Chief Human Resources Officer India

The people decision changed the commercial account

A professional engineering business: 430 colleagues; Seven offices and ₹137 crore FY26 fee revenue; no generation assets
People-function responsibility: 17 HR colleagues; Three leads, ₹2.9 crore FY2026–27 expense and separate ₹1.1 crore change programme
Staffing and professional-service HR: 29 years; Five appointments from July 1997; CHRO since January 2022

Decisions & consequences

Replacing previous-client files with a fictional hiring exercise

In 2022 our recruitment process for engineering-study roles invited candidates to bring examples of earlier client work. The request was intended to make the conversation practical. It also rewarded access to material the candidate might not be entitled to disclose. A senior hiring manager argued that a real project showed judgement more convincingly than a classroom exercise and that candidates could remove names. I understood the concern about superficial assessment, but removing a name did not establish permission to share the underlying work.

I asked technical director Dev Dovzethi to lead the design of a common fictional case while HR examined how to administer it fairly. We separated the evidence required for hiring from the confidential output of a previous engagement. Candidates could discuss their responsibilities and reasoning without delivering somebody else's files. Technical assessors set the criteria and judged the responses. I did not claim that HR could decide engineering competence or that one fictional problem could reproduce every assignment a successful candidate would later encounter.

The development and administration programme cost ₹27 lakh. Forty-six candidates entered the process, thirty-eight completed the exercise and eight withdrew. Twenty completed submissions met the stated criteria and eighteen did not. Those numbers described the assessment stage only. Employment offers required separate decisions, and a withdrawn candidate was not assigned a failure result. We retained a route to raise practical concerns about the exercise rather than assume that every difficulty represented a lack of professional ability.

The revised approach required more preparation from our own specialists and gave interviewers less access to impressive finished presentations. That was a real cost. We also lost the apparent convenience of comparing candidates through work created under very different conditions at previous employers. The common exercise made the evidence more relevant to the question we were entitled to ask, while leaving references, experience and later appointment checks as separate work.

I regard the outcome as a better boundary for recruitment, not proof that the new cohort would outperform every earlier hire. The case taught me that a firm's hiring practice can contradict the confidentiality it expects employees to uphold after joining. Professional restraint should be part of the assessment conditions, rather than a disadvantage for the candidate who refuses to bring a former client's documents.

Correcting the appraisal measure that made assurance look idle

In 2023 a performance discussion used billable utilisation to question the contribution of twenty-four technical reviewers. Across the period examined, they recorded 1,600 hours: 1,180 chargeable and 420 spent on assurance. The resulting 73.75% described the chargeable share accurately. I had supported its use because a common measure appeared to make appraisal more consistent. The error was treating that share as a complete judgement of contribution when the business also required the assurance work.

A commercial leader wanted a firmer chargeable-hours expectation. He argued that overhead work could expand indefinitely if it was protected from scrutiny. I agreed that necessary review should still be examined for quality and efficiency. I disagreed that excluding it from the account would answer either question. Dev and the engineering owners defined the review responsibilities, while HR and finance separated the commercial measure from the wider performance discussion. We retained the chargeable figure rather than replace one incomplete story with a flattering total.

The review programme cost ₹32 lakh. An eight-week trial considered assignment, review and appraisal conversations using both categories, with technical owners examining the work itself. A separate set of 120 review packets contained thirty-four requiring changes and eighty-six cleared through the defined process. These were packet outcomes within that examination. They did not establish how many operational incidents had been prevented, nor did they prove that every assurance hour was necessary or efficiently used.

I revisited the earlier appraisal discussions affected by the incomplete measure and acknowledged my part in endorsing it. Managers needed more time to explain performance because the single percentage no longer carried the entire argument. The commercial leader's concern remained legitimate: staffing and review effort still had to fit a viable fee model. We did not solve that problem by relabelling all non-chargeable time as valuable. We required evidence about the purpose and quality of the work instead.

