Nirjhari Kher|Senior Manager-Leadership Development| Titan Company Ltd.

As Senior Manager, Leadership Development at the Titan Company Limited, Nirjhari Kher is committed to the cause of retaining, skilling and creating a talent pipeline that is resilient and future-ready. She believes in continuous evolution as an HR professional, and has pushed the envelope to explore how learning and development can be looked at for various cohorts in the organisation, building a more personalised engagement. 

Beginning: Choosing HR as a passion

Nirjhari believes that sometimes career choices are made by what people enjoyed as students. “As a high school student, I had a keen interest in subjects like Math, English and Psychology. Around the same time I met a couple of HR professionals and what they did fascinated me”, she shared. These interactions showed her the opportunity to stand on the convergence of business and people, pushing her to become an HR professional. It was not a straightforward path though; she graduated in Engineering to get some work experience and then worked towards getting her Masters in HR after graduation. This set her on the path to becoming an HR practitioner.

Creating impact and battling the challenges

Nirjhari reckons that the biggest problem statement in front of HR today is about building the talent landscape within the organisation. Right from attracting and retaining talent, to re-skilling and up-skilling people, to creating a future-ready talent pipeline, she believes there is a lot for the HR team to do. In alignment, she is working to create a framework which addresses career, development and engagement for top talent in the organisation. 

“From a career standpoint, I am working on helping the individual and the ecosystem create a career path for the individual, keeping in mind their short-term and long-term aspirations aligned with business growth”, Nirjhari said. To enable employee development, she is working on creating a process flow which captures peoples’ development needs, brings these in alignment with the business priorities and creates learning personalisation at scale. Through her model, engagement is addressed through a variety of aspects based on the individual's feedback. 

Nirjhari recommends the HR function to keep evolving and embracing newer ways of working. For example, creating unique programs for different cohorts through personalisation at scale. The challenge is to make this in alignment with the business needs. She shared an example of how she created programs which brought in a project-based learning approach, wherein employees get an opportunity to work on critical business problems in a group setting.

This initiative involved designing fully digital self-paced journeys, IDP-based approaches, and customising the learning programs to suit specific needs. Her three-pronged Career-Development-Engagement approach helped develop and retain the identified top talent in the organisation. ‘Career’ involves Talent Reviews and career conversations to align with peoples’ long-term aspirations. ‘Development’ means diagnostics, coaching, mentoring, CXO updates, and customised programs from marquee institutes. And ‘Engagement’ involves stay conversations and talent discovery in collaboration with leaders

This framework is enabled through a combination of technology and human touch.

Nirjhari considers it a great learning to be able to witness the rapid growth and changes in the business context and be able to see how the talent landscape has to keep pace. She believes that this pace of change poses a very important question for companies wanting to be future-ready from a talent perspective. “We can no longer rely on doing the same things again and again”,  she said. There is also a need to understand individuals from a personal perspective to be able to bring alignment with the organisation. A deep understanding of individual values and how HR professionals can reaffirm them can make all the difference in retaining and developing talent.

Journeying with Are You In The List Awards

“The entire assessment process has taken me on a journey of self-discovery”, said Nirjhari. 

Nirjhari shared that the various rounds have helped her test her capabilities and understand her strengths and areas of improvement better. The journey has also been one of ‘pushing her limits’ and thinking through each problem and solution, as she reflected on all her work done, contributions made and learnings. These reflections have given her an understanding of the path she can now take to develop herself for the future. The opportunity to connect with CHROs, CEOs and fellow HR colleagues has brought in different perspectives on different problems. “It has provided me with greater visibility on the different skills required on my leadership journey”, highlighted Nirjhari. 

What’s Next?

Nirjhari’s vision for HR in 2024 is centred on enabling human experiences and skill-building through a data-driven and digital approach. She believes this will help create a robust talent pipeline for the future. She strives to achieve this by banking upon her core work-life philosophy of ‘being calm in the midst of the storm’.