Rahul Sinha is a Business Leader with over 22 years of experience in FMCG and BFSI in Sales & Marketing. He currently heads the Human Resource Function at Pidilite. Before Pidilite, Rahul spent six years in financial services as Chief Marketing Officer for Birla Sun Life Insurance and Group Brand Head for Kotak Mahindra Bank. He started his career in ITC Limited, where he spent nine years across various roles and businesses. In conversation with People Matters, he talks about Pidilite’s work tech model and shares incredible insights on designing a seamless onboarding experience, empowering employee digital readiness, building an inclusive work culture and more. 

How do you see the role of work tech in the emerging hybrid ecosystem? How is the need for work tech influencing Pidilite's business model?

A robust HR automation framework is the bedrock of an effective work tech environment. Over the last five-six years, most forward-looking employers have adopted a solid tech-enabled HR system, work environment, and productivity tools that help employees perform at a higher level. 

This will become even more important in the hybrid eco-system as employees and teams operate over a distributed physical work environment and ever-increasing digitised work processes. Thankfully, we have been moving in this direction for the last few years, and hence the pandemic did not negatively impact the team's productivity. We have invested in frontline and distributor automation, product supply environment automation, analytics tools at the enterprise and user level, and digital collaboration tools. The pandemic helped us accelerate adoption. As we go forward, this area will require constant learning and enhancements.

This is the third year in a row where most fresh graduates have had to kickstart their careers remotely. But are organisations aware and equipped with the tools to ensure a seamless onboarding experience and a seamless transition to work life for this talent segment?

Inducting fresh graduates virtually has been one of the biggest challenges of the pandemic. Organisations are mindful that these new joiners need to be hand-held and adequate care needs to be taken to ensure they don’t feel isolated.  Familiarising them with various teams through interactions on digital platforms, creating forums for regular feedback from them, and developing a cadence of progress reviews have been helpful in their effective onboarding. Apart from ensuring they understand and are excited by their job responsibilities, we also ensured that they felt the organisation's warmth and welcoming nature. Of course, a physical interface is essential for new joiners, so we have capitalised on every opportunity to ensure they physically meet both the leadership and their work groups. I do believe this is an area of priority and needs attention.

The need for digital literacy continues to grow. However, the digital readiness of talent remains on the down low. So what must organisations do to bridge the gap?

Actually, my experience has been that the younger professionals are quite digitally literate. At the same time, the pandemic has accelerated technology savviness among the experienced professionals who earlier preferred more traditional ways of working. This has been a very heartening change. However, we are clear that this must be balanced with adequate social interactions. 

We continue to focus on formal and peer-to-peer training to help the digital readiness of the multi-generational workforce.

How is Pidilite evolving its learning framework to be more inclusive and holistic for a multi-generational and distributed workforce?

This has been an area of investment and continuous development for us. We have launched our own Learning Experience Platform, Gurukool, a one-stop platform for all learning needs of our employees. GuruKool promotes cross-functional learning, and its mobile-first interface provides easy on-the-go access to learning from anywhere and everywhere. Considering the fast-paced work schedule, the program offers bite-size content for easy consumption. It further provides learning opportunities tailored to the goals and interests of employees. Additionally, the program has AI Predictor that recommends modules beneficial for the employees, basis their search words. Furthermore, to make learning fun and exciting, the program offers gamified learning experience and makes learning rewarding.  

With a significant focus on digital skilling directed towards the workforce, what is needed from leaders today to accelerate the skilling agenda? What are some key skills that leaders need to build on?

The biggest challenge that leadership across the corporate world has faced is ensuring that they substitute the physical connect effectively and can establish relationship/ social capital in these times. This has been a big challenge for leaders who have joined us in the pandemic. It mandated taking extra effort to regularly communicate, tapping into social skills as well as using every opportunity to connect physically. 

Second, existing leaders have had to maintain agility while navigating the choppy waters during the last two years as supply side disruptions and demand fluctuations have meant that leaders have had to be on their toes. Driving this sensitivity, awareness, and readiness in the teams has meant that the leaders have had to up their game and constantly be on top of the situation. 

Third, keeping the short and long-term view in play has never been more critical. Beyond the challenges mentioned above, the current world is also a period of high inflation, which has further required balancing the immediate need for profitability and the long-term relevance to the market in balance.

Imagine all this happening in a digital distributed world, and you have the perfect recipe for an edge-of-the-seat thriller. It has been a real roller coaster ride, but it has made the true leaders stand out well.

What is your advice for leaders as they revamp the business and work tech models for the rapidly changing world of work?

Three things: Keep learning and improvising, focus on productivity and competitiveness and keep the employees at the centre of your plans.