Global Trends in Digital Transformation

Embracing Digital Transformation About: Mr. Anand Pejawar is an industry veteran with over 37 years of professional experience with BFSI Industry. His major experience ranges for about 19 years in Life Insurance and 14 years with the Banking Industry. He has been instrumental in setting up the most productive integrated model of Bank Insurance and Micro Insurance in SBI Life Insurance which is today considered as a trendsetter in the sector. He has also represented Life Insurance sector in various committees formed by Government of India as well as by IRDI and RBI from time to time. He is currently handling the entire Operations, Information Technology, and International Business for SBI Life Insurance Company Limited. As far as his other credentials are concerned, he has also completed MDP programs from IIM Kolkata, ISB Hyderabad and is also the alumni of Columbia Business School, Manhattan, New York. Quick Glance at the Embracing Digital Transformation Podcast The three focus areas are people, process and technology, and digital transformation must be effective when all three are in alignment. There is a strong emphasis on the transition from just technology adoption to value, experience and adaptability. The discussion was given on the role of culture and leadership in transformation — technology by itself is not sufficient. How companies must transit from traditional to modern data-led digital models. An alert that transformation is a continuous process and not a single project — learning, adapting and engaging stakeholders are all important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrY77_4_Wdw Q. Where is your organisation in the digital transformation journey? What is the vision of SBI Life and what desired future state it wants to achieve, how is SBI Life communicating the vision objectives to the employees making seamless for everyone to embrace the change? Ans: Coming to today's question of digital transformation journey especially for my Company which I represent, which is SBI Life Insurance Company Limited. SBI Life Insurance started operations way back in 2001 so typically we have completed 20 years of operation in the Country in the private sector life insurance business. We are into the business of life insurance. We started as a subsidy of SBI and BNP Paribas Cardif. SBI was holding 74% stake and BNP Paribas was holding 26% stake. That's the way how the Company started and in 2017, the Company went public, and we are today a listed Company as far as the status of the Company is concerned and SBI still holds a majority stake in the Organisation. We have a lot of foreign institutional investors who have been our equity holders from time to time. Now, coming to your question about the journey of digital transformation with SBI Life. In SBI Life we understood the terminology digital transformation quite early and way back in 2017; to be precise we looked at how we could transform the various processes and systems of the company using latest digital technology. Now one thing what we found at that point of time was lot of people thought that digital means just converting the existing processes that you have into a digital format and that they said we are digital. Q. How you can better them, how you can improve the user experience and when I say user experience the various stakeholders that are there for the organisation typically for a life insurance Company; we have four major stakeholders, but customer obviously is the king so he is the centre of everything but then you have distributors as you all know in India still life insurance Company is distributed face to face to a large extent and I will come to you why I say to a large extent, so you have the distributors then you have the employees because they after all are the ones who run the organisation and deliver the service that is required and last but not the least the regulator. Ans: So, when we look at digital transformation, we typically look at all these four stakeholders that are there and based on this, the vision of SBI Life of on the digital transformation is, how can SBI Life be the preferred life insurance for the people of India? As I said, we are a subsidy of SBI. SBI is a banker to every Indian; so, naturally, the corollary goes that, can SBI Life be an Insurer to every Indian; can we offer insurance policies to every person in India who's there and that's how we have looked at the digital journey starting from 2017? Now, the question is how does SBI Life communicate the vision, objectives; the very simple thing is that this whole thing started from the thought process as I just explained to you why we wanted to move into digital transformation. State Bank of India, who was a primary distributor of insurance for us; almost 65 to 68 percent of the business is generated from State Bank of India and associate banks now, which are merged into State Bank of India and also the rural regional rural banks sponsored by SBI. So, we have 17 of them, so totally about 24,700 branches plus 7500 of the RRBs which are there. That's the entire distribution map only of bank assurance channel if I look at it. And the second, is the Tied Agency; we also have one of the most productive Tied Agency in the private sector life insurance companies; almost about lakh and sixty thousand distributors of life insurance who are tied agents with us. And if we have to look at this mass and how do we bring them through digital medium in an ecosystem that can help sourcing of the business, processing of the sourced business, issuing the business and most importantly servicing of the business. So, these are the four steps that probably we looked at, concentrated in the digital transformation that we looked at. Now, how did we go about doing this change? I think, today, I don't say this but there are a lot of studies which have happened including Limra which is the Life Insurance Management Research Association of USA who came down and did a study in our office and SBI life in 2017, set some unique concept called Digilab. Digilab is nothing but a digital laboratory where SBI Life runs a particular process, and the process is something what we called as ETPR. ‘E’ for ‘Evaluation’ of the technology so any technology which comes and which we see may be used in insurance, not used in insurance, used in some other field we try and evaluate this technology in the Digilab and it's an in-house in-built Digilab, it's not an outsourced one. So, we evaluate the technology with us and find out whether this technology can help the life insurance business that we are into and help us in some way to either reduce the TAT, improve services, give a much better user experience, have cost effectiveness so there are about five to six parameters that we look at whether this technology satisfies those things. If it happens then we move to the next stage which is the testing stage. ‘T’ is for ‘Testing’. Here we have a small team which works on this technology and sees where it can be used, which function, whether it is front and sales whether it is mid-office, whether it is back office, whether it is servicing, where this technology can be made use of. We have an IT champion; we have a business champion and then we create a small prototype. Next, ‘P’ stands for ‘Prototype’. So, we create a small prototype to see how it works and what kind of result do we get out of this and once we are satisfied that this prototype gives us the desired results that we are looking out for what we had in mind before evaluating this particular technology then we do a rollout throughout the company. So, this is the ETPR Methodology of Digilab that we have introduced in 2017 and friends I am very happy to say that as on date, almost 17 technologies have been rolled out in the organisation and another similar number are on an evaluation testing prototype stage where we are likely to roll it out very soon, very happy that this is something which the organisation gave us a free hand to do it, we could get the collaborative effort of all the people involved IT, Operations and all the teams which are working into it and bring it. So, what we have done in digital transformation is a complete collaborative effort in the Digilab that is bringing up the entire change which is today probably a lot of people are telling us that SBI Life stands at the forefront of digital transformation as far as life insurance business is concerned. Q. Now, in today's network based digital organisations are managed and structured uniquely than conventional businesses as you are talking about that you have a system where you evaluate, you test, so what is the right approach and mindset of top management to design manage and grow a digitally driven business to some extent you have explained me something but I would like to know more than what is the mindset of the top management in dealing with ‘being a leader’ and how do you take it forward? What is the road map of this digital transformation? Ans: When we started in 2017, we never thought we would be leaders or we want to be number one, that was never the vision. When we started in 2017, the focus was on how can I improve the customer experience? Life insurance is the only product I think which is with any person who has brought it and if he has bought the right product in the right manner, I think, this is one of the financial products which is for the longest tenure. Even I think fixed deposits are available only up to 10 years. Here you have life insurance policies ranging from 20 to 25 years, some of them issue whole life policies. So, we went one step backward. How do I create that customer satisfaction and that satisfaction leading to customer delight and that took such a long period? Holding on to customers’ likes or dislikes, holding on to the customer's viewpoint for such a long period itself is a big, big challenge and that's where we found that let's try and see how we can work. As rightly said by you, most of the organisations which are there have typical silos which have created over a period of time, which are these traditional structures. I am not saying they are right or wrong; just understand, when I am saying these things, but these are which are there right from beginning so every big organisation has an IT department which is there to put the IT as major function but what we did here is instead of carving out, instead of creating a separate digital vertical and then putting it against or either parallel to IT department, what we did as the first thought at the top management was that we created a technology and innovation vertical within IT. Because whatever we may do in digital, it finally has to integrate with my main systems, the main IP systems which are there. So, the people working on digital must have a clear vision, clear idea of what is available on the main systems which are there on which the company runs; for example, in an insurance company it is the policy management system which is the heart of the entire organisation, now if I have to do huge amount of digital