Putting the ‘Human’ in HR: A Conversation with Malvika Kulshreshtha

I sat down (virtually) with Malvika to talk about her career, and by the end of it, I couldn’t help but laugh at how accurate those memes are—we really don’t know what our friends actually do for a living. This project started because I wanted to interview people from different industries and understand how they got where they are, what their field is like, and how others could potentially enter it. What I didn’t expect was how much I’d learn about people I already knew. Two birds, one stone!

Malvika Kulshreshtha works as a Lead Associate Consultant in the Work & Rewards division at WTW (formerly Willis Towers Watson). WTW is a global firm with about 40,000 employees. It’s kind of a big deal.

What Does A Lead Associate Consultant Do?

At WTW, the work they do covers areas of people, risk and capital, and Malvika's division focuses on Work & Rewards, which is specifically focused on the 'people' aspect of the company's range of work. She works with global clients across industries, often talking to the rewards team or HR folks within these companies, to consult on their HR and rewards structures.

One of her key roles is helping companies figure out their organizational leveling. That means defining job levels and grades across the company—this can look like “Is this role a senior manager or just a manager?” and “How do we structure the path from here to VP?” These levels help companies set fair compensation, plan learning and development paths, and make internal mobility more transparent.

Another big chunk of her work is around pay equity—looking into matters such as gender pay gaps, doing deep dives into the data, and helping companies figure out how to close those gaps. She also works on designing bonus plans, advising on how to create fair, motivating reward systems.

Currently, she works with a myriad of clients—from non-profits and banks to media and biopharma companies. Each one comes with its own unique set of challenges. For example, with non-profits, she has to design solutions that are both equitable and cost-effective, which often means giving clients a few different options to pick from based on their priorities.

Most of the work she does as the Lead Associate is at an organizational level. But that does not mean it has no impact on individual lives, because when job architectures are done well, it trickles down—people understand their growth path, salary bands become more transparent (especially in countries where disclosure is required), and employees are generally more satisfied. She also works closely with WTW’s employee experience team to make sure the structures they build are human-friendly, not just spreadsheets and graphs. Often job levels or frameworks gets validated with real people—from department heads all the way down the hierarchy. The process usually starts at the top level and moves downward from there.

Her work is project-based and billed by the hour. She mostly works with the Great Britain and Ireland teams, and depending on the project, she could be the one managing a team or working under more senior consultants. The team makeup usually depends on the hourly rates, so the more senior you are, the more mindful one would have to be of asking for your time and expertise on a project.

So How Did She Get Here?

Malvika did her undergrad in psychology from NMIMS, where she gravitated towards organizational psych. During her undergrad, she undertook her thesis on motivation and psychological capital in the hospitality industry, which made a lot of sense because her dad worked in hotels and she basically grew up around that world, which made her feel more connected to what she was observing. This was when she started looking at working life from a human perspective, be it the work culture or the crazy work hours, and she started gravitating towards a deeper understanding of human beings and their work lives. 

She had originally thought she’d pursue a master’s specifically in organizational psychology, but realized that in India, that track often funneled people into very general HR roles. So instead, she packed her bags and went to LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) for an MSc in Human Resources & Organizations.

Her first job was as a Junior HR Associate at an international financial services firm, where she quickly realized that the work didn’t quite align with what she imagined her work to be. A lot of the work involved ticking boxes—sending template emails, doing routine tasks, which left very little room for strategic thinking. That’s when she made the switch to consulting.

A Mix of Sweet & Sour

Even though Malvika studied psychology, she doesn’t get to use it as much in her day-to-day work as she once expected. Sure, there are situations where it comes in handy—like when doing skill assessments or figuring out what kind of bonus structures will actually motivate people—but it's not a core part of her role. There are times when she feels this gap, but other time here colleagues are there to remind her that understanding motivation and behavior is baked into the job—it’s just more subtle. So even when she is designing a good bonus plan, it isn’t just about the numbers; it’s about knowing what drives people, what makes them tick. So even when it is not as obvious, her psych brain is more or less often a part of the work she does.

However, one challenge she faced early on was when she worked in an in-house HR role. That’s where she felt the tension of being an “enabling” function—your work is essential to the business running well, especially in a growing company, but it’s always seen as “extra work” by everyone else — HR needs you to fill in this form or go through this process — and even if it’s important, people are annoyed because it feels like more work. It made it hard to feel appreciated.

Now that she’s on the consulting side, things feel a bit different. She’s on the revenue-generating side of things. But she still works closely with HR teams at big companies, and sometimes you can tell people wonder, "why do I have to do this extra admin task?”—especially senior stakeholders who are juggling a million things. But there’s generally more acceptance at that level. A lot of these leaders do care about making their orgs run better, and when you’re able to build that relationship, the work becomes a lot smoother. It’s about connection, really.

