“I believe that everyone is talented in varying degrees – and that is great; however in a particular context the “fit” between an organization and the talent may not work, and this works both ways and we should accept that.” Rohit Manucha
Interviewer: Khouloud Béheiry
Brief Biography about the interviewee:
Rohit has an extensive experience in transforming organizations across 19 countries, operating in diverse sectors with varying ownership models and at different stages of their life-cycle.
He has developed case studies, authored white papers, chaired events, conducted corporate trainings and spoken at a number of global conferences.
An alumni of the prestigious XLRI (MBA) and Chicago Booth (Exec. Leadership), he has worked in KPMG, Hay Group (Korn Ferry), Pepsi (ORC) and the Dunia Group.
At present he Heads HR at Aujan Coca Cola Beverages Company based out of the UAE and is a board member at the Change & Transformative Collaborative, UK. He is also a visiting faculty at IMT, SP Jain, PIBM and the University of Dubai. In 2019 he was named the ‘HR/ LnD Director of the Year’, in 2017 he won the ‘Compensation & Benefits Leadership Award’ and in 2016 the ‘HR Rising Star Award’. In 2015 he was ranked as the ‘100 Most Influential Global HR Professionals’ and in the same year he won the ‘HR Leadership Award’.
1- HR Revolution Middle East: Welcome Rohit, first of all congratulations for the special award you won this year in the Future Workplace Awards, at the HR Summit & Exhibition, Dubai, Nov 19. You won the Award of HR / L&D Director of the Year. Please tell us more about your success story behind the award? How does it feel getting such recognition after all your efforts?
Rohit Manucha: Thank you for your wishes. The response truly has been overwhelming and at the same time very humbling. Having won the HR Future Leader in 2017, at the very same event and now going onto winning the HR Director Award two years later serves as a testament to foresight of the awards panel, the trust that my family, my organization and all my colleagues – all had in me and the dedication with which I have striven to deliver results and live up to their expectations. This award has been won by them all, but there are still many more miles to go and more lives to touch before I can rest.
2- HR Revolution Middle East: You have been in the HR field for more than 11 years, what changed through all these years? And what’s the biggest challenge facing HR nowadays?
Rohit Manucha: Up until a few years ago we hadn’t quite seen much movement within the HR space. The core concepts pretty much remained the same with HR as a function trying to find its place within an organization – moving from an archaic admin role to that of an operational policy gate keeper, then to a strategic business partner, and so on. Technology within the HR domain back them only played a part as a mere facilitator.
However, in the past ~3 years we have seen a dramatic shift wherein while we are still bringing back the concepts of the 1950s/ 1970s when it comes to AI or Design Thinking – this is now being done with an employee experience bent of mind.
After a long time I believe HR has come back to track, to serve the talent and technology is the backbone for that change. We have almost 5 generations of G-Local talent in the market which poses its own unique challenges but at the same time we now have adequate amount of data points and the analytic framework to make targeted-proactive efforts to enhance the Employee Value Propositioning. However, not every organization is on the same point on this curve and that is the major challenge – how to bridge this gap in the most effective manner.
3- HR Revolution Middle East: When recruiting employees is it more important to focus on Talent or Knowledge? To what extend do you believe HR can really identify exceptional talents during the recruitment phase?
Rohit Manucha: There is an old adage that you hire for behavior and train for skill. This holds true even today. However in the pursuit for job-person fit we sometimes chip away at the true identity of the individual or make false positive/ false negatives (Type I or II errors) through the various acquisition techniques.
Again when you look at the journey of how TA evolved not just in organizations but also academic institutions which churned out talent, it would appear to be more of an art than a science. From obvious mistakes of using psychometric as a selection/ rejection tool, to running countless interviews, jumping through hoops of all sorts…you name it and the organizations did it…and that was obviously ineffective after a point of time.
Over the passage of time and analysis of past data (hopefully) organizations now use the approach which suits their needs – as there is no one shoe which fits all. My concern around this is that this approach should not “stereotype” talent within an organization (at a micro level), as I shared above.
So hire for value alignment and have processes/ policies/ structure/ system that allow for diversity of thought which in turn will allow micro-cultures to flourish and prevent “typecasting”/ “biases”.
Thus, I believe that everyone is talented in varying degrees – and that is great; however in a particular context the “fit” between an organization and the talent may not work, and this works both ways and we should accept that.
4- HR Revolution Middle East: What recommendations would you share with other HR professionals about Employee Engagement techniques?
