## The chart did not settle the decision
An overseas industrial parent acquired 70% of Zevrashi in 2020, while regional founder owners retained 30%. I became CHRO in February 2021, reporting to our CEO and coordinating functionally with the parent's people director. That description explained an important relationship, but it did not settle every employment decision. Group expectations arrived through several channels, sometimes with the apparent force of a final instruction. We held eleven proposals while clarifying six decision areas: hiring, remuneration, conduct, redeployment, learning and exit arrangements. The question was who could turn an objective into a commitment by the employing enterprise.
A senior title can make an instruction feel authoritative before its actual basis has been examined. A local manager may assume that an email from a group function has already passed the necessary review. The group function may assume it has supplied a proposal for local assessment. An employee can then receive a message that neither party intended to own in precisely that form. The problem is not resolved by deciding which colleague is more senior in an organisational chart. It requires a clear account of the decision, the authority involved and the point at which the enterprise becomes committed.
The six areas differed in substance, and we did not try to make them identical for the sake of a neat diagram. Hiring a role, changing remuneration, addressing conduct and arranging an exit can involve different facts and professional questions. A shared ambition for consistent people practices does not eliminate those differences. We needed qualified assessment of the actual arrangements and the appropriate approvals, rather than a general declaration that parent control or local responsibility answered everything. I do not offer this fictional case as a legal rule about subsidiaries. Its lesson concerns the danger of allowing coordination language to do work it has not been examined to perform.
There was also a practical reason to resolve the uncertainty early. Once a manager communicates a decision, the employee may begin to act on it. An internal disagreement about who intended to approve what becomes a problem experienced by someone who was not part of the original discussion. Withholding the eleven proposals during review was therefore more useful than relying on a later correction. The hold did not mean each proposal was substantively wrong. It meant the route from proposal to commitment was not yet clear enough to justify communicating it as settled.
## An allocation must reach the employee conversation
We undertook a ₹39 lakh programme to document who proposed, reviewed, approved and communicated decisions. The cost described the work undertaken, not a permanent solution to every future case. Documentation mattered because it made assumptions available for examination. However, the programme would have been incomplete if its result stayed among senior HR colleagues. The allocation had to be usable by the manager who would explain a decision and by the employee who needed to know which institution was accountable for it. A precise internal description can still fail if the final conversation contradicts its scope.
For example, a group objective could be presented as a proposed direction while an individual employment decision remained subject to further review. The employee-facing explanation needed to preserve that distinction. Calling the whole matter decided because part of it had approval would remove a condition that could still change the outcome. Equally, referring every question back to the parent could obscure the responsibilities held locally. The aim was not to make communications hesitant. It was to make their degree of certainty match the decision that had actually been made.
This required collaboration with operating colleagues. Dev Qervani, our COO, needed people decisions that supported the factories' work; Asha Qevthali, our CEO, needed a clear account of the enterprise's commitments; parent colleagues wanted coherent group practices. HR could connect those needs without claiming ownership of every professional judgement or approval. The written allocation helped identify where a proposal was ready to proceed and where another decision was required. It also made disagreement more specific. Instead of debating whether someone supported the group agenda, we could examine the unresolved authority or condition in the particular proposal.
The employee's experience provides a useful test of whether the arrangement works. They should not need to reconstruct the entire group structure to understand who made a decision affecting them. They do need an intelligible explanation of what is settled, what remains under review and where a question can be addressed. If several functions each describe themselves as merely passing on another party's instruction, the institutional responsibility has become too diffuse. A governance arrangement is not complete simply because every internal participant can point to the step they performed.
## Oversight should test the journey from proposal to commitment
For directors, the useful enquiry follows an actual decision through its stages. Who developed the proposal? Which facts and professional assessments supported it? Who had authority to approve the relevant commitment? What was communicated, and did that explanation preserve the conditions of approval? This is more informative than asking only whether a policy exists. A policy can be present while a particular route around it becomes normal through habit or urgency. Conversely, a complex structure can work sensibly when its responsibilities are understood and the actual decisions remain traceable.
The board should retain the distinction between oversight and management. Directors do not need to become the alternative HR approval desk for routine matters. They do need assurance that the organisation can identify and resolve uncertainty about authority before it reaches employees as a contradiction. That assurance should be grounded in how decisions operate, including exceptions and corrections, rather than the elegance of a chart. My own contribution would be to connect the institutional account with the practical employee conversation, while learning the receiving enterprise's legal, commercial and operating context from the appropriate specialists.
Our eleven held proposals and ₹39 lakh programme are bounded facts in this fictional example. They do not demonstrate that every subsequent decision was free of error. A documented allocation needs attention when ownership, leadership, delegation or operating conditions change. It can also be undermined by informal practices that develop without anyone explicitly deciding to change the arrangement. I would therefore ask how management notices when the actual route has begun to differ from the intended one. The useful response is a specific account of decisions and corrections, not a claim that the existence of documentation makes drift impossible.
The employment promise is made by an institution, but it reaches a person through words spoken or written by particular colleagues. Group alignment should make those words more coherent, not leave their authority harder to understand. An ownership change can create valuable opportunities while also making familiar responsibilities less obvious. Our work began by holding proposals whose decision route needed clarification. The enduring question is whether the enterprise can explain, without relying on title or assumption, who has made the commitment an employee is being asked to trust.