In this episode of CultureClub, we interact with Varun Vijaykumar - Head of HR at Upstox who talks in detail about personalization as the go-to tool that modern managers have in engaging employees.

About Varun

Varun Vijayakumar brings with him 13+ years of experience in human resource management. Over the years, he has managed a variety of functions within HR and Talent Management, including but not limited to HR business partnering, total rewards, talent acquisition, talent engagement, payroll, and HR operations.

Prior to Upstox, Varun also worked with brands like Directi, Microsoft, Zinnov Management Consulting, and Hireworks Consulting. He is an alumnus of XLRI - Jamshedpur and IBMR Bangalore.

In this videocast, Varun highlights how engagement has transformed over the years. In the past, engagement was mainly about celebrating birthdays, organizing ethnic day contests, etc. but today it is much more customized and personal; it is possible to build one-to-one connections with employees using technology.

Here’s a gist of what Varun speaks about in this video:

• Why the role of a manager is not limited to administration but is also about mentoring and caring for employees
  
• How employee engagement is not an HR or manager’s problem alone but a business problem that needs to be solved
  
• How compassion shown towards employees can impact their commitment to work
  
• Why employee engagement will constantly keep evolving and how personalization will be the future of engagement

Listen to the entire episode right here and don’t forget to leave your views in the comments below.

And if you’re an employee engagement enthusiast, do check-out our community for HR professionals, the CultureClub.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:26] Hi all, welcome to the CultureClub. CultureClub is a community curated by CultureMonkey where we interview CHROs of leading organizations in India. The first season was about E-culture. Now we have come to Season Two. And it is about the evolving role of managers. We can get started with the session. But before that, I will quickly introduce CultureMonkey to our audiences. The best way to introduce CultureMonkey is to start with the story.

Senthil [00:01:21] I was an engineer for more than a decade. And I always struggled with this one problem where managers never realized that employees and team members deliver the maximum if they are happy. I have seen that in my teams. When I shared this point of view with managers, with multiple feedback sessions, nothing moved.

There was no anonymity. So I was scared to be open. And even if I managed to communicate my point of view, there was no action. It always felt like my feedback went into a black hole. There's no closure. I lost all hope in this process.

Senthil [00:02:02] But I always knew that happy employees deliver the maximum. With this attitude, in 2017, Joseph and I started Effy. Effy is a software consultancy company. And for the next one and a half years, we observed that we had zero percent attrition, both among customers and employees. We were able to make every stakeholder happy. We were thinking to ourselves, what is going on? What is the secret? And that's when we realized that it was our culture, and that is the reason for our success.

Senthil [00:02:44] So we felt we are naturally good at this, and we built a culture SaaS. That's when in 2018, we launched CultureMonkey. And it is so fulfilling right now because whatever problem I faced, now we can solve the same problem for one hundred thousand unique employees. We have more than 2.5 million individual data points just in a matter of three years.

Senthil [00:03:16] With all of that, we realize that managers play a key role in engagement, and managers are the ones that can personalize engagement for the team. That aspect is what gave birth to the topic - “Sustaining and growing employee engagement, evolving role of managers”. We are primarily in the advanced engineering team.

So we wanted to learn a lot about people science on this journey. That's when we had Ketan from RentoMojo as our customer. Then we started collaborating very closely. I learned a lot from Ketan and that led us to start the CultureClub last year, and it has been going just well.

Senthil [00:04:15] We have with us Varun from Upstox. Varun Vijayakumar is Head of HR there. Varun has worked with brands like Directi, Microsoft, Zinnov Management, and Hireworks.

In his 13 years of work career, Varun has managed a variety of functions within HR and Talent Management, but not limited to HR business partnering, total rewards, talent acquisition, talent engagement, payroll and HR operations. Varun is also an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur and IBMR, Bangalore and VIT. Now with this context, we're all buckled up for this episode.

Varun [00:05:14] Thank you for the beautiful introduction. You sometimes feel a little shy to introduce yourself. It's always good to have someone else to introduce you. Nice to be in this session, and it's already feeling very nostalgic. It feels like I'm talking to some known group of people. And I think that reflects in what you do. The quality of people reflects in what you believe and what you deliver. That's why it's fun working with CultureMonkey. I have heard great recommendations about CultureMonkey from a lot of my industry peers.

Ketan [00:05:56] Varun, welcome again to the CultureClub session powered by CultureMonkey. I'm sure it is going to get interesting. As Senthil said, in this session, we are going to talk about sustaining and growing employee engagement, the evolving role of managers. This is a topic that I've been hearing about for ages. I've heard debates and points of view around the role of managers.

We thought, why don't we start getting views from people who manage organizations. Before we get into some specific interesting questions, why don't you tell us more about you and the organization that the audience would want to know?

Varun [00:07:16] To introduce Upstox, I would just say, if you think about investing, trading, and making yourself some more wealth, think about Upstox. And if you are a cricket follower, you keep watching us during the IPL season. Most importantly, Upstox as an organization has skilled up phenomenally in the last two to three years. Today, we have about 3.5 million-plus customers, which is significant in the investment and trading world.

Varun [00:08:10] We have huge plans for the next few years. We want to be one of the largest retail trading and investment platforms across the country. But again, it's all in the making. We are doing the right things. We are a very fast-growing organization.

Of course, hiring is happening a lot. Along with hiring, there is a lot more responsibility for the manager. So that's about Upstox. When I spoke about how Upstox has grown over the last few years, this year that's going to be even faster for us, be it in terms of customer acquisition or hiring, and I’m positive that we are going to grow very fast in the coming times.

Varun [00:08:56] To give you some stats, I said we moved from two lakh customers to 3.5 million-plus customers in the last couple of years. In the last year, we have probably grown by 150 percent in terms of headcount. There were about 260 people. Today there are about 440 people. That's how fast Upstox has grown and will continue to grow this year. As far as my background, Senthil gave a beautiful introduction. I've been there in the right place at the right time.

Varun [00:09:32] What has helped me to get all these opportunities is, I never refrained from solving a problem, be it with finding office space or doing an admin job or HR job or doing recruitment or going and handling anything outside of human nature. I never stopped myself. I think that's the only way you will get opportunities to learn, and that's how you grow. So it has been a wonderful journey so far in my professional career. It is very enriching.

Ketan [00:10:19] That brings me to the first question. Do you think that organizations without a manager could be a reality in the future? What's your point of view?

Varun [00:10:32] I don't want you to think that I'm giving a politically correct answer, it is yes and no. We don't want managers now or in the future. We want either a mentor or a role model. Or we want a friend. So what it means is, either you mentor me, you'll be my inspiration. You show me how to do things, I will follow your steps. If you don't know, at least give me the freedom. You ensure that you give me that autonomy and freedom.

Varun [00:11:01] If you can't do any of this, don't sit and micro-manage. I don't want a manager. That's what I would say. The current generation is changing, and on top of it, situations like Covid are telling people you need to do what you love in your life. And all this extra pressure is not required. The moment you start playing a manager role, you are going to start losing people very fast.

Ketan [00:11:37] So what I gather from Varun is that the definition of a manager the world has seen is not something that the future requires, especially in the context of the younger generation, and I agree with that. The millennials and the Gen Z are looking at a different kind of relationship or connection with their managers. It's just not the administrative manager. They're looking for friends when there's a need and a mentor when there's a requirement.

Ketan [00:12:14] One thing I know and a shift that I've seen is that managers these days are so secure because they have been in that position and they enjoy working with people and enabling them to get their work done. Varun spoke about a powerful word, which I'm a huge fan of, which is autonomy. It's super important to the generation and the workforce. So that's interesting.

Ketan [00:12:52] Varun, why do you think the world has been divided on the role manager has or the impact manager has on employee engagement? Having worked with some of the mammoth organizations and some very young organizations, I've heard both views. Some think engagement is HR's responsibility, and some think that engagement is the manager's responsibility. And different organizations had different points of view. What do you think has created this divide? What's your point of view here?

Varun [00:13:30] Engagement is a business problem, and when I say it's a business problem, business means everybody. Most of the organizations today are not asset-heavy organizations. They are intellectual-heavy organizations. I would always say context is going to become the most important thing. And how are you saving that context? You can do it two ways.

Varun [00:14:10] One is you keep churning out digital savings of all the content and context you have. At the same time, you should also have an equal amount of IQ brains that will come and understand those contexts to build better platforms and so on. So I would always say it's never an HR's problem or a line manager's problem. In the typical HR world, you call a line manager. So it's not a line manager's problem or HR's problem. It's a business problem.

Varun [00:14:40]  I would say losing people is the biggest opportunity cost that everybody has to think about. You lose a good, talented person in your team. The actual cost is to hire a new person at a higher compensation because the guy will have four or five offers. Number two, you're going to take six months to give context to the new person. In the seventh month, that person is going to start doing something.

So it's going to be a year for your new person to start contributing. Then in that context, it's a collective problem. It's both HR and a line manager’s problem. And most importantly, it's a business problem. It's a huge business problem more than anything else.

Ketan [00:15:33] That's a very interesting perspective. What Varun said significantly is that engagement or matters of culture is a business problem and that’s a great take here.

Ketan [00:16:35] Now, do you think recent changes in the workplace going overly digital impacted the expectation organization and employees have from their managers? Do you think there have been additional expectations that organizations and employees have started to have with their managers?

Varun [00:17:11] The organization and manager have to be compassionate with the team members. I know that there is nothing that the person has to do after evening 7 PM or on a Saturday, Sunday. But, make sure that it is worthwhile for the person to do anything for you. If you are telling the person to work on Saturday and Sunday, make it something intellectual for them to see it and help you.

Varun [00:17:53] Don't make people feel that they are doing monotonous work when you are expecting them to work beyond a certain hour. So be compassionate and be judicious about what time investment you are expecting them to make. I would want to use the term time investment because it's very costly, and people are investing it for you, make it worthwhile. That is what I would say from an organization or manager's perspective.

Varun [00:18:24] At the same time, what team members expect from a manager is patience with clarity. I think you should have everyday morning conversations, which will help you to set clarity. They need to clear the ambiguity around everything. If they can't clear ambiguity for people, then there's a problem. The first thing people are expecting is patience. Along with patience, if you can clear the ambiguous statements around the problem statement, it'll be awesome. That's what I need from a manager.  

Ketan [00:20:29] What are the things that you would want the managers to work upon? You said stretch work is not a problem but make it intellectually challenging. And you said, in the ambiguity build clarity. Anything else that you think you would want the managers to focus on keeping in view the future of work and how the world is transitioning? What else would you want them to focus on?

Varun [00:21:21] Another one is the customization or personalization of your working style with people. Today, managers can't say they will only work on defined metrics. They need to customize it. If somebody is highly intellectual in your team, you should customize your mentoring to get the work done. You could use different styles for people with different intellectual capabilities.

Varun [00:22:59] How are you going to work with people of lower intellectual capability but you know they have skills, and they're hardworking. You could show them how the problem is solved. You solve one problem for them, then tell them how to solve it. For people who are fast learners, who are very sharp, you can tell them the problem statement, and then they'll be able to pick up. So I would say, don't operate in a world where you give instructions, and  expect them to solve. It's not going to happen anymore.

Senthil [00:24:06] This is reminding me of the types of listening. In CultureMonkey, we say listen to your employees. I did a lot of research and I wanted to define listening. But I never found any other way that best defines listening than the Buddhist way of doing it. They say there are four types of listening. One is upside down, where you don't take whatever the other person is saying. There is a pot with holes where you pour water into. It will act like it is there but it will leak out.

Senthil [00:24:52] There is dirty pot listening, which already has a set of prejudices, and opinions and they judge you while listening. And then there is an empty pot listening.  Ketan mentioned clear the air, and you said clarity. All these things come from empty pot listening. The manager creates the space for the team and employees, then completely understands what they're saying and customizes it.

Ketan [00:26:13]  Varun, you spoke about the power of personalization or customization. So do you think the engagement of the future would see a shift towards personalization rather than one-size-fits-all?

Ketan [00:26:53] Yes. So, ten years before engagement meant a birthday celebration and cake cutting celebration. Today, engagement is way too customized and it is very personified at each level. During the year of Covid, all my employees were expecting to have a good mental wellness program, they were like - Can I have a good insurance benefits program? Can I have a one-to-one connection with my HR? People are expecting different sets of engagement plans.

Varun [00:27:46] Before Covid in 2019, when I worked in Directi, the engagement was more towards what else I can upscale, what else I can learn, what I can probably pick up as a new skill set. So it depends not only on customization and personifications for people but also on the circumstances. The context in terms of the circumstances and as well as personalizing it for people will be the future for engagement. I don't think any standard engagement can happen anymore. That era is gone.

Ketan [00:30:08]  Before we conclude this session, I have five rapid-fire questions for you. The first question is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Varun [00:30:45]  I would have been a chef. I love cooking a lot.

Ketan [00:30:49] That almost answers the second question. The second question is during the lockdown, which was easier cooking, cleaning or mopping?

Varun [00:31:00] I would say cooking. Washing utensils and cleaning the house is not worth it.

Ketan [00:31:43]  That brings me to the third question. Any personal or professional goal aspiration that you're chasing and that you're comfortable sharing?

Varun [00:31:57] I will be happy to share my personal goal. I love music a lot, which I haven't been able to achieve. I'm still learning. I started learning the violin. I want my daughter to become a great musician. She doesn't have to work in the standard 9-to-6 or have the managers give instructions. She can decide what she wants to do. I'm already teaching her music.

Varun [00:33:07] In professional life, at the end of my work life, if I could have created ten great people managers, great leaders, I am done with my profession. I don't want to put up a ceiling saying I want to become CEO or CHRO or COO. But I would say if I can create 10 leaders before I quit working, that's my dream.

Ketan [00:33:42] The fourth one, a book that had the maximum impact on you?  

Varun [00:33:47] ‘What Got You Here Won't Get You There’.

Ketan [00:34:10] The last one, one thing you thank the lockdown for?

Ketan [00:34:16] Being with loved ones. If not for lockdown I don't think people would have valued family, love, affection and all of it. I have spent time with my mom for nine months now, which before lockdown, I would probably spend once in three months for a couple of days and then fly back to my workplace. I think it has become very different. This gives an emotional feeling and a happy feeling.

Ketan [00:35:07]  This is our twenty-first session. All 21 people shared exactly this point, saying that it helped us take pause and to connect with our family and spend time with  near and dear ones. All right. So that's it from my side. Thank you so much.

Senthil [00:36:00]  A summary of this conversation. You talked about managers being a friend or as a mentor. And the current organizations are intellectual-heavy and not assets-heavy. You used the word time investment, which we take very seriously, a lot of companies don't. And you talked about customization and personalization. All of these points, in my opinion, are very powerful yet simple to understand.

Varun [00:37:17] All of this is going to be possible only through technology. Either engagement or mentoring or anything without technology, it's not going to be possible.

Senthil [00:37:43] What we have done in CultureMonkey very differently from other companies is that we dove into engagement and culture at full scale. We want to go deep and build more modules and features around engagement culture.

This morning I was telling one of the co-founders that employee psychology is what we want to solve, and that is where problems are mushrooming, and we have to solve that. Anyways, thanks a lot for all the points.

Varun [00:38:48] I should thank you. I enjoyed this conversation. It was like talking to friends and that reflects what CultureMonkey is all about. It's awesome.

Senthil [00:40:53]  Thanks a lot, guys. Have a great evening.

Yet another new episode of CultureClub is here! And this time, we have with us Sunitha Lal, CHRO - Ather Energy who discusses the day-to-day roles and responsibilities of managers in engaging employees.

Sunitha emphasizes how important it is for managers to invest heavily in the growth and wellbeing of their teams, to not only engage or retain the employees but also build an A-team that can enable the organization to meet its goals.

Sunitha draws an interesting parallel between a kanjeevaram saree and an organization’s culture. She points out that the culture of any organization has to be carefully woven just like a kanjeevaram saree - with a keen eye for the intricate details, and a focused and slow approach to create a sustainable culture.

About Sunitha Lal

Sunitha is a seasoned Human Resource professional and an expert in organizational culture whose work focuses on the unconscious processes in individuals, teams and systems.

Prior to Ather Energy where she has been working for over 4 years now, Sunitha held instrumental roles at Matrimony.com, Mphasis, AIG Systems, Talentpro India and others.

She is also a published author and speaker. Her book ‘Dotting the Blemish and Other Short Stories’ is a collection of short stories on inherent prejudices surrounding women in a society.

Here’s a gist of what Sunitha speaks about in this video:

• The secret recipe for ensuring top-notch business delivery by teams: Managers who disproportionately focus on personal development of each team member
  
• Employee engagement by managers seen through a day-to-day lens: From listening to employees to capacity building, managers build employee engagement in small yet significant ways
  
• Can managers rethink their hiring practices - hire people who are more talented and capable than oneself to grow the overall capability of the team.

Catch all this and more with Sunitha Lal in Episode 6 of Season 2 of CultureClub and don’t forget to share your views in the comments below.

CultureClub is open to all employee engagement enthusiasts. Click here to join.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:13] Sunitha, thanks a lot for joining us today. We always start the episode by talking about CultureMonkey’s story. I was an engineer for more than a decade. I started as an engineer, and I always struggled with this one problem where managers never realized that employee happiness, employee productivity and the employee delivering their maximum always depended on the freedom given to the engineers.

Senthil [00:01:14] I have worked globally in many cities in Europe, Singapore and I always felt that freedom was denied to the employees when it comes to honest feedback. I had multiple feedback sessions with managers, nothing moved, and I was scared of being open because there's no anonymity and, also all my feedback felt like it went into a black hole. There was no closure. No action was taken on the feedback. I lost hope in this process.

Senthil [00:01:48] In 2017, I started a software consultancy service with my co-founder, Joseph. Whatever work we did, we were successful. We noticed that we had zero percent attrition both from customers and employees. We were able to make all stakeholders very happy. We talked about this. Then we realized its culture.

Senthil [00:02:37] We decided to take this culture piece and scale this. So we decided to build a culture software. That's how CultreMonkey was born in 2018. Now we have a lot of enterprise clients. And it's so fulfilling right now because whatever problem I faced, now we can solve it for a hundred thousand unique employees, and we have more than 2.5 million individual data points in just three years. With all of these data points, we realize that managers have a key role in engagement.

Senthil [00:03:20] That's why we also have a separate module for managers. They are the ones who are personalizing engagement for their team. So all this gave birth to the theme of the evolving role of managers in employee engagement and culture. Without any further delay, we can get started. Over to you, Ketan.

Ketan [00:03:46] Thank you, Senthil. Always interesting to hear about this story. That's one of the reasons why I decided to be a part of this journey to help them connect to people who can bring insight. For our audience, a quick introduction of Sunitha. She's the CHRO of  Ather Energy. She's also an author and a speaker. She's worked with brands like Polaris, AIG, Talentpro, Mphasis and Matrimony.com over her last twenty-three years of experience.

Ketan [00:04:53]  She is a firm believer in the power of storytelling. She is an oral tradition storyteller. Her book is named ‘Dotting the Blemish and Other Short Stories’. It's a collection of short stories about women and it reflects and comments on the prejudices that we have in society.

Ketan [00:06:09] Welcome to CultureClub Masterclass powered by CultureMonkey. In this session, we are going to talk about sustaining and growing employee engagement, the evolving role of managers. Now, before we get into some of the interesting questions that we have for you, could you tell us more about you and your organization and your experience and your point of view about culture?

Sunitha [00:06:50] Senthil and Ketan, thank you for the invite. Ather is an amalgamation of an organization that has hardware engineering and software engineering. It is in the EV mobility space. We are the frontrunners and probably pioneers. We believe that we have shaken the status quo in the two-wheeler segment with the product we have come up with. It is all being designed and produced at our space and our factory. We are very proud of what we have put out there. There is an enormous amount of learning for us.

Sunitha [00:08:18] The last seven years’ journey has been about how to build a hardware engineering company in India and continue to disproportionately invest in culture. How to consistently be in the space of culture-building when you are going through the highs and lows. We also saw the journey on a lot of highs and lows. That's what our commitment to culture is.

Sunitha [00:09:14] It's not that we are committed to culture when things are nice and happy. It's when things are not very nice. That's where the commitment of culture comes in. In our case, it starts with the founders and then the first 50 who made Ather possible. It was important that they cohesively built it.

Ketan [00:10:06]  How do you see culture? And I would call out the story that you shared with me about the Kanchipuram saree. It was wonderful. Could you share it with our audience?

Sunitha [00:10:27] When I joined Ather, no one expected that someone would come into the conference room and start talking about Kanchipuram saree and culture in the same sentence. You have to remember that we were a very young male organization then. So the diversity of thought and diversity of any other shades were slightly difficult. The moment we become aware, then we start acting on it, building on it. So the first point always is being aware, accepting it and moving on.

Sunitha [00:11:11]  When I say culture, I say weaving culture and not crafting culture or curating culture. Handloom weaver weaving a saree is very therapeutic. It's so beautiful. They have the picture of the saree in their mind, and with so much love and patience, they pick up the right thread and then work on dyeing and then start weaving it thread by thread. To me, each of these threads denotes the decisions we make or decisions we don't make and the conflicts we resolve. All these are the threads that weave into our culture.

Sunitha [00:12:07] How do you make those decisions? How do you resolve conflicts and solve problems? How do you recognize it and reward it? All of this is what your culture is all about. It is not about anything tangible that you can pick it and say this directly correlates to that. It is like the whole process. You have to have the end objective that you want to reach. Then you have to have the patience of the weaver to weave it.

Ketan [00:14:31] This brings me to the first question on this topic of sustaining and growing employee engagement and evolving role of manager. Do you think that organizations without a manager could be a reality of the future? What is your point of view?  

Sunitha [00:14:55]  I will give you an example from Ather. In Ather, we have what we call horizontals and verticals. Vertical functions are hardware engineering, battery engineering, manufacturing engineering.  And there is a whole horizontal switch which is the execution team. The cross-functional teams come together and solve problems. They work on a component or subsystem. They work on solving problems like the transition from the Whitefield factory to the Hosur factory. They work on sales and opening up new experience centres.

Sunitha [00:15:39] It is not one function that sits in a silo and works. The cross-functional teams come together and work on the swim lane. But the question is, what is the role of the manager here? Because the manager is supposed to depute their team members to the swim-lanes. They have to depute the best person who can solve the problem. In the swim lanes, they are authorized to make a decision. They're not supposed to say that I will go and check with my manager and come back. That's not acceptable.

Sunitha [00:16:10]  If the swim lane person needs time to do research and figure out something or is still not confident in the decision, that person can spend some more time figuring them out and coming back to the function and asking for the expertise and resources. There is a person appointed as the decision-maker. There is no manager in the swim lane. Swim lane is cross-functional members coming together working for the problem statement. That problem statement can be services, products or managing crises. They can do any of this. They can make decisions and move forward.

Sunitha [00:16:52] I'm giving this example because your question is related to this one. What is the evolving role of a manager? When we shifted to this model of working, functional leaders and managers became lost, thinking, what is my role now? Our functional leaders were experts. They know the subject, they have the experience, capability, competence and all that. Now, they realize they're not making any decisions regarding any of these things. Then they have to look for a new role for themselves.

Sunitha [00:17:45]  What is the new role? The new role is about building that function in-depth, competence, capability and capacity. How do you build capacity? Either the capacity can be, in the next three years, this is where my organization is going, and this is where the world is going, and I will need certain technology and experience. Do I have the capacity for what will come as an ask from the cross-functional teams? Do I have the capacity in terms of people? Or do I have to hire or cross-train or quickly mentor someone into that space?

Sunitha [00:19:13] The second part is about the managers looking at capability building. What does the organization require, and how do I build my capability? The managers need to build their department and function. Then people who work with L&D or talent management departments can work on the capability building roadmap. That roadmap can be about training, special projects and on-the-job training. It's a huge shift in the role of a manager.

Sunitha [00:20:34]  We have done this at Ather, and I know it is still a work in progress for us. An enormous amount of communication is required. Otherwise, you bring in so much fear in the managers because they don't know what their job is. Some of the managers themselves might be in the cross-functional teams, but I'm talking about the functional leaders who were having large teams. What is their role?

Sunitha [00:21:15] So, do you need managers? Yes, we need managers. I'll explain why we need managers. But do you need managers for execution?  We don't need managers for this. You can hire team members who are self-motivated and who can deliver and have managers do something else.

Ketan [00:21:49]  So what I hear from Sunitha is, we need managers but not in the form that existed and the expectation that existed historically which is administration and execution. And we'll talk about that as we go ahead.

Ketan [00:22:15] Why has the world been divided on the impact a manager has on employee engagement? What's been your experience of this divide? What's your point of view on that?

Sunitha [00:23:01] Firstly, we have to ask what is engagement in the mind of these people? The next question I want to understand is, why are we divided? What you are asking is a huge change, Ketan. We are used to a certain model and asking to shift that model. It creates an enormous amount of anxiety in the system. The other thing is, am I relevant to this change? That is the biggest anxiety.

Sunitha [00:24:14] They are used to a pattern, and it's hard to shift from that pattern. It requires enormous commitment. They should have resilience and grit to pull it off. Resilience is because you have to commit to staying in the course. It is not true that managers are not required for their team members' effectiveness. Managers are required. Managers need to have a conversation with team members about their well being, talk about their responsibilities, talk about complexity changes that are happening.

Sunitha [00:25:41] We are just sitting there listening and asking questions. We need someone to be there to ask the question to invest in them. How do you show that you care and are invested in that individual? That is the engagement we should talk about. If you're willing to make that investment, it results in affiliation to the department or the organization. It builds excellence. Excellence builds a high level of effectiveness. It also builds mastery. Because there is a master or a person who is slightly more aware of things, willing to sit and work with you.

Ketan [00:27:29] I'm sure you would be interacting with a lot of these managers. We've been talking about the changes that employees are expecting, the transitions that everyone is going through. I'm so glad that you're speaking from a manager's perspective, trying to understand how they see engagement, what does it mean to them, what are the kind of difficulties they're possibly going through and what are the answers they're looking for themselves.

Ketan [00:28:00] Do you think recent changes in the workplaces going overly digital impacted the expectations organizations and employees have from their manager? What are the top three expectation shifts you have seen organizations and employees have from their managers now?

Sunitha [00:28:52] Traditionally, managers were more like authority figures. They have been authority figures who took decisions, and some managers were prescriptive. And on the other hand, they were also held responsible for delivery. They give assurances to the organization. So their neck was on the block. That's how the whole model worked. Do you think this model would work in the current generation? Every year you bring a new set of people. Wave after wave you're bringing all the new generations who have grown in a different environment.

Sunitha [00:30:24] It is in the context of what sort of an environment they have grown. And what sort of access do they have for information and how they process that information. And what type of people you're bringing inside. Now, saying what was applicable in the eighties or nineties, the same is applicable in 2021 is not right. It just says as HR and leadership groups, we are generally a little bit lazy. We're just using the same models.

Sunitha [00:31:09] What are employees looking forward to from their managers? They're looking forward to their managers for mentorship. They need a mentor who is disproportionately invested in their career. And not in their career as a manager. How do managers display that they are disproportionately interested in employees' careers? Not every year I can give you a promotion. I can build their competence. That is the only gift we can give as manager.

Sunitha [00:31:55] People can hate me for not being a great manager but can never take away if I have spent enormous time building capacity and capability in that person because that is the gift the managers have. The second is organizations looking for building a very competent function. The third is the human element. All three have to join in, the role of the organization, your team members and yourself.

Sunitha [00:32:55] The team members are looking to invest in themselves and their career. The organization is looking at building a competent function. And what are you looking for as a manager? Your joy should come from your team's success. A team that is extremely strong in terms of delivering. So, your joy should come from your team and not from you doing something. That is a big shift for a manager.

Sunitha [00:33:35] The manager should feel satisfied through a team delivering it, not him being the rockstar standing there and telling how to do it. We have to rewire ourselves. And all these three have a huge role in empowerment, capability building and mentoring. It is at the intersectionality of these three things the organization is sitting. It's built on your model of managing the team members.

Ketan [00:34:26] This question is for all the managers who would watch our episodes. What are the things that you would want them to start investing and start focusing on? Being a manager, I can tell you they are at the cusp of expectations from the top and expectation from the team. So they are the one who get pulled a lot. Now, you've spoken about how important it is for them to build on competency and capability. So, what's that one thing that they should focus on?

Sunitha [00:35:00] I always ask, how do you hire talent in your team? Do you hire people who are smarter than you? At Ather, we always say, please hire people who are smarter than us. Now, you should take great pride in just saying I hired this person. Fundamentally, you have to build the whole team. If you want self-directed groups, then you need to have people who are like that.

If you hire people who need a lot of validation, it's not going to work in self-directed groups. They will be lost because no one is going to be sitting there validating them. There's nothing wrong, but that's not the type of person required in that type of organization. So that's about talent hiring.

Sunitha [00:37:25] Then it's again about capability building. What is the role? Why are these roles required? What competency and what proficiency level does the role require? What is the assessment you have done in your organization to say that your organization has the competence? Or do you want to start capability building on that?

Sunitha [00:38:09] As a manager, it's your responsibility to understand everyone's job because you are responsible for the delivery. Investing in your talent and enormous learning is the new shift of the manager. If you are going to manage a set of people, work on their career progression, capability and competence of your department, please remember your job is just not delivering the task. Your job is beyond that. Delivering a task is nothing. I think the young folks are better than us. I'm sure my department has so many people who are smarter than me.

Senthil [00:42:33] It's very interesting. I was reminded of the story by Dr Abdul Kalam. In 1979, the project was to put the satellite in orbit. But the computer said don't launch it. Abdul Kalam was the Mission Director and Project Manager. He bypassed the computer and launched the system. Instead of putting the satellite in orbit, they put it into the Bay of Bengal. The mission failed.

The Chief of ISRO would go to the press meet and say, this mission failed and will take another year to make it a success. And the next year, when it succeeded, the chief Sathish Dhawan would ask Dr Abdul Kalam to go for the press meet, which shows true leadership and I feel this story relevantly aligns with what you’re saying here.

Ketan [00:44:16]  Do you think, in the future, engagement would shift more towards personalization from a one-size-fits-all approach? If that happens, what role do you think managers would have to play in a transition like that?

Sunitha [00:45:18] It will naturally become tailored to the department. It's not only the managers, but organizations also have to play a role there. The first drop starts from the way you design your systems, processes and policies. It's not one-size-fits-all. For example, we have the R&D centre, protolabs, factory and experience centres. Initially, we put together policies and rolled them out.

Sunitha [00:46:05] Then when we looked at our policies, we thought it was funny because Dusehra was celebrated big time in the factory, but in the R&D lab, hardly anyone noticed it. People did not celebrate, but in the factory, they celebrated it in a big way. How to curate it? I'm saying a very simplified version. We went back and curated our policy.

We said our policies would not be the same for all. In the same way, capability building initiatives also have to be curated to the departments that are there and their departmental needs. Then the manager will ask, what are their departmental needs? What type of team members do I have? How do I work on engagement with this team?

Sunitha [00:47:06]  I don't say it's difficult. It is going to be different because it is not an easy job. There are two things, which I am also observing in the young generation. One is that they are the ones who do not like authority figures and telling them what to do, but at the same time, this is the generation that wants a lot of feedback.

Now, how do you balance both? Now, the leadership team has to use different sentences to curate the feedback. They should not just say it's working, not working. You are doing well, not well. Those are not the sentences they are willing to listen to.

Sunitha [00:48:15]  It is not that we are doing some window dressing for the feedback. Your mental model of that feedback has to change. And also, most importantly, take feedback from them. Things are going to be very difficult for managers as they go. The organization has to start putting work in all the places, whether it's policies, systems or execution.

So there has to be a commitment from the organization, from its leadership team on all these things. And it cannot be brushed on by managers. I'm worried about people dumping it on managers because it's an organisational commitment that goes into different layers of leadership and we all work with it.

Ketan [00:49:46] Thank you. What I gather from Sunitha is that, yes, it is moving toward personalization. This is not something that only the managers should be responsible or accountable for. It starts as an organizational commitment.

Ketan [00:50:31] I have five rapid-fire questions for you. The first question is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen to become?

Sunitha [00:50:59] I'm a storyteller, so I would have written stories.

Ketan [00:51:13] Second, between cooking, cleaning or mopping during the lockdown, which was easier?

Sunitha [00:51:19] Cooking.

Ketan [00:51:19] Third, what's the next personal goal that you are chasing?

Sunitha [00:51:40] I'm writing another book of short stories. The other one is, I'm trying to put together a book called HR - The Cusp People And Their Stories. It's just a work in progress. I'm just a little bit too occupied with work now, but I hope I finish all those things.

Ketan [00:52:04] One book that had the maximum impact on you and you would like the audience to grab a copy of that.

Sunitha [00:52:09] The book I struggled with and tried to work with and grew out of after a long time is In Search Of The Miraculous by Ouspenskii.  It took many years for me to work with it. And whenever I felt lost, I went back to T.S. Eliot's poems.

Ketan [00:53:12] One thing that you thank the lockdown for?

Sunitha [00:53:23] The pause it gave. The pause taught us a lot. It taught us to cry, be jealous, feel helpless and acknowledge we don't know all the answers. So we become more aware, more human and more mindful.

Ketan [00:53:52] Well, I wish we had at least two more hours with Sunitha. Thank you again.

Senthil [00:54:39]  It's going to be very useful. So thanks a lot.

Sunitha [00:55:19] Thank you very much. And thank you for inviting me here. I appreciate it.

In this episode of CultureClub, we are joined by Anil Monteiro – CHRO at Tecnotree Corporation, a telecom software company from Finland.

Tecnotree is listed as one of the top 80 companies for Diversity & Inclusivity by Financial Times in a study covering 15000 European companies and is also recognized as a Great Place to Work.

In this session, Anil discusses the criticality of autonomy for managers in driving effective employee engagement.

With more than two decades of experience in Strategic Human Resource Management, Anil has been instrumental in developing global HR strategies, leading organizational development and change management, innovating HR processes related to compensation management, performance management, learning & development, competency planning, employee engagement and more.

Prior to Tecnotree, he worked with Dell Services, Mahindra Engineering, CG Maersk, and Satyam Computers.

Anil is also a Gallup Strengths Coach and has worked across continents including Europe, Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa.

In our conversation with Anil, he drew a rather humorous yet on-point parallel between burgers and organizations to signify the importance of managers in a workplace. He said - "Managers are the patty in a burger which organizations cannot do without. While the roles and responsibilities of managers evolve with time, they are crucial to not only drive business delivery but also engage employees."

In this video, you’ll hear Anil share insights on:

-     How Tecnotree built its culture bottom-up by actively engaging employees in the process of defining their culture

-    How empowering managers can make them the game changers of employee engagement at organizations

-   Why the role of a manager should be a balance between business delivery and people management

-   How important autonomy in decision making is for managers to effectively engage their teams

-    How the role of a manager is evolving with the changing workplace - digitization and new generation workforce

Listen to this episode to hear a CHRO’s perspective on all things people managers.

Do share your thoughts and feedback on the session in the comments below.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:14] Hi all, this is CultureClub, and this is the second season, where we are discussing topics around sustaining and growing employee engagement - the evolving role of managers. CultureClub is a community created by CultureMonkey. When we started CultureMonkey, we were all engineers. Engineers don't know about culture, engagement and people science. So for me as an engineer, I was struggling with this problem.

Senthil [00:01:14] I worked in multiple cities across the globe, but wherever I went, I felt that it's employee happiness that's enabling the employee to deliver their maximum productivity. I wanted to share this point of view with my managers. I had multiple feedback sessions, but nothing moved and I was scared to open up with my managers because things were not anonymous. Even if I managed to communicate all these points to these managers, there was no action and it felt like all my feedback went into a black hole. There was no closure and no traceability. So I lost hope in this process.

Senthil [00:02:01] That's when in 2017, I came to Chennai and started a software consultancy. I started with Joseph, my co-founder, and it's called Effy. Whatever work we did, we were successful. We saw zero percent attrition from customers, employees and all the stakeholders. Everyone was happy. That is when in 2018 we realized it was because of our culture that we had zero attrition. It is the same year when we also realized that service companies are hard to scale.

Senthil [00:03:07] We picked up the SaaS culture software. It was 2018 when we started CultureMonkey, and now we have a lot of enterprise clients. It is so fulfilling right now because whatever problem I faced, now we can solve it for ten thousand unique employees, and we also have 2.5 million individual data points in just the last three years. With all this data, we realize that managers play a key role in engagement, and that's why we have a separate module for managers, even in CultureMonkey.

Senthil [00:04:09] In this journey, the product has been awesome. But as I said, we were missing a significant piece, which is the people science and the HR methodologies. They were not in our DNA. So that's when I met Ketan two years ago. We already met more than twenty CHROs in India. We are so happy to have you in the session Anil, let's get started.

Anil [00:05:11] Thanks, Senthil. It's so interesting to see how you moved a problem that you were facing, and created a product to solve it. I’m sure CultureMonkey is going to enable these managers and HR to bring solutions and not sit on the problems. A nice transition is what I heard in this process. Congratulations, all the very best.

Senthil [00:05:51] Yes. And I think for anyone who is genuinely facing a problem, it is inevitable that they will pick it up and solve it and then as a serendipitous effect, it will serve a larger population and impact a lot of people.

Ketan [00:06:21]  Thank you, Senthil for that introduction and for our audiences, we have a very special guest today. I have Anil Monterio with us. He's the CHRO of an organization called Tecnotree Corporation. Over his 20+ years of work experience as an HR, he has worked with brands like Dell, Plexion, Maersk and Satyam. He's also an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur.

Ketan [00:06:52] He's a Gallup Strength Coach, and for those of you who don't know what Gallup Strength Coach is, do read about it and take that assessment; one of the most powerful, fundamental things that I also believe in, and we had some conversation around that. He worked across countries in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and now in India. He's very well known in the industry for his Organization Development and Change Management practices.

Ketan [00:07:24] A few days back we were talking about human potential and strength coaching. We were talking about the humane side of people and what people function brings in that. Anil, welcome again to CultureClub Masterclass powered by CultureMonkey and thank you so much for your time.

Ketan [00:08:03] As Senthil said, this season, we're talking about sustaining and growing employee engagement, the evolving role of managers. Before I shoot the questions, could you tell us more about yourself and your organization and your journey? That would be super amazing to hear.

Anil [00:08:22]  Thanks, Ketan and Senthil. Thanks for setting up a wonderful platform like this, which I see will be a lot of learning for many more aspiring people out there who are hungry to learn and to grow. I feel very honoured to be on this platform. I was very fortunate because, at a very early stage, I picked up the whole concept from my boss who said, if you don't have a mentor or a coach, you're like that dangling leaf that will just fall off anywhere.

Anil [00:09:32] My mainstream role is HR. I had my boss as my coach, and to date, he is my guru. And he continued to teach me a lot of things. One important thing that he always taught me is, life is a race. As a manager, I will become the General Manager, Director and the V.P. I know my path is clear. If you don't eye my chair, you will lose the race, so you should always have your eyes cast on your boss' chair, else you're off the race. Wherever I went, I aspired for all my boss' jobs.

Anil [00:10:16] A little about Tecnotree, we are a telecom product company. We provide products to mobile service providers. The billing product is our core. We do the whole billing of a mobile service provider and then a lot more adjoining products is what we started creating. We had been through a lot of bad times and downtime. And like Senthil said, when you're in troubled waters is when innovation comes your way and you tend to become an innovator.

Anil [00:11:02] We've been a part of rebuilding and recreating the whole organization from seeing the worst to what we are seeing in the last 8 to 10 quarters of absolute successful numbers that are going high, whether it's a top line or bottom line, our revenues, our employee satisfaction, it's been going very well. And I think it's very true to what Senthil said. It's all about culture. I'll take a minute to explain what we did on the culture piece.

Anil [00:11:35] Every company has these massive orderings and dashboards to say what your values are. If you ask employees what's the meaning of that value, nine out of the ten will look at the dictionary explanation of that term. Maybe two out of the ten would give you some understanding. So when we were rebuilding our whole image at Tecnotree we were rebranding ourselves, we were rebranding our products and redoing our digital products.

Anil [00:12:15]  We did a massive activity with the employees where we asked our employees, what do you think are the company's strengths and the areas they thought the company has to get better. We did a similar exercise with some key customers. It was nice to see that the strengths that our employees and customers spoke about were absolutely the same, maybe with a little miss here and there.

Anil [00:12:48] The areas that we spoke about and the areas that customers spoke about were also similar, and that became the bedrock for us to create our values. We created our values and defined behaviours for each value. For example, winning for you and winning for me is an absolutely different term.

But in Tecnotree, if it's about winning, what are the behaviours I expect from you to make it a winning organization also got crafted. It happened collectively as an organization with close to about 200 employees getting surveyed and 80 plus employees sitting in the whole think tank.

Anil [00:13:33] Today, two years down the line, people exactly understand when I say winning and when I say futuristic. We say, ‘One Tecnotree for Winning’. F is for futuristic, O is for organized, R is for result-driven, W is for winning; these are our four values. Whether you're in Latin America or UAE, whether you're in India or Finland, we all resonate with the same.

Anil [00:14:04]  That was a massive exercise we did to create the culture of being one organization, and we take pride that we were able to do it together, and that's why we as an organization are winning. That's where the whole change management comes into play, where, when we make changes, let's take our employees into confidence and build our programs and processes that are more employee-driven and not management-driven.

Ketan [00:14:36] That's inspirational. It brings me to the first question on this topic, which is sustaining and growing employee engagement, the evolving role of managers. Do you think that organizations without a manager could be a reality of the future? You can take sides. Just trying to get a perspective from you.

Anil [00:15:43] This is an interesting thing. I talk about it in my induction quite a few times. It's like having a burger without a patty. Managers play the most important role in an organization. If they don't play it right, then the burger is useless. So I truly believe that managers do play the most important role in an organization because they have the sole responsibility of making sure the employees are taken care of.

Anil [00:16:37] They also drive the organizational goals to success. That's why I find it very hard to see an organization that will run without managers. Probably a couple of years down the lane, if we say we have an organization run only by robots, then probably yes. But as long as we have organizations that are driven by humans, managers are required. They are always the game changers in any organization.

Ketan [00:17:21]  So Anil is very clear that managers are required and they are the game-changers. I loved that example that you gave. Now there's one side of the world that says engagement is mostly impacted by managers. And if you look at Gallup, the old statement said that 70 percent of the time people leave because of the managers.

Ketan [00:18:00] There's another school of thought which says it is supposed to be HR’s responsibility, managers have a limited role to play. What's your point of view? Why do you think the world is divided on this approach for quite some time? What is your view in terms of roles that both of them play in the concept of engagement at work?

Anil [00:18:22]  I will always say the divide in this is because of the organization's direction. As an organization, it's important what we want to do and where we want to go. If that clarity is missing, that's when the divide of saying whether engagement is an HR’s responsibility or manager's responsibility arise.

