In an insightful conversation, Santana spotlights a broader understanding of HR as a people function with relevance to technology trends and employee wellness.

Experience is indeed one’s best teacher

Santana graduated from XLRI Jamshedpur in 2000 and over the course of the last 23 years, her career has spanned across renowned organisations such as General Electric, AXA, Goldman Sachs and more recently with high growth start-ups like Udaan and DealShare. According to Santana, the turning point in her career was when she joined General Electric.

She spent seven years with GE, across various roles within HR, and derived a large part of her functional and technical expertise from this rewarding experience.

A shift in roles and leadership styles

When transitioning from General Electric to AXA and then Goldman Sachs, Santana incorporated changes to both her operating as well as leadership style. She evolved from being a result-oriented, individual contributor in small teams to roles that demanded a high degree of influencing to build consensus and collaboration to drive outcomes. She has had to continuously learn and build on her ability to leverage resources across matrix organisations to deliver results. Similarly, navigating ambiguity while managing change and people relationships has been a key skill that has built her credibility across all her roles.

Working in start-ups is more rewarding than one would think

During her tenure at Goldman Sachs, Santana started reflecting on her experience working in large organisations. She realised that the time, energy, and effort required for change management and implementing new tools and techniques often felt disproportionate to the eventual impact it had on the organisation and its employees. And now with the benefit of her start-up experience, she can see the scale of impact and magnitude of change that can be delivered. This includes setting up teams, systems, and processes, building reward and talent philosophies, driving conversations on culture transformation, or even writing a case for the Harvard Business Review.

Technology is crucial to HR operations and communication

When asked about the importance of using technology in the HR space, here’s what Santana had to say: “In the last decade, technology has become an integral part of how we interact with people, conduct business, and handle data. As an HR professional, it is important to be able to leverage technology to not just drive outcomes but table issues and improve the dialogue. I have found that the quality of our conversations has only improved where we were able to judiciously use technology and analytics to communicate with the business or within HR”.

Views on employee wellness

As far as HR’s focus on employee wellness is concerned, Santana believes that it isn’t a first world problem. Irrespective of whether one is an early stage start up or an established organisation, employee well-being cannot be an afterthought or an additional benefit. Given that workspaces are inherently competitive and therefore stress inducing, the onus of providing a healthy environment with adequate support rests with the organisation. Santana and her team are working with the leadership to create opportunities for employees to collaborate through employee advocacy forums, and influencer groups to create a support network. They partner with their insurance providers to build programs on employee well-being.

Santana is a senior HR professional with experience across global firms with exposure to Asia, US & Europe markets. She is a part of our ‘Most Influential CHRO of 2023’ list.