Areas of practice

Make the commitment understandable to the colleague who receives it

Keeping a group programme connected to the employer's authority

I work where a parent company's expectations meet the decisions an Indian manufacturing enterprise must make about its people. After Zevrashi's ownership change, eleven proposals were held while we clarified six decision areas, including who proposed, reviewed, approved and communicated the decision. The ₹39 lakh programme supported that work; it did not prove that every future decision would be correct. I report to our CEO and coordinate with the parent's people director, but neither relationship alone explains every authority. The actual arrangements need qualified review and the appropriate approvals. My contribution is to make an ambiguous instruction visible before an employee receives it as a settled commitment, and to ensure that the explanation identifies the employer and decision owner rather than relying on the apparent seniority of a group title.

Designing an overseas assignment with the return still in view

A departure plan can be detailed while the return remains vague. Our eighteen returnees in 2023 had four different outcomes: ten resumed agreed roles, four accepted different roles after their original positions ceased, two remained in bridging work and two left voluntarily. We established a ₹68 lakh twelve-month transition programme, whose budget was not evidence of eighteen completed placements. I want the assignment account to explain the intended return, the process if circumstances change and who remains responsible for resolving an open case. That does not mean pretending a future job can never change. It means avoiding a promise whose reassuring phrase conceals the absence of a practical process. Individual agreements, professional advice and operating requirements still matter; HR must connect them before celebrating mobility as an uncomplicated success.

Examining what a recognition rule says about the people it excludes

I approved an attendance award whose three-month review excluded 104 colleagues, including 68 whose only absence had been authorised. The rule turned approved leave into a negative statement about reliability, although that meaning had not been justified. We stopped before awards were made, with ₹18 lakh already spent on design and administration. I do not use that correction to declare all remaining exclusions valid or settle every employment question. The lesson is to inspect the interpretation of the measure alongside its arithmetic. A recognition programme should explain what conduct it intends to recognise, whether its records can support that conclusion and whose legitimate circumstances disappear when a convenient threshold is applied. My own endorsement belongs in that account, because the misleading meaning reached the programme through an approval I gave.

Separating an employee's contribution from permission for another use

Seventy-two colleagues contributed to internal learning interviews, from which twenty clips were later proposed for an external campaign. We withheld all twenty because specific external-use permission had not been established, then budgeted ₹31 lakh for replacement production. That decision does not mean every interviewee refused, that the clips had already been published or that the budget was all spent. It means the original contribution could not simply be carried into another purpose. I ask managers to describe the audience and use when inviting participation, and to make a later change a new conversation rather than an administrative assumption. Professional review remains important, but a clear explanation to the person is also part of responsible people work. The employee should understand what their words will be asked to represent.

How I lead

A people policy is a commitment someone else may build a life around. I want its scope to survive the change from a factory conversation to a group presentation. I once approved an attendance award that treated authorised leave as evidence against reliability. Later, I learned to examine who could make a commitment on behalf of an employer, what an overseas assignment meant on return and whether permission to speak internally also covered a public campaign. Clarity must reach the person affected, not merely the approving committee.

At scale

The responsibility, in figures

40 years

Manufacturing people experience

Continuous career from July 1986

People-function colleagues

People remit through five heads, funded by ₹8.6 crore of yearly function expense

820

Employees in the enterprise

Hosur and Belagavi; company scale, not Peter's direct reports

In practice

Decisions and their consequences

Case 01

Stopping the award that counted approved leave against reliability

In 2016 I endorsed an attendance-recognition scheme while leading people operations. Its three-month review excluded 104 colleagues, including 68 whose only absence had been approved. The proposal described the award as recognition for reliability, but its calculation treated authorised leave as evidence against that quality. I had reviewed the simplicity of administration more carefully than the meaning of the exclusion. The approval record did not disappear; the programme simply failed to distinguish it in the conclusion it drew about a person.

We stopped before awards were made. The ₹18 lakh spent on design and administration remained a cost of a programme we did not proceed with. I owned the original endorsement and explained why the rule could not support the recognition claim. We did not quietly change the name of the award and continue using the same list. Nor did the discovery about 68 colleagues establish that excluding the other 36 was correct. Their circumstances still needed examination rather than being validated by subtraction.

The decision required a conversation with managers who had prepared for an event and with employees who had already heard its purpose. A cancelled ceremony could be explained as inconvenience, but the more important correction concerned what we had said about approved absence. I wanted the explanation to retain that substance. The example does not settle every legal entitlement or prescribe a universal attendance policy; the actual employment arrangements and professional advice remain relevant.

The outcome was a stopped award, an acknowledged design error and a clearer requirement for any replacement proposal. It was not a measured improvement in attendance or employee trust, and the cost was not recovered by changing the rule. I now ask what an exclusion will communicate before approving a people measure. If the answer conflicts with a commitment the employer has already made, ease of administration is an insufficient reason to proceed.

Case 02

Holding eleven people proposals until their decision owners were clear

After the overseas parent acquired 70% of Zevrashi in 2020, group expectations began to enter employment discussions through several channels. In 2021 we identified six decision areas where the relationship between a parent recommendation and an employer decision needed clarification: hiring, remuneration, conduct, redeployment, learning and exit arrangements. Eleven proposals were held while the allocation was examined. I had become CHRO and reported to our CEO, with functional coordination to the parent's people director. That reporting description was useful, but it did not answer every approval question.