Of course, as a consultant, you’re expected to be “on” all the time—good with people, great at communicating, always energetic. But energy isn’t infinite. She admits that it’s hard to maintain the same level all day, especially with long hours. Still, you push through because you want to do right by your team and your clients.

Yet being a problem-solver, this line of work aligns well with who she is as a person. Being able to think strategically and help people find solutions is where she finds the most fulfillment, because being an HR consultant, people do come to you with a myriad of problems. As she does more projects and works with more clients, Malvika is gradually building her expertise, which she feels is significant in helping people as the more work she does, the more she can use her learnings to understand each unique problem and provide the best possible approaches to her clients.

Another sweet advantage of working in HR is variety. She’s been in this team for over two years and still hasn’t done everything there is to do. There’s always something new to learn or try. If she gets bored of one kind of project, she can pivot to something else. She also really enjoys working with different teams and seniors—it helps keep things fresh and lets her mentally switch gears throughout the day. It also makes it easier to set boundaries between tasks, instead of everything blurring into one never-ending to-do list.

And yes, it takes effort to adjust to different seniors and their preferences—some are super picky about formatting, others care more about the logic or storytelling—but that’s part of the learning. It’s helped her figure out what her leadership style is shaping up to be. 

Malvika’s Success Tips

If someone’s thinking about entering HR consulting or this specific kind of rewards/compensation work, Malvika has some solid advice: make peace with data. When you’re starting out, it will be a lot about numbers, visualizations and presentations, but that will help you lay the foundation of differentiating numbers from stories as you go higher up the ladder.

As you go higher, you become a kind of a storyteller. As her seniors advice her, “your clients won’t know numbers in-depth the way you do, so what kind of a story can you tell through your presentations to help them understand?”. So even though the skill of having attention to detail remains the same throughout your career, you also start developing skills for the big picture work. 

She also mentioned that this space really values structure and frameworks, so if you're the kind of person who loves thinking strategically and organizing chaos, you’ll thrive. But generally, there are times when the stakes are high in HR, such as when doing payroll work, where one missed detail can lead to employees being paid incorrectly. So your organization work becomes your superpower in these situations. And sometimes, tough decisions have to be made—like redundancies. That’s where empathy and business thinking meet. Empathy is essential, but it’s also hard to hold onto all the time, especially when your role requires you to balance care with practicality.

However, Malvika was happy to bust the myth of “HR person = Extroverts”. You don’t need to be an extrovert to work in HR. Malvika herself is an ambivert, and she’s worked with plenty of introverts too. What matters more is having strong communication skills and the ability to build relationships. You need to be a people’s person—not in the “life of the party” way, but in the “I can talk to anyone and make things work” way.

And for all the jobseekers out there: When it comes to applying for jobs, Malvika believes in storytelling. Whether it was her university SOPs or job cover letters, she always tried to connect the dots between her personal story—childhood, education, work—and the company she’s applying to. Because when you’re on the recruitment side, resumes can start to look the same. A great cover letter is one where the applicant shows how the company fits into their story and why it resonates.

For networking, her advice is simple: show up. Go to HR events, talk to people, keep in touch with old classmates, team members, mentors—just keep the conversations going. And be annoyingly persistent. If someone told her they wanted to work on something, she might forget in three months unless they follow up. So be that person who checks in. Be annoying!

And finally, to stay updated, she recommends Human Times—a website with short summaries of org updates. Plus, joining LinkedIn groups, attending certification meetups, and just constantly talking to people in the field helps you stay in the loop.

Future of HR

Towards the end, we spoke about where HR is headed. For herself, Malvika is confident in becoming the go-to expert in consulting. She aims to build a personal brand for herself and client relationships where people want her expertise. The kind of reputation where her clients trust not only the company she works in but also Malvika as an expert in her field.

Thinking about the HR field in general, there is no doubt that changes are happening, and they are happening fast. AI is already doing a bunch of things analysts used to spend hours on. It’s efficient, yes, and saves tons of time—but it’s also a little scary. Tasks like job leveling that used to take 30 minutes can now be done in significantly lesser time. So with automation, there’s a possibility of leaner HR teams and more in-house capabilities.

But that doesn’t mean HR is disappearing. There are still things only humans can do—like understanding the nuances of a team dynamic or having tough conversations that require empathy and judgment. So yes, tech is going to reshape HR, but it won’t replace it. Instead, the future is probably about working with technology, not against it.

In the end, whether its consulting, in-house or a different form of HR career, there’s a range of exciting paths to choose from, and Malvika is one of the budding experts in the field.

If you’d like to get in touch with her and know more about the awesome work she is doing, you can connect with her on Linkedin!