Abhishek Mehrotra - Onsurity - Affordable Employee

“The heartbeat of any organisation is still the human touch”

Abhishek Mehrotra’s career has been nothing short of exciting and impactful. He believes that the role of an HR leader is multi-faceted, and involves investigating the root cause of “people” problems and offering solutions based on business context and facts.

Abhishek Mehrotra

Chief Human Resources Officer, Yubi

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June 10, 2022

In an exclusive interaction, Mehrotra discusses the intricacies of change management, tech-based HR practices, and the importance of employee experience in his organisation.

Pivoting from L&D to full-fledged HR Leader

Mehrotra’s journey in HR has been exciting and impactful. One of his defining moments was pivoting from a Learning and Development (L&D) role to a full-fledged stint in corporate HR. The second defining moment was when he was in Alcatel-Lucent (later known as Nokia), transitioning from an HRBP to a larger role as HR Head, leading the joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent and RCom where he transitioned people from five different subsidiaries, building a new organisation as well as his team. There he had to take tough calls, but they strengthened his People Leadership skills for future endeavours.

Spill The Beans

Your biggest influence in life?My father
A character you relate to the mostSherlock Holmes
Your post-work mantra to unwind Long drive and binge watching

Capturing the heartbeat of the organisation

According to Abhishek, while technology is an enabler for change management, nothing can replace the human touch in HR. To build and nurture the talent in an organisation, it’s important to understand the pulse of the company and the complexity of the organisation before creating processes and policies. Mehrotra believes that an HR partner must understand the drivers and derailers of business as well as a business leader, to create an impact. Connecting with the pulse of the workforce is always going to be a human effort. Technology is a vital agent that brings a sense of ease to processes, but it’s not a substitute for people.

Co-existing with technology for a better employee experience

Mehrotra states that as far as incorporating technology is concerned, the barriers to integrating tech-based processes are gradually but surely diminishing. Mehrotra and his team at Yubi are making the best use of technology to enhance employee experience by touching upon all the vital points in an employee’s professional lifecycle. Mehrotra and his team gather data and acknowledge HR trends before adopting the right tools and systems to carry out numerous HR functions. They use tech-based platforms to drive better engagement from the time of joining till the date of exit. This way, technology allows for quick, effortless, and efficient candidate as well as employee experience. They deploy tech-based solutions to identify pain points and measure the service quality of various employee benefits. The team capitalises on this “bottoms up” employee feedback to devise and improve policies, processes, and systems. They frequently share these findings during town halls and leadership forums to build a transparent and responsive culture.

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A holistic approach toward creating an employee-first environment

Led by Mehrotra, the HR team at Yubi has a comprehensive and holistic employee wellness program that provides 24/7 mental health support with specialised counsellors and professionals. In addition to an insurance policy, Yubi also has a “Smiles & Tears” policy that provides 5 years of salary to a family member in the event of an employee’s unfortunate passing.

Yubi has a 360-degree approach to conscious inclusion, right from inclusive hiring practices to promotions, well-being, and retention of employees. Building a diverse and inclusive workforce starts with that extra support that employees need at special points of life. Yubi offers its female employees an additional 26 weeks of paid maternity leave, and new fathers can avail of ten weeks of paid paternity leave. All women, non-binary, and transsexual employees are offered period leaves up to 12 days annually, over and above the sick leaves.

Yubi has recently launched its groundbreaking “Back2Epic” initiative, designed specifically to empower women returning to the workforce after a career break. This innovative program offers a comprehensive skilling program alongside a generous stipend, paving the way for a potential full-time role at Yubi. While driving equity, they ensure pay parity regardless of gender. They are piloting a project to have zero bias in Performance Management System (PMS) by undertaking bias detection exercises and adopting language and bias checks as part of the process.

As a CHRO, Mehrotra encourages his team to continuously evolve, learn and experiment by using the best practices that enable building the Talent density that Yubi needs in order to become an institution. With his comprehensive approach to employee well-being and his focus on connecting with the pulse of the workforce, he is setting a new standard for HR practices in the industry and is therefore, recognised as one of our most influential People Leaders of 2023.