Transforming Schools, Shaping Cultures: Abhilasha Deshmukh (Group HR Director at Global Schools Group)

Abhilasha Deshmukh: Now, the biggest challenge here was about acquiring schools. So when you acquire, it's not easy. So the challenge is you're in different locations, you're in new countries, you're in new locations, you don't know anything about them. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And what did we learn out of it?

We realized it's not just about systems and processes, but largely about people. You know, It's largely about how we're going to integrate into these cultures, into these countries, which are so unknown for us, and we are very unknown to them as well. Abhilasha Deshmukh: One of the biggest learnings out of it for us very early on was to put the right team in place. So we designed the right team of integration experts who knew how to build upon their relationship with these countries and, really bring in those synergies and then build those integrations.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: And even more so than that, our biggest learning was when you learn to listen, so when you are a group, you call yourselves a group, and then you are acquiring somebody. If you go with an intention that you know it all, growth is not gonna happen. Dorothy Yiu: Welcome to the HR Impact Show, where we have honest conversations with people leaders about building great workplaces. I'm your host, Dorothy Yiu, CEO, and co-founder of EngageRocket.

EngageRocket is a HR technology and advisory company that helps organizations improve employee experience from hire to retire. Today our guest is Abhilasha Deshmukh. She is the group HR director at Global Schools Group. Where she leads people and culture across 67 campuses, 12 school brands in 11 countries.

We'll dive deeper into her journey as a certified coach, as well as a HR leader within the education space. Abhilasha, welcome to the show. We've talked about doing this for almost a year, and I'm so glad we are finally here. And of course, to me, beyond being a longtime client of EngageRocket, and I feel like you're a personal friend just because of how many years we've worked together.

But for the benefit of our audience who may not be familiar with you, tell us more about yourself and your journey in HR. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Thank you Dorothy. As you said, we've been speaking about this for such a long time and I'm really excited to be here today. My journey, so I was a Bachelor of Commerce.

When I did my education, as a part of my graduation, we were doing internship within a company to really get an exposure to different departments. Abhilasha Deshmukh: I think very early on when I saw what Human Resources does and the impact they create, it resonated very well with me and I was very clear I wanted to take this as my profession. So I then jumped into my masters in human Resource Management. Completed that.

And the first 10 years of my initial journey was with larger organizations in the IT sector, in ITES and then of course, professional services. I worked with one of the big fours and I think those were great years to build foundations of really understanding the entire people lifecycle management. So had a great space of really building my career there. Moved to Singapore.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: My journey with my current organization at Global Schools Group was accidental, but I would call that phase of my life discovery phase, right? I was offered this role and as I got into my interview conversations, I actually came back and told my husband. You know what, who works for a school? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I'm possibly gonna leave this company in the next six months.

And here I am. It's been 10 years. Amazing journey of as I said, discovery. And this discovery was largely around two aspects.

One. Professionally, I discovered myself as a leader, the entrepreneurial side of HR, if I may call it, because I was a part of a smaller organization, which pretty much had very little bit of human resources, department even existing. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And then the other side was about meaning making and purpose, you know, a clear resignation of what we do at our schools. So the Global Schools group today is in 11 different countries.

We have 12 different brands. We have 65 campuses, and as we speak, we actually launched two campuses last week. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So we are at 67 campuses and 5,500 employees. So that's a big scale and I feel really fortunate to be a part of this whole journey of growth and what we do here.

Because what's more meaningful really is that we keep our students at the center of everything we do. So for me, my scope is not just limited to what we do with our employees, our educators, but it's much more and beyond that. This clear resonation of purpose has brought me here and it's been a wonderful journey being here. Dorothy Yiu: Oh, listening to you really resonates with me because we literally watch Global Schools Group grow and grow and grow through the years.

This is a very exciting topic because as the company grow at this kind of pace, which is a really fast pace. How did you manage the complexity that not just comes with the pace of change, right? But also the diversity that came with that growth. Dorothy Yiu: Because obviously Global Schools Group kept expanding to different countries and different countries means different style of education, different systems to put in place.

So tell us more about some of those challenges and as a HR leader, what are some of the things that you needed to do along this growth? Abhilasha Deshmukh: As you said there were really big challenges and as I look back at this tenure journey, many challenges are coming up, but I'm gonna pick up a few. And while I'm gonna address these challenges, I think what I wanna focus on is what was the challenge and what did we learn out of it. Our biggest challenge was obviously growth.

