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

I decided to enter into HR at a very early stage of my career. I developed an interest in it when I chose the subject of management during the final year of engineering. That really fascinated me to take up management as a career. I got opportunity into HR which I grabbed straight away and that’s how my journey started.

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?

In my previous organisation, we had 40 different interests groups of employees related to trekking, music, dance, etc. We created groups and chose a champion within each group.. From organisation side, we ensured to take care of these activities. Most of the people give up their passion and pursue their career. Whereas very few organisations consider providing a platform which will help to carry out such activities to balance work and life.

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

Break from routine is one initiative which is meant for people who are really busy. I ensured few programmes for IT people as they are typically stuck in front of a computer all day. Nowadays mostly the health index of every individual is getting negative, so these activities are beneficial for health.

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

When it comes to the time employees are spending in offices, you must make sure they are getting the most out of it. Spending most of the time and energy at the work, it becomes difficult to refresh the mindset. Not only the cost but also the man hours being spent on for the employee engagement activities count. Such initiatives are big returns on such investments indeed.

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?

Nowdays employees are away from their families for their career, mostly they’re in office for 8 to 10 hours and spend another couple of hours in travelling. Very small amount of time they get to spend with families. If we can create such initiatives where employees get involved with their families, this will help them a lot.  We had some sort of foundation day where we involved family members for a day, kids at work is also one such initiative. It has helped retained goodwill in the work environment.

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

Technology has become the backbone for all businesses. To ensure a proper work life balance, we must keep flexible work hours. Those days are gone when the attendance and number of hours spent in office was strictly recorded. The amount of work and its creativity is something that really matters.

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

I have an interest in Music and Sports as well, though I am not very good in Art and Dance.

Any other thoughts you may want to share.

The kind of creative environment inside imd1’s office space is brilliant. I am sure you are solving bigger problems faced by corporates around the societies. My special regards to the imd1 family.