Senior Vice President, Chief HR Officer & Country Manager of India, GENPACT LTD
CHRO of Genpact - Piyush Mehta - Career Club Live
Unlock the secrets behind Genpact's remarkable transformation with host, Bob Goodwin, and guest, Piyush Mehta, the CHRO of ...
About Piyush Mehta
Piyush Mehta, Senior Vice President, Chief HR Officer and Country Manager of India at Genpact, has spoken about the company's approach to talent, technology, and the future of work. He described Genpact's talent acquisition strategy as focused on "building talent rather than buying it," and noted that the company's virtual learning platform, Genome, has delivered over 10 million learning hours. Mehta stated that Genpact uses an AI-driven tool called Amber to gauge employee sentiment in real time, and that employee engagement measured by Amber is the only non-financial metric included in the bonus pool for the company's top 120 leaders. He also said that the company has a hybrid work model requiring employees to be in the office three days a week, arguing that informal, in-person interactions are "priceless" and cannot be replicated virtually. Mehta has also commented on broader industry trends. He said the "half-life of skills is three to five years" and that reskilling strategies must account for this. He described AI as "a powerful enabler" that should be applied with a focus on scale and sustainability. In a 2020 interview, Mehta advocated for a "cautious restart" from the pandemic, suggesting that about 20% of corporate work done in person should return to the office and that companies should question the concept of a headquarters. He has also discussed the importance of purpose in the current talent market, stating that Genpact's purpose—"the relentless pursuit of a world that works better for people"—allows the company to offer candidates the opportunity to make a visible impact.
Transcript (55 segments)
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Bob Goodwin0:00
Hello everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we get started, I would like to encourage any of our HR professionals or talent acquisition professionals who happen to be watching or listening to please check out our newest initiative that we call Journey Forward—a way of building the candidate experience and enhancing the employer brand by providing differentiated resources to candidates who may not be moving forward in the talent process for a particular role but one that you would like to continue to build a relationship with. You can learn more about that at career.club/journeyforward. So, I am really pleased, speaking of HR professionals, for today's guest. I'm going to read this because this background is pretty cool. We've got the privilege of hosting Piyush Mehta, the CHRO of Genpact, a global leader in digitally powered business process management and services. Piyush, with his extensive experience in driving human capital strategies across global organizations, has really been at the forefront of transforming workplace cultures to thrive in the digital era. Today he's going to be sharing his invaluable insights on the evolution of HR, the role of technology in enhancing employee experience, and the strategies Genpact employs to nurture talent and leadership in an ever-changing business landscape. I'm looking forward to delving into the mind of one of the industry's most forward-thinking leaders, Piyush Mehta. With that, Piyush, welcome.
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Piyush Mehta1:42
Thank you, Bob. It's a real pleasure to be on this podcast with you. Thank you for the good words in my introduction. It's a pleasure to share what we are learning and what we continue to learn as we go along.
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Bob Goodwin1:55
Absolutely. You benefited so much from our initial conversation and I look forward to building on that. I know listeners will appreciate what you guys have built, the learning you've gotten through the exercises you've gone through, and your business acumen is really great. With that, we've got more content than time, so if we can jump into it, that would be great.
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Piyush Mehta2:19
Sure thing, Bob. Fire away.
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Bob Goodwin2:27
So for those who are not familiar with Genpact, do you mind explaining a bit about the history of Genpact, how your business model has transformed, and how you've grown through the years?
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Piyush Mehta2:38
Sure. Genpact is a global professional services and solutions firm. We focus on delivering outcomes to our Fortune 500 clients. At this point, we have 125,000+ employees across 30 countries. We are defined by our purpose: the relentless pursuit of a world that works better for people. That's where we are today. We started as a company focused on process expertise and domain knowledge, as a back office for the General Electric Company at the turn of this century. We're 25 years old. In 2005, we spun off to become an independent company, and subsequently we went public, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Many things remain constant from our early days: our focus on clients and deep domain expertise. But over time, we've evolved from a business process company to focusing on outcomes, solutions, and professional services for our clients.
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Bob Goodwin4:03
I mean, 125,000 globally, 30 countries. Trick question: where is the home office?
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Piyush Mehta4:09
Interestingly, we don't have a home office. We've been a virtual headquarters company for pretty much the last 12 years, even before it was fashionable to not have a headquarters. Our leaders are distributed across the world, near our clients or relevant stakeholders. For example, our largest employee base is in India, so I'm based in India, but our CEO and most of our client-facing and commercial leaders are based in developed markets, largely in the US and the UK, where our clients are.
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Bob Goodwin5:03
When you spun off from GE, what was the approximate employee headcount?