Anil [00:18:57] Let's take the current context of startups. If the whole concept in the head of a startup is to build a product, sell it, make a couple of millions and walk out, it's fine, it can be an HR’s responsibility. But then if the founders are saying, look, I'm going to make that change in the ecosystem through my product in the environment and the ecosystem ,and I'm going to be around, that's where I see engagement becoming the manager's responsibility, obviously supported by HR.

Anil [00:19:47] Organizations should start empowering managers and helping them understand that they are the most key players in this process. If your manager does not believe that he's the key, he is the game-changer, then he will always wash out any people's responsibility. He will say training technology, mentoring technically process-wise is my job, anything with emotion has to be HR, anything with the policy process has to be HR then it's like junk in junk out situation.

Anil [00:20:24] So the manager has to have a lot more empowerment. The manager has to have a lot more liberty and authority over there to manage his team. That's where organizations are divided because, in large organizations, they will have a process set. Medium size, small size organizations have this agile ability to make every change possible on the run. So as long as the organizations quickly pick up the pieces and say managers need to be empowered, I don't think the organization will be successful.

Ketan [00:21:11] This is phenomenal. Anil talked about how important it is to empower the managers because they are the face of the organization. When I started my career, many times when I would ask a question, somebody would come and say, management has decided this and I used to wonder, who is this management? Is that an individual? And I realized with time that for me, management is my manager.

Anil [00:22:37]  We face it at the appraisal time. When it comes to giving a good hike and a promotion, it is the manager. But if it comes to a low hike then this is a management decision. If you look at those organizations that have uplifted managers and given them that credibility and the positioning, that's where this problem gets sorted out. It makes it a much more sustainable organization.

Senthil [00:23:27] I am a part of a  product startup and seeing the community and the attitude of founders, I'm able to completely relate to all the answers that you gave using the examples of startups. I admire how all the things that you're talking about include employees in your equation.

Ketan [00:24:55] It's so amazing to be part of these sessions. We do our best not to miss them. I pick up a lot as an individual. As Senthil said, we started this as a little project. As we go through this journey, we're getting a lot of confidence and knowledge to enhance the product. That brings me to another question here. Do you think recent changes in the workplaces going overly digital impacted the expectations organization and employees have from their managers?

Anil [00:26:26] Yes, the organization's expectation of managers continues to be the same, deliver on time. That has not changed. But from an employee perspective, we are seeing a great deal of change. So let me give you an example. We were talking about covid and what's happening around covid. So for us as an organization, it's important to know which employees or their dependents are infected. There are two parts to it - one is the human part of it the other is the business part of it.

Anil [00:27:26] Let's talk about the human part of it. We said let us know who has been infected, whose family members are infected so we can pitch in and help them at any point in time that is needed. Guess you've heard of Bangalore being in such a chaotic state, not getting beds, not getting oxygen and so many other problems.

Anil [00:27:51] We rolled out the covid leave policy and set a special care program. Managers constantly keep talking in their meetings and their catch-ups and say, if you or your family have been infected, do let us know. So earlier, employees would go to HR and share this. Now they are reaching out to their managers and sharing it. Employees are looking up to their managers to help them and support them.

Anil [00:28:43] They are in tough times. They need help. The employees are also worried about the projects not going live, so the managers should start preparing themselves to see where backup is coming in. So you see the shift, the whole employee community today is going back to their manager. So the manager who had no role to play in the past is now holding an additional responsibility

Anil [00:30:00] Employees reach out to their managers and share their career aspirations, which never happened in the past. The managers are still holding major responsibility, and employees are going to the manager rather than the HR. We were looking at a very interesting conversation in the organization where we said we have scrum teams so why shouldn't HR be part of the scrum.

Anil [00:30:48] The manager is going to be focused only on delivery, so the HR person can take care of the human part of it and collaborate with the manager to make sure both the human aspect and the delivery aspect is taken care of together. And at Tecnotree, we are working on that model. It's an elevation of a business partner concept.

Senthil [00:31:18] I worked for a start-up in the Netherlands. I felt this in the scrum team. There was the absence of the human side of things. It was all super robotic. I was able to superimpose what you just said on that team. Right now, the scrum team only has a scrum master, some developers and product owners, that's all. This would be a great addition.

Ketan [00:32:13]  You spoke about the expectation of employees from their managers that have changed and it's evolving. What are the few things that you would ask or nudge the managers to learn new so that they can cope up well with this? Because the employees are expecting a change. Some managers may be ready to change and some may not. How should they evolve?

Anil [00:32:53]  The first and the most basic thing is with the change that we're going through, managers should start understanding whether they want to become people managers or technical specialists. That's the first step because, in future, there will be people on the technical side who will continue to push the technical agenda. People who are becoming managers and people managers should have complete clarity that the role expectation will be far beyond delivery.

Anil [00:33:42] Empathy is where it starts. The ability to listen is going to be the most important piece. Managers should make a conscious shift in taking an hour off their schedule and talk to the employees in a non-office conversation. Managers should now start having that personal conversation. It's more about making the employee feel good than making the employee feel important. The employee needs to feel good about having a manager that he can bank on for anything.

Anil [00:35:08] The second thing, as an organization, we invest a lot in simulation-based training to help our managers upskill themselves in the whole concept of people management because they were never able to do or never thought about doing it. We need to train them, help them understand and give them an environment and a platform where they can learn about managing people well and taking care of people.

Ketan [00:35:58] Do you think, in future, engagement would shift more towards personalization? Because that's what I'm hearing from you, one thing that covid has done is people are speaking to their managers and you're saying managers also need to take out time and connect at a human level.

Is that taking the entire piece of engagement towards personalization rather than one size fits all approach? What is your point of view and how do you think organizations can enable their managers in a journey like this?

Anil [00:36:41] Absolutely. I picked up this thought a couple of months ago, obviously after reading a few things. We made a small trail around it at the leadership level. In the past, you gave an achievement certificate in public, but today there's no public. Everything happens behind a closed-door with a video. The leadership team and the board decided to recognize the leaders for the good job done. So they wanted to give them a certificate.

Anil [00:37:30] So I started thinking about it, and I said, the certificate is fine, then immediately sat with the marketing team and created a personalized trophy. It had the CEO's photo and along with that leader's photo. So, when you give them a trophy that has a plaque and his photo with the CEO's photo, the whole place gets elevated, and I could see that impact. So in the future, I think a lot of personalization is going to happen.

Anil [00:38:25] Currently, a practical thing that we are doing from HR perspective in this covid period is, we are maintaining a tracker at a crisis committee level where we say these are all my people infected. Employees don't come to HR directly. Few come to HR, few come through the manager, and we fill up this particular sheet and every morning, young HR folks on the team identify and say these six employees are your responsibility for the next 15 days.

Anil [00:39:05] Morning, pick up the phone, call everybody and check how they are doing, how they are feeling, how the company can help them. What can we do for you? I talked to a prospective candidate to join Tecnotree about ten months ago, and for some reason, the role got shut down. When we said it's not happening, he became a friend. So he called me and said he was down for 40 days with covid, and for him to get paracetamol in Delhi, he had to get it from a friend who stayed 30 kilometres away.

Anil [00:39:46] So what we did in Tecnotree is we created a team to provide paracetamol, meal, oxygen, bed, etc. Every morning the team calls the employees. In those conversations, if there is any concern, it is tracked and shared back with the manager. The managers take this in their style, and he talks to the employee. So in the future, we should understand that personalization is the way.

Ketan [00:40:56] Thank you, so good to hear. Empathy has come out in a very different form, and it feels nice. We've been dealing with something unprecedented, and the kind of help people are giving is super amazing.

Senthil [00:41:22]  I wanted to add a point about personalization. We're talking about personalization from manager to leadership to the employee level. But in my experience that personalization already exists from an employee to manager level. In my first job in an MNC, I worked on an amazing project for the first one and a half years. I was performing very well, and they moved to another project where it's a different manager.

Senthil [00:42:03] My manager and I had a conflict of interest because the new manager didn't like my way of delivering. Then after a year, I filed a resignation, and somebody else is coming and talking to me. That is when I came to know there is an HR team. Personalization has already occurred with my managers. It is from employees to managers.

Anil [00:43:29] I'm looking forward to this platform to be another enabler where personalization becomes a habit. Managers should be able to connect with employees rather than wait for an HR to do the survey. So if you can have the managers quickly latch on to some platforms like this, the pressure comes back to you like, how you start building more algorithms in your system to make it manager ready.  

Ketan [00:45:13] That brings me to five more questions, these are rapid-fire rounds. This is the first one for you,  if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Anil [00:45:29] If not HR, I would have been in the hotel industry.

Ketan [00:45:51] Second, between cooking, cleaning and mopping during the lockdown, which was easy?

Anil [00:45:56] Cleaning and mopping.

Ketan [00:46:23]  Third, what's your next personal, professional milestone or larger than life goal that you've been chasing?

Anil [00:46:40] I believe my strengths are what got me here. So I want to create an environment to help people understand that strengths will take them anywhere. If there's an opportunity to switch off from the corporate side, I would probably get extensive in coaching and using strengths as a tool because here I am an example of what it is.

Ketan [00:47:07] Any book that you would recommend that has the maximum impact on you?

Anil [00:47:15] A Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. A book that's always been there and I've become a fan of Robin, so every week without hearing what rolls out new, I don't feel my week is complete.

Ketan [00:48:01] One thing that you thank lockdown for?

Anil [00:48:09] A chance to be at home with family. I also get time for my introspection a little more. And gardening is something that I picked up about a month ago.

Ketan [00:49:04]  We are at the closing of the session. It was phenomenal speaking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

Senthil [00:49:14] Thank you. There are many points for our audiences to grab and make use of. For me, you said playing their strengths can take them to success. We have a lot more sessions, a lot more topics, a lot more very interesting things coming on. So thanks a lot Anil and Ketan for the great session. Have a great day ahead of you. Let's meet soon.

Anil [00:52:31]  Thank you very much, Senthil. I wish you all the best for trying to change the manager's life, make it better, and as a result, make organizations better. So wish you good luck. And Ketan, great talking to you. Bye.

In this brand-new episode of CultureClub, we chat with Soniya Goel, Lead – Learning & Development (L&D) and Organizational Development (OD) at Emami Agrotech Limited. Soniya brings with her over a decade of experience in the HR space and in this discussion touches upon the various ways in which managers contribute to engagement and discusses means to bridge the manager-driven engagement gap in new-age organizational formats.

Prior to Emami, Soniya worked with Maple Consulting Services and Aditya Birla Group. She has, in the span of her career, been actively involved in talent management, recruitment, learning & development, and more.

In our 30-minute interaction with her, Soniya shed light on how everything in HR is subject to suitability to an organization. There is never a one-size-fits-all. And she emphasizes this by saying that even though organizations without managers is a reality across various sectors, this doesn’t mean that this is the new-age organizational format that every company needs to follow. She goes on to suggest that every organization, regardless of the trend, should be able to choose an organizational structure that works best for them.

Furthermore, she talks about the difference in physical and digital workspaces while pointing out the pros and cons in both setups. For instance, while water-cooler conversations may have gone redundant, the stringent personal and professional boundaries are blurring in the digital setup, which can be seen as a good thing. In the same context, she added that empathy from managers has become one of the top expected qualities in the COVID era and rightly so. However, how much of these changes are here to stay and be the new normal, only time will tell.

To listen to the entire conversation with Soniya and the valuable insights she has to share, tune in to the episode right here. And for those of you who worry that they don’t have the time right away, just plug in and listen up whenever you are taking a much deserved break from work!

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:30] Hi all, this is Senthil and this is CultureClub powered by CultureMonkey. We are interviewing a lot of people leaders, and this time, we are targeting the topic of the evolving role of the managers. Thanks a lot, Soniya and Ketan for joining today. Before we get to the actual session, I want to give a quick introduction of CultureMonkey. CultureMonkey is a full-stack employee engagement platform. It can be well talked about with a story of how it got created.

Senthil [00:01:05] I was an engineer for more than 10-11 years and I have worked across cities globally. I saw this engagement and culture as a problem in all my stints. Wherever I went, my point of view with the managers was not taken seriously and with all the multiple feedback sessions that I had with all my managers and the leaders, nothing moved. There was no anonymity for me to be open about what's going on and even if I managed to communicate, there was no action. It almost felt like all my feedback went into a black hole and there was never any closure and traceability.

Senthil [00:01:47] I always realized that happy employees deliver their maximum productivity. But I was not able to communicate this with all the managers I worked with. I just lost hope in this process. In 2017, I met Joseph, (the co-founder of CultureMonkey & Effy)  and we started a software consultancy company. We worked with a lot of smart engineers. We were very successful at work. We started to ask ourselves, why is this working? How is this working? We arrived at the fact that there is zero attrition of customers and employees. We were able to make every stakeholder happy in our company.

Senthil [00:02:41] That's when we realized our strength is our culture. So we said, why don't we take this and scale it? From a software consultancy company, we wanted to create SaaS software. We knew that we have to build a culture software. In 2018, we co-founded CultureMonkey. Now, we work with a lot of enterprise clients. It's so fulfilling to realize that we can solve the same problem that I faced with more than seventy-five thousand unique employees and we have more than 2.5 million individual data points in just two years. With all the data points that we had, we arrived at this particular theme where engagement can be personalized only by managers.

Senthil [00:03:35] So that is why this season we have this topic of the evolving role of managers. And while we were doing all this, we realized we were always technical folks and advanced in that aspect, but last year we realized that only technology cannot solve this problem. We need to associate ourselves with a lot of people leaders, people scientists and culture champions. That's when we met Ketan and we've learned a lot in terms of the problems that are going on in all these organizations. That's the story of CultureMonkey, CultureClub and how we are here. So back to you Ketan. Let's get this started. I'm very excited about all the great points that Soniya is going to talk about today.

Ketan [00:04:48] Thank you so much, Senthil. I remember when I used the CultureMonkey product and that's when I thought I can add value there. Thank you so much and Soniya, special thanks to you. We've been trying to work this schedule for the last few months. And finally, we've been able to grab you. For our audience a little bit about Sonia. Right now she is the lead L&D and OD at Emami Agrotech Limited. She's based out of Calcutta. Prior to that, she worked with Maple consulting services, I think this was also in Calcutta. And prior to that, she had a long stint with the Aditya Birla group across multiple roles.

Ketan [00:05:33] My connection with Soniya takes me back to 2006 when we both joined ABG from Campus. Soniya is an alumnus of SCMHRD 2006, and that's where we bumped into each other. We were the first two people in the first batch to reach and be sent to the flagship plant, which is Hindalco, Renukoot. So that's where we had a good interaction. We had a common boss and worked on a common project. We had a tremendous two months exposure in the plant and then I continued in retail and she continued with the head office.

Ketan [00:06:11] Then Soniya joined Ultratech in the group itself. Then she moved within the group in the young talent management portfolios. So basically she started managing people like me, the entire portfolio at the group level and then she went on a break and now she's back here. Thank you so much for joining. For our audience, we could begin with a little bit more about you and your organization and your role.

Soniya [00:06:57] Thank you, Ketan and Senthil for having me here today and as you said, we've been trying to work out a date for some time and the pleasure is all mine that finally we are doing this. I'm glad that you are the one on the other side asking me questions. I couldn't have summarized my journey better than what you have already done. After a break, I have got back to the corporate world and I am happy to be associated with Emami Agrotech Limited.

Soniya [00:07:45] There are very few organizations that look at candidate post-break only on merit. So that is what this organization did for me and I am glad to be able to represent them and talk to you all about the experience that I've had with the organization in the last year. Currently, I lead the L&D and OD verticals within the HR functions for Emami Agrotech. I also take care of campus hiring, which has always been a constant in my life. So that's about me.

Ketan [00:08:26] So that brings me straight to the first question. The topic today and the theme that is running right now is about sustaining and growing employee engagement and the evolving role of managers. The first question that we have for you is, do you think that organizations without managers could be a reality of the future?

Soniya [00:09:08] Let me start by busting that belief right here Ketan. It is no longer a reality that could be possible in future, it is already there. Maybe not so much in the Indian context, but if you do basic research around it, there are enough and more organizations that are already working on a format where they do not have any managers in the organization. What is even more interesting is you find these organizations across sectors.

Soniya [00:09:44] A gaming organization that is more commonly recognizable to us as the makers of Counter-Strike have been following this model for years. In the manufacturing sector, there is an organization called Morningstar which deals with tomato processing and they also follow this model. Many organizations have been doing it very successfully for quite some time. This is not a recent phenomenon. However, it is not widely practised. Currently, it is still a minority organization structure. Not pervasive in terms of sector and geography. So that is one part of it.

Soniya [00:10:51] There is no one size fits all kind of structure. So we cannot say that this is the kind of structure that is the reality of the future. It may be a reality for some people. I mean, how can we say that this is what works for my organization. To make that decision, we need to see what it is that a manager brings to the table. You take a step back and answer that basic question and then see whether an organization can make do without those things.

Soniya [00:11:44]  For example, a manager to my mind wears different hats. Not only the person could be a coach or a mentor to the team, but the person will also bring a much more mature and experienced point of view to almost everything. He is a person who shows direction at a very broad level. The manager in some cases is also a stock keeper or gatekeeper to see whether we are aligned. So that is a more transactional role of manager day-to-day. At the personal level, reward and recognition is also something that the manager touches. A good word from our manager is probably the most powerful tool for motivation.

Soniya [00:12:34] So to that extent, those are the things that a manager does bring to the table. If you look at these organizations who are following the new management structure, they do find other ways to channelize these things. So that's the question that every organization needs to ask themselves and see whether that structure works for them.

Ketan [00:12:57] Interesting, so things that I'm gathering from your conversation is, one you are saying companies across geographies and various industries are doing it. Second, what I hear you say is, this has to be contextual and the most important piece you are saying is organizations need to define what they expect out of the manager of that role.

Ketan [00:13:46] Why do you think that the world has been divided on the impact a manager has on employee engagement? I remember in my first stint with the Aditya Birla Group, we were doing an organizational health study and the Gallup report popped up saying that 70% of people leave because of their managers. While that has been a Gallup data, I've been trying to tell that and drill it down to the organization. But still, I've seen organizations where engagement becomes a headache of HR folks. So why do you think the world has been divided on the impact the manager has on employee engagement?

Soniya [00:14:32] So the public opinion of the world is divided on almost everything, Ketan. So there are two sides to every coin. On a serious note, every narrative has a context. The narrative can differ depending on the context that we are coming from. My context says to see what the manager can do to impact employee engagement. Let us look at what are the facets of employee engagement that a manager can tap.

Soniya [00:15:25]  An individual is there in an organization to work. So the question that would come from the employee engagement point of view will always be, why am I here? So that definition of why is best defined by the manager in terms of the work context and connection. What is it that I am doing here which translates into a defined role? What is expected of you in terms of timelines and deliverables? All of these are best defined by a manager. Again, In terms of engagement, reward and recognition are the basic pillars of engagement.

Soniya [00:16:13] A manager may not be able to help in the reward part, but in terms of recognition, the manager can do a lot. It need not be tangible in terms of a certificate, a simple appreciation can achieve far more than an annual recognition. So a manager can tap the recognition part of engagement very well. I'm having a series of conversations with our high potential talent within the organization, and the common thread that I see emerging from these conversations is, we are very happy with the leadership.

Soniya [00:17:21] It also translates into personal and professional growth for them. All these ties back to the basic tenets of engagement and your manager are the face of the engagement in any organization. So to that extent, the world may be divided. I am clear that the manager is very pivotal to employee engagement.

Ketan [00:18:01] Last year has changed many of the philosophies that people were carrying about how organizations work and how people work, especially with the world going remote. My sense is we don't have answers to most of them as of now. It'll evolve with time, new theories and philosophies would come into place. But do you think that these recent changes in the workplaces, especially with the workplace going overly digital has impacted the expectation of leaders with the managers in the organization? Do you think there has been a shift in the expectation from managers in the digital world?

Soniya [00:19:00] When we speak about the digitization of the workspace, we need to break it up. The widespread digitization was forced and became necessary because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having said that, we have to look at digitization in the context of COVID-19. We also need to look at it as something that will probably be here to stay in the post-covid era. In the backdrop of the pandemic, the employees do expect more empathy from the manager and the leadership team. Empathy has emerged as a strong need.

Soniya [00:20:09] My current manager often says that this is the first time the organization is concerned about what is happening in the employee's family to a large degree. Never have people asked these questions in the past. So, that has been posed by the pandemic. In the post-covid era, some of it will be there to stay, for example, organizations would want to continue work from home, at least partially.

Soniya [00:21:03] So in that aspect, the organization's expectations from a manager don't change. I mean, the bottom line is, we need the results to be there and the deliverables to be met. It doesn't matter whether you work at a physical workspace or a digitized workspace, the results will remain the same. That basic ask is always going to be there. When you are in a digitized workspace, the need for a formal follow-up and review becomes much more frequent. We cannot shy away from the fact that in the physical workspace a lot of informal catching up and follow-up does happen, which is difficult to replicate in a digitized workspace.

Senthil [00:22:46] I have a view here, I've been in conversations with an ed-tech company and we were discussing abroad education and degrees post covid. In pre-covid the students went to university, they went to a different country and the experience was different. The way they conducted the course was different.

Senthil [00:23:36] But right now, these students are taking the course from home. And the person I was talking to had a lot of stats about how detrimental and undesirable it has become for the students. In a workplace, it's a bit easier because all you have to do is deliver your work, reach your milestone and close your work.

Ketan [00:24:31] When the lockdown was announced, the number of webinars shot up and the participants were good. Now, in most webinars, attendance has gone down significantly. I know people who prefer personal meetings. The balance is important. I'm a firm believer in human connection. Yeah, I guess hybrid workspace is going to continue. I started going to the office at least once a week and when I go there, I'm fully charged up.

Ketan [00:25:43] That brings me to another dimension of managers perspectives. The workplace is also getting younger. What are the things that the millennials and Gen Zs expect from the managers? What are the things that managers should be changing and evolving?

Soniya [00:26:25] This topic is very close to my heart because I've always been involved with campus hiring and managing the interns. I believe that this is a resource that has immense potential but they need to be managed differently. A typical millennial or Gen Z or Gen Y would be a person who will always come across as having a greater risk appetite, as someone who is curious to taking that extra step and trying new things or experimenting with a new idea. They will always be more demanding in terms of rewards.

Soniya [00:27:38] The trick to having an engaged millennial is by connecting with them at their bandwidth. They are the resources who have immense learnability and once you have their loyalty, you will have an equal turnaround time in terms of getting your work done faster. So those are the traits that define the millennial or Gen Y or Gen Z group.

Soniya [00:28:11] In terms of dealing, you should connect with them on their bandwidth, secure that buy-in and then invest time in developing them and making them come around to your way of thinking and working. You will find a happy medium. An engaged millennial is probably the most productive resource that you will have.

Ketan [00:28:46] Interesting, I like what you said about matching the bandwidth. The message that you're passing is to understand them, connect with them and then because there's so much potential and fire that they have, you can get extraordinary results as a manager. So for all those managers who are managing the millennials or Gen Zs, that one is for you.

Senthil [00:29:22] One fact about the millennials, more than 75% of millennials work more than 40 hours per week. As Soniya said, if you make them passionate about what they're doing, they'd deliver for you. So I agree with that.

Ketan [00:29:48] Fantastic.That brings me to the final question. So do you think that the engagement of the future would see a shift towards personalization rather than one size fits all? I remember you said something about the one size fits all is not going to work in the first question. Do you think that the shift is there or it's already started to happen or may not happen? If you think it'll happen, what do you think organizations can do to enable the manager's journey?.

Soniya [00:30:43] We are past the stage of data analytics and the best word today is  Artificial Intelligence. A lot is going on behind social media screens. I feel the same logic applies to employee engagement. Artificial Intelligence is all about personalizing your feed for you and the same thing does apply to employee engagement in a way because we are moving towards a world where we need to make engagement as personalized and as individualized as we can.

Soniya [00:31:42] The best way to ensure individual and personalized engagement is by having engagement run through your managers. When you look at it from the employee's angle, managers are the front runners and the face of employee engagement. If you are engaged with your manager, you are engaged with the organization. So we need to invest far more in that space and sensitizing the managers as to how to go about doing it.

Ketan [00:32:44] I'm with you Soniya that personalization is the future. The expectation from managers has shot up. The onset of remote working or digital or AI can enable them and also force them to move in that direction. So thank you so much for that.  

Ketan [00:33:18] That brings me to five more questions, these are rapid-fire questions. The first question for you is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Soniya [00:33:41] I would be a Baker.

Ketan [00:33:46] The second one, between cooking, cleaning and mopping during the lockdown, which was easier?

Soniya [00:33:56] Cooking  

Ketan [00:34:05]  What's the next goal you are chasing? It could be a personal goal or a professional goal?

Soniya [00:34:13] On the professional side, I want to train as a coach. On the personal side, I want to start learning salsa.  

Ketan [00:34:26] One book that had the maximum impact on you that you would want the audience to read?

Soniya [00:34:32] I'm reading a book that is written by Santhosh Babu on coaching conversations.

Ketan [00:34:44] One thing that you would thank COVID for?

Soniya [00:35:00] My family is contemporary and willing to chip in. I was triple hacking as a professional, as a mother and as a homemaker and everybody started chipping in a little bit more. So that’s something I want to thank COVID for.

Ketan [00:35:22] Yeah, that's it from my side, it was super amazing having a chat with you and thank you again for joining in. Senthil over to you.

Soniya [00:35:32] Thanks a lot. It was a great session. The perspectives you had for those five questions was new in terms of digitization. You also talked about the Gallup report saying employees don't leave organizations, employees leave managers. Now, what happens when managers leave? What is your view on that?

Soniya [00:36:34] If you had a good run with your manager, you will feel that you need some time to readjust and restart the game. If you are genuine enough to share what your manager meant to you, you have a coach for life.

Senthil [00:38:05] Thanks a lot. Today, we get to know the importance of managers from a culture angle. It's interesting because there are many other dimensions to managers and many other KPIs. But this particular topic and the points that we can take out from leaders like you Soniya, it's amazing. So thanks a lot for the session.

In this episode of the second season of CultureClub, we were fortunate to have gotten the opportunity to chat with Sunil Naik, Director of Human Resources - India & South Asia for DHL Global Forwarding. Sunil who started his career on the business side says he stumbled upon Human Resources 15 years ago, and there has been no turning back ever since.

In this fun-filled, insightful chat, Sunil candidly talks about how the role of managers as we once knew it has transformed into a newer avatar that goes with the current needs of the workplace and the workforce.

Along with being a people leader, Sunil is also a coach and foodie. He completely believes in the magic that lies within each of us and works with individuals to help them discover “ridiculously good” versions of themselves.

In his overall career spanning across Sales and HR, he has been instrumental in building strong teams, setting up successful channel partners, developing people policies and HR practices, and making the organizations he has worked with great places to work for. Above all, Sunil cherishes the great stories of people, achievements, and initiatives that he has managed to collate along his journey.

In this interaction, Sunil speaks about the changing organizational structures, be it because of remote work or project-specific teams that are being formed, and how this change impacts the roles of managers. From a control-and-manage standpoint, managers are now expected to coach and mentor teams. He also goes on to add that the role of managers has clearly evolved beyond designations and tenure, and managers are no less than leaders now.

Further on, he talks about how a shift in perspective can change the way engagement is managed within an organization. He proposes that leaders see engagement as necessary for driving business results than as a mere KPI of the HR team. And for this to happen, he believes it is important for everyone from the top management to frontline managers to be in alignment, feedback taking to be a part of the organizational culture, and actions on the feedback to be communicated to employees.

Furthermore, he also shares his point of view on technology’s role in people management and how a changing workforce is impacting engagement.

So, if HR conversations around employee engagement, the evolving workforce and the manager’s role in engagement are something that interests you, here’s a chat hosted by Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) and moderated by Senthil (Founder & CEO, CultureMonkey) that you will thoroughly enjoy. And who knows, you might just stumble upon some ideas to enhance engagement within your organization.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:15] Hi all, this is Season Two of CultureClub, and this time we are talking about the evolving role of managers in company culture. Today, we have Sunil Naik from DHL joining us and we are going to have some interesting points around the usual questions that Ketan fires. And all of those questions are very carefully curated by Ketan to spoon out the most valuable content from our honourable guests. Soumya from CultureMonkey who's leading marketing is also joining us. She's connecting from Mangalore.

Senthil [00:00:51] This episode will be hosted by our good old Ketan and he needs no introduction. So before we go to the actual episode, we have the habit of talking about what CultureMonkey is, a small story always does justice. I'm the CEO and Founder of CultureMonkey. I've been an engineer for 11-12 years of my life. And being an engineer, there's so much that people can empathize with. So that's a privilege to us.

Senthil [00:01:41] I've worked in many places across cities in India, Europe, Singapore. Engineering is a mathematical function. With managers, I was never able to communicate how happiness and freedom can enable maximum productivity in engineering teams. So with all my point of view, I was never able to successfully communicate the message across to all my managers. I was scared to be open because it's not going to be anonymous. Even if they understood the messages, it almost felt like all my feedback went into a black hole and there was no closure on those feedback and no traceability.

Senthil [00:02:35] That's when I lost hope in this process and started our own software consultancy company called Effy in 2017. Joseph is the Co-founder and we started working with smart engineers and we were able to deliver zero attrition, both on customers and employees. We were sitting down and thinking, what is it about us that everybody enjoys? All stakeholders were enjoying the way we did it.

Senthil [00:03:11] The DNA of our companies, the way we treat people, has made a major difference in how we run companies and the maximum performance we were able to deliver. So we felt, why don't we take this and scale this? That's when in 2018 we realized that we'll build this culture software and call it CultureMonkey. We have a lot of enterprise clients and it's so fulfilling to see that we are impacting seventy-five thousand unique employees. We are solving the same problem that I had faced years ago. We have 2.5 million individual data points that talk about the culture and it feeds us to understand the pattern of what's going on in companies.

Senthil [00:03:58] That's when we realized managers play a key role in personalizing engagement and culture for their teams. And therefore, we have this topic covered in CultureClub Season Two. Being engineers, technology is our first mother tongue. So with that, we always felt we needed a people leader. We need someone who is a master of people sciences to join our team and advise us and mentor us to give the right mix of humans and technology. And that's when we started working with Ketan. It's been more than a year now and we’re enjoying the journey.

Senthil [00:04:42] In CultureMonkey we listen, analyze, act, personalize and grow. These are the five things that you can do with CultureMonkey in your companies and without any further delay, let's get into this episode. Ketan, back to you.

Ketan [00:05:01] Thank you so much, Senthil. Feels good to hear that I am considered an expert in the people area. For our audience, we have a very special guest today. His name is Sunil Naik, he is the Director - HR for India and South Asia at DHL Global Forwarding. He's also a career coach. And the most important part is he's a foodie. That's the most interesting experience that I take back with my interaction with Sunil. He's worked with brands like IPCA, Exxon Mobil, Home Solution Retail, Aditya Birla Retail and Fortis prior to DHL.

Ketan [00:05:38] And if I remember correctly, Sunil has been a businessperson and then moved into HR. That was a shift that he carried on for him. There's something very interesting on his LinkedIn profile that says, the people explorer and coach who loves making magic happen by working with individuals to support and enable them to become ridiculously good versions of themselves.

Ketan [00:06:09] Sunil is an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Kozhikode and Cochin University. I've known him from the Aditya Birla days. I started my career as a management trainee and I was full of energy and I would take loads of work to do. I could deliver them, but I struggled. I thought I will only get work, which I can do, but I was having far more work than actually what I could have delivered.

Ketan [00:06:46] I used to observe Sunil clearly, he's somebody who would be there on the timeline and the deadline that has been given. I never heard about Sunil or his team saying that we are delayed and not that he had less work, that was because he was doing something different. He would always have a notebook with him and would write down everything. I would see him either on the system or on his notebook. And that's a huge lesson that I picked up from him, that is to note things and break it down to tasks.

Ketan [00:07:28] The practice continues with me for the last 13 years. And this is Sunil who introduced me to the concept of writing my daily goals and following them through. My productivity improved, I was far more structured in the approach, and that's the kind of impact somebody like Sunil has left in my life. I've been fortunate to have worked with him so early in my career. Sunil, I thank you again for this and this chapter is there in my book also. It is so important for me.

Ketan [00:08:18] Thank you for agreeing to this one. I'm sure there's a lot that I would take from the session and everybody who's watching the session can take it from you. Sunil, welcome again to the CultureClub Masterclass powered by CultureMonkey. As Senthil said this season, we are talking about “Sustaining and growing employee engagement: the evolving role of managers”. Before I get to the questions, could you tell more about yourself and your organization.

Sunil [00:08:57] Absolutely. Thank you very much, Katen. An absolute pleasure and an honour to be a part of a session like this. Senthil, Soumya, thank you so much for having me here. Before I start, maybe I need to show that I still have the notebook with me. I still write everything in the notebook. I just can't do without my notebooks. I have more notebooks than my children, and my wife keeps complaining that I have more stationery than they do. But it has helped me a lot.

Sunil [00:09:28] Ketan you're being too kind. When you go in and tell me that you've learned a lot from me, I think we have learned a lot from you. At least I have learned a lot from you and it's been an absolute pleasure working with you.What I enjoyed was when Senthil started by saying good old Ketan. I always saw Ketan as the management trainee and I felt extremely happy when you addressed him as good and old. Ketan welcome to this side.

Sunil [00:10:11] I'm a part of DHL. I represent DHL Global Forwarding at the moment. We are part of the Deutsche Post DHL Group. We are a Bonn-based German company in logistics. Our basic ethos is to be the logistics company for the world. We genuinely believe that we have an opportunity to go ahead and connect people and improve lives. And when you spoke about culture and about what we represent, I think that's exactly what we do, which is not just moving goods from point A to point B. But what we do is connect people and improve lives. I've been with the organization for around nine years now and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.

Sunil [00:11:04] Ketan also mentioned that I started from the business side. Many of my old friends and colleagues still ask me, what am I doing in HR? I've stumbled into HR. It was not my lifelong goal or passion to get into HR. But for almost 15 years I've been with HR and I've completely enjoyed it. I genuinely mean what I have written on my LinkedIn profile when I say that I want to make people ridiculously good versions of themselves because I think there's a great opportunity for that.

Sunil [00:11:48] I'm a foodie. I have one wife and two daughters. Both my wife and I have survived the lockdown without killing each other and enjoying life. I've enjoyed working in an environment before Covid. Covid taught us a lot and I've also enjoyed working in the Covid environment and I'm looking forward to what the future will bring to all of us.

Ketan [00:12:20]  I'll come to the first part of the question. Do you think organizations without a manager could be a reality of the future? There's a lot of conversation that's been happening around a topic like this. We thought, why don't we pick your brain to get your point of view on (this). Do you think that the world without managers could be a reality?

Sunil [00:12:56] It's an interesting question, Ketan. If you had asked me this question a year back, my answers could have been potentially different. But what I have seen over the past year is that as far as the role is concerned at least from a front-page standpoint, the role seems to be slowly losing its importance. We've got teams that are working remotely. We've got people who have been working on their own. If you see the past, what I believe is that most organizations were running trying to go ahead and build on efficiency or effectiveness, et cetera. But now, we are looking at working towards ensuring that there's more transparency, accountability and more ownership.

Sunil [00:13:48] If you look at the role profile, I don't see a requirement for a manager coming in. But what I also realized is that managers become managers not only because of the experience or the tenure that they bring in, but also because they are good leaders. What's expected now from a manager is more towards leadership. In the future, we will need managers to handle teams, but the structure of the teams is going to change. Hierarchies, organizational structures are going away and you're getting these sort of networks or groups that are being formed which are very functional and you will automatically have somebody who's managing work from those projects coming up. They will be the managers of the future.

Sunil [00:14:45] What's expected from these managers are to be good listeners. You need to be that sort of person who is a problem solver. You need managers who will be able to take care of their teams. Those are the things that are going to be important and we need to start building or developing skills for our managers for the future. So the short answer to your question is, yes, we will continue to have managers, but it's not going to be designation-driven or tenure-driven. You need to earn your respect as a manager. I don't see it coming in just because you've got a designation of a manager and hence, you are becoming a manager. That's my take on it. I hope I've been able to make sense.

Ketan [00:15:46] What I hear you say is that the role would still be there. But it'll be in a different avatar and I liked the point that it has to be earned and it will be more about leading. One thing that I can add is coaching would become a very important element for the managers of the future because the role would be less about control, more about how we keep them aligned to a larger purpose or a mission.

Senthil [00:16:32] I want to insert this one quote that complements what Sunil said is that “Leadership is taken and it's not given”.  

Ketan [00:16:52] So that brings me to another dimension. Now, with the concept of engagement, I have been hearing two opinions. One, it's HR's responsibility and second, it's managers who have the maximum impact on engagement. What's been your experience? Why has the world been divided about the impact that the manager has on employee engagement?

Sunil [00:17:25] It depends upon the definition of what you consider as engagement. When you look at engagement as one of the people practices that you are going ahead and doing in an organization where you are only collating information as part of your KPI, then it loses value. The moment you look at engagement as an equally important factor for driving business results, then it makes a difference.

Sunil [00:18:03] There are enough studies to go ahead and prove the fact that an engaged organization gives better business results than a disengaged organization. In that aspect, if this understanding can be provided to your business leaders, business managers and the business line, the ownership will come automatically because you will realize that, if I can communicate or relate to my teams better, I will be able to get a better response from them.

Sunil [00:18:40] I can give you an example of connecting people and improving lives. Now, as a statement, this sounds very grandiose. But can I get my teams to be engaged enough to understand how the activity that they are doing, the role that they're doing translates to connecting people and improving lives? That is a way in which you can understand how engagement works, and that can only happen if there is a connection or communication from the senior management to the first-line leaders, from the first-line leaders to the supervisors, from the supervisors to the team members. And if everybody is in harmony, then we can get an engaged workforce who knows exactly what they are doing.

Sunil [00:19:38] I would look at it as maybe three steps. One is, of course, to go ahead and seek feedback. When you talk about engagement, try and understand what works and what does not work. The second would be to communicate whatever is happening, and the third would be to go ahead and take action based on whatever has been provided. If you take the necessary steps to do whatever is needed, then people will start to understand that there's a value behind it and we need to reach out and work together as a team.

Ketan [00:20:11] Interesting. The major point that I picked up from what you said is, it has to be beyond KPI, where it is the responsibility of a function. It has to be the way or it has to move into the belief system of the organization saying that we have to be engaged for the organization to do better. Then it becomes joint ownership rather than being one person or one department's responsibility. That was great, thank you.

Sunil [00:20:44] One more interesting point that I had from the name that you have for the organization, CultureMonkey. So if you look at the term culture, there's a very interesting statement or phrase which says that culture eats strategy for breakfast and that's true. If there is a culture of engagement in an organization, then any strategy that you want to put into place, any action plan that you're putting into place will work. If that is not a part of your culture, it's not going to work.

Ketan [00:21:35] The recent changes where the world has gone digital, do you think that there has been an impact on the expectations that employees or organizations have from their managers? Because things are different and suddenly the walls are gone, people are working remotely. So do you see a shift in the expectation?

Sunil [00:22:02] Oh, without doubt, Ketan, I think over the past years, many myths have been broken. We are a typical operations-driven organization that works in the supply chain. So when you talk about supply chain, again, the answer lies in the word itself. We work as a chain and you've got different links that are supposed to be linked to each other and in a particular sequence. So there was always an assembly-line kind of a structure in terms of what we do.

Sunil [00:22:39] Now, COVID came in March, and suddenly these links are all in different locations. People are working at different homes. There was such a lot of anxiety and interestingly, the anxiety was with the managers, not with the teams. The teams are pretty confident saying, we'll be able to work. So I think the only thing that sort of holds this together and what we need to now understand as a part of any strategy that we are putting in is the advent of technology or digitization.

Sunil [00:23:16] I shudder to think if COVID had struck 10 years back, what we would have done. We would have had challenges with technology. We would have had difficulties with connectivity. We wouldn't have been able to have a conversation like this. And I believe that all of this is possible because of technology. So from a manager's perspective, this is a whole new gamut of responsibilities. As a team member, what I expect from my manager is somebody who is more tech-savvy. I can't be scared of technology. As a manager, I need to be comfortable with new tech. I need to be willing to invest in technology. I have a strategy saying technology and digitization, but I don't follow it and I still want you to go ahead and use a notebook. I don't know whether that's going to work.

Sunil [00:24:23] The second aspect that's also getting worked on is data savviness. Are we using data appropriately? Because I can't ask you, I can't see you and take quick feedback from you in terms of what's happening. Because there's a lot of analytics that is being done. There's a lot of information that's available for us. Now, are we using it appropriately or not? Maybe just to give you an example, as an organization, we have a huge amount of tools that are available in the system.

Sunil [00:25:00] You have survey options available. You've got branding options available. But we never tend to use them or until COVID we never used them. Just giving an example, they keep saying that as Indians, the only DIY tool that we use is the telephone. I don't use any tool to go in and fix my plumbing issues. I call up a plumber and sort it out. That's exactly what we do as managers as well. The moment there is a concern, I can reach out to somebody around for EDM work and PowerPoint presentation rather than finding out what tools are available. Suddenly technology has come to the front and centre. Now, we have to use technology and be comfortable with it.

Sunil [00:25:57] So I believe that for the future if you're looking at it from a manager's perspective, we need to be more comfortable with technology and willing to risk it. We need to be more data-savvy. We have to make use of the technology that's available to the full extent. I think you also need to understand that it's a combination of people and tech. The workforce for the future is no longer going to be just people, it's going to be a combination of technology and people. And we need to understand how to value, appreciate and make full use of both these.

Ketan [00:27:06] You've already captured that because the question that I wanted to ask was what are the new things that managers have to adopt but I'll add a new dimension to that. You've spoken about the impact covid had on the expectations from the manager. The workforce, especially in the context of India is also getting younger. Now, with that, do you see that the managers of today need to drive some changes, look at things differently? Does it have a potential impact, in your point of view?

Sunil [00:27:51] I firmly believe that every decade brings in a shift. Based on our working life, at any given point in time, you're going to have maybe four categories of people who are going to be a part of a team. Maybe right now, the 80s, 90s, 2000, 2010. You are going to have people who started their career in one of these decades being a part of our teams. Now, what worked for the 80s is not going to work for the 90s. What worked for the 90s is not going to work for the 2000s. And what's working for the 2000s is not going to work for the people who are there in 2010s.

Sunil [00:28:43] Now, what I mean when I say this is their experiences, their thought processes, the technology that they're using and what their motives are, are all going to be different. If I can give you an example of something as simple as our compensation structure, assuming I'm hiring somebody who is in their mid-40s or early 50s, I'm going to be more interested in my statutory benefits, my provident fund, the gratuity benefits that I'm going to gain, while if I'm looking at somebody who's in their early 20s, I'm looking at cash, take home and employee assistance programs. I'm looking at work from home, flexibility and sabbatical opportunity that's available for me.

