From the shop floor to the leadership team, Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR has had a foot in almost every part of Ford’s business. His diverse career history has helped him become a strong people leader who recognises the value in cross-functional leadership.

As a teenager, Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR would pull apart car engines and gearboxes, and then put the moving pieces back together.

His fascination with cars led him to a job with the Ford Motor Company, where he first worked on the shop floor in its Broadmeadows assembly plant.

“From that time on, it has been one thing after another,” says Chaudhuri. “I’ve had a really non-conventional journey. It has been bound by a spirit of adventure, and learning from the challenges and possibilities at Ford.”

Although a passion for vehicles initially drew Chaudhuri to Ford – and eventually led him to pursue a Masters in Engineering at RMIT University, before holding various engineering positions – it’s not engineering nor car manufacturing that has kept him at the company for nearly 33 years.

It was Ford’s culture that ignited his curiosity to explore the business from other vantage points.

“I loved it so much that I moved into other areas of the business – finance, then purchasing and e-business technology. Working across many parts of the business, from the shop floor to e-business, helped me to see the big picture.”

“I am honoured to be nominated for the HR Leader Award by AHRI. It’s a wonderful recognition of the amazing work done by the entire HR community.” – Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR

Doing so made Chaudhuri realise that his passion for Ford could be utilised elsewhere.

“It was my interest, passion and energy to go and do something from a people perspective that made me take up a cross-functional role.”

Within the HR department, Chaudhuri has held 15 roles in different business and HR areas, and in locations including Bangkok, Melbourne, at Ford India’s manufacturing plant near Chennai, and with the World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.

Since January 2020, he has been Vice-President Human Resources, Ford Australia and New Zealand, and as of this week he has been named as a finalist for AHRI’s HR Leader award, as part of the 2022 AHRI Awards event.

“I am honoured to be nominated for the HR Leader Award by AHRI. It’s a wonderful recognition of the amazing work done by the entire HR community to lead organisation’s through the pandemic and into the future ahead. 

“HR professionals have enormous impact, reach and capacity to make change,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter how much more sophisticated society becomes, or how much technology we use – whether it’s machine learning, AI or something else – people will be at the front and centre of any business.”

An empathetic HR leader

Being a finalist for the HR leader award is a reflection of Chaudhuri’s dedication, empathy and ability to facilitate connection – especially in the most trying of times.

“We really are a company that is also a family. People genuinely care for each other.”

At Chaudhuri’s initiative, Ford launched an Emergency Leadership Group (ELG) soon after COVID-19 arrived in Australia, to support employees through the pandemic.

“We formed a close-knit group of senior leaders, which comprised cross-functional and cross-departmental leadership representation.

“We had to come together to address the needs of the hour, make decisions quickly and implement them very rapidly.”

Aside from the frequency of meetings, Chaudhuri also focused his attention on bringing the right people together. Collective leadership and collaboration are always front of mind.

“None of the challenges of the last 18 months could have been solved through a one-dimensional lens of finance, HR or engineering. What we really needed was a cross-functional view from an agile and diverse team.

“We had representatives from legal, industrial relations, finance, HR, communications, and health and safety.

“With this cross-functional leadership, we quickly came to a conclusion about who would continue working on site, with issued permits, and who couldn’t work on site. All of these aspects of running a very complex business needed to be worked out.”

Don’t miss the chance to attend this year’s AHRI Award reception, hosted in Melbourne. Reconnect with your HR peers and celebrate all the hard work that has gone into helping organisations to be prepared for new ways of working. Book now.

Challenges surface

Ford’s focus on empathy and support helped to supersede differences of opinion voiced by members of the executive leadership group (ELG).

“Caring for each other has always been front and centre,” says Chaudhuri.

“Because we were able to have that as a guiding principle, we could put aside our differences and say, ‘This might have been a point of view from a business perspective or from an engineering perspective, but in support of caring for each other, how do we come up with an outcome that meets the needs of multiple stakeholders?”

This was a particularly difficult question to answer when trying to balance the needs of the business, versus the need to ensure employees’ safety.

The underlying principle of care helped to bring everyone onto the same page. It’s this foundation that has shaped Chaudhuri’s advice for other businesses that might need to respond quickly to an emergency.

“Anyone contemplating something similar should think about the key values and principles with which you’re going to bring a group like this together to decide, iterate and work through business problems.”

“This is the decade of HR. Compared to any other department, I think HR has such an important and strategic role to play in pulling together all the different pieces of the puzzle.” – Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR

With this in mind, he says it is vital to outline the shared values that unite a group of diverse leaders and ensure everyone is working towards the same set of objectives. This should happen before considering the practical steps that need to happen on the ground in order for an idea to come to fruition.

Cross-functional leadership

The ELG’s cross-functional approach has been applied to other business challenges as Ford undergoes a massive transformation.

“We’re looking at how we transform our company from being one that just builds cars and trucks to servicing the needs of the new economy. We are making huge investments in battery electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles,” says Chaudhuri.

“There is a lot of work happening in the new economies of the world which requires all of these different ways of thinking. One of the strengths of Ford is that we bring in diverse points of view. It helps us to design better products and services, time and time again.”

Having diverse perspectives extends beyond taking a cross-functional approach, he says. It also encapsulates bringing in subject matter experts from outside the company.

Just over a year ago, when Ford kicked off its Flex at Ford project to reimagine the future of work, it benefitted from thought leadership offered by external leaders.

“We developed a very informed view about how we work in a way that protects our values, but also keeps it contemporary enough that we can evolve.”

This approach has helped Ford to form a highly connected model of working that emphasizes connectivity through technology, while highlighting the importance of designing in-person spaces for collaboration. 

“We needed to design spaces for hybrid work instead of just having cubicles. We needed strong input from all the teams, around what to do with our office space so people could create and innovate together.”

Chaudhuri believes the project wouldn’t have achieved the same level of employee and managerial support without the cross-functional approach that was developed during the early days of the pandemic.

“It’s critical that senior leaders are also seen as the instigators of the change because HR on our own – or any team on its own – can’t make change happen.”

What comes next?

Chaudhuri’s contribution to the ELG was shaped by AHRI’s Model of Excellence (now the Australian HR Capability Framework).

“It’s something that’s always front and centre for me. The [framework] is not just about how we continue to stand out as HR professionals, but how we continue to be ahead,” he says.

“We always look at the business goals, and what’s happening in the environment in the next three, four or five years.

“As we look ahead, we bring all of that together and then view it from a people perspective: what does it mean for the business, what is my role and what is our role as HR professionals in co-creating solutions?”

“In every leadership discussion and in every board meeting, in every strategic conversation, HR should be asking: what does this mean for our people?

“This is the decade of HR. Compared to any other department, I think HR has such an important and strategic role to play in pulling together all the different pieces of the puzzle.”

What better way to celebrate the ‘decade of HR’ than by gathering in-person with your HR peers and raising a glass to their successes at AHRI’s Award reception on Thursday 1 December at Melbourne’s The Glasshouse. Book your spot today – and feel welcome to bring your colleagues along with you!

“Congratulations to all the other AHRI Award applicants and finalists. I wish them all the best!”

A version of this article was first featured in the Dec/Jan 2022 edition of HRM Magazine.