#525: Leading with Diversity A Puja Khanna Kapoor Perspective on HR Success

"Success mantra: Master your business, be empathetic and objective. Always rely on data. Stay self-aware, adapt, and keep learning. Resilience after failures is the key to standing tall in life's journey."

In this episode of "The Shape of Work" podcast, we delve into the remarkable career journey of Puja Khanna Kapoor, Global Senior Director of HR at OLX Group. With pivotal roles at SirionLabs, Evalueserve, and Google, Puja's extensive HR expertise shines through. Armed with a PGCHRM from XLRI Jamshedpur and a B.Com. from Delhi University, she navigates the dynamic world of work. Join us as Puja shares insights, lessons, and perspectives on the ever-evolving landscape of work. 

Explore the transformative journey of Puja Khanna Kapoor, Global Senior Director at OLX Group, in the latest podcast episode of "The Shape of Work." Delve into her diverse cultural upbringing, career pivots, and impactful HR roles. Gain insights into her strategies for embedding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) across global workplaces. Puja shares valuable advice for women aspiring to HR leadership and emphasizes the importance of data-led decision-making. This episode encapsulates the essence of innovative HR thinking and the pivotal role it plays in shaping inclusive work cultures.

Episode Highlight

• Navigating diverse cultures in global teams and its impact on HR strategies.
• Key advice for leaders to ensure authentic DEI initiatives and foster inclusivity.
• Puja's actionable insights for HR leaders and effective DEI 

Follow Puja on Linkedin

Produced by: Priya Bhatt

Podcast Host: Ipshita Sharma

About Springworks:

Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation building tools and products to simplify recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:

SpringVerify— B2B verification platform

EngageWith— employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture

Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building

SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and

SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system.

Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture, leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Shape of Work, a podcast series by Springworks. My name is Anoop and I am your host. Each week, we'll be talking to top people managers across the world on the future of work and how it's shaping our workplace. So sit back and get ready to find out more from these movers and shakers, as we have a no-holes bar. Anything goes. Conversation with them about their journey, their insights, their thoughts, most importantly, their ideas and vision for the workplace of the future. Join in on the conversation, leave a comment and don't forget to hit that subscribe button.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Hi everyone. We have today Ms Pooja Khanna Vedas, who is the global senior director at OLX Group. Welcome, pooja, thank you for joining us here. How are you doing today?

Speaker 3: 0:42

I'm doing very well, and thank you for calling out my maiden name. I think I forgot it somewhere. So I'm Pooja Kapoor now, but I'd love for you to say Pooja Khanna, it just brought me back.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Alright, that's great to know. We are really happy to have you here, since you have so many years of experience and you are such a seasoned HR professional. Can you tell us more about your background and how you entered into the field of human resources?

Speaker 3: 1:07

Super. But first coming first, I think. Thank you for this opportunity and for me to be able to relay any of my thoughts and my messages. But this is a great way of spreading the message also for HR, which is a community which needs a lot of love nowadays. But anyway, quickly I'll talk about my background.

Speaker 3: 1:29

I was born, brought up in Goa and just before this we were talking about Goa, so that was the fun fact I wanted to let you know. So I was brought up in Goa to very simple and humble parents. I also had some medical emergency when I was pretty young. So I've been through a life of sort of medical attention and then sort of came out of it. And in that process of growing up we also moved multiple places in India and this context is extremely important because it has helped me in my career as well. So I've lived in Goa, I've lived in Gujarat, I've lived in UP Mathura and then Delhi, and what I sort of gathered is these cultures are so different and I exactly would call out why is Goa Goa or why is Gujarat Gujarat and why is UP a UP, and that sort of left a mark in me which helped me become more adaptable to different environments and that's how the growth really started to work for me. Very early on I also was very, very focused on becoming a doctor. That was my sort of passion and labelling in my slam books that I wanted to become a youngest cardiac surgeon. Unfortunately that dream wasn't fulfilled, but I'm still in a noble profession that sort of helps and enables people. So I'm sort of partially satisfied with that.

Speaker 3: 2:57

But it was an accidental decision to move into HR because from science I moved to commerce. I'd done science without that and I moved to commerce immediately thinking that you know, if not this, then something else. I radically changed my mind and very lucky to have brave parents who sort of never questioned my thoughts my brother never questioned my thoughts, elder brother. So I sort of made my way through and, yeah, once I got into my MBA I sort of felt that you know, maybe this is my calling, this is the place that I really can make an impact.