transformation I cannot go and change the main system or the core system which is there, which we call it as PMS ‘Policy Management System’, so I need to create the digital transformation on the periphery of this particular thing. Check Out Our Programme Q. Why is digital transformation required, is it because everybody else is doing it we should do it or is there some logic, some view, some thinking on the digital transformation that is required, and that was a very-very important thing that we took up in the beginning? We wanted to completely change the customer experience by bringing in the huge technological innovations that are available in the universe. How can that be done? There are various methods of doing it; the most commonly used method is Agile approach. Ans: Yes, I absolutely agree with Agile, we came up with something called ‘Phoenix Agile’ approach of going ahead, what is ‘Phoenix Agile’, we first identified the pain points which we felt are there in the organisation as far as digital transformation skills. How do we look at these pain points and how do we come out with quick logical scalable Agile kind of solutions to these pain points? For example, all of you know that Worldwide, when there is a study done on why people don't buy life insurance on their own, one of the big things that we found was that the buying process is very, very cumbersome. You need to fill up a 12, 14, 16-page proposal form attach so many documents along with it, do so many things with it, it's too cumbersome. I would probably do 10 things more than buying a life insurance. So, if I look at it from a customer side, how can this digital transformation change the entire buying methodology of the customer? How can it make it simpler; how can it make it more Agile while there are so many things available in the financial ecosystem of that person? Can these things be easily integrated with the permission of the customer and make this entire journey which the customer felt was cumbersome into a very simple process on a digital platform? That was the thought process which became the second thought process. As I said, there are 24,700 branches of SBI associate banks when it got merged with another 7000 branches of the Regional Rural Banks if physical forms had to move in from these locations and SBI as you all know my dear friends have got branches in Leh, Ladakh. I have got branches in Kanyakumari; branches have grown in Baruch and Kutch right up to Orissa on the other side. So, wherever you go in fact there is a joke almost 13 years I was in Marketing and Sale so when I used to go and market this thing, the people used to joke around that a place might not have a post office but there will definitely be a branch of State Bank. So, if those branches are supposed to generate business and send it to our offices, this required manual movement of these documents obviously when there is a manual movement a lot of dislocation, a lot of things happening, documents getting lost in transit and all this. So, this was the second way how do I create a platform where I get rid of this paperwork and then still make the life simpler for everything, so this is exactly what I meant by ‘Phoenix Agile’? No, I mean, there was a purpose and what was the purpose? Purpose was customer satisfaction, ease of operations and how do you make life simpler for all stakeholders not just the customer the distributor the employees the regulator and still give a better experience to the end user, which is the customer, so that was the whole purpose. Q. I just wanted to know, because as you said the buying process is so cumbersome; there is a distribution channel which is very huge, so, all these are existing conventional processes digitalizing them into digital transformation is a very big challenge and so what is your viewpoint on this how does SBI Life manages this? Digital transformation will always, and I will emphasize on the word ‘always’ disrupt everything whether you like it or not. So, the first thing, I think any organisation when they look at digital transformation is, this is going to completely disrupt my normal way of functioning, that should be the basic underlining principle; otherwise, there is no sensing getting into digital transformation. If I want to just transform my existing physical formats into a digital format, I don't consider that as digitization. Now digital transformation according to me is the disruption of the process starts from the disruption of the existing thought process, everyone in an organisation is used to a particular pattern of working, in digital transformation, this gets disrupted first. So, mentally, the employees must be told to practice that every digital transformation is going to be disruptive and it is going to disrupt the way how we are working today. So, first point I think what we took into consideration was disruption of the thought process itself. I was doing a particular processing of a particular file in this manner now it's completely changed I need to reskill myself to get the whole thing done and that itself becomes a resistance from the employees. So, along with the thought process, I think, making the staff or the stakeholders understand the importance of digital transformation and the benefits that it will give to them is a very, very important. Anyways, this process SBI Life did in a very, very systematic manner throughout the Company. So, the sales guys manage the sales part of it, the operations guys manage the operations part of it, the back-end people started looking at the back-end digital transformation part of it. The second disruption which happens is the process disruption and this again is very, very important. Now, the basic idea of digital transformation is that the process should be faster; there are some legacy processes which are there which takes a lot of time, a lot of duplication, so when we do a digital transformation, we look at it end to end and see what can be knocked off, how the process can be fastened if required shortened but still giving a better experience to the end user. The third and the most important disruption according to me is the system disruption. As I said, today all Companies are computerized; every organisation however big or small is completely computerized now when you go for digital transformation the system changes, the entire ecosystem in the office changes how you are processing a particular life insurance proposal at the beginning of the digital transformation how we are doing it now it's completely different. I will give you a small example about digital transformation in SBI Life and how it actually changed the mindset of the people. Transforming from this big, long proposal form and going and so many information coming and then earlier we used to ask for salary certificates income through KYC certificate, whole lot of documents and in India, a complex Country you know that everybody can't give every document so that's also a fact of life. So, in a digital transformation how do we make the whole process simpler, so we first came out with the platform to source proposals that was the first, because finally the acceptance of this digital transformation to happen from the front which is the sales guy who's bringing business for me. Today he used to go with the bag containing proposal box and different proposal forms for different kinds of policies and all that stuff so ULIP you have a different form, your term you have a different form, endowment you have a different form, so you used to also get worried about how many forms do I carry and what do I do. So, what we first did was we created something called mobile connect; so, today entire sourcing of the business happens on a mobile application of a distributor. Now look at it the very thought that the 12-page form has been converted into an application which is used on a mobile, that thought process is completely different. Secondly, distributors are of different categories; you have tied agents who are distributors, in certain official areas you have 12 standard passes who are distributors may not be knowing how to use this technology in a more effective manner. In India in certain places, we still have 2G, 3G working on so we had a big challenge on how to get into the M-Connect that is there, but I am very happy to tell you that today the entire 99.98 percent and I am not exaggerating is sourced on this M-Connect application. So, whether it's a Regional Rural Bank or whether it is SBI or whether it is any other partner bank or my tied agents, all these people are sourcing policies through this mobile application. Last financial year, which is 2021, as of March 21 we could manage more than 20 lakh proposals on this mobile application and we have gone to such an extent by getting digital transformation that today for certain category of customers, I can issue paperless, pen-less policy. Some of them might not believe some of them might laugh but I can tell you that this is possible because without this M-Connect platform that we had we went and got connected to the financial ecosystem with the permission of the proposal hold up. So, we connected this platform through NSDL for PAN verification; UID now for the Aadhar verification then various credit bureaus getting their credit scores then we went even to IIBI which is Insurance Information Bureau of India which is a repository of the entire insurance policies which are active and there we got that API integration done and today if the person has got information available on these platforms we don't ask for any paper, we neither ask for KYC paper we neither ask for Aadhar number or your financial documents or anything. We have data which flows in on real-time basis in our system and gets done. So just imagine 20 lakh proposal forms coming from all over India in physical format collection is the problem, scanning is a problem, data entry is a problem, processing is a problem, storing is an issue. Today the whole thing has been reduced in a digital format. Q. Even if you scan it the file size is so heavy transmitting that data also takes a lot of time. I would say although as you were talking about the disruption part that how it used to happen 20 Lakh policies and so much of documents now although most insurance customers in India still prefer to purchase from an intermediary wise like an agent, bank, or broker. The evolution of digital sales and service offering is changing the ecosystem of the industry. With the emergence of new technologies insurance sector which is Robo Advisors we have heard of data powered systems and much more. Ans: There are technologies available today which can compress it up to ninety percent; those are good technologies. I will be using a lot of those technologies. Now, the second, is as I said we had distributors in northeast. I have got distributors in Nagaland, Aizawl, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim way down in Kanyakumari in Bharuch and Kutch and here on this side till Bhubaneswar and Orissa and Keonjhar. Just imagine, even if I tell you the