When we started off, we were, I remember I joined and we were just two brands. We were about 600 employees and we were based out in five different countries. Very early on, we were actually seen as a mid-size organization within education, which as an industry was also enhancing was, really finding its true place. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And we realized our potential to grow.

There are a lot of independent private schools that are available, but there were very few groups of schools. So we could see that potential and we really embarked on that journey of growth. We were acquiring schools, we were launching our own new brands, and suddenly, you know, as you said, Dorothy, we were like 600, 2,500, and then we jumped into 5,500. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So that was a big leap that we entered into.

Now, the biggest challenge here was about acquiring schools. So when you acquire, it's not easy. So the challenge is you're in different locations, you're in new countries, you're in new locations, you don't know anything about them. So that was a challenge.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: And then what did we learn out of it? So very early on, while we were doing these acquisitions, we realized it's not just about systems and processes. Largely about people. It's largely about how we're going to integrate into these cultures, into these countries, which are so unknown for us, and we are very unknown to them as well.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: One of the biggest learnings out of it for us very early on was to put the right team in place. So we really designed the right team of integration experts who knew how to build upon their relationship with these countries and, really bring in those synergies and then build those integrations. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And even more so than that, our biggest learning was really when you learn to listen, right? So when you are a group, you call yourselves a group, and then you are acquiring somebody.

If you go with an intention that you know it all, growth is not gonna happen. So I think through our journey, we also realized that some of these schools have so much to learn from them, and that was exceptional for us because we were then actually having all of these new schools onboarded and learning something from each one of them. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So I think that was exceptionally challenging, yet so much of discovery that we ended up with. And the other aspect which also brought us to a big question, was who are we?

We are calling ourselves a group of schools. We have various curriculums. We are operating in various countries. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Diversity, we have more than 70 plus nationalities, as a part of our group now.

And that really brought us, and from an HR point of view as you asked, we really then went back to basics on a drawing board to say, what is our purpose? And there we did a very deep purpose study to really get into the depth. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We looked at competition, we looked at how the big brands actually are big the way they are. We looked at IBM, we looked at Apple, we looked at many of these organizations and what they were doing.

And then if we want to be in that top-notch segment, what do we stand for? Who are we? Abhilasha Deshmukh: So that was a very deep question, deep study. We all got involved in research, we got involved into really knowing what our value proposition really looked at.

And we beautifully realized a purpose statement is all about, being a global, interconnected community which basically thrives on learning, through scale diversity. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So we are very unique. Look at a lot of other groups of schools, they're pretty much in the same region. But here we have a diverse group of people in different regions, different nationalities, how we are all going to get together as a community to learn and grow together.

So I think these were two big challenges yet learnings that we really went through in our journey of growth. Many more to talk about, but I think I'll stop at these two for now. Dorothy Yiu: Just so our listeners can really appreciate the span of this 11 countries. Could you name them so they can understand how diverse they are.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: Sure. So we are based out in Singapore. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We have two big international brands here. We are operating five campuses within Singapore.

We have the Global Indian International School, the One World International School. Then we are operating in Malaysia with two brands. Similarly in Cambodia, Philippines. We have Japan, Korea.

Japan and Korea are really growing very well for us. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We have India. India has more than 20 campuses now, three big brands, and we have a large population, based out in India. And then of course we have UAE, we have Dubai, Abu Dhabi, now Riyadh, which is again a journey, a space for growth.

We also have schools in the UK. So the span is really across so many different countries and I've truly enjoyed learning about these new cultures, building an overarching culture for ourselves, which is very collaborative, community based, where we all learn and grow together. Dorothy Yiu: And you spoke about unifying that purpose, giving everybody sort of like a single point where they can, understand as a group what do you stand for. Dorothy Yiu: But beyond that, how do you actually ensure global consistency but yet still enable some flexibility and autonomy in all these different, it's not just countries, but also different brands and different campuses?

Abhilasha Deshmukh: Wonderful question. And I think we were very clear, when you are operating schools in a particular country or a region, you have to give utmost importance to the fact that, you're operating for the parents and students of that country. So that becomes your top-notch priority. And now what we have realized is that for these schools to be a part of our group is basically more of a strategic partnership, where we are supporting them with everything they've almost missed, right?

