Attrition Fell From 4.62% to 0.82% — But This HR Leader Won't Claim Credit

Employee attrition at Petronet LNG's Kochi Terminal fell from 4.62% in FY 2022-23 to 0.82% in FY 2025-26 — a drop of nearly 85% in relative terms over three years. Hevin Verghese, senior manager of human resources at the terminal, refuses to attribute that reduction to any single HR programme, and that restraint is precisely the point of his approach to the function.

Verghese is a finalist in the Young HR Turk category and second runner-up in the Happiness Ambassador category of the HRKatha Rising Star Leadership Awards 2025. With around 18 years of HR experience, an MBA in HR and Marketing and an LL.B., he oversees a remit spanning employee engagement, learning and development, wellbeing, statutory compliance, contractor management and HR technology.

What does measurement mean in practice?

Every initiative Verghese supports must answer three questions: What problem are we solving? What are we doing differently? How will we know it worked? The questions reflect a distinction he considers central — introducing a programme is not the same as improving an outcome, and HR must demonstrate the difference.

He evaluates evidence at several levels: participation, process effectiveness, employee outcomes and, ultimately, business outcomes. At Petronet LNG, the PLL Swasthya initiative bundles health talks, preventive healthcare, medical programmes and awareness sessions. Learning and development rests on defined training requirements, including a minimum of five training man-days per employee.

Those numbers, however, are only the starting line. The harder question, he argues, is whether such activity produces a healthier, more capable and more engaged workforce. Attrition figures matter because they let HR test whether its overall direction is right — not because a favourable outcome proves what caused it. Without measuring outcomes, HR has even less basis for judging whether its interventions work.

How does business knowledge build HR credibility?

Working in a technically intensive organisation has shaped Verghese's philosophy, which he summarises in three ideas: people, purpose and performance. People should feel respected, supported and heard; initiatives should address identifiable organisational needs; and the function's contribution should show up in how the organisation performs.

He believes HR professionals need to understand the business as thoroughly as they understand employee expectations — including operations, productivity, costs, risks, technology and organisational objectives. His exposure to contract workmen, managers, senior leaders, external partners and training institutions has surfaced one common expectation: HR should be accessible, fair, responsive and grounded in business reality.

Leadership, in his view, is not a matter of seniority. "Leadership does not begin with a designation. It begins with ownership," he says. For younger professionals, credibility grows through ordinary behaviours: taking responsibility, listening carefully, being dependable and following through. In a function with limited formal authority, influence depends on the quality of recommendations, understanding of competing priorities and trust built over time.

Can inclusion be measured beyond participation?

Inclusion has to be experienced rather than stated in policy, Verghese argues. Petronet LNG's engagement spans wellbeing programmes, learning opportunities, family engagement, recognition, health initiatives and knowledge sharing. But participation counts alone cannot establish whether people feel included.

He returns to one principle: "People may forget what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel." HR meets employees at consequential moments — joining, recognition, difficulty, personal circumstances — and even when it cannot deliver the desired answer, the individual should feel heard and treated fairly. Empathy, he notes, does not mean agreeing to every request; it means decisions that can be explained honestly and applied consistently.

What comes next for the employee journey?

Verghese's longer-term interest is connecting systems that employees already experience as one working life: recruitment, learning, performance, career development, wellbeing and recognition. He envisages an integrated employee-experience and wellbeing ecosystem in which HR technology, feedback and learning analytics identify changing needs across career stages, with AI recognising patterns and suggesting development opportunities.

He draws firm boundaries, though. Sensitive data, privacy and the risk of biased recommendations cannot be secondary concerns, and AI should support better-informed decisions rather than remove human responsibility for them. Business acumen plus digital and data literacy, he argues, are now essential HR capabilities — professionals need not become technologists, but they must understand enough to evaluate the tools they use. His own test for any new idea stays practical: can it solve a real problem in the organisation?