Hiring & Firing – A Risky Business — An Interesting Webinar I NISSMAT I

Evening everyone, my name is Pawanjit Taluya. Unfortunately the president Mr. Sepal Singh is unable to join due to connectivity issues. He's staying in New Chandigarh and I believe they've dug up a lot of things up there and the connectivity just vanished. He was online about half an hour back, and so I'd fill in for him. I'd like to talk a few words about NISSMAT so that we all are familiar with what this organization is doing and has been doing in the past.

NISSMAT was formed around 1990 and that is the time when Lieutenant General RK Anand and me started this organization. And it was basically to address the need of training and development for the ex-servicemen of India. So we formed some kind of an alliance with the director general resettlement's office and we started doing training courses on behalf of the DGR to train armed forces veterans to a second career adoption. Along with this we started doing seminars on very topical issues of the day, where we had a lot of attendees, and this led us to doing security audits and security consulting work which came into NISSMAT because of the fact that we were considered experts in this area.

Over a period of time we ventured into other areas and the steam on NISSMAT got lost, which we repe during the pandemic times when we realized that you know we need to sort of put this back on tracks, and so Mr. Seal and I decided to sort of get the ball rolling once again. So somewhere around the middle of 2020 we stepped up doing the webinars. Seminars gave way to webinars and we started doing webinars where we would do two webinars a month on very topical issues, and some of the webinars we had participations in excess of 850 registrations and people coming in from 25 countries. So this is the 121st webinar and the seminars combined that we are doing. So this is number 121, which is on hiring and firing, a risky business.

So NISSMAT today, as we conceive it, has got four distinct areas of work. One is the NISSMAT forum, which is the type of activity that we are doing today. It is in terms of running webinars on various issues. Then we have also started another series called understand and be understood, which are interactive sessions which we intersperse in between, and we would be doing some award nights and also carrying out certain conferences on various subjects which impact the world at large. We also are developing a NISSMAT education portal, which would be online education based on various subjects, and we've got the framework moving. So we would be getting that into order in the next couple of months.

The third arm would be the NISSMAT enterprise, and we have General Mehta on the screen who would be heading the enterprise portion of the business, and that would be dealing with the business aspect of what consulting services or anything that NISSMAT may be able to pick up. And the fourth part would be a foundation or a trust where we want to help the underprivileged, the people who don't have the wherewithal or the means like we have, to push them into a greater educational ability where they can sustain themselves, by way of scholarships. So this is what NISSMAT is about.

And I would also like to speak something about our president. Our president is a very illustrious person actually. Unfortunately he's not here, but Mr. Seal Singh is a very senior retired police officer who served in very senior positions across the country and has held appointments which have been of great significance. He raised two organizations while in service. One was the rapid action force, which was to deal with internal security and counterinsurgency measures within the country, and the second, he headed the internal security academy, or he founded the internal security academy in Mount Abu in the state of Rajasthan in India.

During his service with the government of India he was a very distinguished officer. He was awarded the president's police medal for distinguished services and also the Indian police medal for meritorious services, a police special duty medal with bar. Then he also got a Sena medal, which is an army award, in the police services, and a number of other commendations and rewards. So he's a highly decorated individual from the Indian police service. After retirement, and I remember in the year 2009, he was recognized by no less a person than the president of India as the security personality of the year. He also serves as the adviser to the Asian professional security association, the Indian chapter, and is the honorary director general for the centralation of private security industry in India and the assertion of private detectives and investigators. Mr. Seal's face is very well known in the country. He's a very dynamic security professional who has appeared in a number of interviews in the national television channels. So this was about the president.

Today's webinar is actually being attended by registrations from 12 countries. I'd like to name the countries so that we are familiar with the type of audience that we have today. Majority of the people are from India, but we have people coming in from Singapore, Italy, Kenya, the United States, Algeria, China, New Zealand, Spain, Tunisia, UAE and Vietnam. So it's a very sprinkled sort of a thing. Today's program is sponsored by Premier Consulting and Investigations Limited, and we have the executive director of this company, John Chanata, on the screen with us. He's graciously sponsored the event. PCIL is an investigations and consulting company, and the program is also supported by Tag Scores, which is an examination assessments company, from Premier Shield Private Limited, which is a security company, India Skills Private Limited — I see the managing director Deepak Sapra, where is he, yes, thank you Deepak Sapra for being a co-sponsor on this — and JMD Cargo and HubSpot.

A word about the subject today. The subject is hiring and firing, a risky business. We all know that if we don't choose the people correctly, we would never get the right results, and we also know that if we don't let go of people on time, then the results to an organization would not come in. So both are equally important, and the importance of this lies in how we choose the right people and how we let go the right, or the people who are not right. This subject is valid for all types of businesses. It is a business agnostic subject, whether it's a small organization or a large organization. Everybody needs to hire people, but if you hire them with care it sort of helps the organization, and whether it's a manufacturing organization or a service organization, hospital or a mining situation, everybody requires to hire correctly. And HR plays a very vital role in all these activities.

And today we have two very eminent speakers going to speak to us. The first speaker of the day is going to be Mr. Rajiv Thakur. And let me just — I'd now introduce Rajiv to you all. Rajiv is the managing director of Grassik Consultants. He is a marine engineer by profession. After serving 16 years in the merchant navy, he left the sea in 1987 to join Hotel Holiday Inn Crown Plaza, New Delhi as the chief engineer of India's largest hotel project at that time. He later moved to Gillette as head of engineering for India. In 1991 he started his entrepreneurial journey and he was hired by a Dutch company Delum Via to set up its first fully automated mushroom plant in the Shimla Hills. In February of 1993 he set up an executive search firm, the only marine engineer in the country to ever do so. He's a pioneer in the search industry. He was responsible for executing India entry recruitments for McDonald's and Coca-Cola India when they entered India, both of which catapulted the firm to instant success and recognition.

Today Rajiv is a respected career counselor, guide and mentor who has helped people transition careers successfully across industries and roles. An expert change and innovation driver, he has been instrumental in making Grassik the most relevant and successful search firm in India today. He was recently recognized by the Economic Times as amongst the 50 most promising business leaders of Asia in 2021 for exemplary leadership qualities. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Rajiv Thakur. Rajiv, you're muted. Unmute yourself, please.

