Hello everyone. The guest for this conversation is Mr. Vivek Jain. Vivek currently serves as Senior Executive Vice President and Head HR at Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Vivek is a veteran in the BFSI industry having spent the last 15 plus years in the industry and in general 25 plus years in HR leadership roles. organizations like Kotak Mahindra Bank and prior to that organizations like Genpact and Lupin. Vivek, thank you for being here and looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for the invite, Anshul.
Delighted to be here. Great. So, Vivek, over the last few years, banking and financial services in general have been a very interesting place to be in from an HR perspective.
You have a large and rapidly growing workforce and a very complex business landscape as well. So having spent so many years in this industry, how do you see the evolution of talent practices in the industry and how do you feel digital technologies have impacted these talent practices? Yeah, I'll cover this into three portions.
One is the industry, then the talent and the digital impact. Of course, from the industry point of view, you're still at the tip of the iceberg. the potential for the industry to grow from here on, assuming we reach that 5 trillion economy and there on to higher numbers is humongous.
Any new player who starts at this stage also will grow like Kotak has grown. HDFC quoted about growing twice the size in the next three to four years and similarly organizations like Kotak will grow. So that builds a lot of interesting work for HR professionals in the space, requirement of talent. managing the talent, the numbers that you are seeing a lakh plus employment in the banking industry will become more like a norm going forward rather than few as of today.
Having said that, from a digital standpoint of view, one of the key things that I see a shift, you know, between what I was doing earlier and what is the requirement today, is that today youngsters ask for a lot of transparency to whatever we do in the organization. what does transparency mean there could be many ways to look at it from but from a digital point of view i think people want more data uh you know more decision making which is based on data rather than gut feeling it is about the data that is being used to make those decision making and people want to know on what basis those decisions are being made so this starts right from whether you need a role in a company when you're doing a budgeting getting hired or rejected they want to know why they were hired or rejected to the performance appraisal, to the incentive schemes, to the promotions, to carrier progressions. I think this is becoming more and more of a requirement where leaders were paid for their right gut feeling and decision making.
Today, leaders are being paid more for having a transparent data-driven decision making and capability of a leader to drive that. So this is the fundamental shift that I'm seeing in the industry and that will require a lot of changes, I think, within the organization and the HR function also. Right.
Interesting. Whenever we work with organizations and help them go more digital with their talent practices, we also see the same trend, which is, you know, one of the expectations is that, you know, your data orientation of your talent practices significantly goes up as you go digital. So can you share, you know, an example of how you have been able to use digital to improve the data orientation of one of your talent practices on initiatives?
Yeah, and it is a tricky one because every time you use data, you challenge the gut feeling or the gut decision of the leader. And luckily, or whatever way you call it, there are diversions between what the leader is thinking and what the data is showing. And as HR, you can continuously struggle with that. Of course, one matures over a period of time because finally leaders run the company. And I am on the middle path that.
Paralysis with analysis or extent with instinct either are harmful for the organization. So one has to continue with a balance between the two. Of course, data capturing itself, accurate data capturing, accurate data measurement, valid data measurement itself is a challenge.
And whether what your data you are seeing is accurate data itself is a challenge. So validation of the data is there. So we follow a balanced path over here between the data and the the gut feeling of the managers.
Having said that, for example, a simple thing, we want to promote somebody in the organization. Large organizations like ours would have some 80 supervisory positions which are open. And I would have people who for these 80 positions, I would have for per position close to around 20 people who could meet into this role.
How do I decide which of these one out of these 20 make it to the supervising position? Conventional wisdom is performance, outstanding performer. And it is like a good RM is a good supervisor. The conventional wisdom which fails continuously. And we have demonstrated that regularly.
supervisor skills are different. But however, a person has never done a supervisory role. So what do you do? How do you measure the supervisory capability?
Typically, sometimes managers say, no, I know how he operates. I have seen him operating. I've seen him through my visual eyes and mindset in the way the person is operating with the team members out there.
And hence, he will be able to carry the team or lead the team. I think there are more scientific ways to deal with this. A simple thing could be an assessment center or a development center. uh which is a simulation that you do of all the so in our organization for example if uh managing conflict in an asset division is very important because there is an asset approval that has to be put across there's a credit that has to be given and hence managing conflict where the organization uh wants to you know protect the money that has been given in the market in such a situation if conflict management is a key responsibility of the supervisor along with people management we create a simulation through the assessment center and see how the person is performing.
Of course, there is a lot of data that comes out of the assessment center. At what stage do you say, this is the data that I want to use? Overriding the manager's, the person, the hiring manager's decision of what they see out there on the ground versus what the data is being thrown out of the assessment center. This is what the balancing act is. We often walk this path.
Often than not, what we realize is that once you have data, people start accepting it over slowly as we proceed. We started this exercise a few years back, where we have psychometric instruments, where we have assessment centers to show to the managers that this is also a data input that you should look at while you're making the decision. I think it settles down. People also realize that going purely by the gut leads them to failure. And hence, if there is a data, it balances the decision making, it validates the decision making that they are going for.
And hence, they are able to make the chances of error reduces significantly because they have looked at the data. They know their gut feeling. They are balancing both of them. And then they are proceeding with the decision of promoting a person. I think we have been able to do that successfully.
Our quality of managers that we are promoting now is significantly better. Also, I think from the... Candidate point of view, when they go through the development center, there is a realization they also have because it is a transparent process.
When they see the development report or the assessment report, they also realize there are shortcomings that they are having. And hence the development journey for them, they are also very clear of what they have to do to become a supervisor now, which was only left to the earlier to the gut feeling or feedback of the supervisor. So it plays both ways, I think for the supervisor and for the person who is the subordinate in this example that I just gave you.