Speaker 3: 3:33

And some of my internship projects were also very good I did in those days I had done a project on ESOPs and voluntary retirement and so on and those were like the things in you know, 99 to 1000, when a lot of happening and that sort of created a lot of connection into how ESOPs is correlated to different generations, how people you know value it differently and things like that. So that's how it was accidental move. And then suddenly Oberoi has really picked me up and my first job was in Shimla for two years. So that's pretty much how I ended up being in HR.

Speaker 2: 4:11

That's great. You have had such an exciting journey, also living at so many places. You know having such a great exposure definitely comes in handy with the HR professional experience I wanted to know. You have held various roles in HR, including being a vice president and HRBP. Can you walk us through the key milestones and experiences that led to your current position as a global senior director in HR?

Speaker 3: 4:35

Look, I think there are multiple milestones and I think the journey has been sort of upward trajectory is what I can say. You know it's been over 22 years. But every time you know you get into a role it's always exciting, it's always learning. So while I was working in Shimla just to come back to the point that I was working in Shimla I luckily was a part which everybody would die for today to be a pre-opening team member, like a startup. So I was a pre-opening team member of the Wildflower Hall Resort property of Oberoi's and it was being shaped into an 87 room property at that time and I had a great boss and I had great GM's and they supported me a lot and I worked there for two years and from, you know, going to a PF establishment office to insurance setups and things like that, I probably learned everything and the culture was like the mecca for the hospitality sector at that time in the Oberoi group. So I sort of started with a very good education background, or rather a training background for HR. That set the tone quite a bit. But I would say a significant milestone that came by was when I moved back to Delhi and I started in an IT company called Zansai Now it's so prestigious and I started in the help desk team and that was when sort of I learned people soft which very few people would learn this early and I'd learned how to, you know, use people soft, how to call log queries and how to ensure you analyze queries for a long time, how to analyze queries for employees and people like hiring 50 people a month. So it was like crazy and I was handling the media team and the US transition of work. Those were some some big, I would say, milestones of learning.

Speaker 3: 6:22

And then suddenly my bosses moved out and they sort of poached me into a sapient and that's where I sort of learned, I would say, the ropes of being an HR business partner. I think your foundation of your career and the kind of people or the quality of people you work with is an extremely important ingredient in sort of your growth and your learning as well, and I learned from fabulous talent around me and that sort of helped me then move out of the shadow of my folks who really loved me and wanted to work with me in sapient and I worked there for around two and a half three years and then suddenly got a call from Google and that was another milestone sort of that made a switch in me because I was almost working under the shadow of two great people that I really admired and then it was time for me to be a little bit more independent. So it was six, seven years of experience, wanted to be a little bit more independent and so Google happened and I joined their direct sales business and it was tough. I had zero understanding about Google at that time. So my first six months if anyone from that Google team who was managing me would hear me, would think that it was traumatic, like I did not know how the cultural change really worked and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 7:36

But I think five years there was one of my best experiences of being an HR business partner growing teams, understanding how to run processes, how to develop new programs and, you know, instill different sort of drivers to create impact in the company.

Speaker 3: 7:55

I think those were some of my great learnings that I had over there. And then you know, your personal milestone really hits you when you have a child and things like that. And then I decided that it was time for me to take on something individual. I think it was a tattoo early, I may say so another turning point was, you know, taking a head of HR or a CHRO role of a data science company, and that was something that really helped me, because one thread that you would notice in the journey that I've had and I've been very blessed with that that I've always got attached to growth companies or companies that are actually off the era of that environment, and so I did sort of go into data science where data science is just starting up less analytics people, so a lot of innovation in practices we could do in each other over there and sort of bring about a change and create big communities, change the hiring patterns and build more content to train people in-house to become analysts.

Speaker 3: 8:56

So that was something that was outstanding. And then you know a couple more organizations at scale after five years of doing that sorry, four years of doing that and then OLX happened and it's been like a roller coaster ride of six years being with OLX. I started with them in a classified team for India and then incubated a business that we had bought in India and then sold that business off, along with the leadership team, obviously, and in support with a lot of work that we all did together. But you know, those were some of those experiences that you seldom get in the same organization and some of those tipping points really have shaped me, of who I am, which is never stay constant. You know, there's always this fluidity and ambiguity that you have to deal with in your career and if you are well-adapts to deal with that, then you know success has no barriers or growth has no barriers. You probably will navigate your journey with a little pain, or with a little bit of sweet pain sometimes, but you will always get there because you've you know it threaded the path of learning constantly. And so, yeah, I think those were some of the things that really shaped my career and got me to where I am today.

