Building on the insights from the HR Evolution Perspectives 2023: Empower and Evolve research study, our exclusive interview series brings together top leaders across Asia-Pacific to get a deeper understanding of the findings from one of the biggest workplace transformation studies in the region.  

The Darwinbox and People Matters’ landmark report is the largest study of its kind in the region, gathering responses from over 1,200 HR practitioners, 350 CXOs and around 1,500 employees. It brings together both employer and employee voices to showcase evolving priorities and enable strategic change.

In this episode of HR Evolution Perspectives 2023: Expert's Take, we sit with M Lakshmanan, CHRO, L&T Technology Services to delve deeper into how talent issues he thinks are pertinent for HR leaders to solve and how L&T Technology Services is enabling its employees across the globe to be better at delivering results.

Key pointers from the conversation include:

• Enhancing employee experience is crucial.
• Strategies for building right capabilities, both technical, leadership, and behavioral
• Attracting and retaining the right talent is crucial
• Ensuring the workforce is ready for an uncertain future

Crystalizing Employee experience

"We always knew EX was important but with the changes in the external ecosystem, it is the middle and center of every HR leader's work, " noted M Lakshmanan. It's necessary to build the right ways that tackle employee experience as a core HR imperative today.

The question of EX for M Lakshmanan expands beyond the purview of simply having a robust employer brand or one of its initiatives. While having the right vision and criteria is necessary for M Lakshmanan, there are other aspects that are truly important while building the right employee experience strategy

According to him, EX should be anchored around the following five points:

• Deploy your talent efficiently
• Build a robust leadership pipeline
• Increase your retention
• Reduce your people's cost
• Build a culture that is targeted at nurturing talent and helping them grow

Embracing digitalisation

Digitalisation today is crucial to improve the speed and accuracy of HR delivery. For ML, improving EX by focusing on the 5 pillars above can be greatly improved through digitalization.

“How well and how quickly you can deliver on these 5 themes is crucial and will differentiate you from the best,” noted M Lakshmanan.

Additionally, digitalisation has also been crucial in enabling L&T Technology services to skill people across the board and ensure their culture for growth and

Building holistic capabilities imperative

For M Lakshmanan, a key aspect of developing talent at L&T is focusing on developing the right capabilities. This includes core technical skills and other leadership and behavioral capabilities required today.

Covid was a crucial period to shift to a more digital-first approach to skilling at L&T. The global engineering academy was crucial in helping the company tackle its various skills needs, from onboarding people to providing people deployed at different sites in the US and Europe the right tools and capabilities.

Another aspect that helped L&T build the right skills and prepare for an uncertain future was hiring the right talent. People who learn and are skilled quickly are equally crucial to ensuring the success of learning programs
 
 
You can download the full version of the HR Evolution Perspectives 2023: Empower and Evolve edition here.