Page 15 - SightsIn Plus, Nov 20

By- Romesh Srivastava

Saurabh Govil is the President & Chief Human Resources Officer at
Wipro Ltd and is also a member of the Management Team. In this

role, he leads all Human Resources functions for Wipro.

Despite having over 2 decades of experience Saurabh still
considers himself as a newbie who constantly maintains childlike

curiosity to learn new things. Before joining Wipro he worked in
organizations such as ITC and GE.

An alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur he completed his Masters in

Human Resources. He is on the advisory board of SHRM India
and also a regular speaker at NASSCOM’s HR summit. He also

contributes to NHRDN’s journal as an author.

Q. expectations from HR delivery of existing and new business Most important is cultural integration
How do you see the business
of employees in a remote context.
with minimal disruption. It sounds
especially in the IT industry in the like a normal expectation. However, in
next couple of months? these circumstances when all systems Enabling business in these
for existing and new employees are circumstances is the first and the most
A. global scenario, the pandemic remote, it is quite complex. From important expectation that all IT
If you look at the current
business leaders have today.
hiring new employees to training them,
is not showing signs of waning. to ensuring that they have right system
Nations are seeing second and third access and so on requires multiple Q. How many employees are yet
waves. Closer home, while our teams to come together and deliver. working from home and what
fatality rate has been remarkably low, is your plan to see them in the office?
cases continue to increase and that’s
worrisome. A. Majority of our workforce (over
We see merit in 98%) continues to operate from
In these unusual circumstances, people coming to home as of now. We do see merit in
many organizations have taken tough people coming to office to experience
decisions to ensure survival and they office to experience the culture and build social capital via
look to HR to provide the much- informal interactions. However, in
needed stability in these times. if we the culture and these circumstances, our first priority is
look at the IT industry, it has seen build social capital. employee safety. We have implemented
significant changes in the past few multiple safeguards for employees who
quarters. WFH has been enabled on a However, in these are required to work from office such
large scale, business has been growing as zoning protocols, distant seating,
in certain sectors while some sectors circumstances, isolation rooms, sanitization etc but
are stressed. our first priority we are enabling employees to WFH as
much as possible.
In IT the biggest expectation business is employee
has is to support it in successful We must understand that we are yet
safety. to see the new normal. Today a lot

15 November 2020 www.sightsinplus.com