Article: HR's engagement with people is an ongoing thing'

Strategic HR

HR's engagement with people is an ongoing thing'

Rohit Hasteer, India Director HR, UTi Worldwide, shares insights on how keeping people at the center can make changing processes a tad easier
HR's engagement with people is an ongoing thing'
 

When you are about to bring in such a radical change in existing processes, it takes time. Some people are excited about it and some are a bit sceptical about the result

 

What a company does for its employees in the L&D and employee engagement sphere is what makes a real impression on people

 

In an interview with People Matters, Rohit Hasteer, Director, People Management & Human Resources - Indian Subcontinent, UT Worldwide, shares insights on how keeping people at the center of HR activities can make overhauling of processes a tad easier

Being a part of an industry that depends heavily on the skills of its people, what kind of people do you hire, and what are the challenges that you face?

Like any other industry, in freight management also we prefer people with relevant expertise and skills. The problem is that this is a small industry. In India at the most there are 10-15 mentionable players. Due to this, there is a dearth of people with relevant expertise. On the flip side, due to the size of the industry, even people do not leave their jobs frequently. They know that they have to spend 25-30 years of their career in the same industry, amidst the same companies. The industry isn’t very open to hiring people from the outside, so when these companies hire, references count for a lot. Combating these practices is a challenge in itself. To be able to make fair judgment, it is essential that the recruitment process is fair. The industry is waking up to this idea. Within our company, we are paying special attention to the fact that we hire talented people through a fair process.

Did you explore some new recruitment options to be able to achieve this?

We realised that we needed to bring trust into play. Hence, instead of fully relying on outside agencies, we decided to internalise the process, as this gives us a direct control over hiring. Earlier, there was no ERP system, and the whole delivery mechanism depended on people. There were some systems in different offices at local levels, but there was no integration at the enterprise level. We understand that we need to be more organised on the people front. An essential part of it is recruitment. Hence, we focus more on quality hiring. Earlier, recruitment costs were very high because most of the recruitment was being done with the help of recruitment firms. We decided to make the process more efficient. Of late, we have been taking the help of job portals, and have cut down on the number of recruitment firms we were hiring through. We have revamped the entire hiring process. Now the entire process is metric driven; the HR is the owner of the recruitment process and is also accountable for a position not closing.

Do you think such culture changes are easy?

It may turn out to be a mixed experience. When you are about to bring in such a radical change in existing processes, it takes time. Some people are excited about it and some are a bit sceptical about the results. That’s a part of the whole thing. During my travel to most of our branches, I realised a good thing: somewhere in their heart people wanted HR to come in across branches. I’ll suggest that in such situations, HR should pick one piece at a time, but yes, it has to be swift.

What were the main areas that you focussed on?

We adopted a multi-pronged approach. The first focus area was policy and process orientation. For this we looked at various processes such as hiring, on-boarding and training, to ensure that the HR team is ready to handle these changes well. Gradually, we made some changes to the team structure and focused on hiring more talented people. Overall, the performance of the HR function improved significantly.

Our second focus area were people outside HR. What a company does for its employees in the Learning and Development and employee engagement sphere is what makes a real impression on people. The third focus area was getting the right feedback. The technicalities of the processes are more or less the same but HR is in a nascent stage in our industry, and we did not have a very successful model to replicate. We decided to rely heavily on the feedback, both of the senior leadership, and the junior and mid-level employees.

Do you in some way integrate with the global HR team as well?

Ours is a combination of global and local initiatives. Practices are fairly open, so they can be integrated with steps taken by the local HR team.

And what were the challenges that you faced in this process?

Challenges are a part of any change. Our focus was to build confidence among our staff. So we took one step at a time. To overhaul existing systems, it was essential to have the right people. I personally believe that there is limited talent in HR. For us, it was important to have the right set of people. Our HR team has been hand-picked and trained and that is how everything fell into place.

What kind of steps did you take?

We introduced some good benefits for employees, made our compensation structure tax-friendly, and took into account what people have to say regarding these steps. The focus is to keep people and their performance at the centre of things. So, besides some nice perks, we started a few interesting engagement exercises. For instance, whenever the CEO is travelling to any of our centres, he makes it a point to have lunch with a set of people, particularly the deputy managers and those below, because senior leaders anyway get a chance to interact with him. All this encourages open communication within the company.

We believe that HR processes and its engagement with people is an ongoing thing, and we are still upgrading our systems. We are working towards standardisation of processes and inculcating a common culture across centres.
Our global team conducts a Voice of UTi survey every year. Last year, 32 per cent of employees from our India team responded to this survey, and this year the percentage rose to 99.6 per cent. This is a culture change. People now want to come out in the open and talk about things.

Rohit Hasteer is Director - People Management & Human Resources, Indian Subcontinent at UT Worldwide.

Corregendum : In the print version of the article, the designation of Rohit Hasteer was incorrectly indicated as Director HR India, at UTi Worldwide. He is Director - People Management & Human Resources, Indian Subcontinent at UT Worldwide. The sentence "Overall, the power of the HR function improved significantly" was incorrectly printed. It has been revised to "Overall, the performance of the HR function improved significantly" in this version.

 

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Topics: Strategic HR

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