Okay. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I know some of the places you have afternoon or morning, whatever, but here we have evening. So good evening. Thank you Pawan. Thank you for introducing me. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that while I've been in the executive search business for close to three decades — this is my 29th year of running the business — my role at present is of a management consultant who helps people transition careers, and I spend a major part of my time creating business strategies, mentoring people and writing on various management topics. My talk today focuses on hiring at mid to top levels, which is our basic area of expertise. We don't do below middle levels, you know, and we go right up to the CEO and CHO levels. My talk today will primarily be India-centric and some points may not be relevant outside India because, you know, the laws are different outside India, but most of what I would be talking, you'll be able to equate with that. But as far as the laws and legal part is concerned, it is India-centric.

Now let me start by saying that while we have said hiring is a risky business, in three decades let me tell you, any business per se is risky. A safe business is an oxymoron. There's no such thing as a safe business. But amongst all businesses the risk in hiring weighs the heaviest because of its very nature of dealing in people. Any business leader today will admit that hiring the right talent — you know, right talent — is the key to running a successful and sustainable business. The price of wrong hiring is incalculable, and not just in monetary terms, especially at senior level. Depending on the seniority of the employee, it can set back an organization by months, damage its public image and put extra burden on the management to undo the damage.

Now the basic risk in hiring arises out of the complexity of it being a people's business. You know, most other businesses, or all other businesses except hiring, whether you are selling a product or a service, what you are selling — a product or a service — is inert. But in hiring business your product, or the candidates that you are looking at, are live, with their own cognitive abilities, with no two individuals being similar. Talent is not something that can be picked up off the shelf. Every individual has to be hired based on matching multiple parameters. Hiring, you know, and this is my personal experience, is a mix of science and art. When I say science, I'm talking of parameters which are quantifiable, which can be measured. So you have parameters like age, qualification, experience, past performance. All these can be measured. But finally, it's the art that comes into play. And by art I'm talking about the intuitiveness and the gut feel that is required to make the final selection. That can play up against an employer, because finally, you know, when we are hiring people I have seen that most of the time you tend to make a decision in the first five or 10 minutes whether this guy is good or not, and then you spend the rest one hour trying to justify whether this guy is worth taking forward or not. But your decision has been made in the first five or 10 minutes because your gut feel has come into play.

Unfortunately, this risk has been enhanced by the flawed processes used in traditional hiring. Now, I'm going to tell you what are these processes and why they are flawed, because they are still being used and everybody uses them. Let's start with a simple job description. An organization creates a job description which states — there's a disturbance coming in. Yes. I think okay now. Yeah. Okay. So you know, an organization creates a job description which states what it wants. So if you see any job description — and all of you are senior people and you've made job descriptions or you've seen job descriptions for jobs — it states what an organization is looking for, what it wants in an individual. But when you meet a prospective employer, you get rejected because you don't meet what he doesn't want, and a job description doesn't state what he doesn't want. Hiring managers often write a JD as a reflection of their own experience, ignoring the fact that we are entering an era where the emphasis should be less on ready competence and more on transferable skills.

Second point, organizations fail to appreciate the fact that hiring is a two-way street. As much as you assess the candidate, the reverse is also true. A good candidate loses interest if his experience with the organization has been unsatisfactory. During the recruitment process, candidates will remember how they were treated during the interview process, and this will impact the company's reputation and its ability to attract top talent in the future. So this experience that a candidate goes through during the process is very very important to attract the candidate, which we forget. We tend to forget that he's also assessing you as much as you are assessing him.

Third point, with the talent acquisition teams. Now you know, we all are co levels and CSO levels and we make a JD and we give it to a talent acquisition person, a junior HR person. So with the talent acquisition teams working around preset parameters which have been given to him by the hiring manager, they do not have the gumption or the courage to pick up right fit candidates that may not necessarily match the given specification. Now you have so many good people who don't match the specifications laid down in front of you, and they let go that candidate. Now what is happening in industry? We are letting slip good candidates, which is as bad as hiring a wrong one. You cannot allow a good candidate to slip out of your hands. So that's as good or as bad as hiring a wrong candidate.

Point number four, I've always felt that most assessment tools fail to pinpoint the true abilities of an individual to a role in question. These tools are more useful for developmental purposes rather than for selection process. Many people attributes are circumstantial rather than inbuilt and can change with differing environments. You cannot generalize people's attributes. They change within an organization under a different leader. They change from organization to organization, and you cannot generalize them by putting them through a psychometric test or whatever test and take a call on that. Yes, for developmental purposes we could probably use it, but as a selection process I have never found it to be successful.

Now we do reference checks. Everybody does reference checks. Reference checks are done on a candidate's last performance, while truly speaking a candidate should be referenced on his or her ability to perform in the new role. Most companies that hire stars overlook the fact that an executive performance is not entirely transferable because his personal competencies inevitably include company specific skills, hence reducing referencing to a formality rather than a decision making process. Now I'll give you an example. If somebody was to call me up and say, Rajiv, I'm taking a guy from your company, how is he? Now I will tell him how was he in my organization. But in my case, I'm going to ask, what are you expecting this guy to do in your company? Is he going to lead a team? Is he going to be working independently? What is his role? And based on that, I will tell him whether this guy will fit in with you or not. He did well with me doesn't mean anything. With me, he was reporting to somebody. He had support. Are you going to put him independently? Then I will tell you whether he can handle that independently or not. So the reference check should tell you how he is likely to perform in the role that you're offering him. And that's why we go wrong in reference checks.

Then we come to the salary structures. You know, traditionally salary structures are built around levels. We have levels. The structures are built around levels and not competencies. Policies restrict hiring a star performer at an appropriate higher cost. Organizations give a standard raise on last salary drawn rather than on perceived value. So we see the person's last salary, give him a 10%, 15% increase. We don't see his value and say, okay, you are worth this much to me and if you are asking me for that I'm ready to give it to you. One competent go-getter at a higher cost is worth a 100 incompetent do-nothings at lower salaries.

Today one new factor has come in which has added to the hiring roles, and that is the emergence of a new normal. When an economy goes through a major upheaval, it often creates a systemic shift in how companies operate. The new normal definition alludes to new ways of doing things due to the drastically altered circumstances. The changes being driven by the current pandemic are not elastic and will not regain the old way of functioning. A period of two or more years of the pandemic has already expedited the use of technology and changed consumer behavior and experiences permanently. A new virtual world is being created around us and organizations will be forced to adjust and adapt using new business strategies based on new formats of communication, marketing and operational best practices. The new talent pool will be based around these new realities.

