What do you do if AI can perform parts of your job better and more consistently than you yourself can? For Larissa Murmann, Digital CHRO of Unilever International, the answer was clear: use it to augment her and her team's productivity.

In this first episode of Season 4 of People Matters Unplugged, Larissa shares her journey with AI and her thoughts about how to use it responsibly and thoughtfully.

A leader’s most powerful tool is their ability to communicate with the organisation. For Seema Nair, CHRO of Flipkart, this means ensuring that people know the culture, the ethos, the successes, the failures. It’s about finding your voice as a leader and using it to advocate for yourself and your team. In this episode, Seema joins host Cheshta Dora, Head of Research & Community at People Matters, in a dialogue about the power of communication and transparency.

Key Takeaways

• Advocate courageously for yourself and your teams, even if everyone else thinks differently.

• It’s HR’s job to communicate who and what the company is: what the culture is, what kinds of skill sets you’re looking for, and what ethos you want to continue building within the organisation.

• Communicate your successes and failures from all across the organisation, so that people know what worked and what didn’t.

• Over-communicate: people understand different things in very different ways, so be ready to use different means, different modes, different methods, or different languages, whichever works.

• You can establish consistency across the board, or you can let the system evolve in the way it needs to - there’s no one correct way to make a decision.

• People managers are the fulcrum that connects multiple different parts of the organisation, and leaders must continue to inspire, motivate, guide, and provide clarity to them.

• Empower your HR partner teams to customise people solutions based on what their businesses need.

Only you can truly build and shape your organisation’s culture. To Sitaram Kandi, CHRO of Tata Motors, every leader must take ownership of the shared values that make a company special. With that foundation, it becomes possible to drive business direction, to engage and keep talent, to make your people future-ready.

In this episode, Sitaram joins host Cheshta Dora, Head of Research & Community at People Matters, to share the approach that has kept the culture and values of Tata Motors so strong over the years that people come and stay just for it.

Key Takeaways

• Business owns the teams, and business must drive the culture; HR is the facilitator helping the action plan to happen.

• Ask yourself: How can we do more for our people, more for society, more to give back to society? That brings a fresh burst of energy to every conversation.

• Engaging people is about giving them the opportunity and the foundation to better themselves in multiple different ways, so that they in turn can better the business.

• Challenge your high performers, give them the opportunity to compete, and appreciate their efforts; that is the best way to keep them with you.

• Make your niche capabilities broad-based, spread them to as many people as possible, in order to be future-ready.

• Organisations must remain agile with their policies and systems, constantly revisiting and reviving them to ensure that they meet the expectations and aspirations of each new generation.

• Keep structure, process, and people part of every discussion, so that your talent needs are pre-emptively met as part of every initiative.