I, Subhadeep Khan am a strategic leader with hands on experience of 18 years in management and business leadership. I am currently spearheading the Human Resources vertical of Bharat Aluminum Company Limited as CHRO, BALCO, Vedanta Resources Limited, India. Dedicated towards excellence, I have an established record of success in building, managing and leading high-performance teams in Metals, Mining & Power Sectors.

I am an individual with high aptitude to learn new things, resulting in proven capability at leadership role in handling multiple domains of Projects, Operations, Maintenance, Business Excellence, Planning and HR, with track record of improving HSE practices, increasing volumes, reducing cost, and growing bottom line.

As an individual, I am passionate in travelling and exploring different parts of the world and learning about the diverse local cultures. Driven by my passion, I have explored around 25 countries of the world.

I am a leader with futuristic vision committed to lead best industrial practices and setting global benchmarks across multiple domains transforming the workplace with best people practices approach.

I am currently spearheading the Human Resources Department at BALCO, Vedanta Resources Limited, India as CHRO.

The Vedanta Group (Vedanta) comprises Vedanta Resources Plc, a global, diversified natural resources company and its subsidiaries - Vedanta Limited in India and Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia. Vedanta produces oil & gas, zinc, lead, silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium, and commercial energy. We empower our people to drive excellence and innovation to create value for our stakeholders.

We demonstrate world-class standards of governance, safety, sustainability, and social responsibility. Geographically, our operations are centered in India, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Liberia, Ireland, and Australia with an employee strength of over 70,000 Direct & Indirect employees.

Vedanta’s global journey as a natural resource company began nearly three decades ago in 1979, in Mumbai, India. Vedanta Ltd, formerly Sesa Sterlite Limited, is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc. The company was renamed Vedanta Limited in April 2015, to continue creating value for its global stakeholders with a united and aligned identity. Vedanta Ltd is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange in India.

We strive to make a positive, all-round impact on the communities in which we operate, both as an employer and a contributor, and to leave a legacy of pride. Our goal is to create long-term value for all our stakeholders through research, discovery, acquisition, sustainable development, and utilization of diversified natural resources.

To accomplish that, we empower our people to drive excellence and innovation. We strive to demonstrate world-class standards of governance, safety, sustainability, and social responsibility. At Vedanta, we understand the importance of working together in a team as we pursue growth and sustainable development.

Spread across geographies, our facilities are focused on all-round operational excellence to achieve benchmark performance across our business by debottlenecking our assets, adopting technology and digitalization, strengthening people-practices, enhancing vendor and customer bases, optimizing spend base and improving realizations.

BALCO was incorporated in year 1965 as the first Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) in India and since then it has been closely associated with the Indian Industrial Growth, in a pivotal role. In 2001, Govt. of India disinvested 51% shares of Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO) to Sterlite Industries Limited a subsidiary of Vedanta Limited. BALCO operates through its facilities in the state of Chhattisgarh.

The plant has a smelter capacity of 5.70 LTPA with capabilities to produce ingots, wire rods, billets, busbars, and rolled products. BALCO has a power generation capacity of 2010 MW and a bauxite Production capacity of 6.8 MT per annum from its two Bauxite mines at Mainpat & Kawardha which have a capacity of 4.5 MT & 2.3 MT, respectively.

BALCO has a coal block at Chotia with a capacity of 17.7 MTPA. BALCO has an NABL accredited Quality Laboratory for raw materials & finished goods and has patented the FUSE technology. BALCO has begun the journey of its vision to expand to a capacity of 1 MTPA.

BALCO has superior quality and craftsmanship employed in each process. We are also playing a crucial role in introducing Aluminium as a potential alternative to other metals like Steel in construction, and Copper in power transmission industry. We have also introduced new Power Plant with rated capacity of 1200 MW which commenced its operation from 2016.

Twelve years ago, Vedanta embarked upon a journey to transform how it does business. We committed to not only become the lowest cost metal producer in the world, but to do so in the most sustainable way possible. To achieve this, we established policies and standards in line with global best practices. We then began the journey of meticulously embedding them across our business operations.

Every big idea needs a vision, and ours was “Zero Harm, Zero Waste, Zero Discharge”. All our actions have been guided by this philosophy. Our 7 core values are – Trust, Integrity, Excellence, Entrepreneurship, Care, Respect, and Innovation. BALCO’s mission is to be amongst top decile in global cost curve, operational excellence, ensure resource security with efficient supply chain management, effective collaboration with stakeholders, unleash employee potential, build and strengthen brand equity.

Our goal is to create long-term value for all our stakeholders through research, discovery, acquisition, sustainable development, and utilization of diversified natural resources. For accomplishing that, we empower our people to drive excellence and innovation. We demonstrate world-class standards of governance, safety, sustainability, social responsibility & people practice.