names of the kind of population which is there, the kind of people who sell policies there, how do we get the entire information at the same time what is the process where I can enable a sales guy to be up to date in whatever information is required to do a very correct sale that is very important in life insurance, as I said this is one of the longest financial product that is available in the market. So, we created something called smart advisor pool application for the distributor. Again, this is in-house in my Digilab itself no external agency being brought in to develop this. Our own people SBI Life people have developed this in the Digilab, and today entire processing happens on these two applications which are there, and we have put all the required infrastructure security features in place, so, no information of the customer can be stored on the mobile application after it is being fed in it automatically gets deleted and moves into my system. The distributor can in no way can retrieve that data or misuse it. We have MDMs and DLPs which is Mobile Management Systems in place. We have DLPs that is Data Loss Prevention Systems in place, so every possible info security systems have been put in place to ensure that this digital transformation does not allow leakage of data outside the ecosystem and this is all with the approval of the customer. So, today the customer is very happy this year as of March 21 we are the largest company in terms of number of policies issued for last so many years, but we have already exceeded 16.5 lakh active policies which have been issued only in this year of pandemic. It puts SBI Life at the number one position as far as numbers of policies are concerned. So, this is the digital transformation and the thought process that I wanted to share with all of you. Looking to Boost Operational Efficiency Through Digital Innovation? Discover How Q. How this transition is happening with RoboCops we have heard these terms as you were mentioning is that this is happening 12-page document is compressed to a small file in the mobile system? So how these distributors are coping with it how they are being trained how they are taking this from traditional to more digital means of business? Ans: See, whatever digital assets a Company may introduce, I think, one thing all of us will agree that if the digital assets are not adopted and adopted in the right manner, in the right usage, it's useless. Now, if I look at the sourcing application or the smart advisor, which is an enabler for a sales guy to do the sales, how do I make him use that application? So, what we did was when we created this testing module and the prototype in the Digilab, we actually collected some very good sales people from the bank and from our Tied agency. A group of people from various locations, not only from Bombay, we had some people from all over the place because we needed to also get the right feedback before we rolled it out on a PAN India basis because once you roll it out on a PAN India basis, it's difficult to control certain things. So, we took all the people from PAN India and then we gave them this application and said, please use this application and tell us what it is, you are the champions or the ambassadors of this application. So, look at it first of all we tell them that you are the chosen few to experiment this application you are an ambassador and then you look at it and come back to us with your feedback, if it's a good feedback we will definitely incorporate this in the application. Let me tell you, this played the entire game changer for the Company to use of the distributors. The news spread that this people are being chosen to do that, so people started asking why we are not given, we also want to use create that pull factor because, in life insurance, we are always told that it's a push product nobody goes, and I say I want life insurance. At least in my experience of banking in India overseas wherever I have worked I have never seen anybody going and saying, take my cheque, say of ten thousand rupees I need a life insurance. The agent has to catch the guys at every possible place and that's one of the reasons you spoke about marriages, life insurance agents are never invited for marriages. So, coming back to the point is how do you create that pull factor for adoption of this particular technology. Now, once these small groups of people started giving feedback, we started incorporating the good ones acknowledging the fact that you have given a very good thing, and this has been incorporated the moment we said that, and we released it we found the usage going up because more and more people started using this application. Then we started loading it with more and more features today the smart advisor application that we have developed is like an SBI Life office in a pocket of a distributor. Whatever he wants information about the product, about the process, about the policies, about the proposal, which stage it is, what has happened, renewals not coming, every possible information is available real-time to the distributor. To such an extent when we went and changed my CRM next, the CRM module which we had, we went and changed and introduced a new one, we connected the CRM next with smart advisor, so if you are a customer and you call up my call-centre, the talk between you and the call-centre executive gets noted on CRM and that can be seen by my sales executive. So, if your sales guy is coming to meet you for some work just before starting from home to meet you, he just has to look at it what was the last conversation Mr Ashish Sahu had with my call-centre and what was the commitment given to him, that is available absolute on time online. So, this completely changed the mindset of the user it started using more and more so we could monitor, who is using what is the performance level, where is it dropping, why is it dropping so we also at the back end from the IT side went on improving the infrastructure, improving the back-end support and all that stuff. So, to such an extent where today my advisers whether they are bank employees whether they are Tied agents, Corporate agents, whoever they are, they don't have to even keep their customers phone number in mind, he just has to go and check the renewal status and if the policy is renewed, he has got a small icon of a phone he just clicks that icon and he gets directly connected to his customer, he wants to send some information on his email, there is an email icon he just clicks the email opens up email gets directly connected right you. If the customer has given an option for a WhatsApp communication, because that is mandatory that we get the consent of the customer so that consent gets noted and it is seen on this smart advisor he can also send the communication on WhatsApp. So, whatever greatest developments happening in the ecosystem, we try and bring it up in the smart advisors so today I am sure every advisor before he leaves his house, will look at the smart advisor application to such an extent that if today he is coming to your area to meet you we have given him GSP system location where he can be told how many other customers of his are in that vicinity of two kilometres in case if he wants to meet. So, the moment you enable your guys to use this to make them rely on this more and more, give the right information, I think, the usage goes up drastically and this is something what I think is the magic of adoption, adoption, and adoption. This is the only mantra I would say and the top management driving this entire digital transformation is the only magic that can happen in the system, without this I doubt whether any organisation can claim success in digital transformation. There are huge resistances in the beginning but once you make them understand how it is going to benefit them rather than the organisation, the usage goes up fantastically well that that's my experience in SBI. Q. Adoption is one way you had managed the distributors, identifying the best salespeople, and creating some kind of a competitive synergy among them. As, you said that some people said why we are not involved in this so that is something which actually as you rightly said it's a push market where you have to push the product. So, in this scenario getting involved with distributors is something I think that may be the biggest booster in success of probably SBI Life. Ans: I will just add, I think, the main success of SBI Life in this is, I think, understanding what the requirement of the environment is. We don't develop applications because we want to develop and throw it out in the ecosystem, no, for example as I said if your policy is for 20 years, how do I ensure that you are engaged with SBI life for 20 years. 99 percent of the customers in life insurance have got a big problem if you people don't come to us for renewal, you only contact us during renewal time. Now, how do we ensure that SBI Life is on top of mind of this customer. So, we came out with an application called Smart Care. Right from the time you signed the proposal form, not even your policy is issued I am going one step backward from the time you have signed the proposal form you are asked to download this application on your mobile and register on your registered mobile so what happens is I also look at the security features which I am providing to the customer, I am getting his mobile registered I am sending an OTP on the registered mobile he enters that and then he downloads the Smart Care Application. Now, Smart Care will be with him till the policy matures or the death claim is paid to the customer. Just imagine, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years whole life and today I have created with the help of IT digital operations team an entire ecosystem around the customer to keep him engaged. He can track his proposal. The proposal has gone to the underwriter, underwriter has accepted it, it has been issued, it has gone to my e-repository, so no physical policy to be delivered; it gets into demat format but there is a soft copy available on this Smart Care then at every month we keep on, if he is a unique policy, we keep on giving him the fund information. So whole lot of customer engagement program developed around this application, so the customer keeps on looking at this application at regular basis he is prompted to use that, he is prompted to open up and see what is happening like for example you have the credit policy been declared by Reserve Bank of India small snippets are sent the budget. They are declared snippets that are then sent all these things which are more of a personalized nature in getting created in the system and that makes the customer addicted to this particular app. Today all of us are working on apps, nobody works on big desktops and all that everybody is working, whether it's a banking app, whether it's an insurance app, whether it's a mutual fund app including manage matrimonial apps. Q. What is the emerging trend in customer preference in life insurance industry in India? Ans: I was only saying our