Chief Human Resources Officer India

The opportunity needed decisions beyond the announcement

Company employees: 360; March 2026; fourteen people-function colleagues through three leads
Company revenue: ₹148 crore; FY 2025–26; ₹11.2 crore operating profit
People-function experience: 30 years; Personnel administration to enterprise industrial people leadership

Decisions & consequences

Opening the internal interview without pretending the vacancy had disappeared

A 2022 review of an internal recruitment round found twenty-one eligible applicants, nine of whom had been stopped before interview because their managers would not authorise release. The managers described production pressure and the difficulty of replacing experienced colleagues. I understood those concerns and had supported the approval step when it was retained in our process. But the condition combined two different decisions: whether someone could be assessed for a role and when a successful candidate could move.

I proposed allowing all eligible applicants to enter assessment while requiring a defined transition decision after selection. Operations head Vivek Nalqeshi objected to any arrangement that assumed the sending team could lose capability overnight. We agreed that qualified operating colleagues would retain technical staffing and deployment authority. What changed was the ability to stop an application indefinitely without exposing the resource issue to a wider decision.

The twelve-week programme used ₹34 lakh for temporary cover, supervised learning, selection work and transition support. All twenty-one applicants were interviewed against the receiving roles. Seven were selected. Five completed agreed transfers during the review period, while two still needed workable transitions. I reported those two as unresolved rather than counting the selection decision as a completed move. The remaining fourteen applicants were not selected; access to an interview was not a promise of appointment.

Sending managers received an agreed route to raise cover requirements, and receiving managers had to participate in planning rather than announce a start date unilaterally. Employees were told which decision had been made and what remained. The arrangement did not remove the company's applicable employment processes or permit an unsafe deployment to meet an administrative deadline.

The most important correction was mine. I had treated manager permission as a neutral operating safeguard, when it could also protect a team's resources at the cost of an individual's opportunity. The revised process made both interests discussable. It did not eliminate staffing constraints, but it stopped those constraints from being an invisible gate that prevented the candidate from ever reaching assessment.

Revisiting fourteen grades where tenure had stood in for the job

In 2023 we reviewed 118 role evaluations across the company. Fourteen had been influenced by the incumbent's personal tenure rather than a consistent account of the work's responsibilities and demands. Some managers had used a higher grade to recognise a valued colleague. Others had inherited a title and assumed it described the same level of work as a similar title elsewhere. The resulting structure was difficult to explain to employees comparing opportunities.

I did not propose treating all fourteen as overgraded or immediately changing individual pay. We separated the evaluation of the job from the remuneration and contribution of the person. Managers rewrote the role account around actual responsibilities, with the relevant operating specialists examining technical demands. The review considered the work as performed and required, rather than inventing additional duties to defend an existing grade.

The ten-week exercise cost ₹22 lakh in evaluation, manager workshops and employee communication. Nine of the fourteen roles remained in their bands after review; five were placed differently. Eleven employees occupied those five role types. A separate ₹18 lakh annual pay-alignment provision was approved for the affected arrangements after the appropriate individual review. We did not reduce existing pay through the evaluation exercise or present its result as resolving every legal or contractual question.

Some long-serving colleagues were concerned that distinguishing tenure from job value diminished their contribution. I explained that the company still needed a credible way to recognise experience. That discussion belonged in individual reward and development arrangements, not in a role definition that could become misleading when a different person occupied it. The CEO supported keeping the two conversations separate even though it required more work than a single grade announcement.

The outcome was a more defensible account of the fourteen reviewed roles and a defined process for the related pay questions. It was not proof that the other 104 evaluations were permanently correct. I learned that a familiar structure deserves examination when its meaning becomes hard to explain, and that correcting the role account should not casually rewrite the commitments made to the people doing the work.

Giving technical progression a defined job instead of a supervisory title

A 2025 career discussion with eighteen experienced technicians found seven who wanted deeper technical responsibility but did not want to become supervisors. Our visible progression route largely depended on taking people-management duties. That could encourage a colleague to accept a role they did not want simply to obtain recognition, while the company lost some of the technical contribution it was trying to retain.

I worked with qualified operating specialists to define two senior technical role types. The work included support for difficult production tasks, contribution to approved methods and coaching within the relevant technical authority. These were substantive jobs with assessment criteria, not honorary titles. A senior technician would not acquire unrestricted sign-off power or a supervisory remit merely through a new grade. Engineering, quality and safety responsibilities remained with the designated specialists.

The four-month development and assessment programme cost ₹29 lakh. A separate ₹16 lakh annual remuneration provision supported the new appointments and role structure. Five of the seven interested colleagues demonstrated the defined requirements and accepted appointments. Two still needed further evidence and an agreed development plan at the review date. We did not claim all seven had progressed, or that the appointments had already produced a measured retention or productivity improvement.

Some supervisors worried that a technical route would make their own responsibilities appear less valuable. I explained that the two paths represented different work, with their own expectations and assessment. The company still needed capable people managers. It also needed a way to recognise technical depth without using supervision as the universal reward. Managers and the affected colleagues were involved in explaining how the paths related, rather than receiving a title change without context.

The case changed the career conversation from which promotion title was available to what contribution a person wanted and could demonstrate. HR owned the structure and communication; specialists owned the technical assessment. I learned that an alternative path becomes credible through the work, resources and review behind it, while unfinished assessments must remain visible rather than being counted as success at the programme launch.

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