EP139: Citi - How to Build Data Literacy Among HRBP

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes. 

I'm your host, Lydia, and with us this week is Gautam Duggal of MasterCard (formerly). Thank you for joining us, Gautam.

Gautam: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Why HR Needs a Business Mindset to Thrive

Lydia: So you've had 20 years in the HR space, Gautam. Could you walk us through that journey a little bit? What are some key transitions that might have shaped your perspective on this space?

Gautam: I had never imagined I would end up in the HR space. I am a non-human resources guy who, through many transitions, landed up in human resources. I started off as a technologist long ago, I think twenty-two years back, and through the journey, one thing that stuck with me throughout was the fact that I love working with people more than technology and code. 

I love having a lot of interactions because that brings out the real value of what you are actually generating in business. Whether it is a consulting assignment, whether it is a product-based organization, whether you are pure-play tech, I think people are very important. I had that "aha" moment early in my career when I transitioned from a pure technologist into more of a very loose learning and development kind of role. That made me realize that there is real power that the human resources team can actually bring in. Over many years, I have realized that the message gets reinforced, right? With different jobs, different businesses, and different geographies.

Lydia: Your experience as a technologist would definitely lend its weight right now, as we are seeing so many transitions in the technology within HR itself, right? How has that really helped, in terms of viewing the kind of tech stack that you might need in the HR space?

Gautam: I think it helps immensely. I am glad that I did not start off on the journey of just human resources and then had to learn technology. I think I had the advantage of coming from technology or coming from the business, where the business pretty much had defined everything, which was not working well. 

Then we sort of stepped into roles which were created ad hoc, and we became human resources. I think the understanding of technology helps in terms of evaluating two things. It is not just the kind of technology stack that you need within the human resources teams; it is also the business-level technology stack that you end up understanding, and that helps you understand what sort of talent you need. What sort of business strategy are we talking about? How would that inform the people strategy? 

While I have not written code in many years, if somebody were to talk to me about coding, challenges, and bugs, that sounds familiar. So, one recommendation I give to everybody in my team is to go do a stint in the business. If you are in the commercial business, go do a stint in sales. Do not take it up as a career if you do not want to, but at least go and spend time there because that helps you understand how we make money. 

That will then make you understand what sort of policies, procedures, and creative work you need to do as the human resources team. I think in the last 10 years, we have really moved away from the functional people team to more of a strategic people team that needs to come with very informed decisions. Unless you know how to sell your product in the market, you really cannot hire the best person from all the candidates that you have.

HR as the Custodian of Evolving Culture

Lydia: What are some key areas you are actually focusing on right now? Maybe looking into the new year or even from the beginning of the year.

Gautam: I think the global business strategy team is more focused on bringing to life what our top leadership or our leaders in different markets really want to see from a culture, talent, and stickiness to the business standpoint. While we might have lofty goals around trying to reshape how people perceive this organization, you actually need bodies on the ground to make that stuff work. When you are talking about initiatives, you actually need somebody to drive those initiatives for you, so it is no longer just about strategizing and giving it out to the local teams. 

I think there is value in experience that comes into play when you are doing global initiatives. It is the same team running the show, whether it is in Asia Pacific, Europe, or Latin America. Your experience then helps the organization build better employee experience events. That is at a higher level. 

We have our goals and North Stars defined of what should come to life in a particular year. It also has to go back into self-reflection mode and say, “Okay, while we are running for all these ten things, is it actually generating the impact that we intended to?” That is why this team comes into play, because we are not married to the initiative. It is an initiative that we are running and evaluating at the same time to determine whether it is landing well or not. 

There are so many initiatives that, during the course of their deployment, we have gone ahead and changed on their head. I think that helps. On the business partnering side, it is fairly, I would say, a very important kind of role in this market, where there is definitely planned growth, but you also need people to understand what the employer value proposition is that you are giving out in the market. Is it just the legacy of the organization, or is it something that the new generation wants to come for and work at, or is it something that you are planning for 2030? I think that is a very important discussion that we are having internally: how do you position yourself for a workforce of 2030 rather than just 2025?

Lydia: In terms of HR business partnering, as you mentioned, in the area of growth and a lot of focus on that to appeal to a younger generation or the new workforce coming in. In that sense, what does true strategic HR business partnering look like to you? Beyond just that traditional support function that may be perceived to be.

Gautam: I think we have made that in roles, the journey is yet to be done. We have made those in-roles where you are no longer just the people person, right? You are also an important person, bringing in the right talent for driving growth. You are bringing in the right organizational design that will help you in the future. You are not just taking care of people leaving, but you are also putting checks and balances in place to determine if it is something that we can actually solve for, and being very true to the business leaders and going back and saying, this is what can be done, and this is what cannot be done. 

