Rakesh Kumar Earns 2026 Global Recognition Award for AI-Driven HR Operations
Rakesh Kumar, Vice President at EXL, has been recognized with a 2026 Global Recognition Award for reshaping enterprise HR with AI, workflow redesign, and measurable outcomes. His teams delivered roughly a 40 percent improvement in operational efficiency across HR shared services while lowering the marginal support cost per employee.
This isn't a trophy for theory. It's for execution at scale-turning HR from a ticket queue into a strategic engine backed by data, automation, and consistent adoption.
From transactional to strategic HR
Kumar rejected the idea that HR is just payroll, onboarding, and FAQs. He rebuilt HR as a partner to the business-one that makes decisions with evidence, not instinct. That meant embedding AI and analytics into the daily spine of HR: engagement, payroll governance, and service delivery.
With 43 percent of organizations now using AI in HR, up from 26 percent in prior years, his approach shows how to move from experiments to durable results across a distributed workforce.
What changed inside EXL
- Shifted from email-heavy exchanges to AI-enabled, personalized communication frameworks, reducing friction and creating consistent employee experiences.
- Directed an Oracle HCM implementation to strengthen core HR processes and data integrity.
- Delivered practical deployments using Microsoft Copilot that moved beyond pilots and earned strong user feedback.
- Redesigned workflows so each HR shared service unit now supports about 600 more employees than in 2024-without adding headcount-driven by automation and standardization.
Why this award matters
Global Recognition Awards applies the Rasch model to compare nominees across categories on a linear scale. Kumar earned top scores (5 out of 5) for novelty, technological advancement, adoption rate, and user feedback. He received 4 out of 5 for market impact and disruption of entrenched practices-signals of momentum still building across enterprise HR.
"Rakesh Kumar exemplifies what it means to lead with vision and execution," said Alex Sterling, spokesperson for Global Recognition Awards. "His work is a standard for AI-powered HR operations."
Career built for scale
Kumar's path spans more than two decades: starting as a Process Associate at Genpact in 2001, advancing through Accenture, EXL, and Deutsche Bank, and returning to EXL with a cumulative eighteen years at the company. Today, he leads HR technology, AI-powered HR initiatives, and shared services as Vice President, Level 2.
His credentials-General Management Programme (MDI Gurgaon), Six Sigma Green Belt, and Microsoft Certified Professional (VB, SQL)-back a cross-functional skill set that blends tech fluency with operational depth. The throughline: move decisions from intuition to evidence, and make adoption stick.
Practical playbook for HR leaders
- Map demand. Tag your top 20 HR case types by volume and cycle time; identify where handoffs, emails, and approvals stall work.
- Standardize before you automate. Lock in policies, templates, and decision trees so AI isn't amplifying chaos.
- Embed AI where work happens. Draft replies, classify cases, suggest knowledge articles, and prefill forms inside the HRIS and service tools-not in side apps.
- Design for adoption. Create role-based prompts, quick-start templates, and clear "use this for X, not for Y" guardrails. Track usage weekly.
- Measure what matters. Monitor cost per employee, first-contact resolution, SLA attainment, employee satisfaction, and manager self-service rates.
- Deliver in slices. Launch in a single shared service unit or country, then expand. Retire redundant queues and legacy exceptions as you scale.
- Close the loop. Add feedback buttons to every AI-assisted interaction; review edge cases; tune prompts and models monthly.
- Protect the enterprise. Align with IT and legal on data privacy, access controls, and model risk management from day one.
If you're leading at the VP/CHRO level and need a structured path to organization-wide adoption, see the AI Learning Path for CHROs.
Durability over demos
Sterling summed it up: Kumar didn't just introduce tools; he changed how a large enterprise connects HR work to business performance. The impact is durable because it's structural-rooted in workflows, data, and habits that hold under pressure.
As demand grows for leaders who can turn technical promise into daily operations, Kumar's model shows what good looks like: measurable discipline, broad adoption, and systems that scale without adding cost linearly. That's the bar for enterprise HR in 2026-and the opportunity in front of every HR team willing to build it.
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