Harjeet engaged in a conversation with the Higher Education Review magazine in order to answer queries on the changing landscape of HR strategies in the Indian Telecom sector. He has set multiple green field projects and has handled HR for large multinational organizations in various geographies including India, US & Canada. Harjeet’s experience spans a range of industry sectors that include Automotive, Manufacturing, Pharma, Alternate Energy, IT-ITES, Telecom, Digital, Healthcare and Retail and has worked with Business Houses like Tata, Reliance and Piramal. He is currently working as Senior Vice President HR at Reliance Jio.

In your experience, what are the key strategies for managing remote teams in the telecom sector?

Managing remote teams is like managing a long term relationship and the most important aspect in it is communication. As an organization, one has to hold on to their part of commitment and communication and that becomes the most important aspect about handling remote teams. Secondly, one has to clearly define the roles on what an employee needs to do and what the outcomes that need to be delivered are. In the telecom sector of India, operations are vast and the workforce is distributed across regions. This is the reason why an organization will not be able to survive if the roles are not defined properly. There also needs to be a mechanism for measuring outcomes otherwise it is not considered. After measuring out the roles clearly, clear communication must be maintained and operations can be looked after properly.

Given the rapid technological advancements in telecom, what strategies are to be used to attract and retain skilled professionals in the telecom industry?

Telecom in itself is a very heavy industry if you have to retain workforce. Hierarchy always needs to be maintained and attending to all employee needs is equally important. Deserved compensation for employees plays a vital role here. They have to be compensated in such a way so that they can concentrate on organizational goals without having to look at personal and financial problems. Secondly, all the safety requirements that employees have must be attended to and taken care of and provide as much stability as possible. A sense of belonging also needs to be developed in the teams and all employees must feel accountable towards their duties and consider themselves a s part of the team. In the telecom sector, what becomes most important is esteem because in this sector, people have the opportunity to become part of cutting-edge projects. This is evident from the fact that from a point where the world was using 2G, 4G and 5G networks, we are now speaking about 6G networks as well. This proves that the opportunity and level of work has undergone massive transformation over the years. Technologies are continuously evolving in the telecom sector and with that, work opportunities are as well. Here, employees can be become part of something that is extremely important and feel that they are actually contributing value to the society. Telecom sector has until now created 35 Mn jobs worldwide last year which is much higher than that was created the year before that.

How can organizations effectively align HR practices and employee training programs with evolving telecom regulations to ensure compliance?

Compliance is a very important aspect in any given sector. Misinformation of spreading sensitive data is something that can be controlled by means of regulations. Regulations take care of all licensing requirements, intercommunication requirements like how two operations are establishing inter-connectivity among networks. Pricing is also an aspect that can be handled by regulations. There are two other aspects involved with compliance that are quality of service of data protection and security. These two segments are utterly important from a compliance perspective. Providers need to keep aware of the fact that if they are not providing the quality of service as described in the regulations, penalties will be there. Consumer education becomes an important factor in the area of data protection and privacy. This can be done through though leadership programs and making the ecosystem aware of the current scenario. These are some of the things that are important from an HR point of view in the segment of compliance. Last but not the least; the service quality must never differ for any given customer. The same level of behavior and service must also be there in organizations internally.  

Could you discuss the impact of digital transformation on HR strategies within the telecom industry?

Digital transformation is an aspect that is primarily led by the telecom industry. The society around us keeps changing with respect to the technology transformations that take place. As these have grown, the society's expectations from these advanced technology tools have also grown. Now a time has come, where the consumers are not able to settle for less and at the same time, providers also have to keep themselves updated with the latest technologies and tools. The distributed workforce in the telecom sector therefore always requires undergoing digitization in order to be handled properly.