A lot of times, I have done this reflection of who we are competing against when it comes to talent. Is it just the traditional talent players that my single leaders say, “Because that is where I have always hired talent from, and that is my competitor?” Or “Is it the business competitor in the market?”, or “Is it somebody else that we have never looked at?” We do not even know why people leave us and go there. Money cannot just be one factor for it; maybe it is for three percent of the population. 

So, I think we have made those in-roles. You are talking about our designs. I think human resources today is actually talking about what the top initiatives are and how do I change my strategy. I remember there used to be a time when we would do an annual review, stating this is what we set out to achieve, and now we are reviewing it. I think the current business partner, who is more strategic, is doing a quarterly review. I am assuming it will go down to a forty-five-day review as well, with a very close group to say, “Okay, I do not think this initiative is going in the way we want it to, or we are not hiring at the pace we should, or we are not deploying at the pace that we should.” Then, having that mirror in front of us to say, “Are we doing the best that we could?”, rather than just saying, “This is what the values of the organization are.” I think maybe it is everybody’s job, but we are sort of the trusted custodians of that to make sure that culture keeps evolving and keeps getting better. 

It cannot just be that we keep saying it is everybody’s job. I think we are the ones who need support. So, I think that is where I have seen the shift from a pure-play, somebody who is doing the paperwork, to somebody who is actually looking at data and saying, “Okay, the paperwork tells me we need to do all of these things differently.”

Lydia: Yes, we'll go into the data literacy part in a little while. But moving back to that human resources business partner role, it is super crucial, as you mentioned earlier, right? So what might be some traits that a professional or efficient, and effective human resources business partner might have to perform this job at that level?

Gautam: I think I have seen very senior human resources business partners, and luckily, I worked with them, so I adapted to what they were doing. 

One very important learning for me was that you have to know the next move of the business. They are so hand in glove with the business leadership teams that they know the next move of the business, and they are ready with multiple options on how we can actually tackle it. I think that intelligence does not just stay with those great leaders. They make sure that their immediate team and partners, whether it be talent acquisition or third-party vendors, whoever it is, are sharing whatever intelligence is required to keep them ready and on their toes. 

I think that is very crucial. I talked about knowing your business, but it is also important to know your market. 

You cannot be competing in a market where everybody is just doing technology, but you are still looking at very niche skills. You are not adapting to how the market has reacted. I think that is a business partner’s job to bring that to the table and have a very open discussion about it. A lot of times, we will have extra talent in the market for whatever good, bad, or ugly reason, and that could put pressure on the talent acquisition team to say, “Okay, there is just a handful of people out there. Let us pick up whoever we think is the best, but let us understand what is going on in the market. 

Have we transitioned into a place where these skills are not required anymore, and we are still hiring for those skills? Are we behind in this entire change ecosystem? Or maybe we are on that niche skill path, and we are just the ones doing it. You can still absorb. I think that is the business part, a very crucial part in business partnering. 

I also think it is important for the business partner in today’s world to be the one who not only identifies and keeps a check on who your next-in-line leaders are, but also creates. What I have recently realized is that the business partners are not just the custodians of who my next leader in line is, or just taking care of their individual development plans. They are also the ones going back and saying, maybe this leader is not fit for 2026. That is a shift that I have seen very recently, I would say in the last three or four years, that has come up more rampantly at different levels. Earlier, maybe it was just done at the top level, but now I see it at different levels, where a business partner is questioning the leader’s choice of the individual. I think they are forever questioning the choices, saying, “Okay, are you still sure that this person can do the best job?” I think that has helped us identify the right sort of talent to be placed in the right place.

Lydia: So, asking the right questions and being assertive to bring a new perspective to the table, and also adding value to decision-making.

Gautam: And pressure testing. A lot of times, it is just what the data shows, or what the 360 is, and maybe Lydia is the better choice, so let's pressure test. I think that's very important.

Balancing Global HR with Local Market Nuances

Lydia: Yes, indeed. You mentioned entering a new market and trying to identify what the climate is like. On that note, when you enter a new market or a region, a very diverse region, what is your approach to understanding that local talent landscape? I mean, is there a specific way to approach it? Whose responsibility is it?

Gautam: Whenever we have entered a new market more recently, I would tag everything that happened before COVID as pre-COVID. The post-COVID era is not just fast-moving, but it is also very critical of the decisions and actions you make, whether as senior leaders, human resources, or people joining jobs. You are getting a lot of questions. Whenever we have tried to enter a new market, or let us say we are there, but now we want to bring in new roles—for example, in India, we are trying to bring in more product-based folks. We want more of our product teams, product owners, and product custodians to sit out of, co-located in India, and then maybe serve just the market here or the market abroad. 

