From answering a query to owning the people system

Mandate

Make employee commitments, managerial responsibility and supporting records coherent across a growing service business.

Outcomes

• Separated thirty-six promotion proposals into twenty-two management appointments, eight specialist paths and six preparation decisions
• Supported eighteen additional posts for a defined after-hours cover pilot
• Preserved agreed service and leave records for 420 acquired employees
• Introduced practical assessment for selected roles previously screened by degree

Decisions in context

The CHRO role gave me responsibility for the people system as a whole, including practices I had helped operate earlier. I led five functional heads and worked with the CEO on decisions whose employment effects could be obscured by a simple operating proposal. The promotion review was particularly personal: I had previously accepted technical excellence as sufficient reason to give somebody a team. Changing that approach required a credible specialist alternative, not another training requirement alone. I also worked with finance and service leaders to make after-hours cover an explicit cost and with transaction colleagues to preserve agreed employee records. My authority covers the people function and its delegated expense, while business leaders retain their operating decisions. I present recommendations to directors without holding a seat myself. The appointment has required me to connect an intended policy with the resources and management responsibility needed to honour it.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; reviewing how the revised responsibilities work after implementation.

Mandate

Connect regional people support with dependable company-wide records and administration.

Outcomes

• Assigned owners for employee-record corrections across regions
• Documented the basis of recurring personnel exceptions
• Connected recruitment administration with confirmed service vacancies

Decisions in context

I moved from regional partnering into a company-wide operating role covering employee records, recruitment administration and development support. The team reached twenty-eight colleagues through four leads, and my delegated expense was ₹4.9 crore by FY 2022. A recurring difficulty was that a reasonable local arrangement could become an unexplained inconsistency when another team inherited the record. I asked people partners to document the decision and its authority, rather than leave the next colleague to infer an agreement from scattered correspondence. I also saw the limitations of promotion processes that gave technical specialists people-management titles as a route to higher pay. At the time I helped administer those decisions; the later review did not begin from a claim that I had always opposed them. This role prepared me for CHRO responsibility by showing how several individually competent HR teams could still leave an employee without a clear company answer.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CHRO after the incumbent's planned retirement.

Mandate

Give colleagues at client workplaces a clear route to their employer's decisions.

Outcomes

• Clarified employment escalation contacts for client-site teams
• Connected leave decisions with accountable service managers
• Introduced regional review of unresolved employee queries

Decisions in context

Praneri introduced me to employment arrangements shaped by two organisations. A colleague might work every day at a customer's office while relying on our managers for leave, development and employment decisions. I led nine regional HR colleagues and worked with service managers across northern and eastern India. The challenge was not simply to publish an escalation chart. We needed the named manager to understand the responsibility and respond when the employee used that route. I reviewed unresolved queries with operations and separated customer scheduling preferences from decisions that belonged to Praneri as employer. My regional expense authority reached ₹1.5 crore by FY 2017, but I did not own client contracts or the service P&L. The appointment taught me to examine where a person actually works and receives instructions before assuming that an organisational chart describes their experience. It led naturally to responsibility for the records and processes connecting regions.

Reason for the move

Moved into the company-wide head of people operations appointment.

Mandate

Help supervisors apply employment decisions consistently and explain their reasoning.

Outcomes

• Established joint supervisor reviews of recurring employee issues
• Distinguished pending decisions from completed employee responses
• Maintained a record of reasons behind individual exceptions

Decisions in context

At Felmori I moved from personnel administration into employee relations, leading five colleagues across two service locations. A policy could be read in different ways by supervisors who were each convinced that their interpretation was fair. I brought managers together around actual cases and asked them to explain the facts that justified a different answer. The purpose was not to remove discretion, but to prevent an employee's outcome from depending on which supervisor happened to receive the question. I reported to the HR head and had no independent authority to alter compensation or settle every case. That limit made it necessary to be precise about what I could commit to and what required review. The role strengthened my ability to discuss disagreement without treating it as a failure of the relationship. After five years, I wanted to apply that experience in a more dispersed operating business, which led to Praneri.

Reason for the move

Joined a technology-services employer for wider regional responsibility.

Mandate

Maintain usable personnel records and route employee questions to the right decision-maker.

Outcomes

• Reconciled attendance queries with supervisors before record closure
• Recorded ownership and response dates for employee questions
• Preserved earlier supporting records when personnel entries changed

Decisions in context

I joined shortly after completing my postgraduate HR diploma. My work concerned attendance, employee questions and coordination with supervisors, with two records assistants helping maintain the files. I learned that an administrative record could omit an important part of a person's history even when its latest entry was technically complete. When a proposed change did not explain the earlier arrangement, I took the records to the personnel manager instead of making an assurance beyond my authority. I had no payroll approval or hiring budget, so my contribution depended on careful preparation and follow-through. Employees often remembered whether someone had returned with an answer more clearly than the language of the original policy. Over five years I became more confident in asking supervisors to explain a decision and in distinguishing an unresolved question from a closed file. I left to take responsibility for a small employee-relations team in services.

Reason for the move

Moved to employee-relations management in a service business.