Sunil [00:29:39] The motivators for them are going to be completely different. So can I go in and say there is a single size that fits all? No, it's just interesting to note that finally, the ball seems to come and get stuck on the managers again, it's the managers who will need to understand how to handle the situations. And they will have to look at different strokes for different folks. They need to understand how to handle the guys who are in their mid-40s and 30s? I don't see one being more difficult than the other. It's more in terms of us understanding their priorities, understanding their needs, and then seeing what best we can do for them.

Ketan [00:30:28] You also spoke about one size fits all may not work. There's a question that I have around that. Do you believe that engagement of the future will see a shift from this one size fits all to more towards personalization? If yes, what can organizations do to enable managers in this journey? Do you see that the engagement is moving towards personalization?

Sunil [00:31:03] It is only about personalization. I don't see us going ahead and working with one size fits all. What engages me or what's going to drive me is going to be completely different from what is going to drive you or Soumya or Senthil or anybody else, because our needs and requirements are different. I think what's also important for us to understand is that when you look at engagement, there should be an underlying theme that connects everything. So that is what we mean when we say culture. Now, what is the tool or how we can explain it to each of these different groups is what will change. So when you say that it has to be personalized, I don't see the theme or the culture or the vision mission changing. It is how I communicate with our people that are going to shift from one to another.

Ketan [00:32:11] Before I bring this to the end, I have five rapid-fire questions for you. And I'm sure with you this is going to be fun. The first one is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Sunil [00:32:40] Food critic. I would have loved roaming around and getting paid for telling people that their food is good.

Ketan [00:32:53] Between cooking, cleaning and mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Sunil [00:33:06] I enjoyed cooking. I loved the fact that I could keep experimenting. Now, don't ask this question to my wife because she had to do the cleaning and mopping and she was worried about the mess that I left on the kitchen counter. I tried doing that and I'd rather cook than clean  

Ketan [00:33:53] What's the next goal that you're chasing? Could be personal or professional that you're looking forward to?

Sunil [00:34:00] What I would like to do is, try and do something that can bring all my passions together. What I am looking forward to is maybe opening up a cafe. Have a place where I could get people together, allow people to express their views, allow me to talk to people and hear their opinions and in the meantime, also have fun.

Ketan [00:34:46] Bangalore would be a good place to start your first unit.

Soumya [00:34:52] Yeah, that was my question as well. Where is this going to be set up?

Sunil [00:34:58] So I haven't decided. I've got a few years left, but I'm definitely up to find out if there are good locations because I genuinely feel it's a great opportunity for me to get all of us together. I got a good name for the place. I'm thinking of what the menu will look like and how do I personalize the menu.

Ketan [00:35:29] One book that had maximum impact on you, and you would recommend it to the readers?

Sunil [00:35:35] There's this book called The History of Nearly Everything by the author Bill Bryson. I love trivia. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to everybody.

Ketan [00:36:35]  One thing that you thank COVID for?

Sunil [00:36:42] I would thank COVID for giving me the time to be at home, spending time with family. Allowing us to understand and respect both the different parts of our life. Our work life. I appreciate my teams and office. I appreciate my home.

Ketan [00:37:10] That's it from my side. Thank you so much, Sunil. It has been an amazing experience interacting with you. Thank you for your time. Anything that you want to share with, Sunil?

Sunil [00:37:28] Thank you very much, Ketan, and thank you Soumya for getting this organized. I enjoyed it and I loved the Rapid-Fire round.

Soumya [00:37:49] Thanks so much for joining us. Through the conversations we had, I just had one question that I had to ask you. So do you think that employee engagement is going to be this constant puzzle that we are going to be solving in years to come or do you see that we'll get to that point where we have solved the puzzle?

Sunil [00:38:11] From my experience, I've been working now for the past twenty-five years and I think my journey has been filled with learning. There's a famous saying that it isn't over until the fat lady sings. So I don't see us reaching a situation where we have said, listen, we have done it and we have learned exactly what needs to be done. I think engagement is similar. It's something that's going to continue. What we have done in the past is not going to allow us to go ahead and be successful in the future. As we go along, we need to keep modifying it.

Sunil [00:39:01] Having an engaged workforce, ensuring that we are working to drive engagement with our teams as managers to try and get them to explain what the role is about and showing that we care for our teams, giving them the right opportunity,  that is going to remain. I think that there is no question, but how are we going to do it with our teams? That's a work in progress. As we go along, we need to keep on modifying it. We can't have a template. Anyways, thank you so much for the very enjoyable session.

Ketan [00:39:51] Thank you so much. This was a really insightful session.

For the second episode of the second season of CultureClub, we have with us Manoj Sharma, Joint President and CHRO of Aarti Industries. Manoj brings with him over 25 years of experience in the field and very eloquently sums up for us the evolution of manager roles and expectations in the last 2.5 decades.

During his stint as a people leader, Manoj has held several leadership positions at the factory and corporate level of multi-billion and multi-geography based conglomerates including Grasim & Hindalco, Vedanta and Chemaf SRL. He has been instrumental in providing strategic direction to HR interventions around Rewards & Recognition, Performance Management, Job Analysis & Evaluation, HR Policies & System Standardization, online HR systems, and more.

Manoj believes that managers are key to employee engagement and points out that even though terms like engagement and employee experience are very new to the field, the effort to engage/motivate employees has always been around. He emphasizes thereafter that even when he began his career and up until this day, there is an irreplaceable role that managers play in how employees feel about their work. Quoting his own example, Manoj says that the feedback from his first manager who identified the leadership potential in him has played a crucial role in how his career has evolved.

He further goes on to touch upon how managers drive individualized engagement and talks about some very important ways in which managers can build team engagement. Mapping employee roles to a purpose, enabling people in career development, providing clarity in job roles, are a few to name.

So for everyone who wants to delve deeper into how much the role of a manager has or hasn’t changed, and want to know some hands-on ways in which managers can improve engagement, here’s an insightful videocast of Manoj with Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) and Senthil (Founder & CEO, CultureMonkey).

Listen to the entire conversation to know more about this insightful session.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:02] Hi all, this is the second episode of CultureClub. In this season, we are talking about questions around the evolving role of managers. Today, we have Manoj Sharma from Aarti Industries and we have our good old Ketan, hosting the episode. So before we start, I just want to give a quick introduction about CultureMonkey. I was an engineer for more than a decade and worked in different countries and cities. Globally, I observed the point of view of an engineer or any worker for that matter, is not taken seriously by managers, even with multiple feedback sessions.

Senthil [00:01:11] There's no anonymity in one-on-one communications and even if we managed to communicate, there's no action taken, and all the feedback felt like it went into a black hole. So with all of this lack of traceability and lack of action on feedback, I lost hope in this whole process. That's when I started my own company, where we built software. I observed for a year that all the stakeholders in the company, including customers and employees, had zero attrition. That's when I realized, why don't we scale this? And we wanted to build SaaS on our own. We knew immediately that it must be a culture software.

Senthil [00:01:58] In 2018, we built CultureMonkey and now we have a lot of enterprise clients. It's so fulfilling to see that we can solve the same problem that I had faced, for more than seventy-five thousand unique employees. We have more than 2.5 million individual data points in just two years to learn a lot about engagement and culture. And with all this data, we realize that the managers have a very important role to play in engagement and culture, and they are the ones who are personalizing engagement for you and the team. Therefore, we have this season focusing on the evolving role of managers.

Senthil [00:02:44] While we have built all of this, we realize that we are highly technical and we need support from people leaders and that's why we have Ketan, who is supporting us in people science and concepts. Now let's start the episode. Ketan, over to you.

Ketan [00:03:13] Thank you so much, Senthil. We have a very special guest today Manoj Kumar Sharma. I call him Manoj Sir, you would understand why there's a sir attached to that. Not that I ever reported to him, but the kind of mentorship he has provided to me. Manoj sir is the Joint President and CHRO at  Aarti Industries. He's worked with brands like Grasim & Hindalco, which were part of the Aditya Birla group. That's where I interacted with him. He spent about 20 years with these two companies combined. Then he moved to Vedanta and Chemaf. Now he works with  Aarti Industries.

Ketan [00:04:10] He brings with him 25 years of experience in Human Resources across reputed brands which have a national and international presence. He is an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley and did his two masters from Barkatullah University. I know him from the Aditya Birla Group days. In June 2006, I landed up in Renukoot, Hindalco is a flagship manufacturing setup for the Aditya Birla Group, and I was hired there. So most likely I was going to get placed but during my initial stint, I was supposed to get exposure across various companies.

Ketan [00:05:00] After (work) hours, I used to play badminton with Manoj sir and we used to have a lot of conversations.  He didn't spend time with us on transactions, but the conversation was meaningful and futuristic. He would think about things that nobody would have thought about. And I remember when I was moving out after my two-month stint, that's when sir also got called to Mumbai corporate office for a larger role.

Ketan [00:06:25] We've been watching and observing him. Few days back, we connected and when I was speaking to Senthil about a topic around sustaining and growing engagement and how the role of managers has evolved, I couldn't think of anybody else but to speak to Manoj sir. We are grateful to him that he's given us his time. So welcome again Manoj sir to the CultureClub Masterclass session powered by CultureMonkey.

Ketan [00:06:55] Before we get into the questions, if you could tell us more about you, your organization and  broadly about how important is the role of managers in the various organizations and industries, that would be really helpful.

Manoj [00:07:20] You have made me nostalgic. I have spent 19 years with the ABG and 12 years in the plant locations. It is very close to my heart. That is where my foundation comes from, that is the formative years for me to be amongst people and managing the transactions and seeing things very closely from the experience point of view. Then came the moment in my life when I was asked to report at the corporate office. Since then life has been great.

Manoj [00:08:13] I spent close to nine years in the corporate office and not only brought success for myself but success for a company like Hindalco, which grew from a four billion-dollar company to a close to 20 billion-dollar company in the current year, which has its footprint all across. The job has taken me to various places worldwide. And I had the privilege to interact with people of all communities; privilege to travel on many occasions to Australia, US and Brazil and to learn from the various communities. So that has made me a very fulfilling person and a very happy person to work in the people's business.

Manoj [00:09:09] Coming to your questions, I would say the role of the manager is demanding and it is evolving powerfully. When I look back at my manager and if he had not been in my life, I think I would have been nothing. I still remember my first appraisal. In that appraisal, he had written feedback that - “Manoj has strong leadership potential and he has the business acumen to do this job in an entrepreneurial manner.” I don't know why but this has always remained in my heart.

Manoj [00:10:31] The manager played a very significant role in my career. When I was working closely with my manager, I realized I have a lot to learn from him, so I requested him that I want to be his shadow. I spent a lot of time with the manager, sitting in his office and doing my job but observing him on how he is conducting himself. I got a lot of grips to do business communication from him.

Manoj [00:12:04] During those days, people didn't want to type letters/emails themselves when they had secretaries. But he used to sit with his secretary and give dictation. And the thought process which he brings in, that inspired me. That's not small. It's very powerful because leaders create leaders and for creating leaders, you have to be with them. It cannot happen in isolation. It can impact your leadership which may become your natural state of action, which may become your competitive edge to deal with the issues, situations and proposals.

Manoj [00:13:25] In the end, they make you fulsome and holistic in terms of what you have been able to drive through your proposal and work. And that knowledge, awareness, sensitization and experience come when you are deeply engaged and your manager is also deeply engaged with you. I never heard of engagement during my formative years, but now I realize it - that psychological connection brings the best out of you. Yes, that role was fundamentally played by my manager and I used to call him sir or boss. But that language has changed today.

Manoj [00:14:36] I had about five to six bosses and I enjoyed the relationship with those individuals. Everybody has put in those efforts in me, and whatever I am today is because of my managers and their willingness to contribute to bringing change in me. I have been given brutal feedback in my life. And fortunately, I have taken those feedback as a point of action. That brutal feedback can be given only when you share that rapport. The relationship that I shared with my managers is more like a coach, mentor, anchor and life partners for my success.

Manoj [00:16:05] I would say God has given them that authority in the form of a manager to impact and influence anyone. So the manager does play a powerful role in the lives of people. We are successful because of the role that the manager has played and credit goes to them. Yes, in the end, you have to work on yourself and improve your listening. You have to take that brutal feedback as your action point rather than feeling victimized about it. You should feel responsible about it, act on it and move on. It's a process that is where the individual needs to work and the managers are there for their guidance.

Senthil [00:17:21] It's a great point because for a transformation to happen, for anything to be born as new, it takes pain. So we need to embrace that. You talked about your first manager and it's a clean sweep for me. I quit my job and I was going to join another company, but my first manager was so sure that I'm going to become an entrepreneur.

Senthil [00:18:03] I started my first company after my first job. Once you are an entrepreneur, there's no escape. So like you rightly said, as a Founder, all the things that I'm doing can only be attributed to that person. I was able to completely relate to all the points you said.

Manoj [00:18:26] Thank you so much

Ketan [00:18:32] There's a concept that you talk about how managers differentiate between output and work. Could you give a quick perspective about that? I've always admired that. I'm sure it's going to add a lot of value to people who are on the other side.

Manoj [00:18:55] It's a fundamental and an important question to know exactly what is an outcome and what is work. And to know how your manager can bring in the workplace to move you - in your life - or the team members. So the output is more like creating a purpose. Why do you exist, why does this role or job exist? What is this job delivering to the people or the internal and external stakeholders? For example, one of the fundamental jobs of the HR head is servicing the basic needs of the people in terms of timeliness of things or the hire-to-retire process and all are transactional and routine. The purpose of this role is to serve the basic needs.

Manoj [00:20:42] To serve those basic needs, you need to have goods, contracts, team members and operational discipline in place. Those are your roles and responsibilities on a day-to-day basis. But the fundamental output is servicing the basic needs. If I relate this with Maslow's model of hierarchy, the basic need is where everything rests, what is expected out of you, and then the resources required to deliver that job.

Manoj [00:21:41] Members of the team are not able to relate to their job. So the manager needs to create that clarity on the role and the output before hiring a person. I realized clarity brings capability. You hire capable people but because of clarity issues, most of them lined up as non-performers. So the clarity in the lives of the people is an important aspect, and the role of the manager is to bring that clarity.

Manoj [00:23:20] What is promotion? The grey area for a team member is, I'm not promoted by my manager. But what exactly is promotion. Why are they targeting their manager for that? If you go to the depth of it, promotion is nothing, but it's a factor of two things, the opportunities and capabilities. Managers create opportunities and create a platform for people to develop themselves. People have to learn, unlearn and upscale themselves to be ready to grab those opportunities. So promotion is always a factor of opportunity and capability. And if you are capable, the manager has the authority to create those opportunities.

Manoj [00:24:34] Clarity is the fundamental role of the manager to bring in the eyes of the people, to work on their engagement and to have a larger stake in the game because the individual wants to see what is the impact of his/her role in the game. How it is fulfilling the overall mission, purpose and motto of my company. How it is related to my vision and mission. People want to see that meaning and that is the whole aspect of purpose. That is the role played by the manager.

Manoj [00:25:27] The manager has a unique responsibility. It's evolving fast and dynamic. Nowadays people are saying we are a hierarchy free company. We are a hierarchy agnostic company. But the hierarchy is more of an anchor, mentor and leader. Even the command and control organizations are transforming.

Ketan [00:26:14] So do you think that organizations without a manager could be a reality of the future?

Manoj [00:26:26] That's a great question. By nature, I'm a big optimist. Twenty years back, I had a thought in my mind, the computer is your subordinate. Today, it's becoming reality in terms of machines and AI. The jobs are getting very independent without much of an interface. It's getting more automated and program-driven. That is the power of technology. But that fundamental aspect of knowing your people, loving your people is still a big question.

Manoj [00:27:52] That's why I do feel managers are going to be there. They cannot be taken out of the system. When I say that, it means the hierarchies will remain in the system. How those hierarchies would operate is transforming. It's not operating the way it used to operate 10 years back, it is now more of an enabler and mentor. Many become managers because of the tenure. Those are the fundamental changes coming into the system. People may not become a manager because of the tenure. But, yes, we would need some level of human touch and personal touch in the form of a coach, guide or anchor to channelise the energy and thought process of the people.

Ketan [00:29:32] I heard two parts of the world, one saying that engagement is the headache of HR and another saying that managers have the maximum impact on engagement. What's your point of view? Why do you think the world still stays divided? At least my point of view is that managers are the most significant people who create an impact.

Manoj [00:30:07] HR is such a function where everybody has views.In a way, everybody plays the role of a HR. If you throw a question everybody would have their own view on HR. It is the function where everybody can provide a perspective without knowing the know-how of it. It's interesting and challenging from that point of view. Everybody has a view of HR or HR practices, and they feel their view is the best. So that is how the world is operating, that is how people are operating, and there is one side of HR function per se you know which is the custodian of the various policies, practices and  system and culture and they try to create their own world and they try to impact that world to these people.

Manoj [00:31:33]  Now what is happening depends on at what stage the organisation is in. They need to coexist in my view. It's not something at the cost of the other. They need to coexist and that coexistence needs to be co-created. So HR functions per se need to think, how they have to align and collaborate with people and these people need to be imparted with tools, techniques, frameworks, guidance, know-how or knowledge to do that work. That balancing is needed, but in my opinion, it will coexist and it has to coexist. Then only a more balanced, sustainable and robust approach can be created.

Manoj [00:32:50] So for sustenance purposes, coexistence is a must. I might have not answered your questions directly. It's not a binary question though, but I feel that coexistence is the one. And that balance is important. Fortunately, this is a big realization with the new generation and a lot of people are now taking up this as a career. In a class of eighty, only five people took HR as a major when I graduated. Nobody wanted a career in HR. But today that's not the case. It will be coexistence. It will be more of a co-creation and coexistence. That is something I'm trying to create in the Aarti Industry.

Ketan [00:34:46] With whatever we have gone through the last year where digital became a way of working, interactions started to happen remotely. Do you see a change in the expectation that organizations or employees have from their managers? What are the major shifts that you have seen over the last year which is going to stay for long in your opinion?

Manoj [00:35:12] I have a couple of hands-on experience here when I'm dealing with  people in manufacturing locations and metro locations. In both these perspectives, the role of the manager and team members is different. HR people have always been proposing to have five days a week or four days a week. And most of the corporates were not inclined. But this pandemic, which is a big event in the lives of the people, has got all of us. Now people are thinking of working from anywhere.

Manoj [00:36:28] So the point here is, I think the fundamentals and the thought process has been disrupted big time. All of us have learned a lot at the cost of our safety and people have realized that we could remain productive, relevant and still do our job. And the managers have realized that they don't have to watch people. Since we are learning this process, there is a lot of a productivity issue which managers are facing because everything is calendar-based and time-based.

Manoj [00:38:14] Since managers were not equipped to understand and deal with this world, they try to develop their mechanisms to deal with the situation. As a result, a lot of work gets shifted. I initiated a project, I thought it could get over in three months but it took six months. So we need to understand that to what extent work from home is feasible. We need to understand if it's practical for the organization and it may vary from company to company. In a hardcore manufacturing company, people need to show up to manage those assets.

Manoj [00:39:24] In the manufacturing locations with the help of my managers, we re-organized the shift pattern and rostering which is unheard of in Indian organizations. We had four days, three days and two days roster. We put in our efforts to learn the technology and automatically everything did fall in place. The situation teaches human beings better. Yes, work got delayed. But from the HR point of view, we didn't demand productivity during this time. The softer aspect is important, and that is what we created. That is where the manager has played a big role by remaining level-headed rather than talking about non-performance or productivity issues.

Manoj [00:41:13] I think for that, most of the organizations take a lot of initiatives to re-orient their people and the people managers on how to conduct during these kinds of scenarios. In my case, I have done 120 days of work with my people in terms of orienting them on how to deal during this period so that they feel confident to deal with the situation. So these are a few thoughts.

Manoj [00:42:03] Work from home is a big possibility now in our context, especially in India. It's going to be a big flexible system. Many companies have given up their office space. I remember when HR proposed to introduce five days a week, they face tremendous resistance from their stakeholders. Today, stakeholders are clear on flexibility, as long as people can deliver their job to a reasonable level of performance.

Ketan [00:43:14] This question has more to do with the younger generation. With the average age coming down of the workforce, what is the one thing that you would want any manager to focus on?

Manoj [00:43:43] How they relate to their job is the fundamental thing and that clarity is provided by the manager. When they are out of campus, when they come to the corporate or to the locations, how they relate to their job, where they see their skills and capabilities are used, how it is used, and how they can ramp up their skills and capabilities and the fundamental aspect is they want to feel responsible. It's not about their career, it's about their life. When they start their first job, there's always this question that arises, what am I doing? This is the fundamental question to address. And only the respective manager can address that.

Ketan [00:45:06] You said that the younger generation is more purpose-driven, meaning-driven and managers need to create a connection between their life and how career will enable them rather than career being the end.

Manoj [00:45:23] It's about their life, not about their career.

Senthil [00:45:27] I'm curious, sir, what is the best answer you ever received for this question?

Manoj [00:45:49] I have not yet received the best answer. But it's a big painpoint in the eyes of the manager and team members. Every year, I interact with not less than two thousand people. I used to interact with more than five thousand people earlier.  Every year, I interact with 3000 youngsters. I go to various campuses to address people. This remains a fundamental concept. And I think some level of clarity is needed here to disrupt the jobs at this level. Because it's run of a mill kind of a system. And when you bring your people from campus and you put them into that run of mill, people are not ready.

Manoj [00:46:53] They want to see a bigger meaning and purpose because it's about their life. It's not about the money they're getting in their bank account at the end of the month. Today's generation is far away from this. That is one area in which an organization needs to introspect and take a shot on how they can disrupt this run of the mill. Every year, you hire 200 to 300 people and put them into one year, six months, or two years of rigour. And at the end of two years, you expect that Eureka will be there. If you see the attrition level of the first two years in the job, it's very high. My estimate is to the extent of 50 to 60%, or maybe 70%. In some companies, it's 100% in two years and I'm talking about bigger brands.

Manoj [00:48:14] The fundamental reason is that the organization and the manager are not able to create that purpose and clarity in the minds of the youngsters on how they relate to their job.

Ketan [00:48:46] I wish we had an hour or two more with Manoj sir, but that takes me to the fifth question, there's something that we've been trying to solve and understand at CultureMonkey. Do you think that engagement of the future will see a huge shift towards personalization rather than the one-size-fits-all practices? Do you think technology is going to enable that? What's your point of view on this?

Manoj [00:49:19] I'm a big advocate of shelf-life. Each practice has a shelf-life. And that shelf-life needs to be continuously disrupted to remain relevant. Personalization or customization of individual needs is important to enhance the shelf-life. That depends on the organization or the leaders of that organization. Because most of the organizations initiate best practices. But while executing those practices, the objective becomes something else. So that is the larger concern and that is where the role of technology is going to be important. Because technology brings reliability and integrity.

Ketan [00:51:38] I have four rapid-fire questions for you. That's the most interesting part of the conversation. So the first one is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Manoj [00:51:55] People person.

Ketan [00:52:01] Is there a professional or personal goal that you are chasing right now and would like to talk about and inspire us?

Manoj [00:52:11] I'm chasing two goals. One is a professional goal, rather than being called a CHRO, I have given a declaration to my people and my declaration is, I'm an enabler and a medium for them to realize their vision. So I want to live up to that.

Manoj [00:52:48] My personal goal is to contribute my experience in the form of a book which is something I want to write along with my wife.

Ketan [00:53:10] One book that had the maximum impact on you and you would prescribe to the audience for them to pick up?

Manoj [00:53:23] Two books that I liked are, First Break All the Rules and The First 90 Days.

Ketan [00:53:32] One thing that you would personally thank COVID personally for?

Manoj [00:53:45] During the lockdown, I managed to reduce 18 kgs. For that, I thank COVID. I regained my confidence and my health. And I'm ready for the future challenges now. Personally, a lot of good things happened to me during COVID days. From the professional front, I was able to maintain business continuity. And improve the health of my mother. Shifted into my new house in Mumbai.

Ketan [00:55:02] Thank you so much, sir, for such a wonderful session. I have my three-page note here. Got a lot of interesting nuggets and insights. I've got a few problems that I've been trying to solve, I could see some fundamental outcome for that. Senthil, thank you again for bringing me here and helping me connect to people who have always inspired me.

Senthil [00:55:32] Thanks a lot. It was an extraordinary episode. I don't want to say anything new and deviate audiences from all the points that Manoj sir has mentioned. We have a lot to catch up on offline. I'll book more meetings with you and get inspired just like Ketan. Thanks a lot to both of you gentlemen for your time. Let's meet again for the next episode.

We’re happy to bring to you the first episode of  Season 2 of CultureClub, where we catch up with Meena Kumari, Director of HR at Airmeet, a remote-first organization that offers virtual collaboration solutions. Coming from an organization that has been remote even before the pandemic hit, Meena has some valuable insights to share on how the roles of managers are evolving with the changing technological landscape, the advent of new work models and the changing work population.

Meena brings with her over 13 years of experience in the field of HR and was awarded the Top #HRs100under40 by Jombay. She has a keen interest in Organizational Development, Employee Engagement, Learning & Development, Talent Management, and Talent Acquisition, and has been instrumental in helping start-ups scale from growth to expansion stage.

Meena has also translated her passion for the HR field by founding HR Folks Community where she takes a people-first approach while engaging in conversations around the HR field.

In this videocast, we capture her candid chat with Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo), and Senthil (Founder & CEO, CultureMonkey) where she stresses the need to redefine the roles of managers in keeping with the evolving business landscape.

Meena starts the conversation and immediately grabs our attention by asking a very pertinent question: Are we hiring managers? Or, are we hiring subject experts and pushing them to be managers? Because she implies that the impact of both on employee engagement can be very different.

While HRs may own employee engagement as a function and enable the organization in the direction of engagement, employees look up to their managers for motivation, which makes it important for people in these positions to have people skills - either trained in or hired for these skills.

She further goes on to point out the changes that are happening within a workplace - a more hybrid work model is emerging, the workforce is now a combination of permanent, freelance and gig workers, and millennials and Gen-Zs with very unique ideologies are part of the workforce. What does this mean for the role of a manager is a question that Meena throws light on, in this episode.

Don’t forget to fill your coffee mugs and enjoy this insightful conversation as you sip on that piping hot coffee.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:31] Hi all, This is Senthil from CultureMonkey. We had a great Season One at the CultureClub. The last time we spoke a lot of around, is E-culture is here to replace the culture. This is Season Two of CultureClub. We are targeting a very interesting topic. We're going to talk about the evolving role of managers in culture and engagement.

Senthil [00:01:00]  I have  Meena with me today. She's joining us from Airmeet and I also have our good old Ketan. Thanks a lot for joining Meena and Ketan. So before we go into the actual session. I will give a quick introduction about CultureMonkey and the best way to introduce CultureMonkey is to back it up with a story. For the last 12 years, I've been an engineer and I worked in many cities in South India, North India, Europe, and Singapore.

Senthil [00:01:39]  In all of my journey, I've always noticed that happy employees deliver in the maximum capacity. But then companies don't orchestrate employee happiness. I tried my best to share this point of view with managers with multiple feedback sessions, and I noticed that nothing moved, and when they initiated one-on-one communications with me, I was always scared to be open because there is no anonymity in that. And even if I manage to communicate, in the end, there was no action and I felt like all my feedback went into a black hole. There was no closure, no traceability and nothing circled back to me.

Senthil [00:02:31] That's when I lost hope in this whole process and with this struggle in mind, I partnered with Joseph who is our co-founder. So with Joseph, in 2017, we started the SaaS first company, it's called Effy. We worked with a lot of smart engineers and we were very successful. We were analyzing what's the root cause of our success and we realize that it's happiness at work. We had zero attrition with customers, employees, and every stakeholder. We felt, we are good at this, but how do we manage this? How do we make this a process?

Senthil [00:03:18]  That's when we stumbled upon the fact that this is culture. We wanted to build a SaaS; we wanted to build a culture software, and take this particular DNA and scale it. That's when in 2018, we co-founded CultureMonkey and it's been almost three years now. And with all the work that we have done with enterprise clients and mid-market clients, it is so fulfilling to know that, the problem that I faced, we were able to solve that for seventy-five thousand unique employees, and with that, we have more than 2.5 million individual data points in just two years. And with all of this data that we have, we realized that the key stakeholders here are the managers. So we built a module for managers where managers are the ones that are personalizing the engagement for you in your organization.

Senthil [00:04:19] In the best interest of discussing more in this direction, in season two, we have Meena, to attack more problems around the evolving role of managers. In this journey of building this technological product, we always knew that this technology is just an enabler. We need expertise around HR and people science. That's when we had Ketan join us a year ago and do a lot of initiatives around CultureClub and bringing in that strong domain layer of HR and people problems. This is that short introduction I wanted to give about CultureMonkey and CultureClub and without any further delay, Ketan back to you. Let's get started with this new season, with a new vibe.

Ketan [00:05:14] Thank you, Senthil. That story always is inspiring because that is precisely the reason I decided to help and be associated with CultureMonkey. It helped me solve a problem at the organization and I firmly believe that bringing technology and people together from our perspective is very powerful. So thank you again for having me here, Senthil. And for the audience. We have Meena Kumari, who is the Director of HR at Airmeet. If you guys haven't tried Airmeet, should explore that. I have been a user of Airmeet for quite some time and it's great!

Ketan [00:05:52] Meena worked with brands like Concero, CoreEL, and Capillary Technologies prior to Airmeet. She's also been awarded the top 100 HRs under 40 published by Jombay. She brings a lot of expertise in all the interventions, talent acquisition, employee engagement, L&D, talent management, the entire gamut of the core HRM and she has been instrumental in helping start-ups scale growth to the expansion stage. She's an alumnus of XLRI and Periyar University. I know Meena from a common group where we had interaction and exchange of notes over the last two months.

Ketan [00:06:47]  Meena is somebody who is driving a lot of similar conversations. On Saturdays, Meena has these coffee conversations with HR folks. And I've not been able to attend but I'm certain I would be there in one of the sessions. Meena, welcome again to the CultureClub session, powered by CultureMonkey and thank you again for your time. This season, as Senthil said, we're talking about sustaining and growing employee engagement: the evolving role of managers. So before we get into interesting questions, Meena, if you could tell more about yourself and your organization, that would be awesome.

Meena [00:07:39] Thank you so much, Senthil and Ketan. I'm overwhelmed with the introduction. So quickly about me. I head the Global HR at Airmeet. For folks to understand about Airmeet, it is a remote-first organization and the product of Airmeet is a SaaS-based digital platform, which is an all-in-one platform to host interactive virtual meet-ups and events. The entire platform mimics a physical volume where you can socialize, do virtual events, and a lot more than just meetups.

Meena [00:08:26]  I am the Founder of the HR Folks Community where we have conversations with the HR leaders to understand how we can solve the prevailing issues that HR faces. It's not the pandemic that moved us to become virtual and remote. We are a remote-first organization. The biggest challenge that I'm facing here is, how do we collaborate with everyone while being virtual? This is one of the biggest challenges that I'm trying to crack with Airmeet.

Meena [00:09:15] I'm happy to be here with Senthil and Ketan. While we have moved into the digital space and are looking at a virtual organization, I would love to add value and bring my opinion and thought process into how we can look at the future with digital savvy tools that can help us become efficient in the organization, especially involving a lot of insights and data-driven decision making for managers to bring engagement into the center of talent management.

Meena [00:10:08] We hire a lot of people, but are we hiring managers? Not necessarily. We're hiring people for their expertise and pushing them to become managers, but how do we enable them to become good managers? How do we enable people to make good decisions? That's the reason I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you guys.

Ketan [00:10:31] Thank you, Meena. A fundamental question to begin with, do you think that organizations without a manager could be a reality of the future?

Meena [00:11:20]  In the past, organizations had a pyramid structure and there was a huge hierarchy. But then folks moved into a flat structure. In a flat structure, one person owns the domain and a few people work for him. We are now hiring millennials who are highly tech-savvy folks. When you're dealing with people, who always feel that they are capable of making decisions, and are capable of this mindset that "it’s OK to fail and bounce back" if the decisions don't result in the desired outcome. This is the kind of people you're dealing with today and we are hiring them into the workforce.

Meena [00:12:35]  Gone are the days when we were hiring people to grow up the ladder. We are bringing in people who can perhaps bring in a lot of value and expertise to the organization. The one thing that we value in people is ownership. So when we are looking at all these aspects,  maybe we do not require managers in the organization. We require people who are mature, who have ownership and accountability. Traditionally, in a lot of organizations across the globe, the manager will list out a charter and set goals. Today, people are loving to have a lot more freedom and a bottom-up approach. They want freedom, flexibility and agility.

Meena [00:13:46]  The concept of managers is dying out, technical savvy folks who are strong with technology are growing up the ladder into the organization, not necessarily owning the manager title. It's important to have a set of people who own the domain and the rest will look up to them. Now, the definition of the manager today is changing. Let's take an example from Airmeet, we have a few product lines and a few people owning that product line. But within those product lines, it's not like all are full-time employees. Airmeet itself is a very hybrid workspace, about 70% of the people are full-time employees,10% of people are freelancers, another 20% of people are on-demand talent, that's how the teams come together. So when you ask the freelancer, gig worker, or on-demand talent, who's your manager? They don't have an answer. There's no manager here.

Meena [00:14:58] People want flexibility in managing their own time, their areas of expertise, and their domains. Managers definitions are changing. It's not whom you're reporting to, it's just the person who you look up to.  And does that person have the capability to add value to your job? Is that person enabling you to do your job? Is that person having enough insights to give constructive feedback and develop you in the job? So while I say, do you require managers, I would say the definition of managers is changing, (but) managers may not be out of the system. Co-founders and CEOs cannot be managing everyone.

Senthil [00:15:58] The coach dimension of managers, where he/she's giving you that motivation and inspiration. They are the ones who are delivering it for the company. This point will increase the need for a manager.

Meena [00:16:28] That's the only dimension that's going to help managers sustain. Otherwise, you won't be a manager, you're just going to look at your own work as an IC. We don't want mentors and we don't want too many people to coach us. People want to look up to a person leading by example.

Ketan [00:16:56] So to sum it up, the administrative control part of the manager will diminish. The enabling part and the catalyst part of the manager's role is going to create value in the chain. So that's pretty interesting.

Ketan [00:17:37]  Why do you think the world has been divided on the impact the manager has on employee engagement? For a lot of organizations, engagement is HR's problem and managers are the ones who should be driving it. What's your point of view? Why do you think the world is still divided on the impact that managers have on engagement for such a long time?

Meena [00:18:17] It's not the world, it's the business. For example, the business wants to ensure the managers are held accountable for the speed of execution. Where understanding people's needs and development is compromised. When you're held responsible for the impact on business, you always want to own the authority, that you want to get things done, and you forget to understand whether the needs of the people are met. Businesses want to throw the responsibility of engagement on HR - HRs can engage while the managers are busy doing business. Business leaders should understand that most employees are looking up to the person that they're working closely with to find motivation. So it directly becomes the manager's responsibility to engage with them. I think over time people have realized that engagement is not doing festivals in the organization.

Meena [00:19:41]  Inclusive engagement where you are letting people know what they bring to the table adds value to the organization because that's how you're making people feel inclusive, making people feel that they're valued in the organization. So it becomes managers’ primary responsibility to keep giving that attention to people. Otherwise, people don't feel their purpose in the organization. They feel maybe my contributions don't matter because I'm not receiving much feedback from my manager. And they start to look out for other organizations where they will be valued. So I think whatever the world stays divided, it's important that the manager owns the engagement piece of employees, pulls the team together, motivates them. That's how I think we'll be able to move this ahead. Otherwise, businesses are going to fall apart.

Ketan [00:21:12]  This was learning that I had when I took my first kid for school admission. The school had a very clear philosophy saying that you're not outsourcing your kid's development to me. You are the parent, you own it up, I will integrate with you so that we are delivering the same experience to the kid. And something similar that I'm sensing is that the ownership lies with the business but, at times, we outsource this to HR and the managers are (only) responsible for the business productivity and the results.

Senthil [00:22:13] This reminds me of the point that leadership is not given. It's taken. The managers need to take it, to become a leader. When it comes to engagement, that's the most softer aspect of any job and that's very delicate. If you can be good at that, then it would call for a huge win within the team.

Meena [00:22:42] That is the point where the integration comes. The HR only partners with you to let you know how you can handle the situation. But the managers are the ones who handle situations in the first place.

Ketan [00:23:03] Do you think recent changes in the workplaces going overly digital impacted the expectations organizations and employees have from their managers? What are the big changes or the shift that you're seeing with this world going digital?

Meena [00:23:50] When we talk about digital, the maximum we're able to digitize things is to put a lot of operational inputs, operational information out there for people to self serve. Once that is done, I think what employees look forward to is a high touch with HR and high touch with the managers to provide value-added feedback. That is one expectation organization and employees have from managers. They have to play the role of someone who can give them structured and constructive feedback for them to improve on.

Meena [00:24:35]   I don't know if going digital means that everything is out there on some platform. Of course, HRs now are using multiple tools. There are tools for HRMS, performance, surveys, and engagement. But what is the kind of utilization you are seeing? You see only about 30% of people utilizing this and trying to see whether they can give enough information to get value out of it. When that is happening, the expectation of the organization to have people being extremely approachable, that still remains. Particularly in the virtual environment, it's very easy for people to start feeling that they don't understand what's happening in your organization. So creating a lot of touchpoints, creating a lot of check-ins would remain. Most of the organizations have been pushed to become more remote due to pandemic.

Ketan [00:25:54] The number of touchpoints and the expectation in those has seen a huge surge. With the millennials and younger citizens coming into the workplace, do see a shift in the expectation these generations have from the managers? You spoke about how they look at enablers and managers more as a friend or a support system, rather than a directional manager. But are there more things that you want to talk about how the population is creating a shift in the expectation from the managers? What new things should managers learn if they're listening to you?

Meena [00:26:56]  Managers should learn to be more flexible, empathize more and perhaps look at data-driven solutions. The tech-savvy millennials, Gen Z does not mean that they are so open about what they feel. They want to tell what they need, but they never open up about what they feel. Managers need to be equipped with a lot of data-driven insights for them to go and talk to the people and give case-to-case solutions to the people. That's what people look forward to. The new age folks would love to have that kind of experience in their workplace.

Ketan [00:28:19] One interesting perspective that I picked up is, they will express their wants, but not the feelings. And that brings me to the fifth question. Do you think the concept of engagement is moving more towards personalization rather than one-size-fits-all? Do you think that will continue or are you seeing the digitization of the data will help move engagement more toward personalization and creating those individual touchpoints? If yes, then what organizations can do to help managers?

Meena [00:29:37]  I did touch upon that point because it's important that we solve problems case-to-case. Last month in Airmeet, one person was affected with COVID, another person was suffering from anxiety issues and someone couldn't perform well and later found out that their parents have been infected with COVID, so we had to give each of them a different solution. It's important that we dig deeper into their problems and solve real problems. Another crucial point is how do you understand the pulse of the teams? Run surveys, do some retrospect, get some data, and use that data to make bold decisions. It doesn't have to be always using historical decision-making in the organization. Now, people have more compassion, make more bold decisions in the organization, where it's helping both employees and the brand itself sustain for the long run. That's exactly how we should be enabling our managers.

Ketan [00:31:25]  There's a lot of expectation that we have for managers. The big question is how do we enable them to do their job better. Thank you so much, Meena.

Ketan [00:31:45] I have a few rapid-fire questions for you. I promise these are more interesting than the first five that I asked. The first question, if not HR as a profession, what do you think you would have chosen to become?

Meena [00:32:04]  I would've become an interior designer.

Ketan [00:32:26]  So during Covid between cooking, cleaning, and mopping, which was easier?

Meena [00:32:35] I didn't want to do either of them. It was during Covid that I hired more maids for cooking and cleaning. I think the cleaning part is something that I hated.

Ketan [00:32:58] OK, which was the easiest for you then.

Meena [00:33:03] Cooking is easier and then cleaning after that, is the hardest

Ketan [00:33:12]  What is that professional goal that you are chasing for yourself?

Meena [00:33:27]  My professional goal is aligned with creating a very global community that a lot of HR leaders can come together and talk openly about their problems. For example, we are seeing a lot of HR leaders talking theoretically about concepts that can work well. But I want to build a community based on real-life issues and how they're tackling those issues so that everybody else can learn from them.

Meena [00:33:53] For example, at Capillary and Airmeet there are several things that I am initiating. It's my own research that I am initiating. I don't know what other companies are doing. So for me, it's about creating a community that shares openly.

Ketan [00:34:20] The world needs a lot of meaningful conversation. Thank you so much for that. If you're into reading, a book that had the maximum impact on you and you would want the audience to definitely look at that.

Meena [00:34:33]  I love a lot of fiction. Growing up, I loved Robin Cook and Sidney Sheldon. Afraid of the dark and Outbreak are all like classics novels that I always love. And today I don't have time to read fiction, but I'm reading a lot of books that make an impact on my professional life. The books I would recommend are Who (It's about hiring the right people) and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Ketan [00:35:23]  I was fortunate, I read Atomic Habits, and just before that I finished The One Thing, combined together with its powerhouse. I don't know if you read that book but do pick up this book called The One Thing. Thank you. And that brings me to the last question. One thing that you personally thank COVID for.

Meena [00:35:55]  I would personally thank COVID is for the opportunity with Airmeet. The time that I could spend with my family, with my kids. My daughter brainwashed me over the years to buy a dog. I wouldn't have ever done it in my life.  These are two things that I cherish. A lot of lost opportunities, but that's OK. Just looking at the positive side of life

Ketan [00:36:34] That's super interesting. Thank you so much, Meena. We definitely should catch up in person. Thank you so much for your time. It was amazing interacting with you. Thank you, Senthil for this opportunity. Over to you.

Senthil [00:36:55]  Thank you, Ketan and Meena. You spoke about great stuff. I was keen about the synergy that you and I share. We need to explore that. I am not into fiction, I moved away from fiction recently.  And I remember reading what will happen to Diane and Kelly while waiting for my sister in Katpadi junction(Vellore, TamilNadu). You said the HR leaders are more philosophical than actionable. The professional goal is that you have to bring out that and talk about them. So these are some of the cognitive frames that you have and I appreciate that. And it's rare to stumble upon these kinds of people.

Senthil [00:37:59] You talked about the utilization of tools, HR has a lot of tools but not utilizing them to their full potential. Just like a thermometer can't cure your fever, but you can only measure the temperature.

Senthil [00:38:25] I talked about my struggle earlier in my career and all the words that you used, I was tempted because you talked about the new-age flexibility, moving away from legacy, and empathizing with the team, building trust. These are the things that give employees a great reason to deliver their maximum. So it's amazing we covered all of this today and very excited. Thanks a lot for your presence and Ketan thanks for another amazing session. We have come to the end of the session. Please stay tuned. We have more episodes coming in. This season we are targeting the evolving role of managers and engagement. Thanks a lot. Have a great time.

