Bhavya Misra, CHRO, Godrej Capital: Employees Must Own Their Career Growth

Bhavya Misra is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Godrej Capital, with over 15 years of experience in strategic workforce planning, talent acquisition, employee relations, performance management, and organisational development.

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Prior to joining Godrej Capital, she led Human Resources functions at PepsiCo and Lenovo. Bhavya has a proven track record of aligning HR strategies with business objectives, driving organisational growth, nurturing talent, and fostering positive and inclusive workplace cultures. Her expertise spans talent acquisition and retention, employee engagement, leadership development, and workforce strategy.

She holds a master’s degree in human resources management and has completed professional certifications and training programmes to stay abreast of evolving HR practices and workplace trends. Her leadership and experience enable her to drive people-centric transformation and organisational excellence.

Q1. What have you learned about making career development a shared responsibility between employees, managers and HR?

The most important lesson is that career development cannot be outsourced to HR. The employee must bring self-awareness, curiosity and continuous ownership of learning.

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The manager must translate that aspiration into an honest conversation about strengths, performance, readiness and the critical experiences required next. HR must build the architecture that makes opportunities visible, access equitable and decisions consistent.

Shared responsibility should not become diffused accountability. Employees should be clear about what they want to build towards; managers should provide regular feedback rather than waiting for an annual discussion; and HR should identify systemic gaps, equip managers and ensure that mobility is based on capability and potential rather than proximity or informal networks.

We have also learned that the manager is where an organisation’s career promise becomes real. A well-designed framework has limited value if the manager does not create space for a candid conversation or support a strong employee’s growth beyond the immediate team.

Career development works best when all three parties understand their role and the conversation continues throughout the year.

Q2. How do you balance business-critical talent needs with employees’ aspirations when designing career opportunities?

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We do not see business needs and employee aspirations as opposing forces. The most sustainable career opportunities are created where the organisation’s future capability needs intersect with an employee’s strengths, potential and ambition.

The starting point is the business strategy: which roles, skills and leadership capabilities will be critical as we grow? We then look at the talent already within the organisation, understand individual aspirations and assess readiness against the specific requirements of those opportunities.

Qualifications and tenure may provide useful context, but they should not become substitutes for role-relevant skills, experience and potential. This keeps career planning grounded in business reality while giving employees a credible view of where they can grow.

Transparency is important because not every aspiration can translate into an immediate move or promotion. In such cases, the conversation should not end with a “no”. It should clarify the capability gap, the experience that would strengthen readiness and the next meaningful step.

We do not treat an aspiration as a promise of a title; we treat it as an important input into a development plan. When handled honestly, this balance strengthens both retention and business readiness.

Q3. What approaches have worked best at Godrej Capital in enabling employees to move across roles, functions or levels?

Three approaches have been especially important: defining what each role genuinely requires, making opportunities visible and anchoring mobility in demonstrated skills, experience and potential. Looking at roles more critically helps us avoid using credentials or previous designations as shorthand for capability.

Careerverse is one practical example. By bringing career pathways across sales, credit underwriting and branch operations into one forum, it helped employees understand roles beyond their immediate teams and see how skills can travel across the organisation.

Transparent internal opportunities and manager-led development conversations then help convert that visibility into considered career moves.

Pride Path offers another lesson. The initiative creates pathways for LGBTQIA+ and cis women talent in frontline Collections roles, supported by structured onboarding, manager sensitisation and long-term mentorship.

It reinforces that an entry opportunity becomes meaningful only when the systems around it enable sustained growth.

We also look at progression through more than promotion alone. A lateral move that builds a new capability or broadens business understanding can be as valuable as a change in level.

The objective is not movement for its own sake; it is mobility that strengthens the employee’s career and the organisation’s leadership and capability pipeline.

Q4. How is Godrej Capital redesigning career paths to keep pace with changing roles, skills, and employee expectations?

At Godrej Capital, we are moving away from the idea that a career is a fixed ladder within one function. Financial services roles are changing quickly as technology, AI, new business models and customer expectations reshape how work gets done.

Career paths therefore need to be built around capabilities and adjacent experiences, not only designations.