bigger challenge earlier was how do you bring all the constituents of the stakeholders to participate in this. One thing which you found very interesting, and I think SBI Life has got a fantastic team of employees whenever you want to bring out an app, you always call for names from all the employees and the kind of response we get is fantastic. We have a difficult time choosing, which one to choose and why but you will be surprised the way these people think about the names, even Smart Care. Why was Smart Care named as smart, why was smart advisor named smart advices, and this was given by employees when we called for these names and said okay, we have come out with an app and we would like to name it, would you like to suggest a good name for it. So, as I said, a collaborative effort on every front. So, somebody is given a name he is waiting that whose name is going to get into this app and then he's going to try and see what it is. So how do we do it all the levels at the employee level; right at the lowest level obviously there is a push from the top, there is a push from the board, from the MD, CEO, and the people below it but yes, we take the entire mass of employees and the distributors who are there to get this digital transformation and that is the true sense of the adoption that is done. Which you had in mind I think that is the real sense of digital transformation otherwise it is only digital asset which I also have need to not in the other sense of need to o but yes, I also have a digital asset in place, but it is there in the shelf nobody is using it. Here is a case where you have come out with difficult transformer assets you have done digital transformation you have changed the entire process of how policies are issued. So, it is not just one small application which takes care of it and that is where the Digilab comes in play. Vendors will come and tell you I have developed this particular product for you which will take care of this but what before and after while in Digilab when we look at these applications or we look at it as an entire process end-to-end process of how things are to be managed if this thing has to go live that I think is crucial for our digital transformation journey of SBI Life. Q. How are these tools going to help the insurer in providing a hyper personalized customer experience given the fact that AI plays a very important role? What are the key technology and labourers for SBI Life? Ans: In the last almost four to five years, let me confess I think the technical advancement that has happened overall, has been fantastic, has been absolutely fantastic you may call it, or you may give it whatever name you want. You may give it machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, or any name that you call it. I look at it as to how can you as an organisation make use of this technology which is available to you to improve various functions of an organisation. Now typically in a life insurance Company, my function starts from acceptance of risk, which is my underwriting process, the proposal has been synced-in into my system through M-Connect it comes into my system now for an underwriter who is doing it; how can I give him the resources through various technological tools to make his life simple, keep in mind it's a paperless, pen-less transaction so there are no papers floating around. So, then we make use of analytics, analytics is used in a very, very big way in all the insurance companies today and it is used in almost every aspect of insurance operation; so, whether you look at new business whether you look at underwriting whether he's a high-risk customer, a feminist customer, a low-risk customer; all this bifurcation is happening based on analytical models which are inputted in the system which is there. Go one step forward. Renewal. Renewal is a very, very important parameter for a life insurance Company that tells you how good your quality of sales is, how good your customer base is and that actually helps the life insurance company to build the embedded value of the organisation. So, the more renewals I correct, the better value for my organisation. Now, here there are analytical models which tell me whether this guy is going to pay me on time, likely to pay me on time or likely to delay or may default. Earlier, every insurance company used to do ‘carpet bombing’ of the entire population by calling them. So even if you are a person who is very dedicated principled perfect on due date you ensure that the renewals are paid you would still get a call “Sir, your renewal is in your own hand” and then it bugs you. With help of analytics you can completely redesign this strategy for renewal management and companies are doing it SBI Life is doing it in a very big way since 2017 and that has actually helped us to increase our consistency. In fact, just to give you a small example, which, my board meeting which happened has also declared to the entire country in the five-year 61st month persistency that means the person who has bought policies five years back is still paying on my renewals. We are the highest in the private sector industry. So, with a large case of policies if we can manage that it is only and only because of analytics that it is possible. Analytics is today giving us the right information of whom to contact, when to contact, why to contact and how to get that contact done. Analytics also tells me whether this particular person views his email after seven o'clock at night or very early in the morning at seven o'clock in the morning, it tells me whether he likes to be contacted on mail or on phone or WhatsApp or whatever. So, now whole lot of analytical models which are running right through into renewals into wealth management are very, very important function for a life insurance Company. Even there we are using the analytical models in a big way we make use of machine learning. We make use of artificial intelligence in a big way. Robotics is going to take a big size in the coming years. It has already started companies like us have already rolled out processes under robotics and this is again going to be a game changer on the operation side. It is going to completely redefine the system, redefine the way things are done, 24x7 error-free. Everything possible that you thought of and can be made of by robotic applications which are in place. The last one which has still not entered the Indian life insurance industry is blockchain technology. Fortunately, about 14 companies came together in 2017 and we have done through proof of concepts on blockchain technology, very good proof of concepts of blockchain technology and those have been very, very successful. Let me tell you that the only question is how to take it and launch it and actually actualize the blockchain technology in the Country but yes blockchain technology is going to open up completely new vistas for digital processing in the Country and that is something which is, and I am personally looking very much interested. I am very much interested into blockchain and how this can completely turn. We have done a lot of work on blockchain but still a lot of organisations externally who need to come in and join hands and then work it out, so we are all in that, all the fellow life insurers are in the same thing of how to come together and get you done but this is something. Q. How do you think live insurance companies can prioritize upskilling and re-skilling employees and develop operating models capable of responding to changing demands as you said it's ever changing, it is very dynamic and position themselves in forefront of future proofing their workforces with so much technology? Ans: Very good question which you have asked and especially in today's pandemic scenario, I think this carries a lot of weight. What we found is that in life insurance everything depends on trading. The more you train your sales guys, the more you train your operations guys, the more you train your people the better output you get, the better things happen. When the entire thing is under lockdown, how do you train people? Training was always face-to-face. Huge organisations have created huge infrastructure for training. Today those infrastructures can't be used because of the protocols that one has to follow. So, SBI life came out with a fantastic digital method called e-Shikha; so, today we have a digital platform for our sales guys, for our operations guys, for our other than non-sales of operations people employees who can get trained on the e-Shikha module so whether it is pertaining to sales, pertaining to new products, pertaining to new technologies, new developments whatever you would like to decimate in your employees or your sales force this becomes a wonderful tool to such an extent where we have created small videos on particular subjects not actually in 20 minutes because generally your capacity to listen to more than 20 minutes. Small-small snippets, small-small capsules on different topics of interest so it could be a small capsule on underwriting how do you underwrite your term plan, how do you underwrite a ULIP plan and how do you underwrite a traditional plan, how do you service, how do you change nomination, how do you change your mode, how do you address these small-small things which are required? You create small capsules, push it through the digital mode; the person when he is traveling or even at home, he just clicks it looks at it listens to it there's a visual there is an animation which is given he understands it very well. He can keep on calling it back and re-looking at it and understanding it again and again if he wants to do that which was not the case earlier when face to face used to happen, but e-Shiksha or e-learning is something which is definitely going to help. It is going to ring fence the entire population. Not only that there is a study in US which was done earlier they used to say people used to leave organisations because of bosses, now they don't leave because of bosses; some people who have left you are ready to come back and join you if you have joined another organisation they want to be trained, they want to be skilled, they want knowledge enrichment to happen, they want skill enrichment to happen and all of this is today being done through digital methods. Q. What has been the impact of COVID-19 in life insurance sector in India? Ans: COVID has had an impact on the life insurance business, let me tell you that. I would like to reply to this question in two ways as far as the business of life insurance is cut concerned it's definitely impacted. Impacted because companies were looking at high growth, high things now that has somewhere got nullified to a certain extent but fine no problem, we also understand how the economy is and how it works and what happens. I think the bigger contribution what life insurance company has done to the economy is supporting the equity markets. So, all the money which has come into the ULIP funds of the life insurance Companies have been very well invested in the equity markets thereby giving the