India holds a fair advantage in production and conversion costs in steel and alumina. Its strategic location enables export opportunities to develop as well as fast-developing Asian markets. As of FY22, the number of reporting mines in India were estimated at 1,425, of which reporting mines for metallic minerals were estimated at 525 and non-metallic minerals at 720.

Minerals are precious natural resources that serve as essential raw materials for fundamental industries, so the growth of the mining industry is essential for the overall industrial development of a nation. The vast resources of numerous metallic and non-metallic minerals that India is endowed with serve as a foundation for the expansion and advancement of the nation's mining industry.

India is largely self-sufficient in metallic minerals including bauxite, chromites, iron ore, and lignite as well as mineral fuels like coal and lignite. The industry has the potential to significantly impact GDP growth, foreign exchange earnings, and give end-use industries like building, infrastructure, automotive, and electricity, among others, a competitive edge by obtaining essential raw materials at reasonable rates. Rise in infrastructure development and automotive production are driving growth.

Power and cement industries are also aiding growth for the sector. Demand for iron and steel is set to continue given the strong growth expectations for the residential and commercial building industry. In FY 2021-22, coal production in India stood at 777.31 MT (provisional) with a growth of 8.55%. Coal production in India stood at 210.40 MT in FY 2022-23 (April-July 2022). In FY22, mineral production is estimated at Rs.190,392 crore (US$ 24.95 billion).

India ranks fourth globally in terms of iron ore production. Production of iron ore in FY21 stood at 204.48 million tonnes. From April 2021- January 2022, iron ore production in India stood at 204 million tonnes (MT). In FY20, India had a total number of 878 steel plants producing crude steel. India’s crude steel production stood at 120 MT in FY22.

The steel production in India is projected to increase by 18% to reach 120 million tonnes (MT) by FY22. In Q3 FY22, production of hot metal, crude steel and saleable steel by SAIL stood at 1.55 MT, 1.44 MT and 1.46 MT, respectively. Combined Aluminium production (primary and secondary) in India stood at 4.1 MT per annum in FY21 becoming the 2nd largest in the world. Aluminium production stood at 3,285,186 tonnes between April 2020 and January 2021. India is the world's second-largest coal producer as of 2021.

To be recognized by the TITAN Business Awards does not only acknowledge our success; it recognizes many other qualities of our team like ability, struggle, effort and, above all, excellence.

The TITAN Business Awards is one of the most sought-after awards within the fraternity with highest level of accreditation celebrating the best individuals and organizations, to be a winner of such an award in the HR Manufacturing & Best Employee Engagement Strategy category would set us apart from the crowd giving us an edge over others in manufacturing sector within our industry.

It would set us as a benchmark for other global companies. It would also increase the employee morale through recognition. The trust and loyalty of our employees will strengthen as well as demonstrate to them that they are being valued. This award will lead to positive word of mouth and will enhance our employer branding.

A successful team is one motivated by the shared core values of its members. when your team shares the same sense of purpose, they celebrate and champion each other and this creates a culture of excellence within the business as a whole.

As a group, we won’t always agree on everything, in fact I think it’s healthier not to, but essentially, to be part of a successful team is to share values and work towards collective goals that are important on a personal level to each and every member.

Privatization of BALCO is one of the major factors of becoming it successful. It opened new investments into the company by private players. This improved production facilities in terms of machinery and infrastructure, ultimately resulting in more production leading to modernization of BALCO.

With the BALCO’s privatization, new managerial practices like job rotation and appraisals were introduced. These practices were absent when the company functioned under the Government of India. It gave the management an opportunity to properly utilize its manpower resource and also to adequately reward its employees for their efforts.

We continue to operate efficiently and produce 20% of the country’s aluminium today. The power production at BALCO has reached 2010 MW per annum from 270 MW at the time of disinvestment.