Speaker 3: 10:18

And then, obviously, because we had incubated an oil-ex-car business in India, so we acquired this global business called Frontier Car Group and that was spread across multitudes of countries across Latin America, us, asia Pacific and India and Europe as well, and so integrating so many countries into one business unit of oil-ex-car was another learning journey and therefore got elevated as the head of HR for that business and which was almost like 70% of employee base of oil-ex, if I may say so, and yeah, so lots of things in that journey.

Speaker 3: 10:59

That's how the path was carved and made, and I have had several people who've contributed my team, you know, my folks, my folks who looked up to me and folks who looked after me as well. And, yeah, it's worked relatively okay, I would say, until a point where we decided then to close this baby called Oil-Ex Autos and so we had to go through the grind and I was telling my CEO recently that we started from zero and we're back to zero because we're closing this business. But, having said that, I think those have been some significant milestones and career points and, all through the way, I think what I would definitely say is that the family has played a very, very important role, including my in-laws, and in specific I would say my father-in-law and my mother, who sort of supported me end-to-end, along with my husband, who sort of just you know, felt really great on anything that one was going ahead and doing. So I think, once you have a great family support and you know your journey and what you want to learn, I think it becomes relatively easy.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Definitely. I completely agree with your point there. Family is really the backbone for us, really supportive. You really need that kind of a background to grow and to reach the leadership role. Especially, I wanted to know, pooja, you have handled global teams as well, and working in global markets often involves navigating diverse cultures. So how has your understanding and appreciation of different cultures influenced your HR strategies?

Speaker 3: 12:38

Well, I think you know a lot of it has influenced HR strategies. So, in fact, when we sort of and if I were to take an example only of OLX or Denambi, that I worked with, the data science company that I'm talking about I think the fundamental things that we realized is what's common to all when you build an HR strategy, what are the things that are fundamental for a business or in HR function to run, to be successful and to be able to enable the business successful. So there are some things that are fundamental to everybody. So it could be HR technology, it could be some of the HR processes, it could be some of the benefit programs you know and compliances that you have to do. So there is one sort of brick or one layer that is very, very common and fundamental to everything. You can have some tweaks based on country, but you know, largely the frameworks remain the same. And then, if you then overlay it with people and then look at the context of people, that's where culture really plays a very important game. And I recall that when we sort of integrated Latin America and Indonesia and US, we had different dynamics, different cultural behaviors, and so if you wanted to sort of go and say, hey, this is the change program, this is what we're doing. Communication wasn't enough, or acting on that wasn't enough. So in Latin America you actually had to give people a lot of time to be able to digest that there is a change coming. You had to listen to several people again and again and again for them to be able to digest that this change is inevitable and it will happen. And people have heard us and they're taking our feedback in, and so we did also make a lot of changes to the program based on feedback listening. But I think we did not get there by good brain power. We also got there by a lot of learnings and failures and mistakes. We made several mistakes in the process.

Speaker 3: 14:41

I think the first stage program that we launched was on some change of org structure and reporting lines, because it was an integration of the company and we just kind of informed and we said this is how change is going to impact, this is what's in it for you. So we did all that big consulting stuff that is required what's in it for you, how this is really going to bring any impact, what changes? But to be extremely honest, it just did not land. It required several rounds of listening of each leader, each team, everyone trying to understand what's it going to change, how my decision-making program is going to change, what's the impact on my growth, what's the impact on my career. So a lot of things. We had to learn and then go back again and keep explaining and keep understanding. And then we had to launch programs on what the leadership really looks like. Do you get inspired by the leadership? And therefore you would want to bite into the change, because it was a cultural change, it was an organizational structure change, it was a business objective change as well, not the business model typically at that time, but we went through a roll of rehaul in the business model as well. But it did require a lot of talking on the other side.

Speaker 3: 15:50

If you looked at Indonesia, it just required a lot of listening, but a roll of relationship building. You had to build relation and you had to make it very emotional as to how it was going to make a change. So humans are wired very differently and in Latin America, I think, emotions run on the sleeve, but in Indonesia people just don't speak up. They will not speak up and there will be passive aggression in the system. So we had to discover that there could be passive aggression in the system. So we had to sort of change the way we operated there versus in Latin America, there was no passive aggression, there was just sort of outburst constantly for us, india relatively, because we had incubated the business of it understood. So everyone was under the thinking that, okay, india knows it all but other countries don't know it. But the fact was that India was thinking that why are we being left behind? Why are we not being communicated really well? Because they think that we know it all. So when you go into cultural diversity, I think it's extremely important to listen, to include people. So these are two big sort of actions that one have to do, have to imbibe those behaviors and build that into your culture. That without listening and without including, making a change in the organization is not possible and that was an impact of the diverse behavior.