In episode 14 of CultureClub, we meet Tapas Acharya, Former - Sr. Vice President HR at Renew Power. Tapas has also worked in diverse sectors like telecommunication, retail, and the energy sector. He has more than twenty-five years of experience in human resources, and has also previously worked with companies like Spice Communications, Airtel, Aditya Birla Retail, MTS - Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd, and ReNew Power.

Tapas has taken up coaching people for a long time, and his experience of spending a lot of time with the leaders has helped him coach people to set up great work culture in their respective organizations. Apart from that, he is also an avid biker and a photographer, who often likes to ride his Harley on the highway on almost all weekends.

In this episode of Culture Club videocast, Tapas, Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo), and Senthil (Founder & CEO, CultureMonkey) discuss briefly how individual managers have stepped up in helping HR leaders in implementing employee engagement throughout the organization.

During this conversation, Tapas points out that managers across organizations have started getting involved in creating and carrying out HR initiatives, which has made the job of HR leaders easier. The very fact that the managers know better about their teams since they are handling them has helped HRs to resonate with them in framing policies for the organization.

He further explains how listening to employees is going to be very important in the present work scenario from a manager's perspective, suggests managers should coach/mentor their employees, connect with their teams and help them find solutions to their problems.

This conversation further touches on other vital aspects of the relationship between HR leaders and managers in establishing a great company culture. It also brings into focus the need for organizations to instill confidence in their employees that they’re being taken care of.

Listen to the entire conversation to know more about Tapas’s view on employee engagement and company culture.

Transcript:

Ketan [00:00:14] Tapas, welcome to CultureClub and thank you so much for your time, I'm sure it'll be interesting, exciting, and we promise to make it slightly more troublesome for you by asking questions that are going to be difficult. That's what we intend to do here. My name is Ketan, I'm the head of HR for an organization called Rentomojo and got in touch with CultureMonkey to try and solve problems that we had in Rentomojo. The product turned out to be great.

Ketan [00:00:46] Today we have Tapas Acharya with us, the Senior Vice President, Human Resources for an organization called ReNew Power. I understand from him, that he is in transition and he has always been wanting to do something of his own. So this is possibly a time when he is taking a plunge for himself, but he's been with this organization for six years. Prior to that, he worked with MTS Systems. I met and interacted with Tapas during our stint at Aditya Birla Retail Limited where he was heading North and East for the supermarket business. Close to two and a half years of shared time experience with Tapas.

Ketan [00:01:34] Prior to that, he was heading Human Resources for Spice Communication Pvt. Ltd., and then he has worked with Airtel and again with Spice Communication. He has spent a lot of time with the telecom sector and service sector. The most interesting part, that I'm not going to miss is, he is an avid biker and a photographer. He has a Harley, if you follow him on social media, you would see him on the highway on almost all weekends. I sense that it will increase now with him taking a full break from his nine-to-five potential job and you could see the amazing photoshoots that he does and the kind of animal that he's been able to capture in his photographs. I do bump into his photoshoots now and then.

Ketan [00:02:40] Very interesting experience with Tapas, he is one of the gentle and kind HR guys to work with and I learned a lot from him, especially about the real business HR situation. I don't think I have ever heard Tapas losing his calm or getting angry at the workspace. The north region is one of the most troublesome populations to work with. But the way he built up and managed and the connection that we build, has been amazing.

Ketan [00:03:13] He's a fellow coach also. He's taking coaching as something that looks to be his calling. We have exchanged notes over the last few months. Thank you so much, Tapas welcome again. If you could tell us more about you and your organization of your dreams. Please do so.

Tapas [00:03:38]  Thank you, Senthil and Ketan. This is one of the wonderful introductions that anybody could hear and thanks for summarizing me so well. It's always a pleasure to be getting in touch with colleagues, talking and sharing about certain things, which is of common interest. Ketan and I worked together on a very challenging assignment, which was not instantly what we used to. He was there with me whenever I needed him to be as a corporate resource to get to my purpose through with the CHRO. Those were the days we have enjoyed working together.

Tapas [00:04:21] What he said is right, after putting in a lot of years of service, I decided to get into something of my own. I have always wanted to be in close proximity with people by helping them, guiding them, and doing something for them on a one-to-one basis. That is how I picked up coaching. I've spent 28 years in the corporate world and as Ketan said, I've worked in telecom. People call me a veteran of telecom because I've spent a huge amount of years in telecom. I've seen this particular telecom industry grow from scratch to where it is now. Around 2015, I finally decided that I would have to stop looking at telecom back because I moved out of telecom, came back to telecom, off to retail again, because that was something that was a known ground for me. I've always enjoyed doing that.

Tapas [00:05:24] In the last six years, I have looked at a different industry, which is the energy sector, primarily renewable energy. 2015 was the time when I moved into this industry. It was being set up with a lot of challenges because this sector was known as a very traditional industry where the new thought process was something which was a challenging thing to do. To be honest, I got all support from my CMD, setting up all the practices that I had learned over so many years. Whether it was a service industry concept, a retail part, looking at the regional concept, launching new offices across locations, or getting into different states. All that helped me.

Tapas [00:06:11]  Today I'm happy that when I have decided to move on to look at coaching as my next career or next journey plan, I'm happy where this organization is and I'm happy to leave it at a time when things are going perfectly fine in this organization and things are set. So I'm very happy taking that plunge.

Tapas [00:06:31] Coaching? Yes, definitely. During this period of my journey, I have spent a lot of time with leaders because I worked very closely with promoters, CXOs at the business end. So that always was something which was inspiring me. I was working closely with them to set up the business, culture, performance, and managing people as we expanded. How do we get the new geography and new set of people on board? And that was something which I've always been excited about. That is how I decided this is the journey that I would prefer to take. If I can make an impact, for a few of the people in their lives by doing something amazing for them. That is something which will be a really important thing to carry for me.

Tapas [00:07:18]  I've always believed as a leader we should be very passionate. Riding bikes is something which I've been passionate about because that gives you freedom. I've always enjoyed wildlife because it gives you a lot of peace and calm and it teaches you a lot of patience. I've gone into wildlife photography, these are the two things that I've been working on. I would say I'm not completely proficient. It's a learning journey and I'm continuously learning every time when I'm in the jungle. That experience brings a lot of value. I'm sure these learnings that I've gathered in my passion areas would be helpful for me in coaching as well. Thank you so much, Senthil for inviting me. It's a great honor. It's a great privilege. And it's obviously a nice forum because I'm joining with my old friend Ketan along.

Ketan [00:09:15] We have a few questions about culture and engagement. Tapas has worked with organizations that have historically been very particular about the concept of engagement, one of the branches is Bharti, which is known for its practice around engagement. They were following the Gallup model for a long time. I'm not aware of what they do now, but a company that had the spirit of following engagement by all means. The engagement has turned into action planning, practices, and a lot of small group conversations. Tapas has seen that and we carried a lot of those learnings to Aditya Birla Retail, added our own versions. I am sure that we are going to get a lot of interesting insights and nuggets about engagement and culture.

Ketan [00:10:13] Let me come to the first question, Tapas. It's been about nine months since we are in lockdown. What are the challenges that you see? And this would be your views in relation to the organizational agenda. What challenges did the CXOs have to deal with when it comes to matters around culture, especially with the world going remote? What kind of shift did you see? What kind of challenges did you think were being talked about in those conference room conversations? The boardroom conversations?

Tapas [00:10:53]  The most important thing, which every CHRO right now has been talking about is how do we ensure the employee connect?  Physical connection was something that was amazing. Physical meetings gave you that feeling of togetherness. It actually was evident because you were physically interacting with people. The second part is how do we ensure that I connect with the people at a different location because we are not traveling. I remember I was spending almost 10 to 12 days traveling to a different location, interacting with people at the site whenever my site was being commissioned. I will go there to encourage them and reward them, do a celebration with them because of the kind of effort they would have done. This is all gone. We are not able to travel to locations

Tapas [00:11:56] So that one-on-one personal connection is something which everybody is grappling with. And the second element is the communication that used to be both formal and informal when we were getting together. The element of informality is all gone, it is becoming more formal, more structured because whenever I call up anybody, I'm just looking at my watch as to whether my discussion is over or not. Everybody is landing in the meeting on time, but the meetings are also finishing before time. I remember personal meetings used to extend. People used to gather before the meeting started and some people wanted to hang around after the meeting was over. Now, that's all gone. The element of one-on-one connect is something which everybody today is grappling with

Tapas [00:12:45] We have become very structured, very methodical, very precise, and time-based. Everything's perfect. But I think we have become too perfect. That connect part is something that is missing. The emotional connection that I had with my people with whom I work together is gone. People who wanted to come and talk to me, that desire of coming and talk to me in person used to give me so much warmth and comfort. Today it is limited to just a quick three minutes call in Zoom or Teams. I believe that every manager, not only HR but every manager is struggling with.

Tapas [00:13:37] Today, the calls have got into such a mode that every morning there is a call where everybody logs in and tells about what's happening. There is no one-on-one. It's a good team call where everybody is updated. I would rather say that the connecting element is something that is a challenging situation right now and the informal part of connecting is something that is missing today. And that is a challenging situation.

Senthil [00:14:22] Our company started to come to the office last week, I am able to completely relate to each and every word that you said. Our company is a very small team. We are like 12-13 folks. All of us are constantly happy. The speed at which the relationship reestablished and the fulfillment that you get is amazing. After this call, I'm going to the office where everyone is sitting and working right now. They are having fun. That enthusiasm is irreplaceable. And when you are in different buildings and different rooms, you're getting work done. But then what happens to all of this human element? I was actually able to relate.

Tapas [00:15:25]  Maybe the element of relationship will have a different meaning as we go back to our offices. I think we never appreciated the relationship before the lockdown happened.

Senthil [00:15:42] There are two people here in the office who always have an argument, three days ago, they were like, I can't believe I missed you.

Ketan [00:16:07] That brings me to the second dimension of this question. What are the silver linings that something like this has gotten to the leaders of the organizations? In twenty-eight years of experience, what are the things that you have always wanted people to appreciate, understand and possibly do and somehow COVID helped? One, I'm with you that this is perhaps the first time in the history of workspaces that people have started appreciating the office for what it is.

Ketan [00:16:42] This Monday blues, I don't think, is going to be a word that will ever exist because there are times when absence or lack of something creates a value for it. At the end of the day, we are social animals. We know how important it is to mingle around with people and talk to them, especially for the younger employee who doesn't have a family when they go back to their PGs or their homes. This is a very important social gathering place.  What are those other elements of silver lining do you believe that something like this has got on for organizations or for leaders or people, mostly in the context of culture and engagement that will be helpful to the audience?

Tapas [00:17:29] What you said is right. This lockdown has also made us reflect upon what we had before the lockdown and what we have missed in the last eight months. That revolution was important for all of us because we always looked at the office that we were there only to deliver some X, Y, Z and we were back home and home was something which was important for us. Now, today, with this kind of event, everybody understands that home and office play an important role and both have to coexist. One cannot supersede the other one. There are a couple of changes which have definitely happened and this is something which everybody has to accept.

Tapas [00:18:13] Number one, the industry where I'm currently working, we never had the work-from-home concept at all. So anybody coming and talking (about) work-from-home was always looked at very strangely. Even in manufacturing, how can you ask for work from home. Today, this is a completely radical hit that everybody has got. Now, everything can happen while working from home.

Tapas [00:18:42] There are people who needed to be in the office. They are still in office. But they are in an insecure state, in the event, anything happens to them, who is going to take care of (them)? The company came forward and said, I will take care of you. That confidence came to the employee from the employer saying, look, I will take care of you. Do not worry. If you are coming to the office, I will make sure that your security and safety are taken care of. I will ensure that in the event that you or any of your family members go through a tough time, I will back you up.

Tapas [00:19:19] I think that confidence was something which was very important because we were taking those kind of things very lightly. Changing jobs and moving from one job to another, we took everything for granted. But this situation has created important thought that the employer is responsible and will take care of you. That is something that has come out very clearly that we are backing you up. So that they don't worry. The first line is that the element of care, the element of being there with you is something that has come off well.

Tapas [00:19:59] The second element, which is important, is that we all now understand and appreciate each other's time. As I said to you, meetings used to start early and get over late. We had enough time to spend in the offices. Now, that element of spending quality time on the projects is also there, which has gotten the people to understand there is a limitation. There is (limited) time which is available which we have to utilize in the most effective way.

Tapas [00:20:35] Third, I think every meeting or every area where we were focusing on people is no more focused. This is my view, whenever I see people coming for meetings they are well prepared, they have their point of view ready, they send the notes in advance for people to go through so that everybody can note down their point of view and then they can raise their point, counter the point and participate in the discussion process.

Tapas [00:21:07]  The fourth element, which I see is the participation of people. People never acknowledged the employee engagement initiative that we used to do as an HR, we used to do some activity, nobody will turn up. We were making the announcement and gathering people but nobody turned up. Now, suddenly, people are feeling that void. They feel that activity was important for them to move out of the workstation and get along together, know about new employees, understand about what the other departments are doing, and be participating in a common approach. That is what brought everybody together. ‘The element of employee engagement is an initiative of HR and let it happen’ - I don't see that kind of attitude. I see a lot of people participate in the event, which we do virtually nowadays.

Tapas [00:22:09]  For leaders, there is a huge amount of change because now employees and the team members are more connected to the respective functional managers and leaders than with HR. So that value creation of the managers becoming an HR manager has improved.

Tapas [00:22:30] Previously, if you approach any manager regarding a concern, he will straight away pass it on to the HR team. Now, the surprising and good element is that whenever you approach the managers saying I have this concern, your manager takes the lead and says that don't worry, I will take care of it. I will talk to the HR and get some support for you. Initially, HR was fighting for the people that, I want to have a policy that supports employees, but today managers come forward and say to the HR, I need these policies for my team members.  What I did was in the month of March, when I was reviewing my medi-claim and personal accident policy for employment, I recommended an enhancement of the coverage for employees.

Tapas [00:23:18] And I did not get any kind of pushback from any of the managers that this is going to be the HR outflow. Everybody started appreciating the fact what HR was doing for the employees was something that was actually helping them build up good relations with their team members. So I think from a manager perspective, from the individual functional managers perspective, there is a huge amount of change. They leading the teams now by engaging with the teams more rigorously than what we used to do. People from HR were driving the agenda across a thousand five hundred employees. We needed a (helping) hand and today we have managers who are supporting you to drive that initiative which is a positive move, which has happened after lockdown. These are 4-5 things that are immediately coming into my mind. I thought I would share.

Ketan [00:24:13]  The biggest survey or the study says that the managers are the biggest connector between the organization and the people. And the engagement has moved to where it is supposed to happen. Thank you for sharing all of those.

Ketan [00:24:38] What is that you will want this fraternity to be more focused on as we embrace the future?

Tapas [00:24:54]  The biggest opportunity before the HR fraternity is that now you have extra hands and heads along with you while you're driving the initiatives. So from the HR perspective, initially we used to struggle with the concept note, and Ketan you will resonate with me because we used to prepare a concept note and used to struggle to present it to the top management or to our peer members, to managers. Today, I think the biggest part is that whenever you're preparing a concept note, I'm happy that the managers are willing to look at what the HR is saying because now they've gone through the situation themselves while handling these people on their own so they can resonate with HR in terms of what we were wanting to bring out for the organization as such.

Tapas [00:25:44] Secondly, HR has always been responsible for the cultural element. What do we create as an organization? And whenever we do some activities, it's actually focusing on how are we creating that (culture) or how are we building that organization. Today the discussion is how do we retain, how do we build the organization and (also) if your managers understand that these elements actually help to create that organization together. I believe that we are not alone now because we can connect with managers much faster.

Tapas [00:26:22]  Managers are no longer individual managers. They are now people managers. So if people managers understand and resonate with what each other is doing, we have more say in an organization. That is a positive element that I'm seeing now. We have a lot of head and foot for us to work with. And that gives us a lot of opportunities to do a lot of new things now, which we may have hesitated and we did not want to do because nobody listened to us when we wanted it to happen that way. But yes, now, I think we will be able to break through those kinds of barriers that were created and it will be easier for us to take things forward.

Ketan [00:27:11] What's the one thing you would want people to do or not do based on what you've learned or experienced in the last few months? What is it that you want people to hold on to? Things are uncertain. A lot of things have gone up and down, great plans have suddenly fallen on its face and a lot of things that were probably struggling have come back. But to an individual, what is the one thing that you would want to tell them, your mantra or philosophy saying that this is what you should do.

Ketan [00:27:51] Our large audience is HR folks who are trying to get a perspective on matters around culture and engagement. There are also individuals, to begin with. What are those one or two things that you would want them to focus on individually?

Tapas [00:28:10] With all the changing times, listening becomes more and more important now than ever. Can you gather more information and spend time with people because people want somebody to listen to them? As I said, listening becomes more and more important. Times have changed and we cannot say that ‘sorry, I was occupied’. You will have to take out time to listen to your people. You have to reach out to people and find ways of reaching out to them. The organization will find its own way in and out. Listening is going to be a more important element.

Tapas [00:28:52] Second, from a manager's perspective, I think everybody will have to learn how to coach people, how to mentor people. That becomes very important because it's not just to find a result, but to look at the overall solution because we have to look at the entire issue in terms of solutions. Mentoring and coaching give you that time to look at everything from a different perspective. I believe, for every manager, coaching and mentoring is going to be one element that they need to develop as they move along.

Tapas [00:29:36]  The third element that happens to be which I've been studying in this particular time is that this time has actually given every person that moment of reflection. Honestly, I've gone through my moment of reflection since March. That was going in my mind as to how do I now shift the way I have been working so far. So, everybody who has gone through that moment of reflection needs to talk. Like in my case, I spoke to Ketan in detail as to what we should do. There are a lot of positive elements. There are also elements that are not very clear in your mind. It's always advisable to talk to people around, try and take different perspectives, try to understand different perspectives.

Tapas [00:30:36] And what perspective you arrive at is actually what you value yourself for, what is your own value?  What is it that you want to give the most important value to? Any factor which is very important for you? I think those are the kind of things which are going to be very important. First, knowing what the decision is, finding people, talking to them, mentoring, coaching. All surround one area, which is how do I explore more, in terms of my own inner capabilities and desires. This question made me think a (lot) and I'm not sure whether I've been able to address it completely. I've been spending a lot of time listening to people because coaching is nothing but spending a lot of time knowing where the person is coming from. And that can only happen if I can listen properly. And I've been spending a lot of time listening.

Senthil [00:31:49] I'd like to add one point here, it was like music to my ears that you said those many points which were fragmented, but it was all under the same topic. What we have found especially in CultureMonkey is that listening makes the employee feel heard and that actually solves half the problem, you just giving the feeling that my managers are actually listening to me, just that feeling does half the job. It was great to listen

Tapas [00:32:32]  When you interact with different sets of people, you come to know what they're going through because every person, whether in a job or not, everybody is going through something which is unique, which they have not experienced before and that itself is learning. If you're able to listen to them about their learning, you are actually drawing new kinds of thoughts around you, which is important.

Ketan [00:33:11] Some people may think it's on a lighter note, but this is a serious note. Listening has to improve. Thank you for that.

Ketan [00:33:35] Now, I am trying to bring it together and wrap it from a question perspective. There's something called an E-culture. We had a conversation about E-culture at CultureMonkey, that is the culture as it existed, moving toward something which is going to be E-culture. What's your point of view? Do you believe it's already there or there is more that has to come? If we throw this word E-culture to you, what would be your first thought?

Tapas [00:34:08]  If I look at this, E-culture element is the future because we are going to be in the networked world and be scattered. Now, when you were talking about this particular E-culture element, I was just looking at a couple of elements and the fact remains, the cultural evaluation has always happened, through say a Gallup. We have done the evaluation on elements of culture, on managers’ roles. We have done the (evaluation) exercises.

Tapas [00:34:54] Now, people will have to take it very seriously because it is going to be a scattered world. It is not going to be in one place where everybody is going to be available because times are changing. Hybrid workplaces coming in and people are going to be all across. E-culture will be a tough concept to look at because culture has never been determined over electronic (mediums), it is too difficult because culture is presented when people come together. How do I make sure that the cultural element of people coming together is actually put up in that format is something which I have not thought about and definitely, it's something radical right now for me, because how do I build up that culture, which is going to be monitored on the web or controlled on the web is too difficult because I've been a proponent of the cultural element where it is one-on-one, a team and everything in person. It is too difficult to comprehend, but definitely, I would have to think through because I know that the future is E-culture.

Senthil [00:36:35]  When it comes to company culture, I'm not even touching E-culture. We're talking to a lot of people and very senior and seasoned people like you always start by saying it's too difficult. Culture is too difficult to even talk about. How would you describe the company culture?

Tapas [00:37:35]  To begin with, whenever I recruit talent into my organization, I would meet that person one-on-one. There is a personal rapport that is built-up, then the context setting is done, this is what my organization is, whether you fit my cultural element, what kind of work you've done, what are your hobbies? Passions? How do you work as a team? All those elements in one-on-one. That's just a different feeling.

Tapas [00:38:05] And second, you also look at the perspective from which organization a person is coming in, the kind of responsibilities the person has handled, the kind of teams they have handled and all those elements actually make you believe that he is going to be a cultural fit for you.

Tapas [00:38:25] Let's compare it with today's time. I'm interviewing people on the Web. I am looking at the person on the Web and interview for 15-20 minutes. There would be two or three panelists who would have interviewed and selected that guy. The guy comes into the system. He is again online. I would have conducted induction. He's onboard. He would have not even met anybody in person or anybody physically. The relationship is not built up.

Tapas [00:39:07] Whenever I am doing any engagement initiatives, whether it's an employee activity or an awards ceremony, everything is now happening virtually. I'm just showing a screenshot of the person's name and the certificate that he has won.

Tapas [00:39:21] The appraisal is also happening online, where you are filling up a form, it is reviewed by the manager, and then a ten minutes discussion over a phone call. Third, whenever we are deciding about any compensation raise or industry benchmarking, we used to do forums. We will call up people together for open houses and address questions. We have done open houses through the web also, but the kind of questions we are looking for don't even arise.

Tapas [00:40:27]  When Ketan asked me about E-culture, I was looking at both pieces. In the future, I will have a diversified workforce based on locations. It's more system-driven. I may ask them to give me feedback. But there is a subjectivity in which I will translate the data into an outcome that may finally hit that employee. That is the deliberation, which is going through my mind.

Tapas [00:41:15]  I do understand, it's an important area to look at for every HR. But since I come with so many years of one-on-one connection, I have always believed in relationship building. How do I build the same relationship while I move to electronic format is the question which I'm currently not sure about? But definitely, I would have to think, as to how it will happen in the future?

Ketan [00:42:42]  I have five rapid-fire questions for you. The first one is, if not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Tapas [00:43:09]  I would have joined the Armed Forces. That was my first passion. It didn't happen and I thought HR was much closer to what I was wanting to do. That is the reason I chose HR.

Ketan [00:43:41] Between cooking, cleaning, and mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Tapas [00:43:47] I think cooking and cleaning were much easier than mopping because I learned for the first time that while you are mopping you will have to move. That movement has to be clear. But I found the trick later.

Ketan [00:44:16] What is your next personal goal?

Tapas [00:44:27] It is related to coaching. I want to impact the lives of people that I connect with, that will be my goal, not specific numbers, maybe one person in a year. If I'm able to do a lot of things for him to make him clear about what he\she is wanting to do, I will be more than happy about it.

Ketan [00:44:49] Any book that you would talk about which had a huge impact on you which reader can lay hand on?

Tapas [00:45:00] I think one book by Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, which happens to be with me and I still go through that. And when I was in Lucknow Debashis Chatterjee gifted me a book. I'm forgetting the name of the book right now, but that has remained with me because that talked about leadership traits, though it was written long time ago. But I frequently read it because I find it so relevant.

Tapas [00:45:35] I think these are the two books that have been my prized possessions, but lately, I have been reading a lot of books. I am yet to find something which I will always keep near me.

Ketan [00:45:56]  What is that one thing that you personally thank COVID or lockdown for?

Tapas [00:46:10]  I thank COVID for allowing me to find myself. With so many years of work, I was just running helter-skelter but this gave me time to look at what is there in me, which I can further enhance and value, which is beyond work. This is where I found that this is something which I could maybe pick up as my next part of the journey because that was never possible in the usual box(ed) office.

Ketan [00:46:49] Thank you so much Tapas for giving your time and it was an interesting conversation. Over to you Senthil.

Senthil [00:47:00]  Thanks a lot, audience. Thanks for listening. Tapas, the calmness, and harmony you had in the whole session go with the fact that Ketan said that he's never seen you angry or, you lose it at all. This is the first time I'm seeing someone think clearly and answer even in a rapid-fire round. It was a joy to watch. The way the session started by opening that you were a biker, photographer and we can see one of the photographs right there. And then the points that you talked about, the informal elements that connect being the main thing and connect being lost.

Senthil [00:48:09]  Your acknowledgment of subjectivity and emotional things about people at the office. You said that, if not for HR, you would be in the Armed Forces. I think all of the points had great joy and felt amazing. You have created a huge impact. If I have to say one thing about this session it would be, you said you want to impact one person a year and I think you have done that for 2020. I really aspire to be you. I have a lot of years to come. One thing I clearly learned from you is this calmness, indescribable. I aspire to be you for the aura that you had in the entire session. And I wish I get that soon. It was so joyful to listen to all the points that you said. So thanks a lot.

Tapas [00:49:12] Thank you, Senthil. Thank you, Ketan. It was wonderful talking to both of you.

In episode 13 of CultureClub, we meet Rajesh Srivastava, Chief Human Resources Officer at Capital Foods Private Limited. Rajesh has also worked in diverse sectors like finance, insurance, cement, etc. and has experience in HR for close to twenty years.

Rajesh believes in employee empowerment and dedicates his time to mentoring young HR professionals and organisational leaders, helping them hone their skills and become better at what they do and what they want to do. That is how Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) met Rajesh and continues to be his mentee after all these years.

Rajesh fondly calls Capital Foods a 25-year-old startup owing to its innovative approach; always looking to bring new flavours in the Indian Food and Beverages industry. An employee-friendly organisation, Capital Foods understands the importance of organisational culture.

In this conversation with Ketan and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey), Rajesh brings in an interesting point— the importance of proactive organisational culture. Rajesh explains how the proactive attitude in Capital Foods helped them deal better with the pandemic and make the most of it. This not only helped curb any kind of confusion amongst the leaders at Capital Foods, but also helped the middle and junior level employees find direction during a time of crisis and recognise their duty towards the organisation.

Rajesh pointed out how their organisation has always been dedicated to employee engagement and this has not changed even when the pandemic hit them, all thanks to their proactive organisational culture.

This episode is a great watch for anyone willing to see the silver lining in any dark situation. Rajesh’s conversation also sheds light on important issues like discipline while working from home and how leaders expect their employees to work around the clock because of a lack of empathy.

Listen to the entire session to gain insights from Rajesh’s practical knowledge and learn more about what it means to be a professional in the current situation.

Transcript:

Senthil [00:00:25] Hello all, this is the 13th episode of CultureClub. So CultureClub is the community initiative curated by CultureMonkey and CultureMonkey is an Employee Engagement Platform. To give you a quick introduction as to what CultureMonkey does - when organizations decide to listen to the employees continuously through surveys, through channels like SMS, WhatsApp and want to continuously listen to the employees, collect feedback, analyze the feedback and act on it, you will get challenges like employees located across multiple locations and employees having very diverse sentiments. An employee in sales feels differently than an employee in engineering and then there are blue-collar workers as well.

Senthil [00:01:16] So when you want to listen to all of these different sets of employees, you will have to collect a lot of data ,and CultureMonkey exactly helps you to do that in a more efficient and personalised manner. There is a philosophy that CultureMonkey sticks to where we say that managers are the ones that personalize employee engagement for you.

Senthil [00:02:13] Therefore, in CultureMonkey, we have exclusive access for all managers who can slice and dice data as to how they are performing in different drivers. So, with all of these features and modules and solutions under one platform, it's CultureMonkey for you. So with that quick introduction of CultureMonkey without any further delay, let's get started with this new episode.

Rajesh [00:02:52] . We'll have to know about you also, Senthil. A little bit of what you have done?

Senthil [00:02:52] Oh, OK.

Rajesh [00:02:56] Honestly, I should have done that little early.

Senthil [00:03:00] No problem. So I'm Senthil and I'm the Founder and CEO of CultureMonkey. The idea of CultureMonkey has been within me as an unhatched egg for a long time. After college, I was working at Infosys and then I joined startups. I worked in different places. I worked in Hyderabad, Delhi, Netherlands, Singapore. And then I started this company called Effy in 2017. And within one year I was wondering why my team is performing very high? Why are people working with me, for me, are very happy, what is going on? So that's the exact time when I also wanted to build a SaaS product. That's when I had to give a talk with PayU, the company where they said, how are you bootstrapping startups? And then I had to put a deck and that deck came out of 13 different slides and that talk was a hit and I came back and I retrospected on those decks and realized that it's because of our culture we’re successful as a bootstrapped company.

Senthil [00:04:11]: And its elements of culture, its high engagement, its absence of micromanagement. So that is when I realised my ambition to create a SaaS and my innate affinity towards culture joined hands. And we explored this engagement space and said, let's do this employee engagement platform, which is so much aligned with our passion as well but we are still a bunch of engineers, 2018 is when we started. We were like 10-12 engineers and we said, ‘hey, we have built all these features but lack the flavour of the real human’. There are no HR elements around it. We don't know what the HR team, what the slang of HR is. Towards the end of last year, we started talking to hundreds of HRs within the country. And then we said this calls for coming up with a community. And yeah, now we are here. Rajesh and Ketan.

Rajesh [00:05:15] Oh, excellent. Very nice.Congratulations. When did you start this company?

Senthil [00:05:25] It's August 2018.

Rajesh [00:05:28] Oh, 2 years almost now. So what are the specifics? How do you do, what do you do?

Senthil [00:05:41] Right. So what we do is initially send out employee engagement surveys, culture surveys, manager related surveys. That is the inception of the organization using CultureMonkey, that's the first module. Once the surveys are sent out, we collect all these responses anonymously from the employees and we can challenge that our in-depth analytics are super in real-time and very meaningful. You can see that in Mumbai, in my sales team, female employees in this employee tenure feel this way about innovation in their team or purpose alignment. And we take those data and present it to the HR whose actual action is to take some psychological suggestions instead of crunching data. Instead of wasting time on all the sheets and all that. So that's the second module.

Senthil [00:06:39] We give very in-depth analytics. And the third module is actions where based on the performance of all these teams, we tell these are all the three things for this quarter you can plan. We also benchmark all of this data against industry benchmark, which industry you are from, and now you are acting on this. You are taking action from within the platform. And then I talk about managers where managers will get access and managers will be given a mirror of themselves, where they are seeing their strength, their innovation,  autonomy, their weakness is, let's say, recognition. And they can engineer actions.

Ketan [00:07:21] Senthil, Rajesh has worked with Aditya Birla Group and he's seen about, I think, 17-18 years of OHS, Rajesh sir, if you look at what CultureMonkey does and one of the reasons I'm helping them is I saw a lot of those problems that we were trying to solve using OHS, where there is a Gallup question, there is a group-specific question then administering the question online and the good part of it is manually triggered and also automated so you can create a custom weekly trigger also. So you make the feedback continuous or time-bound. And the second challenge for us is that then a consultant will come and give us data saying this is what people are saying, this system throws the data right away, you can live track on how many places, what's the completion score, which section you click on.

Ketan [00:08:10] I think that's what helped me at Rentomojo, very important, which we were struggling with in Aditya Birla if you remember, was developing an action tool. Now, imagine, say employees have given feedback and the systems say, look at these are the pockets where it's mostly red and you need to do something. You can go to feedback and attach it to an HR guy or a business manager or the factory manager saying that, keeping the employee’s name anonymous we can say that this is a trend that I'm hearing that people are saying that the drinking water facility in your unit is not good. Now, this goes suddenly into their dashboard. The HR guy can act.

Rajesh [00:08:50] This application, Ketan or Senthil works on any HRMS it sits on or standalone?.

Senthil [00:08:58] See, that's another unique thing. So we integrate with any type of HRMS, as long as the HRMS has an API.

Rajesh [00:09:07] API is available. Can it be integrated with that in real-time?

Senthil [00:09:12] Absolutely.

Rajesh [00:09:14] Very Interesting.

Ketan [00:09:16] I know Rajesh has a hard stop at four. I'm going to steal the momment now and for our audience, we have with us, Rajesh Srivatsava who is the CHRO for Capital Foods Private Ltd, before Capital Food he was working with Aditya Birla Groups for close to 20 years. He's worked across any possible industry you can think of: food, financial services, insurance, trading, and he's known for leading successful teams and establishing robust HR practices in the areas of organization design, capability building, talent development, change management, and all restructuring. He has been a mentor to a lot of folks.

Ketan [00:10:01] And that's where my connection with Rajesh happened. I was fresh out of campus and landed up in Aditya Birla Group. There are these cool senior folks who are like the practical guy and realistic guy who will talk less theory and give real-life experience and what happens in the business. I have looked upon Rajesh for that, one of the friendliest of seniors that I've ever worked with. I never directly worked under him, but I'll continue to share a very inspiring space with him. We have stayed connected even after a long time. It's a personal pleasure of mine that he has come and joined the session because I'm going to ask him some interesting and tough questions. That's what I have to say about Rajesh, Rajesh if you could tell us something more about you and about your organization for the audience, that would be super helpful.

Rajesh [00:10:57] Thank you all. Honestly, it surprises me that we never worked together in a team. And all along we have been in touch. The media has provided the opportunity for all of us to have that connection. I'll tell you a little bit about myself and Capital Foods. I'm a student of psychology, born and brought up in a place called Allahabad. I’ve worked for ABG for more than two decades in different industries, settled in Bombay, and now working for Capital Foods.

Rajesh [00:11:51] Capital Foods, as I call it a 25-year old startup. It seems like an oxymoron, but it is not so. The spirit that we experience is very similar to a startup. I never worked for a so-called startup. But in the early days, I worked with Birla Sun Life Insurance. I was among the founding members. The first policy of Birla Sun Life Insurance was sold after two months of my joining, so I qualified to be a founding member. That was one place where I had this experience of a startup, not in the classical sense but that was the organization that was created from scratch. Capital Food owns two very popular brands. I can assure you and your audience would be our consumer, you may have tasted our Ching's Secret Schezwan Chutney which is one of the flagship products and different kinds of noodles or masala, sauces. So, anyone who cooks would know Ching's sauces for sure. Typically we are the only brand of hakka noodles. It's a national brand so to say.

Rajesh [00:13:45] Smith and Jones is another brand, we have our products like ginger-garlic paste, soups, etc. that are popular. Recently, we have launched another noodle in the Smith and Jones category. It's a very innovative company and I joined here two years back. I was, in fact, a user of this brand. So when I told my wife, she said that we use some of these products and there was a bouquet of spices and sauces. And that's when I started recollecting that this brand has been around. I've never looked at it as an employer then. Honestly, we knew Ching's and Smith and Jones but many of us didn't know Capital Foods as an organization or as an employer the way all of us know it now.

Rajesh [00:14:53] From 1996 to now, this is what Capital Foods has done and has brought terrific flavours to our homes. We aspire to provide different flavours three times a day, all 365 days a year to every home in India. That's our aspiration. We are unique. If you look at some of the things that we produce. I don't think that we compete with others. We are unique in that sense. We are innovative, call it quirky as an organization, as a brand. So that's a little bit about Capital Foods, the fastest growing food company.

Rajesh [00:16:05] It's a company of young guys, very passionate folks. Culture has been one of the defined, stated philosophies of this organization. We heavily invest in nurturing specific elements of culture. The CEO himself says that my primary responsibility is to create the culture. We measure it in different elements, and that's why I would be keen to explore most of the opportunities that we have. We are very clear on cultural elements and transparency. Of course, barring and keeping the sensitivities. Communication has been a very strong forte for most of the employees. In July, when we did our employee survey here, our employees told us that they know what they need to know.

Rajesh [00:17:21] Culturally, professional dignity is very dear to us as an organization. Behaviours like shouting, reprimanding or abusive language, if there is any, is something that is completely non-negotiable. Our stated position is - non-performance is not a crime. The absence of a will would be a red flag. As long as you have tried hard and you have put in your best effort, it's fine. We say that human capabilities are unlimited. Just before this meeting we, a couple of colleagues were talking on some subject and we said that our business tests human capability.

Rajesh [00:18:44] So we still believe that the human soul on fire is phenomenal. If you have that element. No dream is beyond your reach. Yes, we expect a disproportionate time on some of these subjects. We did have occasions of tough decisions being taken and as soon as that decision was taken we were the first ones to inform everybody on a conference call across India. Of course, keeping the sensitivity around the person and everything in mind. We would not consciously like to create a culture of grey points and rumours and different cliques talking about different things. We will go upfront and inform you.

Ketan [00:19:59] Very interesting.

Rajesh [00:20:01] We have got lots of accolades on certain occasions, some of the people said that in their previous experiences elsewhere, they have not witnessed the speed at which we decide something. With the clarity and transparency with which we communicate with some of my colleagues, they said that they have never experienced something like that. So we would like to experiment with some of those first of its kind.

Senthil [00:20:35] I'm worried that you have a hard stop at four now.

Rajesh [00:20:41] No, unfortunately, Senthil because that's another external commitment.

Ketan [00:20:49] I'm sure that hearing from you about real things that matter and your experience would be super amazing for the audience.

Rajesh [00:20:58] Post lockdown, in July, we announced our increment, annual performance, bonus, promotions. Normally, HR guys will be resistant to do an employee survey then. My hypothesis was that let's test it. So we launched after a week of the announcement of our increment, bonuses and letters were sent. We launched our employee survey. There was one question that we asked people to describe in one word. What is the culture of Capital Food? Ninety-eight percent of people said pride, feels like home. One percent, one and a half percent was not sure types or mixed feelings. That was the response we had. So we think that we are on the right track, of course, lots of things need to be done.

Ketan [00:22:19] Rajesh, what are the challenges you think the CXOs had to deal with, especially when the world went remote, every machine was running fine. And I think your business is as complex as it could be, there are central functions, sales functions, manufacturing, very different kinds of pieces of business. But when this happened, how were the CXOs or when you spoke to CXOs outside the industry, what do you think were the biggest challenges that they were facing? And probably to add to that, what are the good things that something like a COVID has done to organizations, to matters about culture and engagement?

Rajesh [00:23:07] As I mentioned, I don't think that we had challenges to deal with. I would rather put, we had lots of opportunities to deal with and encash. I don't know how much we have encashed frankly. We knew that lockdown was coming. Three weeks back, we had anticipated that this would happen in India sooner or later. So we did some worst-case scenario planning, etc.. We didn't know how lockdown will pan out, how it will impact the business. We were acting ready, we were very sure, sometime in the first week of March itself, that in a worst come scenario, if we don't sell even a single rupee, we will sustain.

And how long we can sustain. We were clear that we are not cutting, even then. That was not announced though. But within the three of us i.e. CFO, CEO, and me, it was clear that we are neither going to reduce a job nor the salary, we will sustain as much as possible. We have also calculated the minimum selling and how much we need to do and we figure out how to do that so that we are on a break-even period basis month on month.

Rajesh [00:24:43] Lockdown happened on the 25th of march if my memory serves me right, our plants were operational on the 28th of March. We got permission and everything is part of essential services, and our two plants have started operations on 28th March itself. We used to meet twice a day as a team. Some of the things that happened are huge technology adoption, people who might have been averse to typing themselves were converts, phenomenal converts in a week, logging on to teams and sharing documents and sending documents, and all that started happening.

Everybody figured out the corner in their home to be on time. Another thing which has happened is efficiency has increased. Because nobody was loitering around here and there, which generally happens in the office if five people are supposed to meet three is always outside and we have to call and pull them in. All were on time. There was also a sense of national duty. We realize that these supplies are going to be drained soon and we were given this license to work or permission to operate. So very few industries then were permitted to operate. There was news that people are holding.

Rajesh [00:26:17] You might have heard in some foreign country, people fought for toilet paper, etc which was all trending. We felt that in our kind of space in India, food is essential and we should be able to produce as much as possible. Fortunately, we could manage all, in fact, during the lockdown period we grew substantially. We added manufacturing capacities. We ran our plant in full capacity. From a business point of view, we grew. Lots of people in Capital Foods have said that this is more a national duty. If you go on LinkedIn and read their comments, they have said that this is a national duty, that we are doing. Of course, we said that everybody will remain at home. We will have to follow government guidelines, national as well as locally. Within that you left to venture out. We empower people to decide, we didn't monitor their attendance to numbers. We heard the information from our sales team that some of the companies have deducted salaries or asked people to go and there was a little bit of anxiety.

Rajesh [00:27:43] We called the entire people and told them that as long as we can sustain nobody is losing their job and we will not even cut salaries. And lots of people have come back and thanked us. They said that this is unheard of, in fact, we have announced all the bonuses, etc. And whoever has done exceptionally well, we have given them surprise bonuses also. There were a lot of opportunities, the senior management team as a team gelled very well, we spent lots of time together, which in a normal course would not have happened. It is very difficult to get all 10 people together in one room every day. The speed at which we decided things was phenomenal because all of us were together, we were in lockdown, but we were connected. So the decision-making has been phenomenal.

Rajesh [00:28:41] Morning issues were solved by evening and evening issues were solved out by next morning. Everything happened virtually. The machines were checked on a video camera, especially the nuts and bolts. And everything was observed by the technical guys here. The reports were sorted online, parameters were checked and all that has happened virtually. If you look at this it's a huge opportunity, honestly, in three months, nobody has thought that they would have spent so much time with their families as well.

Ketan [00:30:02] Whatever you have seen now during COVID with the changes, whatever ups and downs and opportunities that you see, what are the things that you want the HR fraternity to refocus on or focus more on as we move ahead with the world being a bit different from where it was yesterday.

Rajesh [00:30:22] See Ketan, I'm taking this question more as an organization, because I don't think that the HR fraternity or HR community can work in isolation. The basics of human engagement and motivation are not going to change, to my mind. It will take a few generations to change, the expression and the way it happens could change, for example, there is a huge need for us to connect, face to face is gradually changing itself virtually and a lot of us have gradually started to appreciate and adapt. It is far more productive.

Rajesh [00:31:21] I have been able to do work and migrate to any external engagement seamlessly in a minute. Number one. I'm a little shy to go to lots of so-called networking events, sitting in Mumbai this itself demands your time. So that was another deterrent. This period has provided the opportunity for you to close work and the next second you are in a different world talking to some of your peers or colleagues and come back again without wasting time. That's an opportunity. The whole issue of how you will build capability is going to be different. I think it can be far more efficient and far more impactful. Some of the things which need to be done in person would possibly take time to get virtually, for example, you can't party virtually. I don't think that we've evolved anything.

