Chief Human Resources Officer India

The people choice inside a commercial proposal

Instrument retail estate: 24 shops; Fictional Dorqani Music Rooms, with workshop and regional field services
Company workforce: 480 people; FY ending March 2026; distinct from the CHRO's function
People function: 30 colleagues; Four managers and ₹4.8 crore annual function expense

Decisions & consequences

Paying applicants to demonstrate workshop aptitude

In FY2023 we were recruiting entry workshop assistants under a vacancy description that required a degree. Workshop head Rohan Tevzuri challenged the filter because it did not demonstrate the handling, listening and instruction-following ability needed for supervised entry work. I had retained it to make shortlisting easier. Some managers worried that removing it would produce an unmanageable application pool and lower the standard before the technical team even met a candidate.

We separated the actual entry requirements from the convenient educational proxy. The change applied to this workshop-assistant recruitment, with all candidates adults and the technical requirements retained. It did not remove qualifications required for other occupations or give HR authority to certify instrument-repair competence. Rohan's assessors designed a supervised practical exercise, and we paid candidates for their participation rather than use productive unpaid trial work. HR organised consistent instructions, recording and feedback.

Sixty-two candidates completed the process: twenty-eight without degrees and thirty-four with them. Ten were hired, seven from the first group and three from the second; the other fifty-two were not appointed. The assessment and introductory training cost ₹18 lakh. The CEO approved that expense because it bought better evidence for a difficult recruitment decision, not because we could promise an immediate saving against a conventional shortlist. Technical assessors remained accountable for the practical judgement, and the recruits entered supervised training rather than being described as fully qualified repair specialists.

All ten completed the initial training. Twelve months later nine remained employed, while one had left for further study. Those observations were useful but too small to establish that the method would outperform degree screening in every job. The outcome I could defend was narrower: seven people who would previously have failed the educational filter had demonstrated enough aptitude to be appointed and trained. I learned to ask what a hiring condition proves before defending it as a standard, and to accept the cost of assessing a capability directly when a familiar document does not provide the evidence.

Funding regional service bases instead of assuming relocation

Our FY2024 field-service proposal would have concentrated eighteen technicians around one central base. Eight already travelled regularly and ten worked mainly locally. The proposed model expected frequent travel from all eighteen and relocation from twelve. Its apparent simplicity depended on treating those commitments as available before discussing them with the people concerned. Operations wanted a coherent dispatch system, while I wanted the employment assumptions included in the recommendation rather than left for HR to negotiate after approval.

We considered four regional service bases, including the existing Shillong base. The alternative carried ₹1.3 crore incremental annual operating expense and a four-month implementation plan, compared with two months proposed for the central model. It also required operations to manage more than one dispatch point. I did not present it as a cost-saving choice. The CEO approved the regional approach after reviewing the service implications and the workforce options together.

Fourteen existing technicians accepted regional field roles. Four chose existing local workshop vacancies instead, without being required to document private family circumstances to justify that preference. Two additional field technicians were recruited, leaving sixteen in the regional service team. The four workshop transfers remained employees of the company. Operations retained responsibility for route planning, technical service and the promises made to customers; HR coordinated the role discussions and employment changes with the appropriate advice.

In the six-month review ending February 2025, 342 of 380 completed service jobs were attended within the window promised for each booking; thirty-eight were late. The account did not include a claim that every rural location was now adequately served. First-year incremental operating expense was ₹1.36 crore, ₹6 lakh above the ₹1.3 crore budget, with additional travel and weather-related costs. The regional model gave us an explicit staffing commitment and functioning service coverage, but it remained more expensive and some journeys still proved difficult. My lesson was to put location and travel inside the business case early enough for directors to choose knowingly, rather than call an untested expectation of mobility an operating efficiency.

Replacing my broad outside-work restriction with individual review

In July 2025 we examined forty-eight disclosed outside activities among employees: twenty-nine principally involved performance and nineteen teaching. Each person was counted once by the main activity disclosed. I initially proposed a broad restriction because managers were worried about scheduling, customer approaches and competing commitments. That seemed easier to administer than a series of individual decisions. Colleagues challenged the assumption that every music lesson or evening performance created the same employment concern.

With employment advisers and operating managers, we replaced the proposed blanket rule with a review of the relevant arrangement. The questions concerned actual scheduling, competition, confidentiality and the terms that applied to the employee's role. We limited the details collected to those needed for that review, rather than asking everyone to reveal private earnings or circulate complete lists of pupils and clients. ₹12 lakh covered the review and manager briefings. It was an expense of making a better decision, not a financial benefit attributed to outside work.

By September, thirty-six activities were considered compatible without change, eight had been modified and four remained unresolved. We did not report those four as approved simply to close the review. By February 2026, three had been modified and one conflicting booking arrangement had stopped. The final account was thirty-six unchanged, eleven modified and one stopped arrangement, covering the original forty-eight. It did not represent the termination of an employee's job or a general permission for any future outside commitment.

The harder part for me was explaining why my initial proposal changed. The business had genuine interests to protect, and some conflicts still required a different arrangement. But administrative convenience was not enough reason to treat unlike situations identically. We retained a route for reviewing changed circumstances and told managers not to infer approval for a new activity from an earlier decision about another one. I would now begin with the specific employment concern and the relevant advice, rather than write a broad prohibition and ask colleagues to prove why their professional lives deserved an exception.

Changing the reward around a repair conversation

A new-instrument sale earned a per-unit bonus in twelve shops selected for a pay pilot. Repair advice could require more time and specialist support without producing the same reward. The commercial team wanted helpful advice but also depended on sales income. I did not assume that every colleague recommended a replacement for the bonus; I asked whether the arrangement made one recommendation easier to reward than another, regardless of the customer's needs.

The CEO approved a pilot covering sixty-four sales and service colleagues from January to June 2026. We replaced the per-unit new-instrument bonus with a fixed role allowance and a separate quality review that did not automatically determine pay. The change carried ₹44 lakh annualised pay expense, not a claim that the whole amount was paid during the six months. A further ₹9 lakh was spent on training and review. Finance retained responsibility for assessing the trading effect, while Rohan's workshop team owned technical assessment and the suitability of any proposed repair.

We reviewed two samples of 160 repair enquiries each, one from January–March and one from April–June. In the first, eighty-eight had a documented qualified assessment before a purchase recommendation. In the second, 137 did. Seventy-four customers in the later sample chose a repair; the other eighty-six had other outcomes, including deferred decisions, and were not all counted as new-instrument buyers. The review used appropriate permissions and omitted identifying customer details from the leadership account.

The change in documentation was encouraging, but it did not establish that every recommendation was correct or that the pay change caused the entire difference. Training and the assessment process also changed. By October 2026 the wider margin review was still in progress, and we had not declared a company-wide rollout. My responsibility was to make the employment incentive consistent with the advice we wanted colleagues to consider, then leave technical and commercial conclusions with their proper owners. The case taught me to fund the desired conversation explicitly and resist turning an early process measure into a finished claim about trust or profit.

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