Aon Hewitt's 7th Annual Rewards Conference
Performance and Pay –
The Changing Curve
Pedal on Performance
Gopal Vittal
Managing Director
& Chief Executive Officer
(India & Southasia)
Bharti Airtel
Q. In the global business landscape, what do you think is India’s USP and have you seen it
changing over the past few years?
A. The Indian market is very unique compared to any other market because it is far more
stratified. India is the only market where you will see an RPO or average revenue per user going from 3/month to
10,000/user. The challenge in such a market, something that we have done very well in the past is, how to deliver
a low-cost business model. As we move forward, the game is beginning to change and our challenge now is to
continue to have the low-cost business model but yet do multiple things at the same time – grow both voice and
data, grow financial services and cloud-based services. That is a much more complex game than in the past which
was simply about driving voice penetration.
Q. How do you envisage HR partnering with you and supporting the business in this change?
A. I think HR can play one of the two roles – either it can be a transactional role where it is
about managing the entire process or it can be the most strategic role, certainly for me as a CEO as well as for
the company. I have found normally HR playing the former role than the latter in many environments. The reason
that HR is perhaps the most important to me is that what drives exceptional performance is ultimately the way we
manage our people. The reason for that is the market context which is so different. You are fighting for global
talent on one side and looking to create and groom new leaders on the other side. You have to instill ingenuity
and passion in the people to stay with you, yet you have to be able to attract young graduates, from the best
schools. All of this needs to be done in the best form, which actually drives a culture of humility,
responsibility and passion, and that to me is really what will make a company stand out. And that’s the
reason that HR is an extremely important role. But the question is, can HR stand up to actually play that role?
Q. Do you intend to change your talent management strategy in future to support the business growth? If
yes, how?
A. At the end of the day, the business performance is not going to happen because you got more
towers or more spectrum or more call centers. Finally, it is going to be delivered by a bunch of cohesive people
who are aligned to a common purpose, creating a lot of ingenuityand executing brilliantly. Talent management
strategy has to be the ability to put oneself in the shoes of the employee and say, what would they like to see.
Three things that I would like to see as an employee –
1. Am I clear of what needs to be done,
2. Am I confident of delivering it seamlessly,
3. Do I feel like I
belong here. That’s what the strategy needs to deliver.
Q. Currently, which HR initiatives are you really proud of and believe that they differentiate Airtel
from the other telecom companies?
A.There are two things that we have done in the last year – one is that we are far more
balanced in the way we conduct performance assessments. We have not been mechanistic. We have looked at the
context in which the performance was delivered and then made an assessment of that performance. The second thing
is that we have spent a lot of time in getting people to understand how to have a performance dialogue. We have
taken almost 300 people through this because in a performance dialogue, the most important thing is not about the
person but about the performance. The capacity to separate the person from the performance leaves the conversation
in a much richer place, so that the person, who has had that discussion, even though it is not a good
performance, still feels a great sense of caring and dignity as he/she leaves the room. I think that is very
important that you separate the person from the performance.
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