Rajesh [00:32:34] Now, when I say party, see the party is another expression of how you connect with your guards down and with a little bit of ease. You're talking to people not just at work, but you are connecting at a personal level. I think those elements will continue the way they were and post-pandemic also we will miss that. I miss it and I'm sure that all of us miss it. I think the workplace will transform, to my mind. So for example, lots of companies already come back with this announcement of work from everywhere. I don't think technology adoption is going to be any challenge. It is evolving.

And with 5G coming, I'm sure that there will be far more superior experience on the virtual platform that we will experience. So combined with that, I think this migration to Metro over some time will get rebalanced. We have started discussing and creating work from anywhere. So lots of people whose families are in Delhi, they are here in Mumbai because of kids education, etc. We said that as long as your job is amenable to that, one can work from anywhere. We will come out with detailed guidelines post-Diwali. Whole technology, IT security, etc, will take a different dimension. Personally, if I say I'm still not sure how secure the whole world will be, and therefore I think that is something an organization will invest heavily.

Rajesh [00:34:28] The Office Design will change. My reason to go to the office will be more to connect than to work. I may fix up a team meeting or a team lunch or a team evening rather than doing a work discussion or working on a project, which I can do virtually now, that might be a little far-fetched. But the fact is that the whole office design could be a club design. Barring jobs, which may need to be in office, there are certain jobs and certain organizations, for example, R&D. The R&D labs can't go to individual homes because lots of food technologists have to work together and you need whole paraphernalia in the lab where you do. So I think that those kinds of things are still going to be working physically. And we didn't operate our R&D facility when we were in lockdown, in June, 10% of people were allowed to come to the office otherwise we still don't allow anybody barring this 30% into the office. But lots of people have this need to come to the office. So people have volunteered, including me.

Rajesh [00:36:07] So on average, I would be going to the office with 70%. I have roasted myself most of the days, so I feel like going there. HR needs to think and create innovative ways of how you will create this whole ecosystem to deliver. So, for example, the very concept of leave would be very different now. We were just discussing something internally that, should we have a virtual or technological office shut down? That after 8 pm, if you're at home or working from home regularly, you should be given a break. Your system should not work. You cannot be called.

When I was working and I felt I am sitting at home only, why shouldn't I work extra hours? But if I am doing that unconsciously, am I expecting the same thing from someone else who I'm calling. Should there be a discipline around that, or for that matter, whole things around how you facilitate work from home? In a space like Mumbai people have a smaller home? It’s very difficult to create a very secluded environment to do work, is there something that the HR folks can do, is there something that we can create to facilitate that. Rentomojo is one of the things that we are evaluating, is there something that we can do to create those kinds of stuff? Those are the things that the HR fraternity should be looking for.

Ketan [00:38:22] Definitely need session-2 and part-2. A lot of insights coming from you, one personally helping me understand and get a perspective. And I'm sure our audience is going to love every bit of it. But what I can promise is that there is going to be a part-2

Ketan [00:38:46] Just one question that I wanted to throw to you Rajesh. It's kind of a rapid-fire, but one question. If not HR, as a profession? Where would you have ended up?

Rajesh [00:39:05] Well, I always wanted to be a teacher and I would have been a teacher.

Ketan [00:39:09] Wow.

Senthil [00:39:14] Thanks a lot, Rajesh. So keen to meet you again. I mean, which we will have to organize and also meet you again for CulturalMonkey separately. Thanks a lot for this. I'm looking forward to part-2 and getting more insights. I already stole that policy from you, which I'm looking to implement in my company that after eight, let's shut down. Nobody calls nobody. We've been suffering from that. I mean, honestly, we've been suffering. It was all on me, so I think I should take this very seriously. Thanks a lot, Rajesh.

Rajesh [00:39:52] Thank you, Senthil and Ketan, thanks for all those nice words. I look forward to chatting up with you guys next time, we will fix it up, it was a pleasure. Talking to both of you Ketan and Senthil. All the best. We will connect again. Thanks for your time.

Ketan [00:40:07] Thank you, same here. Take care. Bye-bye.

Gitesh Karnik has been heading the Human Resource department at Nearby Technologies Private Limited for the past year. He has also worked with companies like Tata Capital, Deutsche Bank, GE Money, Magma Fincorp, Hicare, e-Nxt Financials, Integreon, and Cyquator Technologies.

Holding twenty years of experience in the field of Human Resources, Gitesh understands its nuances aptly. Apart from that, he is a technology evangelist and has also led multiple transformational and change management projects across companies.

In this episode of CultureClub’s videocast, Gitesh, Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo), and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey) talk about the current global situation from the perspective of company culture. During their conversation, Gitesh points out how trust and accountability have become crucial aspects in both the company's as well as the employee’s journey.

He also goes on to say these are reciprocal to each other—both employer and employee need and expect the other to trust them and be accountable for their actions.

Gitesh goes on to stress how communication is key to a better company culture. During the conversation, he also brings up a very interesting point—the true success of remote working can be determined when people work from their homes without a pandemic, and to check how productive they can be then.

This conversation touches on other vital aspects of the relationship between employee engagement and company culture. It also brings into focus the significance of the HR fraternity leveraging technology and its implementation to create improved employee experience.

Listen to the full conversation to know more about Gitesh’s views on company culture and employee engagement.

Transcript

Senthil [00:00:27] This is the 12th episode of Culture Club where we are attacking problems around e-culture where we ask questions and share some really important thoughts around culture with the pandemic and remote work being the new normal. I would like to welcome Gitesh and Ketan to this episode as well, and before starting the episode, I want to give a quick introduction on CultureMonkey. CultureMonkey has created this community, Culture Club as an initiative to collaborate and discuss problems around culture.

Senthil [00:01:10] CultureMonkey is an employee engagement platform, where the real question to answer is why CultureMonkey? There are many problems that as CultureMonkey we have solved, I used to work for Snapdeal, I used to work for start-ups, I am an engineer myself. So I saw firsthand problems when it comes to engagement and culture and I saw that these workplaces are really highly engaged, yet the engagement initiatives taken by the leaders came from top-down.

Senthil [00:01:47] One of the problems there is, generic. We want to solve that, we want to make it bottom-up and we want to make engagement and building culture within an organization, a continuous process where you are listening to your employees continuously and once you decide to do that, there are multiple problems where you're dealing with multiple locations, diverse demographics, and you have different sentiments between teams.

Senthil [00:02:13] Then you collate all of this data from all of these segments and then you have a lot of raw data, you need some actionable insights from all of this data you've collected and on top of that, once you have some actionable insights, you need to take actions, for that also, we have a place within the platform.

Ketan [00:02:35] Gitesh, a pleasure to have you here, thank you so much for joining us and for our audience, a little bit about Gitesh that I wanted to share, he heads people management for an organization called Nearby Technologies Private Ltd, based out of Mumbai and Gitesh has worked with brands like Magma Fincorp, GE Money to name a few and he brings with him close to about twenty years of experience in human resources function.

Ketan [00:03:31] Apart from the best practices which come with his experience and passion, he's also a technology evangelist and he has worked and led multiple transformations and change management projects across the organizations that he's worked with. So Gitesh, welcome again to Culture Club's e-culture masterclasses powered by CultureMonkey and thank you so much for your time. It would be good to know more about you and also a bit about your company if that's okay with you.

Gitesh [00:04:19] Thanks, Ketan and Senthil for giving me this opportunity of sharing my experiences with you and the audience, and I hope that there'll be mutual learning happening on either side. So I'm really excited about this. About me, as you rightly said, I am an HR professional with over 20 years of experience, also passionate about sports, passionate about photography. So these are a few of my so-called hobbies, which I try to also bring into my workplace. I'm really passionate about employees or my colleagues are also part of the sports culture in the organization. So that's about me, born and brought up in Mumbai, I've been here since my birth.

Gitesh [00:06:03] PayNearby is the brand that we go by, the company name is Nearby Technologies and we have various products in the fintech space. So we have Aadhaar enabled payments, domestic money transfers recharge, we also have a travel company, we have an insurance company where we do insurance broking for our customers.

Gitesh [00:06:26] We are also looking at building an NBFC in the future in terms of also reaching out to our customer base, the uniqueness about our business is that we are a B2B organization and we reach out to retailers and distributors to service the last mile. So our end user would be a typical maid or a driver who goes to the nearest retailer shop to recharge his or her phone, there they can also do money transfers and they can also withdraw cash. So basically empowering, enabling those people who do not have the accessibility to ATMs and banks can walk to the nearest digital centre and do a transaction on the bank.

Gitesh [00:07:30] It's more of digitising the last mile is how we look at it and we're very passionate about it because we really believe that that's the one area which needs to be catered to and we are passionate to do that, so that's what we do as an organization.

Ketan [00:07:44] Interesting, thank you. So the first thing is, with this world going remote, what are the challenges did you see the CXOs had to deal with, especially when it came to matters around culture and engagement?

Gitesh [00:08:28] In terms of the changes I have seen, in terms of a cultural shift in my experience is one is that if you look at the way Work from Home was looked upon earlier, it was more of a benefit than a facility given to the employees. It was not seen that you can work from, as usual types and actually when this happened, organizations were wondering, how will we manage this because people will be working from home and all this hinges upon two things, one is accountability and trust.

Gitesh [00:09:02] So I think when you hear about productivity not going down or it's been maintained or it is margin loss in productivity, I think it's more to do with the accountability and the trust as posed by the company in the people and people repaying it back in terms of doing the deliverables, so somewhere when the initial, it began saying, how will it pan out? But the way organization goes on to the challenge and the way, the colleagues and the employees came along and demonstrated that we can really work from wherever we can if the intent is to work, if the work is well articulated, then the output can still be the same irrespective of where you work from.

Gitesh [00:09:47] One thing that is changing is, people being accountable and people being trusting that this can work, that's one thing which I saw as a change in culture where people are now moving towards accountability and trust, doesn't matter where you work from, but you can deliver. That's one thing I've seen change.

Ketan [00:10:08] That's pretty powerful and that's a very fresh perspective. Basically, if you look at, suddenly the trust and accountability came on the platter straight and there was no option to do it and of course, the last data in the recent studies that I have been going through says, productivity is up by 30, 40 percent across.

Gitesh [00:10:34] The second one which I think that has worked is the flexibility, because people do realize that when people work from home in the current situation where there is no so-called support that we require in terms of the household support that we want or children having school and we can still work peacefully, all of that is not there.

Gitesh [00:10:54] Children are there, we have to keep our eye on the kids, we have to cook yourself, to keep your household clean all by yourself. So people also realize that 09:30 - 06:30 when I was working in the office, I was there full time with no diversions of mind.

Gitesh [00:11:14] Now, people also understand that 09:30-06:30 may not be a practical way of working in a current situation, so there is an amount of flexibility made available to the people to deliver on their output. It doesn't matter, you take some break to cook, to look after their children's studies and so on and so forth. We provided flexibility and colleagues and employees again responded back by saying, "You've been reposing this faith in us, we would also work beyond 06:30 and ensure that the work is done".

Gitesh [00:11:48] Hence, you don't see any loss in productivity or any such challenges and people must have thought they might see when this happens, because people also rose up to the challenge saying that, we understand and we're willing to stretch ourselves to ensure that the work given to us is delivered.

Senthil [00:12:34] We organisations typically spend a lot of time and energy to build trust and build accountability. But then what this has done is, it reminds me of this line that says, necessity pushes you to uncover your potential. So that is automatically happening.

Gitesh [00:12:51] The third thing that I see is care that started to come in, people do care. Earlier, you just walked into the office and then you would come on everybody in the conference call, discuss and used to talk to people. But now you're saying, can I call by 11, 11:30, you check and you start the call with asking, how are you? Is everything fine? there are no issues in your area, in your family, and so on and so forth.

Gitesh [00:13:23] I think the care part has gone up to a great extent where people have started taking an interest and people also care that people are working from home, so you just cannot pick up the call whenever you want to. But still, there is a bit of reciprocation from the employee and from the manager and from the organization that the provide an environment where accountability, trust, flexibility, and care has now started becoming so visible and demonstrated on both sides, which is what I think is making this beautiful relationship work.

Ketan [00:14:18] Based on experience on whatever you could predict, six months later, where do you think the world would stand?

Gitesh [00:14:56] I think this will be to a great extent, there'll be a hybrid model if you ask me. There will be some amount of people working from home permanently, but I believe it should be on a rotation basis so that people are able to also connect with their colleagues in the office if you make it a permanent one, then in some way, the social connection which is there can isolate people, which is not great.

Gitesh [00:15:18] I don't see 100 percent of people returning to work anytime soon and even if they return it will in rotation, I see that the new normal would be that like you're now virtual. I believe that most of the organizations will move in that direction, that people will have a hybrid model of some people working from home and some people from office, and on a rotation basis, everybody gets an opportunity to come to office and connect with their colleagues, I think that's going to be the way forward.

Ketan [00:16:04] I've also been speaking to people in my network, so at RentoMojo what we do is, provide work from home with chair and table also, I did for my employees, I realized it was just so much relaxing when the chair came to my workplace and I spoke to a lot of HR folks, most of them are anticipating that the hybrid model is going to come in, and probably one opportunity that I see is, technology would play a very important role in enabling this connect, I think some sense happening in this entire madness, I think now answers have started to come in, people are taking choices and adopting technologies. So that's one of the most interesting things that I saw perhaps over the last few months.

Senthil [00:17:06] I think Zoho announced permanent work from home, the SAAS company in Chennai, they announced permanent work from home, they have around eight thousand employees. So that's one of the news from Chennai that we had and I think Freshworks announced an extension of work from home.

Ketan [00:17:42] My sense is that human connection is very powerful and important. If you ask me, I would definitely once a week want to go to the office, I hear a lot of people would do, but looks like as Gitesh said, hybrid is going to be the way forward.

Gitesh [00:18:10] Ketan, I believe that you cannot really make certain people decide that you will not come to office, you have to give on a rotation basis, I think that will be very important for people to stay connected with the organisation and with their colleagues. So we really propagate saying that it should be a rotational based where everybody gets an opportunity and of course, it's voluntary.

Ketan [00:18:43] To come to the question that I was trying to understand from you earlier, when this happened, what are those conversations your CXOs were trying to have with you to figure out how to deal with this transition or the change where the world has gone digital, there are cultures, there are impacts on engagement, what are those interesting things that you were trying to solve for, along with your CXOs?

Gitesh [00:19:23] This initial discussion was in terms of enablement, how do you enable people to work from home, in terms of providing computers, laptops, providing their dongles, enabling people in terms of physical infrastructure, so that was the first and foremost discussion. We made a list of employees, who had what infrastructure, what needs to be provided, and so on and so forth, that's one thing we did.

Gitesh [00:20:04] We also formed a team which was given the responsibility of ensuring that we enable the organization to work from home, effectively, that's another thing that we did and we were prepared ahead of time because we thought it will get there. We were almost a week or 10 days ahead of the lockdown in terms of preparing ourselves. Of course, it spilled over because it happened certainly after one day.

Gitesh [00:20:38] We were able to create a community a platform in the organization to have these conversations and get ready for it, that's one thing that happened. The second thing was, how do you really monitor the effectiveness of what we do, and we all focused on KPIs. Luckily, we are one organisation which has very robust KPIs which were done in the month of October, so everybody had very clear KPIs on what each one of them are working on, it became much easier because the deliverables were defined.

Gitesh [00:21:19] The challenge starts coming in when people start working, it's not so difficult to plan for it, the difficulty happens when people start working, you see the challenges of speed, you see the challenges of collaboration, lack of visibility. These are three things which I think, most of the leaders experienced. One is speed because it was so much easier when you were working in the same office, the same place, walk up to the colleague, resolve the issue, get the team to the conference room, tell them what to be done, discuss, deliberate, and go on to the desk and deliver, that is not there any longer.

Gitesh [00:22:00] So although the productivity is there, I'm very sure the speed would have taken a backseat in terms of delivering the output and everything today is about the speed of execution, so how do you quickly adapt and ensure that the speed of execution doesn't suffer, so that's been one challenge which most of the companies were faced in terms of how to deal with it.

Gitesh [00:22:29] The second would have been in terms of collaboration, when you work in cross-functional teams, that's a challenge we face and in collaboration, accountability keeps shifting as the project evolves, and then coordinating that becomes a challenge in terms of how do you collaborate and ensure that you are able to deliver on the timelines and the third thing, which from the employee perspective, which I think happens is, visibility because the manager feels, I have given everything to you, why are you taking so long to give it back to me and the visibility is not there.

Gitesh [00:23:11] Earlier it was pretty much there on your desk, you walk up to them, sit together and get it done, you know what somebody is working on, you only keep changing priorities of people as a leader because you were always there, physically, prioritising for them. But when it happens over the phone or a video call, it's not the same, so the visibility of what is happening and that's where again the conscience.

Gitesh [00:23:35] The employee also might feel that am I doing enough or is my manager thinking that I am not doing enough, so these three things eventually come together in terms of speed, terms of collaboration, terms of visibility are what creates insecurity in the minds of people and that's where HR comes into play and say, hold on, we will do the balancing act for you, and that's the people's expectation also.

Gitesh [00:24:13] There's no visibility, I keep giving you tasks, but I know that it's going to be a challenge because of flexibility but still, I want the speed of execution and that's what tears apart the person on the other side saying, hope the company, the managers understand what am I going through and is there a department of function or a person we can go and talk to and innovating that, and keeping that abreast with the employees is where the HR challenge starts saying, how do you ensure that the person does not feel isolated, does not feel lack of visibility, does not feel nobody is there to collaborate and does not feel I'm going to hold off for not doing work on time.

Gitesh [00:25:02] That's where you come in saying, the key things are there which is trust, accountability, flexibility, and care but when these other three things come in, which is fear of execution, collaboration, and visibility, how you put all six things together and experience what the employee has is where the HR role comes in, is what I feel.

Ketan [00:25:37] What does this change or transition mean for the HR fraternity? What are the future things or the skills or competencies or new things that you would want the HR folks to imbibe and adopt?

Gitesh [00:25:59] One is, leveraging technology, that's going to be the key one but leveraging technology with adoption becomes a challenge. So you have the best of the technology, but adoption rates of the technology is where we have to keep pushing saying, please, we have deployed our technology, but are people coming on their platforms are creating a pull factor on that technology platform? becomes very important.

Gitesh [00:26:23] So how do you keep innovating yourself so that people can keep coming back to their technology platform, what is the pull factor which will get an employee to that platform? So that's one, second is refreshing it.

Gitesh [00:26:53] Second would be in terms of reaching out to people, you can either use the culture survey that you have or you can just pick up the phone and talk to people but I also understand that in a larger organization where HR to people ratio is 1:200 or whatever, it becomes impossible for people to reach out to 200 people and talk to them on a fortnight on a monthly basis and that's where, again, technology comes into play.

Gitesh [00:27:21] The third challenge is that earlier distributed workforce was restricted, perhaps people in operations or customer support or in sales. But now, it is the entire organization that is distributed, so how do you keep them connected with the organization?

Gitesh [00:27:46] These are a few things that as an HR and I don't have ready solutions, to be very honest, I am also evolving and discovering as we go along in terms of what will really work, what will not work, because this is something new for all of us. It's really easy to town halls in an office where everybody comes together or you come together to the cafeteria and do birthday celebrations and cut cakes, all of that is gone now.

Gitesh [00:28:13] But how do you still maintain the same flavour or the spirit of what you're doing? That's another one that we need to figure out. The good part is that, reach has improved, earlier town halls were restricted to maybe one or two people sitting in a particular office or a particular location, but now we can do it on a Zoom or a Google Meet or any of these platforms, everybody can log in, so the entire organization becomes accessible to you which has been a big win if you ask me, from that perspective.

Gitesh [00:28:47] But again, it goes back to adoption, how many of you really want to log in to the town hall and listen to what the CEO wants to say, so adoption is where, again, remains a challenge. So these are few things that I can tell you Ketan which is what each one of us perhaps is dabbling with, as HR heads. It's going to be difficult, you have to evolve beyond that and that's what evolution is. But you have to also do this because these are the ways of connecting with the people.

Gitesh [00:29:38] People might say that HR is about Rangolis, but please understand that's to connect with the people, that's the way you bring people together, in festivities and share the common happiness that you see during festivities. So we have been doing all of this, we have monthly town halls, we have monthly birthday celebrations, we have employee connect programs which could be on wellness because that's another one that is very important during this time.

Gitesh [00:30:24] We also have a cultural committee which is owned by the employees and they come and tell us what they want to do and we provide the platform for them to do it. So all of that has worked as a combination, but the rhythm has to be simply figured out because nobody imagined this would be as long as six, seven, eight, nine months.

Ketan [00:30:58] I am a firm believer in the power of technology and glad to see people like Senthil trying to bring in a lot of technology to what HR does and what people function does, somebody created a very interesting tool which is about taking this entire office virtually where people can do coffee conversations. Of course, I'm a firm believer in the power of personal connection, but maybe I'm also trying to learn that but a lot of innovation happening, and a lot to do.

Ketan [00:31:48] Now, everybody is an employee and an individual first before being in any other role. So what are those two, three things, learnings, that or piece of advice that you would have for people, in general, looking at how the world has transformed and where it may go?

Gitesh [00:32:13] The first thing I would tell people is that, take care that's most important, take care of your mental health, physical health, that's paramount and there is a very thin line between being fearless and careless, so people have to understand that. So let's not be careless, some amount of fear is good actually.

Gitesh [00:32:50] So I keep telling people, if any organization is doing any activities on mental wellness or health wellness, please participate. It might look like why to log in and see somebody doing on the screen, but I guess you people should log in and they should really spend time. It's important because we take that one thing for granted is mental health and physical well-being, that's taken for granted.

Gitesh [00:33:18] The second I would tell them is that, be accountable for what you do, it's very important and that's how the trust that the company has reposed in you will only be repaid in the form of being accountable, and third is taking ownership, let's not pass on the box. I would say the same thing to people who are on the other side if somebody reaching out to you, then please respect that and call back or reach out, even if you do it after half an hour, one hour, just do it because otherwise, the other person doesn't know.

Gitesh [00:34:25] In this situation that we're in, not knowing is the most dangerous situation to be in. I think that's what leads to a lot more negative thoughts coming into people's minds. It's very important on either side, on the employee, as well as on the managers' side, it's very important that you respond and communicate. So I would say, be accountable, take ownership, and please communicate. If these three things are done well with proper intent, then you will see this relationship of work from home and it will be really beautiful.

Gitesh [00:35:19] I keep saying, people have not seen real work from home because still, to a great extent, you're confined to your homes. Imagine a situation when malls are working, theatres are working, boxes are open, and then your maids are there, your kids are in school and you're working from home, you will experience a different joy. The pleasure would come in there, maybe today you're not feeling that pleasure because anybody can call at any time because you're at home only and I'm looking forward to that work from home, that is where the real test of work from home is.  

Ketan [00:37:06] Do you think e-culture in the future or do you think it's already here? What's your point of view when you hear that word?

Gitesh [00:37:12] It has always been there, I was just trying to go back to my G-days where we used to have those CBTs, so the induction program would be on a CD and people can at their convenience, go and check about the organization.

Gitesh [00:37:34] A new orientation happens in the room and then you give a joining kit, which has a CD, just go to your home, put it on your laptop or computers and just go through the organization all over again. Now that has moved from CDs to the cloud. So if you ask me, it's always there, it's all about adoption.

Gitesh [00:37:59] Everything is there for people to look at, including the interviews which were there and it's evolving, the evolution has gone to a great extent, it's unimaginable, but what are the adoption rates, is where it all comes down to and the companies need to start working on it and on another side, the employees also need to start accepting this as a way of working, you have to be online, you have to take online lessons seriously, you have to be educated enough to understand how to operate on an e-learning kind of a solution and adapt to it.

Gitesh [00:39:47] I think that's where the challenge lies, and again, I throw the challenge back to technology experts like Senthil, can you create a product for us where the adoption by default becomes so rich and I don't have to struggle for adoption, it just happens because the product is so powerful that people will come to this platform over and over and engage with us. So I really want to see a product which really has a pull factor, today it is a push factor to some extent, can there be a pull factor to do the technology products that we have, that people will come and engage proactively with you.

Ketan [00:40:30] Thank you so much, Gitesh, Senthil, and the audience, that's from my side.  

Senthil [00:40:37] Thanks a lot, Ketan and Gitesh, during the middle of the conversation I was really able to relate to a lot of points as I said already and it was learning for me already and I was able to validate that, am I the only one who's insecure? So I think collaboration has taken a great hit and you valid that, and not only that, a lot of other points.

Senthil [00:41:07] I would say one of your quotes that you said, not knowing is very dangerous and how over communication in this phase of work where we have to communicate, we have to be responsible in communicating and making sure that the message speaks. So that is some of the very important points, I think for audiences, this is going to be a great listen.

Senthil [00:41:39] Thanks a lot, Ketan and Gitesh.

Rohit Dhody’s eighteen-year-old career has always revolved around adding value to those around him. It’s an everyday and continuous process that he believes adds value to him in turn. Rohit is the Senior Regional Director of Human Resources at Syniverse. He has been working there for the past nine years and has previously worked with companies like Accenture, GE Money, RR Donnelley, NTT Data Corporation, HSBC, and Ma Foi Strategic Consultants.

Driven by the need to add value in everything he does, Rohit is also a champion when it comes to transforming talent and companies. In fact, his dedication to unlearning and relearning is so immense that his bucket list tops with the desire to report to someone who reported to him because he believes that’s the best way to reverse learn.

Episode 11 of CultureClub features Rohit talking about something close to his heart—the role of culture in increasing employee engagement. His conversation with Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey) is an in-depth discussion on the relevance of cultural alignment of an employee towards the company.

They also discuss how the pandemic has shed light on the importance of culture in companies now more than ever, and forced the HR fraternity to raise their bar for empathy and human connection.

Listen to the full conversation to know more about Rohit's views on company culture and employee engagement.

Transcript

Senthil [00:00:14] Thanks a lot, Rohit and Ketan for joining today. For our audiences, this is the 11th episode that we're doing at Culture Club. Culture Club is a community initiative by CultureMonkey and at CultureMonkey what we're trying to solve is, when you decide to listen to your employees continuously, you have multiple problems where you will have diverse demographics to deal with, you will have multiple sentiments coming from various teams within the organization especially if you have offices across the country.

Senthil [00:00:47] So CultureMonkey is one platform where you're listening to all of these people, top-down, bottom-up and you will be capturing a lot of data, and yet this data is useless if it's not helping you get any meaning out of it. On top of it, if you're there without acting on those data, there is no engagement going on, so if you're looking for one platform that solves all of this, that's CultureMonkey.

Senthil [00:01:11] On top of it, we have this Culture Club where we're interviewing CHROs from leading organizations and this is just purely to surface out problems around culture and employee engagement and then discuss and add value.

Senthil [00:01:32] I am so happy to announce that we are live on Spotify, Google Podcast, and Apple Podcast, so happy to take this forward, and the next 10 episodes are already lined up for the audience. So I think this is getting more amazing. So, thanks a lot to Rohit and Ketan for joining today. Ketan, back to you.

Ketan [00:01:58] Thank you, Senthil. Rohit, welcome again, thank you so much for taking your time for this, it means a lot to me that there are people from the HR room I can request and they can come for a conversation on such interesting topics, so thank you so much again, Rohit for being with us.

Rohit [00:02:19] It's an absolute pleasure, Ketan and you can see the smile on my face. I don't know. The word culture is so important and we can spend hours and hours talking about it, it's a subject very close to my heart and I'm more than happy to be here. I could take time out any day of the week, any week of the month for a subject like this and I also learn every time I speak to someone and someone speaks back to me, while I'm sharing my knowledge, I'm also receiving knowledge and I'm sure to share and receive both today.

Ketan [00:02:57] Thank you and for the audience, we have today a very special guest with us, his name is Rohit, he is the senior regional director for an organization called Syniverse. I met Rohit a few months back, I was fortunate enough to be sharing a panel with him on something around digital HR. It was about digital millennials and there were some of us, the younger generation, who were trying to learn and understand what it takes to do and then we had people like Rohit who were sharing their point of view and since then, I've been exchanging a lot of digital notes with him and then a few days back, I was able to speak to him.

Ketan [00:03:47] Now, before I get into and share more about Rohit, this is something very interesting and one thing that I learned from him, I was amazed to see that somebody carries that point of view. Now, what he does and what kind of challenge that he has taken for himself saying that, people who have worked with Rohit, when he's been a manager or a leader, he wants to report to them at one point in time.

Ketan [00:04:16] This demonstrates the kind of investment he would be doing to help them grow and of course, his ability to learn and appreciate that everybody brings something new and something fresh to the table to learn and we heard that when he said that he's here to learn, his first thing was, I'm here to learn and then share. So I think I can understand a bit what makes Rohit who he is.

Ketan [00:04:41] This was amazing, Rohit. These are some of the conversations which I will carry throughout my life, but the message is well taken and if you go to Rohit's LinkedIn profile, this is probably the shortest description I have ever seen, it says, "Adding value every day". I was trying to figure out more, understanding more, but I think this made me understand him from start to end, his scope of this mission looks like to be about adding value every day.

Ketan [00:05:27] Rohit has also worked with brands like HSBC and Accenture, to name a few, he is a champion when it comes to transforming talent and organizations, that's something he says he specializes in and, welcome again Rohit to CultureClub’s e-club Masterclass powered by Culture Monkey and thank you so much for your time.

Ketan [00:05:48] The two reasons that I am here is, one, I do get to interact with a lot of HR folks and learn and understand and get a perspective. Second, when Senthil has spoken about that, I take care of people function for a startup called RentoMojo and we partnered with CultureMonkey for understanding our employees and in creating action plans and honestly, I fell in love with the product, but that didn't end there.

Ketan [00:06:21] When I met the people who actually were trying to solve this problem, I was amazed to see that it's a bunch of engineers were trying to solve a real problem because they experienced that as an employer or as a leader or as a manager and they said, why don't we actually use technology to solve for it. So that's where I thought, can I partner with them, can I help them bridge the gap between the product that is required and what the consumers or the future consumers or the leaders are expecting and anticipating, this entire piece in the industry about engagement and culture to move to and if we can bring them together and create something which can create a lot of value for everybody. So that's why I'm here. The audience would definitely want to know more about you and your organization.

Rohit [00:07:16] First of all, thanks. You said welcome, four times, so I now feel super welcomed. It's my pleasure, privilege, and honor to be here, to be very honest. Nothing spectacular, yes, I like to add value to everyone around me and to myself, because the more I add value to myself, the more I can give, is my concept. You're spot on and one of my bucket list things are to report to somebody who's reported to me and to reverse learn, once in my life, it's a mission for me that once before I call it a day, I want to work under the guidance of somebody once in my career has worked for me. So I want to reverse learn, that's a name.

Rohit [00:08:18] About the organization I work for, it Syniverse Technologies, it's a telecom tech product company. It's been around for 30 years, but in India for the last 10 years, essentially enables interconnection and interoperability between mobile operators. We have around 800 mobile operators who are our customers, it's a very niche kind of business.

Rohit [00:08:34] I worked in large and mid-sized organizations and somewhere I think I've spent almost a decade here, sometimes I wonder, is it too long. But, yeah, as long as you're enjoying what you're doing, time is inconsequential and that brings me to the very subject, culture. What makes employees stick? What makes employees happy? you're figuring out how to engage and motivate people. So engagement, motivation, all of this for me, the underlying fabric is culture and basically, in the underlying fabric of culture, it's about being human.

Rohit [00:09:15] It's about human interactions and relations. I was talking to a friend the other day. I remember a movie in which Aamir Khan has acted, it's about a dyslexic kid over a decade or so old. In that there's a scene where the boys are sent to the hospital and the father comes to visit and he tells the teacher, I bought him lots of stuff and goodies and all that. So I still remember that dialog very clearly. Just by giving gifts and providing money that is not Kayal Rakhna(taking care of), it should come from the heart.

Rohit [00:09:58] That's what I always tell managers, people leaders, colleagues, that is, people will see through the bullshit, people will see through those fake things that you want to do. Be genuine, be honest, be real, and be in the moment, spend time understanding people and it just struck me, that's something that stayed with me and I tell that to every leader, do you know your people? Do you know what makes them tick?

Rohit [00:10:38] I go to restaurants, I don't give tips. But I call the person who served me, I ask him his name, I shake his hand and I say, thank you for your service, I truly appreciate you, Mr. so-and-so and then when I handover a tip, they say, no, you're one of the few customers who called us, asked us our name, where we're from, and thanked us with a handshake and that is what I talked about, that's what I mean when I say, be human, be relevant.

Rohit [00:11:12] As a human resource function, it's all the more important because many times, we need to coach and guide people managers whose focus is business. I don't fault sometimes people managers and other colleagues because their focus is business, they're driving certain outcomes and in that whole journey, sometimes they can lose sight of this particular human interaction and that's where we come in as coaches, as consultants, as mentors, as buddies at different levels, at different situations to come in and be that reminder.

Rohit [00:11:48] My call out to everyone in the human resource fraternity is, first introspect yourself, check if you're doing the right thing, are you there? If someone were to take a survey among employees saying, what do you think of your HR partner? What are people going to say? What are the few words that they will say? Will they say policies, procedures, authoritarian or will they say someone who understands, someone who cares.

Rohit [00:12:13] I ask people to take a survey of people, take an anonymous survey. Let people tell you what they think of you. I can keep rambling on, but Ketan back to you I'll be happy if you'd like to throw specific questions at me. I'd be happy to kind of point those answers to your specific questions. As I said, this topic is very close to my heart and I can go on and on.

Ketan [00:12:44] Thank you, Rohit, for somebody like you. I'm sure I can have a list of five questions and I have them. But I'm going to pick the top five, which we believe right now people are looking at answers for. I'm sure this coming from somebody like you is going to help build perspective and together help us take the HR function and the organizations in a direction that we desire.

Ketan [00:13:18] The first one that comes to me Rohit is, what challenges do you think, the CXOs and this is more to understand from the business folks, they're dealing with, especially with the onset of COVID where the world has completely gone remote, what impact, what are the things that you're seeing on the matters of culture and engagement, something like this has created? What challenges do you think they're facing in the newer, digitally connected, and remote world?

Rohit [00:13:56] First of all, I want to categorize the leaders globally that there are people who are leaders because of their age demographic, they're old school in the thought process. I know leaders, I worked with leaders who feel that this whole concept of work from home is rubbish. Collaboration can only happen when you're physically present in the office and I've also worked with leaders who feel there needs to be a mix and I worked with leaders who think that 'I wonder why we even have one'. So, I worked with three categories of people.

Rohit [00:14:29] So this answer has to be specific, each category. Those who were challenged the most are the first category, who feel that collaboration can happen only in person and of course, this whole what COVID did to us, has kind of made a paradigm shift. Even those people, naysayers have actually moved the needle. They've understood that you can be collaborative.

Rohit [00:14:54] But that said, I think for me, the largest challenges, whatever's said and done, I love the fact that we're talking to each other like this, but any given day I'd prefer you sitting across the table at any given day. I want to hold your hand, shake it, feel you there, this is the best alternative. But given the opportunity, I'd say, hey, you know what? Why don't we meet at the table and discuss this? that's one. Second is, I think the world was not ready for this, many corporations were not mentally prepared, they had the infrastructure in place which is why thankfully the collaborative tools like MS Teams, Zoom, Skype saw a revival happening, but I think the mental preparedness was not there.

Rohit [00:15:45]  That is definitely coming as a challenge. Well, another thing which leaders in my organization are saying that the lines have got blurred. Employees and leaders, both are feeling the pain of, are we working from home or are we living in the office? We don't know. Sometimes we have to question that.

Rohit [00:16:06] At times, I feel like I'm living in the office, not working from home and, of course, there are family and emotional challenges. I think leaders themselves are also human beings, you have to understand that just because you're a leader, yes, you have to take care of people, you have to understand, but you're also a human and most leaders, probably because given an assumption that many of them may have, be in an age bracket of 40 to 50, I'm sure their young startups where even 25-year-olds and 30-year-olds are our business leaders, not withstanding.

Rohit [00:16:41] But for the most part, there's an age demographic which comes with certain family pressure, there are so many other factors that come, for me, it's about the missed opportunity of personal connections between people, the world not being ready for this hit that happened globally. Leaders first two, three months, they were kind of grappling with that. Of course, now it's become the new normal, as we call it and the blurred lines between family time, personal time, work time, those lines have got very blurred for everybody and even leaders are impacted by that.

Rohit [00:17:20] So that would be my response, but it depends on what kind of leadership, thought process leaders have and those who had a more flexible thought process adapted quicker, those who did not, took some time and that whole change management journey that happens typically. In my mind, that's been the largest challenge that this environment has brought.  But I'm sure you would also have some thoughts about that. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

Ketan [00:17:47] Well, I have a collection of thoughts now that have met a lot of people, but my individual view from the HR side is that one, you're right, the world was not ready for it. Having said that, there are organizations and if you look back, especially because I've worked a lot with retail and sales led the organization, remote working existed, sales team, they were not supposed to come in, clock in, clock out and do that, end of the day, it was very result-oriented. So, you get the result, now you're doing it in two hours, 20 hours, I don't care, I think sales existed a large part of technology offshore, the people working offshore or in different countries and all of it remotely.

Ketan [00:18:33] I think it existed, just that yeah, very important, it suddenly took the world by surprise, what I realized is that the younger organization found it easier and you rightly said because when I look at myself, I'm midway. I was like, will it work/ not work. My personal preference is that of human connection. But with time, I started to realize that it is going to be a very hybrid based model.

Ketan [00:18:58] Now, after understanding the benefits of what is happening and personally, I'm able to reduce the time of travel, I am still able to structure few things, manage things well, and a lot of time with family. I do realize that there is a value that it brings in. So I put a huge evangelist of a hybrid model as we go ahead where based on that human connection which is extremely important. So if you ask me, there's one thing that should be non-negotiable, is the power of human connection.

Ketan [00:19:31] We are biologically conditioned to meet people, exchange that pleasantry, and feel good about that. So for me, it is working because I have five people in my home. But that's not the reality with a lot of younger generation millennials. So if you have people at your home, I found that to be relatively easier provided your infrastructure supports. But younger generations there's been staying alone in PG and guesthouses or a single house.

Ketan [00:20:01] They're finding it very difficult, the external social structure is impacted and the organization. But the most important thing and the one thing that I will always cherish is, suddenly people realize why and how officers are important. From a lot of people saying, hey, why do I need to go to the office? but we now realize that at times the absence of something creates a value of that particular thing. I think that is what our new office is. We all know that human connect health has been helping us, energizing us in going through it. That's my individual view, that the future is going to be of a hybrid model.

Ketan [00:20:41] Some have adopted, some are still learning too, some may still want to come back to their old ways and I think overall if the world becomes better, that's a progressive movement, I would say.

Rohit [00:20:58] Spot on, I think, the hybrid is the way forward, there will be a good mix of both worlds and that's how it is, what is the prudent thing to do in life, always pick the best of all worlds and here's an opportunity to pick the best of both worlds, merge it, make it fungible and benefit from it. I think, yes, this has also brought so much appreciation, we can obviously talk about the positives of this, these are the challenges, there are a lot of positives that have emerged.

Rohit [00:21:29] Like you said, people have started appreciating family. We actually forced families to sit and come back to the table together, literally. I will talk about myself, my schedule was different, my daughter's schedule is different, she's a 10th grader. The missus had her own schedule because I was stuck in traffic, not able to make it on time. Being in Bangalore, you would empathize with me, the traffic is the biggest Ohhh, that we've all been happy to live without.

Rohit [00:21:59] But today, there's an opportunity, there's breakfast happening together, there's lunch, there's dinner happening together. We all have our Zoom calls and we all have a network, but I strongly believe and I even make that in the workplace. At work, I always eat with my team. I say, the family that eats together, stays together.

Rohit [00:22:19] Small, little things have really been positive, for me, the largest positive is the avoidance of traffic situations, there are people who have to travel one or one and a half hour to work, one way, so that's happy, this family time, as you said, there's an appreciation for that family time and I started understanding my daughter better in the last six months then I was in the last 3 years. I started understanding that teenager because it's given me the opportunity to invest time with her, which otherwise would have been invested in traffic, so there are some positives.

Ketan [00:23:02] I'm glad you spoke about that, Rohit, you did speak about a lot of introspection and personal time and re-looking at what we were doing as the daily schedule keeps changing, and I like it when you said that your connect to family, has moved to a level two. I was having an open house and I was co-hosting the session and I had no idea that these two, actually sneak into the room, they were literally dancing at the back and what happens in Zoom is, if there are too many people, then your screen is a miniature screen on the right.

Ketan [00:23:37] So I was never paying attention to that and then somebody patted me on the and I looked back and I get my share of chocolates, the older one went to the fridge, got a bunch of chocolate without telling mumma, I understood in that two seconds that it's like, I'm being bribed to say, shut up, eat and leave and suddenly I realized that because a lot of people started commenting, hey, we want chocolate. I said, what? This is a serious meeting.

Ketan [00:24:08] I have evolved, for me, my space and that like when you are working, perfect, be there has been a very important piece that I've developed for myself and I'm changing and I'm glad I'm changing it, my usual response would have been, 'hey, wait, I'm on a call'. But I'm trying to learn and I have a long journey to go, thank you, Rohit and probably we talk about the office, this is also about culture.

Senthil [00:24:47] I had a point for engineers and it's like you were saying, Ketan, I've been an engineer or a developer for a large part of my life and worked in majorly modern startups, so for us, this has actually been there, even I wrote a blog like six months ago about all your employees in their zone at work, with millennials and developers, they actually take a day off to work at home because, in office, there are meetings, there are a lot of other things happening under the name of collaboration, the engineers are not able to sit, focus on the goal.

Senthil [00:25:28] So I clearly remember, in a lot of jobs that I used to work, whenever there was a lot of backlogs in the board, I just target a Wednesday, on Wednesday, I take a day off and at home is when I'm in the zone and in one day, the productivity is short-term. But then that was good, that was better as long as it was just one day per 15 days. Every day is like that now, like you guys talking about the lines of the blur, rightly you said, it's living in the office, not working from home.

Ketan [00:26:31] So my question and I'll come to my response and share my view, but Rohit, my question was, so you spoke about a few silver linings that you saw for yourself at a personal level. Now, from an organization perspective, do you see that same thing as change that you have always been wanting as an HR professional for the organizations to imbibe and move ahead with and somewhere this change, this transition, this something that came from outside and impacted us, created that silver lining, is there something that you want to share on that?  

Rohit [00:27:07] I'll talk about my organization and I know there are many others, one is, it is of course a mindset change. The good thing is, had this not happen, I think of many organizations that are still stuck in that thought process of this kind of work, not on a long term basis, one day, two days a month, but not on a continuum, but it worked. Productivity went up, we've never had this kind of productivity ever in the existence of the organization through the roof.

Rohit [00:27:44] We could control costs, we've given up some space, we can have higher productivity. There's been a cultural mindset change that people can work remotely. I was talking to a relative who does online classes, he even had a company and the essential business model was, have classroom training for the student who aspires GRE, GMAT preparation for that today. Today, his business has doubled because it says earlier my mindset was limited to one office and that was it.