So our priorities are always about the localized culture, the localized needs, and then we top up with a lot of digital innovation that we have done, process orientation. Very beautifully, we've really merged these two aspects of really giving utmost importance to our parents and our students and the local, regional cultural sensitivities that we have within those spaces. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And then supporting from a group perspective on the best practices, and then elevating these schools to a different level.

Dorothy Yiu: What's the biggest difference that surprised you across the different countries? Abhilasha Deshmukh: We operate in different curriculums. We operate in very different regions and their needs are very different. I'll give you some examples.

Like we had one of these schools in Cambodia, which that school specializes in special needs. We very early on realize, running a school for special needs is so different because it has such different demands and different kinds of teachers that you need to run that. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We had a great expert there who's managing that curriculum. And then when we actually started understanding that, we realized the potential of really optimizing that knowledge into some of our other schools.

Because we are a pretty much of an inclusive school everywhere and so in some of our other schools, we have maybe a smaller number of students who have special needs. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And this team was then able to help some of our academic heads in various regions, train them, build up a curriculum for them. And I think that itself was wonderful space for us to see how within this group, now we are leveraging learning to a different level, right? So people are benefiting out of each other and learning from each other in different regions.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: So I think every country now has its own sense. And I'm also now seeing globally, people want to sustain their cultures. Like in Japan, in South Korea, in India, maybe they want their local languages to be used. They want their children to understand the cultural sensitivities.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: So we have this beauty of really plug and playing anything that we want to if there's a demand in any other region. Dorothy Yiu: Well, first of all, as a mother of a child with special needs, thank you for doing that. And second of all, you know what I love about everything you've shared so far is just this very strong focus that Global Schools Group has in terms of almost pulling out best practices. Dorothy Yiu: You don't just look at all the gaps and things that needs to be fixed.

You look at good things that can be pulled out from a specific school, from a specific region and then sharing it across the entire group. And that's something that I think is worth celebrating. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Yes. Thank you so much.

And I think we are doing a fantastic job in that area because we have a full fledge professional development department, which is day and night working on these aspects of, as you said, there are gaps. It's all about understanding those gaps and fixing them very quickly within the community so we don't even sometimes have to go outside. It also excites people. We've realized suddenly this potential of a great sense of people who want to contribute more and more beyond their jobs.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: They want to contribute in others' learning. Of course, we are using a lot of technology also now to support that. But I think it's working beautifully well for us within the group segment to be able to collaboratively learn and grow together. Dorothy Yiu: So last question before we move on from this topic.

My question is what is one initiative that you're really proud of? That really helped elevate the employees experience across all these 11 countries? Abhilasha Deshmukh: Again, a wonderful question. Abhilasha Deshmukh: When you are operating in so many different regions, sitting at a group strategic level.

It's very difficult to create a connection and I think it's so important for us to really build those connections. So I think two big successes we've had in the last two to three years. The first couple of years was grappling with this new growth that was happening, structures, processes, et cetera. But then when we did our entire purpose study, what really came out of that is now we know what is the purpose.

Now, how do we align this purpose with people, with every individual in the organization? Abhilasha Deshmukh: Because if there isn't any alignment, you know you're not gonna achieve that goal or purpose that you have as an organization. Let me first talk about the town halls that we did. So we had this purpose.

We were very clear of, how we are as a group and many people, for example, educators in smaller countries like Cambodia or maybe, India didn't even know what Global School Group is all about. So we then really spanned out these presentations that we wanted to really make. And more than presentations. These were sessions of connections.

We leveraged our EngageRocket tool to firstly understand what are people looking for, what do they need? Abhilasha Deshmukh: And then we also had this whole purpose statement. We had a purpose presentation ready to go back and tell them, look, this is what we stand for and how does it resonate with you? How can we help you out there?

So I think it's the last one year I've exhaustively traveled, tried to build those connections in. Abhilasha Deshmukh: I can't even tell you individually and even professionally, it's been a fantastic experience, to be there with people, talking to them, listening to them, learning from them so much. When we went in, we went very traditionally in a presentation mode. And then we very quickly changed our strategy to say that no, we wanted to be a collaborative learning.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: We wanted to get these people ready. So every campus, every individual, every employee attended these sessions. They made a difference. They spoke.

We also took the country leadership there to really understand what's happening at the ground level. So I think that's one big success we've really had in the last couple of years. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And the other side, of course, is about. We've been able to really digitize our entire of performance development review.