I think the very first thing is to identify whether you have the skill set in your current organization to bring that in. While there are a lot of people who will raise their hand and say, I really want to do this, and there is this upcoming need in the market, and I have a technology background, I think the evaluation has to be done by the leaders on the ground, the human resources team on the ground, and then a local, maybe a global team that comes into play to say, “Okay, we think you will be ready in the next two years. There is a plan in place that will get your folks ready to do these jobs in the next two years. In the interim, these are our options: let us train those folks, let us hire people from the outside for replacements, let us do knowledge transition.” 

It is not that you have one formula in place and that will play out in all geographies. I think every geography, because of their sensitivity, because of the way they are reacting to information, and the way they are behaving in terms of their maturity, creates a challenge. But that is what good human resources teams come together for; they are so in tune with the business that they know the next move. If you do not know the next move of your business, then you are simply reacting to information. 

So, yes, we have ventured into getting more product people here. Have we successfully deployed it? That is a 50-50.  Have we failed miserably? Absolutely. But we have learned. We now understand the culture, we know what is coming up next, and we are ready to react to it rather than reacting late. From a global perspective, I think each region, whether it is Europe, Asia Pacific, or the Americas, in my mind, they are living in different decades of how they process information and interact with technology.

Lydia: In what sense is that? 

Gautam: The way I would look at let us say, the Asia Pacific, or the greater China region, you will find a lot of tech-savvy people there, and their tech-savviness is pretty much focused on a lot of self-consuming applications. They will use those applications for their daily use. When you bring that same lens to, let us say, India, we are very great at creating applications for the world, but are we consuming those applications ourselves? I think there is still a long way to go. 

Now, you shift to a more South Asian region, somewhere in Bangladesh; they could be using applications for themselves, developing skill sets for developing applications, and becoming a technology-based economy. Each region has such diversity within itself. We are all living in different decades across the globe. To land one initiative as a human resources team and say, “Okay, this will work globally,” that becomes very difficult. Maybe our structure remains the same, but the house inside is completely different when you go to different countries.

Lydia: Yes, there is a lot of nuanced knowledge coming from these markets that either they will be able to give insight into whether some strategy works in that particular region or not, or you will be wasting your time trying to roll something out, and you might lose.

Gautam: We end up losing the interest of the employee as well, because if you are talking about something that is not happening in their market, you are talking five years in advance. While it sounds great, I have not really done that or experienced it. Now, is there scope for me to fail and learn? Or do you have the appetite to say, “Sorry, you cannot really fail somebody who is a little advanced in their journey,” and now I am bringing them back and saying, “Oh, come to the office, sit down here for nine hours, show me your face for nine hours.” 

We might end up losing them to the market again. So everything that we would do was to keep them at the center and then build the fancy things around them. But then I need to understand what level they are at. So, while we look at global initiatives, being very strategic in our number games and all, I think the real value comes when we actually deploy it. That is where the reality of every initiative comes out.

Lydia: So, in terms of evaluating how effective your global people strategy is, are there specific metrics that you look at to find whether or not it's working?

Gautam: We do have metrics. For some initiatives, because they are the first time around here, we do not really have metrics. So, we will build the metrics as we go. Let us talk about the employee value proposition. You have the voice of employee survey, which you would look at and say, “Okay, we were at a certain basis point last year across different dimensions. What can we do to bring up our red zones to an orange, the orange ones to a yellow, and the yellow ones to a green? How can we sustain the green ones?” So, you do have your calendar of events around that.

You might have niche initiatives happening in the markets where you are trying to explore and expand your business. There, you might have a very niche initiative, let us say, return-to-work programs for females who have taken a career break. Now, that is a very niche initiative in a particular market. Again, what is the maturity level? What sort of skill sets are we hiring for? How many people are we targeting? Is that a pure-play? You come in as a full-time employee, you come in as an intern, and then you earn yourself full-time employment. It is not just that you are starting at the bottom. Based on your skill set, at the end of the internship, we will offer you the job, whether you are a director-level person, a manager-level person, or maybe a vice president-level person. For those initiatives that are the first time in the market, we do not really have a metric. 

That is where we work with the business to figure out a metric as to what you would want to measure with this initiative. I think that formula has worked for me. So, rather than giving you metrics of what the learning team is doing or what our talent acquisition team is publishing, I think it is important to look at what the business wants to see. 