Rohit [00:28:34] But today, I have students from South Africa. I have students from Dubai, I have students from Singapore, Indian origin students who definitely would have wanted to be in this class but couldn't. So it also reimagined possibilities for so many people at so many levels and for me, it's about how this has made people think differently, which they otherwise wouldn't have thought. I've taken two examples here already. So I think it has forced us to reimagine possibilities, which is a good thing.

Ketan [00:29:12] How is this going to redefine? How is it redefining HR already? What does this mean for the HR fraternity? and you've seen, you've been there, you've led from the front, you've understood a large part of what it takes and how it takes, but what does this entire piece would mean to the HR fraternity?

Rohit [00:29:40] For me, I think HR as a partner, this has forced us to raise our bar on empathy, this has forced us, for some it happened naturally, for some it had to happen, to be effective. You have to have increased your empathy level, the connect levels have improved, We have never connected this well with employees while we were in the office, the way we're connected now. It was what used to be a chore too, but now, I see my team, my colleagues, my fraternity actually proactively reaching out to people and saying, we understand this is emotionally difficult.

Rohit [00:30:27] People have gone through, you mentioned about youngsters living alone. I personally know about a few cases where people have gone through depression because of this and I know that they needed help and they got help, and I'm so glad they got it. In one of the cases, the help came from an HR professional, when the HR professional spoke to this individual two, three days in a row, he realized that this person is very different today than what this person used to be back in the office and then we boiled down to that loneliness.

Rohit [00:30:57] As HR, we took a collective call that we will call this person every day for half an hour and talk, what have you done? What did you cook today? Can I send you something? Can I Swiggy something across to you? Have you seen this movie? Come, let's do a movie marathon together, let's do a Netflix party together. HR has to go into the human of human resources, this has to come to the core and has come to the core today. I've never had these kinds of conversations in the past.

Ketan [00:31:28] I see you, I see other friends of ours, look at the content of what you're talking today, was it the way, one year ago, see the pattern shift, see what's happening, look at LinkedIn, the content is shifting, the pattern is shifting because people are now more aware. There is more connection, there is more understanding, there is more empathy and there is more human interaction. It is not transactional anymore.

Ketan [00:32:01] Very insightful. I gather that human connection, the human and the human resources, and empathy coming back or actually shooting up are the things that I could resume it back to.  

Rohit [00:32:22]  The reason it's there is because we're also going through it. So even the human resources are humans, they are also having the same issues, same depression, same stuck at home, same cabin fever is hitting everybody and when you understand it, you kind of want to help and when you help somebody, it makes you feel nice.

Rohit [00:32:45] The human resource function today has the opportunity to garner that feeling, when you give there's a niceness about giving, there's a dopamine hit that happens to you as a human being. Simon Sinek talks about all the time, if you can help somebody, you can engage with somebody meaningfully. Now, I've got comments from my teams, from my organization employees saying thank you for that call. It was so awesome. It is so real and I've not heard that said to me in the nine years when I was in the office, but I had it said to me for the first time in my career now.

Senthil [00:33:28] Sounds very therapeutic and psychological, the Human Resources.

Rohit [00:33:33] It is therapeutic. I tell people, I invite people to treat it as therapy because it helps you as well, it makes you a happy person.

Ketan [00:33:43] I'm silent because I was needing more, I think, it was very insightful to us, probably Senthil makes a session, we could do three, four hours one on this one. Thank you, I'm just kind of right now introspecting, looking back, and resonating with what you said, Rohit, while there are a lot of conversations about processes, digital HR, technology, but this is a far deeper level. Thank you for calling that.

Ketan [00:34:31] Now, what is that one message, in this transitioning, changing time, you would want to take and tell to them for them to become better, use this time better and come out of this with becoming a better version of themselves, what would be that message you would want to give to people as individuals?

Rohit [00:34:51] I tell people, use this opportunity to reflect and introspect, and understand what has happened to us in the last six months. How has it been different for you as an individual, for you as a professional, for you as a father of the house, or whatever you are? and what kind of behaviors made you a better person and what made you worse? So this is also bought out through us.

Rohit [00:35:23] There are times when the number of arguments I've had, believe me, today, after the lockdown was over, my wife was very, very, very keen that I take a break. Go to your cousin's house, go stay a week, take that break, please, imagine your wife is telling you to go, it's a dream for a guy.

Rohit [00:35:47] I think this is the opportunity for us to introspect, my message to everyone would be reflecting on what worked, what didn't work, because one day in the near future, the world will slowly come back to the old normal. The styles of working may change, there may still be a lot more work from one home than before, there'll be a lot more remote collaboration than before, agreed, but slowly, the world will inch back towards what we call the old normal which was there.

Rohit [00:36:21] It may be in a different format going forward, but it will come back, as we go there, I think here's an opportunity to look at what worked, what didn't work, what are the behaviors that I exhibited that made other people around me happy, what are the behaviors that were exhibited that made them not so happy? The mad, sad flag approach. Look at those three things and you can apply this to personal space, professional space, or anything and this is an opportunity to look at that in a very introspective fashion. That would be my message.

Ketan [00:37:16] I'm right now incomplete, I don't know if this is getting recorded or I honestly, I don't care because I think, there's a lot of insights that I'm picking up right now and it's insightful, having said that, we have borrowed your time to get some specific powerful points taken to people.

Ketan [00:37:44] Now, when I and Senthil were talking about, we said, is culture moving towards e-culture? and whenever we add 'e' to something, there is a digital element, there is a remote element, there is a virtual element that gets added. Do you think it is there or it is going to happen, what's your view on the matter of culture now, in the context of remote working, is e-culture already there?

Rohit [00:38:09] It's already there, culture is the way you do things, every organization has a culture and it is about the alignment of your values, systems, thought process to an organization's culture statement. Today, I think the strongest alignment is seen in terrorist organizations. I mean, a human being is ready to give up his life for the sake of just one culture, which is called alignment. So, I would say organizations have to find that cultural alignment or employees have to find the cultural alignment with an organization.

Rohit [00:39:10] Every human being, if we look at large corporations like GE and Accenture, they have lakhs and lakhs of employees, can five lakh employees align to one culture?

Rohit [00:39:19] No, but can each one of them find something in that culture statement which they can align with?

Rohit [00:39:25] Yes, So what is culture, and then what is e-culture? e-culture is like you said, you make it digital, then it becomes e-culture. I fundamentally think e-culture, culture are semantics. For me, it's a digital way of doing it or in person, you're doing it, you have to have a cultural alignment. and yes, it's very important for organizations to focus on that.

Rohit [00:39:55] I think somewhere in the whole growth and expansion, I know organizations that have a culture statement, but hey, when you're bringing in talent, are you evaluating that culture? No, you're evaluating C, C++, Java, Hadoop, and the so-called HR round, we did the HR round, what is in it?, how many times have you had an HR round where you've rejected the person based on culture? you have rejected because he has had too many job changes because the CTC expectation is too much because he spoke rudely.

Rohit [00:40:34] But where is that cultural perspective? I think the cultural perspective has got lost and now, it is a great opportunity to bring it back to the table and say, yes, this is the kind of person we want, how many people are even doing soft skill assessments? We had all been tech assessments. I don't know, at the time of hiring how many companies are really investing and saying that we do an assessment of this person, which is not a technical assessment. There are other products, HR tools are there in the market.

Rohit [00:41:08] They are being used during promotions, they are being used in the growth, why not at the point of entry? So for me, yes, e-culture exists, culture also exists, and this will continue. I think, from an opportunity perspective for organizations such as the ones which Senthil runs, I think, there is a great opportunity to go digital, take this to the digital platform, leverage digital, make it e-culture and the world needs it because what's happening today is, the millennials, the next that's coming in.

Rohit [00:41:44] I'm going to quote Simon Sinek on this because it made sense when he said something and I believed it. He said that the millennials that are coming out now are so used to texting, they've forgotten how to talk. They're more comfortable texting, my daughter is more comfortable texting me than talking to me, we're sitting in the same house, she would rather text me, than in person.

Rohit [00:42:12] Here's an opportunity for us to train them on cultural values of collaboration, of talking. I think, ten years from now, organizations will be grappling with a whole different problem, when I started my career, communication was not the problem, collaboration was not the problem, it was technical skills that needed to be taught, partnering skills that needed to be taught.

Rohit [00:42:36] I think the next generation will need a very basic level, like going back to school and getting people to hold your partner's hand, talk to him, look in the eye, and talk, these are things that will happen. So, yes, e-culture exists, culture exists and it'll continue to exist, and here is an opportunity for us to look at nuances of culture that we need to promote for the betterment and focus on those.

Rohit [00:43:00] We can use the digital format because the current generation is totally digital savvy, aware which is a good thing and e-culture, it is a default. There is nothing going to be no e-culture, everything is going to be e-culture.

Ketan [00:43:16] Thank you, in fact, to conclude this question, my point in one of the conversations, somebody beautifully said that earlier the culture was limited to at least the office infrastructure or the physical framework. Now, the home culture and the office culture are sitting in your house. I think that's a new one that people are trying to put together and build a more inclusive culture. So at least for the family, families have started understanding the organizations better, organizations have started understanding families better, and somewhere, the cultural element is extending and spreading.

Ketan [00:43:58] It brings in a larger dimension, brings a new set of challenges, but as Rohit was saying, every challenge is an opportunity. So what can we do and how can we make it better and what can we learn from it is going to be made at least 10 years later when you look back, I think we would have two things to say. What is the great stuff that we build? or we would simply say, hey we had an opportunity and we killed it.

Ketan [00:44:22] I think these are the only two outcomes that we could expect. Rohit, thank you, this was phenomenal. We have a few more minutes to go and have some interesting questions that I wanted to shoot at you, we call it the rapid-fire question. Looks like you're ready, but I hope you're ready.  

Ketan [00:45:03] If not HR as a profession, what would you have been, or what would you have chosen?

Rohit [00:45:12] Hospitality, without a doubt, it's my dream, after I report to somebody who has reported to me, I will quit and I would open a cafe and I would serve people like you. Come sit with me, have a conversation, eat at my cafe. Well, feeding people is a passion. I love to feed people.

Ketan [00:45:41] Cooking, cleaning, or mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Rohit [00:45:46] I didn't cook, I can only cook to save myself, basically morning breakfast, cereal, bread, and egg types, so I didn't cook. I mopped, I'm a waterboy and anything to do with it, so I was doing utensils and mopping. Mopping was a little difficult, but it helped me lose weight. So yeah, I mopped, I have a picture, I can share the picture with you where I've got the mop like Harry Potter's broom and trying to take off somewhere. I would love to share that with you guys.  

Ketan [00:46:17] What's your next personal goal?

Rohit [00:46:21] My one goal which I am currently enduring is 4 more kilos to go to reach my ideal weight. I was 114, I'm 86 today, I need to get to 82. Some of my pictures looked like a Snapchat filter, people can't believe that my face was that big. So my personal goal is to lose weight, but it's also to help the community, to help as many people as I can. So I haven't yet pointed my finger on which way I will help, but I want to help the community, whether it's underprivileged children, whether it's girl child education.

Ketan [00:47:05] Which book or the book that had the maximum impact on you?

Rohit [00:47:11] I'm not a massive reader of fiction, I'm not and I admit it, I'd rather watch a movie based on a book than read the book. Of course, there are two schools of thought, everyone else who is a reader including my wife tells me, 'you are mad, you don't know what you're missing out'. But, I am okay, that's my quote, that's it.

Rohit [00:47:34] I'm a humor lover. I think we have enough problems in our lives, even the little that I read is humor, 'The growing pains of Adrian Mole' by Sue Townsend, it's a diary of a 12-year-old kid and every page you flip, you are laughing because it's a twelve-year-old's diary. It's a casual, relaxed reading that would make you happy.

Ketan [00:48:11] One thing that you thank COVID for?

Rohit [00:48:16] Traffic and apart from traffic, it's taught me how to live frugally. Earlier, I could never imagine that with this much money I could manage a month, COVID taught me to do it without a problem, COVID taught me that it's okay not to go to a restaurant, COVID taught me, It's okay not to have your maid coming in.

Senthil [00:50:00] I was just shocked by some of the points that I was like, wow, and did learn a lot. In some of the blogs, all of this will cascade into those content and of course, I am gonna quote you in many places. The point that you brought out when you said, in the hiring process, nobody grills the candidates for the culture element, so it's just technical, I as an engineer, when I was working in Singapore, there were many engineers who applied for jobs in Europe, in the Netherlands, and in Austria especially.

Senthil [00:50:58] I remember this company called Runtastic, they do an app that just tells you how many kilometers, calories, and all that. So in that company, a few of my peers applied, they're like top-notch guys, the two of them were from Vietnam and they're extremely technically talented, they take Javascript, restructure and they have their own version of Javascript, that's how much talent they are, but they got rejected.

Senthil [00:51:25] They have very good communication, so what I did, the reason why we started CultureMonkey having this unique interest in culture, I wrote to that HR who was actually outsourcing, her answer was, they were not culturally talented and when you said these points, I was like wow, that's something that, large companies don't do.

Rohit [00:52:18] I'll give you my personal example and my callout to everybody is always the most powerful example you can share is your own, thank you for sharing your example, Senthil. I was once rejected by a fitness chain, I was rejected for an HR job because I was unfit.

Rohit [00:52:45] They said, how can we have an HR head of a fitness chain who is unfit, that is where the culture comes in.

Senthil [00:53:21] I think culture is not something that we can scientifically take or cut and view or your sensory organs can't really perceive culture very simply. So that's the reason why it's really messy and really complex to measure as well. I think I think we've come to the end of the session. So thanks a lot.

Senthil [00:53:46] It started with your LinkedIn just saying, adding value every day and you're doing justice to what you said. You added a lot of value to the session, to all of the listeners and us as well. So thanks a lot for your time, Rohit, and thanks a lot, Ketan.

Rohit [00:54:03] It's been an absolute pleasure as a parting note to the listeners and to you guys, I'll say only one thing, culture is very important. Just a small example, I sat with a group of youngsters and asked them, tell me your dream company to work for. Someone said Google, Facebook, IBM and I asked them why?

Rohit [00:54:20] Every single response was linked to culture, nobody said because its share value is this much, No one said because it's multi-billion dollars, nobody said because it has a presence in 50 countries, everyone said because of certain practices which they have which are directly linked to culture. So, that is the importance of culture. You're doing a great job, Senthil, my best wishes to you and your organization, someday we'll meet. Thank you, guys.

The biggest change that the pandemic has brought in a lot of organizations is the hesitant but compulsory adoption of technology, and in some cases, using it in unplanned, creative ways. Organizations with no prior experience in remote working now have teams all over the country coordinating and collaborating over video calls or Slack messages.

This big shift in the area of work culture in organizations has been witnessed by experts like Bhavna Batra, a crusader of culture and transformation in the field of business and development.

Carrying more than 15 years of experience, Bhavna is the Executive Director of Management Consulting at PWC. She has also worked with brands like Genpact, SHL, and Project Leader in the past. An organization transformation and leadership development expert, Bhavna’s leadership philosophy is anchored in Charles Darwin’s theory - “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one most adaptable to change.”

In this episode of CultureClub, Bhavna engages in an in-depth conversation with Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey) about eCulture and the transformations it has brought in its wake, especially that of employee engagement using technology and how this has led organizations to focus more on inclusion and diversity.

Dive into the details of their conversation by listening to this episode of the videocast here.

Transcript

Senthil [00:00:27] A quick introduction about Culture Monkey before we start for our audience, Culture Monkey is an employee engagement platform where if you have decided that a lot of companies care about their people and do a lot of things for their employees, yet it's stopped down right?

If you want to do it bottom-up, you want  to listen to your employees, source your engagement initiatives from your employees, it has to be bottom-up and once you have decided to do that and decided to listen to your employees continuously, you will face problems where you have multiple locations, multiple teams, diverse demographics, very different sentiments and then there's a lot of life-cycle with employees unboarded and then adapting and then being productive, and there's a lot of challenges when you want to really find out why employees are leaving your organization.

Senthil [00:01:20] When you want to do all of these things with data in front of you, you still want to derive meaning out of the data. So once you have meaningful data, you would still be not doing anything in the company unless you've acted on it. So there's this one platform where you can do all of these in one place. That's what we do at Culture Monkey. So without any further delay, over to you Ketan. Ketan, let's begin the session, thanks a lot for being here.  

Ketan [00:01:49] Thank you, Senthil, Bhavna welcome again. To the audiences, let me try to do a small introduction of Bhavna. She is an executive director with management consulting for PWC or you can call her the consulting leader. She's worked with brands like Genpact and SHL. She's an organizational transformation and leadership development, expert. She mostly works with the CXOs and family business owners as a business partner, advisor, facilitators, influencer whatever you may want to call.

Ketan [00:02:29] But she helps them drive the business for the future. Her leadership philosophy is anchored on Charles Darwin's famous words, 'It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the most adaptable to change that survives' and her interests are in travel and photography apart from spending time with friends, she's a great host for parties and get-togethers and she's on a journey of continuous learning and the lens of adaptability is something that she bears in her life and in the profession.

Ketan [00:03:15] I know her from my MBA days, a dear friend and I know we have shared amazing memories, I'm not going to trouble the audiences with that, but definitely one of the things I thank MBA for would give me a friend who I can call and I can tell you guys, she's done really very well for herself because of who she is, she will continue doing well. So Bhavna, thank you again for joining in and welcome to the Culture Club powered by Culture Monkey and if you can begin with, telling a little bit more about yourself, if you want to, and about your organization.

Bhavna [00:04:10] As part of PWC and over the course of my consulting career what I've really been doing is working with organizations, whether it is multinationals, whether it is startups, whether it is Indian business houses, whether it is family-owned businesses, to really help them think about, are they future-ready? and when we talk about future-readiness, I think two dimensions become really important.

Bhavna [00:04:39] One, keeping off the disruptions and the evolutions that are possibly going to happen and you're not building that into the way you're really approaching business and two, you're people, the people that you have around you, the processes, the ways of working, are they rigid to the point of not being inclusive of any changes or are they dynamic and flexible and very often agile and responsive to changing environments, changing stimuli from different sources.

Bhavna [00:05:16] So the high that I get is really working with leaders of all types to really help them craft organizations that are as flexible as a tree that bends when it faces a strong headwind and doesn't necessarily crack and break because it has that ability to recognize when to be flexible and when to be firm. That's a little bit about what I do. I have got about 15 years of experience.

Bhavna [00:05:43] The few grey hairs that I have, I tend to treasure them a little bit more today because they seem to lend a little bit more credibility at times when I have conversations. But as a person, I come from a defense background, I love traveling and my mantra has always been that I should have traveled to at least two more countries than my age. I'm doing about five more countries than my age. So I think I'm well placed right now. So that's a little bit about me.

Ketan [00:06:12] So I will jump to the first question for you and I'm just gonna do that because you bring so much experience in this subject. So, what challenges do you think that the CXOs are dealing with in this post COVID world, especially when it comes to matters around culture and engagement and with the world going remote?

Bhavna [00:07:11] If I were to really look at it, I think what's happened is business models have been disrupted at a scale and in a way that is frankly unprecedented. I think organization models have been disrupted in a big way and as a result of which, what has happened is today organizations are thinking about a lot of basics that have to do with survival, which until yesterday they were not necessarily thinking about.

Bhavna [00:07:42] Now, as a result of that, there are three big shifts that have happened. I think one big shift that has happened is the role that the COVID crisis has really played in driving the momentum on technology or adoption. A lot of organizations conceptually got it, a lot of organizations were ahead of the curve, but more than 50 percent of organizations were still grappling with what their technology thumbprint needed to be.

Bhavna [00:08:12] In today's environment, at least over the last six months, a large amount of focus on the digital strategy, and the technology roadmap for the organizations to enable people to work from home. So that's one big change. The second big change that has happened is that when you look at a lot of your people, systems, and processes, the way we worked classically will no longer really work.

Bhavna [00:08:45] Let's take the example of the simplest process, onboarding. You would go to the office of the organization that you were joining, you would fill out a bunch of forms, you would get your identity card, you would get your laptop, you would get all of the assets that are given to you as an employee, but in a situation where one, you have complete lockdowns, you can't travel. How do you make that happen?

Bhavna [00:09:08] So the second big thing is that classical ways of working are getting questioned in a big way and they are likely to continue to get questioned because some people say beyond the second wave of the COVID crisis, some say the first wave is not yet over, some say we're on the third wave. But whatever wave, this is clearly an issue which marks something that is going to go on for a while and this is not an isolated incident.

Bhavna [00:09:36] About 10 years ago, when we had the SARS crisis, we were disrupted to a large extent. So in this kind of context, how do we constantly look at questioning some of our processes and ways of working, I think that's happening in a big way. The third thing that I feel is happening in a big way is, we were used to profitable conversations. We were used to walking across to the pantry and having a chit chat with each other, just catching up over the course of the day, being able to blow off steam with just random, unplanned conversations, that no longer happens.

Bhavna [00:10:18] Even if I have to have a sidebar or a side chat with someone from my peer group or someone from my team, etc., now, we need to look at calendars, block time, and then have a sidebar which takes away the whole interest and the energy and the excitement from that interaction. So I think what's happened is that one, technologically, we are already in bits and pockets and how do we ready ourselves from a technology point of view, I think that's one thing that is top of the mind.

Bhavna [00:10:50] The second big thing is our classical ways of working and some of those rituals that we were used to because they would energize and frankly, they're critical for any group of people working together, those that are getting reshaped in a big way and we necessarily don't have the flexibility to adapt to them very easily.

Ketan [00:11:14] So if you can try to tie this up in terms of the act this could have on the culture of an organization, what's your point of view?  

Bhavna [00:11:31] Yeah. So, different organizations have different cultures, so I think one of the aspects that have changed in a big way is co-located working is perhaps becoming a thing of the past, sooner than we had anticipated. There are multiple conferences that I have attended and I've heard others speak where I myself have spoken about the fact that in the year 2030, you will have perhaps people who are not working for one organization, who are working for multiple organizations parallelly for whom their cubicle is going to be equal to the corner of that house that they live in, which they are choosing to use, or the coffee shop that they choose to work out of.

[00:12:22] Or you know what, if you just cast your imagination a little bit, someone may choose to be backpacking out of another country and may choose to say that I want to work for three hours a day and that's my commitment to earning a livelihood and that should be possible. I think that the reality of 2030 is the reality of now. More and more organizations that I'm talking to are talking about working from anywhere and how do you enable working from anywhere at the drop of a hat?

Bhavna [00:12:50] Recently in the news, RPG, who is a very respected traditional business house, was speaking about how working from home is going to be a reality for a large chunk of their people for a large chunk of time, now in this kind of context, I think culturally there are a couple of implications.

Bhavna [00:13:10] One, how do we measure productivity when our teams are not sitting in front of us when we can't see what they are doing, when in a very classical shop floor example, because Senthil spoke about being an engineer, so a very classical shop floor example was how many tea breaks are you taking in the day? Is each tea break five minutes, 10 minutes or 20 minutes, or more? so when you can't see what people are doing, our performance processes really evolved enough to say that we are outcome-driven and it doesn't matter if you achieve the outcome in a day, two days, five days or two hours.

Bhavna [00:13:51] So I think that is one implication, which is that how do we measure productivity and therefore culturally, what are we doing more of? So are we asking for people to fill out timesheets, are we asking people to just do check-ins regularly? So all of these pieces will come into sharp focus. So that's one part of it. I think the second part of it is even as people are located in different places, a team that worked out of Gurgaon of 20 people, for instance, may today be sitting out of Bhubaneshwar, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Chennai, Pondicherry, and a couple of other places.

Bhavna [00:14:35] This type of 20 people have the luxury of having known each other for a while and therefore there is a certain chemistry that flows in the team, but what happens when they don't meet each other for two years or three years? What happens when there is a twenty-third or twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth person who joins the team? Externally, who doesn't feel inducted into part of the team because that person doesn't get the jokes from two years ago when they used to sit around the table and drink coffee together.

Bhavna [00:15:06] So I think the whole dimension of inclusion is going to be an extremely important area that we need to look at, engagement practices, when I worked with Genpact, one of the favorite engagement practices that I really used to have was we would just pick up themes and post it on the mezzanine floor in our cafeteria and talk about what's happening in life, what is energizing whom, what's happening with whose family and it was an energizing and an engagement driver like nothing else before or nothing else could compensate for.

Bhavna [00:15:47] Today when that's not possible, how do you actually make it happen virtually, by building a discipline around it and this is something that I have, for example, experienced over the last few months, we do these Friday drinking sessions of the evening over Zoom, on a Wednesday, a midweek get together over a glass of wine where you're not allowed to talk work, you just have to talk about your personal life.

Bhavna [00:16:18] I think in a lot of organizations, there's this huge focus on health and wellness and therefore, you're using a lot of technology-enabled platforms, such as a zoom or teams or whatever else to do Zumba together or to do yoga together. So I think when it comes to engagement, what we're going to have to realize is, the non-negotiables have become negotiable and how can we keep things simple and yet impactful?

Bhavna [00:16:49] The way you measure the impact is not going to be the way that you've classically looked at it. Because you know what? Neither are the systems to measure impact, the same nor is the ecosystem in which in fact, gets measured the same. So that's what I truly believe about culture and engagement.

Senthil [00:17:24] So all the points that Bhavna you said are apt and you reminded me of the Charles Darwin quote about adaptability. So all of these new things are overwhelming and it's all the more true now that if you don't have the ability to be flexible and change and adapt to these new things, it's very hard for the people to survive, these new points that you mentioned.

Bhavna [00:17:58] If I could just take a minute and add this, the things that we need to do are changing, but we are fundamentally the same people. So the other linked aspect to this is going to be how do we continuously upskill ourselves to remain relevant to this changing world because that's going to be an important one. We as individuals will make it or break it and therefore, the kind of capabilities that I believe are going to become even more relevant, even more, meaningful in the times to come are going to be some more different from what has got us where we are today.

Ketan [00:18:40] In fact, it reminds me of one of the senior leaders that I worked with, in that company, we use this terminology called spin of the place. Now suddenly all this cannot happen virtually and we're going to learn a lot with this experience.

Ketan [00:19:17] What do you think is the silver lining here? What has it done to the organization, which was something that has been like we're not moving, but the one thing that COVID has brought to organizations, what's the silver lining?

Bhavna [00:19:38] Reminded of a joke that did the rounds at the beginning of the COVID crisis and that joke very simply put was, who is responsible for your digital strategy? Is it your CEO? Is it your chief digital officer or is it COVID? now, we all know the response to that one but I think there are multiple silver linings.

Bhavna [00:20:03] One, the pace of openness that we have seen and I have personally had the very good fortune of working closely with a multitude of clients, I think the sheer open-mindedness that I have seen in organizations has been terrific, very often you need a catalyst for change. In many ways, this crisis has acted as that catalyst for change and today, the openness that I see in people looking at flexibility, looking at work from home, looking at liquid workforce are linked on a tab and some of these things have gone up in a big way.

Bhavna [00:20:49] At the same time, when you look at aspects like cybersecurity, when you look at some of these other aspects that are there, which were considered to be hard reasons why people couldn't work from home, those are also getting challenged. There are so many banks, for instance, that have relooked at their security practices and policies and there are types of people, yes, there are types of roles that would require people to point to the physical place.

Bhavna [00:21:19] But there is an equal or more, set of roles where people can work from home while ensuring the production of the world that they are doing and production of the customers that they sell. So I think that is one big silver lining. The second big silver lining to me is just the focus on inclusion, very recently I was speaking to the head of H.R. of a pharma company, and she was talking to me and telling me that thanks to the COVID crisis, earlier they would not necessarily look at the medical representative job as being a job that women would opt for.

Bhavna [00:22:01] But she said in an ecosystem where you have to interact with the doctor virtually, it's almost obvious to say, why wouldn't women want to be a medical rep when they bring the same skill set in any other way. So I, I believe the other silver lining is really this whole focus on inclusion. We can bring diverse views, voices, perspectives in, like never before and I think a lot of organizations are truly using this time to connect with their purpose, to connect with the values that drive them, and really look at simpler ways to make that happen. So I don't know if that answers your question then. But for me, those are two silver linings that I definitely see.

Ketan [00:22:49] It's definitely a very interesting perspective, it's an eye-opener.

Senthil [00:23:30] I think this is the tenth episode that we're doing and definitely like you said, it's an eye-opener for us as well. The inclusion part as a silver lining was a very new point. Thanks.

Ketan [00:23:52] What does this change in paradigm would mean for the HR fraternity?

Bhavna [00:24:07] We have to relook at how we add value. If I break the HR fraternity into our centers of excellence and our classical business partnering rules, I do believe that both sets of people are going to continue to remain extremely relevant. I believe for our business partners, we need to be a lot more focused on, for example, the classical phase of walking the floors, we'll have to do it virtually for large spans of people, are some who are full-time employees, a lot of whom are temporary workforce liquid workforce and therefore they work with us for shorter periods of time. Well, how do we make that time count? How do we make that engagement count? I think it's going to be an important one.

Bhavna [00:25:03] Are each and business partners are also going to need to leverage the power of analytics from our systems and ways of working, are we able to drive value in a lot of the process related work that they are expected to drive and therefore the criticality of being able to leverage technology to do a lot of things is going to go up. On the Centers of Excellence side, I've to lead a center of excellence around talent myself. I do believe that we sometimes have the luxury of sitting in an ivory tower and being based on best-guess estimates.

Bhavna [00:25:45] Our need to be more anchored in business reality is going to be more than ever before and therefore, as CEOs, how do we ensure that we understand our businesses even more? We understand the language of our business and we work with our business partners, our HR business partner, colleagues to really understand the spirit, the sentiment, the mode on the floor as we do a lot of process design work, is going to be very important.

Bhavna [00:26:13] If I really look at the skills that are going to be really critical for HR professionals going forward, one big one that stands out in my mind is design thinking. Tech Mahindra for instance has been recently recognized for the terrific work that the HR team is driving. I was having a conversation with Harshi, he emphasized the whole focus on human-centric design and that is something that every single HR person needs to appreciate and implement. So that's one.

Bhavna [00:26:51] I think the second capability that's going to become extremely important is analytics and a technology-savvy mindset, how you can leverage technology to make your life easier so that you can do things with more impact is going to be very important and in that context, I think analytics is absolutely crucial.

Bhavna [00:27:14] The third one is influencing beyond boundaries. You won't to be able to walk into cabins or you won't to be able to walk on to floors where people are there, how do you reach out, how do you build your networks of influence, even though you are possibly going to do that over a screen very often or over WhatsApp or over emails, I think that's going to be important.

Bhavna [00:27:38] The fourth thing which I feel has always been the benefit is even greater relevance today is business appreciation. The HR person needs to understand business as well as the sales guy, as well as the supply chain guy, as well as the finance guy and the intent really is that as the custodian of the soul and the values and the people of the organization, you have to understand how the business makes money and how the business truly creates values for our customers, for our investors, for our stakeholders. So that is what I believe is going to be critical for our HR fraternity, Ketan.

Ketan [00:29:21] What are the new things that you think an individual should be open to embracing, to face the future?

Bhavna [00:29:37] I think what is extremely important is for each one of us to take personal accountability for upskilling ourselves, I truly believe gone are the days where you would work with one organization and that organization would think about nurturing you and building you at different stages of your career path, etc..

Bhavna [00:30:06] Today each one of us has to craft in our own mind what our political path is going to be and for that, the big question is, be true to your purpose, what is that purpose that energizes you, that motivates you, that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning when you open your eyes is extremely important. Someone I know who had an extremely successful job actually decided that he wanted to set up his own startup in the space of education. He's formed through yours of ups and downs and the COVID crisis has certainly not been kind to him.

Bhavna [00:30:47] But the reality is that even today, when I speak to him and we speak practically every day, there's that energy in his voice because those first two or three hours of the day where he's brainstorming with his team on new products, what to do, what not to do, etc, it's not just about earning money, it's about creating value. So the first thing that I will say is, be true to your purpose and I'm certainly not self-actualized.

Bhavna [00:31:15] So for me, my focus has also evolved over the years but just be true to asking yourself those questions around what gives you a high, what gives you joy, and if what gives you joy is to be a CEO, well, you have to realize that you're not going to get up one day and become CEO all in one short. You have to put in the grunt work and the hard work and the effort and you have to build yourself to that level. So if you're going to set up your startup, you understand everything from financials to product, the customer value proposition to people to how you are going to deliver that.

Bhavna [00:31:53] So identify your focus, also identify what you need to make that happen, and upskill yourself continuously. I think that if that we have all for today's world is the fact that we have access to some outstanding content at zero cost, when you look at Coursera, etc, when you look at various such learning platforms, you can learn anything from making perfumes to robotic process automation to how to influence more effectively and a bunch of other themes yourself at your pace in a way that works for you, so how do you not just think about the future, but equip yourself to be able to deliver on that vision for yourself is extremely important.

Bhavna [00:32:51] The third thing that I will say is invest in relationships because relationships are truly the equity that you create for yourself. At the end of the day, most of us are energized by the thought of leaving a legacy. Now, what that legacy will be, very different and very personal for each one of us. But the relationships that we invest in becoming the path for us to deliver on that legacy and therefore, I would say that human beings, because we are social animals, we thrive on relationships and that is going to be even more critical in the coming world because even as technology becomes more vital, I think the human and human being also needs to be more vital.

Ketan [00:34:01] These are very important things to focus at. We want to do in life on purpose, peace-giving is super amazing.

Bhavna [00:34:08] Entirely my pleasure and all the very best to everybody, it's an exciting world out there and I think the beauty is to rediscover something in an ecosystem that is uncharted. I often feel that we are doing what the Starship Enterprise did at some level, which is figuring out a reality that is somewhat uncharted, so all the best to everybody.

Ketan [00:34:56] Is the e-culture the future or is it already here?  

Bhavna [00:35:03] So a year ago, if they had been doing this, chances are you would have flown to Gurgaon or I would have flown to Bombay or we would have flown to the city where Senthil was, we would have sat in a studio, chatted across the table with a cup of coffee between us, I am hoping the coffee still happen sometime soon, but this is e-culture, this is here to stay, this ain't going away anywhere.

Bhavna [00:35:25] If you take a look at some statistics, look at the impact of no carbon emissions over the last six months on our planet. It is phenomenal. In Gurgaon, I'm seeing butterflies over the last six months of the kind that I have never seen. There are people in cities who can see mountain ranges which are not too far away, but which were never visible because there was so much pollution, that I think this as a race we have discovered for the first time we had an opportunity to hit the forced pause and because we hit a forced pause where you couldn't fly, you couldn't take the train, you had to sit in the house, you started appreciating a lot of very small things which make a huge difference.

Bhavna [00:36:17] I think the e-way of working is a reality that's here to stay. I do believe that, yes, as things open up, let's hope that we get things under control sooner rather than later. But even then, not spending four hours in traffic and using that time instead to spend with your children or your parents or your partners or your self, I think is a very big blessing and I do believe that most people who believe in PNLs will realize that there is more to profit from an e-way of working than there is to lose.

Ketan [00:37:02] Rapid-fire questions to you Bhavna. So if not, HR as a professional, what would you have chosen?  

Bhavna [00:37:26] I would love to start up my own coffee shop which has a bookstore attached to it, so that I can spend days meeting new people or enjoying a cup of coffee that I truly enjoy along with the chocolate muffins that I truly enjoy and hopefully create a few connects that give me an opportunity to give back. So like I said, the jury's still out there that I may still do it.

Ketan [00:38:08] Cooking, cleaning, or mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Bhavna [00:38:15] Cooking, for sure, as long as it's not standard dal/chawal, as long as I can do different things, different cuisines, cooking for sure.

Ketan [00:38:27] Your third one, your next personal goal?

Bhavna [00:38:32] I think my next personal goal is, I'm currently doing, whether I should do my Ph.D. or not. I haven't arrived at a conclusion, but the questioning and the thought processes are alive and well. I let you know when I decide, but doing something more in the space of education is definitely something that's up there.

Bhavna [00:39:02] I've realized that over the last few years, I've got a lot of joy when I've been in classrooms giving guest lectures to school kids, and apparently they've enjoyed it because they come back with lots of questions. I'd love to do something more around that. I must tell you, Ketan, I have expanded my repertoire to be more than thank you speeches.

Ketan [00:39:34] One book that had maximum impact on you?

Bhavna [00:39:42] That's one that I've read over the last year. It's a book called Autobiography of a Yogi. I never thought that spiritualism would appeal to me, but it has and when I read through that book, I must tell you, I picked it up four times, put it down four times the fifth time I actually read it, then I read it another time and I read it another time. What it has given to me is in this crazy world, it's given me a sense of purpose.

Bhavna [00:40:19] I am experimenting a lot with Hindi these days, So I do a lot of coaching in Hindi also. The Autobiography of a Yogi enables you to just look within and find your peace, it suddenly impacted me very positively.

Ketan [00:41:04] One thing you will thank COVID for, personally?

Bhavna [00:41:10]  Time. I don't think I have everybody in my life, not traveled for a period of six months, it has never happened. I come from a defense family, so travel is part of my life, I've been to multiple schools, my father moved around the country quite a bit and I genuinely enjoy traveling. I think I had reached that stage where, on multiple consulting assignments, you would be in multiple cities and there were a couple of times and I would open my eyes and I would think to myself, which hotel is this, which city is this, why am I here?

Bhavna [00:41:53] I think the gift that COVID has given me is the time to spend with my parents, my brother, loved ones and of course, the gift Netflix. I'm enjoying it.

Senthil [00:42:17] Thanks a lot, Bhavna. Actually, it's more of coaching for me, I was just blown away with a lot of points, honestly, some of the points that you made, I was stopped on and I really think the energy also that you brought to us, I'm worried that the session is ending now.

Senthil [00:42:45] I think we should mention that it's just a season one, we will come back to you with season two with a new theme and new topic, and of course, as you said, thanks for giving us that gift of time. And you topped that gift with another gift where you're giving us the lessons and attention as well. So this is going to be super valuable for all of us, this is brilliant, and thanks a lot for being here, Bhavna and thanks a lot, Ketan.

Ketan [00:43:33] Thank you, Senthil, thank you, Bhavna.

The latest episode of Culture Club is a masterclass with Homi Tarapore. He is the Chief Human Resources Officer at India’s leading full-service financial house, Trust Group. Currently based in Mumbai, Homi has an experience of about twenty years in the Human Resources field. He has worked in reputed organisations like Aditya Birla Retail Ltd., HDFC Securities, India Infoline Ltd., WNS, and more.

Ketan (Head of People Functions, Rentomojo) introduces Homi as someone who is an evangelist of people, human behavior, and technology coming together and solving larger problems. He’s one of the few people who have the rare combination of being both an ideator and taking action—a combination that not a lot of people have.

In his conversation with Ketan and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey), Homi shares his views on company culture and employee engagement, and how most leaders and CXOs face the challenge of integrating and bringing these two together.

Homi focuses on the change in work culture over the past few decades and how it has contributed to a multitude of changes in work patterns. He believes that every change leads to a set of patterns which in turn changes other elements.

The trio goes on to discuss connectivity, adaptability, the motivation of employees, and more, while also focusing on the need for HRs to evolve.

Listen to the entire session to gain insights into Homi’s ideologies and learn more about what it means to be an HR professional in the current situation.

Transcript

Ketan [00:00:13] Homi Tarapore, thank you for joining in and I will add a context there, why am I here? I partnered with CultureMonkey for RentoMojo because I've seen the engagement of the world and when I heard this story of engineers trying to solve a problem and when I actually looked at the product, I literally fell in love with the product. It actually brought a lot of things that I have been trying to solve. We've seen this while working at organizations at the Aditya Birla level or when I was working with great places to work. But I was amazed to see the engineer trying to solve this problem and the product was really well. Of course, there's a lot that needs to be built over time.

Ketan [00:01:01] But that's where I connected and when I realized that there's no HR guy who's been involved in this because they drew the inspiration from a company of 15-20 people and they realized there's been no attrition, they've been able to engage people, people were supercharged, I think they brought that into a solution and I was like, okay, I need it too and I thought, whatever I learn, can I add value to their product or thinking process? So that's where I get in and a very important thing that we realize is like while I have my own set of views, a lot of leaders, a lot of people out there have a lot of point of view which I think is going to be important to build the product better.

Ketan [00:01:47] Culture Monkey is about listening to employees. I think what we realize is that we need to listen to the people who are driving and are setting the agenda as HR in the industry. Because of two sides of what you build in a product and so forth. So that's what brought me here and that's why I started to reach out to people that I know who have a point of view which I think is going to be important for HR folks because that's our target audience and of course, this team can pick up and work on an enhanced product.

Ketan [00:02:20] So that's how I got connected.

Senthil [00:02:24] Very well said, to add one point here, our core strength is technology. We have solved multiple technological problems and we never had this HR layer, if you spoke to me a year ago, you'd be like, 'oh, you have no idea what you're talking about'. But this journey of gelling with people leaders has starved us and most importantly, it has installed so much about the problems that can be solved through technology. Now we are automatically thinking like HRs, thinking like the people leaders, thinking like CHROs. So that's a very, very humbling purpose to, now even the words that we use, the slang that we use internally, I just started to change. Back to you, Ketan.

Ketan [00:03:21] Thank you, Senthil and for the audience, I have Homi Tarapore with me. Homi is the CHRO for the Trust group and it's an organization based out of Mumbai. He has worked with brands like HDFC Securities and Aditya Birla Retail and that's where I've met and I will talk a bit about that later and several other brands. He has about 20 years of experience and a very interesting thing that you would find on his profile, he believes in people, human behavior, and technology. I think he is somebody who is an evangelist of these coming together and solving a larger problem. He believes in a lot of introspection and traveling and music. So that's kind of Homi for you.

Ketan [00:04:17] I know another thing that is not written out there, but I know I can call it out, he has been a boxer in his college days. He has been physically very fit, I said. He said, 'you don't know? I have been a boxer. Not that, he used this to ensure that we were working harder but it was a general conversation. A core belief that he carries is that everything good can become better over a hearty conversation. So I think it's a good mix of kind and hard together is what I experienced. I know Homi from Aditya Birla Retail days and I was as a management trainee, literally pushed into retail and the task that was given is that we have to hire some 400, 500 people a month, you have to be a part of the machinery, you will be given a candidate name and offer in the comp sheet, prepare an offer and send.

Ketan [00:05:18] I did that a lot and then somebody says that, okay, this is a pretty senior person in HR and I had no idea that he was going to become my boss. He was worth what we hired, but the amount of patience that he had on that call. He would ask that typically the compensation structure is more than excel. Now, he would ask questions and I said, 'okay Homi, give me time. I'll come back' and then I will go, get details and then talk to him.