Our schools have been working in absolute administrative manual processes. It wasn't easy. For educators performance review, a developmental review sometimes is not something that comes very naturally. So me and my team along with a lot of educators, we got into a lot of research to understand how can we build a practice and a system to really support this.

So that's been a huge win. We've now onboarded 67 campuses onto our platform. We have kicked off all the reviews and we are hearing such amazing responses from people because from a place of being scared about why do they want to know about us. Now they've moved into a space to say, I own this.

I own my growth. I own my experience in the organization because from a manual to a digitized process, it was a big journey for them. Abhilasha Deshmukh: And, again, I traveled and I wanted to hear from people what they felt about it. It's just been exceptional for us.

So I think we've really stepped into a zone of creating this entire employee experience for everybody. So it's equal. It's the same for everyone, and that's what I think has been a big success for us. Dorothy Yiu: Everything you've said so far, what I most love about it is you really bring the business perspective which makes you a very distinguished HR leader because you go beyond your domain and you really at the core of it, understand what the group is doing, what the business is doing, and then you enable it through HR.

Dorothy Yiu: And that's what I really appreciate about you. And then beyond all of that, you are also a certified coach, so let's talk about that. So how has that new knowledge actually changed you as a leader? Abhilasha Deshmukh: Wow.

Dorothy, we spoke about my journey of discovery with my purpose, my professional purpose and then I think in around COVID 2020 is my second level of journey of discovering myself as a coach, as in my professional journey of wanting to hone my leadership skills. It actually started with, I wanted to really elevate my leadership style. Abhilasha Deshmukh: I was trying to network and talk to people. Heard a little bit about coaching and try to figure out something and I started reading a lot about it and I got very interested and I'm like, look, this makes so much more sense.

I work in a leadership role. I have my team, I have so many stakeholders to manage in different regions. Abhilasha Deshmukh: How can I elevate myself? And that's how that journey started.

I've been really lucky to have amazing mentors through this journey. And have a practice ground. So I've largely used my coaching into my own role. I started my journey with Jean Balfour and her coaching, and it was wonderful.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: I did my ACC. I did my PCC, I got certified and I haven't stopped at that. So it's continuous learning for me from there on. So this year I started on even elevating my journey where we talk about, I've done this course with Saba, which is about BDMM, and it brings about connections of coaching with your past, so it's about neurosciences, psychology.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: I think I find myself very lucky to have been living a very purposeful professional life and a personal space of really enjoying. Coaching for me is a calming space is a space which I really love to read about, learn about, and I use a lot of these techniques now into my day-to-day life in, listening to people, active listening, no judgements, and that's what builds connections. As I said, I've, I'm very passionate about coaching again, and I've even now brought it into my organization at different levels and I can see that true appreciation for it at different levels.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: Yeah, that's a little bit about my initiation in this journey. It's been a five year journey and I'm gonna continue that for life for sure. Dorothy Yiu: So you've once written that's sometimes the bravest thing an employee can do is just to raise their hand and say, I need help. And that's easy to say, right?

Dorothy Yiu: But how do you create a psychological safety or an environment where employees feel like they can actually raise their hand and say, help? Or how do you coach leaders to create that within the team environment? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I've been actually sitting with this aspect, Dorothy, for almost about one, one and a half year because again, when you grow and when it's about scale to 5,500 employees. And look.

For us, our journey is not about 5,500 employees. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We are talking about 45,000 students, who have to have a very safe and secure place. And we as a group, as a school, we take our safety and safeguarding very seriously for our students. While we've been developing so many things around safety, safeguarding wellbeing, mental health for our students, it automatically then also translates into a lot of programs for educators within different regions.

Through my journey of connections, through townhouses and when I was visiting these places, and I'm not trying to really compartmentalize this and under gender, when I used to have so many conversations, I realized many people actually struggle to ask for help, and it's so important. And maybe men in particular really find it very challenging into my coaching conversations as well I realized. And I'm like, why is it we've at the organization level now, really worked very hard to create those spaces of this safety.

So you know, people want to come and talk to me, they wanna talk to somebody else, a completely neutral party. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We have created many avenues around that. We have a whistleblower policy where people can come with something very silly or something very serious, and we take it very, very seriously. Everything that comes up to us is extremely taken very seriously, and we take action on that.

