Human Resources Expert
When Chetana Patel joined her present company – Analytix Business Solutions, as Human Resources Manager about 10 years ago, it was a company of about 50-60 employees. Surprisingly, there were hardly any women employees, there was a huge gap in gender base in many aspects, including wage, and there were no organised policies in place. Chetana faced the challenge head-on and started closing the gender based gaps in the recruitment process by providing equal opportunity to female candidates as well as making changes and bringing a cultural shift in the company. The CEO and higher management were supportive of her actions and today they are a proud 500+ employee corporate. In time, Chetana improvised on many aspects like gender based gaps, wage disparity, maternity leave, and most importantly, an AWOW group at Analytix (Wonderful women @ work) – a platform which allows them to share their stories and ideas, which in turn helps the company to work on women empowerment.
“Empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. By investing in training, mentoring, equality programs, opportunities given to them to be heard, and promotion into senior-level positions, you ensure their career growth which is essential to creating long-term employees,” opines Chetana.
A successful and result oriented Senior Human Resources professional, Chetana has earned a name for herself by being a Change Enabler and Transformation Strategist with 15+ years of experience in a blend of medium-large size companies.
An MBA from VTU University, Bangalore, Chetana always harboured a desire of being in the HR profession. “I was always people focussed and business driven,” she says. A fast learner, Chetana soon demonstrated
an intuitive understanding of people, establishing a reputation of guiding individuals find their professional calling as well as transformative leadership. Creating a high-performance culture helps unlocking people’s potential, thereby enabling organisational growth, she feels.
Having widespread exposure has also helped Chetana to have an extensive cross-cultural and cross-border experience while dealing with different nationalities who execute other enabling functions at Analytix. She has led HR teams through business scale-up, coaching, mentoring and enablement, and revamped operations towards HR COE set up.
Years ago, she was the first woman from Analytix to travel to the US. But that’s not all, for her list of achievements runs long. With a role that has evolved every year, Chetana has completed more than a decade with Analytix and continues to be a stronghold as the company aims to expand to multiple locations with 1000+ employees.
Some of her honours include: Analytix receiving the ‘HR Super Achievers Award 2021’ during the 29th edition of The World HRD
Congress held at Mumbai in 2021; Awarded the ‘National Best Employer Award 2021’ at the same World HRD Congress; Analytix awarded as the ‘Best Brand in Gujarat’ at the Gujarat Brand Leadership Awards 2020, a virtual ceremony organized by CMO Asia.
As somebody who started working while pursuing her graduation to support her middle-class family, Chetana has had an arduous journey. Ask her the biggest challenge she faced, and she says the oft repeated bane of most women: “The toughest phase was early motherhood, when I needed to strike a balance between my personal and professional life. With the support of my family and management team at office, I passed that period and was soon in a better position to manage both.”
Today, Chetana’s parents are proud of their daughter, as is her family consisting of her husband, son and in-laws. She attributes her personal and professional success in part to her strengths. “Positive approach towards life, belief in spirituality, people-oriented, belief in hard work, and to enjoy life to the fullest are some of my strengths that drove my success,” she says. And her inspiration? “My spiritual journey, my guru, and my parents.”
One of Chetana’s interesting hobbies includes exploring in-depth spiritual knowledge. “I have been fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time during the pandemic practising my meditation, especially Reiki healing, yoga, or spending quality time with my son,” she says. Her vision for the coming years, especially post pandemic, involves helping society and individuals take care of their well being through spiritual practises.
Speaking about how times have changed, Chetana says, “A decade ago, women had to face more challenges in terms of gender-based wage, discrimination, sexual harassment, and others. But today, not only is there a change at corporate level, but there’s even a significant shift at family level, where nuclear family is the new norm and educated families are more supportive in addressing the challenges faced by working women.” We’re sure women across the world will agree!