With an aim to contribute towards the larger objective of building a better working world, I entered the corporate world as a HR professional post my Masters in Human Resources Management. I have spent over 11 years at work and have contributed across the complete value chain of HR. Being born and bought up in a Tier II city in central of India ‘Bhopal’ where not many corporate opportunities were available, I decided to pursue my career outside my hometown. However, moving out alone wasn’t easy and especially being the only girl child in the family, but staying firm on my decision I decided to break this stereotype that ‘Woman can’t travel or stay alone’. I shifted to a completely new location Jaipur in Rajasthan, joined HDFC Life in the HR function in year 2007. Post which there was no looking back, I has explored India and also moved to Mumbai at HDFC life corporate office and later joined EY at Gurgaon in the year 2014. It would have been easier for me to stay where I was or compromise in my career, but with the support and encouragement of my family I stepped out of my comfort zone and took up the challenge. I have built high personal credibility by achieving results with integrity and consistency and have a personal brand that stands for authenticity, professional expertise, ability to change assumptions and take risk. I have always been a key member of the Talent team both at HDFC Life and now at EY. Humility, a commitment to hard work, an eye for detail, and an insatiable hunger to learn new things and accept new challenges has always helped me grow in my career. My contributions were recognised timely and I received two promotions at HDFC life and one at EY so far, each promotion happened within a span of 2 years.
Currently I am working as Sr. Mgr HR in EY and I am also the India Diversity & Inclusiveness (D&I) Lead. Some of my major contributions are : improving gender ratio across levels, building gender balanced leadership pipe, promoting flexible working arrangements, creating a support system for working mothers, creating a work environment which is free of stereotypes and biases, providing level playing field to women, engaging with Gen Y, strengthening employer branding and EY’s presence on social media, driving leadership development interventions, creating a strong culture of recognition, coaching and camaraderie. I drive EY Women’s India Network, which has over 4000 members and has also been recognised as the best network amongst organizations in 2017 by BD Foundation. Some of my key contributions in driving firm’s D&I agenda involves, designing of maternity coaching and transition support program to ensure that women have smooth transition through maternity phase, building a culture which is bias free by creating higher awareness on unconscious bias though innovative theatre style gender sensitization sessions, building gender balanced leadership pipe, driving career sponsorship and other women leadership development initiatives. The D&I practices were recognised with D&I Impact award at World HRD Congress 2017. EY has also been recognised amongst the Top 10 best organizations in India for women in 2016 by AVTAR Working Mothers Media. I am part of the EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) D&I Leads group and represents EY India in the forum. The leads group engages to discuss the trending challenges women face, cultural expectations, how organizations can move from equal to equitable approach, how women can participate fully and be successful at work, what an organization can do to enable a striving work culture.
I also played key role in setting up the employer branding strategy for EY and introducing some of the unique campus branding initiatives to engage with students and leverage social media presence. EY moved up by 22 pts in 2016 Universum study and also featured in the top 10 organization in India. I always aim to enable my organization to win by developing and deploying a business aligned people strategy and managing change effectively by demonstrating agility, proactively deploying new capabilities and shaping organization culture.
Contributing beyond defined scope of work and applying my knowledge and skills in strategic initiatives for the organization really drives me. At HDFC life, I worked on various strategic organizational change initiatives apart from my daily routine work. I was part of the ‘Organizational values alignment strategic initiative’ and made key contributions towards revisiting organizational values, aligning business strategy and all HR policies to the organizational values, cascading the value system till the last employee and creating a sustainable model. I was awarded for my contribution towards this most important strategic initiative by HDFC Life and the initiative also received the best project award for its successful drive. I was part of the core team to define the reward and recognition programs, designing employee communications framework, setting up an internal social networking platform for the employees, enhancing customers experience and many more strategic initiatives.
I always look out for opportunities to enable people in their careers and have been involved in training people to have effective upward transition in their careers. I have conducted two sessions so far at Amsterdam, Netherlands for over 60 people from different countries on effective feedback, delegation, client relationships, how to build high performing teams, social styles, etc. My scores have been highly encouraging and the participants feedback drives me to do more in this direction.
I am equally passionate about contributing to the society and have been involved in driving firm’s CSR agenda in India. I was involved in driving various employee volunteering drives including blood donation, clothes donation, tree plantation, engaging with NGOs, teach for India, environment week and many more. I strongly feel that if everyone can make their bit by even doing something small for society, this world will be a beautiful place to live in for everyone.
I am a soft spoken and simple person and yet passionate about life, be it work or family. For me work and family are the two facets of life, without either I am incomplete. Outside work, I have an active interest in what I call the finer things of life. I love to do birding, spend time on my fitness and socialise with my friends.