Leaders

An accomplished Senior Executive Vice President & Head of People, Performance & Culture at Aon India Insurance Brokers, Sonali Chatterjee has over 19 years of experience in engaging with corporates and clients at different stages of the organizational lifecycle. She began her illustrious career in Corporate HR and then transitioned into a Talent Management Consultant and continued in that role for 11 years working with clients in shaping organizational strategy, vision, and values, and successfully designing and improving upon talent and leadership development practices. During these years, she has worked with leading organizations like Tata Chemicals, Max Life Insurance, Aon Hewitt, and Salto Dee Fe Consulting; where she had the privilege to work directly with industry stalwarts and embrace unmatched exposures which helped her to pave a successful path for her career. At Aon, Sonali has been instrumental in shaping the company’s work culture and employee experience while keeping in mind local market dynamics and requirements. She is an influential leader, who is known for her exceptional ability to solve problems and hands-on knowledge in HR Consulting, Deferred Compensation, HR Policies, Performance Management, and Leadership. Let’s hear it from her.

Tell us about the various responsibilities you shoulder at Aon. What are your current focus areas?

I have been with this organization since 2018, and I joined it with the clear vision to build the organization’s culture, and create a high-performance productive but highly engaging workplace for the employees. Hence my focus has always been on building people policies keeping in mind the sector always aligns itself to the overall Aon ethos. My key responsibilities are building the HR strategy for the organization, making sure that we are aligning ourselves to the business requirements, understanding the challenges that the business is facing, and addressing them through short- and long-term specific HR strategies. Besides that, as an organization, we are at a very high growth stage, hence we are consistently focusing on talent acquisition. We focus on making sure that we support organizational growth while continuing to work on improving employee retention and engagement.

Throw light on some of the most critical challenges you face in your current role. What steps do you take to overcome them?

In today's scenario, where the whole face of work has completely changed, in my opinion, one of the most critical challenges that we are facing is the process of transitioning ourselves into a more flexible & hybrid at the same time successful model of working. Bringing all of the pieces together and making employees work as a cohesive whole aligning to the company’s guidelines is one of the key aspects of focus today. At Aon, employee experience continues to be at the core of everything that we do, hence, we offer enough and more opportunities to our employees in terms of career growth, learning and development and ensure we have ways and means to capture employee feedback on an ongoing basis.

What has been the driving force behind your success as an HR leader?

It has been a great journey, and throughout the way, I have been blessed with the support of great mentors who have paved the path for me, helped me grow, and contributed to my success stories. Moreover, I have always been true to myself and that has been one of the most important driving forces of my journey. When I am comfortable & happy and believe in what I am doing, I perform at 200 percent of my capability. So being true to myself brings about a huge amount of conviction and helps me outperform. Besides that, my whole point of being an HR professional has always been touching lives and creating a better work culture for people. So as long as I can see myself delivering that purpose, I feel a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction.

“My whole point of being an hr professional has always been about touching lives and creating a better work culture for people”

Going forward, how do you foresee the Indian HR industry evolving?

The pandemic has brought the HR profession to the forefront. Everything that has happened during the years of the pandemic was facilitated through HR. HR practices are now at their peak and they will continue to be because organizations have realized that with the change in dynamics, expectations of the workforce are evolving unprecedentedly and have become very different from how they used to be. HR professionals have to also adapt to new technologies and align themselves with these transformations.

What would your advice be to young women who aspire to become business leaders in the future?

To begin with, I would advise young women aspirants to follow the mantra of being true to themselves. Secondly, during the initial years of their career, they should focus on investing enough time in learning, working across different areas, and not getting comfortable too soon because this is the stage where they can explore, experiment, and diversify themselves to learn more. At last, I would urge them to stay connected with their mentors as the right guidance & advice from them will always be helpful.

Sonali Chatterjee, Senior Executive Vice President, Aon Insurance Brokers

Having an MBA from IMT Ghaziabad and B.A. (Hons) in Economics from Delhi University, Sonali has around two decades of experience working across industries with senior leaders in developing critical organizational development initiatives and shaping their talent & performance management practices.