Mumbai | 8 June 2026: As organisations invest heavily in AI, digital transformation and workforce modernisation, HR leaders may be focusing on the wrong challenge, according to veteran banker Anil Khandelwal, former Chairman and Managing Director of Bank of Baroda.
Speaking at the People Matters BFSI Talent & Tech Summit 2026, held on 4th June Mumbai, with 210 senior HR and business leaders from across India’s BFSI sector around the theme: Capability is the New Currency, Khandelwal argued that HR’s biggest challenge today is not managing employees but influencing CEOs, senior leadership teams and boards to view people as a strategic asset rather than an operational function.
“The challenge before HR is not employees. The challenge is dealing with their own higher management, especially the CEO and the board,” he told an audience of BFSI and HR leaders.
According to Dr. Khandelwal, organisations continue to treat people-related issues as the responsibility of HR alone, while leadership remains disproportionately focused on financial outcomes and short-term performance metrics.
“You have to reverse the equation,” he said. “Top leadership must become deeply involved in understanding employees, investing in people and building organisations where talent can thrive.”
Drawing on his experience leading a large-scale turnaround in the banking sector, Dr. Khandelwal emphasised that sustainable transformation is rarely driven by technology or capital alone. During his tenure leading a public sector bank through a period of significant change, he said the real differentiator was a relentless focus on employees and customers.
“It was all people, people, people..and customers.”
Dr. Khandelwal also challenged HR leaders to rethink the scope of their role. While recruitment, training, performance management and engagement remain important, he argued that the profession must move beyond process management and take ownership of building what he called “leadership capital, culture capital, trust capital and human capital.”
He warned that organisations operating with yesterday’s mindset risk becoming obsolete in an era of rapid technological change.
“Most organisations will become outdated if they continue to manage from yesterday’s mindset.”
A significant portion of his keynote focused on leadership development, where he questioned the effectiveness of traditional training-led approaches.
“Leadership is not an event. Leadership is a discipline to practise,” he said, arguing that organisations often spend heavily on executive education without ensuring that learning translates into behavioural change. Leadership, he noted, is built through consistent practice, feedback, accountability and real-world experience, not classroom interventions alone.
Khandelwal also urged leaders to distinguish between building successful companies and building enduring institutions. While companies create financial value, institutions endure because they invest in trust, culture, ethics, reputation and leadership.
“Financial performance creates value. Organisational health creates endurance,” he said.
As BFSI organisations prepare for a future shaped by AI, demographic shifts and continuous disruption, Khandelwal’s message was clear: HR’s next frontier is not simply better talent management, but shaping how leadership thinks about people.
“The future belongs to organisations that invest in leadership, culture, trust and people. Those are the assets that endure long after strategies, technologies and leaders have changed.”