Our focus is on giving employees greater visibility into the opportunities available, the capabilities each role requires and the development needed to become ready.

The second edition of Careerverse, held in Bengaluru, showcased pathways across sales, credit underwriting and branch operations.

It helped employees see how experience in one part of the business can create possibilities in another, while supporting internal mobility and long-term growth.

Employees today also expect purpose, flexibility, belonging and continued learning as part of the employment proposition. Formal education and prior experience provide a valuable foundation, but they cannot be the endpoint when roles and skills are changing so quickly.

A modern career framework must therefore provide clarity without assuming that careers will remain linear. The aim is to create multiple routes for people to deepen their expertise, gain critical experiences or take on greater responsibility as both the business and their aspirations evolve.

Q5. What career-development practices or lessons from Godrej Capital would you encourage other HR leaders to consider for their own organisations?

I would encourage HR leaders to treat career development as business infrastructure rather than a collection of programmes. Start with the capabilities the organisation will need, define role requirements precisely and then make the pathways to those capabilities visible and accessible.

A few practices matter consistently. Give employees clarity on the skills and experiences different roles require, not merely which vacancies exist. Hold managers accountable for the quality and frequency of career conversations.

Recognise that progression can include deeper expertise and broader experience, not only a higher designation. Assess people holistically, valuing skills and potential alongside academic qualifications.

Review the full employee journey from job descriptions and interview panels to onboarding, development and progression, through an inclusion lens. Finally, measure outcomes such as internal mobility, leadership depth, productivity and employee experience rather than the volume of learning initiatives launched.

The larger lesson is that future-ready organisations will not be defined only by whom they hire. They will be defined by how effectively they enable people to adapt, contribute and grow after they join.

Q6. Why is psychological safety becoming a critical enabler of business performance, innovation and collaboration, and not just an HR or wellbeing initiative?

Psychological safety is business infrastructure because its absence creates silent risk. When employees hesitate to question an assumption, flag a control gap, surface a customer concern or admit that an approach is not working, leaders receive a filtered version of reality.

Decisions slow down, problems remain hidden and organisations lose the opportunity to learn early.

Also Read: Bhavya Misra on Godrej Capital’s devotion to LGBTQIA+ Inclusivity

This is particularly important in financial services, where performance depends on sound judgement, responsible risk-taking, collaboration and customer trust. Lived experiences can influence how teams assess risk, design products and engage with communities.

However, diverse teams create value only when those perspectives can actually be voiced; representation without the safety to disagree will not improve decisions.

At Godrej Capital, this thinking is reflected in Included 3.0, our company-wide learning initiative covering gender sensitisation, microaggressions and psychological safety, as well as Qnity, our employee resource group for queer employees and allies.

These platforms help connect inclusion with everyday behaviour, learning and business performance. Psychological safety is not about removing accountability or avoiding difficult conversations. It creates the conditions in which concerns are raised sooner, debate is more honest and teams learn faster.

Q7. How can leaders and managers at Godrej Capital and other organisations build everyday cultures where employees feel safe to speak up, challenge ideas and learn from mistakes?

Culture does not travel through communication alone; it travels through repeated managerial decisions. Employees learn whether it is safe to speak up by observing what happens when someone disagrees, delivers bad news or admits a mistake.

Leaders can begin with a few consistent behaviours: ask for contrary views before stating their own position; respond to bad news with curiosity before judgement; distinguish a thoughtful mistake from repeated negligence; and close the loop by explaining what changed, or why it did not, after an employee raised a concern.

They should repeatedly ask: Who is not in this room? What are we assuming? Which voices are not being heard? Managers must also notice who is not speaking, address microaggressions and evaluate a challenge on its substance rather than the seniority or identity of the person offering it.

Clarity and psychological safety reinforce each other. People should know the standards expected of them, but they should also know that questioning an idea will not be treated as disloyalty and that acknowledging an error is the first step towards correcting it.

When leaders model humility, invite challenge and remain consistent in their response, speaking up becomes part of how the team performs rather than an act of individual courage.

Thanks, Bhavya!