The Government of India has adopted few initiatives in the recent past for the industry to grow, some of these are as follows:
• The government plans to monetise assets worth Rs. 28,727 crore (US$ 3.68 billion) in the mining sector over FY 2022-25.
• The Ministry of Mines of the Government of India has signed MoUs with different nations.
• The Ministry of Mines notified the Mineral Conservation and Development (Amendment) Rules in November 2021 to provide rules regarding conservation of minerals, systematic and scientific mining, and development of minerals in the country for environment protection.
• Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) and Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), under the Ministry of Steel, supplied 48,200 tonnes of steel for the Purvanchal Expressway, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 16, 2021.
• As part of unlocking India’s vast mineral potential by exploration this year, the Ministry of Mines has handed over 152 mineral block reports to different state governments until November 2021. Also, 52 potential G-4 mineral blocks approved by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) have been handed over to 15 state governments.
• In July 2021, the Odisha government approved five key industrial projects worth Rs. 1.46 lakh crore (US$ 19.60 billion) that are expected to boost capacity of steel production by 27.5 million tonnes.
• In June 2021, the Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi approved the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be signed between the Ministry of Mines and the Secretariat of Mining Policy of the Ministry of Productive Development of the Argentine Republic. The MoU will provide an institutional mechanism for cooperation in the field of mineral resources.
• In Union Budget 2021, the government reduced customs duty to 7.5% on semis, flat and long products of non-alloy, alloy and stainless steels to provide relief to MSMEs.
• To boost recycling of copper in India, the government announced reduction of import duty on copper scrap from 5% to 2.5% in the Union Budget 2021.
• The National Steel Policy aims to boost per capita steel consumption to 160 kgs by 2030-31. The government has a fixed objective of increasing rural consumption of steel from the current 19.6 kgs per capita to 38 kgs per capita by 2030-31.

There is a significant scope for new mining capacities in iron ore, bauxite and coal and considerable opportunities for future discoveries of sub-surface deposits. Infrastructure projects continue to provide lucrative business opportunities for steel, zinc, and aluminium producers.

Iron and steel make up a core component for the real estate sector. Demand for these metals is set to continue given strong growth expectations for the residential and commercial building industry. The Government of India has also helped in the development of the metals and mining sector in India by launching key policy initiatives.

The National Mineral Policy, which was approved by the government in February 2019, has ensured improved regulation and enforcement, more transparency, balanced social and economic growth, and sustainable mining techniques. The policy grants industry status to the mining activities and boost private sector funding.

Additionally, it aims to facilitate the merger and acquisition of mining companies, entice private sector involvement in exploration, and permit the transfer of mineral corridors created specifically for metals and mining leases. In the future, both increased domestic demand and exports are projected to play significant roles in driving the industry's expansion and its contribution to GDP growth in a post-covid environment.

During COVID – 19, we faced the following hinderances while running the operations:

• Less Workforce – Since during pandemic all companies were instructed to operate using half workforce as a precautionary step and safety constraint, we designed alternate days’ roasters, stopped all non – core activities and shifted the enabling functions like HR, Finance, IT etc. into work from home model.
• Non – Availability of Infrastructure, Medicines, and oxygen cylinders for critical patients – BALCO operates a hospital in its township premises for employees and their families. BALCO hospital couldn’t be used for treatment of COVID – 19 patients as they required a separate entity.

  Therefore, we faced the constraints of non – availability of infrastructure, medicines, and oxygen cylinders. To tackle this, we sourced these by collaborating with other hospitals and medicine sellers of Chhattisgarh. We also converted few schools situated within the vicinity into COVID centers to provide healthcare facilities to critical patients.

• Home Isolated Patients – Patients that weren’t critical were advised for home isolation for whom we arranged healthcare services like on – call doctor visits, medicine deliveries, etc.

The following trends in the business industry excite me the most: Sustainable, resilient operations - Every organization must seek to eliminate or reduce the environmental costs of doing business. Decarbonizing the supply chain is a sensible place to start, but forward-thinking businesses are looking beyond the supply chain to improve sustainability across all business operations.

Balance between human workers and intelligent robots - We now have increasingly capable robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can take on tasks that were previously done by humans. There’s no doubt that automation will affect every industry, so business leaders must prepare their organizations and their people for the changing nature of work.

Shifting talent pool and changing employee experience - The way we work is evolving, with more younger people entering the workforce, more gig workers, and more remote workers. Flatter, more agile organizations - Leaders are recognizing the need for flatter, more agile structures that allow the business to quickly reorganize teams and respond to change. It is also, in part, a response to the changing nature of work, particularly the proliferation of freelance and remote workers.

Co-opetition and integration - We live in a time where pretty much anything can be achieved by outsourcing. The global business world has never been so integrated. In future, it will become increasingly difficult to succeed without partnerships with other organizations. In practice, this means greater supply chain integration, more data integration and sharing of data between organizations, and even cooperation between competitors.

Focus on purpose - Top-performing organizations know that purpose is both a differentiating factor and a must-have. A strongly held sense of corporate purpose is a company’s unique affirmation of its identity, the why of work and embodies everything the organization stands for from a historical, emotional, social, and practical point of view.

Sharpen your values - The key is to use the value agenda to focus the organization’s efforts and instil a sense of what really matters in every employee. When organizations can leverage this clarity knowing exactly what differentiates them from everyone else, the results are powerful and hard to replicate.

Use culture as your USP - Culture forms the backbone of organizational health and fuels sustained outperformance over time. Companies with strong cultures achieve up to three-times higher total returns to shareholders than companies without them. Radically flatten structure – Structure organization to make them fitter, flatter, faster, and far better at unlocking considerable value.

