Aastha Bhatia| Senior Manager HR | Bharti Infratel Ltd.

A graduate in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a gold medalist in MBA HR from Symbiosis Institute of International Business Pune, Aastha has worked across a broad horizon of HR verticals ranging from HRIT to managing talent on the ground. She started her journey in HR by working on SAP SuccessFactors implementation for global clients at Infosys. Then she moved to KPMG and joined its HR Consulting arm, where she helped businesses with breadth of solutions to manage talent effectively and efficiently.

Later she transitioned from advising clients to managing talent for a corporate. In her current stint at Bharti Infratel, she is leading Talent Management, Learning and OD vertical. The diverse experience Aastha has had so far has shaped her as an HR professional.

“Each and every stint in my career has uniquely contributed in my journey so far and I would love to maintain this flavour of diversification moving ahead too,” shares Aastha Bhatia, Senior Manager HR, Bharti Infratel Ltd.

Learning to unlock the human potential

The inclination of understanding human behaviour and the curiosity to find what motivates them, intrigued Aastha to explore this field more. “HR as a function has immense untapped potential, the key lies in understanding the business and its people deeply and making thumping difference in the growth of organization,” believes Aastha. 

Nurturing the emotional quotient to make an impact and stay unique

Self Motivation, learning mindset, Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Integrity are some of the qualities that help Aastha make a great impact at work, she shares. While motivation, growth mindset and integrity are some of her innate qualities, she had to still put a conscious effort to groom her EI skills. Often appreciated for her quick ability to learn and bring a fast turnaround with the right equation of enthusiasm and discipline, she has invested in nurturing her emotional quotient. 

Aastha reveals, “Every week I was making an incremental shift to my natural working style, until it became a habit. The learning process has not stopped yet, the habit are still developing and my style is still evolving. I am described as a person with result orientation, eye for detail, and am recognized for solving pertinent business problems and resilience to sail through the toughest of situations.”

Identifying and cultivating the critical top talent: The key priority

For Aastha the biggest priority in today’s time is identifying and cultivating the critical 2 percent of the talent. This is the percentage of talent who is truly accelerating the organisation’s growth. However, organizations fail to identify these employees. Aastha’s focus shall thus be on helping her organization and the entire community build a mechanism or process that enables them to identify this top layer of talent. Once identified, companies must also invest in their development. 

As Aastha continues on her professional journey,  et’s see what key actions and plans does she have in mind for the HR function. 

The one thing I will change in HR

It is time to be agile and embrace technology to take more sound people decisions. Digitization and predictive analytics doesn’t replace and rather supplements and improves our judgement. It can help us find the right fit for the job, forecast skills for future, anticipate attrition and help set talent priorities in far less time and with much higher success rate. 

The one thing I will retain in HR

The employees indeed, fuel the growth of the company. The talent decisions taken today, go a long way in shaping the future of the organization. As a function, I would like to retain that talent strategy has to go hand in hand with the organisation strategy, so utmost care needs to be taken in defining the vision for the business and its people. Listen and invest in potential of employees to reap long term gains.

Vision for HR's future growth

There is a strong need to personalize our approach to employee experience as rigorously as we would personalize our offerings to our customers. One size doesn’t fit all, and we need to curate employee experience across all touchpoints. The traditional job descriptions need to be fluidic to align to help the employees play to their strengths. The career paths designed should accommodate personal priorities and align with business goals. The learning experience needs to be personalized basis one’s proficiency level and the skill sets needed for their job. Further, the bundle of employee benefits should be attractive enough for all employee groups and should have flexibility to choose. Advent of technology can play a huge difference in creating these positive individualized experiences and winning the war for talent.