Now I'm going to give you a surprising fact. While the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 witnessed mass layoff and increased unemployment, throwing the talent search business into a down spin — we are all aware when the pandemic started, companies started closing down or started reducing staff, and there were mass layoffs and unemployment went up and people were without jobs. Now when the recovery mode started, and that was at the beginning of this year, and now at this point — and the second wave was sandwiched in between the two, between January and now we had two months or three months of the second wave which was mostly April and May — that was standard in the recovery mode, we suddenly saw an uptick in our hiring business, surprisingly driven by a rush of replacement positions. We were surprised, all the CXO positions that we were getting were replacement for existing people. To our surprise, we witnessed that the people who were assets during pre-pandemic period were turning into liabilities in the recovering states. They were unable to adapt with agility to the emerging new normal.

Now we have a very very recent example of the Indian cabinet reshuffle yesterday. India had a major cabinet reshuffle yesterday, you are all aware of it in India, is a case in point, where very well-known names were dropped because they failed to meet the challenge of change. The change that took place, they were not able to — we were surprised, you know, how come these big names, Shanka Pash and Haj and all of them, were dropped, and this is an example which just happened yesterday.

So today the risk of hiring the right talent — and I'm focusing on right talent, I'm not just saying talent because we need right talent — is at its highest today as businesses move in a nonlinear direction. Now I'll give you an example when I say nonlinear. You know, normally businesses before 2008 were like driving on a highway; for short periods you could go on cruise control. Today, and all of you who are into business will agree with me, running a business is like driving on a hill. Every few minutes there's a change of scenery. The person who's driving the business is continuously changing the clutch and the brake and the accelerator and the steering wheel. It's a continuous movement and it's not just a straight drag. So we are driving a business on the hills. How do you define your talent need in such a scenario where past is not a guarantee for future performance? Your past performance is absolutely no guarantee, because your past performance is what is letting you being thrown out of your companies, where suddenly the existing stars within an organization are losing the exchange.

We at Grassik aren't just a talent provider but a huge talent consumer. I hire for myself as well. No one appreciates the risk of hiring wrong more than us. For us, a wrong hire not only sets us back monetarily but can adversely impact our reputation and brand. As each colleague is a brand ambassador to the client organization they deal with, their competency helps uphold our reputation.

Coming to the question of firing, it is usually a result of wrong hiring, unless of course you have a problem about integrity or other issues. Normally firing is done because we hired wrong. Having once hired wrong, there is a need to rectify the fault at the earliest and let go a confirmed — and I repeat, confirmed — non or underperformer. I have found companies averse to taking these decisions owing to certain perceived notions. For one, organizations keep hoping for far too long that the person will turn around. Secondly, they worry what other employees will think and how it will impact their morale. The guy may be a nice guy. He's a great guy. He's very friendly with people, but he's not performing and you've asked him to go. It is going to impact his colleagues. Third is a fear that a fired employee is likely to send a negative message to the outside world about the company's culture. A negative post on social media like Glassdoor can damage a company's reputation as a good employer. Most people see Glassdoor and see how people have rated the company, and a negative post can scare people off. And lastly, most of us, especially in India, have a lot of empathy towards our people. You know, we are empathetic organizations and we find firing a very difficult process. It's not an easy process to fire a person, and hence we shy away from biting the bullet. While firing does carry these risks, it is riskier to retain a non-performing employee for too long.

To mitigate the risk of hiring in today's VUCA world — and I suppose all of you understand what is VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity — in this world I would like to suggest possible solutions. You know, we have spoken about the problem, let me give you a solution, most of which we ourselves implemented in Grassik and found to be very effective. Now this is a little controversial subject which I'm going to say. I personally am a firm believer that talent acquisition should be moved out of the ambit of HR and report directly to the CEO, as I see it as a business rather than an HR function. There's a management guru, most of you have heard about him in India, called Ram Charan, who in a very famous article a few years ago in Harvard Business Review titled it's time to split the HR, says HR can't relate the real world business needs, they don't know how key decisions are made, and they have great difficulty in analyzing why people or whole parts of the organization aren't meeting the business performance goals. While the global HR fraternity reacted strongly against these views, in the Indian context this holds completely true.

In Grassik, we the management are the first point of contact for every potential new hire. Candidates need a great first experience beginning at the first point of contact, right at the reception — a warm welcome at the reception, and which should blast right through the hiring process. Irrespective of the selection or rejection, they should carry a positive message to the outside world. How many organizations have a policy of ensuring a candidate is conveyed a rejection without loss of esteem? We have a very clearly laid down process how we convey a rejection to a person who took the trouble to come and meet us two, three, four, five times and has not been selected.

Salary negotiation is an extremely sensitive and a critical issue. The old format of offering raise on existing salaries needs rethinking. Organizations should focus more on gauging whether the candidate is capable of delivering value for the salary. Here I agree with Robert Bosch, the founder of Bosch company, who said, "I don't pay good wages because I have a lot of money. I have a lot of money because I pay good wages."

Today, hiring isn't just about sourcing and assessing. It's about influencing and romancing the candidate. He should get excited about the role, the organizational culture, and growth possibilities. No one can do this better than the people at the top, who must focus on pulling in great talent. It saddens me to see, and I have seen this in many cases, companies turning repelling talent into a fine art. They become talent repellers. People have a first meeting and they don't ever want to go back to the same company.

And lastly, if a candidate is trying to sell himself to you with only his past credentials and older accolades, without including present examples and up-to-date proof, you might be dealing with someone that is sharing outdated information and does not have the latest knowledge to help you. If he's talking too much about the past and I've done this, he's of no use to you. But that's the reason he lost his last job. So today while hiring you've got to be purely focused on what you can do for the organization in the coming future. You should have an understanding of what the future holds.

In the end I would like to give an advice to every organization. Hiring should be a part of your long-term strategy and not a quick fix solution. It's like dating. Hence, you can completely obvious being wrong at times. You know, I don't know how many of you remember the last time you dated, but you can go wrong on a date. But one thing you must remember, if the individual you hire doesn't fire up, he should be fired out. And one advice I would like to give to the job seekers, which comes in the words of Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach, and this advice goes to all potential job seekers: if you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. That about sums up how I feel the risk of hiring can be brought down to less painful levels. Thank you.

Thank you Rajiv. Thank you very much. I think it's been a very contemporary sort of a talk and I think majority of the people listening to you would benefit by it. I would now take time to introduce the second speaker of the day. She's Navlin Kalra, who's going to speak to us from the United Kingdom. Navlin is currently the global HR head for DS Smith, which is the world's largest packaging company. Navlin is a well-rounded senior HR professional with strong strategic and operational experience in diverse industries operating in multiple geographies. She's a strategic professional with solid understanding of business dynamics who deploys participative management style in fast-paced, highly metriced, diverse workforce. She is a proactive change agent who spends time in employee environment encouraging learning and promoting increased productivity that results in value added customer service. She has a reputation for being result-orientated. She's an excellent communicator and skilled at identifying and developing talent. Her expertise is in HR strategy and business alignment, organizational design and restructuring, management development, change management, leadership coaching, union and employee relations, talent acquisition and performance enhancement and evaluations. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Navlin Kalra.