Rohit Manucha: As I said before there is not one sure shot way…customization needs to be made as per the organizational/ individual context. Having said that:
- Link engagement to organization objectives and make a business case for it;
- HR should get to know its people and what they truly want (deep dive into the symptoms to reveal the problems);
- Drive HR initiatives from the employee POV to provide for an enhanced experience;
- If you have to do EE surveys do not spend too much time on “analysis paralysis”…from vendor identification, to questionnaire tweaking, to reports review with group discussions…identify those quick wins with maximum impact to set the momentum for change;
- And lastly, rather than EE surveys, work towards a culture where feedback is shared openly and worked upon and use spot checks with a high statistical reliability and validity to course correct your initiatives from time to time.
5- HR Revolution Middle East: What’s AI in HR, what’s that AI changing in HR industry? How shall HR professionals advance their skills to be able to benefit from AI in HR management?
Rohit Manucha: Well AI in HR is covering all aspects of a talent life cycle from sourcing to exit/ re-hire. Along with this it’s touching upon other aspects of Total Rewards, Organization Design, Policy & processes, Workforce Planning & Analytics, etc. All of this is possible on account of strong Master Data frameworks and cleaned up data points within organization that probably in the future may even allow for cross sharing of information in a standardized manner (e.g. point factor based job evaluation to some extent was able to accomplish this while being task specific and sector agnostic…it of course had other shortcomings…but that’s another conversation altogether).
Look at it this way…if you run an organization and have an ‘X’ amount of employees – then each data point you collect on them (in compliance with local laws and data privacy) forms your knowledge repository. Every organization collects information on each new hire/ existing employee and this data keeps getting entered (self-service/ data entry operator), stored (Human Resource Information Systems), reviewed & validated time and time again given the performance cycles, promotion cycles, structural moves, etc.
Now augment this perspective to the talent funnel wherein information on job applicants is also being captured across job portals/ social profiles, etc.…that’s is Big data for you in the field of HR. But this was not being effectively leveraged for predicting performance against a host of HR metrics. HR dashboards were limited to historical analysis but now with passage of time and advent of big data coupled with focus on analysis organizations can now make informed decision on the basis of simulations…this in the future can be honed with Machine Learning.
6- HR Revolution Middle East: Do you think AI can completely replace human talent?
Rohit Manucha: The same question, though it was then pertaining to the advent of “mechanization”, was asked years ago…and we now know where we are. Thus, if the past is a good predictor of future (i.e. TBEI approach), then what we have learnt is that every new change bring with it a host of challenges and opportunities, it depends on how you perceive it and how well you are geared for it.
Take for instance, Agriculture Era was complemented by Industrial Era which later absorbed a larger workforce and hence some jobs went away/ some were modified and accordingly new jobs were born…the same was repeated when we moved to the Financial Era, then the Technological Era and now the Knowledge Era…the cycle would inadvertently repeat itself.
However there would always be a need for human talent to take us to the new – undiscovered “Era”. Also rather than being a futurist and focusing on the now, we must realize that some industries are still workforce intensive, data-sets of global talent is still not cleaned/ mapped out and Machine Learning in HR is still at its nascent stages where errors on account of false hypothesis is still moderately high (garbage in-garbage out quandary).
7- HR Revolution Middle East: With a background in different industries and countries, and wide culture, do you think the HR in Middle East is ready for this change, is ready for the AI? How can we decrease the existing gap?
Rohit Manucha: Within the space of AI in HR, I believe Middle East can be a front runner and leader in this segment primarily on account of the fact that compared to other markets, here the HR framework is still fine tuning itself and hence rather than undertaking extensive compatibility tests on robust-established frameworks we can make the next big jump. Speed of change is on our side and the fact that the respective governments within this region are making great in-roads within this space further bolsters my faith that the Middle East region can make this leap successfully and sustainable.
8- HR Revolution Middle East: You had a very distinguished participation this year in the Compensation & Benefits Forum this year, in its First Round that took place in Riyadh on the 29th & 30th of Oct. 19. Please tell us more about it.
Rohit Manucha: Yes, I presented a paper on AI in HR more specifically on Job Evaluation (within the CnB domain). Basically, this was meant to address the current/ past issues that many CnB practitioners/ JE panel members/ organizations using it face, using text mining, predictive analytics and machine learning models.
I believe the Job Evaluation process is in an urgent need of overhaul as the intent with what it was founded has been lost somewhat in the din of subjective/ clouded human judgement/ personal biases which result in sub-optimal evaluation. This in turn has a far reaching ripple effect within the organization construct given the interconnect nature in which HR processes/ policies/ systems and processes are structured or as I like to call it, the “honeycomb” structure of HR, requiring all the hexes (i.e. congruence of all HR aspects) to fit in properly to provide the comprehensive strength for an organization making that change.
THANK YOU