STL Acing Its HR Game Which Is Purpose Aligned And Purpose Driven

A management structure built on outdated principles—a hierarchy that addresses conformity, bureaucracy, and control—will be as ineffective as it was pre covid as it will be now that we are in a post-pandemic society. 

Businesses are aware that happier employees translate into better financial performance. In order to improve individual, team, and corporate performance, successful firms collaborate with their people to design personalised, real-world, and inspiring experiences. 

Anjali Byce, CHRO, STL, shares some of STL’s people driven, purpose aligned and futuristic policies that make STL one of the best places to work. 

1. What makes STL a great place to work and how do you create a unique working environment? 

It is well acknowledged that to succeed and remain relevant, we must continually reinvent ourselves. STL is a global company with its roots in India today. We have established ourselves as a tech-led organization with over 742 patents. We are recognized by BCG as Top 100 Tech Challengers and have been Certified as a Great Place to Work for three years consecutively!! 

We are purpose aligned and purpose driven and have an entrepreneurial spirit inside the organization. People here are cognizant of the fact that they are transforming billions of lives, through the work that they do, whether it’s through smart networks or through technology. We are committed to creating a highly engaged, energized, and enabled organization; a culture where employees can come to work bringing their ‘whole self’ and perform at their best potential.  

Our flat organisational structure with strong empowerment helps build an entrepreneurial culture that enables young talent to contribute ideas and have a bigger voice in decision making. We are fostering a tech-led culture that embraces change and encourages innovation. 

During a recent 360 pulse check with internal and external stakeholders, we were provided feedback that some key Differentiators in STL culture are Long-term Career Growth, Challenging Projects, Continuous Learning and upskilling, Social responsibility, Balanced work-life culture, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion. What better validation than this on our STLer differentiators. 

2. How do you make sure that everyone in your organisation, no matter who they are or what they do, is a contributing member and can realise their full potential? 

We start the year with the business direction at STL. This is an amalgamation of an ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ approach. Likewise, the goals are a collaborative approach of ‘Top-down’ & ‘Bottom-up’; making the process inclusive, leveraging the collective wisdom of the organization, and driving strong ownership and accountability. With a common lighthouse, we build goals, KPI’s , OKR’s ( as applicable ) to ensure that the linkage to a common goal is tight all the way through.  Our rewards and performance too are linked to performance and Values. This stems from our belief that ‘how’ goals are achieved is equally important to ‘what’ is achieved. We have always lived by our values of Respect and Empathize, Hunger to Learn, Promises Delivered, and Keep It Simple. We have a dedicated Innovation Team that builds the strategy to ignite and nurture the culture of Agility & Innovation across the organization. As part of the Innovation Programs, we have focused on one of the biggest and the most important pillars for an organization – The People and invested in them.  

All our development initiatives are focused on identifying and maximizing each employee's inherent potential, or those true qualities and skills that enable them to express their creativity and presence. 

3. How does STL ensure Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace? 

Biases have a way of sneaking upon you and finding their way into our ideas and actions. Oftentimes these are inadvertent and stem from past experience and subconscious beliefs. It's time to focus on and address one of the most significant barriers to gender equality: hidden prejudice in people practices. To go beyond fundamental prejudice, one must first understand where hidden bias might appear in the talent and employee experience process, and then determine to break it. 

At STL, we are on a very fulfilling journey of developing gender-agnostic policies and practices across an employee’s lifecycle.  As they say, seeing is believing. That's why we take pride in the fact that at STL, women are frequently seen excelling in previously male-dominated functions such as manufacturing, STEM roles, civil engineering, public relations, key account management, predictive analytics etc. To eliminate the risk of bias, we recently piloted an AI enabled resume stack ranking tool. The tool ensures all resumes are stacked on capability, thereby mitigating the risk of bias creeping into the process; additionally, tech evaluations are done through an independent agency. Both these approaches ensure equal opportunity and fairness! As we move ahead on this journey, we are pushing boundaries to make STL a truly progressive, diverse, equal, inclusive, and exciting place to be! 

4. Since the workforce is getting younger, how are you paying attention to Gen Z’s expectations of the post-pandemic world of work? 

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed workplace culture. The whole world adopted entirely new ways of working. Whether it was diversifying employment models from full-time to gigs and crowds or moving to flexible work and hybrid workplaces. Nobody ever thought that this temporary setup would define a completely new playbook of working. The GenZ today demand flexibility in work that helps them maintain a work-life balance. Moreover, they also appreciate the welcoming culture of the organizations and a job that gives them a ‘purpose’ & ‘growth’ more than just pay. 

