Secrets of Success: Mili Handa, Head of Reward Delivery, Human Resources London Stock Exchange Group

Mili Handa, head of reward delivery at London Stock Exchange Group believes global businesses need local practices when it comes to reward strategy

How do the demographics of your workforce shape your reward strategy?
Even though we are the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), we’re not just based in London – and we’re not just a stock exchange! The company has grown significantly over the years both organically and inorganically. We are now 4,500 employees across more than 16 countries, spanning across Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas.

When you think of the LSEG, the perception might be hundreds of years of heritage, history and legacy – and that is true but what is also true is the reality that we are a growing business with evolving needs. The technology infrastructure which underpins the organisation is still evolving and the decisions made on a daily basis have a lasting impact on the global organisation.

Our reward approach is to ‘glocal’ that is “think global, but act local”. We look at market practices in each location and put into place benefit/reward programmes that are in keeping with the market in that location rather than a one size fits all approach.

As we have had a strong track record in acquisitions, we often have organisations coming on board with legacy benefit entitlements. Our team carefully work to understand those legacy entitlements to determine an appropriate integration approach that supports the needs of the business whilst trying to mitigate any adverse impact to the employee.

An example of this was our recent roll out of a Global EAP programme which has proved very successful and dovetails with the Groups’ wellbeing strategy.

If you could introduce one change to the reward sector what would it be?
Data and Analytics continues to be a challenge within HR and reward. The ability to draw out meaningful data from existing enterprise solutions and connect reward data to other disciplines across HR (such as Talent, Recruitment and ER) is still difficult and not as joined up as we could hope for. This invariably limits HR’s ability to truly understand and support end to end business needs from a human capital perspective.

I believe the direction of travel will be towards setting up ‘data hubs’ within HR. The primary focus of these data teams will be to mine data and draw together unassuming datasets across HR disciplines. This would provide the business with unique insight into their teams and valuable intelligence to support their forecasting and planning measures.