In my career, I have had a few leaders ask me the "so what" question. They were not trying to be rude to me. They were just trying to understand. We were publishing these numbers and saying, “Okay, we are at this percentage of diversity, we are at this percentage of learning hours, we are at this percentage of our conversion ratios. What am I comparing against? How does this change my business? Are these numbers just pretty to look at? Are you comparing me to somebody in the market and saying to be better than or less than them? What does that change for my bottom-line revenue? Can you go back, or let us look at what we should be looking at?”

I remember asking this question, saying, “Okay, what is our time to fill the role? They said, “It does not matter, my time to fill the role. Yes, there is a static amount of time that we need. We need somebody to come in and do the job. But even if we go beyond that number, I am not going to fire anybody with it. I just need to find the right person.” That has changed the perspective. So now, for newer initiatives and even for the older ones, in those quarterly business meetings, we actually ask, “Does this metric make sense to you?” “Are you taking away what you need to take away?” Do we need to peel the onion a little more and maybe look at more business value-driven things?” Or, “You are at a 50-50 diversity number. Are you happy with that?” Or “Do you want to look at how many diverse candidates have come in the last year?” “Where do they stand on the productivity wheel?” “How many of them will progress to be my top talent?” “Are you looking at that peeling of the onion, or are you just okay with the high-level numbers because that is probably not your priority right now?” I think that has helped immensely.

So, for any new initiative we have, the business team comes together and says, “This is the initiative, but you tell us what impact you want to see.” Do not give us those big, fancy answers. Give me a metric that we can evaluate. Do not tell me, “Oh, we need to change the culture.” How? Tell me that. What is that point basis that you would want to evaluate? If there is no evaluation, that is absolutely fine. I think we can take the feedback, we can circulate what people are saying. All of that can be done, but you will not always have this number that needs to shift.

Building Data Literacy for HR Beyond Traditional Roots

Lydia: So in terms of data, this is very important, having not just the ability to pick out the figure and present that, but also being able to peel the onion to use your words, right? So, how do you build that kind of data literacy among HR business partners who may come from a traditional HR background?

Gautam: I think the new-age business partners are slightly ahead of the curve. They understand those charts, the demographic data, and what the talent pool looks like. It is important to understand what you currently have in your organization. Some of the data points we look at are definitely diversity numbers. We definitely look at our high-potential talent pools. We look at our attrition numbers and whether we have lost very high-potential people. Let us say, in three months, what would be the rationale for it? If we have lost very critical people, who may not be high-potential but were in critical roles, what is the impact on the replacement? How soon are we getting those replacements in? How fast will they be ready, and how well will they be accepted in the culture?

We also look at, I think, the SWOT analysis that we create, which also has that element of the opportunity area. So, while this is what our threats look like, what are the opportunity areas? Where can we really exponentially change the dynamics? This is purely from a people's standpoint. This is not from a business market perspective, how many deals we will crack, or what the revenue coming in is—it is pure-play people.

In those SWOT opportunities, I have seen some very unique points. You might look at them and say, “Okay, do you really want to discuss this? But if that impacts the culture of the organization, that is the ask that people have; it calls for a discussion.” We have had people asking, “Can I wear shorts to the office, because at Google I used to wear them?” I am like, why are we discussing this at the global team? But they wanted to discuss it. Is that a possibility? Do we have that sort of flexibility, or is it because we have so many financial people and clients coming in and going out that you really cannot be in that office location wearing shorts? If we really want to do that, maybe it is just casual dressing on a Friday. But if this is a high-stakes meeting and that impacts the team, then it calls for a meeting.

We also look at a year-to-year comparison. I think it is important to look at that from the perspective that while the business is evolving rapidly, your consumer base is also changing. There is a shift in the consumer base, and your business has shifted. Let us look at, from a people-play standpoint, what shifts we have made within the people practices. Are we still doing what we were doing when we were a pure network, versus today, where we are more service-oriented and trying to save people money by avoiding scams and all? Your business model has shifted, but your people practices are the same. So, we do that comparison as well.

I think we also try not to solve everything on the metrics side; we prioritize the top three things that we could tackle.

Lydia: Do you give a timeframe for the top three things to tackle within this time? 

Gautam: 90 days. Because people who are joining us today would have made a perception about the organization and their career journey in the first thirty days itself. The first week, they are still evaluating: am I at the right place? Or maybe they are in awe of the organization. By the end of the first month, when that first paycheck comes in, they would have already made up their mind about how long their strategic playbook with a particular organization is going to be. Is it going to be two years? Or three years onwards, am I going to look for a job? Or in five years, am I not going to look for a job and just grow here? 