So we wanted to really create that network one at a group level, at a campus level, at a school level to really build that up. Abhilasha Deshmukh: But I think when I posted something like that, I really wanted to reach out and tell people that sometimes it's just as easy as asking for help. It is not so difficult. And largely, I figured this out through my coaching where I felt that, when a person feels more comfortable.

It's easier for them to ask for that help. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So it was more of a call out to the world to say that, sometimes just using that one word can mean so much to you and you won't believe there'll be a community of people who will come out there to help you out. So it was, I think, a little bit of deep resonation and understanding through my coaching as well as this entire practice we've now tried to build around psychological safety and wellbeing of our educators, of our employees and our students within the group.

Dorothy Yiu: At the core of connection. Dorothy Yiu: And when we think about the workplace, as a topic like employee engagement that EngageRocket is all about. The role of the manager is so important. So how can HR or maybe even leaders of organization bring that coaching mindset, through all levels of the organization so that even in our daily work, my manager is also adopting some of those coaching practices to create not just that psychological safety for me, but the connection that you spoke about.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: I'll share my own story, so when I learned the benefits of coaching and I was just in such a happy zone with it. came back and I said, you know what? I want to make this transformation in my company. Where do I start?

And I was like, okay, let me start from the top. And then I was confusing myself. Then, it just hit me that you don't have to overthink this. This is something that people are gonna love anyway, so then I worked with my professional development team and I said, you know what?

Let's just break this at different levels. So we started doing some purely high level programs for our leaders. Abhilasha Deshmukh: For our new managers and where we could really create a great impact, Dorothy, was those middle level managers. New managers, middle level managers who actually have the largest span of control.

They're possibly looking at 20 to 30 teachers dealing with them day to day. And an educator's job is very tiring. Abhilasha Deshmukh: It's not an easy job to take care of so many students at one go. It's a very giving job, so it becomes then more and more important for us to really develop our center level leaders to really equip them with these techniques and skills to really deliver and work with these educators, to give them that space of really feeling valued, feeling happy, and wanting to do their jobs well.

So we've really done a fantastic job with our middle leaders. We are doing different programs with our senior leaders at different steps. We are making a coaching culture continuous in our organization. It could be a snippet, it could be a full day program, it could be a two year, two hour program.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: And more and more, now I'm seeing people getting interested in it, wanting to join these programs. So we have platforms where we have some courses available, we are then doing some interventions of ensuring that there's team coaching that's happening. So I would say don't have to think so much. Start small, and it'll automatically grow to a different level.

Dorothy Yiu: So we ask this of all of our podcast guests, if you would imagine the ideal workplace of the future, what would that look like to you? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I think as we are heading into the ideal workplace, from an organization point of view, an employee point of view, I think there are two or three big things which are gonna matter. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So one is you have to enable technology, so it could be AI and we have really benefited from AI in different ways.

Maybe I'll touch upon that a little bit as well. So you have to be future ready for that. The second big thing I think is about the learning interventions that you're doing. Abhilasha Deshmukh: So how are we truly ensuring that people are getting ready.

Because it's a very fast growing space. Things are changing all the time. So you have to be ready to learn a new skill, do something different, do something more. Getting ready for that is very important.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: And then the overarching thing, which is most important, is building that purpose. I think I'm a big advocate of the fact that every organization has to create a purpose and then work on that alignment of that purpose with every individual who works in that organization. So the future is I think creating a great employee experience, empowering people, giving them a safe space and giving them that authority to take ownership of their own growth within the organization.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: So I feel these are really high level things, which will be very important for the future. Dorothy Yiu: So let's circle back. Tell us more about what are some of the exciting trends we're seeing in the education space? You talked about AI.

How is AI being adopted right now in the schools? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I think for us, AI is a big enabler, right? Abhilasha Deshmukh: So if you want to be relevant in this world, you have to adapt away. I've had the opportunity in this organization to work with really visionary people like my chairman.

He's a true visionary when it comes to technology and his vision of how he looks at education for future. Abhilasha Deshmukh: It's just amazing on how we are developing, researching. We have a whole dedicated team right now, which is doing hardcore research to see how AI can be embedded into our platform and into our systems to support data insights. The largest issue for us in schools is basically the administrative workload.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: And I'm sure many organizations go through this. There's so much of paperwork. We are associated with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labor. There are so many basic administrative work they expect us to do.

