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Just like a good fragrance, a great employee experience leaves a lasting impression and feeling among employees. Armed with this belief, Sanjoy Shaw talks about building a workplace where people feel valued, inspired, and ready to grow.
Sanjoy Shaw's journey into HR began unexpectedly during his university days, where his work with non-profit organisations sparked a deep interest in people and their challenges. What started as a natural curiosity about human behaviour evolved into a fulfilling career spanning multiple industries, countries, and cultures.
For more than two decades since then, Sanjoy has witnessed how HR has transformed from a support function to a strategic partner in the boardroom. Today, as HR Head – Asia Pacific, F&B, Givaudan, he leads with a purpose-driven mindset and a people-first approach, constantly adapting to the fast-changing world of work across Asia Pacific.
In this Snapshot interview with Umairah Nasir, Sanjoy opens up about his leadership philosophy, the challenges of cross-cultural HR, and why crafting a great employee experience is much like blending a memorable fragrance.
Q You have been in HR for more than two decades. What first drew you to this profession, and what keeps you inspired today?
HR is one of the best professions one can have to create commendable value to organisations, people, and society at large. This is even more exciting now in the current disruptive world that needs HR leaders to shape the future of organisations and society to make our planet a great place to live.
During my university Bachelor studies in social science, I had to work with various non-profit organisations, leaders, people, as well as experienced various kinds of challenges that people go through and the professional help they often need. Those days, there were no career discussions or guidance. It happened naturally as I used to observe people, their personalities, and their dynamics. I found it very exciting for me to work with people and support them.
I am so glad that I chose HR as profession and my journey so far has been very fulfilling and highly rewarding.
As HR, there is so much we can do for the people and organisation to enable the organisation to be purpose driven, bringing human elements to business for its sustainable growth as well as leading culture and capability for the company to make it future proof. Understanding evolving business dynamics, various challenges, and trends, I continue to adapt, learn, grow and contribute.
This keeps me alert and inspired every day. HR has a strategic role in the boardroom now to create value and champion people and culture agenda to create competitive advantage for organisation to keep winning.
Q How has your approach to HR leadership changed over time, especially when working across different cultures in Asia?
This has been a learning journey for me as I worked with Indian companies, MNCs, and am now working with various cultures in Asia amid my engagement with global stakeholders. It is all about learning the business well, understanding the people, personalities, and culture well, and adapting your style of working from connecting to people differently, decision making, communication styles and collaborating for a common purpose.
One must be humble enough to listen and learn yet be very purposeful for creating value and supporting leaders in their development journey. I had to often realise that what is needed is more important than what I know from past experiences. Adaption and co-creation are the keys to win trust and work across cultures. Mindfulness of cultural nuances and leveraging it when needed are important. Working in different cultures is like driving your car in different terrains such as weather and changing road conditions: You must adapt, learn, and enjoy your journey with the people onboard for a common goal.
One needs to balance when to lead, when to support others and ensure you win as a team.
It is no longer about me or my team or my way, it is about the larger organisation, our way, and our future.
Q What is one leadership lesson that has stayed with you throughout your career, and how do you pass it on to your teams?
Let me share some of key lessons that I learnt in my more than two decades of journey, working various industries, different countries, cultures, and senior leaders; and at different scales.
- Lead with a purpose: Always be clear on your purpose and what value you wish to create in the organisation and for your people. This will keep you alert as a leader, connect you with people, and keep you inspired for work every day.
- Know your business thoroughly and be grounded: Talk to your people, visit factories, warehouses, various offices, meet distributors and understand your customers/consumers. This will enable your working from ground floor, not from top floor.
- Build trust and relations: Treat your team, leaders and employees with care. Build a lasting relation to work as one team. Give your support to them to succeed and ask for help when you need.
- Listen more and communicate effectively: Active listening helps to understand people, their situation, and perspectives. Be clear on your intent and communicate effectively and more frequently to get people on your side. Allow others challenge you to help you get better.
- Do not impose; rather, influence and collaborate: Positional power does not help much. Leaders must articulate vision well and influence others to persuade them for common goals and seek collaboration to work together. Invest in building high performance teams if you want to win frequently and sustainably.
