Committed to advancing the highest standards of boardroom excellence, Bala V Sathyanarayanan holds the positions of Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Greif, Inc. He is focused on delivering a top-tier, diversified, and motivated staff that can carry out Greif’s objective of being the world’s best-performing customer service organization.
Mr. Sathyanarayanan’s journey began in the city of Chennai, the 4th largest metropolitan city in India. He started his career as a graduate trainee with United Technologies/Otis Elevator Company. He had the good fortune to begin his career with this international multinational American legend here, where he was exposed to many aspects of the industry, including a brief stay in Malaysia. His career was advanced by that experience, which opened doors to positions of greater responsibility at Coca-Cola, Avaya, Hewlett-Packard Inc., and Xerox Corporation.
Prior to joining Greif, Mr. Sathyanarayanan headed business transformation and human resources for Xerox’s Technology Business. He was responsible for the company’s 40,000-person workforce spread across 145 nations globally. He previously oversaw human resources for the Americas Enterprise Business division of Hewlett-Packard.
Mr. Sathyanarayanan has an MHRM from Rutgers University in New Jersey, a BS in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the University of Madras in India, and an MBA in General Management. He also earned his degree from the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.
The Company
With prime locations in more than 40 countries, Greif is the top provider of industrial packaging goods and services. Greif is a business with a long and illustrious history. Its mission is to carefully package and safeguard the materials and goods of its clients in order to meet the basic needs of communities all over the world. Greif continually raises the bar in its pursuit of excellence in customer service for both its global and regional clients across the world.
The biggest strength of Greif is its workforce, which has upheld the fundamental principles of customer service for many years. With more than 225 production plants in more than 40 countries, Greif’s people methods, which center on carefully choosing, fostering, and motivating its employees to provide exceptional customer service, give it a competitive advantage in this business-to-business market. The essential values that have guided the company’s development and how it will continue to deliver for its stakeholders in the future are its mission, vision, and The Greif Way (to treat people as you would like to be treated). These values are shared by the four continents where it works.
A People Centric Leader
As the Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Greif, Mr. Sathyanarayanan’s responsibility is to build a global workforce that can execute the business strategy and create value for its customers. He is a strategist who helps in designing new organizational strategy, implementing change, and shaping the organization’s future with the CEO, the Executive Leadership Team, the Leadership Council, and the Board of Directors.
As a leader, he keeps the employees motivated by building a culture of engagement with regular personal recognition, which engages the company’s colleagues to deliver better customer service and lead to higher business yields. Doing so, Mr. Sathyanarayanan fundamentally believes that, “If we take care of our employees, the employees will take care of our customers, and if we take care of our customers, the customers will take care of our company.”
Mr. Sathyanarayanan sees himself as a “relator,” and he is quite comfortable working with anyone and everyone across the countries that the company operates in. He creates an amicable space so that strong relationships can form. He states, “Taking time out of my busy schedule to do small things like, smile, lend a helping hand, ask someone how they are doing helps bring balance in all aspects of our life. It helps build strong relationships and strong teams.” He states that one needs to be a servant leader to be truly fulfilled as a human and as a leader.
Building Strength to Deliver Best
Mr. Sathyanarayanan’s goals include improving people’s lives and leveraging his special talents to build flourishing communities throughout the nations where Greif does business. The organization intends to accomplish those goals by concentrating on the strengths of its executive leadership team, which are open-mindedness, a love of learning, and a desire to make a positive impact on its international clients by offering them legendary customer service through its highly engaged workforce.
The goal of Mr. Sathyanarayanan’s teams is to provide Grief with a top-notch, engaging staff that will help it realize its big-picture goals. His function is that of a strategist, an activist inside the company who shakes things up and encourages innovation. His personal mission as the Global CHRO is to manage the present while laying the foundations to help sustain global success for the future; “we call it our Build to Last strategy.”
Message for all New Learners
“Be a Servant leader with a Champion’s mindset. They need to be engaged and love to learn,” says Mr. Sathyanarayanan. He goes on to say that emerging leaders should lean in and not be afraid to ask probing questions. He asserts, “We look for employees who are motivated and driven to succeed. We call it the Champion’s Mindset. People who have this mindset will not only be more productive, but they will also help inspire their co-workers to do better.”
According to Mr. Sathyanarayanan, aspiring businesspeople can be very uncomfortable being vulnerable, and it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” He says, “Lean in and ask the question: Can you educate me on how this comes together in the business unit or how this business makes superior margins? Sometimes we hesitate to ask the business questions.”
Vision for Upcoming Years
Mr. Sathyanarayanan’s primary mission is to create a world-class, motivated, diverse, and engaged workforce to help Grief deliver its global vision. He says, “My mission as the Global CHRO is to manage the present while laying the foundations to help sustain global success for the future; we call it our Build to Last strategy.“
Written by Steve Sanchez.
