Performance Paranoia

Right from hiring the right person to promotions, career development and all other business and people initiatives, values remain the guiding light at HDFC Life. The values framework EPICC (Excellence, People Engagement, Integrity, Customer Centricity, and Collaboration) informs the inspiring culture at HDFC Life, fostering growth and progress for its employees. Vibha Padalkar, MD & CEO, shares with BW Businessworld’s Avishek Banerjee the workplace dynamics at his company.

- Avishek Banerjee

On what makes your organization a great place to work for

Four things that set the company apart and make it a great place to work for are: leading the change; paranoia for performance; living the values and, fostering development and growth. We have been leading the way in every aspect of our business — be it digital transformation, identifying and targeting white spaces or building new ecosystems for business acquisition. We have seen that this drive to lead is not only preferred but actually needed in order to attract and retain key talent. We are paranoid — about performance, about our ability to bring a positive, meaningful difference to our work, and about being prepared for potential events that can impact our company’s future.

On talent management

Talent management works on the philosophy of having the most skilled and engaged employees managing their current roles while developing a strong bench of ready talent. Internal talent is given ample opportunities to take up managerial roles, through a transparent, fair and scientific internal job posting (IJP) process. Cross-functional movements are also encouraged and enabled through a talent review and assessment process to provide a holistic understanding of business to employees. In FY19, over 60 percent middle management and about 80 percent of senior management vacancies were filled through internal talent.

On the company’s evolution

HDFC was the first private life insurance company to start operations in India in 2000. In the last 18 years of operations, the organization has gone through three major phases of transition. In each of these phases, it kept evolving its people practices in order to suit the business context.

On people philosophy