Radical Innovators #16 leading with transformation: developing, reskilling and future-proofing with Infosys’ Shaji Mathew

In this episode of the Radical Innovators podcast, host Frank Congiu sits down with Shaji Mathew, CHRO of Infosys. With more than three decades of experience at the company, Shaji shares his unique journey from software engineer trainee to global HR leader.

The conversation explores how Shaji’s background in technology and business operations shapes his vision for HR as a strategic business function. Shaji and Frank also discuss how Infosys is navigating the human-plus-AI paradigm by rearchitecting career paths, reskilling a global workforce and leveraging AI-powered tools to enhance the employee experience and personalize learning and development.

Key takeaways:

• Find out why Shaji believes business acumen is one of the most critical skills for HR professionals.
• Learn how Infosys categorized its workforce into AI consumers, integrators and creators to design targeted AI training programs.
• Discover how Infosys uses AI assistants to support employees and provide hyper-personalized learning.
• Hear why Shaji considers the three pillars for success to be business agility, talent transformation and fostering a culture of continuous learning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Radical Innovators Podcast. I'm your host, Frank Kanju, and for this episode, I sit down with Shaji Matthew, CHRO of Infosys. Throughout our conversation, he shares insights from his 30-year career at Infosys, why he approaches HR like a business function, and how his team is redesigning work, reskilling teams, and transforming its culture in the era of AI. So let's dive in with Shaji Matthew. All right, Shazi, great to see you. Welcome to the Radical Innovators Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Thank you, Frank. Looking forward to some interesting conversation today with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So many people that are listening to the show aspire to be in the seat that you're in. So it'd be great if you maybe talk a minute about what your journey has looked like.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So, Frank, if you had asked me, will I be a CHR or let's say about five years ago, I would have most likely said no. So I joined this company more than three decades ago as a software engineer trainee. At that time, the company was quite small. We were just about 300 people. Today we have grown to 330,000 people. We work across 59 countries across the globe, employ about 150 plus nationalities in Infosys and the subsidiary. So as the company grew, I also grew along with it. But I played mostly business roles for about three decades. Early part of my career, I spent many years in the United States. And before moving to this current role, I was the global head of delivery for our financial services, insurance, healthcare, and life science business. Just about three years ago, I've I've moved as the CHRO of the company. So that is a short journey of mine in the company.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, it's great. I mean, number one, uh a rare story these days for someone who has that long of a tenure in an organization because it seems like the average now is, well, far shorter than that. The other piece is you talked a bit about this idea of being in operations before taking on the CH role and being client-facing. Um, how has that client-facing and operations side helped and the understanding of the business helped you shape your vision uh for the HR function in the organization?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

So there was a study done by um World Economic Forum earlier this year, and they asked this question what is the most important skill in the future for an HR professional and a CHRO? And interesting enough, what they came out with as the most important skill was um is business acumen. So for me, as I said, I have spent about three decades in business. And uh for me, my biggest um um aspect of HR is to look at HR as a business function. And that's really what I talk keep telling my team. So I'm blessed with a fantastic um HR team. And when I say HR as a business function, it's about every HR professional understanding our business of business better, as well as looking at uh how can we influence the metrics that matter for the organization. And sitting in this function, and especially for a services organization where people are really the core asset, there is a lot that uh HR can do to really uh look at HR as a business function. And added to that, I would also say that I joined the company as a as a as a developer, as a mainframe developer. So my upbringing is really in technology. And today, with AI everywhere and also we're talking about AI in HR, it really helps to have a technology background in some way as well. So that's really the the focus for me has been in the HR. One as uh looking at as a business function and two to bring a lot of technology in everything that we do.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah, and well, where we met uh at Jackie Canney's conference at ServiceNow, uh that certainly was one of the topics in terms of the prevalence of uh AI and tech and the convergence uh of AI and HR and IT and HR. And certainly that's reflected in Jackie's title and what I think you know you're talking about seeing in terms of the future. So as you as you took the reins though, uh what were some of the misconceptions that you needed to help drive and change, or or even some of the traits that you needed to change in your HR organization? Because you have the advantage of uh, as you mentioned, right, being in operations and being client-facing for 30 years. I'm sure many of the team members that you inherited did not come with that skill set. What were some of the things that you've done to make sure that you're bringing people along for the ride and helping them advance in their careers as well?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I wouldn't say misconception, but I must say that um I got a much deeper appreciation of the entire HR function as I came in. When you're looking from the business side, from the delivery side, you know that HR is looking at uh employee engagement or performance management, the role change. And sometimes you think uh sometimes HR also gets very tactical sometimes, right? So that was really the perception of HR sitting from outside. Once I've come in, I really understood the deep strategic uh importance of HR, and especially to a services organization where, like I said in the beginning, uh really people are really the core to everything that we do. So, and today with AI coming in, that entire talent transformation is really drive the business performance in one way, in a way. And then HR has got a significant role to future-proof the organization from a technology disruption or even to look at developing the future leaders so that who can take the organization to the years ahead, looking at the succession planning and all of that. The other importance is really the culture of the organization. HR really is you know the custodian in some way of the culture of the organization. So that is again significant um importance HR can bring to that aspect as well. It's a very broad, very strategic role, and that appreciation really has come to me after coming to this function.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

