Nirav Jagad, Chief People Officer of Sugar Cosmetics speaks about ensuring the right opportunities for the right talent in a complex omnichannel organisation that is on a fast track to growth
From a handful of staff to an army of 4,000 people, Sugar Cosmetics has come a long way. And helping the company achieve its ambitious goals through its people is Nirav Jagad the company’s Chief People Officer.
Nirav is a perennial learner who has been a keen observer of human dynamics for the past 22 years in various professional portfolios he has held. He refers to himself as a compulsive learner with a child-like inquisitiveness.
He started his career as an entrepreneur straight out of campus after completing his Master’s Degree in Business from Mumbai-based Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research (WeSchool) to launch a startup, when it wasn’t the buzzword.
In the next decade, he built his professional career with organizations like Randstad India, Cerebrus Consultants, IL&FS and Nykaa, where he was the CHRO during the company’s steepest growth phase.
Out of the workforce the Mumbai-based beauty brand employs, 700 are full-time employees, 300 are contract workers at its warehouses and the rest are beauty advisors, most of whom are women.
The HR veteran believes that a company’s prime responsibility is to raise the talent level of the industry and thereby the economy through skilling people to build sustainable careers.
In an exclusive interview with IndiaRetailing, Jagad speaks about ensuring the right opportunities for the right talent in a complex omnichannel organisation that is on a fast track to growth. Edited excerpts…
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How has Sugar Cosmetics’ approach to its people changed over the years as the organization grew?
Any growing organisation becomes a different entity as it grows. The growth we have had over the last three to four years has been exponential in some ways. When I look at the people approach, and the policies, it is a bit dichotomous—you have to put checks and balances in place while focusing on growing and developing people. One gives us a framework to work with, the other opens avenues for people to explore themselves, to grow, develop and have a fruitful career with us. These are the guiding principles that we keep in mind as we tread this path of balancing our path to robust growth
How do you handle the complexity of an omnichannel business from the people perspective, where the employees range from delivery associates to directors?
This is where today’s HR professional’s role differs from earlier. The dynamism of various organisations within an organisation is only evolving. We have three brands of note—Sugar, Sugar POP and Quench—and 3 revenue channels. We have roughly about 40,000 touchpoints across general and modern trade with about 180 exclusive brand outlets.
Then there are our tech and product teams which do all the development for us… there are a lot of microcosms of cultures within the organisation. When designing, we look at the umbrella view of the organisation as well as build specific policies and initiatives for functions and departments. Let me explain with an example. We have about 3,500 beauty advisors (BAs). For them, we have designed an exclusive programme called ‘Unnati’ to help them build a viable career. We do other engagements as well which are specific to a certain team. Like the activations, we do for our contact centre team. As an organisation, it is important for us to meet the talent where they want us to meet them. So, there is an umbrella approach to talent, and then a specific functional talent approach, and then an individual talent approach. So, we do three layers of engagement to ensure that people feel engaged at a homogenous group level, team level and also an individual level.
How do you use technology to engage them or understand them and meet their requirements?
Every employee has access to a platform we have created. And we try to push content through that as much as possible. However, we are sensitive to the kind of technology employees are comfortable with. So, we try to keep it simple and work with them, assess their level of acceptance of such things.
We have designed the platform such that we reach them as economically and as efficiently as possible. Because reaching 3,500 people is not an easy job.
For instance, since people are comfortable with Instagram reels, we have made short format videos of 30 seconds through which we send our appreciation to the team, which they feel happy about.
What are the main challenges of dealing with such a diverse group?
It is trying to understand what motivates each group—warehouse staff, Beauty Advisors…at an individual level. And, you have to be able to move between them quickly because if you continue to operate only from one point, you lose the other audience. So, you have to be moving up and down quickly so that you are able to keep tabs on whether all three levels are aligned with each other.
What are your people priorities probably for the next two years?
Setting up for sustainable growth is important. So, building the mid-management is critical in a scaling organisation. People engagement becomes an important component of growth. If our managers do not grow at the pace of the organisation, then we have a problem because friction between an individual and the manager will creep in.
For us, reducing that friction by way of deeper engagement between managers and individuals is the number one priority. The second will be to see how we can continue to deeply engage our BAs and reduce attrition by showing them real development and growth. This involves constantly investing in them, grooming them, guiding them, and building the supervisor level in such a way that one supervisor can connect with 40 team members and drive the development agenda.
At a company level, how much percentage of revenue/sales does Sugar spend on its people?
I will answer this question in a layered manner because we cannot just look at it from the allocated budget point of view. We have to look at it in terms of what is the voice of share I have.
And I feel that I have a decent share. It could be a function of just the leadership respecting the HR function, but it is because you bring your equity to the role. In the organisation, I do not have to struggle or worry about a budget.
There is mutual respect between the business and the function where both are working together towards one goal, which is to ensure that we have a fruitful and successful business. And I’m an equal stakeholder. I am pained when our numbers are not met and most elated when we overachieve our business targets. Gone are the days when HR used to be a passive contributor. That’s a story of the past.
What is your view of talent in retail?
Retail has different sub-sectors—Fashion, apparel, shoe, utility and gold retail all are different. There is a lot of sectoral work that is required. E-commerce cannot necessarily replace physical retail. Everybody is talking about phygital. But we are not saying digital and then physical, we are saying physical and then digital. So physical retail is here to stay because humans will only consume products of a certain kind to a certain volume by ordering online. They do want to experience and it’s clear which is why you see the kind of returns you experience. Look at the growing size of the Indian middle class, we are just seeing an exponentially high purchasing capacity in India. What we need to do is create a high-quality retail experience for everybody—even unorganised retail should upgrade.
This is where the whole talent piece comes into the picture. Can everybody in organised retail take the responsibility to ensure that everybody who works in a company becomes an employable talent?
For the 4,000 people I am responsible for, I have to endeavour that at least 80% are employable talent for my company.
What am I doing is raising the quality of this talent to become employable, whether in my company or anywhere else.
But there is a perineal dearth of talent in retail…
In India, you are competing with one of the most exciting upcoming sectors which is quick commerce, which is a subsector of retail. But it is also a competitor from a talent standpoint and also the Profit & Loss standpoint. Like today, q-commerce is eating into the business of mom-and-pop and kirana stores. We must look at it as a wholesome shift of talent. Today if a rider or a partner, is getting Rs100 per delivery, if the person does 10 deliveries in a day, it comes to Rs1,000 per day. Multiply that by 25, so he makes Rs25,000 per month, with no other skill than being able to ride.
We have to really talk about a skill-based industry. I am all game for gig working, but as an economy, if you do not build skills, you will hit a plateau at some point where you will not know what to do. Assuming I am a rider…and I just do deliveries for five years and do not build any other skill, what if this industry goes down? So, you have to build one core skill, at least.
And again, we always look at government policies. I am saying, we have the power and the budget. Why don’t we create avenues for people to build their careers in our sector? But when it comes to skilling people, we become myopic. Invariably this talent will leave in the hope of a good avenue, but the point is you cannot live your life in insecurity.
You are losing business because your customer engagement is lacking. So instead of defaulting to the negative, why can’t I default to the positive?