The goal isn’t to eradicate hierarchy so much as make it less important as an organizing mechanism. Flatten the organization reinforcing business objectives with clear, strong performance management and other mechanisms. Turbocharge decision making - Organizations that consistently decide fast and well are, in turn, more likely to outperform their peers.

Achieving quality and speed in tandem takes work. It requires a system that properly allocates decisions to the right executives, teams, individuals, or even algorithms. The top team needs to focus its time and energy on the core business decisions that only it can make, such as those initiatives central to the value agenda.

Other leaders, meanwhile, should spend more time deciding on resource and talent allocation for those initiatives. Through managing the backlog of resources from the top of the house, organizations can speed up and increase the quality of decisions.

Treat talent as scarcer than capital - Create an attractive destination for top talent and foster an inclusive employee experience. This influences whether employees stay and thrive, which in turn affects the company’s bottom line. Adopt an ecosystem view - Future-ready organizations view partners as extensions of themselves.

These relationships feature porous boundaries and high levels of trust and mutual dependence to share value and let each partner focus on what it does best. Partnerships should be cultivated for the long term to better develop the antifragility that helps partners weather shocks.

Build data-rich tech platforms - Companies should understand that data can continually empower decisions and the value agenda in unexpected, yet promising, ways. To make the most of data, leading organizations must tackle a complex set of tasks.

They must create compelling approaches to data governance, redesign processes as modular applications, tap the benefits of scalable cloud-based technology, and support all this through variable-cost technology budgets that are reallocated dynamically.

Be a learning organization - High-performing companies promote a mindset of continuous learning that encourages and supports people to adapt and reinvent themselves to meet changing trends. Getting to this level requires instilling a growth mindset, curiosity, and an openness to experimentation and failure.

Experiment-and-learn environments encourage accelerated personal growth and improvement for employees. Since traditional educational institutions alone cannot deliver the skills companies will need, organizations need to look inward. Rather than creating monolithic centralized programs that people attend before returning to their day job, forward-looking companies develop learning journeys that have a mix of core and individualized content, delivered when people need it and at requisite scale.

Upskilling and digital dexterity - In the future, high-value work will be cognitive in nature. Employees will have to apply creativity, critical thinking, and constant digital upskilling to solve complex problems. The digital economy demands new ideas, information and business models that continually expand, combine, and shift into new ventures.

Employees must consistently refresh their digital dexterity to meet these needs. HR will have to establish and promote a continuous learning environment, meaning knowledge acquisition and transparency across the organization must become a part of day-to-day operations. Smart machines - Smart machines are getting smarter and more ubiquitous, not only completing tasks previously reserved for humans, but also doing what was thought to be impossible for machines.

Companies will start to increase the functions of smart machines, software, apps, and avatars. Employees will develop personal toolkits of virtual doppelgangers, virtual counterparts, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) software and devices that are more accessible to their personal or team-based activities. In addition to this, they will have the ability to carry their personal workplaces with them using cloud communities, open applications, and personal virtual assistants.

Lifelong reinvention – Productive years of an individual are becoming long hence traditional ideas about careers, retirement, and work – life balance will change. The effectiveness with which organizations can manage quadri-generational workforces may affect business efficiency and productivity, investment decisions, and resource retention.

Extended careers might redefine worker and management attitudes toward aging, alter the pace at which organizations are renewed by younger talent and new ideas, and increase intergenerational competition for jobs.

Sustainability and ESG – The importance of sustainable operations and ESG will keep on increasing. Businesses will need to design their policies and operations around these. Decarbonizing the supply chain will be important. Every organization will have to seek methods to eliminate and reduce the environmental costs of doing business.

Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging – The demand from companies is not only to be diverse and inclusive but move up a ladder and include equity and belonging to the definition too. In future, it won’t help organizations who are just diverse and inclusive, the workplaces need to make employees feel belongingness within the company in order to attract and retain them.

My inspiration in life is Mr. Anil Agarwal, Founder and Executive Chairman of Vedanta Resources Limited. His sense of determination and hard work inspires me. The billionaire arrived in Mumbai, the city of dreams, India from a small place Bihar, India with nothing but dreams. However, over the years, he had not only succeeded in building a very successful life for himself, but also founded one of the biggest mining companies in India - Vedanta.

The way he has built the company from scratch, making several acquisitions along the way, and transforming his small scrap metal business that he started in south Mumbai in early ‘70s into a major mining giant. Today he is not only known for his business giant but also his philanthropic efforts via Vedanta Foundation.

People are the most important asset of any organization that ultimately determine the success or failure of your business. Take care of your people, they will take care of your company!