And it sounds like um some of the culture and the work that you and your organization are doing is is working out quite well. I heard that Infosys was recognized as India's best employers among nation builders in 2025. So I'm curious, what are some of the key initiatives that you've introduced to help build a strong culture and improve employee experience to earn and achieve this recognition?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

We are truly proud of that recognition. And when we talk about culture, for me, culture is really what differentiates an organization from any other. So we have um we've been an organization who are who is very deeply uh rooted on the culture of the organization. About two to three years ago, we said, let's look at the culture and go back to the employees and understand what is their view about influences culture. So we surveyed about 30,000 people across the globe, across job levels. And based on what they have said, we have shortlisted the culture markers for the company. And then we've started on a journey called Infosys Way of Life, and it has made some significant uh progress through the culture index in the company. I mean, we we measure our culture in the company through this culture index. So in the last two years, we have made some significant progress through this Infosys Way of Life campaign that we have been running. When you talk about the nation builder part, uh there are a few couple of other aspects also I would mention. One is about um the training and enablement we do for a large number of people. Um, so we have a foundation training program that's available in the company uh in our global education center. So this is a center which can train about 14,000 people at any given point in time, and it's completely residential. In the last two decades, we would have trained about 350,000 plus people. Some of them are still within FUSES, and many would have become good talent for many other organizations across the globe. And we've uh you know, it's not just about the foundation program, it's also the continuous training and learning that we have in the company. We have a platform called Lex, which is our digital uh training platform. The same platform we also use from a social responsibility perspective to impart training to you know cross-section of people. Um today we have over 10 million people who are registered on this platform across the globe. So that is another way of building the nation. Um and the other aspect I would mention um is also the sustainability effort. So we've been a carbon neutral company for the last uh six years. Today we have a target to become climate positive by 2030. So these are some of the aspects which really have helped us to get that recognition that you mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Congratulations on um all the efforts and look forward to seeing how that progresses towards your 2030 goals. You you mentioned earlier on um the importance of and the convergence of understanding the business, uh evolving with where the world is going in terms of AI. And I'm curious, what are you doing to champion the human and AI collaboration at Emphasis?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

That's a big part of the work that we are doing uh these days. So we look at the AI fluent workforce from a spectrum of consumers of AI, integrators of AI, and creator of AI. So everybody in the organization is a consumer of the AI, whether it is a software developer who is using a GitHub copilot to code the program, for a recruiter who is using AI to find out the profile, which is the most suitable one. So everybody is a consumer of AI. Now, the integrators of AI are the ones who develop AI solutions for our clients or for our own purpose. And the creators of AI are the ones who develop our own small language models, fine-tune it, and so on and so forth. So, but so as you can imagine, the enablement and the training requirement for these three kinds of people are quite different. So they have therefore we have designed a training program to enable them at a different level, and we call it as AI Aware, AI Builder, AI Master. So that was one of the first things that we have done to understand what are the various levels of enablement that is required and impart that training program to the cross-section of the people. So today, 275,000 of our people are AI aware certified. So that was one of the big parts of the transformation, uh, the talent transformation that we've been on. We also looked at our career architecture to see what is required in the new human plus AI paradigm. The first thing that we realized is that we need much more deeper expertise compared to what it used to be in the past: domain expertise, technology expertise, et cetera. So therefore, to accommodate that, we are now re-architecting our career architecture, number one. Number two, we are looking at every role in the company and then seeing what will humans do, what will AI agents do, and therefore, again, redesigning those job descriptions. The third thing, of course, there are some new roles, those are being created, because you know, in this new in the new context of AI. So that's the other part that we're looking at. How do we redesign our entire career architecture, introduce new roles and all that? The third thing that we are doing is really looking at building a culture which is very conducive to this kind of a transformation, because we are looking at significant transformation across the board, and it's important to create an environment where our people are willing to experiment, they have that psychological safety to experiment with these new technologies. And the fourth aspect is also to bring in a responsible AI framework into everything that we do, because whatever we do with AI, we need to be able to have an explainability. You know, it has to become only under the responsible AI framework. So these are the four broad aspects that we are looking at when we do the when we do this human plus AI collaboration and the talent transformation uh journey that we've been on.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