- Develop others and make them successful: Leaders cannot lead and be there forever.
A leader must coach team members to develop them for future leadership and step back at times to support their success, even if it means risking some failure.
- Seek regular feedback and acknowledge contributions of others openly: Leaders are not perfect. Learn from others and be open to feedback and suggestions. Give credit to those who deserve it.
- Lastly, keep learning and adapting to be relevant: The pace of change is faster than ever. Leaders must stay aware, bring in outside perspectives, and keep learning and adapting. At times, they should lean on others who can do better and leverage their expertise. Learning agility is critical to remain relevant and meaningful, and it must be an ongoing habit for any good leader.
Q You received Givaudan’s Global Award 2025 for driving a culture programme across 12 markets in Asia. Tell us the secrets that led to this achievement!
This has been a great teamwork work by our APAC F&B senior leaders, teams in those countries and our employees. I am proud to be part of such a high-performance team in APAC. This award was about our 'APAC F&B 5 Values Programme' (trust, respect, creativity, passion & humility). We connected this to our organisationalpurpose and culture DNAs. The team worked on developing these values modules to train our employees/leaders to raise awareness on values behaviours to work as one team and collaborate with colleagues and customer.
We conducted various creative engagements programmes, appreciation, and dialogues around this across markets for last two years to encourage our employees to live our values in their daily life. Last year, we ran a 100-day Values Story Campaign in APAC markets for employees to come up with real stories of living our values at the workplace and in winning businesses. We had 160+ real inspiring stories and 12 'Best Stories' winners from various countries.
Finally, we released our APAC F&B Values Storybook as an inspiration for all. This has been one of most engaging, inspiring, and strong culture building intervention in the region. Our Journey of Values 3.0 continues, and we continue to nurture an inspiring workplace where we all love to be and grow.
Q What’s next – how else are you planning to take your workforce further in the coming 1-2 years, and how are you working with the rest of your leadership team to make this possible?
Our world has changed significantly post covid and continues to be complex with current geo-political dynamics, the tariff war, and sustainability challenges. Technological advancement and AI are making a rampant impact on our work, workplace, workforce, and ways of working. This is posing a tough challenge and an opportunity for organisation and leaders including HR leaders like me.
Survival of the fittest and fastest will be key for the future. It is time to revisit our business model, footprints, talent landscape, talent management, and ways of working. HR leaders need to deal with strategic aspects of organisation and work re-design, develop leaders for tomorrow, re-engineer the right culture at the workplace, integrate technology/AI in the most responsible and sensible way, and upskill the workforce to adapt and perform for organisational success. Managing change and transformation will come to the forefront in the coming years.
Givaudan has a legacy of strong leadership for decades that delivers credible organisational performance, and we continue to build a stronger and sustainable organisation for the future. I must acknowledge our leaders' commitment to people and culture.
We are currently working towards building our 2030 Business Strategy and HR leaders are engaging with our business leaders to develop our next cycle of HR strategy to support business growth. We normally go for large-scale consultations, seeking feedback and taking an outside-in perspective to prepare our plan. We are excited about our next strategic cycle aspirations and value creation for our customers. The HR team is getting ready to partner our leaders and work hand in hand to navigate the challenges and provide strong leadership for talent management.
Q If you could describe your HR journey with a fragrance, what would it be and why?
This is an interesting question that makes me smile.
A good fragrance evokes emotion and memory. As leaders, we must ensure to create great employee experience like a good fragrance for a lasting impression and feeling.
As HR leaders, I see strong a co-relation with our employee experience at the workplace. The role of HR should be about getting all the good ingredients of talent management (hiring, onboarding, culture, talent development, wellbeing, etc) – like making a great perfume that our employees as customers should value immensely and remember for many years while feeling respected, valued, and able to give their best to the company.
While our business leaders and creative teams deliver great fragrance to our customers across the world, we as HR continue to deliver similar a great experience to our employees. It is a journey, and we are getting there slowly. It is easier said than done but we are committed to this, and our HR strategy aptly describes our mission of “Creating a place where we love to be and grow” and we continue to work towards this. Personally, my experience with Givaudan has been excellent and many more fragrances to be experienced and enjoyed in coming years.
Lead image / Provided
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