Speaker 3: 17:19

One of another failure that we went into is we did not have a great Latin America presence in our leadership group. We did not have a good other ethnic presence in our group. We had five people of India who was like the CEO, the HR head, the CFO, the strategy person and the tech head and the product six people. All of them were Indian. So I guess that was a bit of a sort of I would say a tipping point for us that made us realize that we needed more diversity on the leadership group, not only from a gender perspective, but also from an ethnicity perspective.

Speaker 3: 17:58

And that's when we launched our campaign of hiring people from outside India into our leadership team, and so our CMO came from London, who then moved to Amsterdam, and then, unfortunately, we still didn't do a great job of hiring too many, but we had an Australian legal person on the team and a woman leader, and so we have to bring about the diversity change as well. So I think culturally, we need to understand that listening and making it inclusive is extremely important. Also, walking the talk is extremely important. So if you have cultural diversity in your leadership team, that actually makes that behavior in other teams as well. If you don't have, then you're not sort of setting a great example for the rest of the team, despite the fact that you may have it as a goal. So I think those were some of our learnings from a cultural standpoint that being inclusive is extremely important.

Speaker 2: 18:58

Talking more regarding diversity and inclusion. I wanted to know from your experience so far can you share some DEI initiatives you have implemented in your organizations, current or previous, which were successful and what was the impact that they had?

Speaker 3: 19:14

Look, I think a couple of things that we at OLX did really well is in the beginning, when we really got very, very serious about DEI. I think we had to make the phishing from the top, which is the leadership team, or the global leadership team, really had to imbibe some of those goals or outcomes that we expected. If we were to create an impact in the organization, what would the outcome look like? And I think that's also one of the fundamental mindsets that one needs to bring in the leadership team that DEI is not a lip service. It is definitely action orientation, with outcomes that are expected to boost the organization. It's extremely important to think of it that way, and so we created a DI council that had representation of some select leaders and luckily I was one of them as well and we had our CFO as the leader for that, and we had someone in the legal team who was the person who was extremely passionate on almost like a project manager for the team. And then we had leaders from different countries who then plugged into this council and took the objectives of. Let's say, you know, we had a three pronged approach, which is you spread awareness, then you create some long, some programs, and and then that's action. But then action gets converted into practice, which is regular policy. So how can you really turn the tables after you build awareness?

Speaker 3: 20:47

A couple of things that we didn't very differently was, let's say, in India we established a DEI team, but we also had ambassadors from every country and our goal was that we wanted to build awareness. So we did a lot of theater activities in the business to sort of enable people to self discover biases at any point in time. A person is dealing with over 150 biases, so even if you're aware of 50 grade and if you're conscious of few, it's outstanding. So how can you really discover biases? Having said that, that was not the more disoperant I in some other countries, and so we had to do storytelling and we had to do a lot of podcasts and chats that way to be able to do that. We had to do that way to be able to run it within the organization and it sort of developed a lot of awareness and it came to a point that after a year, almost every leader wanted to be a part of the DEI council. Every leader thought this is the place to make an impact. You know, despite the business doing really well and everything. It sort of became a very aspirational type of work that could generate impact in the organization. And if you do that, it can also become culture, because now you're making everyone aware of it and it sort of lands.

Speaker 3: 22:01

Having said that, I think all programs don't land. For example, when we did this persons with disability in India we created a team and it was trained really well. We trained the organization really well. Having said that, we did not build that team really well. We may have disseminated them into the normal business, but we did not recreate another team. So it was action once done and then stopped.

Speaker 3: 22:27

Because what happens is that when you have to weigh the priority of running a DEI team, which is excess capacity, versus running the business on efficiency, you sort of take DEI and Buxit and you say, yeah, we can do it next year, may not be this year, and then the next year never comes because there are a multitude of things to change. So those were some of the things that we couldn't do really well. We wanted to do a lot of accessibility campaigns in which we wanted to create an infrastructure that was impeccable for any person with disability to enter the office, make work happen, people with epilepsy who could have like a dog rider with them, or people with different gender. Accessibility could be accepted really well. A lot of programs that we launched, but only a few really landed and took its way into the culture, and we still have a very, very long way to go on LGBTQ.

