Lakshmi Narayanan
Head of People / Director — Talent & HR
Bengaluru, India • +91 90080 13297 • lakshmi.narayanan@proton.me • linkedin.com/in/lakshmi-narayanan-people
Portfolio: www.eliorexa.com/portfolio/hr-talent-manager-senior
Professional Summary
People and talent leader with 13 years building HR functions from the ground up across IT services, SaaS and global capability centres. Sets people strategy across talent acquisition, org design, performance and culture; leads HR teams of 12–20 and owns a recruiting + people-ops budget of ₹6+ crore. Ties HR decisions to business outcomes — attrition, time-to-hire, engagement and cost-per-hire — and has built leadership-hiring engines, HRIS platforms and labor-law-compliant policy across multiple geographies.
Skills
People leadership: People strategy, Org design, Team building (12–20), Leadership hiring, Executive partnering, Change management
Talent acquisition: TA strategy, Employer branding, Global recruiting, Hiring analytics, Vendor & agency management
Culture & performance: Performance management (OKRs), Engagement systems, DEI programs, Total rewards, Succession planning
Compliance & systems: Labor law (multi-state, multi-country), POSH governance, HRIS (Workday, Darwinbox), ATS platform strategy, Audit & policy
Core Competencies
people strategy · talent acquisition · org design · leadership hiring · performance management · employee engagement · HRIS · ATS · labor law · DEI · total rewards · succession planning
Work Experience
Director — People & Talent — Aurelis Global Centre
Mar 2019 – Present
Bengaluru
- Lead a 20-person People org (TA, HR business partners, people ops) supporting 2,400 employees across India and two global sites, owning a ₹6.2 crore annual budget.
- Built the leadership-hiring engine that closed 45+ director-and-above roles, cutting executive time-to-fill from 110 to 64 days and reducing agency spend ~₹1.4 crore/year.
- Re-architected performance management onto a quarterly OKR + continuous-feedback model on Workday, lifting goal-completion 31% and review on-time rates to 96%.
- Designed an engagement and culture program that raised eNPS from 18 to 49 and cut regretted attrition from 19% to 11% over three years.
- Owned multi-state and cross-border labor-law compliance and POSH governance, clearing two external audits with zero major findings.
- Hired and grew the HR leadership bench, promoting 5 managers into senior people-partner and TA-lead roles.
Senior Manager — Talent Acquisition & HRBP — Cendrix Systems
May 2014 – Feb 2019
Chennai
- Built the talent-acquisition function from scratch, scaling the company from 300 to 1,100 employees and standardizing ATS-driven hiring across 6 business units.
- Cut average cost-per-hire 34% by shifting to direct sourcing, employee referrals and an employer-branding campaign that grew the talent pipeline 3x.
- Implemented the company's first HRIS and onboarding platform, reducing new-hire administrative effort 40% and standardizing compliance documentation.
HR roles — earlier career — Wipro, Mindtree
2011 – 2014
Bengaluru / Chennai
- Progressed from HR executive to HRBP across recruitment, onboarding and employee-engagement mandates; promoted twice for delivery and people impact.
Education
MBA — Human Resource Management
2011
XLRI Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur
B.A. Economics
2009
Loyola College, Chennai
Certifications
- SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) — SHRM (2020)
- Certified Workday HCM Configuration — Workday (2021)
Selected Achievements
- Cut regretted attrition from 19% to 11% over three years via an engagement and performance-systems overhaul.
- Reduced executive time-to-fill from 110 to 64 days while cutting agency spend ~₹1.4 crore/year.
- Speaker, SHRM India Annual Conference 2023 — "Building a leadership-hiring engine that scales."
- Advises two early-stage startups on people strategy; mentor in a women-in-leadership HR fellowship.