people the live policyholders very good returns. So, if you look at the returns which some of the ULIP products have bought; they are extremely good and much more than what probably people expected to get. That's on the returns part of it. Some of them who have put into that market obviously that will depend upon what is the economy of the country, how much is the interest rate, whether our RBI reduces it, increases it, that has got a direct correlation to all that. The most important thing what has happened in the Corona period, the COVID period is that every organisation is doing huge amounts of work and I am stressing on the word huge. I am not saying that it is something which is great; I am saying huge amount of work to support the Corona Warriors through these CSR programs that are implemented by every organisation and I am very happy that every organisation including SBI Life is doing a whole lot of work on the CSR to support the COVID measures that have been taken. Earlier it was providing the PPE kits providing so many things to the Police Force, the BMC, the Doctors, all those people who are there and getting things done. Now all insurance companies are trying to see how we can support vaccination drive, which is very, very important if all of us get vaccinated the third wave has got nothing to fear about it. Let the third wave, fourth wave come you will be vaccinated, and people will still be in a position to continue with their lives and do it well, but the most important thing is how do you ensure the vaccination drive goes to the last mile and I think that is the area where most of the insurance Companies are working today regulator has also guided us on many things as to what we are supposed to do. Wonderful guidance that has come from IRDAI and let me tell you every organisation in COVID has been doing it. Most importantly and this is something which I want to tell all the viewers, life insurance Companies have been paying COVID death claims at the fastest possible time. We have been paying it if all the documents are received on time even through a mail we need not even wait for our physical copy of the document. We have settled COVID claims in less than three working days and look at the amount of COVID deaths that have happened, we are sorry to say that money can't replace the person but at least it will allow the dependents to live a very decent life which the particular person or the life issuer had thought for his families. So, one is on the on the equity support side, the other is on the death side, third is on CSR part that we are working on especially now in in phase two, yet we are putting a lot of efforts on the vaccination drive we are wanting to do a lot of camps where people get vaccinated. We are trying to spread the information of how the vaccination can be done, how the registration is to be done. Every insurance company is sending mailers, messages to their employees to the policyholders to the distributors asking them to get registered and get vaccinated and the last and not least is how every insurance company is trying its best to pay the COVID claims at the fastest possible pace. So, I think this is the way how life insurance companies are trying to do their little bit in this difficult time. Is Your Business Ready to Thrive in the Digital Age? Start Your Transformation Journey Senior Leaders People Managers Individual Contributors

Reimagining the Future of Work in the Retail Sector Speaker: Mr Ranjit Khompi, Head L&D, Reliance Retail Fashion & Lifestyle Businesses Interviewed by Mr Ashish Sahu, Vice President Training, Amity Institute of Training & Development About Mr Ranjit Khompi: Mr Ranjit is the Head L&D, Fashion and Lifestyle Business, Reliance Retail to our Leadership Studio. He is an award-winning business professional with 24 years of experience across marketing, consulting in HR. He has held leadership roles in Product Management, International Trade, Human Consulting, Human Capital Consulting, Global Value Management, and different International geographies across diverse sectors of Office Automation, Automobile, IT, Outsourcing, Insurance, Telecom and Retail. So, he has a wide range of experience and it will be interesting to listen to him. He also holds HR credentials of Senior Certified Professional SCP from SHRM, USA and CPHR which is Chartered Professional in Human Resource from Canada. He brings to the table, lot of experience in terms of his business and talent. He has offered numerous articles, has authored & presenting keynotes in international HR and L&D summits and in developing copyrighted training quantification methodology, which we also known as PQM. In his current role, he leads talent readiness of approx. 31,000 employees for the fashion and lifestyle business of India, India's largest retailer by driving businesses’ outcomes, focused on HR interventions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S948jrAoGhc Q. How to develop an organisation with a Future of Work mindset and is more resilient coping with uncertain times and more adaptable to thrive in these times? So that's something which I wanted to ask you, Mr Ranjit? Ans: I think I am also looking forward to the next one, our interactions, the kind of questions that will come up from the students, as well as the faculty members. I think, to start off with the first question that you have for today; how successful a company is or maybe actually is going to be in the future? It all depends on how it is exploiting the emerging opportunities, tackling their challenges, which are coming along and how intelligently it is observing and interpreting the dynamic world in which it is operating. So, we are looking at the Future of Work mindset. The success of companies will determine, how it takes care of it ahead. Now, of course, any company is driven by their leader. So, first, leaders must define their leadership in the future that we are looking at. Leadership is like what, it's very difficult to define in terms of how it will be in future. Every leader that I come across, feels that he is doing very well. But when I am talking to CXOs across the world, they are saying that the kind of future leaders that we need, is going to be completely different from that we have come across till today. So, the leaders of today’s companies will first determine what kind of leadership that is needed and where we are today because that is going to be the pivotal point to take the future of work ahead. Are we going to capitalise on it or are we going to succumb to it? I am from the Retail Industry; we have got the same pandemic coming across the World. And I have seen some companies, because of their leadership, not only sustaining, thriving but also looking at galloping into the future. While I have seen other companies across the world who have shut shop; companies who have gone down. So, what determines basically, developing in the organisation the future of work is to develop the leaders themselves who can look beyond the horizon. The leaders must, first, see what exactly is going to come; beyond that, they must have that bird's eye view around it. Only when they have had that bird’s eye view, can they then start looking at having a mindset to start it? The first mindset that is required is called a growth mindset. In Reliance itself, for us Growth is life. If it is said about humans, it is said about organisations also. Compared to inflation, forget about the competition, you are receding. So, one of the ways to tackle the future is to have the growth mindset, how can I grow, not just about 10%, 15% but can I grow above 50%, 60% because if you have that mindset, if you want to buy a red car, you will start seeing a lot of red cars on the road. Similarly, if you have a growth mindset, you will start seeing a lot of opportunities even in the industry 4.0 that we are looking at or the pandemic or where we are looking at any kind of calamity we are looking at. The first thing that is required in different sets of people in the group mindset Secondly, I would say, it is the Digital Mindset. Compared to earlier revolutions; industrial revolutions, this revolution is not here to support humans. It is there, in fact, to replace human actions and in this manner to replace humans also. Unless until I, as an employee, as well as a leader, understand this and have the digital mindset coming in, this tool, rather than becoming a friend, can become a foe from my job role. I would go ahead and see different contours that are coming in. So, I need to have a digital mindset, I can't be sitting, saying I have got a functional skill; I don't need digital experience or digital exposure around it. I need to have it to survive it. That’s the second thing that is near today. Thirdly, the thing that is going to happen is that every hour it is getting more integrated into the organisation, we are moving away from silos to something which is an integrated organisation. If there is a change happening in some other department, it's going to impact me. Can I have a collaborative mindset to take the future and make sure that works for me? And that’s the third important thing that I have said. And the last thing, which will be required is that; gone are the days when the leaders are supposed to look at the future of the organisation. I would say that, if we must take care of the organisation of tomorrow and be resilient, the employee must be an entrepreneur, he must think about how I can add to the top line and the bottom line of the organisation which we call, in the management term it is called the ‘Intrapreneur’. So, I think these 4 mindsets, if all the employees can build together with a leader who has a vision of going beyond the horizon, I am sure the organisation will not only be sustained through what is coming into the future but also capitalising and growing through it. Q. How does the organisation prioritize and strike balance to accomplish these objectives in a dynamic World? That's my second question to you, Mr Ranjit. So many things are happening, how do we create a balance in the organisation? Ans: I think it was happening earlier also. I think what has happened is, the pace has increased to an extent that all these initiatives are now vying with each other to be resources in the organisations. So, if I must get transformation or if I want to get an incremental view of it, I need to invest some resources. And because the changes are happening so fast, all these are coming almost at the same time. I think what the leaders can do here, and I have been practising it in my organisation is, to step back, because there are so many things happening, you tend to react than respond to what it is. And one of the ways to prioritize and look at which resources would need to be going where, rather than following a herd mentality, where everyone else is going. I think, what needs to be done is, every leader must step back and do thinking. We are in a kind of system; we are not operating in a vacuum. All of us are interconnected with each other, so we will have to have a kind of