Ketan [00:05:50] But not a single point, he ever lost patience because he probably understood the context where I was coming from, and if I remember something which is almost like 13 years back that it happened to me, which means it mattered to me, that's one very important thing. It was easy for him to say, 'hey, you guys don't even know what you're solving for?'. But for me, that mattered. I was fortunate enough, I think he joined up. I started reporting to him, he's been a mentor to me he's been an ideator, he's been an action taker. His strategic outlook is perfect. I have usually seen this combination to be rare.

Ketan [00:06:40] A lot of people are either action takers or very strong and strategic. That at least is something that I've always looked upon to him and learned from him. So this is what Homi is for me. In my book, a lot of chapters are inspired by him at a moment when he created a change in me. To tell you something, he's kind of a boss that I can work with many more times. He's been very amazing and I'm not mincing words definitely here. Welcome again to Culture Club's e-culture Masterclass powered by Culture Monkey. If you could hear more from you about your organization and to the audience, I think that's a start.

Homi [00:07:36] Thank you, Senthil and Ketan for inviting me here, thanks for such kind words, Ketan. I'm quite humbled actually, I'm quite touched here. I'll take about a few seconds to come to the tone and speak with you all. It's quite emotional to understand how a colleague with whom you have worked and likewise with Ketan. Ketan has been a phenomenal learner when we interacted, there are a lot of things that I learned from him. Though he mentioned his learning, in fact, I also learned from him as a colleague, I liked the promptness and the urgency he put into every kind of task that came between us while we were executing the work.

Homi [00:08:36] I think that is something I take as a big pride for me that I had an opportunity where I could learn from my colleague, how to put an urgency in a certain task and so that we completed in time. That is one, second is, whenever I work with Ketan, I enjoyed one part is that he completely understood the concept of the task. I mean, the whole principle of the task and then execute it, he just didn't go all out, just executing without thinking. So there was a lot of application of mind and heart towards a particular job and then he goes on about executing. That is something I quite appreciate. I mean then and as well whenever we could get an opportunity to work together. I think that would be a wonderful experience for both of us too. So that's something.

Homi [00:09:37] I will give a gist about our organization, I work for a company called Trust Group, we're into financial services, I would call that we are a young organization because we have just about to complete 20 years from now. If you look at an age like human beings, till about 19, you're a teenager and then you go to the 20th year, you're out of teen, we are also on a similar journey. So, what happens in our journey like this is that organization also is young, has its set of beliefs, has a set of way of doing things, and when the organization is looking at growing, the growth in an environment which is changing, in a whole ecosystem which is changing, in that growth, how do you assimilate all the kind of knowledge and the information in the market? how do you get the right people on board?

Homi [00:10:28] Now, these are things that are quite challenging and my job with the organization is to bring in alignment off the growth journey that the organization has thought for themselves, taking along the current people and also acquiring a new talent joining the organization. So that's the organization as a personality. We take a lot of pride in saying that we are like a knowledge workforce because we believe in a lot of innovation as an organization, in innovation in products that we bring in. Thought and the subject is that our organization brings in the areas that are very well respected among the industry.

Homi [00:11:13] So our organization, our leaders, our promoters are very well respected in the entire fraternity. Our range of work is from institution relationships to now beginning to move into retail relationships I mean, an individual relationship now from institutional to individualism, that's the journey that we are getting into. We've got about a couple of businesses predominantly in the debt asset class, we have a dominance there.

Homi [00:11:44] We also have the asset class, we have an organization, we've also ventured into wealth management space about a couple of years back and we are also looking at kind of a long shot for newer businesses. So there are a lot of names and a lot of brand work will happen eventually because the new business that we are getting into are of quite of interest to the individual clients as well, along with the institution plants.

Homi [00:12:17] As far as me, Ketan already mentioned about my journey of 20 years, I've always enjoyed working with the entrepreneurs from the start of my career, I always believed that the kind of learnings that I had with entrepreneurs is immense, something where I'm able to value add as a professional. So the journey has been from organizations which are looking to grow, the organization which is looking to transform, the organization which is looking to stabilize certain elements, that has been the journey for me and throughout the journey, I've met several people with whom I had a good opportunity to learn.

Homi [00:13:15] At the same time, in this journey, I've also been able to influence the essence of human relations in the organization and the workforce. Now, that is something I think, I did capitalize on in the last two decades of my experience. It is very important that when you work with multiple stakeholders, the whole engagement of our relationship between the work, the workforce, and the management has to be linked up and aligned and that is where I've been able to contribute meaningfully. Yes, there's still a lot of scope for learning. I mean, all of us keep on learning and discovering new things, I keep that open. But, yes, I've been able to do that.

Homi [00:14:04] As far as industry is concerned, a large part of my career, I've spent in the financial services industry. I had a stint with Ketan, in the monetary telling segment, that's been there. Yes, BFSI is the sector where I have contributed a lot. But all in all, be it any industry, it is the people who have the same emotion, the same request, and the same issues all across and that's where the product that you're introducing, Senthil, becomes very important because anything that is around engagement or anything that's around the concept of culture is important in every industry.

Homi [00:14:53] It is just that the talent in the particular industry is executing their expertise, but the emotions are the same. So that's a small brief about my professional work and the organization that I work for.

Ketan [00:15:19] Can you share your views and experience on this entire concept of culture, engagement? What do you see and what has been your experience? I think that's a point that we would definitely like to hear your point of view.

Homi [00:15:34] Okay, so the very good and interesting question, Ketan, and this is a question that we have read about while we were in our colleges and school institutions. We read a lot of articles about cultural engagement, we have ourselves experienced when we are in the job phase. I would say before I just shared about culture and engagement, I will also share about the way the work scenarios are changing in the last couple of decades. So, if you look at what happened between 1960-80s, then what happened between the 1980s-90s, 1990-2000, so there is a change of the working environment which kept from happening and interestingly, we will have to be aware when India started growing in the certain sectors like, IT and services which had a big boom between 1920 and 2005, there's a lot of change in the work pattern also happened.

Homi [00:16:50] In the last decade what we're seeing is a complete evolution of the e-commerce businesses coming in, again there is a change of work patterns that are happening. Now, why I'm sharing this because every time a change is happening, a new set of work patterns and culture is being built. So culture is, when I'm saying culture, the way I understand very much the changing environment and the changing lead of the industry and the country or the world when we look at a particular organization.

Homi [00:17:26] Now, it's a very vast subject, it's a concept that everybody talks about but very difficult when you look at implementing something or driving something when you say that, this is exactly what we are on to because what we understand by culture is, it is a set of values and belief system. Now, it is a belief system built by the people who are the core of building the organization.

Homi [00:17:51] So, again if I take you to the example that I'm sharing, the e-commerce industry, you had a lot of organizations that cropped up in the last 10 years. Now they have a typical set of behavior and typical set of approaches to executing a job. Now they are among the set of beliefs, they have actually built in a culture wherein that forms the overall value system of the organization. Now, when an employee is looking at joining a particular company like the one in the example that I shared, the person, the employee has to align with the set of cultures, which is there set as a system by the organization.

Homi [00:18:36] Similarly, if I if you go back to the 1990s, early 1990s where you had a big boom in the banking industry, what had happened when a lot of private banks started in India, many of the talent pool in the banking industry actually moved from multinational banks to the private banks. So when they move from the multinational bank, the ethos of the work systems is what they carried is a very multinational banking kind of a system belief is what they've brought into the private banking and though that's all that came in.

Homi [00:19:10] So the workforce talent who joined these banks and these organizations at that period of time had to adapt and align with those belief systems. Okay, what was there? it was more structured, it was more process-driven, it was more timeline driven and now if you look at the e-commerce industry, everything is happening at the moment. It's moment-based, idea-based. So I'm just trying to build a concept around this thing and how culture is in every organization when they are building a value system around it.

Homi [00:19:54] Now, I would say employee engagement is definitely interlinked with culture but culture, of course, plays a larger role in the overall way the person gets employed in the organization and how he/she develops himself or herself in that journey within the organization. Now, engagement, the way I understand, of course, it's one's individual motivation and drive to commit to getting the job done or the relationship with the job and then with the organization. So, yes, I would say many times engagement, as such people do try to combine engagement along with the culture as a concept.

Homi [00:20:47] No, I would say that these are two independent concepts. Culture, of course, forms a part of the entire values and the belief system of the organization. Now, engagement, I would again say, is the motive or the drive of the individual to perform that. Now motivation is again very individual. My set of beliefs and my sort of thinkings, maybe something which I may not like in a particular organization, and as an individual, I may choose to continue or not continue with the organization.

Homi [00:21:22] Depending on what my motives are and what my interest levels are, so that is where it gets very, very challenging for leaders, the CXOs, how do you integrate these two things and bring it together. So it becomes a job by itself because these are two different independent elements that I would like to say. I said I tried to be as simple as possible. But, I have no idea if you understood what I said.

Senthil [00:21:54] You started by saying that culture is very difficult, it's very complex. But everything every word that you said, I wanted to listen to more of you. It feels like, hey, let's meet. It's very amazing.

Ketan [00:22:11] If I take this concept of e-culture right now and world going remote, which is why Nasscom which says that, most IT giants are looking at moving to work from home for as high as possible. This is not a temporary change, but these could be massive ones and they are the companies that have a large set of employees. Now, what challenges do you think the CXOs have dealt with or dealing with, especially in terms of culture when the world is going remote, what's your point of view around that?

Homi [00:23:07] So it's a good question and a tough one as well because we are all experiencing that and we are in the environment. I'll tell from whatever I've been experiencing what I've been gathering information, knowledge by my discussions with the leaders within our organization, outside our organization in the fraternity which is there. So I think, one of the things that have happened during COVID19 is that there's been a complete disruption of the way we're working, and the biggest challenge the CXOs are facing today is about uncertainties.

Homi [00:24:18] Now, these uncertainties are of year and now and of the immediate future, to put up a better perspective, the big challenge of the CXOs is how do you navigate through these uncertainties which are currently placed on the table and how do you navigate through this uncertainty? Now, very specifically, if I bring you and draw you to our topic of discussion, which is around culture and engagement, I think there are a couple of challenges which come to our notice and what I feel.

Homi [00:25:03] The first and foremost is connectivity. Now, when we are looking at remote operation, now connectivity in terms of IT connectivity and also in terms of the physical infrastructure that is provided to the employee. Now, when we look at this, the remote work and arrangement for the employee or the talent pool have to be effectively available.

Homi [00:25:31] Now that is one of the worries which is there because when COVID19 happened, we all moved into this arrangement overnight, there were a few challenges. But as we are deciding what's going to happen, post COVID19 and if you're gonna continue with the remote working arrangement, whichever way it is, this is going to be a top priority for all the CXOs to ensure that the connectivity is good enough.

Homi [00:25:59] Second, because there is a shift in the way of working from the traditional working system to a remote working system because you're not having enough physical accessibility with your colleagues, you're in virtual accessibility with your colleagues. The whole work and work management have changed.

Homi [00:26:17] I think that the second part, the challenge which the CXOs are dealing with is that what are the small innovations, the employees are gonna introduce in the work practices because there is a lot of change that is going to happen in work practices and little small innovations that you do in work practices are going to help a lot, and that is a big worry that the CXOs are thinking, these change or this small changes or innovation that we do, will it be implemented effectively or not and there has to be a lot of drive and initiative from the entire workforce to bring in this.

Homi [00:27:00] There has to be understanding and flexibility by the workforce employees and the management that okay, this is a newer environment, and second, how do I or how do we bring in the small changes and innovation in these practices? and that's a big worry.

Homi [00:27:17] The third, I think definitely is around the motivations of the employees. Now, if we go back to the theory of motivation, you have motivation X, motivation Y, motivation. Now, there are people who enjoy working like to work in any given environment and there are people who would take every opportunity to avoid work. Now, how do you ensure that the teams are motivated enough and how do you ensure they come together and work together and are able to deliver the result that is expected?

Homi [00:27:52] The fourth is about human connection. Now, I have also figured out that in our working environment, what is happening, if I go back to the pre-COVID days when in the regular environment, remote working was existent earlier as well, it's just that we are forced to get into this as fast as possible. But earlier also, it was there and nobody took the advantage of remote working earlier. But what I observe is that in the human connection, a lot of people enjoy coming to the office, workplace and interacting with people and that is something which is a very, very important element.

Homi [00:28:33] Many people want to have this environment. You have a home environment where you have your familiar environment and you work there and you contribute at your home environment, then you want to come to the office environment where you want to meet and there is a need to interact with different kinds of people personally, and that also gives a lot of motive, that also gives a lot of motivation and inspiration to people to come there.

Homi [00:28:57] Just to give an example, when we conducted two internal surveys within our organization during the initial period of the lockdown, there's very strong feedback coming from our employees saying that they are looking forward to coming to the office and meeting people because that is something a source of inspiration for them to come there. So, I mean, that's we cannot take that out. So that's a big challenge.

Homi [00:29:28] Then comes to balance, now balance when it comes to working integration balance, how do you balance the work-life as well as the health and well-being of the team members? Now that, of course, it is very subtly coming and slowly that word of balance is becoming stronger. You will see that in at least by giving it about seven / eight months. This whole word of balance is going to be talked about in all the webinars and forums.

Homi [00:30:00] Because what's happened in these remote working, because of the anxieties from both parties by the leaders as well as by the team members, because of the anxiety, everybody has started by engaging much stronger, longer, they've started giving more time and more time to the work area. So the limits of the timing of work are actually being exceeded in most of the occasion when the remote looking was forced upon everyone, all the organization everybody was anxious and because of this anxiety, everybody started and giving in extra effort to this work timings and what happens is when you're putting a lot of time on the work front because of the anxiety, you are actually missing a lot to do with your health and balance.

Homi [00:30:59] Now, one has to recognize that element of balance and one has to bring in and balance it and beyond. I would say that the leaders of the organization play a big role as to how they want to set it up and of course, that's one of the big worries that they also have and lastly, in the set of challenges, I think acceptance is a big challenge. To accept the fact that remote working is for a year and to continue is something both parties have to accept and start adapting to this change.

Homi [00:31:37] Because the more time we take to accept it, we're just procrastinating and pushing our decision to actually get into this new arrangement and start working. I think that acceptance is a big challenge many of the CXOs are dealing with now because we still feel that coming to a physical accessibility kind of a work arrangement will give you better productivity. That's the thinking, many of them have, They're trying to shift this whole dimension of thinking. I think these are the challenges that are there.

Ketan [00:32:06] Glad you brought that out because I'm also speaking to a lot of organizations on, from Rentomojo we are trying to create this work from home solution. Now, a lot of human behavior and decision making is changing, I realized that when I came to Bangalore, I took a house which was very close to the office paying an 'X' amount. Now, I'm thinking that I should move to a bigger house in another place. Now there is no attachment for me to stay close to the office because at best, I will go once or twice to the office.

Ketan [00:32:42] I think that's fine even if I have to drive for three hours, I think mentally that is absolutely okay. I was not alone when I started to speak to a lot of people, this just makes sense because then I'd go to a cleaner and a better and a far more open area where the weather was very, very pleasant. But they are also contemplating, does it make it simple actually either move to a bigger place or a different place or a place which is far more personalized or even save money, I think any of those benefits.

Senthil [00:33:14] One point I was able to relate to when talked about acceptance is, so we hired an engineer and designer just around March 1st, 2nd week behind engineer designer without knowing what's going to happen and then the first month they spent, I was okay, let's see, when we get back because a lot of training, we can't remotely onboard them and then after the second and third month, Now I said, I remember this 'no more other strategies, we have to accept this and move forward'. Because you accept it or not, it's going to be there.

Ketan [00:34:09] In the second part, I think you have shared about things like balance and acceptance. Now, what is it positive? Is there a silver lining that you see that COVID has brought to light?

Homi [00:35:35] Yes, I think there are good positives which are actually coming here. One, when I look at productivity, now the people are, this is going to be a very highly debatable topic for some time now, traditional working Vs remote working and productivity. Now, I think the work from home arrangement is an arrangement that provides the employee a lot of flexibility to execute the work at his or her comfort, and when you want any delivery coming in, you don't want your employer to be anxious.

Homi [00:36:20] You want the person to be in a very comforting mindset to execute the work and I'm talking about the nature of work which can happen through remote working, maybe there is a specific type of job which may be required to coming up to work office but there are many types of work which can actually happen through a remote arrangement and they would actually positively look at the entire flexibility provided.

Homi [00:36:50] I think that can connect with productivity very well. Now, when I look at productivity, I'm not talking about the outcome because that is a separate discussion when I put productivity in line with our topic of discussion of engagement and building of culture. Now, what has happened, this entire thing has developed productivity because the employees are becoming more compliant to the virtual meetings, to the remote engagement and remote processes that they are having.

Homi [00:37:27] So they are getting a complaint in that they are becoming better coordinated in their efforts because everybody is forced into the situation. So they are consciously thinking that they have to coordinate the work much better than what it was earlier because when our earlier environment, it's a different environment, many a time things get taken for granted but here you're consciously putting an effort.

Homi [00:37:48] Collaboration, I think one of the big parts. I have seen the collaboration has actually the level of engagement and collaboration has gone up significantly. Not only in our organization, but I have also been talking to other organizations as well and I've figured out because this has happened so suddenly, people have actually started collaborating much better through this arrangement.

Homi [00:38:15] Now, expression, one of the big things is, I remember when you were doing a town hall in a workplace environment, many of them are not even asking questions and many of them are distracted with what is happening around them. Now, in a virtual sort, we've run a couple of town halls and I've seen the quality of questions that are coming in very good questions. So when you're in a virtual meeting what happens in a virtual conference, nobody is thinking about who's at what position.

Homi [00:38:54] You are just at a screen, I'm at the screen and you just freely, there's an exchange of questioning and the ideas which are happening and that is beautiful. I think that is something that is encouraged. Not only the leader, the leader has come closer to the employee and the employees are also coming closer to the management and that is a big positive.

Homi [00:39:15] I also think what is going to happen is that organizations and teams and the CXOs, now will not be worried about what kind of office premises I should have. Everybody is going to be worried about what kind of laptop or a computer I want to provide to my workforce, what kind of telecommunication system he or she has so that I'm able to connect to the person more effectively and there's dimension shift of the work arrangements from the office space to actually a lot of focus on the IT and communication kind of thing.

Homi [00:39:53] Lastly, what I think is a big, big, big plus is I think there is a big good shift in the level of conversations that are happening. It's not. communication, it's the conversation, it's the material of the conversation that has improved significantly built due to this remote arrangement which has come in because when I'm engaging or when two people are engaging, they know what subject they want to talk about. There is no additional no extra distraction in the conversation, they stick to the conversation, the quality of conversation improved a lot.

Ketan [00:40:40] Interesting, thank you. So what do you think this means for the HR fraternity, what all things would it redefine, a lot of people who are going to listen to this are going to be HR folks, I think very important to hear from you about what do you think it's going to change for the HR fraternity as we imbibe this new normal, whatever we call it?

Homi [00:41:12] For the HR fraternity, if you refer to my first when I'm giving the context of the experience and what I share is that whether it is a different industry or different working arrangement, the basics of HR is going to be there and people need to just stick to that. The basics of HR will not change. One area where there's going to be a little bit of shift and how the entire HR or group of people are going to focus on or work on is talent solutions.

Homi [00:41:51] I am calling it more like a talent solution that involves the whole elements of work. Now that would involve an element of mobilizing people. Now, how do you mobilize people? Earlier it has a lot to do with location, here it is not location, it is assignments. So there's a focus on the assignment. Assignments may be a short assignment, long assignment, so how do you mobilize the talent around that?

Homi [00:42:19] How do you figure out the gaps in skills and reskill your talent within the organization? Because there will definitely be a strong drive in getting the entire workforce digitally enhanced, right from the top to bottom, including the HR professionals. They have to be digitally upgraded. And that is going to be there. So that's going to be the main area and how do you upskill and reskill around that.

Homi [00:42:54] I also feel as I said in the mobilization, there's also going to be a change in the work design. So the HR will have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how the world designs will keep on changing and how to provide designs for a particular specific period looking at a particular assignment or a job in addressing that particular challenge. So, a flexible work designing, talent mobilization, and reskilling and upskilling is going to be a continuous process, that is why I'm calling it talent solutions that HR will have to work at.

Homi [00:43:28] Apart from this one, on the qualitative side, I think HR will have to level up their engagement of counseling because counseling is going to be one area where the HR profession needs to upgrade their understanding of how the counseling processes are executed and how do you deal with the employee or a member and counsel the person through a particular situation. So there has to be an upgrade on the level of counseling which I think HR has to do. These are a couple of things that are newer and the rest is going to be the basics.

Homi [00:44:14] See, I'm not talking about words like adaptability, agility, and all that because that is for any environment whether it is remote working, change, if I change from financial services, I go to a different industry, I have to adapt and be agile to understand. So that's a given, these are all given. But the core around here is the flexible work designs, mobilization of talent, reskilling and upskilling, and the digital upgrade for the entire workforce.

Ketan [00:44:47] If I take this question ahead, while there is a professional role, there are also a lot of questions on what happens to a career, career path, growth progression. I think as individuals, there are also a lot of questions that we see are popping up. So what are the new things that you personally believe that individuals who want to make it and continue into corporate space need to imbibe and embrace in this new world?

Homi [00:45:16] I think part of it was in the previous comment that I shared is one of the things is everybody, as I said, digital learning in the new environment has to be top to bottom and one has to upgrade himself or herself in the space. So, for example, if I am an HR professional and if I do not know how machine learning or an AI technology, at least the concepts of it work and what are the benefits that I would get, then I think I'm not doing justice to my role and to the organization.

Homi [00:45:53] So this means I need to enroll myself and get a certain understanding of the fundamentals of how it works. So that I'm able to apply it, similarly for every individual in their respective space, they need to have this upgrade and I think in a week and not avoided because it is gonna be an integrated part of your profession. So you have your subject expertise and you will have your digital understanding of other work habits. So one has to get these two things together.

Homi [00:46:21] The second thing I think, the second part for individuals is on the mindset. The mindset has to be flexible and agile because when I'm interacting or I'm executing a particular job in this new arrangement, the nature of the job as I shared in the earlier comment could be different. So the nature of the job is the kind of job they're doing and the time period of the job.

Homi [00:46:50] It can be a short time period. It can be a long time period. So one has to prepare that mindset to be in that and also when you're saying that the speed of change, how faster you accept and move around things is what individuals will have to look at. I would also say, here what's going to happen because corporates, companies are going through their own set of challenges with their remote arrangement and you have the entire workforce who are also experiencing changes.

Homi [00:47:20] But if the workforce can focus on assignments which are there and adapt around themselves, around the assignments, digitally upgrade themselves and the corporates encourage their entire workforce to digitally upgrade themselves and have a workflow or a framework where the movement is very flexible and easy for talent to move from one, maybe a job to another or one situation to another situation or one project to another project. So that's something that is going to be a plus for everybody and one has to keep themselves prepared for it.

Ketan [00:47:56] Oh, thank you. I can relate to a lot of them and the digital upgrade and learning and then being oppressed with new terminologies is super important and lastly, with this question, I know you have addressed bits and pieces of this in the scheme, but do you think e-culture in the future? Is it already there? What's your closing broad theme on this entire piece.

Homi [00:48:30] I definitely think that e-culture in the future and if you refer to my earlier one of comments, the faster we accept it, the better we are prepared for solutions around it. We've just got a glimpse of it during this lockdown and arrangement that all the organizations have started doing in this period, the last couple of months.

Homi [00:48:57] We've got a glimpse of it, we cannot avoid it. Culture definitely as I started sharing earlier that it is a value system of the organization. But the faster we move to an e-based kind of an arrangement and faster we adapt to it, I think that is what is one has to look forward to and I very strongly believe that e culture is going to be an integral part of work-life for everyone, some may accept it, some may not accept it or some may accept it later, we cannot avoid it. It's gonna be a part of it and you got to be in it.

Homi [00:49:39] I am also saying, there are some organisations that might already have implemented it also. I mean, there are organisations globally which may have looked at it and when I'm sharing my thoughts, of course, a lot of my experience and the comments that I shared is in the context of what we're doing in India but when we look in the global setup, yes, there are organisations which have been adapted to the whole theme around e-culture. We have to give it time here for the whole concept to mature and I think across the workspace, there's gonna be a party for us and we have to live into it.

Senthil [00:50:30] Even before COVID, there are many startups especially in technology, globally. Many companies have done remote work for a long time. So they suddenly got a lot of traction as to, a lot of other companies turned to them, to learn from them. So many companies globally, like you, said, even before COVID. Now, it's just another day for them.

Homi [00:51:12] Earlier what would have happened, the organization could have thought that remote working is a possibility, but nobody ventured towards that direction. But now, given the situation, now we know, oh my god, this is fantastic, it can work very well and I will share one thing and I'll give this benefit to a lot of Indian organizations who are there and they have all adapted, many of them have adapted very smoothly and moved on to providing and building a lot of solutions.

Homi [00:52:09] A lot of corporates are working towards it and I think that's a good sign because everybody is pushed into a situation. Because you're pushed into a situation, you have to think about what's new and what's going to work for everybody to move together for growth and I think one good part about the whole concept of e-culture is that it has to become very aspirational.

Homi [00:52:37] So what happens when it becomes aspirational? People get inspired to be a part of it and start connecting to the whole concept of e-culture. So it has to be probably projected by the corporates and the organisations working on this concept, they have to make it very aspirational, how it works and what are the benefits for the organisation and what do they benefit from it and so they get inspired with the concept.

Ketan [00:53:03] Awesome. I think we can go on for long. There are five rapid-fire questions for me. I think this is how we typically close our conversation in Culture Monkey.

Ketan [00:53:39] The first one is, if not HR as a profession, what would it have been for you?

Homi [00:53:29] Sportsperson or something around sports.

Ketan [00:53:59] Cooking, cleaning, or mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Homi [00:54:04] Mopping. I picked up because I was removed from the cooking job. I did a pretty bad job. I was given very critical feedback and I was just given an assignment of mopping.

Ketan [00:54:21] The third question is, what is your next personal goal that you've picked for yourself or you're thinking about?

Homi [00:54:42] So my personal goal is that I've for quite some time, I was wanting to put my hands into writing poems or writing. I've been trying to attempt that for a long time but somehow, I have interests around that. I have interests in this whole field of art, which is there as of now. To learn an instrument as well and do something around that. Because that's something, it's a personal hobby and it stays with you.

Ketan [00:55:41] A book that has maximum impact on you?

Homi [00:55:42] This is man's search for meaning. That was one book, it's an amazing book. The first time I read, I was so touched by it that I read it at least four to five times after that. Just to understand what was going on in his mind and what exactly is the message being shared and I think that's moved me the most and which is when I think that nothing is permanent in life.

Homi [00:56:15] So you got to be ready to accept any kind of change that is put across you and you accept it and move on and that if one reads that book, you'll get a lot of notes, meaning and message as to what happens to the human mind when you're put to a situation. I think that's a book that I would recommend for everybody, especially read it once.

Ketan [00:56:44] The last one, one thing you thank COVID for, personally?

Homi [00:56:56] The time that I've started spending home with my family. I thank God for that. At least, it made me realize the entire essence of being home, being together, understanding what happens. I thank COVID for a wonderful experience. I know everywhere it is a lot and every time there's monsoon rains, there is waterlogging and everything which happens.

Homi [00:57:25] Most of the time whenever it was heavily raining here, I was inside the office. I didn't even know what's happening. This is the first time I experienced what's happening all around. I saw the trees falling, I saw the leaves swinging, singing, everything happening and it was such a beautiful thing to watch that experience. I would have not got it otherwise.

Homi [00:57:45] That was the experience that I was able to enjoy along with my family to see what's happening. The monsoons are very beautiful and it's one of my favorite seasons as well. I just watched it, enjoyed it. I also tried to write something around it. It was very beautiful.

Ketan [00:58:06] Thank you, that's it from my side, Homi.

Senthil [00:58:10] I just want to add one point, about you talking about poems and all that. So very constantly your name also sounds like Rumi. I love poems as well. I think there's another book in all of this, The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck, which has similar views about Love and I think these Austrians and Germans including Russians have explored the human mind in a very phenomenal way.

Senthil [00:58:58] So, I am excited to read your poems now. Looks like you have explored human emotions from a very different angle and you are enjoying the weather now, I think it's gonna be very good, and your ambition is to stitch all of this into the culture as well. Now, we're talking about a great piece that's going to come on. So definitely you have to share that with us.

Homi [00:59:24] Yeah sure. I thank you, Senthil, and thank you, Ketan for inviting me. You have a wonderful experience and as I said, the one thing that I shared earlier is that we all learn from each other. I wish both of you good luck.

Senthil [01:00:01] Thanks a lot.

Ketan [01:00:04] Thank you.

The latest episode of Culture Club features Ajay Pandey, Head - Business Human Resources at L&T Financial Services. With over 30 years of experience, Ajay is a celebrated HR leader in the Indian corporate sphere. He started his career with the Indian Air Force where he stayed for almost a decade. His work experience at the Indian Air Force helped him mold fundamental ideas of his professional journey. He then moved to the banking sector where he worked with giants like ICICI Bank, IDFC Bank, and L&T. He has been an HR personnel for more than 21 years now.

Ketan (Head of People Function, Rentomojo) believes Ajay is a courageous leader who personifies all the ideal tenets of Human Resources. Having shared a part of his HR journey with Ajay, Ketan has witnessed how Ajay goes beyond his role to help people without expecting anything in return.

The eighth episode of Culture Club is a testimony to these facets of Ajay’s personality. In his conversation with Ketan and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey), Ajay helps viewers understand culture as a social and behavioral construct. His analogy of an iceberg to talk about culture is an apt example to understand how culture is a reflection of what is and what has been in an individual’s life.

This episode is just a peek into the vast knowledge that Ajay has accumulated over the years and an hour-long session is not enough to dig into everything he could share, but has helped us understand how he views organisational culture and employee engagement in the current times.

Drawing a mythological analogy from the Mahabharata, Ajay tries to explain how culture shapes not only the mindsets of the individuals in an organisation, but also leads to its success and glory. Along with this unique viewpoint, Ajay also discussed the challenges CXOs faced during the recent transition and how the HR fraternity needs to evolve with the changing times and build mechanisms to suit a virtual world.

This episode is a must-watch for anyone interested in the recent cultural changes, especially those in HR or leadership roles.

Transcript

Senthil [00:00:14] Thanks a lot, Ajay for joining today. Before we start with the actual episode, I just wanted to set some context here. At CultureMonkey, we have curated HRs from leading organisations to address some of the problems, now that the world has gone digital, so what happens to the culture? We are calling it e-culture and we wanted to talk about some of the questions that will address problems around culture after remote work.

Senthil [00:00:53] So that's one of the main themes, Culture Club is going to focus today. Ajay, thanks a lot for joining this afternoon and to give you a small introduction to Culture Monkey, what we do is, when people want to listen to their employees anonymously, when you have problems like, you have multiple locations, different teams, different sentiments, diverse demographics. So we have one single platform that will help you capture all your employee feedback and act on it. So without any further delay, I'll pass it on to Ketan. Let's begin our Culture Club episode today.

Ajay [00:01:32] Thank you, Senthil. It's a pleasure to really join and be a part of this team. I'm really honoured. Thank you so much.

Ketan [00:01:41] Thank you, Senthil. Thank you, Ajay. I know honour is mine, especially because I know when I reach out to Ajay, like always, he never says no, at least to me. So thank you for joining in. One of the reasons I'm here Ajay is because when I experienced Culture Monkey as a product sometime back, I found a lot of value in what they were trying to do and then I realised it's a bunch of engineers who have started solving problems which are related to what an HR folk would essentially face.

Ketan [00:02:14] I think I was amazed and then I said, can I help you guys take this cause to a larger set of people and a very important thing that we realised was that for us to listen from the industry veterans and people who lead from the front to understand what more can a product like this solve? So that's what brings me here and for our audience, we have Ajay Pandey with us. Ajay heads HR for L&T financial services and there is a huge division that they have, which is the rural finance business, offers inter financial services. He heads HR business, human resources for that.

Ketan [00:02:54] He has 30 years of experience, the initial part of his career was with the Indian Air Force and then he came to corporate. In fact, I Senthil was asking, what's so special about Ajay? you keep on talking about him. I said, today we will understand what's so special about him. He brings a lot of experience, he has worked with ICICI Bank for a long time, then we met at IDFC and then he's with L&T Finance, and before we get into something specific, I want to share a story. This is important because it touched me when it happened to me. Now, I was reasonably new there and there was a protocol that when somebody above a particular level had to be hired from business, somebody from HR had to be there.

Ketan [00:03:43] I was relatively new, I requested Ajay. Ajay was heading talent acquisition for the entire bank. As I said, Ajay being Ajay, for me, he said yes. We were sitting in this interview, we were interviewing somebody for one lead kind of a role, for a reasonably senior position. This guy on the other side started sharing his story, this guy also worked with ICICI Bank. There was a year when the global meltdown happened. But I know, Ajay along with the other leaders there, took calls to relocate and move people into other units, but not let anybody go.

Ketan [00:04:20] Now, this guy shared a story that in 2008-09, I was in a unit in this particular bank and I just mailed to my HR business partner. Then, the business head called Ajay Pandey that my mother needed help. Within 48 hours, without anything, I was transferred to a business unit that I wanted and my job continued. Now, this was an eight-year-old story that he remembered, and he had no idea, he had never met Ajay, he had no idea that this is the same Ajay Pandey he is speaking to, that was a real test of HR.

Ketan [00:05:03] We talk about culture, we talk about leading from the front, but I think that was the test of saying that, you've done so much for somebody that somebody is carrying that in his head. That guy was like, 'Wow, you're Ajay sir. Thank you so much". So I think who better than him who can talk about matters of cultures, the things that matter to people, a leader that I look upon to. I think he's a leader with a lot of courage, that's something that I personally learn from him. Now, if he has a point of view, it doesn't matter who you are. He will put across the point of view, he will have a discussion on that and then after that, he will come back and say, this is what we decided. But a lot to learn from him.

Ketan [00:05:45] I think he's seen a lot in life. I used to talk about some 20-30 Surya Namaskars and he would come and say, "Hey, I did 108 today" and he runs eleven kilometers in some minutes, he would say, I would be like, does he really do all that. There are a lot of stories that he has shared with me. But yeah, that's Ajay Pandey for you guys. Ajay, welcome again to Culture Club's e-club episodes powered by Culture Monkey, and thank you for joining in again If you could help us understand more about your organization if that helps and then we can come to question and hear more from you.

Ajay [00:06:27] Yes, sure, thank you very much Ketan, you have been very kind, more than kind actually, I noted one point that, next time when I go for an interview, I'll give you as a reference. In the context of what Ketan has said, it doesn't take too much to be, it's just about being natural and normal. I think it takes a lot of hard work when you have to be different than what naturally you should be. For example, let's say you are at home dealing with the children or dealing with the family, you behave in a certain manner when you are in the office when it comes to your team members, why do you want to behave differently?

Ajay [00:07:15] Then that's not a natural behavior, because the only thing that differentiates it, you don't own the chaps in office who work for you because of whom, you get your bread and butter and at home, you own. There is a lot of accountability and ownership of a family. So if you are just similar, simple, and natural, I think these things, these standards of behaviors come out. I think it's far easier to be normal and not be double-sided. Thank you so much, Ketan.

Ketan [00:07:50] I think hearing from you about what you manage, what you oversee, a bit about the organization if that's comfortable for you.

Ajay [00:07:57] Sure, L&T finance has a story since 2016 when it completely turned around, I see it as a bigger story because to me, one of the main heroes or one of the leaders who actually was a critical part of that story is an HR person. He was an HR guy, we worked together in ICICI for 10 years. So, he came and shifted as chief executive for rural, and he is the guy who really, along with the MD, turned around the whole organization. Today, we see our ROI is significantly growing up, our ROI used to be less than 9%.

Ajay [00:08:44] Our ROI moved from less than nine percent to 18 percent, which is a significant jump. Profits which we were doing annually, today we do more than that in less than a quarter. So, that's the change that has happened. Our manpower base has significantly changed into around 5000-6000 in 2016. Today, we are close to 25000 people. So, it's moved significantly and all of that has been simply because of keeping basic aspects in place, saying let's work further, let's focus on returns to the stakeholders who have invested in us, who have trusted us, and ensure that they also get the same return as a consequence, employees also get a significant upside in their take home.

Ajay [00:09:37] My role recently moved from rural. I started this new business at SME. So I was given the charge of starting up this SME business, plus I was given charge of HR operations, talent acquisition, and employee engagement. So I've moved from rural to these four functions. We need to strengthen these four areas, we need more engagement with the employees, we need the whole talent acquisition engine to be now aligned, to support the system for the next phase of growth. Practice point of view, it has to be strengthened a lot. Ask me, it was the new business, so it was given to me to manage the growth, though we have held back SME launch at this point in time, we'll shortly do it in some time, but this is the change that is currently there.

Ketan [00:10:30] Thank you, Ajay. That definitely gives us a perspective and congratulations again on the new role and the new challenge, I'm sure it's going to be as exciting as it is.

Ajay [00:10:42] It is, in fact, more than exciting, it's really challenging because there are so many things that need to be done.

Ketan [00:10:53] Ajay, we have a set of five questions for you and hearing your views both as an HR leader and if in the context of the organization, whatever is comfortable for you, which can help typically the people that who see these videos are HR professionals who're looking at, learning from others and people who have been there and seen that, and especially during these times, I think a lot of insights and practices are important. So completely up to you in terms of how you want to respond.

Ketan [00:11:31] I will come to the first question. Now, what challenges do you think the CXOs are dealing with post-COVID, especially when it comes to matters of culture and engagement and the world going remote? So, what are those challenges that you have seen or you anticipate may come further?

Ajay [00:11:52] The whole discussion is around culture. So, I would prefer to start with culture as a point. Let's first see what culture is and how culture actually defines the organization. I'm not trying to propagate a certain religion, but the most favorite example of mine is from the Mahabharata where there were many learnings and many things that we've picked up from that. But when we talk about this thing called core culture, one question that was always in my mind since when I was small is what is it that made the Pandavas victorious despite the fact that they were very very minuscule in terms of size and capability and strength compared to the Kauravas.

Ajay [00:12:53] What is it? It's culture. Very clear. Both the organizations had different cultures and if we have to talk about a few aspects of that, The Pandavas had clearly a shared goal, there was a complete alignment to the cause of the organization. People believed in it, people were combining the purpose of the organization and each person had a position there, each person had a responsibility. So there was so much ownership, there was so much accountability, there was so much faith that the organization had and the people had in the organization mission.

Ajay [00:13:32] There was so much faith and followership towards the leader. Was it the Kauravas? People preferred to be blind and not wanting to see things despite them happening. For example, Gandhari, she was not blind, but it's symbolic that she preferred to put a blindfold on herself because she didn't want to interfere and get into anything. People preferred to be ignorant despite being the strongest warriors. There was a warrior capable of turning around the war, but he preferred to follow the chair, follow the order of the chair rather than looking at what is right and what is wrong. He was ignorant, he wanted to be a very good follower instead of looking at things in the right context.

Ajay [00:14:21] The entire team was built around sheer. It was not out of willingness, the team was built around fear, so people despite the fact that they didn't believe in the cause for which the Kauravas were standing, they were there because they had the fear that otherwise I'll be attacked and I'll be annexed. So, these two aspects are so different and such a small army went and defeated such a big army just because of these aspects. I brought this context from the point of view that we often say that, will COVID really impact our culture.

Ajay [00:14:58] The hypothesis I am trying to put forward is that COVID will not really impact culture, culture is too strong. It may impact the ways of doing things probably. So if we really go forward and see what culture is, culture is about a tool that leadership would put in place to achieve a certain objective or a task. If we explain culture in a way like how is it so deep-rooted, let me take the example of the tip of the iceberg.

Ajay [00:15:35] The tip of the iceberg, basically, you see 10 percent of the iceberg is visible above the water level and 90 percent of it, is below that and that by the virtue of the role of Science. Now, the quality and the quantity of what is underwater, what is hidden, what is not visible, actually defines the size and the quality and the characteristics of what is visible to us. We can align that to our human behavior and the behavior of people are impacted by the value systems, the belief systems that are not visible, that are built over a period of time, that are built through our social engagements, through our family engagements, through our religious engagements, through organization engagements, through teachers, mentors, call whatever it may be.

Ajay [00:16:33] So under the water, the value system, the belief system that is there helps us build a certain attitude. We gently say that this guy has a negative attitude, but we're not able to see what attitude is, that translates into a behavior, and that behavior is above the water. Summation of all this is what I call, from an organizational context, a culture, the way of doing things, the way of behavior. So, it is so deeply entrenched that it is not really impacted unless and until, there is excessive utilization of force and creation of pain to change a culture, to change the way of doing things. So, this behavior which is visible to me after the consequence of that behavior, whether it's a desirable consequence or an undesirable consequence, we decide to go back and then question the stuff that is below the water, saying that, is my belief right, is my approach right, am I doing the right action.

Ajay [00:17:43] Attitude and behavior are definitely very different, though we use that as similar words. But the attitude I often say is the readiness to react to a certain stimulus and behavior is the actual reaction to a certain stimulus. So culture is that for me, for us to redefine the whole thing. It actually shakes the world view of an individual. It shakes the world view of the organization.

Ajay [00:18:16] Let me further elaborate on this. Let us say, by virtue of our beliefs, our values etcetera that we have built by virtue of engagement with our dear friend or a family member, we see our father as a very, very respected senior in the family. He is my caretaker, he is my guide, he is my mentor, he is everything, and therefore, my life revolves around the confidence that this kind of social support is available for me, forever. Suddenly, the father passes away, it goes and shakes my strongly held belief that there's a strong support system existing for me. It completely shakes people.

Ajay [00:19:04] What happens when death occurs? It shakes us up. People change, behaviors change. So there are very, very strong events, there are painful events, there's a lot of force that is required to actually change the final outcome which is the behavior which comes as a consequence of the change in my underwater systems. So, culture cannot be really impacted so much, it can temporarily make you go and reconsider your values, belief system. It will temporarily make you go and realign yourself, but overall, I think it will not change.

Ajay [00:19:41] The second point I want to make about culture is, it's a very messy thing. It's very complex, it's not so simple.

Ketan [00:19:49] That's why we had to get you here.

Ajay [00:20:01] Let's take the example of military services and I have been from the armed forces, so I categorize it quite well. Military services consider the sacrifice of self for the nation, as a supreme sacrifice. You're there to give yourself up for the nation. So anything beyond that, when you are ready to give yourself up, you are actually being cruel to yourself in a certain manner that, they do not hesitate in the killing, very disciplined people, hard minds, physically very hard, they believe in discipline, valor, courage, these are the aspects that define a military job. They look at the paradox.

Ajay [00:20:49] They're the most caring individuals, when it comes to the well-being of the family, the well-being of fellow soldiers, the well-being of subordinates, they're supposed to be the most caring individuals. Now, how does this happen? How do you create a culture like this? How can the military services be caring as well as collaborative? They're not sensitive at all when it comes to doing the job, they are very tough people. So that's why I said, it's very messy. The most misplaced definition of culture is, I have a lot of hesitancy in taking this.