Speaker 2: 23:27

Yeah, that is true. Can you tell me some specific challenges or roadblocks you faced while implementing these programs?

Speaker 3: 23:34

Like I said, I think we always were hard pressed with budgets, Like you know. The challenge was obviously that if you're going to give you this budget, what's the ROI? And we know that ROI is not measurable of a DEI program in a year. It's measurable in a couple of years or three. It will show its outcome in some time may not be now and so our quick win was that can we bring about a change in our employment surveys that happen right? So we did that. And so when you say that your engagement score can change, then the budgets can only be to the extent that you want to make that change, not on the extent that, okay, you want to do resume masking so nobody will be able to see a gender and resume masking. That's practically a high cost driven topic. If you want to create teams with persons with disability and you want to create infrastructure for persons with disabilities, then that's a cost impact, definitely on the company. If you want to run programs of, let's say, leadership, inclusion, trying to get them trained, there is a cost impact because you first have to build awareness, you have to train them, then you have to get them to own some initiative so that they can run it by themselves and that had a cost impact. So we struggled with budget.

Speaker 3: 24:49

Second, I think we struggled with and because my business was almost like a startup business housed in a very large company, and so one of the challenges we faced is the constant dichotomy between prioritizations of different programs versus DEI. Should we work on efficiency? Should we work on product? Should we work on change, management of organizational structure? This, that everything, values that were getting changed in the company, and I think one of the things we suffered with was there was so much change in the organization that I think there was change fatigue as well. So now you're building awareness, there's change fatigue, there's a lot of things, and so how do you prioritize a program on DEI then at that time? So we had to run some snippets, but those were some of our challenges where some of the leaders did believe in it and the amount of time it takes to change mindset is seldom less understood, and people don't realize that it takes more time to change mindset than to actually get action on a program.

Speaker 2: 25:51

All right, keeping all these learnings and challenges as well as the successes you have had in this domain. What would be your one advice to the founders, ceos or the management team to make sure that their DEI initiatives are not just tech boxes but are generally focusing on making an inclusive culture in the workplace? What would be the one advice you'd like to give them to implement?

Speaker 3: 26:15

Look, I think if you're talking about only the founders of startups or anybody, so to speak, I think there are two ways to look at what they can really make an impact on. One is on their own leadership style and behavior, and my advice to almost every leader is to be open, transparent and authentic Extremely important, because when you're open, your ability to listen and include is extremely high. But when you're calculated about what you can be transparent about and what you should not be transparent about, that's when actually the shit hits the road and that's very difficult for you to communicate authentically. So I guess those are three things that I would really say that a founder should keep high up there in the order of priority for displaying great leadership. I think some of the other things that I would say is also as a founder and I've worked with founders and I've worked with CEOs of corporate environments and stuff I think the stuff that I really feel is the founders need to be far more flexible and adaptable to changing organizational construct and environment.

Speaker 3: 27:33

Like if I were 300 people and I spoke to 300 people personally and I got shit done or work done, that does not mean that when you'll become 1,000, you could manifest the same behavior, or you could do the same thing, but how you can keep humility into the picture, how you can keep approachability but start to set something that is slightly more organized so that some people have accessibility and some don't and feel deprived because there are some people who are not very open, not very direct in talking to you, and so that's when you need to be more inclusive and give everyone an equal opportunity to be able to be a part of your environment.

Speaker 3: 28:11

So that's from a cultural thing, and I believe that, as a founder, you need to train people so well or you need to get people in your business trained so well to take on more, to take on more innovative topics or give more ideas so that they are really ready to leave you. But your treatment as a founder or as a leader or as a leadership team should be such that you treat them so well that they are always willing to stay with you. And this context is extremely important that you make people absolutely independent, self-sufficient, self-starters, driven, take more ownership, they can drive decision making themselves, give them that freedom and freedom with responsibility and build that culture that you can train them so well that, when you actually treat them really well. They don't want to leave you. I think that's the trick that founders and probably HR professionals should be able to help founders also build really well. So that's something that I would definitely say.

Speaker 2: 29:14

Those really are some pearls of wisdom. I also wanted to tell our leaders that Pooja here has been a recipient of the Women's Super Achiever Award and she has been recognized as 50 most influential HR tech leaders, amongst her other accolades. I wanted to know how do you perceive the role of women in leadership, especially in the HR domain, and what challenges have you personally faced and how did you overcome those?

Speaker 3: 29:41

Well, I think those awards really are no awards. I think they're just validation of some work that you do. So I feel good, but you just have to move on. I think I remember Indra Nooyi saying that you always have to leave your crown home or crown in the office, in the either places that you are.

