Piramal Pharmaceuticals partnered with SimuRise to address collaboration gaps within their HR leadership. Through immersive simulations, 20 HR leaders, including the CHRO and CTO, explored team dynamics, confronted real workplace patterns, and committed to fostering a more cohesive, growth-driven culture.
Introduction
Piramal Pharmaceuticals Limited, a leading force in India’s pharmaceutical landscape, is known for its commitment to innovation and excellence. But even the most forward-thinking organizations face internal challenges that can stall growth.
For Piramal, it was the growing need to align their HR leadership team (20 Senior Managers, the CHRO, and the CTO) on shared values of collaboration, mutual support, and effective communication.
The company partnered with SimuRise to create an experiential HR leadership development program that wouldn’t just talk about these values but help leaders experience, practice, and reflect on them through a powerful simulation-based intervention.
The Challenge
Despite having a capable and experienced HR leadership team, Piramal’s HR function was struggling with invisible barriers:
- Siloed ways of working
- Aggressive, defensive communication
- Hesitation to ask for support or collaborate across functions
These patterns were not only impacting productivity but also shaping the overall team culture. The HR leadership recognized that addressing these behaviors at the top would be key to long-term change across the organization.
The Solution
SimuRise designed a leadership program that used immersive game-based learning to surface real behaviors in a safe, simulated environment. The simulation allowed participants to:
- Observe their decision-making styles
- Understand the impact of their communication
- Practice problem-solving in teams under pressure
- Reflect on the subtle patterns that hinder or enable collaboration
Rather than lectures or presentations, the intervention was built on interaction, tension, and discovery, mirroring the dynamics of real workplace challenges.
Implementation
The program was conducted with 20 HR Senior Managers, alongside the CHRO and CTO, as a closed cohort.
In the simulation, teams were presented with complex problems requiring high trust, clear roles, and real-time collaboration. Each team selected a leader, defined their internal process, and had to adapt quickly as the challenge evolved.
As the levels advanced, so did the complexity, forcing participants to shift from individual action to collective alignment.
Every simulation round was followed by a structured debrief. Leaders reflected on their choices, the friction they faced, and how those behaviors map directly to real scenarios at Piramal.
The Impact
The results were immediate and eye-opening.
- Participants saw how their communication styles, especially aggression or defensiveness, created distance in teams.
- Many admitted to defaulting to silos even in a simulation, validating the need to break those habits in the real world.
- The simulation helped them understand the value of asking for help, pausing to align, and leading with intention instead of reaction.
The most significant shift was in mindset. Participants moved from “this is how I work” to “this is how we win together.”
Outcomes
- Leaders pledged to replace aggression with assertiveness
- Teams committed to cross-functional collaboration
- Senior leaders, especially the CHRO and CTO, took ownership of cascading these behaviors
- A shared vocabulary and experience base was established to support cultural transformation
The experience created a space for honest reflection and sparked a collective agreement to lead differently.
Conclusion
This program wasn’t just about playing a game. It was about holding a mirror to leadership behaviors that often go unnoticed in the daily rush.
By investing in experiential learning, Piramal Pharmaceuticals has laid the groundwork for a more unified, agile, and human-centric HR leadership team, one that’s equipped to lead with clarity, empathy, and trust.
Through this partnership, SimuRise helped turn everyday collaboration challenges into a live rehearsal for leadership transformation.