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Piyush Mehta5:10
I want to say it was approximately 10,000 when we separated from GE.
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Bob Goodwin5:21
One of the things I found fascinating was, as you grew and your clients' needs expanded, what was the talent acquisition strategy? You continue to be in a high growth mode. How have you been able to recruit and keep talent in a people-intensive business?
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Piyush Mehta5:47
That's one of the most important questions, related to our growth, getting to where we are, and our future. The talent question—how to fuel our growth—is fundamental to our existence. Our view has always been that it's more about build as opposed to buy. Part of this starts with our DNA. When we started around 2000, the industry didn't exist and we were growing like gangbusters. The only constraint to growth was great quality talent. High-potential talent existed in large numbers in developing markets like India, China, and Eastern Europe, but training them from high potential to high performance was a massive challenge, probably the biggest constraint to growth. So we built a training and upskilling engine that led to our ability to scale and be successful. The idea was: ready talent isn't available in the market; create an engine to hire talent at the entry level and build them into high-performance talent. Training and reskilling became fundamental to our success and growth. Do we hire people from outside at lateral levels? Yes. Is that important? Absolutely, especially for new technologies and seeding talent. But the bulk of our talent needs are fulfilled by building, growing, and investing in talent. Therefore, the internal marketplace that gets talent ready from an upskilling perspective, and the internal talent marketplace for demand, matched with algorithms that take ready talent and bring them into bigger roles, is absolutely fundamental to our talent strategy.
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Bob Goodwin8:40
One reason I was so excited to have you on is that you guys are ahead of the curve. The half-life of skills keeps diminishing. Having it in your DNA to reskill, upskill, and repurpose talent to where it's most needed—that's like Moore's Law; it's just going to keep spinning faster. It sounds like you've built the model to optimize that.
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Piyush Mehta9:16
You said it better than I could. We've kind of patented the line: the half-life of skills is three to five years. Our entire reskilling strategy is built on that, and it's a key part of our talent strategy and overall organization strategy.
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Bob Goodwin9:35
That makes me think of a couple of things. A few years ago, tech companies were in a talent war, overpaying and overhiring, then had a bunch of layoffs. It sounds like there's built-in insurance in your system that doesn't necessitate overpaying for talent. You can buy high-potential talent, turn it into high performance, and redeploy it as market needs dictate, instead of slashing talent. You can upskill, reskill, and redeploy, avoiding boom-and-bust cycles.
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Piyush Mehta10:34
You are spot on. Let's start with the fundamental thesis: growth is the most fundamental need for establishing a powerful talent strategy. Growth is a great problem to have, and once you have it, all other problems are great problems. We've been blessed to grow every single year of our existence. With that engine pulling the business forward, everything from a talent perspective falls into place. Also, it's important to have a clear view on why people come to work. We have a strong point of view on this. Once we're clear, it puts all our talent programs and agenda in perspective. Think of the four reasons people come to work: they want to work for a great company, for great leaders, for great rewards, and for a great career. This hasn't changed since I started my career 35 years ago. If we're clear about this employee value proposition, and our programs scalably and sustainably build value around being a great company, having great leaders, fair rewards, and great careers, then we have a winning proposition.
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Bob Goodwin12:59
Thank you for that segue, because that's where I wanted to go. You kicked off by describing Genpact as a purpose-driven company. I also like that it allows for different value propositions for talent. Not everyone has to buy into every one of those all the time; they just need to buy into one at any given time to have high motivation to contribute and grow. You have the benefit of both time and geographic perspective. Do you see any geographical or regional differences in those value propositions—purpose, rewards, quality of leadership, career development?
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Piyush Mehta13:54
No, I don't. Those are basic needs for people coming to work in any part of the world. What changes is the context: competition, options available, nuances of geography, the relative dominance of technology, and sometimes demographic profile, though I think the impact of demographic profile is overstated. Irrespective of generation, people look for these things. The enablers differ; for example, newer generations are more comfortable with a higher impact of technology on these four variables. Those nuances come into play, but fundamentally it's the same. As HR practitioners build talent strategies, this is the North Star to navigate in your own context of geography, industry, competitive landscape, and macro conditions.
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Bob Goodwin15:48
One of the big takeaways from our conversation is identifying those four pillars, but also their durability and universality. That allows you to have a strategy built on them instead of chasing things that change over time.
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Piyush Mehta16:20
You hit on a vital point: it has to be scalable and sustainable. As we look at trends and changes, it's the primary role of leaders to look around corners and figure out what's coming, but also to discern what's flavor of the month. For example, during COVID, there was talk of 'quiet quitting.' The reality is that there's always a percentage of the workforce that's not engaged, 15-30%. This has been known through engagement surveys for decades; it wasn't new, just became fashionable. Another example: doing away with performance ratings. While noble, organizations still pay bonuses and differentiate between strong and not-so-strong performance. So there's inconsistency. It's important to distinguish between what's scalable, consistent, and an established trend versus flavor of the month.