Good afternoon, good evening everyone, and thanks for the brilliant introduction Pavan. I don't know if I'm that great as you made me sound, and I'm going to try and speak on this subject after Rajiv has just literally torn apart my function. So thanks for that Rajiv. But I do agree with you, to be a good HR leader you have to be a good business leader first and understand the nitty-gritties of the business. So, given that start, I'm going to be talking about hiring and firing and not go too much into the details of the process of it, but I want to start by talking about why hiring is a risky business. So, I'm going to share my screen if you just give me a second here. Are you able to see my screen? Yes. In the presentation mode. Yeah. No, it's fine.

So, as Rajiv alluded in his, or very clearly stated, you know, the cost of a bad hire for any business is phenomenal. So when we're looking at the total cost of poor hires, the direct costs are easy to calculate. You calculate the recruitment rehiring fees, you calculate the wasted training cost, you calculate the loss of productivity, and that in itself, as per the latest US studies, shows that is at least one-third of the employee's first year of earning cost. This is just the direct cost. But what is even worse is the indirect costs of a bad hire. And for me that is of more of a concern over here, because you know, direct costs, if wrong decisions, sometimes you do it, and let's all accept it. You know, we are all going to make certain bad hiring decisions. Out of all the hiring decisions, at least 20% of them are going to be wrong decisions or bad decisions, because it is a human process at the end of the day.

But what it does to the business is much more, because it lowers the team morale. It affects it immensely. It leads to disengagement. A disengaged workforce is not a productive workforce. It causes, you know, the rest of the team, it gets overstretched. Every supervisor who deals with a bad hire is spending about 30% of their time dealing with that bad hire, to just then, you know, either correct it, to help them with the performance, to, you know, put PIPs in place, to get them out of the business. So the hidden costs are immense. There is difficulty in attracting new talent. Your customer service could be impacted. All that it leads to is the impact on your employer branding, whether internally or externally, because internally, you know, you've made a bad hire, people have come in, people have gone out. The churn impacts the people who are working along, with the supervisor spending so much time with a bad hire, impacts the team morale. Externally, you know, any bad hire again, you know, it takes time to train, it takes time to build customer relationships. It impacts your reputation with the customer if you're kind of changing and churning too fast. So the hidden costs are a lot to deal with, which is why hiring becomes a very risky business.

So on the top I've kind of put a diagram around. So you know, when you terminate an employee, it gives result to a vacancy. Your vacancy could be a new position created as well. You hire, there's a couple of weeks wasted. You see the red line over there. Let's say in about 6 to 8 weeks, or 12 weeks at times depending on the role you are in — whether you're in shop floor going through a proper set skills training or whether you are a more senior member of the staff — there comes a point where there is a ramp up of activity and suddenly you feel, okay, we've done a job, somebody is picking up. If it is a bad hire, for whatever reason, whether it's the cultural fit, whether it is performance, whether it is skills, whether it is issues with the team, the ramp up soon starts flattening and the disengagement sets in. Once the disengagement sets in, you have a period of another couple of weeks where you're dealing with that bad hire and you're going in a downward trend, and again you get into this cycle of vacancy and starting the process again. So this is why hiring becomes a very very risky business.

Now, as Rajiv covered most of the process parts of it, I thought what I'll talk more about is, if you already have a process in place and you are consistently making bad hires — one-offs everyone will do — how do we move from that situation? How do we remedy that situation? What is it that we should be looking at within our organizations to ensure that our hiring process from there on is much better? So I think what you need to do is you need to do a deep dive of your hiring process, and I'm talking more internally, you know, as an organization. Evaluate what you're doing. Go through every step of the process. Do a process map. Audit the recruiting, audit the hiring, the interviewing. Are you using any assessment tools? What are the tools you're using? Are they fit for purpose? Is your hiring criteria emphasizing more technical skills and academic credentials? Because this can be an issue. Now, of course, this can be an issue depending on the job that you're recruiting for. If you're recruiting for, you know, a technical skilled worker to run a machine on a shop floor, of course, you're going to give credit to the technical skills, a bit more weightage. If you're recruiting for non-technical jobs, for example, do you really want to talk too much about the technicalities of the job, or are you looking at the fit for the role? Because the fit becomes more important, the cultural fit, the potential becomes more important, the attitude becomes more important. So you need to know what you're hiring on in your recruitment process, and does it fit with the roles you're trying to recruit for.

Is your process under-evaluating the personality traits, overlooking the workplace preferences, undervaluing the motivations for work? What are the kind of values you have in your organization? You know, are you actually just kind of going very mechanical and seeing, okay, tickbox exercise, this person fits this, this, this, we're done, seems like a right fit? What you need to do is dig a bit deeper into what is their motivations for joining the work. Are they looking for a long-term, you know, work? What is it that inspires them? What is the kind of career they're looking for? What is the kind of people they want to work with? What is the kind of boss they'll be able to work at? How do they like to take direction from their bosses? What is their working style? All these need to be assessed as part of your interviewing and hiring process.

So, this will of course mean, you know, redesigning. Redesign your process. It will cost you some initial cost, because you'll probably be looking at different assessment tools. You might want to get experts in to help you with setting up your competency sort of interview frameworks for you, because they are really really important tools that really help you with the hiring decisions. But in the longer term, once you make a good hire, your costs will be very easily offset, because you'll achieve higher productivity, you'll have a longer tenure of service, and that way you mitigate your cost very quickly.

Now like I said before, hiring is still a human process. It is still a human endeavor, but what you need to do is calibrate your interviewing skills with the managers. So what I mean by that is, every person has an unconscious bias, and I'm not talking about the unconscious bias towards race or color or age. The unconscious bias — we like our kind of people, you know. I have had situations where I have interviewed and I've liked the candidate straight up because they kind of sound like I was when I started work 10 years back. I remember this conversation. We were hiring for a very sort of early career HR professional and I wanted to get this girl in because she sounded like me, you know, it was me 10 years back. So we all have those unconscious biases, but perhaps she was not right for the organization I was in at that time. So we have to train our managers and, you know, get them to understand the unconscious biases that they hold — you know, hiring for the like, they have common interests. I had an MD I worked with in the business, and he's this really fit person into sports and running and all, and one of his questions in the interviews would be, do you run, do you like running, and I had to really, you know, get on with him and stop him from asking that question again and again and again. That's how unconscious biases creep in.