If you are changing things, we need to land them as soon as possible. There is no point in planning for 2026. For me, a lot of times, it has changed completely. What I was working on prior to the meeting suddenly stopped, and we started working on something new. It is very frustrating for the team as well, but that is the charm of the new human resources team. We cannot really be left behind. We have to be on the same journey with them. If a talent is shifting, we are shifting as well.

Elevating Core Employees to Become Future Stars

Lydia: Finally, Gautam, we have spoken about so many variables and different granular details when it comes to HR business partnering and different ways to approach people strategy at a global level. So, what advice would you give someone who is starting out in the talent space today?

Gautam: I think whether it is talent, human resources, business partnering, learning and development, or talent acquisition, personally, even though I am in human resources, I still feel that a lot of people do not even know who their human resources business partner is, and that is a reality today. You ask them, and they would go blank. They will probably mention the name of the recruiter who called them last.

Why do you think that is? That they do not know who their business partner or human resources business partner is? My hypothesis is that we are too busy strategizing rather than socializing. I think it is important to socialize as well. You do not need to be best friends with them, and they do not need to come to you with every problem, but they should at least know your name. They should at least know what you do. I have been reached out to by people saying, “Hey, I know you are the talent guy at this organization. Can you hire me?” I am like, “No, I do not do talent acquisition.” He was like, “But it is talent.” Network engineers and software engineers are not the same, but they are engineers, right?

So, I think it is important for the human resources folks to be out there, and not just out there in leadership meetings or showing their face on billboards and stuff. Be there on the ground, like be there in the office, meeting people, just going on floor walks and asking, “What is going on here? Is anything troubling you? How can I help? I am your business partner.” I got to know my business partner, I think in my second or third job, by looking into Workday. I had no idea that she was sitting right next to me. We used to have lunch together. She never said she was my human resources business partner.

Lydia: So what did you think she was doing?

Gautam: I had no idea how much she was doing, maybe something to do with human resources. I knew she filled out these forms, and people came in, and in those days, you would still do things manually. But then I realized, oh, she is my human resources partner. So, I think it is important for all of us to be out there, especially when you are starting in the talent team, because you cannot really look at talent from just the numeric value or what they have done so far. In the talent role, you really need to know your top talent.

That means you need to connect with the human resources business partners because a lot of organizations now have a model where the talent team is a center of excellence. You may not end up interacting with the business directly a lot. It is always through the business partner. So, I think checking with the business partner as to what drives this individual is important. If we do not have those answers, I think it is time to get those answers. Because if they are stacked as the next in-line leader, we need to know what drives them. In my experience, a lot of people who are stacked in succession plans do not really get the job, or they do not apply for it when the time comes because their aspirations have changed, but they were never captured in our slide deck. So, that is a big miss.

Another piece is to not look at your core people in the middle, who may not be tagged as your top talent, as just existing. I think it is important to look at them as, “how do we make them click and go to the next level?” Because the top talent came from the core, the next set will also come from the core. So, the goal needs to be looked at very wisely. They should get all the opportunities there could be to give them the chance of becoming the next shining star of the organization.

Then, let us also understand that while we can do a lot of things, it is important to prioritize. Do one thing, do that very well, and stick to it. Then automate it. Let it run automatically. You do not really have to say, “Oh, we did this ten years back, we never got the time to do it again. It worked well, so why did we not automate it?” “Why was it not done every year? “Why is this just a faint memory in somebody’s files, saying, remember this party, and we used to throw these parties when we would do deals? Why not today?” I think as humans, we have not really evolved that much, as our expectations keep changing. But if somebody were to throw a party for my success, I would not mind it. But if it is ad hoc, one of those things, then I think human resources has missed a big opportunity on our side. So, know your metrics well because each organization looks at metrics very differently. Somebody's looking at just the DEI retention, others could be looking at promoting people entering new markets. So knowing that metrics and what the big ticket item is under that metric. So, just not the comparison of year on year would be better, but what is the underlying element of what made it better? Because that is what I have learned. That is what the leader wants to know is why do we have so many people who are very good at their work? Suddenly, we never had this 10 years ago. Why is it happening now? Knowing that why, and bringing it to the table, will actually help you build a lot of credibility with them.

Lydia: Well, thank you very much, Gautam, for your time and insights today. For those who are listening in who may want to connect with you and also pick up a conversation later from the topics you spoke about, where can they find you? 

Gautam: Oh, you can look me up on LinkedIn. My name is Gautam Duggal. Send me a message, and we can definitely connect.

Lydia: Thank you again, Gautam. We have been in conversation with Gautam Duggal of MasterCard. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All In Recruitment.