Kirubavathsana Jagadiswaran is a strategic human resources leader with more than a decade of progressive experience spanning healthcare, FMCG, and engineering. Throughout her career, she has developed a broad understanding of how people strategy, workforce capability, organisational effectiveness, and business transformation intersect to drive sustainable performance.
Currently with Viatris, Kirubavathsana leads the HR agenda across Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Her role involves partnering with senior business and commercial leaders to align people priorities with broader organisational objectives, ensuring that workforce strategies support transformation, growth, capability building, and long-term business sustainability.
Building Future-Ready Workforce Strategies
A significant part of Kirubavathsana’s expertise lies in talent and workforce management. Her experience covers succession planning, workforce planning, talent reviews, internal mobility, performance management, leadership development, and organisational effectiveness.
As her career has progressed into multi-country HR leadership, her responsibilities have expanded beyond traditional HR functions into broader organisational strategy. She has contributed to organisational redesign, workforce transformation, integration and harmonisation initiatives, compensation governance, employee engagement, employer branding, and complex organisational matters.
This breadth of experience enables her to approach HR challenges from both a people and business perspective, helping leadership teams make informed decisions around organisational structure, workforce capability, and talent priorities.
Experience in Industrial Relations and Workforce Transformation
Kirubavathsana also brings significant experience in industrial relations and tripartite stakeholder engagement. Her work has involved collaborating with business leaders, employees, unions, legal advisers, and external stakeholders to navigate complex workforce matters.
This requires a careful balance between business priorities, employee interests, regulatory requirements, and organisational risk. Her approach combines strategic thinking with practical workforce management, supporting organisations through periods of change while maintaining employee engagement and organisational stability.
From Talent Acquisition to Strategic HR Leadership
Earlier in her career, Kirubavathsana developed strong expertise across talent acquisition, organisational development, learning, HR business partnering, and employer branding.
Her experience included strengthening talent pipelines, developing graduate and early-career programmes, engaging universities, and implementing initiatives designed to attract and develop future talent. She also contributed to external partnerships and initiatives involving TalentCorp Malaysia, including programmes supporting women returning to the workforce.
These experiences provided a strong foundation for her later transition into broader HR business partnering and strategic workforce leadership.
Connecting People Strategy with Business Performance
Kirubavathsana’s professional journey reflects the changing role of HR within modern organisations. Her career has evolved from attracting and developing talent to shaping broader people, workforce, and organisational strategies across multiple markets.
Today, her focus extends to building future-ready talent, strengthening leadership capability, improving employee and employer experiences, supporting workforce transformation, and positioning HR as a strategic partner to the business.
With experience across multiple industries and markets, Kirubavathsana continues to demonstrate how effective HR leadership can connect organisational capability with business ambition. Her combination of talent expertise, workforce strategy, stakeholder management, and transformation experience positions her as a strong contributor to the future of people leadership.
As organisations continue to navigate changing workforce expectations, digital transformation, and evolving business models, leaders like Kirubavathsana play an increasingly important role in ensuring that people strategy remains closely connected to sustainable business performance.