The attendance record had left legitimate work outside

I became more careful about the word absence after discovering that our attendance process could make work disappear. An employee might have no depot entry because a supervisor had authorised an assignment elsewhere. The rule I had approved did not preserve that possibility. It produced a clear-looking record from an incomplete description of the day, and the resulting certainty belonged to the process rather than the facts.

I completed social studies at Vaqlerni Social Studies College in May 1996 and joined Navqerzi Employment Services the following month. I was a personnel assistant in an eight-person group, preparing appointment records and checking changes under supervision. The work introduced me to the difference between a document that had been completed and a person who understood what it meant. I could organise the record but could not independently determine a disputed employment question. Learning when to seek an accountable decision was as important as learning how to maintain the file.

In April 2004 I moved into people operations, with twelve colleagues and ₹1.4 crore annual function expense. We supported distributed assignments where the person giving daily instructions could differ from the person maintaining the employment record. I learned to identify which manager had actually authorised a change before treating the administrative trail as complete. That experience should have made the later attendance mistake less likely. Instead, familiarity with recurring problems made me too comfortable with a single rule that seemed easier to explain across locations.

I joined Zevqrali Landscape Care as an HR business partner in April 2011. Twelve HR colleagues worked within ₹1.8 crore annual expense. Landscape maintenance meant following people between estates, nursery activity and supporting duties without assuming that every site was an employer. Direct employees and vendor workers needed distinct accounts of who held responsibility. I became more interested in the way a people practice altered daily work after its announcement, especially when a manager had to choose between following the rule and accurately describing an assignment.

Promotion to Head of People in April 2017 brought sixteen colleagues and ₹2.5 crore annual function expense. The attendance review followed in 2018. Forty disputed records did not represent one kind of event: twenty-four had approved offsite work, ten showed actual absence and six remained unresolved. I withdrew the automatic adverse conclusion and used a ₹41 lakh, nine-week programme to revise the account and its review route. Correcting an attendance record was not the same as deciding every pay or conduct consequence. Those decisions required their own facts and professional review.

I became CHRO in April 2023. The next difficult question concerned promotion. A broad relocation condition had excluded eight of twenty-four applicants even though only three of twelve vacancies required mobility. We reopened consideration against each role’s actual requirements. Eleven appointments followed, including three people who could not relocate; thirteen applicants were not appointed and one vacancy remained open. I would not describe that as universal success. It changed access to consideration without removing the need to choose or pretending that every role had the same practical demands.

In 2025 we examined support for forty-one newly appointed supervisors. Seven experienced mentors could each support four participants in the initial programme, leaving thirteen for a later cohort. I chose a phased approach rather than claim that a mentor’s name beside every supervisor created useful support. The ₹78 lakh, twelve-week initial programme protected time and covered its defined support costs separately from recurring HR expense. Mentoring did not confer a technical qualification or site authorisation. Those requirements continued through their own qualified owners.

I now ask reviewers to identify the person affected by a rule and the manager able to explain the underlying assignment. That keeps a policy discussion connected to a real working relationship, rather than letting an aggregate measure become the only account anyone sees.

Today eighteen HR employees work through three heads within ₹3.1 crore annual function expense. I report to Rita Qelvazthi and work with Suresh Zevqalni across the operating account. The company’s 480 direct employees and 180 vendor workers remain distinct populations. I have neither personal equity nor a statutory board seat. For a future outside role, unfinished governance preparation and an appointment-specific assessment would come before acceptance. I want to contribute where a leader can acknowledge a flawed people rule, explain whom it affected and show how the revised decision follows the work more honestly.

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