Kiran Ponnada

About Kiran Ponnada

Global HR Leader with 20+ years of experience driving people, culture, and organizational transformation across the NA, LATAM, Europe, APAC, and MEA. Skilled in aligning HR strategy with corporate goals, designing agile people strategies that deliver real business outcomes: faster integrations, leaner operations, and stronger cultures. Proven expertise in building, leading, and scaling Global Capability Centers (GCC), HR Shared Services (HRSS), and Centers of Excellence (CoEs).Led global HR integration during complex M&A by driving multi-country initiatives in harmonizing compensation & benefits, modernizing payroll, handling culture change, optimizing talent, digital HR transformation, and employee engagement that helped in building teams, shaping culture, and designing systems that enhanced compliance, reduced costs, and strengthened talent retention. Passionate about creating people-centric organizations, advancing organizational effectiveness to promote high-performance cultures that enable sustainable business growth through people and process innovation, allowing both people and businesses to thrive together.Career highlights:• Designed global C&B frameworks that improved pay equity and trust.• Digitized HR operations, migrated to one global payroll platform delivering GBP in annual savings, cutting payroll cycle times by 10%, reducing errors, and enabling real-time workforce analytics.• Spearheaded multiple end-to-end HR system implementations, migrations, and integrations, optimizing key HR processes & resources and boosting operational efficiency.• Establishing global capability centers (HR, Finance, IT) serving 30+ countries• Led HR integration for four major transactions, achieving synergy targets and retaining critical talent.• Boosted employee satisfaction and eNPS by 18% over 2 years by driving engagement through targeted recognition and development programs.

Experience

1. Senior Director, Global Human Resources

   Metrixlab

   Jul 2011 — Present · Hyderabad, IN

   As Senior Director and Head on Global HR CoE:• Built and scaled Global Capability Centers (HR, Finance, IT) in India, using a shared-services model that delivered operational support across 30+ countries and reduced cost-per-transaction by an estimated 30%.• Led HR integration for 4 major M&A transactions (MarketTools, Macromill, Acturus, Toluna), harmonizing policies, compensation, and culture across multi-country entities — achieving all synergy milestones ahead of plan.• Designed and governed a global C&B framework across 30+ countries, standardizing pay structures and reducing compensation exceptions by an estimated 40%, improving pay equity and management trust.• Migrated payroll for 38 entities across 23 countries to a unified platform, cutting payroll processing cycle time by 10% and delivering GBP in annual cost savings through vendor rationalization.• Implemented enterprise HRIS (Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, OrangeHRM) with self-service and automated workflows, eliminating an estimated 4+ FTEs worth of manual effort and enabling real-time workforce analytics via Power BI.• Launched global engagement programs and recognition platforms, driving an 18% uplift in employee satisfaction / eNPS over two years across all regions.• Embedded AI tools (Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT) into HR workflows, automating routine processes and surfacing workforce insights to support faster, data-informed people decisions.

Education

• Osmania University

  BSc., Computer Science

  1993 — 1997

• Osmania University

  MBA, Finance & Information Systems

  1997 — 1999

• XLRI - Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur

  PGDM (HRM), For Emerging CHROs

  2025 — 2026

Skills

• Personnel Management
• Team Management
• Employee Relations
• Strategic Planning
• Strategy
• Organizational Development
• Performance Management
• Recruiting
• Program Management
• Human Resources
• Strategic Partnerships
• Strategic HR
• Business Strategy
• Market Research
• Sourcing
• Management
• Management Consulting
• Technical Recruiting
• Consulting
• Talent Acquisition
• Career Counseling
• Leadership
• Competency Management
• Business Development
• Screening
• Compensation and Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Learning and Development
• Talent Management
• Performance Appraisal
• Resource Management