system-syncing approach looking at that - okay if I am going to pull one lever at one place, maybe it's a cost reduction, how does it affect the fundamentals of other departments somewhere else. Now, if I am looking at these aspects, one of the ways are to deal with this; is to do a force-field analysis of the problem that you have with you or the strategy that you want to adopt. Force-field analysis will tell you which are the forces that are in line with you, which are helping you and which can enable you to be successful. And which are the forces that would be hindering your growth. It could be a small intervention that you are doing for your organisation, it could be OD or intervention the way you are running pan-India, or it could be a strategy that you are moving, it could be a blue ocean strategy. Once you do a force-field analysis, you will understand, out of the negative factors which might be slowing me down, I will pick out which I need to modernise, which I need to revamp, where I need to go faster in the organisation. It will also actually help you look at which are the lever that I can utilise to do that. I will tell you one surprising factor; you don’t need to look at these independent activities. I would suggest that you look at the forces which are supporting you to enable and further capitalise through a lot of areas where you don’t need improvement. You can use a strategy to find out certain improvements required and just go for a transformational thing that is required. In my experience, the force-field analysis for each of the functions of each of these categories helps us prioritise what is needed right now and what is going to give me higher bucks for money that I am spending out there. Q. That there has been a change in transformation in basically three things that we have to talk about. So, in the process of adapting to this changed reality, every process, function and role will be re-imagined, fundamentally changing the future of work as we were talking about. Besides work also, you can say workforce and at the same time workspace as well. Offices are closing; people are working from home. So, what is your viewpoint on this? Ans: In fact, for the last one year you will see, our revenue target has remained the same. There is no office space right now. Earlier, most of my revenues used to come from the stores and the way it used to happen is – customers used to come to the retail market and then they will buy from there. Suddenly, with Lockdown, everything stopped. Right from cars to garments to food everything went online. So, your workplace has shifted. The way your business model has shifted, your financials have shifted completely, and the kind of role performed by people have completely shifted also. And same with my L&D team, I had to shift the way I am thinking of building capability. Now, each function will try to change differently. However, as a leader, if I look at it as an independent view, if I look at it as a part that is changing then I will, be missing out on the acylate that the part has hit other departments. So, I need to think, when I am talking about stepping back, I need to see that as a whole system. It's an entire gearbox that exists. So, if each department says that I am going to re-imagine differently, then the gears will be out of sync and they won't be able to move in properly. So, as a leader, who is orchestrating the entire thing? First to look at, move from looking at independent individual departments, from disconnection there to look at interconnection or look at the relationship because if I am changing a process, changing a function, what and how the relationship with other functions sync, what are the implications? It does not go from raw material to output, that output also comes back as money for the raw material. If I am going to change only one part, I am going to change my entire loop. The leader does not understand that he would still work, or she would still work in silos. When you start stepping back and look at the entire orchestration around it, the new methodology emerges. And I think that’s what we need to look at. I think that’s the leader’s role; when each function would like to reimagine themselves, is a leader’s role to put it together and say okay while you might have evolved individually, how does it all add up to the organisation’s output and how organisation move. The organisation is a creature. Incorporate law also, we say it's an entity. Now, imagine if I have got 4 legs and all these 4 legs are going in different directions at different speeds, the organisation will not move, it will collapse. So, it must work together. Q. Automation will reshape business models and the broader value chain creating organisations with fewer layers and a better trained and trusted workforce empowered by real-time data analytics. So, as you rightly said, people used to come to stores. Now, most of the things are happening online. And the role of data analytics has become so critical, so important, Artificial Intelligence.So, what do you think, would be the emerging trend in the retail sector in this kind of situation? Ans: You have heard of Amazon Go in the US where you go and check in with your phone, you pick up what you want and then you just walk out of the store. They just removed the entire cashiering system, the order management system, everything out. The automation and the data analytics that happen at the backend enables a seamless customer experience. Now what it is doing is not only getting a better customer experience but is also somewhere rewriting how the organisation is designed. For example, if I look at Amazon Go and if I look at Walmart, here entire frontline cashier staff, out of which almost in Walmart is about 72% women, will be out of a job. Let's look at another automation. There is automation called a Progress Shelf. What it does is one of the main jobs of retail people is to tag merchandise on each of the shelves. Now, what Progress Shelf does is it automatically tags whatever merchandise that you kept on the shelf, checks the barcode and price, the calorie value of that thing, any item will be blinked on that shelf. Now, the entire role of the people who are arranging the shelf is gone. Or you look at autonomous cleaning robots or you look at pickers. In many warehouses that we have where the distribution happens, we have fully functional robots who go and pick up the merchandise that is required to be dispatched either through e-commerce or through the direct route. Now, what I am talking about is that real-time data analytics all are now become autonomous making sure that the process is becoming very, very similar. Now, in this part, what happens is the traditional roles are somewhere going to get taken off. I will give you an example of this. This example is about 3 yrs. old. In the telecom sector earlier, if you had to go and buy a sim from a retailer, you had to submit your Aadhar card. Now, that form would be checked by an officer, he would check if the photo matches with the identity card if the address matches and then they will sign on that. Now what happens, we have the automation happening in that last mile where rather than having all these documents, you just need a fingerprint sensor and the Aadhar card connected UIDAI network and that’s it. You don’t need any third person to really agree with what exactly you are saying. Overnight in an organisation that I was working on earlier Tata Tele, 600 people lost their job. Now, what will happen is because of automation the regular work that is happening, will get automated and the way it is happening. I will give another example; one of the ways to tag merchandise in a Retail sector is called RFID – Radiofrequency Identification Device. So out here you can just scan the entire rack with just one sensor in about 30 seconds and you know what kind of merchandise you have. You don’t need any physical inspection; you don’t need so many people to know exactly what is happening. Now, because of the earlier role, the layers are going to be taken out. So, what our role will be when we are structuring the organisation and the way we are structuring the ways of working, the way we are structuring the information flow must be centred around not our current processes but how the information will flow tomorrow. And that's a huge shift I have seen across. I am not seeing only here but I have seen outside. There are so many companies who are investing effort into just getting this restructuring in place so that they can be ahead across. Exactly. One of the things always said is, because of automation people will lose jobs. And that's true to some extent, I think every industrial revolution we had, this kind of job shift happening. But at the same time, I see the redeployment of labour as a strategic opportunity, because if it is done well, then you can get your already aligned, culturally aligned, team members to give all their focus on getting a better customer experience. So, you move them out of all the transactions which are mundane jobs which are not value-added job into something that they make a customer happier. I will give you a couple of examples. For example, let's say customer support. If a customer comes to return a garment, in the retail sector 34% of garments worldwide or the electronics sector, has returned. What it means is, customers can return a product, no questions asked. Now that must be dealt with in a particular manner. I can't automate that. I need to have a human who understands, who checks, displays empathy, understanding concern and at the same time enables a person to buy a different product so there is no cash outgo. Let's take another example. Let's say, Ashish, you go to a particular shop, and you are buying a T-shirt for yourself. Now an automated system can't suggest would that t-shirt, blue colour t-shirt, a beige colour trouser will go. We need humans with that. So, what people can do is use automation to lower their errors. Use the analytics coming in to understand the customer buying pattern, what exactly the customer is doing and then make sure that he or she uses this information to give better customer service. For example, with automation, the workflow around the entire store has improved. Walmart is a classic example. Last year Walmart spent 400 million dollars by improving the workflow at the same time improving customer satisfaction. In our organisation, we improved the way we interact with the customer, not only has it increased the revenue but also it has increased the net number of scores around it. In this way, we can, using automation plus better customer service if I can train my people to use automation properly, then I can reduce the number of complaints that are coming in because I can proactively eliminate the complaints that might come in. So, it all depends on the organisation’s focus on skilling, reskilling on a large scale. Q. How the Retail workforce is going to change. As you have mentioned just now about the reskilling part and what we call it, we run workshops on Performance