Up the ranks: Scania Southeast Asia welcomes Sharmeel Kaur to the team as Human Resources Director

One of her aims in this role is to foster a culture that emphasises mutual respect, openness, innovation, and continuous learning within her HR team.

Scania Southeast Asia has welcomed Sharmeel Kaur to the team as Human Resources Director, effective January 2026. She reports to Joyce Antar, Scania Southeast Asia's Managing Director, and continues to be based in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.

Her core responsibilities in this role include aligning HR and business strategies, fostering innovation and a culture of process improvement, introducing psychological safety, and ensuring employee wellbeing alongside employee safety.

As she tells HRO, there is also a big focus on strategic people priorities such as talent development, culture alignment, and DEI strategy.

Beyond these priorities, she acknowledges the importance of ethical leadership, compliance integrity, eand emotional intelligence, alongside crisis and stakeholder management, coaching and mentorship, conflict resolution, innovation, and agility in HR leadership – not only in driving company-wide transformation, but also in ensuring organisational resilience and growth towards the right business goals. This, she notes, is what makes the organisation relevant and sustainable.

Talking about getting to know her colleagues, she says her leadership approach centers on earning trust and respect rather than commanding it. "I hope to earn that and not demand it. There will also be a lot of alignment with stakeholders at all levels, and the most important element for me is to show empathy and engage in emotional intelligence."

Her top priority in the first year will be to build strong rapport with colleagues, understand the company’s culture, and navigate challenges with sensitivity. "I am a qualified NLP practitioner. Therefore, communication and listening are my priorities while addressing people-related challenges," she adds.

Looking ahead, Sharmeel aims to foster a culture that emphasises mutual respect, openness, innovation, and continuous learning within her HR team. "It’s not rocket science – I like to keep it simple and not overcomplicate matters when life itself is already super complicated in this day and age."

Prior to joining Scania, Sharmeel was most recently Vice President, People & Culture at Volvo Group Malaysia.

If you'd like your senior HR leadership appointment to be featured in 'Up the ranks', please write in to us at editorial@humanresourcesonline.net.

Photo / Provided