Ashima Kapur

▶0:00HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Ashima to the Built By People Podcast. Ashima, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:50GuestThank you for having me. My career journey started with doing a master's in psychology. I thought I was going to become a psychologist. Did that for about 6 months and then decided that I wanted to do something different. That was when a lot of corporations were looking at people with a psychology background to bring them into what used to be called the personnel department at that point, to help with things like motivating people, job satisfaction analysis, et cetera. So that's how I started my journey in HR. I've grown from there. I worked in India for some time before I moved to the US after I got married. I've worked for search firms. I've done cold calling, hated it, by the way, but I have grown into the profession starting as a technical recruiter. And now I lead the people function for an insurance financial services company with about 2,000 employees.

▶1:54HostAshma, I'm curious to get your perspective on how you approach people development in a way that ensures both individual growth and organizational success.

▶2:05GuestWhen done, those two are not mutually exclusive. I think at the end of the day, an organization is successful when people are connected to and buy into the objectives of the organization. And people are successful when the organization is committed to growing and developing them, making sure that communication is open, making sure that there's tools and resources available. The company is always looking for strong— any company, our company for sure, is always looking for strong leaders at every single level. Employees are also always looking for organizations that are willing to invest in their development. At the end of the day, though, there is a shared accountability. An employee cannot look at development and say, it's all of company's responsibility. They are the only ones that have to give me the tools and resources. Because we can give all the tools and resources to the employees. If they don't want to do anything with that information or with those resources, then their growth is only as limited as the company can take them. The same thing for an employee. If an employee is looking for opportunities, but the organization does not have those tools and resources available, it's not going to go too far. We've seen it work in our company. We've been committed to development at every level of the employee, and we continue to grow from within. Just in 2024, we had out of about 2,000 employees, we had about 155 promotions. We've done succession planning, and most of our succession planning candidates have come from within. But it is because you start early, you— and you look at it as a mutually inclusive approach, not an exclusive approach.

▶4:02HostWhat strategies have you found most effective in building and maintaining a strong employer brand through community engagement?

▶4:11GuestI think the biggest one is employee involvement. We've always been very active in the community, but a few years ago, we actually decided to formalize our approach. And to do that, we started with a community engagement survey. We asked our employees for their feedback. We listened to what they had based on what they were saying they were connected to. We built or stood up 4 areas that align with the business objectives, our values, and what the employees were asking for. So that— those are our 4 funding priorities. We've built our community involvement based on those funding priorities, which ultimately tie to the business objectives and our core values. And because the employees have been involved in this from the very beginning, we ask them to give us feedback every year. We ask them to get involved in volunteer activities. I think all of that collectively has gotten us to where we are today, where our employees are significantly engaged. And our communities recognize us as a strong community partner.

▶5:16HostAshima, how do you measure the success and impact of your community engagement initiatives on your employer brand?

▶5:23GuestTwo or three different things. I talked about an annual employee survey. It's important to us to know that our employees continue to be committed and they see value in something that they're participating in. So that annual survey gives us the feedback on the pulse of the employees, how they are feeling. We also do company-wide organized activities, and based on the feedback, we make adjustments. We have some significant partners through our funding priorities. We're connected to United Way, Red Cross, the Penn Fit Foundation, Children's Miracle Network, just to name a few. We're constantly getting feedback from them on all of those things too.

▶6:04HostIn your experience, what are the key elements of a successful leadership development and succession planning program?

▶6:11GuestI mean, at its core, it's the people. I talked about the values. It's important that the employees understand and are tied into the objectives of the company, right? I'm a firm believer in a line of sight at every level of the organization. It's only when everyone is clear on what the company is trying to achieve and how they can contribute to that achievement Do you get the true level of employee development, leadership development, which automatically, when done right, can lead to succession planning? We've never thought of succession planning as an approach to replacing someone. We've always thought of succession planning as an approach that comes from wanting to grow everybody. If we start with a strong bench strength, knowing that every individual may not rise to that next level, but we're building that bench strength, then we know that we have a number of people that will be ready to take on future roles whenever that becomes available. I'll give you an example. We recently had a couple of our executives leave, and this is succession planning at the highest level in the company. They were retiring. We started the process for their replacement about 3, 4 years before they were going to retire. And when I say that, I mean that was when we started identifying potential people that could take that role. The bench strength for those people started like 10, 15 years ago when these people joined the company. As people join the company, if you can look at their strengths, if you can build on their strengths, if you can continue to grow and develop them, then when it comes to a point where somebody's getting ready to retire, you have a very strong pool of people that you can automatically fit into those roles.

▶8:00HostAshima, how do you balance maintaining company culture while scaling people development programs across your organization?

▶8:07GuestIt's tied to the core values as a company. Our core values, we have 6 of them. It's innovation, mindfulness, passion, achievement, community, and teamwork. Collectively, they form the acronym IMPACT, and that's intentional. What we're trying to do is say, when we work together, we believe that we make the biggest impact in, in an employee's life, in the community, and for the company's objectives. For us, culture is about living those values, behaving in ways that, that exemplify those values with our clients, our employees, everybody. And people development is, we use the same approach for people development also. Hire the right person, make sure you give them the tools and the resources that they need to be able to do their job well, and give them the opportunity to grow and explore other opportunities. And that will automatically lead you to further development of the people.

▶9:08HostWhat parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶9:12GuestI think my biggest advice is take initiative, own what you're doing. It's a two-way street. As a company, yes, the company's always responsible for making sure that we give all the right opportunities and the tools and the resources to the employees. But again, you have to be willing to take the initiative and own your own future success. Within the company. You have to be committed to doing what is needed today, but also stay focused on how you can continue to grow and expand your responsibilities.

▶9:44HostAshima, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶9:49GuestThank you for having me.