Girish Ganesan, CPO at S&P Global, took the reins of the financial information and analytics giant’s HR function last fall amid a C-suite shake up following the appointment of CEO Martina Cheung in 2024. Ganesan told HR Brew he’s spent the nearly year-long journey focused on three main priorities: supporting the executive team’s efforts under a new CEO, readying the workforce as the company and world evolves, and maximizing the people teams to best deliver for the company and its employees.
He said a big chunk of his work involved deploying a new employee value proposition for its workforce: people forward. Ganesan said the organization needed to evolve its people philosophy to reflect changes inside the organization and outside more broadly.
People forward. The new framework guides all company messaging and communication and is “embedded across the employee life cycle,” according to Ganesan.
“It’s an evolution from our people-first philosophy, which has existed at S&P Global for many years,” he said. “It’s a mindset that guides how we invest in our people, largely underpinned in continuous growth and development.”
The shift to people forward reflected not only a strategy shift from new executive leaders, but also acknowledged ongoing AI-disruption and new economic and geopolitical realities.
S&P Global focuses on employee career development, trust and transparency amid a changing workplace and world, and a renewed focus on employee well-being with emphasis on the entire person.
“We want our people to grow and come along the journey as the organization evolves, so it emphasizes momentum, propelling our workforce towards keeping up with the pace with market changes, emerging technologies and shifting work-life needs,” he said.
Ganesan said people forward is an evolution of the company’s previous “people first” philosophy, designed to equip the workforce for continuous innovation and adaptation.
Empowering employee growth and career development requires a focus on employee agency over their own career development and equipping employees with the training and tools to succeed in a new economy. It’s no secret an AI-enabled economy is where we’re headed.
“We’re not just adopting AI. We want to prepare our people to thrive alongside it,” he said.
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S&P offers in-house generative AI tooling to every employee. Every employee, 42,000 of them, is required to complete a training program on the tools. The organization is doubling down with additional role-specific training for specific groups of employees and managers.
S&P focuses its education both on essential tech and essential skills training, largely focused on human skills or leadership skills, which will be more urgently needed as AI becomes more enveloped in the day-to-day of business, he said.
“You both need to be technically astute to be able to leverage AI, but you also need to have those power skills to be able to supplement where AI is going to leave a gap,” he said.
As businesses transition amid the ongoing AI transformation, and S&P Global moves ahead with its AI plans, company execs are working to include employee listening and needs. AI transformation questions are included in employee surveying, and AI technology showcased to employees also “generates a lot of commentary and questions.”
“We want to make sure that we’re building a community in which everyone feels connected and valued,” he said, “It was fundamentally important to us that…our people feel that their voices are being heard and that we are on this journey together.”
Ganesan also said that employee wellness and well being is paramount to S&P’s new strategy. The company boasts of its wellness days, five days a year when its offices are closed and employees are asked to focus on their lives and families. It also focuses on hybrid work, an essential resource for supporting employees’ ability to work the way that works best for them.
“AI is truly turning into a life skill very quickly, beyond a professional skill,” Ganesan said. “It’s seeping into our lives. It’s in society everywhere. I wake up to an AI feed every day, and that’s how life’s going to be, but combining that with human connectivity, empathy, respect for human race, also respect for human intelligence, that’s going to bring about judgment…even more profound as we move forward.”