Ajay [00:21:35] How to define culture, how to demonstrate culture, how to make people align with those cultures and values? It's not such an easy aspect. Culture is often, as you said so, there are some basic tenets, they have to be there to propagate culture, they're required that it really be required if you have a cognitive-emotional alignment of people. People's hearts and minds have to be aligned to that aspect of the organization, which would therefore impact the action of that individual. There have to be certain basic tenets in the culture that, you know, like, for example, there has to be a set of shared and shared belief systems.

Ajay [00:22:31] The organization has to demonstrate a kind of attitude. I would say, like when I was in ICICI bank, there was an attitude we would carry when we would meet our customers when we would meet our employees when we would meet our colleagues. We had coined a word saying, 'Saath Aapkaa' meaning, for the customers as well as people. Mr. Ram Kumar who has been my mentor and today whatever good, I would be talking, it's because of the learning that had from him, mistakes are mine.

Ajay [00:23:07] Mr. Ram Kumar used to say, once an ICICI, always an ICICI. People who have left the system and gone have called him back for certain support and the ICICI system has validated them. So that attitude, we used to carry in our heads. There has to be an identity that people carry. There's a need for identity. Who am I? Who are we as a system in our Organization? What do we stand for? Some say, no, we make money, some say we want to give ROI to our customers, some say no, I will serve my customers and nothing is wrong in any of them. It's our decision, it's a conscious call.

Ajay [00:23:53] Some say I will serve my customers and sales will be a consequence of that. So there are different ways. Now, somebody says, I'll just go and service my customers and says there will be a consequence, may seem contrary to somebody who says, no I stand for profitability or I stand for this or that, may not. There has to be a set of laws, a set of norms that bind people, which makes people behave in a certain way. The biggest of all is how do you propagate these things in the organization. So, a seat of rituals that you carry, how do you reward people around those cultural and value systems, how do you engage people, how to reward them, how to propagate them.

Ajay [00:24:35] What are the rituals that you carry in terms of showcasing such people in the organizations, where people get aligned to it and the standards that are required to put a culture in place and culture is not always an outcome of a certain activity, it keeps on moving as an organization grows because there are certain culture keepers who are old people in the organization? There are certain cultural challengers who come from outside, join the system, fight their way inside, get assimilated, then they kind of negotiate their way of working and find a newer way of working which keeps redefining ourselves.

Ajay [00:25:17] So it is not so weak, therefore that COVID 19 may come and disrupt our culture. Coming to the challenges that we may be facing. In terms of challenges, yes the P&L is impacted, the shift in the focus from growth to sustaining, taking control of the situation, rebuilding yourself, and then again, going forward, looking forward to rebuilding yourself to the next phase. Yes, these challenges happen. There are challenges with regard to employment.

Ajay [00:26:32] It gets more from less, demands more from people, demands higher productivity. Somewhere challenges the work-life balance of people, lack of direct supervision. Therefore, in my office, I know that people are sitting and doing certain transactions, I have control over them or I don't have control over them, I trust them, it's not easy to trust people that they will sit somewhere else and give me the same output. So these are challenges. How do I ring-fence my key talent and ensure that these people are there with me and they do not move out, I do not have the flexibility of compensating them at this point in time? What do I do?

Ajay [00:27:19] Therefore, do I build a strong succession plan to ensure that the people risk is managed, or do I have to look at it differently from how do I retain my key talent and there are a lot of employee-related aspects which are also going to challenge the CXOs, which is like dealing with insecurity of the employees which is personal and professional both? In the case of personal insecurity. I don't know somebody in the family or somebody in my neighborhood catches these vibes and there is the insecurity of life while I am saying this, I have been going to the office since May, but it's indeed there, unable to correct in the workspace.  

Ajay [00:28:08] Now, when you come to the office, there's a lot of social capital that gets created, when you engage with people, talk to people, understand people, that entire social capital is lost. I feel insecure at what is happening behind my back, I don't know. How am I getting assessed, I don't know. How am I getting evaluated, I don't know, what I hear, I hear on the phone or the email. Now, that's not the best medium to really help us make a judgment about ourselves. We often informally seek a time where we go and speak to colleagues, speak to seniors, whereby we talk to them.

Ajay [00:28:48] We don't just talk to them, we also assess their body language. These things are completely missing. So that becomes a challenge. The other challenge that our CXO has is the workplace, the complete change of norms. Now, if he wants to call people, the same workplace can only accommodate 33 percent of the people, it used to otherwise accommodate. The dilemma is, I either go for more, more real estate, or I start trusting my people. The choice one has to forcibly make. So, therefore, they have to really look at, rewriting theories of people, rewriting the activities of people, extensive use of technology, creating guidelines on how to work, etcetera.

Ajay [00:29:42] So how do I ensure that the same level of performance continues, doesn't impact my productivity, and work from home happens? There when we started working, indeed some very interesting things that came out, it set me thinking obviously never done these things before or was thinking and understanding that dilemma was there.

Ajay [00:30:09] Why don't we trust our people, that was the first reaction and then I thought, well if I were running my business if I have my driver who's working with me for the last seven, eight years if he takes my car and goes somewhere for some work and I'm not with him, I still call him and ask him, where are you? What time are you reaching back? simple car, the driver has gone and I know that if he misses the car, his life is at risk, but I still ask. So, my CXO is really right in asking, how do I trust that people will be at work? so we clearly started bifurcating roles. So one school of thought was that yes, all functions that are directly linked to revenue, whether it is sales, collections can be seen as functions. Let's take credit, for example, which will be anyways evaluated by the outcome.

Ajay [00:31:14] The functions like accounts and finance, legal, etcetera, we said, how do we know what they're doing and what they're supposed to do? So then we got this idea of ensuring that everybody's key arrays are properly in place. It's a tough exercise to get everybody's key arrays in place, align it to a single philosophy that key arrays should actually address the financial aspects, process aspects, the people aspect, the customer aspect, etcetera. We had actually done that exercise and it really came in handy today. So we said, we have got the key arrays in place, why don't we try and see if we can list down activities.

Ajay [00:32:08] We said okay, we may not want to cover the entire leadership in this. Let's list down certain activities that they do. For example, a person is supposed to do sales and he's a frontline sales guy, though he's not part of that activity, I'm just giving an example. He's supposed to prepare his sales plan, he is supposed to go to the field as per the plan, meet the customer, explain the product, understand the KYC details, get the documents, so there is a host of activities. As for HR operations, these are the 25 activities a person does. So we said okay, let's list it down.

Ajay [00:32:53] The next thought that came to my mind was, people get busy into various types. One is a routine care act, one is a project, you have a special project to run, you are trying to work on it, trying to align your stakeholders towards it, it's not a part of normal care, it's a different project. The third is reviews and meetings and discussions that you keep having, whether it is a review of your team or you're part of a review or you are getting reviewed and the fourth is ad-hoc work. This made it very easy for us to be iterative now.

Ajay [00:33:45] So we built a system, the system is currently a prototype that will be ready tomorrow actually where we said, each individual carries a list of activities and we have a list of activities about good, we have 606 roles in our organization today and for good about close to 400 roles, we have listed down the activities. Now, once we have listed down the activities, we build a system where, it goes into an order, first the employee will pick the task time. So he says, task time is my routine caring, review meeting, project review, or ad-hoc task.

Ajay [00:34:32] Let's say, for example, he clicks the key array, then all the key arrays drop. He clicks that key array and the list of activities drop, he clips that activity, start time, and time is noted. I know it may sound primitive, it may sound cumbersome, but we wanted to make it like this because it's also important to de-escalate to this extent, because if I have to make people write down free writing what they do, there is little that, I will get out of it, somebody will just write okay, somebody press the spacebar, somebody will say dot dot dot and move on and the system will still accept that.

Ajay [00:35:10] This will enable people and there'll be a lot of consistency in what people are writing, so start time, end time, etc. will be written. Over the end of the day, it gives a summary to that individual and the supervisor, what is it that my team has done? if I want to take a high-level output, I will say, my team has been busy 25 percent of the time in doing projects, 45 percent of the time doing carry activity, but a lot of times, you had to be taken on ad hoc areas, what has this meeting done or some other way. So it'll bring that ability for me to assess the way my team has been engaged.

Ajay [00:35:49] If I want to further analyze it, I can pick up the name of the person and see what exactly he's been doing and how he's been doing and the supervisor certifies this timesheet, and then that gets moved. This system also ties into our Google Calendar. So it is also able to assess if the person is saying, I was in the meeting, whether the calendar also had the meeting at that time or not. Some call it checking, somebody may call it policing, but to start with, we want to be very, very sure as to how things are progressing. So this tool has been developed. The prototype is ready, making us quite happy about the way we progressed. I think next month onwards, we will be able to implement it. I'm sure employees will like it.

Ajay [00:36:49] So this is how we have progressed in addressing this issue with regards to the challenges that CXOs would face and how do we put the model in front of them, which would actually address their challenges.

Ketan [00:37:07] Thank you so much, Ajay, for lots of insights, perspectives that you brought. I think the next session with Ajay should definitely be a two-hour, detailed one. I think Ajay, we've done a lot of sessions, but the context that you have built, the stories that you've built, I think, it's giving us very important examples and I know, I worked with a lot of fresh starting organizations, but a lot of things that you said made me think differently. So thank you.

Ketan [00:37:54] What would this mean to the HR fraternity, what is that one thing you want the HR fraternity to be prepared for? Because a lot has changed, and I can sense that you're telling that, we have to adopt a lot of things, you spoke about technology, new systems, trust, relationship building, stakeholder management, but to the HR fraternity, what is one thing that you want to tell them, that which will possibility redefine HR as we go ahead post COVID?

Ajay [00:38:28] Well, yes, the role of HR has significantly moved and got redefined. So, I would say the way we're doing things has now changed. There is significant use of technology, in other times there was a possibility to engage employees face-to-face. Now the engagement of employees Face-To-Face may not happen because you may not always really have people available on videos also, people don't prefer that.

Ajay [00:39:04] Again, a distant engagement is a distant engagement. Engaging a person over video who is already known to you is far different from engaging an outsider or an unknown person on the video. The alignment of employees, now today, as I said, there are few tenets of culture, there are certain objects that align. For example, in my nation, there's a national anthem, there's a national flag. That acts as an object which aligns and builds that Indianness in me, that culturally binds me to the overall nation. Today, those props are missing.

Ajay [00:39:48] The challenge for the HR fraternity, therefore, is how do we create those props in the virtual world to get that cognitive, emotional alignment of people. In the mind, they start thinking in an aligned manner, therefore, they start believing from the heart, and therefore their actions are in line with what we expect. Simple logic. The performance evaluation process changes.

Ajay [00:40:19] A lot of time and it may not be so much for the junior levels, but for the senior levels, a lot of time we would say, well, well, well, he has some function key arrays and he has some behavioral key arrays and there's some functional expectation and there is some behavioral expectation, then where will I just this behavioral expectation from? What do we do about it? I don't see him engaging in meetings, I don't see him engage in offices, I don't see him talking in forums.

Ajay [00:40:49] But I know that we need to reconsider. One of the key aspects of HR was ground sensing - traveling, meeting people, understanding the pulse of the Organization, understanding what is happening on the ground, is the way of doing business the same as what it had been articulated, are there some hidden issues, is that a leadership issue. This all has gone off. How do I, therefore, create proxies, to give me that same grounds?

Ajay [00:41:28] For example, can productivity levels of employees become a proxy to that, can adherence to meeting schedules be a proxy to that, can we build some kind of scorecard around these behavior of people on the alternate talents which should give me an outcome saying, do I need to raise a red flag for the Organization or do I see things happening normally? These are the areas the HR fraternity has to now rethink. Enabling work from home using technology is easier. These are the difficult aspects that will really challenge our function moving forward.

Ajay [00:42:25] Another interesting thing is that, when we talk face to face, our whole body talks. My hands talk, my eyes talk, my face talks, I also use verbal communication. In remote channels. It's just the voice and communication is a key agenda of the HR team. How do we ensure that the same communication is clearly, clearly, clearly, without any doubt understood by the last leg any doubt, that is going to be a challenge. So, to be able to articulate the organisation agenda in a very short, crisp, clear manner and to be able to get a confirmation of the understanding of people, that's another challenge.

Ajay [00:43:25] This is the time which will give rise to a lot of rumours. I can give you a very simple example, missing comma, and therefore the meaning of the sentence changes. If I use a comma, after or before the word, the meaning changes. So how do I ensure that I'm so clear and my frontline people in any organisation are not so articulate? We'll have to figure out how I now engage and communicate with my employees so that they're able to work with a free mind.

Ajay [00:44:27] Training is one area that I missed talking about. Upskilling our managers, upskilling our supervisors on managing the workforce through e-channels and remote channels are going to be another key aspect. It may involve behavioural training modes, like when you are face to face with a person, you can ridicule, review, but you have a choice after that engagement putting the hand on the shoulder of the person and saying, let's go for coffee and you do a recovery process, you don't have that choice in this channel. We're working on that module as well . How do I train my supervisor on how to handle remote teams? So these are a few challenges that we as an HR function will have to face.

Ketan [00:45:27] Very important points, Ajay. Thank you and I think this actually comes from a lot of experience and perspective. Thank you for pointing those out. I'm fairly certain that I have gained a lot of insights.

Ketan [00:45:52] There are a few questions that I think have addressed, but I'll bring back again towards the end, Ajay. One more question, what new things would you tell individual people who are working in organisations to open to and embrace in this new world?

Ajay [00:46:29] One basic first principle is, don't worry. This is a challenge, it will go. It has actually given us a way of, it has created new norms of working, that's all. I mean, there was a fashion of bell-bottom at a point of time, then the fashion changed, get used to it? In my childhood, if somebody used to wear a bell bottom, I would say, wow, amazing pants. Today, if somebody wears that, I laugh. So a day will come when we will laugh at the fact that I have to report to the office at 9:00 every day. So, I would say, get used to it. Let's not worry and let's get used to the e-way of doing things, that is going to be the new way of doing things. Let's accept it and move on.

Ajay [00:47:28] These are certain facts for which you don't have a solution. For example, death does not have a solution, accept it, and move on right? If you are attacked by a disease, there is a possible solution. Therefore, we go to various hospitals, doctors, and we try and get rectified. Today, there is a situation that has come, which is not in my control, completely uncertain. Let's accept it and move on. So don't get deterred by this situation, that's point number one. Point number two is getting used to the e-way of working, at least for the managers and the leaders, I say over communicate, from the point of view of the frequency of communication. Keep in touch with people.

Ajay [00:48:14] They are the ones who are doing their jobs. We are the ones who reap the benefit of the hard work that the front line guy does and I'm not ashamed of saying it, this is the real truth and certain aspects of the basic discipline that assumes that when you're sitting at home, you're not at home, you're in the office, you're working, that changes the whole paradigm.

Ajay [00:48:43] The moment I believe that I am at home, so we've kind of mandated to our team members that, Be well dressed, have a closed environment, don't get disturbed, when you're on a video call, there are certain guidelines that we have given people to follow and a lot of self-discipline in terms of adherence to thinking which otherwise, my boss would come and remind me. Some self-discipline in terms of following the diary, following the culture of doing things in my own time is very, very basic.

Ajay [00:49:17] Be simple and natural, that answers the whole issue. We try to overreact and make mistakes. At the time, my mentor used to say that, whatever way the pitch behaves, if you put your head down and put a straight bat, you will not lose your hope. But the moment we start manufacturing strokes unnaturally, you're sure to lose. So in this situation, put your head down, offer a straight bat, nothing will go wrong.

Ketan [00:50:06] You talk a lot about e-way becoming a reality, so I am gonna bring two questions together. One, you spoke a lot about the challenges, the CXOs or the organization have faced. Now, has this change also brought up a much-needed transition in the thinking of CXOs that we have seen over time, there are things that we as HR folks try to ensure that people need to understand and need to understand it, do you think COVID has brought the silver lining somewhere?

Ketan [00:50:43] Second, what do you see overall? Is e-culture the reality that is going to be there for some time? So I'm bringing these two together. I know you've touched upon that, but I think I would definitely want to hear from you combined or individually and on these two points.

Ajay [00:51:04] e-culture is there to stay, definitely because of the benefits that this IT enabling and the e-culture had made available to us was not really utilized to the maximum till yesterday. It's only today that we started maximizing the capabilities that it provides. Once we have used it and that forms a part of the way of doing things, I think it will stay for long because it gives a lot of flexibility, a lot of cost-saving happens.

Ajay [00:51:44] Organisations save a lot on real estate costs, employees save a lot of communication cost, the overall pollution levels in the city goes down because there are fewer cars on the road. Because of lesser pollution, disease levels are lesser on a lighter note. There are a lot of other consequences that we will start seeing because of this. Flexibility will be there, you'll be able to be there with your near and dear ones, even during office hours without bothering your office timings at the hour of need. So there are a host of benefits that come across. Currently, we don't see it because I said the change is a painful process.  We're being pushed to make this change. It is giving us pain because of the insecurity that we are going through.

Ajay [00:52:30] Let me draw an example of this. In 1986, the whole revolution of computerisation started happening in the government sector where the unions were up a notch and I'm using this example because the same revolution is happening now, IT enabling. We will have job losses. So when the railways tried to introduce computerised railway ticketing counters, the railway unions created a lot of trouble. We will lose jobs, we will do this, we will have this, you know what the real consequences are. In Bombay like city, there used to be just two ticket counters for reservation of long journey trains before computerisation. After the computerisations, every railway station has a ticketing counter. So, jobs actually got created.

Ajay [00:54:00] So, once we see the benefits of this, lesser use of the real estate, more flexibility for people to work. I know currently the work timings make it a little regimented, so that organisation will also want to see how they build trust over employees. But slowly, slowly they lose any doubt, these are the 10 things that have to be done, you do it in the night, you do it in the day, it doesn't really bother me. You give the delivery. So we will start measuring the actual outcome instead of the process of the way we're doing things. In the minds of CXOs, this is coming as an advantage.

Ketan [00:54:50] Thank you, Ajay. I think we will have a chat with Senthil, more and more conversations of yours that we would like to give to others. As always, it was a delight.

Ketan [00:55:06] So we have five Rapidfire questions for you, Ajay. And to the audience, I'm going to warn them and to tell this out loudly. So if you really want somebody to hang around and have fun with, I think Ajay is your person. He will make you laugh to the extent you would never imagine, amazingly funny. I remember the first week of my joining, I got introduced and Ajay called me and said to me, we're going out and there is a good bar nearby, let's go. I said I don't drink. He said, hey wrong guy.

Ketan [00:55:50] Those were the ice-breaking moments. But I do remember that. He's an amazingly fun person to hang, his sense of humor is absolutely, absolutely stunning. I'm sure, if you're traveling to Mumbai, I think we definitely should hang around. He will make you laugh like anything. So like these five, I'm sure they are going to be super interesting, Ajay. Let me see if this time if I'm able to get you in a different direction. So between life and the forces and HR, in the next life, which one would you prefer?

Ajay [00:56:28] Life in the forces.

Ketan [00:56:30] The second one, cooking, cleaning, and mopping during COVID, which was easier for you?

Ajay [00:57:00] Cooking was actually easier.

Ketan [00:57:01] What is your next personal goal?

Ajay [00:57:23] When I retire, I would leave a legacy. Some kind of legacy which sustains even after I have left the organization, it's not there just because I'm there. It continues, because it holds value and people remember me after a few years saying, you know, two years back, four years back, this guy leads, but this is what he has done. If I can ever do that, I think I'll be happy.

Ketan [00:57:48] I'm sure you've already done that quite instant. The first thing that I spoke about that zonal guy that wanted to hire was exactly the legacy you have created, thank you. One book that had maximum impact on you?

Ajay [00:58:03] Leveraging Human Capital by Mr. Ram Kumar. This is actually a practitioner's guide, and I've worked with Ram for 10 years and he's been my guy. The way, he's very simply put it, It's amazing. So this book has really opened my eyes to the reality of HR.

Ketan [00:59:12] One thing, you personally thank COVID for?

Ajay [00:59:25] I think it has made us rethink ourselves. What is it that I really need in life? You know, we would be busy planning that, I have to go there, I have to party there, we have to go to this mall. I mean, we really saw that the moment lockdown happened, we could identify clearly, what are those basic needs that I really need to fulfill to sustain, and to be able to deliver what is required to be delivered. Everything else is a bunch of lies.

Ketan [01:00:16] Thank you, Ajay. To our audience, that's Ajay Pandey for you and it was amazing. We'll keep coming back to you.

Senthil [01:00:30] Thanks a lot, Ajay sir. I mean, this was not just another culture club session, this is more of extraordinary storytelling with superb facts and real-life events that you shared. I wanted to talk about the way I understood culture today. You know, maybe I'll take like two minutes to touch that.

Senthil [01:01:07] First, the way you started, where you said, being naturally normal, is actually less effort. If you are manufacturing your own strategy, starting there for culture, you've talked about the iceberg and the example from Mahabharata. I read up a bit. So last week I was going through Lord Krishna's reply to Arjuna, asking how I control my mind. So it's actually the same thing, today after you saying, I was able to relate to culture and how the human mind works.

Senthil [01:01:53] So the tip of the iceberg is the conscious part and below it's the unconscious and the subconscious is what they call the samskara. The samskara is the impression, attitude, and all that you have in your unconscious place and that drives your action, the moment it becomes an action, that's your karma. This is stage one and that's stage three. In between these two, there is raga and raga which is your likes and dislikes and Krishna says that, in this second stage, you can make that decision and you tell that I will wake up at five a.m. and the beauty of it is your actions, it's a cycle, your actions for a month or two months becomes your samskara. So like you said, the culture for an organization is driving the actions and the moment you're controlling the actions, actually you're modifying the culture as well over time and therefore the desired action is taken.  

Senthil [01:03:11] Thanks a lot for this micro enlightenment and it was phenomenal today that they know all the points that you've brought up have added like next-level value to the culture club and culture monkey as well. I really desire to have part two of this session. So thanks a lot for your time as well Ketan.

Ajay [01:03:50] Thank you, Senthil. Thank you, Ketan. You've been very kind. I hope this helps. It has been very learning and while I was talking, I was actually synthesizing in my mind, learning myself that, have I done these things right? It's an opportunity for me to rethink and re-evaluate my view of things. Thank you so much.

Ketan [01:04:16] Thank you so much, Have a great day.

It is a well-known truth that social media plays a tremendous role in shaping our opinions. Most social media users tend to use #TheNewNormal to indicate any kind of change, be it big or small.

This is the same case for the pandemic. Although it is a time of great transition and changes, people have gone slightly overboard with this term. Most of us have started using the term more as a trending hashtag rather than have a real understanding of the situation. For example, #TheNewNormal is used with images posted of people washing their hands and wearing masks.

This sentiment is explored in this episode of CultureClub by Vinay Trivedi, Head of Human Resources at ToneTag, a disruptive fintech startup in Bangalore that transfers data over sound waves through encrypted technology.

Vinay, a post-graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur, has worked with prestigious brands like HP, Accenture, Axis Bank, Future Generali India Life Insurance before joining ToneTag in 2018. He is also a part of the Corporate Advisory Board of Poornima University, as well as a student mentor for the Pune Institute of Business Management (PIBM).

This conversation between Vinay, Ketan (Head of People Functions, Rentomojo) and Senthil (Founder and CEO, CultureMonkey) covers everything from #TheNewNormal, predicting future trends in employee engagement, to social learning and its effect on remote working.

Dive into the details of their conversation by listening to their conversation here.

Transcript

Ketan [00:00:27] We have Vinay Trivedi with us and I met Vinay at one of the conferences. I think this was Feb or March somewhere and we were a part of a panel discussion and interestingly, that was around the HR and digital something around that. And I, of course, Vinay was probably the youngest out there sitting in terms of the experience. I'm not even getting into the age. But I was impressed with his thought processes, ability to put across his point of trust, and asking questions which were very, very fundamental in nature.

Ketan [00:01:03] On a lighter note, I don't know Vinay if you remember this, but he had a question in that conference saying that, will we as an HR, I am talking about HR getting digital, why are we having this conference live in physical? He said, why is this conference not happening over a digital platform. Lest that, one knew that this would become a reality. But I remember that question Vinay, I don't know if you recall that. But it raised a question. You know, in those conferences, there are people who there's a fundamental question that really. Wow, this just makes sense.

Ketan [00:01:37] I think I've been following him on his LinkedIn for some time. He posts certain videos, starting with talks and he's shared stories about organization, about people and Vinay is exhilarating. He did his Post Graduation P.M. in 2008. And he's been TA Pai young leader HR, a young HR leader which is run by times. He is also a speaker, he is a guest faculty, he is also a university board advisor and the most interesting thing that you would see on his LinkedIn description is, He's somebody who is trying to be human. I think that's something that's getting at a personal level.

Ketan [00:02:24] He has worked with brands like Accenture, ITC , Future Generali before joining Tone Tag and I think he's also if I understand correctly, he is a student mentor for Pune Institute of Business Management and he's also one of the Corporate advisory board of Poornima University. So, Vinay, thank you so much for joining us and we can begin with more about you that the audience can know and also watch your organization if that's okay with you.

Vinay [00:02:58] Sure. First of all, it is very kind of you to give such a nice introduction to me Ketan. Thank you for having me here, Senthil and Ketan. I could add some value to people who are listening to this conversation. I must say, I was certainly thrilled to know that if somebody was to listen to whatever I say, others had thought, I only talk on LinkedIn and you know, I just keep, you know, shipping news. But much appreciate it.

Vinay [00:03:34] Tone Tag, the organization that I work for, we are a fintech startup if I have to, you know, in a very simple way, explain what we do as an organization, we're essentially an organization that does the transfer of data from point A to point B or soundwave through encrypted technology. Now, this transfer of data could mean multiple used cases as far as technology deployment is concerned. It could mean payments from one device to another device, it could mean shopping that, you know, if I'm picking up something, the device talks to my device and adds to the cart automatically. So we have multiple use cases. It's fascinating to see how sound can be used through technology to transfer data. So that's what we do, as an organization. So we are a disruptive fintech product company originated out of India and that's who we are.

Senthil [00:04:39] If I can add one point here. I mean, Vinay, it's nice to listen to your company, what it does, it's actually very interesting. And for us in culture monkey, though we have a very high-tech solution for employee engagement. We always had this, see HR in the end, engagement is the end is psychology first, it's human first and that's the primary job. It's more than crunching numbers, more than making decisions, it's a very psychological and methodology implemented. So that's why we have this culture club by CultureMonkey. So glad to have you here and very excited to hear all the points that we're going to get from you and it's gonna be a great value for our audience. So yeah, without any further delay, Ketan let's get started with the questions.

Ketan [00:06:06] Looking at what COVID has done, what challenges do you think in your experience is CXOs have been dealing with post-COVID, especially when it comes to matters around culture and the world going remote, what are the things that you have seen, Vinay?

Vinay [00:06:25] I am an optimist and I see all of these crises as huge opportunities, what we as HR folks could not drive doing for so many years very successfully, a pandemic has done. So for CXOs, I think it was a huge unlearning and relearning exercise of getting work done remotely because they were not used to it, they were not very agile to get used to a lot of industry segments like your BFSI, manufacturing. A lot of these segments were not open to such changes. So there's a huge wave of unlearning that has happened where people have at CXO level, people have adapted to newer ways of managing a workforce, newer ways of working themselves and also getting their teams productive.

Vinay [00:07:19] So I think one of the biggest advantages is the change management that has happened in terms of appreciating that you could do a lot of things remotely and that has been the biggest shift in the way CXOs have scaled up to manage their teams. Obviously, any change is not very simple, so everybody goes through a share. Change or a transition is like your flight taking off, so when you have to gain that thrust, you have to put all your energy to actually get to that thrust of cruising level, and then when you're cruising, it's pretty stable where you happily sort of fly in. So that's what has happened.

Vinay [00:08:00] First one month, there was a lot of disbelief, there was a lot of excitement, there was a lot of anxiety, there were a lot of rules that people were setting up, that you have to log in at this time, you have to be in a noiseless place, you have to do this, you have to do that. Because everybody was discovering themselves, every day as it comes and how they can work. Slowly that has settled down. Now people are saying it's okay if there's background noise at your house., no problem. It's okay if you have to switch off, no problem, keep your routine.

Vinay [00:08:30] So a lot of things, we at sort of CXO levels also have learned as we practice because we were also facing the same issues as our teams were facing. First time, we were all on an equal platform as far as infrastructure is concerned. So, a lot of those things eventually settled down. I think it's now pretty much a smooth sail in a lot of sectors and I think everybody's getting or have gotten used to the new ways of working.

Ketan [00:08:59] Nice and just to take this question ahead, because you already spoke about what are the positives that had happened. As per you, what has been that silver lining in this entire change. What is it one thing as an HR professional, you have always wanted to happen and COVID, made it happen for you?

Vinay [00:09:25] One biggest silver lining that has happened is the word 'trust' has actually got life. People are more trusting today than they were ever before. While a lot of large companies, a lot of companies have trust as a core value, but somebody is taken a day off, people want to believe he or she is rather giving interviews or there is something that somebody is up to. We've always had this trust deficit as a psychological behavior. This pandemic, because we were not left with any choice. I think trust as a factor, people have just begun trusting their teams. So tomorrow, once everything goes back to normal and we will go back to normal, we will go back to normal lifestyles.

Vinay [00:10:16] It's not going to be a permanent change. At least that's my strong opinion. But if somebody wants to have a flexi working arrangement, people will trust you which otherwise was a huge challenge. So that's one-word 'trust', which I think is a huge silver lining.

Ketan [00:10:33] I'm glad you called it out and I am also with a similar belief that the world will come back to a large part of normalcy. That's how we are going to evolve. It's important because a lot of things that became regular - things like going to the office. A lot of people hated the office for a very, very long time. I think now we know how important it is to be socially present there, chitchatting, talking to people, and other things. I shared a similar opinion as you do.

Ketan [00:11:12] What do you think this means? How is it redefining HR? What should it mean for the HR fraternity in your view?

Vinay [00:11:22] I think it redefines HR in two or three aspects, really. The first aspect, It allows HR to have logical conversations as far as role flexibility is concerned. Earlier, there was rigidity, in the sense that you got to come to the office because that's how the world works, etcetera. Even if HR had to go back and say that, we can have flexi working arrangements, there were really, you know, hogwash or eyewash policies in most of the organization and a Herculean task in a lot of traditional setups truly will get that flexibility as well. So that is totally redefined. Now HR has a great opportunity to sit down with business teams and say, hey, can we make a list of all the roles that logically can be performed remotely or flexibly, which opens up our doors to get talent from across the country, including tier 3, tier 4 towns and still get them to be productive. So that definitely is a great opportunity.

Vinay [00:12:24] The second opportunity is from an interview and a recruitment cycle perspective as well. I think a lot of us used to struggle to get candidates in person, to get candidates to come to our offices, so on and so forth. Thankfully, a lot of that will be much smoother and acceptable. So now the focus is going to be on how we can improve the quality of candidates and how we can get candidates' inputs and how we can ensure that we have a face to face. A lot of those things will sort of just vanish. So I think these two are really critical changing points while it may seem very simple but critical changing points to the way workplaces are going to be set up in the way forward.

Ketan [00:13:14] Do you think this is somewhere going to also add or work as a catalyst in the adoption of technology and digital and data by this?

Vinay [00:13:34] I think that the catalyst role is already done Ketan, we've already adapted to the way technology is, we have already adapted to newer ways of working. Nobody trained us. Nobody told us what new ways we can work on how we can work. So that job has happened in the last three or four months. Now, how we encash that is gonna be more critical as we go forward.

Ketan [00:14:05] What's your view on this obsession with the term, the new normal?

Vinay [00:14:26] I really think social media has played a very negative role in the way a lot of things are actually shaping up and our obsession to be on social media platforms has further fathered the resolve to make sure that these things keep coming up. New normal, as a term or our obsession to talk about whatever new things are happening in a very different manner, is fine when you do that initially. But our obsession unfortunately is that, if anything that happens, we want to keep using the same terms. Oh, this is new normal, this is new normal. I am combing my hair, it's new normal. I am wearing a mask, it's the new normal. I am taking a selfie, it's new normal. You just want to go overboard, to get some attention because we have an attention deficit.

Vinay [00:15:19] We're not socially meeting people. So to continue to get our attention, as human beings. Psychologically speaking, we keep seeking attention or reaffirmation as well. That's what these terms help us get because they're trending.

Ketan [00:15:44] Another one and Vinay especially with you, I'm asking this question because I know you have a very straight and direct point of view. Now what happened with me is, when this work from home started, suddenly I was getting at least 10 webinar invites a day. What actually has been driving that and what's your point of view on the sudden surge in the number of webinars and 99.99% were free and joined this free webinar. So, for me personally, it was overwhelming, and not being able to attend some of them was very bad for me. So what do you think was happening and what's your thought around this one?

Vinay [00:16:28] You know, in the 1980s and 90s, the term that was used more often was 'insecurity', you're insecure and that's why you're doing all of these things. In the current scenario, it is the fear of missing out, with the genze and millennials and fear of missing out is a bigger pandemic than the actual pandemic itself, because either you want to be a part of a webinar to present because you've seen somebody else's post on LinkedIn or any other social media platform that you're speaking at a certain forum. And likewise, when you are seeing that, I'm able to get to talk to people so easily, I want to jump onto that bandwagon.

Vinay [00:17:15] Initially, when this world sort of suddenly changed upside down, I would say it was really a boon. It was a boon because suddenly it gave access to so many conversations that in a normal scenario, people may not have had the opportunity to actually do those conversations through these webinars. A lot of seniors in the industry, a lot of celebrities, a lot of famous people that you could only imagine seeing them without having a personal conversation, they were available to have conversations. So it was definitely a boon where your learning zoomed out.

Vinay [00:17:51] But what happens with anything is like, I'll give you an example. During last week's event in Ayodhya, I was reading some statistics, over 200 channels have written to DoorDarshan to telecast that event live. Now, you can imagine there are 200 news channels that are running. How do you sensationalize the whole thing? and sensationalization is a bigger problem that we have, like FOMO, where everything is just larger than life. So these too have now gotten into a stage where webinars have become a sensation and a fad.

Vinay [00:18:27] But it's like Maslow's Hierarchy theory. So you will eventually start seeing diminishing returns of these webinars. Like, for example, I started choosing which ones I want to be on, which ones I don't want to be on. I know a lot of people who started choosing those things as well. So we are seeing diminishing returns already. Over a period of time, it will calm down and settle down. So there's nothing to worry about.

Ketan [00:19:04] Another dimension that's more from a mix between what the HR profession needs to focus on and also with the individual learner. Now, what is your view? What happens to be the social learning concept in this virtual world? So a lot for me. I've learned a lot, from the person who was sitting on the next desk, that a conversation that I would have in my office, and pick calls in a small office, but I think every movement had something that it intruded me to learn. Now that's gone virtual. What's your point of view on this entire social learning in the new digital era or at least in the new normal as we say?

Vinay [00:19:48] I would be honest that when somebody reached out to me to do a video on social learning and its effect as well. So I've been sort of reading and learning and talking about it to understand. There has been a slight hit in our social learning pattern. Now, that hit really is, till we readjust our ways. I'll give you an example. Technology today has been so solid in availability that what I could learn from somebody who's sitting right next to me, I could do the same learning by watching a video today. Because technology has made it possible for me to record a video, in 30 seconds I can put it up on every platform possible and get people to interact with that video and understand what I am trying to do.

Vinay [00:20:43] So I think, we're resetting our parameters of how social learning is done, as we speak. Slowly but surely in the phygital world - physical cum digital world that we are going to live in. We will start getting used to learning through virtual platforms. So right now, that take-off phase, as I told you in an aircraft, that's what is happening. So it's a transition that we are going through. We are not fully there.

Ketan [00:21:18] Interesting, very interesting. I never thought from that lens, but it's that the pattern is changing and digital is actually going to enable that.

Vinay [00:21:28] So people want to have a war right, that the whole world is gonna change and how their learning is going to change. You know, I find it quite hilarious when people want to predict when nobody could even think beyond every day as it comes when the pandemic hit us. So I find it amazing when people still want to predict the future of the workforce and future skills and future this and future that.

Ketan [00:21:57] I read a very interesting statement which is made in this book called "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Dale Carnegie says at one point in time that, even if we're 45 percent right about predicting what's going to happen next, we should go to Wall Street, he adds, we will make billions and billions of money that nobody has ever imagined. His prediction is that even the best of the best people are not more than 40 percent right and that's okay.

Ketan [00:22:30] I think it was a very important learning for me. I was holding on by asking, am I right? Is it correct? Is it going to give the result? But he said, if you would be right more than 45%, then go to Wall Street and you will make billions, you don't even need to do anything about that. I think he is right. It made me understand that it's important to make choices, take action, move ahead. Glad you brought that up.

Ketan [00:23:12] Now, to the individuals Vinay, as an individual what are the new things we need to be open to as we embrace this far more digitally connected world? What changes do you think will be necessary for people to be open to, as you see how things are coming?

Vinay [00:23:41] I think, there are two or three key things that have possibly helped me and I'm only sharing my experience. One is the ability to be flexible in changing your approaches multiple times to do certain things. It's far more real and it is required for us to be flexible because we have not left with any choices. So flexibility is critical and we need to continue to be agile and flexible in our approach.

Vinay [00:24:18] The second thing that definitely has a quality which has helped me is the ability to unlearn and relearn quickly. In a lot of ways, we are suddenly adapting to the new normal. But the new normal will certainly change to half physical, half virtual, then again it will move back to physical. So you have to keep yourself aware that you need to unlearn and relearn quickly. Because that's when you will not get stuck. Ketan, when you were mentioning that, you're putting so much pressure on, how this changes and predicts, and am I right and all of that.

Vinay [00:24:56] That limits your ability to unlearn and quickly relearn something else. So that is another quality that is going to be very critical for intuitions and the third quality is, please take every day as it comes, because we don't know what's going to happen. So instead of really looking at it from the long term and the longest-term perspective, I think right now the world is pretty myopic. So you should look at it from every day as it comes perspective, that'll only help you be at peace and less anxious about how this world is changed.

Ketan [00:25:34] Yeah, so powerful and so important, because things are like, new theories, new views, everybody is writing something about something that's coming and you start listening to everything. You're right and very powerful that your inner peace may get disturbed. I love the word myopic and accepting, what is there rather than fighting it. That's absolutely amazing.

Ketan [00:26:09] Now the whole thing is, we start about culture and how it is evolving. Now what we think or what I think at least is that the culture now has an element 'e' added to it. Because the physical fabric or the sense and the smell of the place that we used to get in one of my previous companies are different now. What's your point of view on this, Is the culture going to be evolving in the form of e-culture or is it already there?

Vinay [00:26:51] We are called as social beings, to think of it. Amongst all the animals, we are the most social animals that exist on this planet. So our urge and our need to have social requirements are not gonna change. It is only going to be a pause before anybody comes up with a vaccine before things settle down. But we will move back to our social ways. What would change possibly is, professionally we will do a lot of e-working because that's convenient and that's more logical and that also is the way forward.

Vinay [00:27:34] But personally, we will continue with our social engagements the way we would want it to be. So it's possibly going to be the best of both worlds that I get to work from home, but I get to meet my friends in the evening. I don't necessarily have to go to work, get tired, and then go and catch up with my friends, that change may happen. But even that will come back to normal as soon as we can because our requirement is being social.

Senthil [00:28:04] Now, before we start the rapid-fire, I want to give some of my thoughts, listening to Vinay and all the things I seek. I think I've really admired many points. Clearly, you and I will connect so well, that's what I realized from all the points that you've made. And one of the main points is the predictability is, how stupid are people trying to predict the future, that's like, not having the flexibility to change. That's like competing with the universe.

Senthil [00:28:36] Universe has its own course and you're going to say that, okay, five months from now, this is going to be the new normal and this is my strategy to face the future, that's not going to, that's not a good idea. I really admire that. That's very important. Consistency is, of course, important, but being inconsistent and playing with the new rules of the game, as and when the next game is getting started, that's very important. So I really love that point and the point where you said that this pandemic has given life to trust and that is for the people, for the ones who are running the organizations and the pandemic has also made the way we work differently. Your interviews or the technical round adoption.

Senthil [00:29:33] All of these on both sides even for people and for organizations, there has been a lot of change and reminds me of this great quote, " No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he is not the same man". So we have stepped on this river, the pandemic, and if we're going to step again, we are not going to be the same people again and organizations are not going to be the same thing again. Both would have changed.

Senthil [00:30:07] Vinay, you have clearly given out a lot of points that corroborate this goal. I just wanted to highly appreciate this and of course, there's this there's so much synergy that I already see that you and I can have. So thanks a lot for all of these points.

Ketan [00:30:33] Glad you called it out Senthil. I got to know Senthil more, very intense and one can have very interesting conversations. So guys, whoever is watching this video if you want some interesting conversations about mythology, beliefs, life skills, and life system, I think, he carries a lot of thoughts around that. So do catch up with him when you get the time and just to come back to the four-point one. I see it differently, what I believe is that the mistake that we do is, we start fighting about things that are outside our circle of influence. That's where stress happens, that's where we create pain for ourselves.

Ketan [00:31:28] So Vinay, are you ready for five rapid-fire questions from me?

Vinay [00:31:33] I'm not sure, my problem is that I'm too frank in a lot of answers.

Ketan [00:31:48] So Vinay, the first one for you. If not HR as a profession, what would you have chosen?

Vinay [00:31:53] Sales

Ketan [00:32:00] Cooking, cleaning, or mopping during COVID, which was easier?

Vinay [00:32:04] Mopping, obviously.

Ketan [00:32:25] Your next personal goal, if it's not too personal to share your next personal growth goal that you have set for yourself?

Vinay [00:32:35] I want to go back to traveling across the world. I think that has taken a complete stop. I used to take about 2 or 3 flights every week and I've done that for five, six years in a row to be grounded for six months in the house.

Ketan [00:32:59] One book that has maximum impact on you?

Vinay [00:33:06] 'Who moved my cheese', it's the simplest of the books that you can read. But it prepares you to be flexible, it prepares you to move on, it prepares you to keep changing and keep adapting to changes. So learning, unlearning, a lot of those theories that I've read that many months back. But that's one book that definitely has left a huge impact. The second is, 'Suppandi in Tinkle'.

Ketan [00:33:45] One thing that you personally thank COVID for?

Vinay [00:33:56] So one thing that COVID made us realize is that as a family we can peacefully coexist in the same house without having to go out and that's an amazing discovery. We never thought that we could live under the same roof without fighting for so many years together. So I think that's a great thing that COVID has done.

Ketan [00:34:21] All right. That was phenomenal, Vinay. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you, Senthil for organizing this and we are right on time. It was amazing to listen to you Vinay. Thank you so much.

Vinay [00:34:38] Thank you.

Senthil [00:34:39] Thanks a lot, Vinay, thanks a lot Ketan.