CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Mohan Monteiro, Chief Human Resources Officer, House of Hiranandani
- What are some HR Initiatives and Employee Policies?
As part of an employee’s induction, they are taken on a tour to see the buildings and other infrastructure our company has created. This helps them to understand and identify with our purpose of creating sustainable communities with a world-class lifestyle, and how stringent quality standards and customer centricity have helped us to create the brand we stand for today.
We believe that ‘Health is Wealth’, and with a healthy mind and body, productivity can be enhanced. We ensure that all our employees are well equipped with an online health and wellness platform. Our health platform has a consulting desk, emergency medical advice, pharmacy discounts, online exercise sessions, mental and physical wellness analysis etc. We encourage our employees to participate in running events, and sponsor their participation (along with their immediate family) for select events including the Hiranandani Thane Half Marathon.
We understand that every employee may have different work/life requirements, so we have flexible work shifts to cater for that. Employees can also avail upto 3 “early outs” in a month to take care of personal chores and in case of emergencies.
We have an initiative called “Ideas2Action” whereby employees can contribute their ideas, big or small. These ideas are reviewed by a review board comprising senior management, who shortlist and recommend ideas for implementation. Employees whose ideas make the cut are rewarded for them.
Sports binds our entire nation together and we at House of Hiranandani get the competitive juices going with regular intra-company sports tournaments including quarterly outdoor or indoor sports days.
The tenure of service of an employee indicates a sense of trust towards their place of employment. To recognize this trust and support of our employees, each year we honor those who have completed 5, 10, and 15 years of service with the Company in the previous fiscal with Long Service Awards.
Individual excellence with a positive impact on teams helps create a high performance culture, and top performing employees are recognised and rewarded through our ‘Employee Of The Year’ program.
To help our employees with their financial needs, we have tied up with a financial services platform Refyne to offer earned wage access (early salary) to our employees. We are also currently exploring a salary top-up service and pocket insurance option with them. We also offer employees the option to contribute to a Corporate National Pension System (NPS) scheme. We have tied up with a new-age insurance platform to offer personal insurance to our employees at a discount to the prevailing market rates.
More than 55% of our employees have been with us for over 5 years. This has been a clear indication for us that closely-knit teams, setting a high bar for quality of output, providing challenging career opportunities and creating ownership and accountability have ensured that our employees have been with us through our growth journey.
- How technology is used to streamline HR processes or improve the
employee experience?
At House of Hiranandani , technology is a key enabler for our employees as well as HR. A majority of our employees are based on project sites. Keeping this in mind, we ensure that any technology we incorporate is accessible to 100% of our employees.
Whether it’s employee self service on our HR management system (HRMS), official communications, learning tools, benefits webinars – all are accessible to employees on their smart phones. Employees can view their historical and current data on their HRMS profiles, and most HR processes are run using online workflows that ensure speed and transparency. We also run periodic training sessions so that employees are updated about the latest upgrades.
- What are the achievements in the area of employee learning and development?
Our Learning and Development initiatives focus on classroom training for non-technical courses. We also encourage HODs to nominate their team members for external domain-specialisation courses. During the lockdown, the learning and development initiatives were taken online through a tie-up with LinkedIn Learning for all employees. We encouraged our employees to spend at least 60 minutes in a working week on learning and take up courses of their interest. With e-learning, employees could learn anytime anywhere on-the-go and at their own pace.
We ensure that employees understand that learning is an integral part of their career growth and to thrive as an individual. To emphasize the importance of learning, a learning goal constitutes 10% weightage in each employee’s KRAs every year. Employees have the autonomy to choose the domain and expanse of learning, which doesn’t necessarily have to be related to their current job role. This allows employees to keep expanding their growth horizons.
- How do you stay updated on HR trends, changes in regulations, and other factors that may impact work culture with a real estate firm?
Every day, I spend an hour reading newspapers, e-magazines, e-newsletters, and LinkedIn blogs to stay updated on the newest business and HR trends. I also participate in select seminars and conferences, both in-person and virtual, on the future of work and how HR practices are evolving to meet the needs of a multi-generational, varied workforce. Finally, I leverage the incredible networks available to HR professionals, whether through offline CHRO forums, WhatsApp groups where the latest trends are shared and discussed, or one-on-one conversations with other HR leaders to understand the impact of these trends and how companies are incorporating them into their workplace practices and policies.
Regarding regulatory changes, we collaborate with our statutory compliance partners to evaluate potential changes to workforce legislation and their implications. For example, while the new Labour Codes have yet to be enacted, we have conducted a thorough review of their impact on our company based on recommendations from many compliance specialists and our own reading and research. We provide our employees with a much better experience than the minimum levels mandated by labour legislation (including workplace policies, salary, and benefits).
To preserve and strengthen our work culture as a leading real-estate developer, we adapt and incorporate new ideas, whether collaboration tools, best practices from other industry players or other industries, or ideas and business plans generated by our employees through our Ideas2Action initiative. We also have a robust real estate HR forum with participation from most of the Mumbai-based firms, where we debate market trends, share pertinent industry information and source talent.
- What are some key advancements you have witnessed or implemented in your business?.
We have digitized most HR processes to ensure a more seamless and consistent employee and candidate experience – including recruitment, onboarding, employee documents, performance management, attendance and leave, compensation planning and payroll, and offboarding. As we have a large number of employees based on our construction sites, we use various channels of communication to ensure that all employees are aware of what’s going on at work, and feel part of the Company. When COVID hit us, we provided employees with the opportunity for online learning through LinkedIn Learning, though we have now largely switched back to classroom and on-the-job learning. We’ve also offered our employees a curated menu of benefits, including earned wage access (early salary), company loans, discounts on purchase of our properties, voluntary parental insurance, corporate NPS and discounts on personal insurance. Following a large-scale integration of two organisations last year, we have spent a considerable amount of time and energy on creating a single unified work culture and identity, and we are seeing these efforts pay off into a stronger organization with enhanced capabilities.
- Is the House of Hiranandani using AI anywhere to empower its employees?
On this, we’re still at the very early stages. Our HR management system (HRMS) has a chatbot that responds to common employee questions, saving our employees the time and effort of contacting an HR staff member. Additionally, we are beginning to apply AI for employee expense processing (using optical character recognition) and candidate screening.
To improve their written communication output and increase the effectiveness of their communications, we have encouraged our employees to use AI products like Grammarly. Additionally, we are beginning to use ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard to create job ads, prepare employee communications, and summarise research and viewpoints on a certain topic. We still have a ways to go, but we are looking forward to the ride!
- Apart from the regular learning courses provided by the House of Hiranandani team, are there any AI, or ML courses proposed for the HOH employees?
At this point, we have not designed or rolled out any AI or ML courses for our broader employee population. Our IT team regularly attends seminars and online courses on these topics, and is actively exploring how we can incorporate these to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our business operations, as also how IT and HR can collaborate on specific initiatives to improve the digital employee experience through AI and ML tools.
- How has the staff strength changed, what are the hiring plans?
As we embark upon new construction projects, our employee strength keeps increasing. Our strength has increased in the last fiscal by 127%, including the integration of our Thane-based workforce.
We are always on the lookout for great talent. Our employees are our brand ambassadors and hence, the best source to attract outside talent. Our employee referral program ‘Bring In The Best’ acts as a platform for referrals. Whenever a position opens up, we look for references from employees as the first step. We also consider internal job movements. Finally, we have begun using platforms such as LinkedIn to convey our employer brand and reach out to new talent pools.