Another important tool to be used is exit interviews. We don't place that much of importance in exit interviews. I've seen a lot many times, you know, we do exit interviews, we stall at them, we do again, we stall at them. But a couple of your critical people, when they're leaving, do the exit interviews, understand what went wrong, and many of times you'll come up with things like — I remember a case where it had come up with, I wasn't onboarded properly, and there was some very clear reasoning they gave why they weren't onboarded properly and why they felt, you know, this organization doesn't care for its employees, because there is hardly any stress given into onboarding, and that gave them a poor start at the job. So immediately, you know, you start re-engineering and reversing that and taking that feedback into account, because hiring doesn't start with when you interview and doesn't end with when the person joins in. Hiring starts much before, when you start defining values, your culture, the kind of people you want to take in. You start looking at the market and you start getting in touch with the potential candidates, and it only ends when the person has been properly onboarded and passed on to, you know, the next stage in their career.

So, you know, it's important to remember that bad hires, when they appear in greater numbers, reveal a whole bigger picture of the organization. It can bring out issues with your culture, with your employees' engagement, and those are the things that you should be tackling. So this is what I wanted to really emphasize on hiring, rather than going on the detailed processes, because of course the process is very important — what you put in the job at work, what is your internal employee value proposition, how do you interview, are you training your managers, is your process consistent, are you taking notes, do you have competency based questions when you're interviewing, do you have a consistent process for hiring? How many stages of process you have is another interesting one, because I myself have been interviewed in my career in one organization where I had to go through 13 interviews, and that wasn't at a very senior level, and at a different organization for a much senior level it was a three-stage process, and I actually really liked the three-stage process, and they set panels up. So how do you set your interview panels up? All these are important criteria to consider when you're hiring.

So I'm going to now move on to termination. You know, firing is a common term which is used in many cultures, but in many cultures firing is not a term that we use when terminating employees, which is why I prefer to use terminating rather than firing as a general term when I'm talking generically, and it applies across all cultures. Now there are situations when terminating an employee is the right choice, and I'm not talking about your disciplinary cases where they've done some gross misconduct and all — those are no brainers, you've got to take the decision then. But there are certain other situations where terminating the employee is the right choice, and of course inadequate performance, as Rajiv had also said in his talk. If you've got a poor performance, the burden of carrying a poor performer can sometimes be more damaging than actually making them exit the business. So inadequate performance is one of those. Of course there will be situations when, you know, you change your structures — you have changed, even though the business is not changing, you've gone through an OD exercise, you've changed your structure, and suddenly a role that was very relevant in your previous structure is not relevant anymore. So that's another reason when you could get into an exit situation. And the third, most commonly at senior levels that I've seen, is the breakdown of relationship, either with your colleagues or with your manager, leading to a loss of trust. When that situation happens, it's untenable to carry on for both parties, and it's best to get into the situation of, you know, sitting and talking it out.

Now when you are firing or terminating employees, again there are costs which are direct costs, which are significantly higher than when you've made a bad hire as well, especially if you're dealing with a very senior level situation and dealing with big notice periods as well involved, plus the legal costs that are involved in dealing with it. So the cost of termination is the cost that you have of settlement agreements, or as they are called golden handshakes in some countries, or as they are called exit agreements in other countries. Now why these costs go up is because there are risks associated with every exit you do, and I'll talk about those risks briefly in the next slide. There are direct costs of course, with the productivity loss, as we're engaging in the discussions weeks before, you know, things have already started going wrong, it's already affecting the productivity, and for weeks to come, till you have then rehired in that position, till the employee morale has been kind of settled a bit for the people around, you're going to experience some productivity loss. And of course the direct cost of the rehire, going through the vacancies again, advertising, all those costs, you know, assessing, interviewing, all those costs.

But again the indirect costs are even higher and more critical, because what it does is it causes a lot of low morale, because especially I've seen in the senior roles, but equally in shop floor level as well, every exit that you do impacts the team around, impacts the people around. If you're exiting somebody from the shop floor, I've seen massive impact where unions are involved, where it can have positive and negative both impact, but I'm talking about the negative ones here, where, you know, people were friends with somebody, they don't understand, they start sharing, they start talking bad about the management. When you're talking about senior exits, again the low morale, because people were looking up to that leader or working with that person, the team was doing something, suddenly, you know, that person is gone. The remaining staff has to stretch themselves for a period of time till you have then filled in that role and trained the person in the new role. So it's an overworked remaining staff, a totally stressed staff. There is a huge damage to the employer brand if not handled carefully. There is a loss of organizational wisdom as well. Let's not forget that if it's a long-term employee, they carry a lot of knowledge in their heads, irrespective of whatever processes and systems you put in. When you're exiting somebody with 15, 20 years of tenure of service, there's a lot up here that you miss and that you forget, which you have to be very careful how you manage that situation then.

So why is firing a risky business? I've talked about the cost, but there are lots of risks involved with firing, or termination as I like to call it. There is risk to the security of the business. You know, people have access to your information. You're suddenly in a very uncomfortable position. Better make sure that you've covered all your security risks before you get into a discussion with the employee. You know, if it's senior level roles, make sure that you have spoken to IT, you've taken a stock of, you know, whether they have accesses to whatever drives, whether they have access at home, what is the material they have access to, can they enter the building. If it's a shop floor employee — I remember a shop floor employee who we were engaging with in discussions for an exit, a very disruptive employee, who then typically went off sick, but he still had the company fob. We had disabled all of them, but one access had somehow been missed, and he entered the shop floor at night and created a real ruckus, and the police had to be called in. So be aware of the security risk, because there's lots of risks. Are you covered with your IP in your settlement agreements? Have you covered all the risks concerning the IP, concerning your security, concerning your secrets — everything is covered?

There is, of course, a legal risk when you're terminating. You know, there are discrimination claims that could come in, and this is a global risk, of course, different in different countries, but every country has protected categories. So be very careful when you're taking those decisions, and more careful when you're having those conversations, as to what you're saying. There is risk to the reputation, of course. You know, a wrong exit can cause a massive amount of damage to the employer. And there is a risk of retaliation. Some people are going to be in that negative state of mind and they can do anything to retaliate. Especially sales and all roles, if you think about them, how much of business you can lose if you have an ex-employee — what damage he or she can cause you in the market.

And how do we minimize that risk? So like I said, be very careful, go through every protected characteristic as you're engaging in those discussions, and cover all of them very carefully in the agreement that you do. Do not have any conversations where you are unlawfully discriminating against anyone. That's not the right reason to terminate the employment. Now length of service is another very very important criteria. When you're dealing with somebody who's long service, your process needs to be very robust on why they have been selected or why you're engaging, and they are in a position where they could fight a claim against you.

