At what point in your life did you decide to take up HR as your career? What were the guiding / motivating factors?

Right from the beginning after I completed graduation, I wanted to study management subjects and I was passionate about people management, this made me land up with Masters Degree in Human Resource Management.

HR is one practice that touches human lives directly. Do you think employers and specially HR Professional can play role in reducing stress levels of employees through various employee engagement initiatives?

Reducing stress level is responsibility of everyone dealing with people management, be it HR, Facilities and Administration, top Management, etc. The policy that we implement has to be driven from Top to ensure there is a commonality in the programme. When the role gets designed and not the job, you delegate your role to manage the job efficiently.  Stress levels increase when there is a compounding of responsibility, if the same is delegated among the team, it can be managed effectively. Engagement is one of the mediums to bring forth the talent and passion in people to contribute. This actually would be the stress buster, but real engagement happens when you delegate and recognize efficiency in team members for their contribution in their job role. Dedication and Loyalty increases from here.

Recognition programmes are those which we bring in to keep people happy, they may reduce stress levels up to some point, but when you  recognize and appreciate talent, you go a long way and especially when you define and delegate the role if becomes more meaningful.

What are some of the most important employee engagement initiatives related to Music, Art, Dance or Sports that you have taken in your career?

You can have informal passionate music classes, talent hunt, inter-corporate competitions, recognition of hobbies, sports clubs etc. We used to develop talent hunts to identify potential singers and players.

Do you think time and cost for employee engagements are an investment for the organisation and can help in multi-fold returns?

When you have to engage your employees, investments are a must, you should see how much you can invest to make your employees happy and engage them to expect more productivity from them. Apart from this employee engagement activities are also looked at engaging the social community through employees. You can go with CSR Initiatives and make a difference. Employee feels contended when they make difference to the lives of needy.  This might be the other way around too to invest.

Do you feel there is a need even to reach out to the family of employees so that they get better connected to the company? Have you undertaken any such initiative in your past or current organization?

Today every company engages employees to bring their families for any annual / festive celebrations, that way they get acclimated to the culture of the Organisation and influence their folks to carry on with the work.

What is the one change that you would like to bring in HR practice that has potential to boost employees work-life balance?

Always connect with the employee recognition program that people are passionate about. Not to copy the program of your competitors and try to implement the best practice.  Ultimately your people have to connect to what you do.

What are your personal interests in Music, Art, Dance or Sports and how do you continue to pursue it?

I always peruse my interests and like to learn new things. There is no timeline for perusing what you want to do.

Any other thoughts you may want to share.

Introduce the programme that your people appreciate and engage them in all possible ways to make difference to the community and promote their talents, be it in training folks, personality development, extra-curricular activities or CSR initiatives.