In today’s fast-paced and complex business environment, the role of business consultants has become increasingly crucial. Their expertise, objectivity, strategic guidance, and change management skills help organizations navigate uncertainties and drive growth. By leveraging the services of business consultants, companies can tap into external perspectives, optimize operations, and stay ahead of the competition. The partnership between businesses and consultants has become a powerful tool for success in the modern business landscape.

Prithvi Shergill is one of those highly accomplished professionals with a wealth of experience in Human Resources (HR), Business Consulting, and Entrepreneurship. Prithvi’s career journey has enabled him to work with diverse teams and shape solutions for organizations and individuals to reach their potential.

His professional journey began when he realised that value gets created by combining purpose, people and proficiency.

Experiencing this in local and national leadership positions and international training with student associations such as AIESEC led him to join AT&T in 1990, where Prithvi worked in several HR roles across the USA, Philippines, India and then Singapore, which helped him understand how important it is for HR to be aligned with business objectives and ensure people practices create happiness.

Voyage to Superiority

Prithvi established a start-up called NetCel360/VSource between 2000-2002 and experienced the impact of business cycles on people.

Working with Asia’s leading telecommunications companies at SingTel, his mandate from 2002 was to transform HR service delivery, using technology and shared service models to impact organisational effectiveness and enable effective integration with joint venture companies.

In 2004, Prithvi joined Accenture, progressing to be a partner, working closely with internal stakeholders to shape strategy and ensure execution, enhancing the maturity of policies, processes, practices and platforms impacting leadership, talent and culture. These served as the foundation of the growth engines for its businesses across technology, consulting and operations. His assignments in Accenture led him to work on a human capital strategy to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations, value creation and people development in various contexts, cultures, and countries.

Prithvi was then appointed Chief Human Resources Officer at HCL Technologies in 2012, where he played a pivotal role in the reset of the talent strategy to re-energise the culture founded on the strategic intent of putting ‘Employees First, Customers Second,’ seeding, nurturing and harvesting ideapreneurship to multiply profitability and innovation. His experience at HCL Technologies helped shape his experience and expertise on the need for systemic operating models and solutions, combining technology and talent.

These experiences at different companies across countries have helped Prithvi develop a distinctive perspective on the opportunities HR and leaders have in engaging, enabling and empowering people to build their proficiency and performance.

After transitioning to be an entrepreneur, Prithvi established ‘Tomorrow’ with colleagues who had shared beliefs in the opportunity to refresh people management by stewarding digital transformation initiatives with an outcome orientation. Tomorrow merged with Entomo, where their expertise and experience were codified into a people experience platform that enterprises of tomorrow use to transform performance, talent and learning.

Shaping Customized Business Solutions

Prithvi Shergill has remained committed to investing in creating capacity, enhancing ability, capturing creativity, and driving change leading to growth. His career as a business consultant allows him to engage with multiple communities across cultures and countries to help companies and people become the best versions of themselves.

His intentions, promises and actions are rooted in the belief that professional consultants should act as trusted advisors to their clients, demonstrating ownership to understand the context and shape customized solutions that translate strategy into action. He believes that success requires a deep understanding of the drivers of the client’s business and culture and relationships that truly go beyond the contract.

Delivering Desired Results with Empathy

Prithvi Shergill emphasizes that the commitment to demonstrate ‘Empathy,’ apply ‘Adaptability,’ and build ‘Relationships’ are three of the most crucial personal qualities that have contributed to his success.

By developing Empathy, a leader can connect with stakeholders on a deeper level, understand their pain points, and create a working model that delivers desired results in a culture that is fostered by inclusivity, respect, and collaboration.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, change is constant, and leaders must be able to role model Adaptability in changing circumstances by remaining resilient, agile, and forward-thinking, thereby responding proactively to be future-ready.

Finally, he sees building transparent Relationships with employees, customers, and stakeholders as essential in inspiring trust, which is the fuel to have people commit to applying their abilities authentically.

Prithvi Shergill believes in staying updated with the latest technology, trends, and research, and he achieves this by being curious about things that he does not know, have exposure to or experience with.

To reach the right decisions, he demands it to be evidence-based and seeks data that can be translated into information and insight, which inspires the right action.

He can often be seen seeking out time with people one-on-one to learn from them, attending industry conferences to learn from audiences he engages with, seeking responses and reactions to ideas on online forums, – and seeing ‘networking’ as building a mutually beneficial association.

Keeping the Same Pace through Adversities

Prithvi Shergill shared that one of the biggest challenges for professionals, including himself, remains co-creating enterprise-wide people enablement technology solutions whose value can be seen in their awareness, adoption, and assimilation to augment practices, processes and policies truly.

Prithvi Shergill has been humbled to have represented his teams to receive several notable recognitions – some of the more memorable ones being the:

• Asia Human Capital Summit Award from the Human Capital Leadership Institute and Ministry of Manpower in Singapore twice, with Accenture in 2009 and with HCL Technologies in 2015, honouring innovative people practices adopted by Asia-based organisations.
• Stevie Award for Best Human Resources Department with Accenture in 2012 and for International Business with Entomo in 2021 and 2022.
• Brandon Hall Awards for Talent Management with Accenture in 2012 and with Entomo in 2021 and 2022.
• Forbes Award for HCL recognising it as one of the fastest growing companies in 2012 (which continued until 2017-18 with revenue increased from $4.9 billion to $8.6 billion, net income grew from $859 million to $1.5 billion, and EPS increased from $1.33 to $2.32, representing growth of each of these metrics by approx. 175 per cent) and many others.

More than the awards, the opportunity to share the experiences of the work he has stewarded with other leaders and teams at various events, as a member of the SHRM Think Tank or the Economic Times Advisory Council – and at educational institutions such as Harvard Business School, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore as well as many others, using case studies published to capture the learnings from his career journey has been most fulfilling.

During his tenure, entomo has been recognised with –

• 2023 Gold Stevie Winner for Innovative use of Tech in HR – 2023 APAC Stevie Awards
• HR Online Employee experience awards 2023 – Best Career Development Program
• HRTech Awards – Best Talent Intelligence Award 2023
• ObserveNow Super30 HR Leaders Awards – Best HR Service Provider 2023
• Singapore Business Review Technology Excellence Award 2022
• Gold Stevie Award – Middle East and Africa Stevie Awards 2022
• Human Resources Online’s HR Vendor of the Year Award 2021
• Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Award 2021 – Best Advance in Unique Talent Management Technology
• Recognized as a ‘Leader’ in Winter 2023 G2 Awards

Exploring New Avenues

Prithvi Shergill sees his purpose to partner with people in the community to build capability, courage, and commitment to change how they perform, learn and grow.

He sees his career journey to date as the path that has opened opportunities to enable him to explore new avenues with teams and people across countries to shape answers for them to reach their potential.

He is energised when answering what work needs to be done, who has the skills to do this work, and how the work should be done– by having fun while making the world a better place to live in!

Prithvi Shergill always has a point of view and is always available to share it. The only advice he sees of value for those who listen to him is to learn from his mistakes.

Each person has their own journey they are on and, more importantly, their own purpose and goals. Sometimes they have reflected and articulated these, sometimes, they are in the process, and sometimes, they have yet to start. He ensures he makes himself accessible to people wanting to exchange notes as they aspire to accelerate towards the milestones that reflect growth for them.

His role when engaging clients is to ensure that the offerings that are represented to them consider reflecting solutions that will deliver the desired business outcomes and values that are important to them. These offerings are premised on an evolving point of view on the drivers of enterprise and employee performance and growth.