And I'll give you an example of a situation that went very bad in one of the organizations I was working in, and without divulging the organization names or employee names. We had a global marketing exec who we had to engage in this discussion to, you know, exit the business. She was a female in a manufacturing industry, only one of the four female leaders in an industry which had 400 in the leadership team globally in an organization. And even though the reasons were valid and everything had been covered, and discussions had with, you know, legal and with her and everything, she brought a claim against the company, a gender discrimination claim. Now ultimately she did not win the claim, because the process had been so robust. Everything had been documented, and there was lot of work done in sort of fighting every claim of hers, what she had put in. But the amount of reputational damage that caused to the business was phenomenal. It was in news. It was in newspapers. It was, you know, clients calling up, customers, big global suppliers and customers calling up and checking what has gone wrong and questioning the company and its policies. There was lot of work that had to be done to mitigate the damage and build the brand back up. So situations like these need to be very very carefully handled, and which is why they are risky.

Another situation which can be very risky, and I think I can take the name here and everybody can search it, because it's in news these days, is a company called BrewDog in UK. Now it exited some of its employees, and these employees had blown the whistle, and the damage it has caused this company, which was on the high for so long, is just, I mean, out of the world. Nobody imagined this. The CEO has had to come and give statements and statements, you know, their sales have gone down like crazy, because the employees spoke about the culture of the organization. So this is why these situations become very risky. And of course where trade union officials are involved, whether you are exiting them or exiting somebody who's in the union, again how you do that is very very important.

So I think whether you are making a bad hire or whether you are exiting an employee, the most important thing to remember is, yes, it's a human process. Do your homework. Get your reasoning very sound. Talk to your legal. Document every step of the process and try and answer every question you can. But when it's a firing situation, don't drag it on. Be ready with everything and then talk, and make a quick decision and a quick exit. So that is all I had, you know, on my talk today, and I think I'll pass it back to you. Thank you.

The first question goes out to the president who's joined late. Mr. Sipal Singh, if you could ask your first question please.

Well, I didn't get time, Mr. moderator, because of the network problem. So I think you'll give me some time to elaborate on the subject before I also ask the question out of the elaboration. The points raised by and covered by both the speakers, as said, I'll cover it in the closing remarks, are excellent. I only want to bring home certain points from my experience. I was adviser with one very very renowned group known as Tatas, and more than 100 years had passed, Tatas never had any strike. Then all of a sudden there was some problem in the coal mine and they called me. I was their advisor, and I found why there were no risks of strikes, why the employees were feeling so satisfied. First of all is the hiring process. They had selected their employees. The second was the satisfaction level which was provided to the employees. And third was the welfare oriented scheme for their families. So it saved them a lot as far as the retention of manpower is concerned. There were not many attritions unless the employee wanted to go.

Another experience was with a very big group of hospitals, and I'd not like to name it, as it is one of the biggest groups in the hospital industry. I was their adviser. Unfortunately, they landed up in an environment in northern India where some unions instigated the employees, and right in the first or second year they had to incur losses. The nurses had to go away, the staff was attacked. So there is not the question that the hiring was not good. The hiring was very good. Most of these people, the nurses etc, belong to the south, who were very well trained as far as the trade was concerned, excellent as far as their skills were concerned, but somehow or the other the environment in which they landed up in the north at that time was not conducive to their psyche, and they were led astray and resulted in the strike. There's the second example, irrespective of the hiring.

And the third most important thing which is often said is sharpening the saw. You know, you have hired the people, they are your saw. How are you able to sharpen that saw? Because you have got already trained people, but they have to adjust themselves to the environments in the particular organization, and the organizational environment may need it little different — the sharpening of the saw may be different from what they have learned there. So my submission is that irrespective of the fact that firing and hiring itself is a very risky process, because in the process of firing you are not only losing the trained manpower, you're also getting a stigma on the organization. People start thinking that this organization is in the habit of firing people so quickly. So therefore there have to be a lot of, I should say, farsightedness, as Rajiv pointed out, certain organizations there who are selecting etc, but ultimately all selection is a human process and there are likely to be some human errors at the time of selection, because the human process will have some subjectivity — it will come at the time of hiring.

So with these views I want to request and ask both the speakers, the first speaker, that how do you feel that one candidate which you have selected is an ideal candidate? How do you presume, by the process of hiring, that this candidate which you are recruiting is an ideal candidate as far as the job is concerned? That is my question. It's very difficult, and nowadays, you know, such psychometric tests have come, they are doing that, that is all done, understood, but it is a very very difficult process, and it is the environment in which they ultimately land up that is more important. With these words I'd like to ask the speakers to elaborate my point: is it not the environment which is very more important than the process of hiring, or is it only the process of hiring? And if it is so, if the process of hiring is so important, then is there some ideal way of hiring where there are no flaws likely? Is the candidate going to be ideal for the environment in which he's going to be put? This is my question, sir.

Rajiv, can you take it on? Rajiv, you're muted. Navlin, would you like to answer this?

Yes, sir. Okay. I'll tell you. One thing is, first thing is, the person who's hiring, does he know what he's looking for? That's my first question. Second, if he knows, can he articulate his needs? The problem is, can you articulate what exactly do you want? So if you know, most of the time you're looking for an ideal candidate, how do you describe an ideal candidate? How do you pick up? I'll give you an example. I launch a soap in the market which is not known. It's a soap called X. And if I pick up a guy from Hindustan Levers who's been selling a Hamam soap which is known to everybody, and I picked up a Lever's guy, I made a huge mistake, because a Lever's guy has never been to a shop to tell him to place his product on the top of the shelf and not below the shelf. I need a person who has sold an unbranded product. So if you are aware of what you are looking for, and not just because he's coming from Levers and you expect him to sell a product which has never been branded. If I open a hotel and I want to sell that hotel, the last person I will look for is from Oberoi. Oberoi doesn't need selling. So you got to know very clearly what is your ideal candidate. And the problem is that either you don't know — you mean the organization — or they know but they can't articulate, because if you can't articulate then you can't hire right. So you got to first see, are you looking for the right guy? Will you pick up a Lever's guy for a brand which is not known, or Oberoi guy for a hotel which is not known, where he's never sold a product which is not known? Who wants to be sold Oberoi? Everybody knows Oberoi. But if I open a hotel called Rajiv Hotel and nobody knows, I don't need Oberoi guy. So I know exactly what type of person I need for my company, and I should be able to articulate that need down the line to the person. That's very important.