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Bob Goodwin19:48
I appreciate that. We're inundated with news and social media. You used the term North Star—it's like, okay, I'll take that data point and see how it aligns. If it doesn't, you have the clarity to call BS and say that's not a thing, or it's always been a thing with a fancy term. Taking a stand on something is cool. I want to talk about technology, because you're a technology-forward, technology-enabled company. How do things like Amber and Genome advance and deliver on those value propositions?
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Piyush Mehta21:12
Our fundamental belief is that technology is a massive enabler for driving fulfillment of talent needs. That's not rocket science. Amber is our always-on employee engagement platform, an AI-driven chatbot that reaches out to employees in real time across the company—125,000+ employees. It helps us establish how people are feeling at any point, and with data linked to geography, business unit, tenure, manager, gender, etc., it provides massive real-time insights. Because it's AI-driven, the chatbot drives the dialogue based on responses, not a standard set of questions. It helps us keep a real-time pulse on engagement, morale, and sentiment. Interestingly, this is such a powerful tool to employee productivity that it's the only non-financial metric in the bonus pool for the top 120 people in the company, including the CEO. The bonus pool has three metrics: revenue, margin, and employee engagement as measured by Amber. That's how important it is.
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Bob Goodwin23:41
Do the findings root back to the four pillars—how connected do you feel to purpose, rewards, management, career development?
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Piyush Mehta23:54
Spot on. The engagement with Amber is built around exactly those four things: how close do you feel to the purpose, your view on the quality of your supervisor and leadership, etc. It's a two-to-three-minute interaction that gives us very powerful insights.
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Bob Goodwin24:33
Can you talk about Genome?
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Piyush Mehta24:38
Genome is our learning platform, built entirely virtual across all our learning at Genpact. Our view was that knowledge is freely available in the world, but context is crucial. The context of Genpact, a B2B professional services organization, is different from a B2C organization. So contextual elements are needed for relevance. Also, virtual learning allows scale, access across geographies, and speed, but you lose collective learning. Genome established both: organizational context and collective learning. We took 90+ skills and over 600 subject matter experts in the company, nominated them as 'gurus' for these skills, and built an infrastructure where they could access material from across the universe and contextualize it to Genpact's needs. Then we allowed free access to 125,000 people. For the fourth consecutive year, our global workforce completed approximately 10 million learning hours on Genome. It allows us to reskill at scale and address new capabilities at speed. We took our innovation leader out of his day job for three months to conceptualize, architect, and build what is now Genome. It was a massive commitment. For example, when we launched GenAI as one of the 90 skills, our objective was to familiarize people at a basic level. Over four months, we had 40,000 people learning about GenAI. Today, 80,000 people are learning that skill. That's the scale and speed it gives us.
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Bob Goodwin28:47
Based on where an individual employee is in their career, their skills, and the needs of the business, does Genome or a human make recommendations for the next courses? Does it proactively recommend, or do I choose?
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Piyush Mehta29:12
You have both options. We've democratized learning; individuals can choose from those 90 skill sets. But we've also built capability through something called AI Guru, which assesses skills and proficiency levels extracted from bios, Genome learning data, and our capability frameworks to recommend learning paths based on roles and business needs. So it's both.
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Bob Goodwin30:01
That makes sense, tied to your internal talent market and identifying gaps. We're about 30 minutes in, and I'd like to move into a couple of other key areas. You speak at conferences and interviews, you're a thought leader in HR and technology. During the pandemic, the world went virtual. You guys grew up natively remote, so that was less of a struggle. But it brought the CHRO next to the CEO every day. For some, that door opened and they ran through it; for others, it's closed again. What advice would you give to CHROs to build on those gains or reenergize?
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Piyush Mehta31:37
I smiled because I see that question often. I'm a bad person to ask because I've always been fortunate. Our business model—being a new industry that grew like gangbusters—meant bringing in the right talent was the single biggest constraint to growth, establishing the talent agenda as a key strategic challenge. Our HR teams never had to discuss having a seat at the table; business loved us and pulled us in. That said, the responsibility for having a seat at the table rests squarely on us as HR practitioners. We need to understand business and solve business challenges. Everything we do should be in service of solving business challenges. For example, in a previous role, I spent six months researching competencies to hire frontline salespeople when two days of internet research would have gotten me 90% of the answer. I could have spent the remaining time building an execution tool. We need to focus on execution and let business needs be the North Star. If you're solving business challenges, business will love you. It's simple—don't preoccupy with having a seat at the table; go help business solve their challenges.
