MC Interview: MakeMyTrip to step up hiring, continue hybrid work model, put employees first: Group CHRO Yuvaraj Srivastava

Yuvaraj Srivastava says Make My Trip will not drive a policy at the cost of employees’ welfare.

Online travel company MakeMyTrip will continue to adopt a hybrid work model for the next two to three quarters, group chief human resource officer Yuvaraj Srivastava said. In an interview with Moneycontrol, Srivastava said MakeMyTrip will not drive a policy at the cost of employees’ welfare, and the company is set to hire around 800 people this year to lift growth. He talked about new HR initiatives that will stay in place even when the pandemic is over, and how MakeMyTrip will continue to reach out to “guide and father figure,” founder Deep Kalra, who is taking up a mentorship role.

Edited excerpts: 

The travel and hospitality sector is opening up and this will drive growth. What’s the hiring guidance at MakeMyTrip? 

Our overall headcount is around 3,500 people. We must have hired almost 800 people -- both new and replacement hiring put together -- in the last one year. Going forward, we are looking at recruiting 700 to 800 people more, including replacement hiring. And this is for all our brands – Goibibo, redBus and MakeMyTrip. 

We have gone to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for tech talent and for management we went to top management schools. We went to small cities to test the talent and hire. We have increased the number of institutes in our consideration this year. 

Founder Deep Kalra has shifted to a mentorship role. How is that going to impact people and processes? 

Deep has been a mentor, he has been a guide. He has been in the forefront of everything. Whether he is a mentor or in any other role…he is a father figure to most in MakeMyTrip and he will continue to be that. Maybe he will spend some time with larger things pertaining to society, for a larger impact. But when it comes to his reach and accessibility to us and our accessibility to him, I don’t see that reduce. 

Work-From-Home seems to be becoming the norm? How is your company dealing with it? 

You cannot really drive a policy at the cost of personal wellness and at the cost of your employees’ welfare. We believe that a workplace should be attractive enough for workers to come and work and in last two years we have never given a mandate that the office is opening on this date. We are saying office is open and if you are willing to come, then come. Leaders are empowered to decide who should come and who should not. Among cities, our Bengaluru office is a bit more conservative than Gurugram. 

As Omicron is phasing out and offices are opening, we believe the office will run for next two to three quarters in a hybrid model. 

While 30% to 35% of our employees in Gurugram have started coming to office, it’s slightly less in Bengaluru. Because, there workers are largely migrants, who may have shifted to their home town and are taking a bit of time to come back and settle down. In Gurugram, a majority are residents of Delhi NCR (National Capital Region). 

Firms have given up office space in the past couple of years, and need to ramp up to take people back to office. Did you also give up office real estate during the pandemic? 

We had optimized some of the space we had and it was an industry-wide phenomenon. But currently, we have enough space to accommodate around 80-90% of our people. We don’t have constraints in getting people back to office. 

What HR policies you have put in place you believe will stay even when the pandemic is over? 

We as a company believe in the policy of having trust in the workforce. We believe employees come to office to work. We have said Work-From-Home is a manager’s prerogative and HR has nothing to do with that. We created an uncapped leave policy under which managers can approve as much leave as you need. During the pandemic, it helped us and we did not get into a compliance issue. Incidentally, it was not misused and reaffirmed that employees want to work. Besides we created a We Care fund employees contribute to voluntarily and the corpus gets deposited in an external fund to help and support colleagues... Policy around continuous education of employees is another to help them upskill. 

These are positive HR moves. What is the attrition rate in your company? 

Attrition is happening across companies. The market is driven by a pool of talent and this pool is not only looking at brands, but various other things. Attrition in our case maybe has gone higher in the last one-and-a-half years, but problem gets accentuated due to offer drop out. They take three to four offers and openly talk about it for counter-negotiation. I have no problem with it and the positive is our attrition rate among high-potential workers remains more or less the same. Leave aside tech and product, the attrition rate is around 10-12 percent. Tech and product is market-driven and it is a little more. Around 30 to 35 percent of our workers are in the high-potential category and we have seen 15% to 18% attrition in that category.