Babu Vittal - Onsurity - Affordable Employee

“Managing people is one part science and three parts art”

Thanks to an increasing number of start-ups around the world, employee expectations are constantly changing, and HR leaders such as Babu Vittal embrace the winds of change with grace, resilience, and creativity.

Babu Vittal

Chief Human Resources Officer, Ula

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June 10, 2022

In a chat with us, CHRO Vittal shares his valuable insights on workforce transformation, HR work ethic, and HR’s contribution to employee well-being.

A drastic yet rewarding turn of events

Sometimes, the most impactful experiences come around when you least expect them. This holds true for Vittal’s career graph as an HR professional. He moved from the field of engineering to becoming an HR professional. This was a drastic and sudden change of plans, but the HR path has enabled Vittal to view his work and career through a different lens.

When asked about a defining moment in his career, Vittal tells us about his initial days at a young start-up enterprise. He had entered the start-up ecosystem for the first time and his experiences were filled with lessons, realisations, and a decent share of unlearning too. Vittal admits that as an HR professional, he often refused to adapt to changing circumstances such as policies, structures, and processes. Being in the start-up world softened his attitude and helped him become a skilled and empathetic “people person”. From learning how to articulate a problem statement cohesively to understanding the right way to approach a problem, Vittal has experienced a transition in his career that’s been immensely rewarding.

Spill The Beans

Your biggest influence in life?My wife
A character you associate yourself with the most?Panda, Shifu and Oogway from Kung Fu Panda
Your after work mantra to unwind?Engaging on Twitter and Ted Talks

It’s all about listening to understand and not only to respond

According to Vittal, working with people and managing people’s problems is relatively easy if you’re progressive in your approach. While the materialistic expectations of people remain the same, their expectations as employees of an organisation are always changing. Vittal believes that if HR leaders are able and willing to evolve with time, to meet the needs of their workforce, managing people is not a complex or strenuous task.

Vittal adds that it’s important for HR teams to listen to their employees to thoroughly understand their concerns and generate a response or solution that can truly fix the issue in real-time. He detests the phrase, “Let me get back to you on this.” Vittal says that this statement in a one-on-one conversation between a HR and an employee, can be a total deal breaker. Being an HR professional is all about building trust and credibility. The inability to offer a solution in real-time is a leading cause of unsatisfactory employee experience.

Technology is what technology does

Vittal says that the first step toward leveraging technology at work is to understand what technology can do for HR and employees. The question to raise here is, “What does the organisation need technology for?” The fundamental answer to this question is smart data. Vittal and his team at Ula turn to technology for data about various aspects of HR operations such as performance evaluation, compensation assessment, workplace culture, and talent management.

Thanks to technology, Vittal can access clean and accurate data on the happenings of the organisation that help him make informed, people-centric decisions. For Vittal, technology means data and a seamless flow of data is all one needs to manage the talent of the organisation effectively and efficiently.

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HR trends shape the future of workforce transformation

In the context of workforce transformation, Vittal sheds light on a few trends that are seemingly impactful and insightful. In his experience, employees are no longer fixated on the idea of staying loyal to an organisation on a long-term basis. That sentiment of “loving” a company they work with is a thing of the past. Employees are no longer a family, but a community of like-minded people, and HR teams need to work on addressing its people accordingly.

Another trend that seems to be surfacing is a shift of focus points in the recruiting process. Vittal believes that in the start-up environment, employees are looking to spend a maximum of 12 months in any given organisation. A short time such as this isn’t sufficient to make meaningful interactions with employees to understand their pain points and retain them. Hence, HR teams must rewire their hiring measures and keep a watchful eye on what candidates are looking for in a new job and what motivates them to work in the company.

Retaining talent centres around employee well-being

According to Vittal, employee wellness or well-being is a mandatory provision that every organisation is required to offer. Paying salaries on time, conducting interactive sessions, and having a comprehensive wellness program in place are direct contributors to employee experience and job satisfaction.

Considering this, Vittal and his team conduct regular pulse surveys to identify and rectify employee-centric challenges that revolve around wellness. Vittal says that each employee has a different and unique problem. Instead of offering a “one-size-fits-all” solution, the HR team at Ula focuses on the root cause of each concern and offers resolutions that are best suited to the specific individual.

Vittal is a people person through-and-through which makes him one of our most impactful People Leaders of 2023. He has worked with start-up founders and people across the globe. He is also working towards creating a social impact through his social entrepreneurship inititaive in rural India.