CHRO Dialogues Q1FY27 Bangalore

Sessions

When

15 April 2026

Time

4:00PM-5:30PM

Arrival

9:00 AM

Where

Welcomhotel by ITC, Richmond Road, Bangalore.

For whom

All Forums

Departure

12:30 PM

Overview

Key Takeaways

Speakers

Outcomes

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CHRO Dialogues Q1FY27 Bangalore

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Session 1: Managing Risk Across the Cycle

9.00 am – 10.30 am

When business cycles turn, most organisations respond with a lag — using last year's playbook to navigate this year's conditions. In growth periods, the risk is excessive caution: underinvesting, hiring too slowly, and missing emerging channels while competitors move. In downturns, the risk flips: across-the-board cuts, suspended capex, and the quiet haemorrhage of talent and customer trust. The cost of misreading the cycle falls unevenly across the enterprise, but it falls hardest on people: capability gaps that widen under pressure, and cultures that either stretch well or fracture.

In this session, Adit Jain, IMA’s Chairman and Editorial Director, will examine how CEOs and their leadership teams navigate risk across both phases of the business cycle — not as a financial exercise, but as an organisational one. Drawing on the contrasting approaches taken by organisations during a crisis, the session will map the decisions that separate companies that emerge stronger from those that spend years in recovery. For CHROs, the argument is both practical and urgent: the organisation's ability to scale in growth, and its ability to hold shape in a downturn, is a talent and capability question as much as a strategic one.

Session 2: Wages, Allowances and Variable Pay: Navigating Salary Structure Design Under the New Labour Codes

11.00 am – 12.30 pm

The four Labour Codes have been in the making for over a decade, but their implications for compensation design are only now coming into sharp focus for most organisations. The redefinition of “wages” under the Code on Wages — and its downstream effect on provident fund contributions, gratuity computations, and statutory bonus eligibility — means that salary structures built around traditional allowance strategies are under increasing pressure. For many firms, this is not a future compliance problem; it is an existing liability that surfaces most visibly during M&A due diligence, senior employee exits, or regulatory inspection. The question for CHROs and compensation leads is no longer whether to act, but where to start.

In this session, Kanishka Maggon will decode the practical architecture of compliant salary structuring — examining what the Labour Codes actually require, where existing structures most commonly break down, and how organisations can redesign compensation without disrupting their broader reward philosophy. Drawing on his experience advising domestic firms and multinationals including Accenture, Capgemini, BlackRock, ANZ India, Standard Chartered Bank and others on Labour Code implementation, Kanishka will ground the conversation in real-world decisions that HR and legal teams are navigating right now.

Key Takeaways

Why the dominant risk in a growth cycle is under-investing — in people, capacity and capability — and how CHROs can build the internal case for ahead-of-demand hiring and development

How the best-managed downturns protect culture and talent selectively, rather than cutting uniformly — and why indiscriminate cost reduction damages recovery position more than it protects short-term margins

What case studies reveal about the leadership behaviours that enable fast cycle-switching — and the organisational design choices that make it possible

How to read the early warning signs that a company is applying the wrong cycle's playbook — and what CHROs can do before the lag becomes costly

What the redefinition of “wages” under the Code on Wages actually means for PF, gratuity and statutory bonus — and why many organisations are underestimating their exposure.

Why the basic-to-gross wage ratio matters more than it did before, and how suppressing fixed pay in favour of allowances now carries measurable legal risk.

How variable pay architecture — discretionary versus contractual — affects severance liability and statutory computation, and the common misclassification mistakes firms are carrying. 

A practical lens on what a compliance review of your salary structure should cover, and how to sequence redesign without creating disruption or perceived reward regression.

Speakers

Outcomes

Session Summaries

Session 1 Summary

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Session 2 Summary