Hello, Glass Tunnels. Bye-bye Glass Ceilings

As HR leaders grapple with ‘Great’ everything – from resignations to quitters to lay-offs and AI’s footprints; there is a new way emerging to look at what HR does, expects, fixes—and how. Avadhesh Dixit, CHRO, Acuity Knowledge Partners gives an honest look at his new dashboard. And also gives some ‘more than brochure’ insights on DEI, and a candid take on India’s Demographic Dividend.

The pendulum could not have swung any more suddenly than how we saw it moving from the ‘Great Resignation’ to the ‘Big layoffs’. How much has all this changed life for HR?

Yes, you are right. I have never seen a shift as rapid as this in the last 25 years of my life. We have abruptly moved from one extreme to another. The industry was just trying to figure out what to do with the volume of offer drops. And now we are looking at surplus manpower. The tech meltdown in Europe and the West cannot be ignored. Managing this shift is definitely challenging for HR. The second challenge is to deal with new models of distributed workforce and hybrid workplaces. It’s not a reversible trend. It’s a structural shift. We have to embrace and facilitate flexibility in a completely new way now.

I hope we can make the most of it—by investing well in primary and secondary education. Government has started that work on several fronts—and we can do a lot more. Private players can also do a lot in filling the campus-to-corporate gaps.

You had announced significant hiring plans in early 2022 – along with a global expansion spree and India headcount targets for the next three years. Would that change?

No. We have been lucky. And the credit goes to our sales and delivery teams too. We are still on track with these plans. We have never come to layoffs and hopefully, never will. The plans are still intact, we have not revised them – we can’t put a number to it though due to changing circumstances.

What has changed—if anything—for your L&D strategy—like at Acuity Training Academy?

We are training campus hires to bridge the ‘campus to corporate’ gap. We try to fill in the requirements that customers have through specific training in 6 to 10 weeks. Especially in areas like financial modeling and analytics.

Is AI going to help or shake up the ‘skills’ game’? Will AI change HR’s focus on human skills – in terms of software and hardware?

Getting talent is tough these days – especially in industries with the need for skilled specialists—like financial analytics, auto, aviation, and AgriTech. There are skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, etc. that cannot be taught in six weeks. While we have seen (with the ChatGPT chatter) that generative AI and LLM can be quite disruptive, there was a recent report on Labor Day that AI will create new jobs too—like that of ‘prompt engineers’. It’s like Y2K. Some jobs will go. New ones will arrive. In terms of skills, people will have to continuously reconfigure their stack of functional and technical skills – maybe every 6 months or 1 year to remain ahead of the curve. But soft skills are very complex. They develop over time. And they are very human—like teamwork, analytical abilities, empathy, problem-solving abilities, and resilience.

Is it a good time for India to shine?

India’s Demographic Dividend will pay out well for the next several years. I hope we can make the most of it—by investing well in primary and secondary education. The government has started that work on several fronts—and we can do a lot more. Private players can also do a lot in filling the campus-to-corporate gaps.

Is there a flip side to more diversity in the workplace – like can Baby Boomers and Gen Z work in the same room?

We are taking diversity to a different level. It’s not just about gender. It’s about age, parenting stage of life, and women coming back to the workforce. We have ERGs or Employee Resource Groups to help HR. As to the challenges of DEI, well, challenges are always going to come up. It’s not an easy game. It’s not simple to have consensus on ideas—pure democracy in the workplace without differences of opinions. That’s why it’s important to start this journey and keep going.

What are some of your top diversity initiatives for women?

Women Returnee Program Step Up 3.0 — Maintaining a stable career graph as a woman navigates through the various phases of her life is a challenge. Marriage, mobility, and motherhood often make women put their careers on the back burner and take a career break. For those who decide to re-enter the workforce, it is often an uphill climb with the negative connotation associated with a career hiatus. With the Women Returnee Program—STEP UP, we are offering female professionals on a career break an opportunity to re-establish themselves professionally and restart their corporate careers. Step Up is a prudently designed training-cum-internship program that prepares them for a second successful inning in the corporate world. Through skill-gap analysis, focused mentoring, re-skilling and upskilling, on-the-job training, and smooth onboarding, we facilitate a seamless transition from being on a break to being ready to be back in the business.

Through skill-gap analysis, focused mentoring, re-skilling and upskilling, on-the-job training, and smooth onboarding, we facilitate a seamless transition from being on a break to being ready to be back in the business.

How well has this worked?

We concluded our batch of 2022 internships for a brilliant cohort of 25 ambitious and talented women returnees. We were fascinated by their enthusiasm and attitude towards work. About 50 percent of the batch was hired as full-time employees. As an organization, this was a great learning experience, has opened doors to a brilliant talent pool, and has made our culture more inclusive.

Any implications of acquisition-action on HR—like with Cians Analytics and recent Permira-Equistone development?

Acquisitions and mergers are perceived as a demanding exercise from all facets, especially from the people integration aspect. We keep people at the heart of everything and our culture thrives on respect and collaboration. It is these values that have guided us in this entire integration process as well. We had both parties included at various levels of decision-making and communication, which has resulted in an extremely agile, collaborative, and efficient integration process which was completed in record time, taking everyone along.

The recent ownership change to Permira is another milestone in our growth story; we have been a dynamic organization that has imbibed positives from each of its phases. As a knowledge business, we strongly believe in the power of learning and evolving. With Permira coming on board, we are very excited about the future.

Written by Pratima H