The lesson was uncomfortable because the arithmetic had been right. The management use of it had been wrong. A people function should examine what a measure invites employees to neglect before presenting consistency as fairness. I would repeat the correction, but I would also retain the unresolved capacity and economic questions rather than claim that recognising assurance automatically improved productivity or business results.

Reducing a bid team to the people whose participation was supported

In 2024 a proposed ₹4.6 crore engineering-study engagement included biographies for fifty-two colleagues. Their experience strengthened the capability narrative, but the named team implied availability and participation that had not been established for everyone. Some colleagues were committed elsewhere, and some had not been approached about the proposed scope. The bid director argued that naming experts was a familiar way to demonstrate the breadth of the firm and that final staffing would be discussed after an award.

I distinguished a statement about the firm's capability from a promise about particular people. Commercial and technical leaders retained the proposal decision, but I asked that each named person's role and proposed involvement be explained before their biography was used as a staffing commitment. An earlier internal biography was not treated as permanent permission for every future bid. We also kept a record of unresolved cases instead of interpreting silence as agreement or availability.

Thirty-one people confirmed the defined participation, twelve declined and nine remained pending. The process repair cost ₹18 lakh, including the work of checking the proposed roles and revising the account. The commercial team submitted a narrower proposal built around the thirty-one supported names. The ₹4.6 crore remained a proposal value. We did not report it as a contract won, revenue delivered or income lost because the team description had changed.

The bid director had to present a smaller named team and explain how any further requirement would be addressed. That could make the proposal less impressive at first reading. The twelve refusals also required respectful handling: declining one opportunity did not establish a lack of commitment to the firm. The nine pending cases remained outside the supported team until an actual decision could be made. Technical owners continued to determine whether the proposed staffing was adequate for the work; a consent record could not answer that question.

For me, the case concerned the credibility of a promise made through somebody else's professional identity. The company may have broad capability without having every specialist available for every engagement. HR's role was to help preserve that distinction and ensure the proposal reflected actual conversations. We retained the commercial inconvenience rather than hide it behind a general statement that people were our greatest asset.

Reopening a hiring deferral after candidates had accepted offers

In 2025 a demand revision prompted a proposal to defer incoming appointments alongside unfilled vacancies. Twenty-eight candidates had already accepted offers. Eighteen planned starts could continue, while the proposed change affected ten others. I initially treated the exercise too much like a headcount adjustment and too little like a review of commitments already made. A finance colleague wanted one consolidated schedule because the business needed to see its future employment cost clearly.

I supported the need for a revised cost account, but asked that accepted offers be separated from positions that had not reached that stage. Some candidates had already made arrangements in reliance on the original dates. Employment and legal specialists examined the actual terms and the appropriate options; we did not assume that a planning label decided the company's obligations. HR then held individual conversations about the proposed change instead of presenting a single deferred date as an accomplished fact.

The board approved a ₹24 lakh support envelope. Eight of the ten affected candidates accepted supported arrangements, and two reached different agreed resolutions following their own discussions. The eighteen unaffected starts continued. We retained the support cost and the differences between those outcomes. Agreement did not mean that the change had caused no inconvenience, and we did not use the number accepting an arrangement as a satisfaction score or a claim that every obligation had been handled identically.

A separate ₹1.2 crore proposal concerning vacant positions remained outside the account of realised savings. It described a planning change, not cash recovered from people whose offers had been accepted. Finance kept responsibility for the eventual financial treatment. The revised approach took longer and made the immediate cost reduction less simple to describe. That was preferable to a smooth aggregate report which concealed the different stages of commitment behind the same vacancy label.

The case changed how I begin a workforce revision. I now ask which promises already exist, who may have acted on them and what choices remain genuinely open to each party. A business can face a real change in demand and still owe a careful account of its earlier decisions. I would not turn this particular support arrangement into a universal employment rule; the repeatable discipline is to examine the actual commitment before deciding how to change it.

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