I joined IBM 15 years ago after a BA degree and an Masters degree from one of the top universities of my home country.
I was contacted by IBM to set up the instructional design vertical for the corporate learning team. I had already served about 5 years in my last organization and was looking to take on a new challenge. I was hired in a week’s time and was given a huge responsibility to enable the entire team on instructional design principles to some of the team members who were much experienced in the Learning and development domain. I got an opportunity to experience and contribute to each learning role – consultant, facilitator, program manager and people manager. I had the opportunity and professional challenge over these years to be part of an epochal change, as said once by former IBM Chairman and CEO Lou Gerstner “we were changing our socks while running.”
Given my passion and enthusiasm to learn and contribute, I was given another big challenge to build a learning solution to transform HR Organization to Strategic business partnering.
From an HR perspective, we were to design a change management intervention to enable HR Professionals to move from an engagement focal to a business advisor and people manager to take on first level employee queries. With the success of India deployment, I was given the opportunity to lead the Philippines transformation. This was my first international experience! This is where I understood the power of creating strong people practices which can be leveraged beyond borders.
I have spent almost two thirds of my professional life as an HR Partner rotating while growing in experience and competencies across different BUs and geographies. I also had a great opportunity to take on Subject Matter expert roles in Learning, Work force partnering, Talent and HR Partner organization.
In this tenure, I moved from regional to Global roles and had an opportunity to work across – Philippines, China, South Africa, Egypt and USA.
A key point in my HR Partner career were two assignment – First my stint in Greater China Group as the Workforce Partner driving Adopt China as an initiative. Secondly, in Software Labs as HR Partner for India Labs as it gave me an opportunity to develop a point of view on people practices and share my learnings by authoring some white papers.
I had my first managerial experience early on with Learning team. After having coached managers for years on PBC aka Checkpoint, the utility of mid-year reviews and the need for non-monetary recognition, it was me on the stage with a dozen direct reports.
When I think of my professional life, I see a lot of learning, many successes and of course some defeats. Every time I have contributed to IBM Clients’ success, I felt gratified. What I learned quite quickly was to rely on colleagues (not HR only) and get advice from their experience and expertise: you never stop learning in IBM. I have had the opportunity to do many jobs in IBM and I have always been ready with my suitcase to take advantage of the opportunities as they arise.