We undertook a ₹39 lakh programme to document who proposed, reviewed, approved and communicated decisions, with qualified assessment of the actual arrangements. The work separated a group objective from the authority to commit the employing enterprise. It also required us to identify what employees would be told and by whom. A centrally prepared presentation could support a proposal without becoming an instruction that a local manager had no authority to issue.

The difficulty was not simply obtaining a more detailed chart. Parent colleagues wanted consistency; local managers needed decisions they could act on; employees needed an accountable employer rather than a series of referrals between functions. We worked through those practical concerns while retaining the formal review. I did not present subsidiary status as a universal legal answer, and the documented allocation could not replace the approvals required in an individual case.

The eleven holds prevented ambiguous proposals from moving forward as settled commitments during the review. The programme's cost and documentation do not establish a permanent absence of error. Its value lay in making responsibility discussable before communication reached the workforce. My board-level lesson is to ask whether institutional authority follows the decision all the way to the person affected, especially when a familiar group title creates an impression of power broader than the arrangement actually supports.

Case 03

Accounting for four different outcomes when overseas assignees returned

Eighteen colleagues returned from two-year overseas assignments in 2023. Ten resumed the roles agreed for their return. Four accepted different roles after their original positions had ceased. Two remained in bridging work while a longer-term placement was unresolved, and two left voluntarily. A summary that called all eighteen completed assignments successful returns would have erased the distinctions that mattered most to the people involved. The departure arrangements had been more developed than the process for changes during the assignment.

We established a ₹68 lakh bridging and transition programme over twelve months. It was a programme budget, not evidence that the entire amount had been spent or that every colleague had secured an agreed permanent role. The four people who accepted different positions had a different experience from the ten who returned as planned. The two in bridging work needed continuing attention; a temporary allocation could not be relabelled as closure merely to improve the report.

The practical work connected the sending business, the host team and the manager responsible for the return. We reviewed individual arrangements with the relevant professional support rather than infer one entitlement from the word assignment. We also changed what a new proposal needed to explain about return expectations, changed circumstances and responsibility for an open case. That did not mean promising that a future organisation could never change. It meant giving the colleague a clearer account of the process that would apply if it did.

I retained the two voluntary departures in the outcome account without claiming to know every personal reason behind them. The case shows a programme that exposed unfinished obligations, not a universal verdict on international mobility. For oversight, I would ask directors to distinguish a movement completed on a calendar from a commitment completed for a person. The unresolved return deserves the same visibility that the original opportunity received when the assignment was approved.

Case 04

Pausing three moves when a currency comparison overstated pay equivalence

In 2024 a comparison for three proposed international moves used a foreign annual salary on one side and Indian fixed pay on the other. Relevant variable pay, employer retirement contributions, housing and insurance were not consistently included. Converting the headline amounts into one currency made the table look comparable without making its scope equivalent. I challenged the conclusion that the packages were the same in economic terms, rather than treating the conversion as sufficient evidence for an employee's decision.

The three moves were paused for individual assessment. We incurred ₹27 lakh in advice and analysis to reconstruct the relevant package components and explain the assumptions. A component paid by the employer is not automatically cash available to the employee; a variable amount is not necessarily received; housing and insurance can have different practical meanings in different circumstances. Those distinctions needed to remain in the explanation rather than disappear into a single reassuring total.

We did not claim that the new analysis could establish universal net-pay equivalence. Individual circumstances, actual terms and qualified tax or employment assessment were still required. Nor did the pause mean that all three opportunities were unattractive or permanently cancelled. It meant that the available comparison did not support the statement being made about them. The employees needed a more intelligible account before deciding whether the move fitted their circumstances.

The ₹27 lakh was a cost of rebuilding the advice, not a saving or a measured retention benefit. The case changed how I review the employee-facing summary of a mobility proposal. A total can be mathematically tidy while its components answer different questions. HR should make the comparison usable without borrowing certainty from the currency conversion. At board level, the question is whether the organisation is allowing a simple presentation to carry a promise that the underlying analysis has not established.

Case 05

Withholding internal interview clips from a proposed external campaign

Seventy-two employees contributed to internal learning interviews in 2025. A later campaign proposal selected twenty clips for external use. The original participation did not establish specific permission for that new audience and purpose. I asked that all twenty clips be withheld while the proposal was reconsidered. The colleagues had offered accounts of their work to one setting; it was not appropriate to let the availability of attractive footage decide what else their words would represent.

We budgeted ₹31 lakh for replacement production rather than proceed on an unverified assumption. That was an approved production budget, not a statement that every rupee had been spent. The twenty clips had not been published through the proposed campaign. We also did not describe the decision as evidence that all 72 interviewees refused publicity. Their views on a different use had not been established by the original interviews, which was precisely the gap the proposal needed to respect.

The work required a clear division between the content team's wish to tell a good story and the employee's opportunity to understand a different use. Professional review remained necessary, but the human conversation could not be reduced to finding a convenient form. A manager needed to explain the proposed audience, the context in which a clip might appear and the practical choice being offered. Internal participation should not silently become an expectation of public endorsement.

The outcome was a withheld set of clips and a replacement-production decision. It does not establish a measured increase in trust or a legal conclusion applicable to every interview. I carry the case into governance discussions because employee voice can be made to serve an institutional purpose beyond the one the speaker understood. Directors should ask how an organisation knows that a contribution still belongs in the context in which it is about to be used.