The future of HR: Lessons from Metro’s human resources director

In this podcast, Heidrick & Struggles’ Claudia Schneider speaks to Sangeeta Pandey, human resources director of the Convenience Cluster at Metro, a leading international wholesale company headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany. Pandey shares how she experienced leadership in an uncertain and fast-moving crisis and emphasizes how critical developing the right people is for the future success of every company. She further touches upon the importance of being transparent about gender goals for all hierarchy levels within a company.

Some questions answered in this episode include the following:

• (2:38) What leadership skills have been essential for you and your team in order to thrive?
• (5:03) What is your advice to attract, retain, and develop talent? And to what extent is Metro working virtually or in a hybrid setting and how has that changed the talent proposition?
• (6:45) What advice would you give companies that are seeking to increase the diversity of their workforce?
• (8:07) What does the future of HR look like to support this rapid evolution in business?
• (11:29) What's the most important way Metro is building on the lessons of 2020?

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to the Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services. Diversity and inclusion, leading through tumultuous times, and building thriving teams and organizations are among the core issues we talk with leaders about every day, including in our podcasts. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Claudia Schneider: Hi, I'm Claudia Schneider, principle at Heidrick & Struggles and a member of the Corporate Officers Practice. In today’s podcast, I'm talking to Sangeeta Pandey, human resources director of the Convenience Cluster at Metro, a leading international wholesale company headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany. Sangeeta joined Metro in 2018, after a few years as global head of talent at AkzoNobel, a global chemical company headquartered in The Netherlands. Before that, she had senior HR positions at Mahindra and Xerox. Sangeeta, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

Sangeeta Pandey: Claudia, thank you for having me here.

Claudia Schneider: Sangeeta, you have worked in different industries in your career. How has this differentiation helped you develop as a leader?

Sangeeta Pandey: Honestly, I never started out saying that this path was the one I would take. But whenever an interesting opportunity came up, I never said no. The more challenging and different the better. I also pressure-tested myself when moving to different industries and geographies across the world. The pro is that once you have established your presence [across industries], your credibility is recognized, and you can initiate change or transformation. The con is that you will find yourself an outsider for a long-ish time, and the road is lonely. A whole lot of effort is required from your side to understand the cultures of the organization and country [you find yourself in], and to be sensitive when bringing your thoughts into the existing paradigm. Basically, the journey is not easy. You need to have patience and a lot of resilience. However, the sense of connecting people within the company to the outcomes that you're trying to drive is priceless and worth all the effort. That's really what gets me out of bed every day in the morning.

Claudia Schneider: Leaders who are able to be flexible and adapt have navigated through the pandemic with more ease, right? What leadership skills have been essential for you and your team in order to thrive?

Sangeeta Pandey: I must say that I have experienced my share of economic downturns, disasters—both natural and manmade—and general business hiccups. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique crisis for businesses, but some leadership tactics remain the same.

Leadership in an uncertain, fast-moving crisis means making yourself available to feel what it is like to be in another’s shoes—basically, to lead with empathy. Keeping this in mind, I think the following have been the four main lessons for me, my country HR leads, and the team in corporate. First, act with urgency. The risks of delaying decision making are often invisible but, in a crisis, wasting vital time in the vain hope that greater clarity will prove that no action is needed can be very dangerous. Managing our warehouses, distribution centers, and stores required us to think on our feet. Roles and government orders changed from night to day in different countries. The second lesson is to communicate with transparency. Provide an honest and accurate description of reality, being as clear as humanly possible about what you know and what you don't know, what you can anticipate, and what that means for employees at large. Three, be empathic. How one responds to mistakes or slip-ups is just as important as addressing the crisis. Four, engage. Because of the pandemic, working from home happened much more than in any other time that we've seen. Constant updates, we found, were very, very useful.  Being an essential industry, we still had to function. So, we had to learn through events as information came to light.

Claudia Schneider: That's great advice, Sangeeta.

Having the right people on staff is critical for the future success of every company. What is your advice to attract, retain, and develop talent? And to what extent is Metro working virtually or in a hybrid setting and how has that changed the talent proposition?