Enablement, how do we enable people, empower people to do the task which is required. Ans: I think the big shift that will happen basically is how to balance in this unprecedented time, the short-term crisis with a long-term uncertainty. Honestly today none of us also know how Retail is going to go which way. For example, if you look at footfall across the world in the brick and mortar or the offline store that you are looking at, the footfall is less than 50% compared to last year. And it's not only India, but also not only just the Electronics Stores or Best Buy, that you can look at. So, we don't know what the future is. But what we need to look at is how do we balance it out together. One of the first things we need to look at, whatever you might say from an HR perspective, is how we plan the entire manpower for next year, we want to see how we really look at the manpower planning, what are the assumptions that we are building in. We need to have three kinds of assumptions that I look at. I look at the best-case scenario, the worst-case scenario and everything in between. And you need to have a talent acquisition strategy required to upgrade. Now, you can look at someone like our platform. Coke has been using it for some time. You have a couple of other companies who are using it very nicely in terms of planning their acquisition strategy for tomorrow. Uniqlo, our global competitor is using this which enables them to really plan what kind of hiring that I am going to do for it. The second, is basically, how I am going to engage. We are in a truly kind of not so happy scenario today. So, when you are talking to an employee, when HR is planning around it, they need to plan engagement with some positive purpose. There is a very large pizza chain worldwide. What did they do was, they got all their employees together and said let's give free pizza, physically go, and give it to all the hospitals? Now what it created, it created a very positive purpose for employees to be associated with the organisation and the engagement score went up. So, what happens is there must be a purposeful approach for HR in whatever they do. It could be as simple as connectivity calls; employee connects calls that we are doing or if we can get family in the call. In fact, I know a couple of IT companies which are doing, couple of retail companies, what they do is in their office calls, they also invite their kids, their families, to be there, because we all know that we are not an office, we are at home and people around. What happens is then there is a kind of comfort that sets in. And I think that's what HR can do because HR must maintain culture while maintaining distance. And if that HR can manage this in planning and ensuring that employee well-being and performance are set, automatically the balance thing happens. Another thing that can work is basically, we started doing is remote development. You can't get people into the classroom. But what you can do is you can take the classroom to the person. Now either it can be self-learning, it could be virtual instruction based or it could be remote coaching that you might be doing. Anything that you can do, if you keep on feeding him, there must be growth. See we all are human; we must grow. If you can't grow monetarily because of some reason, what you can do is you can feed at least the intellectual growth part of it or the emotional growth part of it. And that's what you can do with remote development. We also see that a lot of organisations, because of the changes that are happening, have retrenched people or they have got some other people. Now organisations would have saved money. My suggestion, in fact, my viewpoint around this is, if this idea can be reinvested in the people who are there, that further motivates the retail sector employees where you don’t see actual things around it. So rather than ploughing back of profit, distribute the profits saved into our people and that’s another way of ensuring that you keep on maintaining the performance of the people. Ready to Transform Your Retail Workforce Experience? Discover Cutting-Edge Talent Solutions Q. How does the organisation capture and scale up the productivity that can come with the new ways of working specifically in a hybrid model like our organisation Amity also starting that 50% people will be working from home and 50 will be coming to office. So, we call it a virtual and hybrid model. How do you accelerate individual learning curves so they can become productive in this kind of scenario? Ans: In fact, being in education University globally, if you guys think about the corporate who are focused on the bottom line all the time. In fact, you would have heard of TCS, a vision of 25 by 25. So, it’s the same with everyone. Everyone is looking at how I can get ahead because while the leaders want their employees to come, employees don't want to come back to the office. And it's a mix of both the things that are happening. Yes, there are some pitfalls of working from home. In fact, you don't meet people, you don't connect and say how it is and in fact, traditional leaders have this comfort of having people around them. And they say that's the only way to really communicate their vision, their goals and what they want to do. And that’s why we used to have all the strategy meets all the time in April, May, and June corporate India. This year we did not have it, but people are still making money. So, I think the shift that leaders must go back and say if I don't have my person physically sitting here, how can I still set clear objectives and milestones for the person, so that even if a person is physically maybe 1000 kilometres away, knows what to do, knows how to do, know how he or she will be evaluated and how he will be rewarded. There are of course multiple tools that can be done, a balanced scorecard is one of them if it can be done properly. OKR is another one that we have seen happening well. In fact, there is a classic case of Intel vs Motorola where OKR helped Intel to outright Motorola. And that's not one of the classic cases where we can look at it. One of the most important things that I have seen across is, if there is a clear objective for someone there is a higher possibility of that person performing. Ambiguous goals mean ambiguous results. Secondly, I have seen is, when people are aware while people would know what they are supposed to do. What happens is that people are not sure that whatever they are doing is right or wrong. Now, they might be coming to the office, they might be coming one day in a week to the office, or they may not be coming to the office. One thing that they require more than anything, is coaching on how it is going and how the person can cope up with the entire shift that is happening because the subordinate himself or the employee himself is not physically going in meetings somewhere. Suddenly people have realised that they don't need meetings. The work can be done on emails and phone calls. Now, not everyone is after doing it. Some of us are good at it, some of us may not be good at it. I think the second thing that the leader can work upon is ‘Remote Coaching’ for their subordinates. You don’t need to really give coaching only for the bottom. I believe everyone needs coaching. In fact, when I sit with my supervisor, I also ask him okay this is how we are going to go ahead with that. I have this view, but do you think it's appropriate, do you think it will work, do you think it will fly? So, at every level, people would want the most of whatever they are doing around it. Earlier it was very easy. I could just walk up to my boss’s cabin, anytime sit with ‘chai’ and I can work. Today it's not possible because he is in a meeting, I am in a meeting. So constant coaching by the supervisor is the second thing that I talk about and lastly what can drive individual performance as well as individual learning growth is ownership of well-being and engagement of the team members. Earlier people are to believe that HR was responsible for conducting engagement, games and ensuring that employees were happy but today, in fact, we are pushing it basically that your employee's well-being and engagement is completely dependent on you. For even a leader owns it then in this kind of hybrid model or maybe a remote working model also, we will be able to drive development as well as performance. Q. Do you think that this requires a new demand at the workplace in terms of skilling, lot of skilling because I was reading a report which says that 80% of people must be reskilled now with the advent of so much of digital transformation? What is your take on this in terms of reskilling and upskilling employees? Ans: There are a couple of websites one of them is BDUK and another one is NFWM where you can go and put your job out there and check out how much of your job will get lost because of automation over the next two years. It’s a very interesting insight, in fact, people can go and check it. I can tell you about the right thing in the world, the industrial revolution is not here to help humans, it is here to take away their jobs or part of their jobs. Now all of us as employees even facilitated as L&D team, you will see that some of it will be going out. So, if you look at this, from an organisation’s perspective when these changes are happening and even if the organisation doesn't want to do it for themselves, there will be competition, there will be markets, there will be customers to be forcing them to do it. Now, because of this, there are three scenarios - there are job losses that are happening what I talked about earlier. In fact, World Economy Forum 2018 report talks about that more than 30% of jobs in the manufacturing and service industries will be lost by 2025. Now, of course, on one end there is job loss happening, on another end, you have new jobs coming in. You have the app creator, you have got cloud sustained, you have digital marketers coming in. Now, these jobs were not there about four or five years back. So, you get job loss at one end, you got new jobs coming in between and then there is everything in between that is there. Now the organisation must see challenges, one is to also check if I am running automation and there is, of course, the pressure from the CEOs, CXOs, CTOs about getting new technology in place, what do I do with my people. Some of us will skill for the new thing that is coming in. Some of us have upskilled because they don't know it. I will have to reskill some of them who don’t have any other opportunity in the organisation to do something else. I will give you a classic example. In the organisation, when you had the offline business since it is locked out, we had the online business coming in and we had to reskill our people to start doing online training. Now these guys who were doing customer-facing roles, now are doing online order consignments. But now they must be reskilled. My own team went in from doing classroom training to doing virtual training to doing something which is now getting into complete performance