Anish Aravind On Bringing More Science Into HR: An Insight Into His Challenges, Learnings And Upcoming Priorities!

Our next HR Speaks story is about Mr. Anish Aravind, Co-Founder at SS Consulting & M/A/R/S Kerala, here’s an insight into his journey as an HR Professional and his take on what lies ahead of us during these unprecedented times when it comes to staying aligned with the HR industry.

We started with our first question”How do you think HR will prove beneficial in building the future of work?”, to which he replied, “HR is uniquely placed to design as well as play a catalyst role to forge purpose-oriented collaborations that can bring results to any cause, be it for profit or otherwise (Social / NGO, etc). The function by definitions is better placed to connect and spread the scope and possibilities of Science and its recent advancements across Brain, Neuroscience, Behavioural Economics, and Evolutionary Biology”.

We were equally eager to know if he can predict the challenges the HR industry might be facing in the second half of 2021 to which his answer was, “How to connect leadership role players to the evolving future of work will be a key challenge for all HR role players. The situation has become more complex because of the pandemic as it has set off some radical shifts in human behavior which will itself take at least a decade for the majority to get a full grip on. The second challenge would be bringing more science into HR to help leadership make informed and concept depth-based decisions, customizing them for the society, Company, Department, team and the individual contributor (employee)”.

We have to agree, presenting these stories, challenges, lessons, and other insights help us not only stay aligned with what’s going on in the industry but also prepare ourselves with the upcoming as well as the existing challenges in the industry which makes us more eager to know what are the lessons they have learned. Mr. Anish Aravind spoke about his three biggest learnings in 2021 that were:

1. Work does not always require a designated workplace.

2. Contributions to any cause can be measured easier than what most of us are led to believe till 2020.

3. Real leadership at its depth lies in relinquishing control and enabling ‘responsible freedom’.

Moving forward, we also asked him about the metrics that he would you use to measure success in the HR industry, to which he replied, “HR needs to align with business metrics itself and design ways to measure HR function’s contribution to those business needs. For example, if a company’s OKR is to expand to US markets, the HR function can charter a plan to support this goal by aligning Talent (Internal + External), Leadership Development, Employee Experience, and Employer Branding, etc”.

We couldn’t agree more.

We concluded the interview by asking him about his way forward, one of the most important questions for us to understand his key priorities in the coming months. He spoke about enabling collaboration among leaders and employees to deploy measurable Communication designs while also enabling Leadership Development to get supervisors to access the relevant skills that they need to live inside a Hybrid Workforce. Lastly, build Internal Competencies which are visibly aligned to the purpose of the organization or its journey.

We’ll get back with another interview soon, stay tuned for more such insights and stories shared by some of the leading HR professionals who are setting trends in the industry every day.