So data can be used. in multiple ways, I'm saying, as long as we balance and use it for validation. And that's a powerful example, Vivek, because like you said, you know, you have hundreds and thousands of people who are aspiring for these supervisory positions. And how do you ensure that you are able to cover so many people?
So digital also helps with scaling up some of these processes and so on. Absolutely. When we go and up.
Talk about going digital with these talent processes, improving the data orientation of these talent processes. One of the biggest pushbacks and barriers to change that we see is what you said, which is a reluctance from line managers to really adopt a more data-driven approach, given that it sometimes goes against their own what can be called a gut feel. Given your own experiences, what would be some of the tips that you would have for HR professionals who are looking to go more data-driven with their talent process?
And how to really get sponsorship and alignment of business managers and leaders in their own organizations? Yeah, as I said earlier, giving away what they believe versus what the data is showing is a challenge. And it is a challenge both ways, for the manager and for the HR leaders also.
because sometimes the gut feeling plays out. The uncertainty of the market is so complex in the finance space that the uncertainty plays out and people do succeed. But those percentages will be small.
I think in a mature organization, in a banking space like ours, one has to create data points. over a period of time to prove what is being said. A gut feeling, the chances of a gut feeling failure is much higher than a data-driven decision making. If I go that path, then I'll say that if I record a case wherein I'm taking a decision on data and see how it pans out in the future, versus if I look at a gut feeling data decision where the data is otherwise showing otherwise, and if I see how it pans out.
both for the manager and for the HR, it is important that we are tolerant of both the facts, create databases to believe what we are seeing out there, and then see in a year's time, two years time, how does it play out. I think it is a slow process of buildup that will happen for both the HR people and for the line managers. Having said that, I think the fundamental ask is about concepts like transparency, as I started earlier. If we propagate those ideas, because finally the manager is there to do well in the organization, they come to office every day believing they'll do well on a daily basis. There's nobody who comes into the office to do anything otherwise.
If that is the assumption that we are walking in, I think these paradigm shifts that the next generation is asking for, or the industry is asking for, or the environment is asking for, I think creating more awareness around that will help. Also, I think the sheer fact that there is more data available for helping the manager to make decision also the point to deliberate earlier these points were not there actually and hence managers were making as managers become are made more aware that there are possible more data points that they have at the discretion for the process of their decision making i think then it helps it is the collaboration data is in collaboration with the decision making of the manager rather than as a competition to the gut feeling that they are seeing i think this is the fundamental hours that the hr has at this stage that they should help managers to see data as complementing to the decision making rather than seeing that as a challenge to the decision making and the requirement of the environment in terms of higher transparency i think this is the path that this will go in the future right interestingly that actually brings us to another key success factor as organizations look to go more digital and data driven which is the skills and competencies in the hr team itself you know that that often can be a significant factor in whether organization succeeds in this adoption journey. So what do you feel are some of those competencies that HR team should look to build as they look to do a better digital adoption and data driven orientation in their talent practices?
So this is a topic very close to my heart. And being a research scholar, the first thing that I say that HR people should have an SPSS or some data or some method of data analysis tool in their own laptops. I think the fact that a lot of HR people just shy away from even an Excel sheet or even doing a VLOOKUP or looking at basic averages, medians like that is the first step to take care. Having said that, of course, those are very primitive methods of doing data analysis. There are much more advanced techniques to do data analysis.
Causal relationships can be clearly and easily established. There are scales to measure. For example, if you want to measure what is the level of intent to attract or if they are looking at organization socialization, if you're looking at the leader member exchange, what is the quality of leader member exchange that is happening.
There are significant tools out there which can measure these constructs. very very easily and quickly so i'm saying one thing is that instead of making your own survey tools please use standard tools that are available because the tools that you are using may not be validated at all you may be seeing measuring something which the instrument is not measuring at all the second thing is the once you have the data what you do with the data i think there is a lot of causal relationships that can be established with the data that you have plus root cause analysis could be done in terms of what is the starting point of the whole effort of course sigma is something that i was exposed to in jetpack and companies like jetpack have a full department which is within the hr department i am saying which supports the hr department on the sigma analysis in kotak also we have a dedicated analytics team which supports all the data that we have over here the fact that hr needs to have a tool on their laptop which they use beyond an excel sheet is the first starting point to look at and hence training on that understanding that i think again i'm saying from as a resource quality the journey becomes very interesting when you go beyond just doing a game or an engagement out there without understanding of how is this impacting the organization or changing an incentive scheme without understanding what is the cause and effect that this may lead to. A lot of times the board asks that you are taking this asking this expense of two crores, three crores, how will this impact the organization? I think the answer is very vague that the HR department gives over there.
If they are more trained on data, I think whatever they are seeing can be visually be also be expressed to data. and they can represent in the in the meetings that this is how possibly this will impact with more data in their head so training of hr people uh the future i have often said in various conferences the future of hr is around people who are more data savvy will lead the hr function it is it is going to or otherwise it is going into coaching and areas around that which are very very soft in nature uh so i think it is time that hr people understand the seriousness of uh you know, getting more data savvy, getting tools to measure higher data savviness and capture data correctly itself, I think, having an eye to capture data accurately of what they need to, you know, to have a causal relationship of what causes what, what is the cause and effect that is there in a very, very clear manner. I think these are the few things that come to my mind that is critical for the HR function. I think Vivek, some of these points that you mentioned, I feel can not only help HR teams improve their own data orientation and digital adoption skills, but in general, build their credibility within the system.
I think that's the broader support that some of these tips that you shared can help HR teams with. But thank you, Vivek. Thank you for being here today and for sharing your insights on these topics. Yeah. Great.
It was a short snippet. Thanks for bringing me on board of this forum of yours. Really appreciate. Thank you. Thank you, Vivek.