I think AI can play a such a big enablement role to really manage that bit so that everybody can then think strategic, so be it HR, be it my educators. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Everybody's really so much more looking forward to the AI enablement. We've already started in a big way and we are looking forward to that. And there is a new implementation that's happening every two months, three months for all of us.

Abhilasha Deshmukh: So that's like truly exciting for us. So that's one big trend in education. We have to be relevant and we have to build, enable AI in that sense. The second bit is a curriculum building.

I think the world is now moving out of old academics and is moving into holistic education, which includes sports, it includes even basic values of resilience, collaboration, it's all about collaborative learning. I see my own children today not wanting to learn in isolation, but learn together. So these are such amazing trends that are happening across the world, and again, we want to be at the best and we are building our curriculums in that way to ensure that, our students get the best possible holistic education in a diverse environment 'cause we are truly international and a diverse form of schools.

And then of course, the last bit, which is again, very important for the world today, is about wellbeing and sustainability. We are investing a lot of knowledge for our students early on to understand what sustainability looks like. Abhilasha Deshmukh: We are embedding these aspects into our curriculum now. So lots more to speak about, but I think these three things are something that we are, as an organization, investing in into our curriculums into technology and AI.

And I think there's absolutely no fear around that. AI is going to benefit education with personalization, and that's gonna be a game changer for us. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Our teams are researching around how can AI support. Every student's needs are different.

You cannot expect a teacher in a classroom to do that for everybody. So AI is gonna enable this teacher to help with personalization. So that personalization for our students, for my educators, for my teachers and my employees is so important. Dorothy Yiu: Yeah, I think the possibility of AI is just really endless, and I think the accuracy of AI is just gonna get better and better, especially when it comes to personalization.

Okay, so now I'm gonna move on to some fun questions. Dorothy Yiu: We have a rapid fire question segment. My first question would be, if you weren't in HR, what career do you think you'll be in? Abhilasha Deshmukh: Wow, brilliant question.

Maybe, Dorothy, 20 years ago, if you'd asked me this, I wanted to be in fashion. Maybe a designer, a model, something around that. But times change and things change. Abhilasha Deshmukh: I think I'm very close to having a clarity of eventually having my own coaching career.

As I said, it resonates so deeply with my purpose of wanting to help people. Yeah, that's where I'll be eventually at some point of time. Dorothy Yiu: Amazing. So on that related note, what is one leadership lesson you keep coming back to?

Abhilasha Deshmukh: Hmm. The biggest leadership lesson, which I think is also a life lesson, is stay humble and stay curious. If you want to be relevant and if you want to be respected, you have to keep reminding yourself to stay humble and stay curious. It's a very simple lesson for me, which I keep reminding myself all the time.

Dorothy Yiu: Next one. I wanna laugh at this question because I feel like I know your answer, but coffee, tea, or something else that fuels your day? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I was never a coffee person until I went and lived in Australia. So, in an ideal world, I start my day with coffee and end with wine.

Dorothy Yiu: And ideally, Australian coffee. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Australian coffee, and an Australian wine. Dorothy Yiu: And red wine. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Red wine.

Absolutely. Dorothy Yiu: And last one is, what's one underrated skill every future HR leader? Abhilasha Deshmukh: I'm gonna answer that question in two segments. So one is the soft skill.

We spoke about curiosity. You know, I think to be relevant now, it's so important to keep learning all the time. So be curious. Humility.

We spoke about humility, authenticity. I think these are very important skills that HR leaders need to have. But what's even more important, I think, is having a clear understanding of your business. Being a true business partner, understanding your business.

Financial literacy. My own experiences, I used to run away from it, but if you don't have that understanding of business and what your revenue targets look like, you can never align your people goals to what those targets look like. So I think these are very, very critical skills all HR leaders should really carry with themselves. Dorothy Yiu: Abhilasha, it's been an absolute pleasure.

You know, after talking about doing this for years, I'm so glad we finally had the opportunity to chat on this podcast. Thank you so much for your time. Abhilasha Deshmukh: Thank you so much, Dorothy. I've really enjoyed speaking to you today.

Thank you. Dorothy Yiu: To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to our HR Impact Show. If you have enjoyed the conversation, please like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcasts. You can also subscribe to our community at engagerocket.

co/hrimpact. I'll see you in the next episode.