Sukanya Bose| Senior Unit Manager-HR Business Partner | Infosys

As a Senior Unit Manager, Business Partner HR at Infosys, Sukanya Bose sits close to the business and acknowledges the fact that the looming recession and subsequent pressure in margins, is making it necessary to attract, engage, and retain people differently and efficiently. HR professionals must work towards this business imperative by leveraging the tools of learning, engagement and career pathing. She believes in adding the ‘human touch’ while tapping into tech and analytics, to make this happen. 

Choosing HR as a passion 

Sukanya’s HR journey kickstarted with a firm belief that employees can singlehandedly determine the success of an organisation. Even when all strategies are in place. This has been one of her primary motivators to be part of the people function. 

Creating personalised experiences

Sukanya believes that in today’s age of digitisation and reduced human touch, the biggest challenge for HR practitioners will be to create more personalised experiences through more conversations, enable managers to be better mentors, assess learning needs and provide learning opportunities, and create long term career path for employees in line with their aspirations. As a sales segment leader at Infosys, Sukanya is trying to get the team invested by re-routing budgets to AI-driven learning interventions and communicating the organisational purpose and strategy through the leaders. Sukanya prefers speaking one-on-one with employees to understand their needs, aspirations & pulse, and using analytics. She strives to add innovative hiring practices, invest in early-career training, and create future talent pipelines to enable cost savings – a key leadership priority. 

“I truly believe that HR Business Partners should understand and align with business and not just with the leadership. Taking people along is crucial. Business doesn’t need another business function but a people aligned function which can deliver business impact”, shared Sukanya.  

When she took over as HR head of the sales segment, her first priority was to understand the business i.e. P&L, industry trends, competitor analysis, future impact areas etc. She recommends business acumen and understanding the larger context as the first HR capability for HRBP success. A deep understanding of the sales process, from lead generation to delivery, to relationship mining also helped. Analytical skills enabled Sukanya to build solutions around workforce planning, reducing cost-per-employee, and improving productivity. Above all, being empathetic, yet business-aligned has helped build a leadership connect as a trusted advisor and ally. 

She shared, “Rethinking what HR function is capable of has made corporate HR functions reach out to me to pull a chair for a “seat at the table”. Not to mention the impact on business metrics like attrition, ESAT, diversity, employee cost, productivity etc.” 

Sukanya is on an ongoing learning journey. She has learnt that the HR function has never been more relevant in contributing to an organisation’s success, hence the custodians of people need to step up, bringing human touch & personalised experience to employees. New realities are ripe, with millennials’ and GenZs’ differing needs and behaviours, and the rise of gig workers. She believes that amidst this crisis and chaos, an opportunity has risen for HR to innovate people practices, engagement, learning and career that makes people stick around and contribute meaningfully to the organisation. 

Journeying with Are You In The List Awards

People Matters Are You In The List powered by Aon has given Sukanya an outside-in perspective of the HR world. She found the case study round interesting thanks to an opportunity to debate real and plausible scenarios. The developmental report and the Start-Continue-Stop exercise helped her self-analyse and work on certain behaviours. “The CHRO coaching session by DNP (DN Prasad) was an enriching experience where the coach could draw answers and share inputs individually and as a group”, shared Sukanya. The HR leader gained a lot from hearing her peers from other organisations & industries share their challenges and approaches to tackling them.

Above all, her biggest learning came from the 10 min interview because it gave her a peep into what a leadership interview can look like 10 years down the line. “I have replayed that interview in my mind multiple times rethinking what my answers would be if given another chance. I think this will be my biggest takeaway from this process”, she shared. 

What’s Next?

For her HR vision for 2024, Sukanya believes in leading her HR journey with Empathy. This, according to her is a powerful tool to attract, engage, and inspire a diverse workforce and enable them to create positive business and social impact. 

To gain new perspectives and innovative ideas on streamlining HR processes, follow the #AreYouInTheList.