And you know, one thing which is there, we keep asking questions to our candidates and they keep answering. I don't believe in that. I want to know what question does the guy ask me. Anybody will tell you, brilliance shines through questions, not answers. Can he ask me a question which is to do with my business? Has he understood my business, that he asked me a relevant question? He has answers ready. That doesn't give me the correct information about the candidate. But I want to know what questions. So if he doesn't have any questions, he's not interested in my business. So there are a lot of things that we can do. We should be sure of who can work in my organization, in my culture. What sort of a culture am I having? You should be able to define your culture. You must be able to fix your culture and find people who will fit in, or you can help him fit. He may be coming from a different culture, but yes, he will be able to fit into my culture. So that's very important.

Oh, thank you Rajiv. Navlin, would you like to add something?

I think Rajiv has covered it quite well, because what you hire for, in my opinion, is the fit for the organization, and I said that before. So define what the fit is for you, and there are ways you can do it. Organizations also grow, go through many phases. You know, what was right yesterday may not be right today. So define what your fit is at that time and moment — that is the step one. I think the second thing that is very important in this process is calibrate the interviewers. So don't rely on one person. See who should be the right panel interviewing, and introduce different sort of people, you know, who can all contribute to the process, and get them together and calibrate and discuss in the end. And of course it's a two-way process. You know, you're looking for an individual who will fit in your organization. The individual has to make sure that they fit in the organization as well and it's the right culture for them. So make it very easy for them to ask those sort of questions to get a feel for the organization. These are just couple of things you do. But equally, if you are hiring for potential and if you're hiring for attitude, even if they're not your ideal candidate — because, you know, even if they are 60, 70, 80% of the match, work on the rest of the 20%. Because that's what as an organization you should be doing. If you have found a nearly good candidate, go for it, because sometimes the search for ideal actually is impractical. It takes too long, it doesn't happen. If they have the potential, if they have the right attitude, if they have the basic skills, get them in and train them for the rest. So that's what I think are kind of things that help with it. But yes, it is a human process and you're not going to always get the ideal candidate, and you're not always going to get the right fit. You are going to make some errors, and we've got to accept that and roll with it.

A little point here. We were involved with a hospital, and the hospital had orthopedic surgery department which was very good, but they were running short of one person which they wanted to add on as a consultant into their team. So they got hold of another orthopedic specialist after a lot of interviews and he got embedded into the team. Now what started occurring was that when patients were coming in, they started preferring the new doctor to the older senior person who was there in the hospital, and that started leading to a very large egoistic clash between the two doctors. How do you avoid this?

Yeah, I'll tell you. Dealing with doctors is a pain. I have worked with Max, and I told them very clearly, I'll hire your non-medical staff, I will not hire your doctors, because doctors, there's a lot of issues. I underwent a knee surgery in October in Max, and there are two orthopedic surgeons over there, and I know what issues turned up over there. So, you know, the thing is that when the new guy came and he won more patients — you know, we've all been to the doctors. 90% of doctors, before you reach, they open a piece of paper: what's your name and what's your sex. They can see what you are, but they still ask you what is your age, and before you have even opened your mouth they start writing the medication. And if there is a doctor who listens to you, he may not be the better doctor, that guy is going to take away all the patients. Doctors don't listen. Today when you run to a doctor, or a mother runs with a child to a doctor, she wants somebody to listen to her. Doctor thinks before you open your mouth they have understood, and they start writing the medication. If this doctor — he may not be a better doctor, but he would be a better listener, and he's got the patients coming to him. We all go to doctor. We've all been to doctors. We want a doctor to listen to our problem before he starts giving me medication, because he's charging me 2,000 rupees. I don't want him to give me a medication prescription of 500 rupees, otherwise he'll think, you know, what is he charging for — if he only tells me to do gargle, you know, it may not be worth charging 2,000 rupees. So doctors don't listen, and that is what I have seen. So this new doctor who has done a good job is not a better doctor, but he was a better listener. That's my viewpoint. Unless Navlin has something to say.

I live with a doctor and I agree with Rajiv. They are really difficult to deal with, like he said.

Rajiv's younger brother is one of the best endocrinologists in India.

Oh good, so he knows it firsthand as well. So, you know, which is why I could see the passion coming out. But yeah, you know, situations like this, whether it's doctors or it's, you know, sales — sales is another sort of, I would say, employees who can get into these situations. Well, these are going to happen. You know, there's no real right fix, you know, magic wand to help with these situations. It's up to the individuals. They're mature. You know, we've hired employees. You've not hired kindergarten kids. They're mature individuals, they need to sit and talk it out. So that would be my first thing, you know, sit together and talk out and communicate, till it becomes really disruptive and then it's different. Then you launch formal processes. But I think, you know, when you've hired mature adults into the roles, they've got to learn to deal with it maturely and deal with it amongst themselves. And if they don't deal with it, then it becomes formal. So that's what I've got to say on that.

I want to know an incident. There's an office where there's a shared office staff, and a new hire comes in, and so you have one senior person and another person who comes in, and they're sharing the same back office staff. Now the back office staff gets divided in their role because they're supporting two people, and they suddenly start to support the new person better because he speaks to them better, and the older person starts getting irritated on this account, and there's a lot of friction between the two seniors that starts to occur, and instead of the business going up it starts to take a downward turn. How would you address this situation?

I think what needs to happen here is, because the person who's caught in the middle is that admin person or the junior person, and I think what needs to happen is sitting down and talking and clarifying exactly the expectations to that person, and having a three-way communication on this basis. If it's affecting business, you would think that both of them would want to resolve the situation. So I think it's sitting together, clarifying, talking, and making sure what the expectations from that person is — whether it is in terms of time they spend with each individual, whether it is in terms of the activities they do for each individual — and kind of work on that basis. And it wouldn't harm to have that conversation from the junior person also to the senior guy, whoever is not communicating well, for them to highlight to that person that the reason perhaps I'm getting, you know, more attracted to work with the other individual is your communication style, and I would appreciate a change in the communication style. Because sometimes these kind of open communications I think are needed to resolve such situations.