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Bob Goodwin35:35
I agree. Focusing on business is apparently devilishly hard for some. The 'seat at the table' cliché is more a result than an aspiration—if you're contributing and not just policing policies. Do you see AI as a new door to reenergize CHROs who want to orient themselves and their teams more into the business?
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Piyush Mehta36:58
I'd be careful. Advances in technology are a powerful catalyst for moving up the value chain, delivering with speed, and catering to business needs. But it's important to identify scalability and sustainability. Apply AI where it's most effective: employee engagement—like staying in touch with 127,000 employees scalably; training and skilling, which is critical; and hiring—we hire 45,000 employees a year. If we could leverage AI to hire better, faster, and create a better experience, that's a fantastic application. Focus on the right areas for scale.
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Bob Goodwin39:19
I want to move into career advice. When you're hiring or promoting talent, what core qualities or attributes are you looking for?
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Piyush Mehta39:57
Hunger, energy, drive, curiosity. We can teach people pretty much everything else, but we can't teach energy, hunger, drive, or curiosity. If someone doesn't have that, it's a challenge.
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Bob Goodwin40:30
Is that something you intuit, or can you directly interview for it?
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Piyush Mehta40:35
It's both. It's evident from the things a person has done in their career, even earlier, and from conversations. It's not difficult to figure out.
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Bob Goodwin41:05
So let's call that passion. What else do you look for?
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Piyush Mehta41:10
In today's world, the ability to communicate and network is very important. Along with curiosity and passion, it enables learning and contribution. That includes collaboration and the ability to work in teams. Those two become powerful combinations.
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Bob Goodwin41:53
Conversely, what would be huge turnoffs or dealbreakers?
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Piyush Mehta42:06
Entitlement, lack of positive attitude, pessimism, low energy, no drive to learn.
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Bob Goodwin42:27
When speaking with people who feel subject to ageism bias, I say: you can counteract that by bringing energy and showing curiosity and continuous learning. Whether you're 25 or 55, if you bring those qualities, you'll be an attractive candidate.
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Piyush Mehta43:43
Totally agree.
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Bob Goodwin43:49
What's the best career advice you've been given?
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Piyush Mehta43:55
Build deep business acumen. If you want to work in the corporate world, understand business as well as or better than the stakeholders you work with. Simple things: understand a P&L, how the business makes money, how it will grow, and the components of the P&L. Moving up the value chain, understand your clients' P&L and how they make money. Developing deep business acumen is fundamental to success in any corporate role, but especially in HR.
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Bob Goodwin45:23
When reading resumes, people often just list responsibilities. The language of business is numbers. How did you contribute—make money, save money, or mitigate risk? It's shocking how often people can't dimensionalize that.
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Piyush Mehta46:01
Well said.
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Bob Goodwin46:10
Last question: if you could go back and talk to 25-year-old Piyush, with the benefit of hindsight, what counsel would you give?
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Piyush Mehta46:23
I've thought about that. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would do exactly as I've done. I've had opportunities to learn, work with great people, make great mistakes, had people indulge me, and had my share of luck. I wouldn't change anything.
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Bob Goodwin47:07
That's interesting. It's like, do you have any regrets? No. But you described things you've learned that you could communicate: continue learning, take chances, be open to mistakes, learn from them, have mentors, and drive business acumen. Anything to add?
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Piyush Mehta47:45
I wish I had learned to communicate better. The power of being able to communicate one-to-many with a point of view and enable learning through that is huge. I wish I had focused on that earlier.
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Bob Goodwin48:17
Amazing. I knew this would be a home run, and you've exceeded my expectations. Thank you very much. If people want to learn more about Genpact, what's the best way?
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Piyush Mehta48:30
They can go to our website and engage with the organization there. They can follow links and reach out for relevant information.
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Bob Goodwin48:48
Thank you, Piyush. The depth and quality of your insights are built on a track record of performance and execution. These aren't just high-falutin ideas; you've put them into practice at scale and sustainably. I've benefited tremendously, and I hope our viewers and listeners have too. For folks who listened and watched, thank you for your time, and we hope to see you on the next episode of Career Club Live. Thanks, Piyush.
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Piyush Mehta49:19
Thanks, Bob, and thanks for your patience. A disclaimer: if we've given the impression we've solved it all, we haven't. We're on a journey, learning as we go, making mistakes and learning from them. It's a virtuous cycle. If you have thoughts on what we could do differently, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, Bob.
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Bob Goodwin50:00
Thank you. Thanks again, everybody. See you on the next episode.