At STL we acknowledge all the new standards & have set in place programs to cater to the needs of the incoming young talent. We create a culture of continuous learning and enable employees to evolve their skill sets and help them progress in their careers. For example: ACT Up is STL's fast-track career acceleration program for young talent from junior to mid management level. The key objective of this program is to Identify and Build High Potential Talent by identifying them early in their career. In the last year, 28% of the promotions in young talent from junior to mid management level were a result of ‘Act Up’. 

We are also very particular about work-life balance and nurture a positive work environment where employees can excel professionally and lead a healthy lifestyle. Our EAP (employee assistant program) offers confidential, no-cost counseling to you and your family, 24/7. Expert counselors are available to help with everything from stress management to relationship challenges, to budgeting. We have introduced Flexi-Holiday (Optional Holiday Plan). The employees shall now have 7 Fixed Holidays across India and 3 Flexi holidays to choose from a defined holiday list.  This helps promote a better work-life balance and time with family to celebrate or observe essential occasions as per their preferences. More and more people today are looking for companies that stand for a purpose beyond making a profit. STL is deeply committed to the environment and sustainability is at the core of our business operations.

5. Please shed some light on your return-to-work policy.  

Our "Return to work" policy is aligned closely to reflect business demands. Our strategy focuses on achieving the best of both worlds for the business and our people because we have seen the enormous potential of working remotely and from the office.  We believe in Safety First and the importance of health and wellbeing of our employees is paramount. Needless to say, we have ensured that our workplace is safe and follows COVID-related protocols being followed like staggered lunch hours, air filtering systems, hybrid town halls etc. We have all our plants and sites running at 100% on-site attendance and most offices running on a Hybrid combination of 3 days at office and 2 days WFH. However, it is common to find multiple employees at offices too back to pre-pandemic ‘normal’ - ‘Return to work’ every day. 

In order to ease the transformation, we launched “People First”- a program for managers. It provides a toolkit that empowers managers to address key ‘moments of truth’ through an employee's lifecycle. From a safety perspective, we revamped our medical insurance cover to be ‘gold standard’. We ensured that our global employee assistance program is open to employees and their families thereby maximizing the impact of wellness. We built online volunteering programs to empower employees in contributing to our communities. With a spirit of embedding inclusiveness to our approach, we introduced flexi-holidays - a great way to enable work life balance and flexibility. 

We are committed to building a STLer workplace - one that is compassionate and provides a new, regenerative experience as people transition from work-from-home to a post-pandemic future. At STL, we have always valued employee wellbeing with sustainable performance. We provide a stimulating, lively environment and warm camaraderie that are not available at home. We have concentrated our efforts on developing a ‘whole setting’ approach with welcome areas to indulge in meals, have meetings, and work with teams or individually.  

6. According to you, what are the four key HR skills that HR professionals learn/implement keeping in mind the changing times in 2022? 

It is true that our working environments, people, motivations, and technologies are always changing. From a time when HR was considered as a key resource for recruitment, we have come a long way. HR professionals are strategic leaders who, among other things, ramp up employee development, compliance management, talent strategy, and wellness initiatives. 

My four top skills for HR professionals would be: 

• Purpose aligned People Strategy - Critical in this era is the need to start with the Why? What is our Purpose, Business and Customer anchor? Once that is established; work outside in to build enablers, experience, capability & skills that would create strong “employee experience”. Business results are an outcome. Key success factor is understanding the business and its enablers. 
• Empathy - HR professionals must demonstrate empathy in order to manage the rapidly shifting workplace dynamics. The rise of previously unheard-of health challenges, instability in the economy, and societal changes have intensified the focus on empathy among HR leaders as a fundamental competency. Empathy is essential in promoting inclusion and diversity in the workplace, in addition to creating collaboration and cooperation. Empathy is at the heart of “people centricity”. 
• Foster a culture of trust - “The most expensive thing in the world is trust. It can take years to earn and just a matter of seconds to lose.” This quote sums up the importance, power, and fragility of creating a culture of trust at work (and outside of work). The discussion of trust is constantly at the forefront of our work to promote ethical culture and assist management teams in creating purpose-driven, values-based businesses. An organization's capacity to handle difficult challenges and thrive in both good and bad times is greatly enhanced by such a culture 
• Adopt technology - This goes beyond simply implementing HR software in a company to streamline administrative tasks and automate important HR procedures. As an HR professional, you should understand how to use data to your advantage so that you can make better decisions about workforce planning, hiring, and employee engagement.