management which is based on analytics. So, this is something that is required for survival. So that's the reality. Now whatever you might say, that’s how it is coming in, you don't know how people want to take it. But there is a churn, we are there, fortunately, unfortunately, we are living in the best era of humankind, but it also has its own set of challenges. And I think as an HR leader you must see it coming in and we must be the enablers to make it happen. Q. What should be the role of Human Resources? What mindset shift does this represent for the future and how different are these priorities vs today what they used to be earlier? Are you seeing some of this already been happening? In the very first instances, we talked about possible mindset shifts. To deep dive into certain things is like it must be, whether it is enabling performance or managing performance? When it must be job focused or well-being focused? Like we talk about the task and people-oriented leaders. Is it about bureaucracy or self-managed teams? Is it culture and behaviour focused or strategy/goal focus? Is it about people focus or Technology focus? So, a lot of questions are there in front of HR. How do you focus on these areas? Ans: We call Human Resources, and this term has evolved over the last 100 years from being an admin team to personnel team to labour relations. Now in the last 30 years, people were human resources, unfortunately, the resources are not managed well, is becoming a liability in the organisation. And the HR’s biggest role is to ensure that the resources remain resources, do not become liability where a finance team or operation team come back and say – your people cost is way higher than what we can afford to move out people. For HR, the biggest role that HR must do is make sure that HR has a vision to really take people through it so that not many people are left behind in the journey. This is a time when it can be where we can move everyone through it. We have seen that in the outsourcing boom that happened about 20 years, this was not managed that well. In fact, that's why you had a lot of pushbacks happening as outsourcing and in fact, outsourcing also became taboo in the developed countries, and India was on the receiving end of it. But today it's not only an outsourced company or outsourcing company or it could be a manufacturing or retail company. HR must play a role where the resources to remain the resources. And for that, what they need to do and in fact what I have seen, a lot of developed companies doing it, has a look at over the next 4-5 years. It's not going to happen overnight. It's like keeping a frog in slowly warming water. It will not hit you today, but slowly in fact it is eating away yourself and one fine day it will impact you badly. So what people, the last companies have done like Walmart. What Walmart's HR department has done. They have set $4 billion for the next five years to take care of their employees. What I talked about is basically where the cashiering which is 72% are women, if that role is going to go, what you are going to do with that. If you are going to get autonomous robots to pick up your cargo in the warehouse, what am I going to do with the pickers? What they have done is, they have investigated the future, and they have discussed with the leadership. If we got 1000 people and I need to take care of them because they stay with me. Now, how many of them can I make sure that I can take it ahead? So, HR must do two parts. It is possible to take care of people for readying them for tomorrow. One of the ways to do it is basically, there are three ‘S’ principles - Scout, Shape and Shift. What does Scout mean? HR must investigate the horizon and understand the business strategies and look at what kind of skills would be required or what kind of people enablement is required to enable revenues to be coming in over the next couple of years and how people can contribute along with technology coming in. Technology is not going to come in, in fact, it is coming to you already. How can I coexist with it and still make sure that the new skills that are required, I get my people to do it? So, they must have a visibility of what skills will be required over the next 4-5 years for my industry, for my organisation, for the resources that are coming in for the revenues that are coming in. That’s the first part. Secondly, they have to ensure that we segregate the current resources into who is shapeable and who are not shapeable to get to the skills. And that's the second part of shaping up which we call ‘Upskilling’. And third, they have to shift out people to roles that do not require technical skills but can move on to other skills so that they can sustain themselves and they can be taken care of. So, three things, Scout, Shape and Shift. So, by doing this, what HR will be able to do is sustain what exactly is going well. Also, what they can do, for example, what has Best Buy done in the U.S., is they have looked at how many of our people are good communicators. Best Buy is into full furniture and getting office equipment, all these things. Now people have stopped coming into it, they are buying online. Now what they have done, the way you have UrbanClap, as a company which has come and set up. They have extended their services into these areas where they can use their technical expertise to go and fix things in people's houses. So, I can upskill someone, what I can do is I can side skill him. For he knows something well, I will just add communication skills so that he or she can go to the customer’s house and fix things that are required. So, what HR has to do is keep on scouting, shaping, and shifting people so that they remain resources because training on the resource is almost 1.5 to 2 times cheaper than buying a new resource. So that’s business can be catered and pushed to management also. Q. How do you think what portion of outsourcing will be taking place in terms of Learning & Development? Ans: From HR & L&D perspective, I see one is kind of complex technology that is coming in. Let's take augmented reality or virtual reality. We need to build a lot of content around these products to make sure that the customer comes to our stores and goes to experience to buy something new. So complex technologies which are not available in-house, and they need to be trained for people is that’s where outsourcing can happen. The second is Scale, in fact, you guys are already good at it. Getting a scale in place, maybe we have to get 20,000 people trained on a new way of doing something, new software that is coming in or new processes that are getting rolled out. And that's another outsourcing that can happen. The third is basically the regular work that does not require a lot of technical competencies and that can be done by an outside facilitator also, is another area that can be outsourced easily. It does not require continuous connection with the client organisation or employee. So, these three areas which I think are clear opportunities for outsourcing and cost-saving as well as building upscale for HR & L&D. Q. What will be some of the key themes on organisation culture that corporate India will need to embrace in the future because things are changing, their dynamics are changing and where are we now on these themes? Have we started implementing it right now because people who would like to join in future, the organisation would like to know so that’s what I wanted to know? What will be the theme of the future in terms of the culture of the organisation? Ans: I think the theme of the future would be completely based on what kind of the target group that you have for the employees that you want to attract. Different organisations run with different sets of employees. And the reason why I am saying this is even a company like Google which provides almost everything under the sun to the employees, can't really attract the best of the employees and retain employees. In fact, a lot of these employees have left Google and Facebook and have joined a lot of start-ups in the US as well as in India. So, I think I would, rather than giving or responding to a very generic kind of answer, I would suggest that kind of theme that we need to build up, will be built upon the target group that I have, the kind of employees that I want to attract, retain, and grow, to kind of employee value proposition that I want to build. So that I can sustain the theme not only in attracting but sustaining and growing also. The reason I am saying is I have seen a lot of companies started a lot of fanfare kind of theme and not able to carry it through because that has not become part of the DNA, that is not really bought in, that is created to showcase to the world. In fact, I know organisations who participated in great places to work or a lot of these things just to get accolades on the website. But is it really to ensure that employees come, stay, sustain, and go ahead? That’s the biggest question. I think the theme, evolution will depend on three things - the target group, the EVP that you want to create and of course, what is your biggest long term people strategy around it? Q. What do you think, what will the future Leadership look like? What qualities & skills must future leaders possess? Which leadership strategies will have the greatest impact? We have been talking about so many leadership strategies and there is a question which has come in about leadership style, how do we see in the future. What kind of leadership style will be there? Ans: I think it's a very interesting juncture, the reason I am saying is that when I talk of the future of leadership, there is a lot of discussions that are happening worldwide on what kind of leadership do we require for the next decade. And the key thing that is coming across and the one word that arisen across is ‘Agility’. Unless and until leaders keep that in mind that tomorrow is going to be different than today and unless, until I am agile enough to take on that, whatever domain, functional, people skill or strategic skill I might be having, all will be in vain because I will be applying yesterday’s tools to tomorrow. So, I would summarise it in one word - ‘Agility’ and that's the key thing that is coming in across. If you look at yesterday’s news, Jeff Bezos stepping down. If you look at his journey. I was just reading through it. Just imagine AWS which was nothing, in 2001 they launched it and today it's in the cloud. Now, just think about it why I am talking about this. It's not about how much of the grey hair that you have, how much education qualification that you have or industry expertise that you have today, it is out of the window. What is required for today and tomorrow? Do we have the capability to understand what is required? Can I create tools and team around it, and can I go ahead and conquer it? And the genesis of all this is Agility which is if you go back to the tip of the Iceberg. Lead Your Retail Workforce Into The Future—One Skill At A Time. Learn How

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