Hello, I have a question to ask the speakers. You know, we are taking the argument of doctors back to the generalists and the specialists. I'm not saying specialist in terms of orthopedics. I am saying specialists in terms of a doctor, and generalist in terms of a HR expert, a generalist in terms of somebody else like me. The question is, this is a long drawn controversy for years, whether a generalist is good or a specialist is good. Specialist saying that he is the best, generalist saying no, he doesn't know much, so we have to teach him. So anyway, my point is, when you hire people, what will be your thought process? Will you like to have a person who is only in one skill specialized — today is the age of specialization — will you like to have only those people who are only specialist in one skill, or you like to have a person who is in multi-skills and is able to do many jobs? What is your experience? Will you be able to retain and have savings if he is multi-skilled and is able to deliver his job, or only uni-skill, expert in his skill, and is high headed? The organization may like it or not, I want to know from your experience. How do you want to hire a person, whether he has two, three skills expertise, or only one skill? Today is the age where skilling — you are going into skilling as HR persons. What do you think about that?

Okay, I'll answer this. I have a very very unique organization. I have a very clearly defined set of seven attributes, and I choose people on those attributes. If you have 70, 75% of those attributes, you are a go. I do not hire from competition. Do not hire. I will hire an air hostess. I will hire a nurse. I will hire a teacher. I will hire anybody, except for few positions which are highly highly technical, because I am very in depth, deep into the tech enabled business, the startup ecosystem, where I need different type of people. I hire for attributes and not for skills, because every skill you can teach a person. Today you want to make a bomb, it takes you 10 minutes to go on Google and make a bomb. I go for basically attributes, because I spend a lot of time in teaching and training my people, and I have very well-defined attributes. My attributes are very well defined. I check for those attributes, and the interview process starts with my son, my elder son who's a director in the company. The second is my younger son, and third is me. And between the three of us, we decide whether this person has the skills, has the attribute we're looking for. And I do not look for skills, because I will train him for skills. There's nothing to it. Most of our businesses are common sense. Most of information is available. It's not that you don't have information. So if a person does not have that information, you can teach a person any information. I have worked merchant navy, then I went to hotels, I went to manufacturing, I did mushroom farming, and I have been headhunting. I didn't have any of these skills. I learned everywhere. Navlin would have been in many industries which had nothing to do with the previous industry.

That means you are supporting the view that it is mostly the attitude, you say, the personality traits of the person. Today, because today your past skills are not of use. You tell me one thing. Today the payments are being made online. You're not using cash. No, my submission is that in your organization, probably out of experience, or maybe because of your sons being expert in some, they may be able to — in fact I want to ask another question. The ones you select, are final selection, or they are ultimately approved by the organization? Just a personal question, because that will elaborate me further. If you are only hiring for them and submitting a list, and in turn the organization has to select, that means ultimate analysis of the candidate will depend on the organization. But if you select them and they are finally accepted, that means this is left to you. Now my submission is that if you select a man from the hospital industry or hospitality industry, or on the other side Tata, I mean some iron industry or cement industry, if you select one — I mean in your case I'm saying different thing, maybe you have — but another organization which is an intermediary organization may not be having that expertise which the organization may be having. So the question will be only by going by the traits of personality or only going by the attitude of person. We don't normally feel — we are selected, all All India services people, there is lot of fight between the generalists and the technocrats. We all go by generalist, and what we want to assume is a technocrat. In your case, it's a multi sort of job you have to select. How do you fit in in that?

I have just selected a consultant who's from steel industry in Bombay. She's based in Bombay. She has not come to Delhi as yet, and she is in through the manufacturing industrial segment, and we are training her online. I mean, she does not have any background of any other industry. She's worked eight years in a steel industry. I pick up people from hospitality and put them into consumer. I need people with certain attributes. I'm not talking of traits. I'm not talking of personality. I'm talking of attributes. Today let me tell you one thing. One of the most important attributes that you're looking for is common sense. And I'm not talking of the normal common sense where you cross a road and look at left and right. I'm talking of common sense where you have never ever faced a situation before — how will you face it today? Because we are facing situations today. We are facing pandemic. How do I move forward? I've never faced such a situation. People are going into the market. People are dying. And yet, within seven days of opening, everybody's gone out to Shimla. Shimla is full. So I need somebody who has got certain attributes. So common sense is one. You're talking of knowledge — you know something, how many people apply knowledge? It's not the knowledge which is important, it is the application of knowledge which is important. We have got all the knowledge in the world. 80% of the people never apply that knowledge in practical life, and I need people who can apply knowledge. Knowledge is free. Knowledge has no value. You can just click a button, and what do you want to know? You want to know how electric vehicle works, you know what is neuroscience — everything is available. You know, you read about happiness chemicals today. You can use how you can release happiness chemicals in your people and make them happy.

I just want to cut in in between. I think we're running out of time now, and I'd like the president to sort of take over now and wind up the proceedings for today.

No, no other questions. No more questions now, sir. We ran out of time. I have the time, I have no problem. Thank you very much, both the speakers. Nobody from the audience has asked anything, and I'm very happy that I have been able to listen from first point. Rajiv — immediately my network was on when Rajiv talked. That means he has that, you know, attributes and attitude to make the network on, because no sooner I started speaking, my network was on, and I could hear right from beginning to end. A very very experienced person, and who has delivered a very practical point of view — practical point of view how to hire and how to fire, or if at all you have to fire, or there's a need of firing or not. If the right hiring is there, probably there may not be need of firing also. And Navlin, thank you very much. You have gone into a very structured sort of discussion, A to Zed, everything, on the basis of your experience, as well as, I would say that, as they consider an SJD man, they structure most of the things and they go into structure. Maybe there are differences of views on certain issues with the people, but I am very sure that there are very things to take home, and most of the delegates must have enjoyed the deliberations. And we are very very thankful to the delegates also who have joined us from various countries.

And with these words — I just want to say one thing to Navlin. Navlin, I really liked one point of yours that really stood out, was re-engineering your processes through exit interviews. I missed that point. That was a very very relevant point, I think, very very important point. I missed it out. I do it, but I missed out on saying, and thank you for covering that point, because that's a very very important lesson — how do you re-engineer your entire process through exit interviews. So I thought that was something very very I missed out. So thank you for covering it. No, thank you. It's been a pleasure to be part of this discussion. So thank you all.

So our next webinar is going to be on another very important subject, that is good operational management for higher goals. The better the operational management, the higher the goals you can achieve, and this subject will be discussed in length. We are getting again very learned speakers, and this is due on 23rd of July, again 6 p.m. And I'm sure the delegates who have attended this webinar, have had so scintillating discussions, will be able to note down this webinar and try to attend this webinar. I'm sure you will enjoy, and once again I thank everyone who have been here with us and who have joined us on this webinar, and thank you very much. Thank you indeed. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Rajiv. Thank you Navlin. Thank you to both the speakers. Thank you sir. Thank you very much sir. Thank you both. Thank you everyone. Thank you, very learning experience today. Good evening.