Shuchi Arora | Vice President, Performance and Reward | HSBC

Diligent and dynamic by nature, with a penchant to take on challenges and look for new experiences, Shuchi is a passionate individual and a consummate professional. What motivates her is the desire to make a positive impact on people’s lives. With more than nine years of experience across multiple industries, Shuchi continues to reinvent herself and challenge existing beliefs and practices. She has deep convictions and strong values. Shuchi wants her work to be a vehicle for personal growth as well as a driver for social change. Listening to music lifts her spirits. She is an avid reader and loves spending time with her family. Going forward, she aspires to work for gender justice and social welfare.

Shuchi strongly feels that HR is instrumental in building a robust and responsive organization. HR professionals can help employees realize their true potential by creating a sensitive, supportive and trust-based environment. They build channels to achieve shared objectives along with influencing strategic priorities.She believed she had the talent and ability to sustain such ecosystems as well as enhance people's outcomes. Her emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills made pursue HR

Always a learner

Her changing and challenging career trajectory has made her quite adaptable, agile and truly versatile. She is an engineer-turned-HR professional with a sharp focus and a problem-solving lens. Shuchi’s journey in HR started with an Agri-based business, after which she moved to the banking sector. She also had a brief stint as a consultant. Always a learner, Shuchi is open to different ideas and competing views, which helps her build a diverse perspective. Her mantra is to get out of her comfort zone and stay ahead of the learning curve.

She has a unique combination of strategic, analytical and executional capabilities along with the desire to make a difference. She has also partnered with employees across many levels and played an active role in transforming organizations along with developing strategies, streamlined processes, and promoting a performance-driven culture. She has always thrived to #raisethebar.

Engage a multi-generational workforce: Key Priority

For Shuchi , the biggest priority for the future will be to engage a multi-generational workforce operating in a mostly digital ecosystem and being able to retain the social fabric and cultural priorities of the organization. With the redefined contours of work and workplace, and the disruptive pace of technological changes, HR will have to play a pivotal role in integrating the new generation, enabling collaboration, and creating shared visions in this new, boundaryless ecosystem."

The one thing I will  change in HR 

HR needs to make a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach towards the challenges of the future. With technology transforming our ways of working, HR professionals must reposition themselves as champions of change, creating the infrastructure to support the future of work.

The one thing I will retain in HR

Shuchi hopes to retain the human touch of the HR profession. We must ensure that ‘people’ remain the focal point of all policies and decision-making.

Leader who can lead through a crisis

At a time of crisis and rapid change, a leader must have resilience. He should have the ability to balance competing priorities, juggle paradoxical demands, and take decisions with limited information. Leaders can no longer look in the rear-view mirror. They must embrace change and diverse viewpoints to steer the organizational growth agenda. Disruption, though challenging, offered leaders an opportunity to transform organisations through progressive leadership strategies. Leaders need to forge more change ready culture, enabling their teams to succeed in uncertain business environments. The past 2 years have re-established the need for leadership to invest in transparent and purposeful messaging. Leadership will also need to evolve to build a well being focussed employee value proposition, leverage data, create innovative solutions and build resilient teams.

The leadership journey with People Matters Are You In The List Awards

For Shuchi, Are you in the list is one of the most prestigious and aspirational platforms in HR Fraternity. She feels that the  program not only helps to identify the emerging professionals who are ready to make their mark, but also enables a transformative journey for those young leaders. 

“The assessment process was a period of self-discovery and a thorough learning experience for me.. It also gives an opportunity to connect with the brightest talent and thought leaders in the industry and have an exponential learning curve.,” she adds.

Vision for HR's future growth

HR’s growth lies in our ability to be innovative and agile. Shuchi believes we need to embrace new technology. 2020 was a watershed year; it brought HR centre stage. HR played a pivotal role in spearheading organisations through a period of disruption. HR’s goal should be to create an adaptable ecosystem and a future-ready workforce that can respond to the unprecedented rate of change. HR professionals and leaders, therefore, must reinvent themselves to be able to support this transition