A pharmaceutical company reveals its priorities in the careers it makes possible.

In 2021, Anvethra Pharmaceuticals reviewed the progression of eighty-four formulation and analytical colleagues. Several experienced specialists had reached a grade where the obvious next move involved line management. Some wanted that responsibility; others wanted to deepen their technical work. Development leaders were using retention exceptions to bridge the gap, but those exceptions did not explain what a more senior specialist was expected to contribute.

As CHRO, I proposed a parallel specialist framework with assessed responsibilities and corresponding pay ranges. Technical leaders defined the evidence: complexity of work, the quality of review, contribution to methods and development of others. I did not score the science. My team examined consistency, documented the role and prepared the employment implications. Finance questioned whether the framework would create a general expectation of promotion. Some managers worried about senior specialists earning more without taking responsibility for a larger team.

We addressed those objections by publishing the distinction between technical contribution and supervisory scope. Eighteen colleagues were appointed to assessed specialist grades, with an approved annual pay effect of ₹1.26 Cr. Sixty-six remained in their existing grades and received individual feedback. The decision required time from senior technical reviewers, not only a revised job-description document. We also made clear that a specialist title did not automatically confer every form of technical authorisation.

The result was a usable alternative to compulsory management progression for that group. It did not prove a reduction in attrition or improvement in product outcomes. Some colleagues were disappointed and challenged the assessment. Those conversations were necessary because a credible framework must explain a decision that is not favourable. I would have prepared the feedback process earlier; the first round gave too much attention to the successful appointments. The lesson was that a technical career path needs evidence, pay and ongoing work that justify the grade, rather than a title designed solely to end a difficult retention discussion.

A 2019 organisation review at Anvethra identified a practical ambiguity. Site quality heads had defined technical responsibilities, but their people reviews and staffing requests were handled mainly within the local operating hierarchy. The group quality director could discuss technical matters, while some employment decisions reached that function late. I did not interpret this as proof that any technical decision had been compromised. It was an organisational dependency that deserved attention before a serious disagreement tested it.

I worked with the group quality director and site leaders on a clearer arrangement. The proposal gave the group quality function a formal role in appointments and performance reviews for the site quality heads, together with a direct escalation route for unresolved staffing and role-authority issues. Plant leaders objected that another approval layer could slow decisions and blur local accountability. Their concern was legitimate: a second reporting line can create delay without adding useful judgement.

We therefore specified which decisions required technical functional input and which remained local management responsibilities. The chief executive approved the arrangement. It covered three site quality-head positions and included quarterly conversations about the operation of the reporting relationship. Six staffing or role-definition matters used the new route in the first year; four were resolved through revised responsibilities or resources, while two remained under review at year end. I reported the unresolved matters rather than equating access with resolution.

My contribution was the employment architecture and the discipline of explaining who could decide. The quality director retained technical authority, and the arrangement did not make the people function a route for overruling a quality judgement. We accepted additional coordination time to make the responsibility more workable. Looking back, I would have documented the expected response times at the start. Access to a senior person is valuable, but an unresolved request can still become a practical constraint when nobody knows when it will be considered.

The staffing proposal for a 2023 manufacturing-line expansion assumed that twenty-four experienced colleagues would transfer from an established unit. The new unit would receive people familiar with the company’s ways of working, and the group headcount plan would look economical. The existing unit’s leaders challenged the assumption. Losing the full group together would leave gaps in supervision and technical experience that a replacement recruitment list did not adequately describe.

I asked the operations and quality leaders to distinguish the positions required from the experience needed at each stage. My team examined the proposed transfers with the individuals and the managers responsible for the work they would leave. We did not treat an internal move as automatically easier for the employee or costless for the company. The alternative plan combined twelve transfers with twelve external hires, sequenced around preparation and authorised work.

Finance challenged the additional overlap expense and the effect on the investment timetable. The approved plan provided ₹2.4 Cr for staged overlap and preparation, and moved the planned line start by six weeks. The executive team accepted that trade-off after reviewing the staffing dependencies. Technical leaders retained responsibility for deciding when people could carry out particular work. A filled position in my report was not labelled as operational authorisation.

The twelve transfers and twelve hires were completed under the revised plan. That is a staffing outcome, not a claim that the people intervention established manufacturing quality or commercial success. The existing unit kept more of its experienced team during the transition, while the new unit received a more credible sequence of support. I would have put the experience dependencies into the investment discussion sooner. By the time the staffing request arrived, the original timetable had already acquired authority. The lasting change was to require an explicit account of what internal transfers would remove from the sending operation before counting them as capacity for an expansion.

In 2014, while vice president for people and organisation, I supported a supervisor award that gave substantial weight to uninterrupted attendance within the team. We believed the measure would recognise dependable staffing and was easy to verify. Employee discussions subsequently revealed a problem we had not examined carefully enough: some people delayed reporting illness because they did not want to damage their supervisor’s result. The award was sending a message that conflicted with the openness we expected about fitness for work.

My initial response had been to improve the explanation of the scheme. Listening to employees and occupational-health colleagues changed that view. A clearer communication could not remove the incentive embedded in the measure. I recommended withdrawing the attendance criterion and reviewing the awards already assessed. Operations leaders were concerned that this would undermine confidence in a programme they had introduced in good faith. Finance asked how far retrospective correction should extend.

We reviewed forty-one award decisions from the affected period and changed thirteen, with ₹19 lakh in correction payments and review costs. The company explained why the measure had been removed without identifying individual health circumstances. Relevant health decisions remained with appropriately qualified professionals; the reward review did not attempt to judge them. We accepted the cost and the embarrassment of correcting a design the people function had supported.

I cannot infer a subsequent health outcome from that change, and I would not use illness reports as a convenient success measure. The evidence was that the original criterion had created an unwanted pressure, and that affected award decisions were reconsidered. My own learning was to ask employees how a proposed measure would feel in a difficult week, not only how it would appear in a management report. We later required that discussion before launching a people incentive. The process is slower, but it is preferable to discovering the behavioural consequence only after colleagues have borne it.

In 2017, Anvethra brought a smaller formulation-development team into its organisation. The employment review covered 136 colleagues whose titles and grades did not map neatly to the group structure. A quick harmonisation would have simplified administration, but it risked treating similar titles as equivalent work. Several specialists carried broader technical responsibilities than their old grade suggested, while some managerial titles described coordination rather than formal people authority.

I led the employment workstream with the development director. We documented actual responsibilities before proposing a grade mapping and held individual conversations where the change was material. The business sponsor wanted a rapid common structure; finance wanted a bounded cost. Employees wanted to know whether the acquisition would change their role, pay or prospects. We chose a staged review, retaining existing pay while the work was assessed, rather than announce a universal equivalence on the first day.

Of the 136 colleagues, 103 mapped into a group grade without a change in base pay, twenty-one received adjustments and twelve required redesigned roles before final placement. The twenty-one adjustments added ₹74 lakh to annual pay cost. The twelve role decisions were completed over the following four months, with written responsibilities agreed with each colleague. These categories describe the initial mapping and should not be read as different levels of employee value.

The process took longer than the sponsor’s original six-week expectation. That delay was a deliberate consequence of examining work rather than matching labels. It did not establish that everyone welcomed the acquisition or that future retention was secure. It did give managers and employees a more specific basis for discussing their place in the organisation. I would have separated the timetable for payroll continuity from the timetable for final role design more clearly at the outset. Combining them made some colleagues fear an immediate pay disruption when the unresolved question concerned their longer-term responsibilities.