Sangeeta Pandey: Very good question, Claudia. We do believe that the future of work will have more and more space for hybrid or virtual types of working standards, and we would love to integrate them into our modus operandi. Being a wholesaler and a market leader, Metro puts a lot of attention toward building trustworthy relationships among its customers, peers, and employees. This also has a lot to do with one of our guiding principles: power of relationships. Our field force and stores and platform colleagues constantly work in direct contact with our customers, respecting all hygienic standards required in each of our markets, and using both direct and indirect forms of communication including mobile devices and virtual as well as physical contact. We believe in the team’s efficiency and respect all local legal obligations; we offer digital tools that support most efficient ways of working depending on a person’s role and mission; and we believe that workforce mobility will drive this proposition even further in some parts of our organization.

Claudia Schneider: Sangeeta, what advice would you give companies that are seeking to increase the diversity of their workforce?

Sangeeta Pandey: This is interesting. A little background: I started my career as a management trainee with an oil and gas company; my first posting was in a lubricant instillation. I was the first female manager that that instillation had seen on the shop floor. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that the shop floor of the manufacturing facility was not really [a good place] for a woman at that time. But I had enough grit to hang in there and make some changes along with the instillation manager, who was a great guy.

I truly believe that we can only close the gender gap if we make the inclusion of women real—and what do I mean by that? Let’s be transparent about our organization’s gender goals for all levels of hierarchy, as well as functions. And these goals need to be beyond just measuring percentages. We keep our promises, hold leaders accountable for our targets and developing talent, and make sure that we have inclusive and progressive policies in every part of the geography and, most importantly, functions.

Claudia Schneider: The pandemic has accelerated the rate of change and transformation in business, as seen, for example, in the approach to hybrid working and the rapid adoption of technical and digital tools. In your opinion, Sangeeta, what does the future of HR look like to support this rapid evolution in business?

Sangeeta Pandey: The future will for sure be full of new opportunities and territories and will require more skills like digital and understanding technology, as well as an understanding of consumers. Overall knowledge of human behavior and megatrends will be needed. The new normal and rapidly growing skills gap means that reskilling efforts must be transformational and not business as usual or piecemeal. To drive and facilitate these people initiatives, HR must walk the talk. The pandemic has accentuated the urgent need for a more dynamic talent and work model. I read somewhere that future-ready companies shared three characteristics: one, they know what they are and what they stand for; two, they operate with a fixation on speed and simplicity; and three, they, as a group, are scaling up their ability to learn and innovate. HR can propel this transformation by facilitating positive change in these three key areas. Chief people officers will also play a vital role in clarifying and living the organization’s purpose, values, and culture. HR needs to be resilient and find ways to support business in a more agile way.

As we move toward the organization of tomorrow, lessons from the experiences of the pandemic have provided an opportunity for HR to accelerate its shift from a service to a strategic function, helping to shape a more dynamic organization that is ready to meet the post-crisis future.

Claudia Schneider: Excellent. Summing up, Sangeeta, how would you describe what it’s like to be an HR leader today?

Sangeeta Pandey: To be an HR leader is much more than just being a people person. An effective HR leader needs to have a unique balance of compassion, technological knowhow, business acumen, and legal knowledge. He or she needs to be close to the business. And, in my opinion, the time has come for HR professionals to be brave in order to successfully take a cross-functional jump and understand the numbers. [If that happens,] I firmly believe that the believability cogent of the HR leader with the business increases.

Claudia Schneider: Sangeeta, what's the most important way Metro is building on the lessons of 2020?

Sangeeta Pandey: I do believe that Metro is emerging stronger from the pandemic. We continue to invest in our people and business. The HR function is playing a key role in the successful initiation and support of corporate transformation. During the pandemic, HR competence was particularly strained in combining operational and strategic thinking in parallel and ambidextrously, in addition to acute pandemic management. Going forward, the conscious design of a cultural framework in line with our guiding principles will lead the way. Our managers will be empowered to exemplify this in their daily work and make it more tangible for their teams. We are also systemically developing roles, competencies, and the willingness to learn among our employees in order to meet the requirements of our guiding principles on the one hand, and the short- and long-term corporate strategies on the other.

Claudia Schneider: Sangeeta, thank you for making the time to speak with us today.

Sangeeta Pandey: Thanks a lot, Claudia. Thank you very much for having me.

Thanks for listening to the Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don’t miss more future-shaping ideas and conversations, please subscribe to our channel on the podcast app. And if you’re listening via LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time.

About the interviewer

Claudia Schneider (cschneider@heidrick.com) is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles’ Munich office and a member of the global Industrial and Financial Officers practices.