I'm just curious around are there specific roles that you either started with or you said these are the most critical roles to effectively pixelate? So say, here are the the aspects of a role that can be done better by AI, which frees you up to be a uh better at the things that are done by a human. Is there one profile where you've either seen significant ROI or that you're saying, like, we believe this is the right um area to start, or are you trying this more broad-based? Just curious what approach you took.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Looked at various service lines, the service units in the company. And each of this will have its own uh career architecture. So we um, and then look at various roles within that career architecture to see for that particular service line, what would AI agents do, what would humans continue to do? And that we are doing across the spectrum. So there are changes that's happening through pretty much every role in the company. And like I said, we are also introducing some new roles which are required in this new context.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

So I know Emphasis has uh deployed some AI-powered coaching tools like Navi and Zoe. I'd love to understand how these tools are specifically designed to provide both empathetic support and personalized mentorship and scale. And then I'm curious also, how do you actually measure the impact of those tools?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

So Navi is our uh AI assistant um for every person in the company. Now, Navi can take um different personas, you know, Navi can act as an advisor, Navi can act as an assistant, Navi can act as a friend. So, as an assistant, for instance, if you have a specific query about some of the policies or your benefits or any of those, you could ask and Navi will give you the answer. Or if you want Navi to do certain transactions for you. For example, if you want to apply for leave, we can ask Navi to do that for you and Navi will apply the leave for you. And you know, we keep adding more and more transactions and capabilities or Navi as you know as we progress. As an advisor, if you are in a particular job, you have a certain skill set, and you want to take another role in the company, Navi can help you with what path you want to take. What are some of the uh experiences that you may want to you need before you take that um that role? So Navi can advise you on that particular journey. Or as a friend, you know, it can also give you nudges. Say, for instance, you have you know, Navi may recognize that you have not taken leaves maybe for a few weeks or a few months. It could nudge and tell you, why don't you take a few days of leave, right? So it can take a different personas based on the context in which uh in which we are operating. So this is really the personal assistance for every person in the company, and we keep adding more and more capabilities into this. We used to get a few hundred thousand queries from employees across the globe on various aspects, policy matters and otherwise. Today we have cut down that by more than 50%. So that is one way of measuring the impact of it. The other way of the measuring is that when you ask, when you call up a help desk and ask for any response, it actually takes a lot more time than just opening the personal assistant and ask the ask the question and get the response instantaneously. So it is a better productivity uh tool as well as it improves the experience of the employees. The other one is the Zoe, which is our learning assistant. Here, the intent is to bring personalized learning experience for every person in the company. You know, when you have 330,000 people across the globe, it's almost impossible to give a personalized training or a learning experience. But today with technology, we are able to bring a lot more personalization into the learning experience. Now, for example, if you have us, if I have a certain technology skills and I want to learn something new, the Zoe will understand what your current capabilities, current skill set is, and based on what you what you want to learn, it can chart out a path for you which is very unique to you from your Lex platform, right? So it will give you the path. But the hyperpersonalization comes where if you like to learn through a certain pedagogical style, let's say you want to you like to learn through analogies, you can just tell Zoe and it will transform their entire learning content using certain analogies. Maybe it will take some mythological characters and explain to you the concept. So it really brings that level of hyper-personalization into the learning. So these are a couple of examples of um internal AI tools that we use today across the company.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Sounds like we could all use a Navi and a Zoe. Uh, me specifically, I know there's a number of ways I could benefit from that. So excited to hear about all these things that you're rolling out. Just shifting to the last question, um, I wanted to talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of future outlook and advice you'd give. But given the exponential rate of technological change, um, curious, what are some of the most critical organizational structures or leadership behaviors that CHRs need to either dismantle or rebuild to successfully manage the permanent disruption that we're going through?

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So, for the um, I would say what CHROs would need to focus on. Um, so first, in my mind, I spoke about the need for that business focus as well as agility in the in the operation. So, how can CHROs empower, enable the business agility for the entire organization? Second focus area in my mind would be talent transformation, especially today in the AI context, um, and the need for a deep expertise that is required. And for all of those to happen, the third aspect in my mind is to encourage a culture of continuous learning in the organization. Because technology is changing so rapidly. Um, the only way any organization can keep pace is by continuous learning, relearning, unlearning, uh, unlearning and relearning. So that's the only way any organization can keep pace. So those would be the three things in my mind, which uh CHROs would need to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

I really appreciate your time today, and I look forward to hopefully seeing you again at some other uh event. Perhaps uh maybe I get this time on your turf. Uh so looking forward to the next conversation and thank you so much for spending time with us today.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Thank you, Frank. I really enjoyed the conversation.