Holding The Reins
People Matters|October 2018

In an open and frank conversation with People Matters, Archana Singh, EVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at Wiley shares her outlook on change and transformation at Wiley, getting the right talent on board, leveraging the strength of a people-centric culture, and culture and brand as the two sides of the same coin.

Suparna Chawla Bhasin
Holding The Reins

From Hay group (a global management consulting firm) to Wiley (a global leader in education and scholarly research) — how different has the experience been in developing HR strategies and initiatives?

As CHRO at Hay Group, I was working with consultants advising Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies on people and organizational matters. These teams knew my job as well as I did! What was important about that experience for me was the process of building confidence in the leadership team and across the organization. We “drank our own champagne” and enabled our consultants in the same way that our consultants enabled their customers. I had the opportunity to bring that thinking inside the organization and emphasized pragmatic design and practical application as we tested, learned, and practiced on ourselves.

When the Wiley opportunity came up, I was impressed by the organization’s long-standing history and even more impressed by the transformation journey that lay ahead. Wiley was at the pivot point of evolving into a more customer-centric, technology-enabled organization advancing scholarly research and education. This was an amazing opportunity to leverage the strength of a people-centric culture and team and help lead a 210-year-old company at an inflection point in its history.

When you say that you joined Wiley at the time when the business was transforming. Can you share some of the direction you have been taking the business in recently, and the strategy for success going forward?

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