After my MBA, while working on a project in close coordination with factory workers to enhance plant productivity, I realised the huge human element apart from machinery processes that contributes to organisational or factory productivity,” says Megha Goel, CHRO, Godrej Properties. “We co-designed initiatives that were a win-win for workers and eventually productivity, too, was enhanced. That was my first approach towards employee practices.” After completing her MBA with a specialisation in human resources, she realised she was fascinated by the way people think. “A question arose: How can you generate synergies out of people? After all, it is the HR team that decides if a thousand people in an organisation behave like a mob or work as a unified team towards organisational goals. For that, as organisations, you need to be extremely receptive of how employees are feeling, why they choose to leave or stay and work with you. Only then will they feel incentivised. A business may grow at a very fast rate because its employees are willing to contribute more than what they were giving yesterday, last month or last year. Now how do you generate that? The human resources function, with support from the business, plays a crucial role in enabling people to perform at their best. This collaborative effort has always attracted me to the field.” She shares more in her conversation with R SRINIVASAN. Excerpts: What are the current best induction practices? So, how have HR policies changed? It is a very different kind of world where, to engage talent, we need to ensure we're adding value to them as an organisation. The focus is on planning their careers with us because they need to know what to do next. Now, if an employee walks into your workplace, they want to know how the day is enriching their careers and what needs to be done. We enrich their work profile through GPL Alchemy and capability and learning programmes. We need to manage careers as an organisation and show up as a diverse and inclusive organisation? A lot of work around this has increased over a period of time. Also, you need to invite all kinds of talent as it is scarce. There is a huge focus on engagement, listening to employees and understanding their concerns. We continuously try to understand how our employees are feeling and reach out to them. To summarise, the HR approach has become employee-centric; there is no other way businesses can succeed if they are not operating from that zone. Keeping employees at the centre, ensuring that they are well-engaged and equipped to handle business outcomes will ensure that the business actually benefits. Please share upskilling initiatives undertaken by the company. Overall, the macroeconomics of the sector was going through headwinds for quite some time and now the sector is going through a boom. When the sector is going through a headwind phase, a lot of talent is not entering as they are not seeing much growth. About 10 years ago, when a civil engineer was passing out, the person would think of going in for technology or doing an MBA as it didn’t look like the construction sector over the next five or 10 years was going to do very well. Thus, over the past many years, a lot of good talent had not been retained in the sector. Also, a large percentage of engineering colleges offer computers, mechanical, electrical, electronics, etc, but not all of them are actually offering civil engineering. So first, you don't have talent getting created in the sector. Second, talent has not stayed in the sector. Third, organisations have not contributed towards bridging the academic to corporate skill gap. And at this point of time the entire sector is facing a crunch of talent. Thus, we have launched the GPL Alchemy learning platform through which employees are put through multiple kinds of global learning programmes. We design programmes with faculty renowned in India and globally who work with our businesses and leaders to understand their needs, what the real-estate sector needs, and then accordingly design these programmes. After spending so much for their capability building, a lot of employees do leave us. But at Godrej Properties, our focus on capability building remains extremely strong and we focus on bringing new talent into the sector. We are running very large campus programmes now and over the past few years, we increased our intake through these programmes by almost four to five times. We revisit almost 60 different campuses all across India and bring new talent into the industry. And then they go through all these Alchemy capability-building programmes, learn and grow. All this is growing talent for the sector. Godrej Properties is committed to the role that organisations and market-leading developers like us can play. What are the current trends? Trends are hugely focused around technology. A big trend is a very smart way to enhance the experience of our employees. One trend that I would urge should never go away is to listen to our employees and be worried about their engagement and retention. Another strong trend that I would want every HR person to think about is how we are managing their careers. We always talk about the customer but for a HR professional, the employee is the customer. Now, when the employee writes the name of my organisation on their CV, am I adding value to that employee to say that I have spent so many years with this organisation? That is what the employee is expecting from me and my ability to provide that is vital. Employees expect that focus on their learning and when they join big brands like Godrej, organisations invest in them, which is a key part of the employee value proposition they expect. These are the top-of-the-mind things. Also, in terms of another trend, the number of women employees in the sector is only around 12 per cent whereas if you see India’s population, it's almost 50 per cent. So, in April this year, we launched an initiative called ‘CREW’ [Collective of Real-Estate Women] to bring talent to the sector, to advocate for more women to join, remain and grow in the sector. At our first event in Pune a few weeks ago, which was attended by over 400 women, we provided them with counselling for a future career in the sector. Again, this will benefit Godrej Properties and the sector as it will help create an untapped pool of talent. As we make homes for families, if we don't have women in our teams, we are not representing their point of view. What should be done about the skilled manpower shortage? Construction is the second-largest employer in the country and talent shortage will have a huge impact on business. All firms should recognise their role in building talent for the sector. Currently, it is seen as a non-lucrative sector by students and we all have to do that much work to make it as lucrative as FMCG, financial services, technology, etc. If benefits in the sector are outdated, a lot of employees will not want to join us. Godrej Properties offers modern benefits. For example, our medical policy provides support of IVF for women, unlimited sick leave, etc. We need to change the face of the sector to attract talent. Gone are the days where organisations called the shots. We are customer-centric but eventually we need to become employee-centric and talent-centric to make sense to our customers.