

engagement is linked to somewhat

something inside that has a fire and

then you just have to fan it rather than

try to replace it with another kind

amazing thank you thank you all right so

guys thank you for tuning in this is the

leaders journal and hr edition really

understanding the hr landscape which is

going to be bigger and bigger in the

future many companies are pushing more

and more hr leaders into the forefront

because the talent development human

capital is something that's going to

bring us to the next 10 years right

that's been your host jason thank you

for tuning in stay tuned thank you

[Music]