Speaker 3: 29:59

So I guess what I personally feel that HR professionals or leaders really face as being women in the businesses, there is always a bias or a mindset, and, specifically, you need to crack it in your head first. Like if you ask a woman and I was reading it somewhere that if you ask a woman, you want to be a CEO, and I heard it already somewhere the lady would say I want to make an impact into the organization, but if you ask a guy, you would just outrightly say I want to be a CEO. And so the ability to be able to say what your ambition is should be extremely important. And I also feel and this is my personal mantra that you should not ever be conscious or contentious about what you want to say. You should be courageous and you should always build competence around it. If you are courageous and you have the courage to be able to say what you have to say, then the world is out there for you to conquer. So those are some things that I really feel are extremely important.

Speaker 3: 31:06

Some of the challenges that I may have faced, that I have always been the single woman in a male leadership group, and it's been unfortunate, so to speak, that I really had to strive hard to get more women into the leadership team. I did get a few, but I think what happens is that extremely smart women are also extremely, very clear on what they really want to achieve, and so we need to create more environment for women to be very clear on what they want to achieve, and we need to make women very, very self dependent on their mental thought and not get bogged down by somebody else's opinions. So that's one, I think. The second one is that you will find a lot of competition, but if you think that you cannot win that competition, then you're going to set yourself back. I don't think it's about winning. It's about striving to do something really well and succeed in your space. If you focus on that learning and if you focus on how you can build that learning, you probably will get there. But if you start to receive or sort of take inputs from everybody else and not decide on your own, I think that becomes the biggest dampener for a woman, and so a woman is not able to succeed or not able to take the next step that is in their favor.

Speaker 3: 32:32

The last and not the least is that there is always bias, and the bias is as simple. As you know, I'm in an auto business, so I'm probably okay saying that. But you know, like there will be people, men, in a room and they'll be talking about, let's say, soccer, and they'll be talking about cars, and you're constantly, you know, in that kind of topic. Right, but at the end of the day, men need to get sensitized as well as to what all topics can you talk of? And is that the only topic of brotherhood? Right, one is that. And second, you need to navigate them and influence them to talk more intelligently through and make powerful conversations besides only that.

Speaker 3: 33:15

So I guess sometimes the boys club is something that you have to definitely navigate through. I've been through a lot of years of navigating that, but the trick for me has been building personal relationships with each person to the point that they sort of start supporting you in your journey and also sort of helping you in your journey, and asking for help is not a bad thing. I think the biggest problem that women have is going and asking for help, because the moment they think that they want to ask for help. They feel that someone's going to judge them, that they're not good enough, and that's not what women should do. They should be open to ask for help and it's okay to move on. When someone has given you some help, it's absolutely fine. So I think those are a few things that I would say have been a part of my journey and my learning as well.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Those are definitely great advices. I think we all should incorporate those. I wanted to ask one last thing Any final thoughts you have or messages you'd like to share to our audience, especially those who are aspiring to follow a similar career path in HR?

Speaker 3: 34:19

Well, I think I would say there are a couple of things that one needs to be really, really good at. One is, whatever business you want to get into, know the business end to end. Knowing the business is going to help you make an impact in the business From a cultural standpoint, if you can really build your muscle on good listening, involving people in your decision making and being empathetic yet very objective at the same time. I think this is really going to take a long way. And, last but not the least, always be data-led.

Speaker 3: 34:53

What I have faced is in my career or in the fraternity that I've seen, is that people want to say a lot of things but at the end of the day, when you're sitting in that leadership room and if you're a woman, there's double judge on you. But beyond that, if you're sitting in that leadership room and you're talking based on pure gut every time, then your opinion on the table is only an opinion. So it's like your proposal without data on the table is only an opinion. It's nothing else. And to be able to change that, being very data-led is extremely important. And, yeah, be more self-aware so that you can constantly keep adapting to different environments and keep learning. I've been a student of life who's constantly learned, and I believe that that really has helped. It's helped me stand upright after several failures that I've seen in life. So I think that that would be my last message.

Speaker 2: 35:54

That's great. I think that's really great insights, as well as the advices that you have shared with us. I'm sure this is going to be a really interesting podcast for our listeners. Thank you so much for your time today, pooja. I will reach out to you for more insights in the future, hoping to stay in touch with you.

Speaker 3: 36:10

Thanks, sibhita. It was a pleasure talking to you and hope it's meaningful and a useful message. Definitely, thank you.