Twenty-seven years of terms set far from head office

Mandate

Put pay, employment categories and conduct processes on a footing that a new investor and the board could examine and defend.

Outcomes

• Retrained 92 broadcast craft staff for the app and limited role closures to 38 through voluntary separation
• Moved 141 long-serving district contributors into employment with accident cover
• Protected take-home pay for 940 employees under the labour codes
• Cut the share of night shifts worked by the ten most-rostered producers from 31 to 18 per cent

Decisions in context

The CHRO role came with the private-equity investment and a board committee that wanted written answers. My first year went on pay data that could be trusted: one grade structure, one payroll and an honest count of who worked for us without being employed. The three larger decisions followed from that count. Each needed the managing director, the CFO and the news director to accept a cost they would not have chosen, and each went to the nomination and remuneration committee with the trade-off stated first. I attend board meetings for people matters but am not a director. The role has also shown me how quickly an investor's timetable can press on permanent commitments to employees. I have learnt to separate the two in my papers, because the fund will leave while the pay structure stays.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing for a first independent directorship alongside it.

Mandate

Build a human resources function in a company that had handled personnel matters through its accounts department.

Outcomes

• Introduced written job grades for newsroom and technical roles
• Constituted the Internal Committee with an external member and trained every bureau chief
• Kept 24-hour coverage staffed through the 2020 lockdowns with bureau-level rosters

Decisions in context

I arrived to find salaries set by whoever had made the hire and no record of how many contributors the bureaus used. The first year went on grades: a written ladder from trainee reporter to output editor, with pay ranges that people could see. Some senior staff found themselves above their range and were frozen rather than cut, which they resented but accepted. I set up the Internal Committee properly, with its external member, and ran sessions in every bureau. The lockdowns of 2020 tested all of it. Coverage could not stop, staff fell ill, and transport was uncertain. We gave bureau chiefs their own rosters and a daily call with my team, which kept the channel on air without one central schedule. That period earned HR a place in operating decisions, and it shaped how I later wrote the CHRO mandate.

Reason for the move

Appointed CHRO when the investment brought a nomination and remuneration committee and a wider remit.

Mandate

Bring the company's own staff and the crews engaged through production houses under consistent terms and safer shooting practice.

Outcomes

• Agreed written daily rates and overtime terms with crew suppliers on four in-house serials
• Limited shoots to twelve consecutive days before a rest day
• Moved staff pay from cash allowances to recorded payroll components

Decisions in context

Mallurika ran daily serials, and the schedule set everyone's life. The company's own staff were a minority of the people on set; light assistants, drivers and junior artistes came through production houses and were paid in cash by the day. I could not employ them all, and I did not pretend to. I could make the company's supplier contracts specify rates, overtime and rest, and refuse to approve schedules that ran crews for weeks without a break. Two suppliers withdrew rather than comply, and one serial lost a fortnight of filming. Inside the company, I moved staff from cash allowances to recorded pay, which cost some of them take-home pay in the short run and gave them provident fund records they had never had. I learnt there how far a company's responsibility reaches beyond its own headcount, and how slowly suppliers change unless the contract makes them.

Reason for the move

Moved to news, where most of the workforce was employed rather than engaged for a season.

Mandate

Staff rapid growth in retail, distribution and network operations while keeping incentive plans honest and auditable.

Outcomes

• Redesigned distribution-sales incentives that had paid on connections never recharged
• Hired about 700 people in two years for network rollout and retail
• Managed the people side of the 2013 sale of the southern operations, including 1,100 transfers to the buyer

Decisions in context

Running HR for three circles meant running three labour markets at once. Network engineers were scarce in Kerala, retail staff turned over fast in Bengaluru, and the Andhra Pradesh circle was still growing. The hardest work was incentive design. Our distribution-sales staff were paid on activations, and audits showed a large share of new connections were never recharged. I worked with the circle chief executives to defer part of each incentive until a connection had been used for ninety days. Sales results dipped for two quarters and several strong performers left. When the company sold its southern operations in 2013, I ran the transfers: individual letters, continuity of service and a help desk for every query. I left once the last transfer was complete and every help-desk query had been closed.

Reason for the move

Left after completing the transfer, when the remaining HR role moved to the corporate office.

Mandate

Recruit and organise a circle workforce growing nearly fourfold in five years.

Outcomes

• Built zonal recruitment teams that filled about 380 roles
• Set up the circle's first written grievance procedure
• Introduced monthly reconciliation of incentive payments against activation records

Decisions in context

The circle grew from 140 to more than 500 people while I was there, and most of my time went on hiring: sales executives, retail staff and network engineers for towns that had never had a mobile signal. I set up zonal recruitment in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati so that we were not hiring for coastal towns from a Hyderabad desk. The work that shaped me most was reconciling incentive payments with activation records each month. The figures rarely matched, and the gaps were not always fraud; often the plan simply paid for the wrong thing. I also wrote the circle's first grievance procedure, after a sales executive in Tirupati waited three months for an answer about a deduction. The role taught me how pay plans shape conduct far from head office, and how long that takes to notice.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead HR across three southern circles.

Mandate

Keep wage and attendance records accurate and be able to explain them on the shop floor.

Outcomes

• Reconciled time-office and wage records before each annual bonus calculation
• Prepared the personnel papers for the 2002 long-term wage settlement
• Supported the move of 160 copper-line workers to the fibre lines

Decisions in context

My first employer made the cable that telecom operators were laying across the country, and the work was physical, shift-based and unionised. I kept the attendance and wage records and was expected to explain them, in Telugu, to anyone who queried a payslip. The union's general secretary tested every figure I produced, which made me careful. In 2002 I prepared the personnel papers for a long-term wage settlement, costing each demand against the records rather than against assumptions. When copper orders fell, 160 workers moved to the fibre lines, and the hard part was not training but agreeing how their grades and seniority would carry over. I left for a mobile operator because I wanted to work where the workforce was growing rather than being redeployed, and where pay was being designed rather than inherited.

Reason for the move

Joined a mobile operator's growing circle to work with a services workforce.