Ms Monica Mudgal, Senior Vice President and Head – Human Resource & Administration, HealthKart interacted with the students of School of Entrepreneurship on 2nd February 2022. From being awarded Femina Women Super achiever award, to being on the hotseat and facing the legendary Amitabh Bachchan in KBC to participating in car rallies- Monika ji has done it all with panache. All this while contributing successfully to the Healthcare HR world. Her session got rapt attention from the audience.
Here are some excerpts:
What can I do to build up my career in Human Resource?
Ms Mudgal emphasized that one should enjoy what they do. Be open minded, focused, and resilient but above all step out of the comfort zone and focus on achieving the goals. She emphasized that one should constantly upgrade one’s skills and network and attend conferences to learn from others too.
“You don’t have to rush, but rather take time to have a holistic understanding of human resource elements and accept to take all the baby steps and soon you will be where you want to be.”
How good or bad is it to change jobs and profiles?
Ms. Mudgal suggested that job hopping is definitely does not reflect stability. She advised that to stay with an organization patiently from two to three years. Infact better opportunities in work was a better reason to change rather than only money.
As an expert in the human resource field, what do you look for when recruiting employees in an Organisation?
Ms. Mudgal emphasized that she used the principle of “ASK”-Attitude, Skills, Knowledge when she made recruitments. According to her each employee owns unique ASK principles. She observed that Attitude was the driving force for any individual. Even the way one used his skills and Knowledge also depended on the attitude. Also, both skills and knowledge could be learnt but one had to develop their attitude. According to her attitude and culture fit was most vital for the organization. She also added that it would be better to focus on the complementary skills not supplementary skills when hiring the team.
Ms Mudgal opined that human resource is the strongest pillar of the organization. Teamwork was an essential ability to be good human resource leader, approachable to all the employees and handled a lot of confidential work of the organization. She said that it was extremely necessary to keep all the employees motivated, pay them well, and ensure that they remain happy.
Ms Mudgal reiterated that in an organizational set up we tend to take the function of HR for granted. Even though it is the most vital function of an organization and the most important pillar that keeps the organization standing strong. However, it is a thankless and most unacknowledged function. HR was a key enabler function and one should join an organization that supports that belief and not treat it merely as a support function.
She wished the students best and encouraged them to take up many challenges in life to learn the most. We look forward to many more such interactions.
Namayanja Bernadette Claire and Kunal Goyal
School of Entrepreneurship, Rishihood University
