Arghya Sen: The Strategic People Leader Driving AI-Enabled Workforce Transformation
Arghya Sen is a globally experienced senior people leader with over 28 years of rich and diverse experience. He has been leading and building human capital strategies that positively impact business performance in complex, regulated, and multinational environments across Asia, EMEA and the Americas. He has worked at prestigious organisations such as HSBC and General Electric. Where he has been trusted to translate external pressures, geopolitical changes, regulatory expectations, and rapid technological evolution into clear, board-endorsed, future-ready workforce strategies that protect both commercial outcomes and the licence to operate. He navigates with equal credibility at the Executive and Board levels, Regulators, as well as people on the ground, bringing a rigorous, data-driven approach that treats HR as a commercial lever while keeping the organisation resilient, compliant, and deeply human. Arghya is passionate about developing leaders who thrive in ambiguity, foster psychological safety, and cultivate a culture of accountability and innovation. Arghya currently leads the people function for HSBC Shared Services, Global Capability Network, and Technology Centres.
Arghya began his HR career at General Electric (GE), working in front-line manufacturing (factories) and supply chain operations, where he was responsible for managing union relationships, Long-term labour agreements and overall Industrial Relations. At GE, he was part of the prestigious Human Resources Leadership Programme (HRLP) and developed his skills through multiple assignments across HR, operations, sales, and services globally.
After completing the programme, he was appointed as the Head of HR for GE Healthcare Clinical Systems (Asia) and Global Performance Technology. In this role, he designed go-to-market strategies and incentive schemes that contributed to 3x growth in Asia and EMEA over five years. He also led business acquisition and integration work across Australia, Thailand, China and India. These global assignments enabled him to live, learn and immerse himself in diverse cultures, enriching his perspective and strengthening his ability to adapt and lead in complex, dynamic environments.
Arghya subsequently returned to his supply chain roots to serve as Director of HR for GE Healthcare Asia Supply Chain. Here, he supported organisational transformation by creating an 11-country footprint of approximately 7,000 FTE, building a unified supply chain for the business that delivered around 18% efficiency improvement, including union productivity gains, scale manufacturing, and re-establishing the flagship Organisational Management Leadership Program.
After the GE Healthcare role, Arghya moved to GE India to lead and scale the creation of the first country P&L model for the Supply Chain and Commercial verticals, which united all GE businesses into a single country construct. During this time, he was also given the responsibility of leading the people function for GE Capital India for a short period during its divestment process. He was also part of the team that built the first multimodal factory in Pune, India. Arghya’s role saw him strengthen commercial models for GE India, establish industry verticals (including mining and metals), and create a unified supply chain capability across 12 manufacturing sites and 8 sourcing functions spanning 9 lines of business.
Across his 18-year tenure at GE, Arghya delivered business gains through cohesive union strategy and long-term agreements that supported process improvement, restructuring and service conditions.
Arghya was headhunted to join HSBC in 2017 as Regional Head of HR and Chief Operating Officer for HSBC Global Services & Technology Centres. In this role, he ran the end-to-end people agenda across 8 countries and 10 service centres, supporting around 55,000 colleagues. In this role, he led the HR transformation journey to build strategic capabilities across digitisation, cybersecurity, data, and automation. He championed the migration of strategic processes from high-cost locations while managing regulatory requirements and protecting business continuity. He also led people strategies for large-scale restructuring (including divestments and site closures), mitigating legal, environmental and reputational risk through strategies that enabled constructive redeployment or empathetic exits.
In his current role as the Managing Director and Global Head of People for HSBC Shared Services, Global Capability Network & Technology Centres (which he has held since October 2020), Arghya partners with business leaders to create a future-fit organisation and drive enterprise transformation through organisation design, AI-enabled workforce strategies, digitisation and multi-year change programmes that deliver sustainable growth and operational efficiency. He has been a champion of GCC and the “future of service” strategy: aligning location, capability, and workforce decisions with long‑term business demand. He has been instrumental in steering the design and execution of Technology and Operations value-stream organisations and strengthening front-to-back accountability. Throughout his 10 years at the Bank, he has had the unique opportunity to play an enterprise-wide role, working with all of HSBC’s four global businesses and functions to create a common people strategy and consistent colleague experience. He has a proven track record in orchestrating global resilience and wellbeing responses, especially during times of rapid change and uncertainty such as COVID, natural disasters and geopolitical aggression, while ensuring continuity for 55,000+ colleagues.
Arghya has served as a Board Member of HSBC Software India Limited (2017–2021) and is a Trustee and Governance Board member of the Lotus Petal Charitable Foundation. He holds an executive education in Corporate Governance from Columbia Business School, a Master’s in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations from Xavier Institute of Social Service and is currently pursuing an AI Certification Program in managing workforce and Agentic AI models. He is fluent in English, has beginner proficiency in Mandarin and Spanish, and speaks multiple Indian languages.
Arghya is looking forward to shaping the next phase of the people function as it integrates AI with human capability to help organisations navigate evolving business realities, workforce expectations and geopolitical complexity. He is excited about building a resilient business, with future skills and capabilities that will enable organisations to transform with empathy. He strongly believes that future business success will be defined by an organisation’s ability to embrace and integrate technology with a people-centric approach, resulting in both business growth and thriving workplaces.