Priya M Pillai, Head – People Function (Retail, Corporate & Manufacturing) at Titan Company Ltd. on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the company, its people philosophy and priorities…
Titan Company Ltd. has come a long way since it started in 1984 with just one category—watches. In the 40 years, it grew at a remarkable speed to what it is today—a retail leader with more than 15 established brands in its kitty at various stages—established once like Tanishq & Titan and new like Taneira & IRTH.
As the company grew and ventured into new businesses, the people function has had a strategic role to play by meeting its talent needs and adapting to the changing pace and scale.
Priya M Pillai, Associate Vice President – People Function, has over two decades of experience working with reputed companies like Unilever, Taj and Mahindra, managing a variety of portfolios from sales, operations, and human capital to heading an e-commerce business. Recently, she was conferred the “Leading Woman in Retail” by WeQual Awards, Asia Pacific 2023 in the Business Partnering & DEI Category.
In her current role, she now has to manage challenges of a different kind—that of meeting the culture and talent requirements of a large organization that continues to grow, change and scale. In an exclusive interaction, she speaks about the unique requirements of her role, Titan’s people philosophy and her priorities in the coming years…
What is Titan’s people philosophy?
At Titan, people are the heart and the soul of the organisation. It is our belief that if we take care of our people business will be taken care of. Our erstwhile managing directors Xerxes Desai, Bhaskar Bhat and even our current MD C K Venkataraman have continued to build on the culture seeded in 1984. It is one of the reasons that the HR function is now called the People Function. The genesis of that came with our current MD C K Venkataraman saying human beings come with feelings and therefore should not be looked at as resources. The function transitioned not just in its name, but also reflected the purpose it always stood for.
Unlike other organisations, which only consider employees on their payroll, at Titan, we look at the larger ecosystem of people working as part of the company engine, they are all Titanians. This includes our business associates, employees of our franchisees, our vendor partners and their employees. They also play a big role in contributing to the experience and overall business growth. For instance, when a customer walks into a store, the security guard is the first touch point and hence it is equally important that they feel part of the company and their well-being is taken care of.
Our ecosystem today comprises a community of 40,000+ people associated with Titan—direct and indirect people who are associated with the brand. We believe that culture can only come together when the inclusion of people is its cornerstone.
Does technology also have a role to play?
Our aim is to be a high-tech, high-touch function. High tech means letting technology do parts of the job without compromising on the human connect.
Technology is used wherever it brings agility and improves the quality of decision-making. Therefore, a lot of emphasis is on Employee Self Service and Manager Self Service.
This frees the People Function to focus more on the human aspect and drive business success, making sure that we can contribute to culture building, Organisation building and partner in delivering the business strategy.
We also use technology to understand employees better. For instance, we have Mood-o-meters to gauge the feelings of individuals as it’s not practical for HR to monitor such a large and geographically dispersed workforce. However, once you know an individual’s mood, technology can do little. There’s where human intervention comes in—the touch aspect.
I’ll give you an example. Once the mood-o-meter revealed that an employee was going through depression, and we were able to intervene in time to provide the required support through our panel of certified & expert counsellors.
How do you align such a large ecosystem with the company’s culture?
The culture and vision must be driven by leaders downwards. Walking the talk, painting the vision and letting that housekeeping person know how important their job is and how it connects to the larger purpose, is the leader’s role. How does the People Function enable this? By making sure that we have the right leaders in the organisation. We are the gatekeepers looking after who is brought into the organization—the culture builders and champions.
In fact, our business associates and vendor partners are also assessed on the cultural aspect before they are onboarded and undergo the Tata Code of Conduct training.
Tell us about the generation dynamics in your workforce.
You need diverse personalities and people with diverse thinking in an organisation that caters to a diverse portfolio of customers. For organisations to stay relevant, DEI is now table stakes.
There is a direct correlation between the DEI quotient of the organisation and innovation. The Gen Z should challenge a baby boomer. The organisation’s job is to provide psychological safety for people to challenge each other and bring their perspectives.
At Titan, we have second generations of employees working with us. The average tenure at our factories is 25 years, at our stores, it is 18-20 years.
Our attrition is 7% – 8%, while the industry average is over 20%. Because our businesses have grown, new positions have been created, bringing in fresh perspectives, and new learning opportunities. About 15%-16% of employees are Gen Z, they help us stay relevant. For instance, based on feedback from one of our Gen Z employees, call was taken to not go ahead with a certain marketing campaign. Thats the power of diverse thinking and providing a safe space for the expression of thoughts.
What are the challenges of managing such a large and diverse workforce in a dynamic environment?
What is important is how agile are you as an organisation to adopt the multiple shifts around you. It has certainly put pressure on the People Function because we have had to quickly recraft our people strategy and look at the capability gaps in the organization, which is now growing at a fast pace.
We have put together a blueprint to ensure that adequate exposure is given to our leadership and management teams to what’s new like AI so that the change starts from the top. For instance, we have introduced a Digital Mindset as a competency.
Recently, a group of our leaders went to visit DBS Singapore, because it is known for its early adoption of digitalization and how it has transformed the way banking is done. There is a lot happening around and we try to learn and bring it back to build a digital mindset and agility. Similarly, immersions with Tata Motors on their all-women plant for Harrier, and with Tata Steel on all-women mining team helped us bring in outside learnings.
We are also consciously bringing in people from the outside to some leadership roles to bring in outside thinking and help shape the organization to meet our ambitions. In the People function itself, we have had to unlearn and relearn a lot.
Can you elaborate on this?
We are undergoing People function transformation, where we are relooking at the way we worked for the last decade and changing for the journey of the next five years and beyond in line with the ambition laid out by the organisation.
We need to be shapeshifters because that’s how consumers are. Times are changing. Today, a white shirt gets delivered in 10 minutes. Everything happens on the phone. To understand the changes, we spend time with different consumer groups. We stay curious and hence spend time listening and learning.
Can you tell us about Diversity Equity Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) at Titan?
Titan was on the path, even before the word DEI got coined. In the late ’80s, we had a complete assembly line for watches managed by persons with disabilities (PwDs).
About 85% of Pantnagar factory is managed by women.
In Jewellery retail, we have 30% women. At a company level, we have 27% women—largely at the bottom of the pyramid. Now, the shift must come in leadership roles. Today, we have 17% women in our top leadership. We have women in CEO roles in Watches & Wearables and the Design Function. We have women heading businesses like Mia, Zoya, Watches Premium… we have women in the leadership pipeline. Our aspiration is to have 50% representation of women in our leadership team at some point. That will shift the dynamics across the Company. We need to have a representation from all segments, whether it is women or LGBTQi+ since a company is a microcosm of the society.
What would be your three strategic priorities in the coming years?
First and foremost, to get the right talent as we scale in the next three to five years, specifically when we go deeper into India and wider across the globe.
Talent strategy, which includes the full gamut of acquisition to retention to management to development, continues to be the top focus.
Second, culture is going to be extremely important as we grow and scale…when the 40,000 grows two to three times, making sure the subcultures are aligned to the larger culture will be critical. We are a company that has mature businesses like Tanishq, Titan World, Titan Eyeplus and Helios and also new businesses like Zoya, Mia Taneira and IRTH.
So our portfolio is wide with brands & businesses at different maturity stages. So, another priority would be to make sure that each of these businesses finds its space, both culturally and from a talent perspective, to develop and grow.
Third, as a function, what matters is our own transformation journey, which is the bedrock for continued success as a function and as an organisation.
