Cost to Company

The winds of appraisal season seem all too familiar. 

HRs deciding the budget for the cycle. 

Employees frantically trying to put their best tasks forward on a scrappy Google document at the last minute. 

Managers bracing themselves to negotiate pay hikes with their reportees. And HR. 

But this year, things are looking slightly different.

With the current economic situation, some companies have ‘indefinitely postponed’ appraisals. Some aren’t increasing base pay and thinking of unique ways to reward and retain their best talent, while some are using appraisals as a precursor to future layoffs. 

But, as you’ll find out through the course of this episode, it’s not all dark and gloomy. 

In this episode I speak to Vibin Baburajan (Ex-Freshworks), Bhavya Arora (Talent and Culture Partner @ Outplay) and Kanika Singal (Ex-McKinsey; Ex-Levi Strauss & Co.) to understand how appraisals this year might be different than usual. 

And what the appraisal season is trying to tell you. 

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Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

This episode is about a group of Indians, who worked in food delivery and ecommerce startups in India. Now they work in food delivery and ecommerce businesses around the world. Starting with Jakarta and Singapore, but now also Seoul, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires, and Riyadh. We’re going to interview three such people, and ask them how and why they moved. What they found there. And what is that aspirational thing they’ve been chasing. And spoiler alert: it's not for the money.

And to be clear, we are talking about this because it is happening, not randomly, or sporadically, but systematically. And it is going to happen a whole lot more, in other industries and in other forms, that we haven’t yet seen.

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For the past 19 episodes, we at CTC have spoken about hiring in many shapes and forms. But what do the numbers tell us? And more importantly, what do the numbers hide?

To kick things off this year, we spoke to Ruchee Anand, Senior Director of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn, who shared some data-driven insights around hiring in 2023.

Why are some women leaders going the self-hiring way? What is 'The Great Mismatch'? Talent pools are getting bigger, but is that really a good thing?

Listen in to find out.

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

Tasked with keeping us together and happy, the advocates for employees in most organizations are usually in the HR department. The people we complain to when management systems break, when there's a sexual harassment complaint, when we aren't receiving the recognition and reward we deserve, they're usually in HR.

But the universe of HR is experiencing a moment of transition. Inventive SAAS products are being built to solve HR functions. HR tech is reducing human intervention, or removing it altogether. 

This is changing the nature of HR itself. Which, in turn, has the additional consequence of changing how we work.

 
If you have episode ideas or interesting new changes in the workplace, or hacks people are using to navigate it, fill in the typeform here, and feature in an episode with us!

Unlike its dubious cousin 'the layoffs', there's not much brouhaha around the hiring freeze.

And with good reason. Most hiring freezes are unofficial. They're never really revealed to the world.

But that's not to say that the freeze hasn't gripped Indian companies.

What if the hiring freeze is an opportunity for the employees? Is it a faster way to grow within the ranks since the jobs outside have dried up? Or is it just a race to the bottom?

Are employers taking notice too?
 
Read Vanita's story by tapping here: https://the-ken.com/the-employee-employer-paradox-layoffs-everywhere-but-hiring-still-a-problem/

Fill in the Typeform to become a part of the show: https://theken.typeform.com/costtocompany

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

A group  of men set out to build a Brave New World. A world with new ideals. A world where the old structures of power are destroyed, and newer ones, more fair, more transparent, rise from the ashes. A brighter world, a better world. They dream of community and belonging.

Eventually they live long enough to watch the new world become so much like the old. They watch their heroes fall from grace. They see the weaknesses in the system, they see their brothers exploit them. They watch innocent people suffer. They watch the powerful cause that suffering.

That world is crypto, and this is an episode where we talk to three believers who have left the industry. And we ask them, what do they still believe in?

If you have episode ideas, a trend in businesses that nobody else has heard of, or something new and inventive happening in your workplace, write to us on this form here. If you have any other thoughts and feelings, write in to us at [email protected].

Breaks always seem tempting. 

But in a job market that is as brittle as it is in late 2022, does a career break even make sense?

Even if the times were better, what happens after you take a career break? Does your career ‘rise from the ashes’ once you’re back? Or does the pause affect your growth in the long run?

In this episode, I speak to Vatsal Sanghvi (Consultant, Omidyar Network India*; former Category Manager, Flipkart) and Issac John (former Head of Marketing, Discovery India; former Marketing Head, Puma India) on how they bounced back from their sabbaticals. Two people with starkly different experiences, but oddly similar outlooks. 

*Omidyar Network India is an investor in The Ken. 

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Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria. 

The CEO of Better.com fired hundreds on a Zoom call. The CEO of HyperSocial posted a selfie of himself crying while he did it.

Byju Raveendran wrote to his employees saying that he would be laying off 5 percent of them but that he was losing 5 percent of Byju, meaning himself. This was so poorly received that it became a moment in pop culture of its own.

Unacademy laid off 125 people in April. In July they committed to no further layoffs. And then they laid off 350 more in November.

And then Amazon laid off 10,000 employees last week. The communication was faceless, private, and clinical. It has been called inhumane.

Which brings us to the question, is there a good way to lay off employees? Does such a thing even exist?

In this episode of Cost to Company, Shreevar and Sneha interview Karthik Srinivasan, behemoth of corporate communications in India, to ask, are there best practices for communicating a layoff? And if so, what are they?

Tell us what you'd like to hear in the next episode of CTC! Please fill this form, it won't take more than a minute. If we like your idea, you may get invited to the show too! 

In a world where your to-do list doesn't seem to ever end, should you create task lists or block 'chunks' of time?

More importantly, what does your manager at work want?

We speak to Arpitha Desai (Legal & Public Policy professional, ex-Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas), Tara Khandelwal (Founder at Bound, ex-Penguin Random House) and Sachin Jaiswal (Director of Product Management at Swiggy) to find out.

Tell us what you'd like to hear in the next episode of CTC! Please fill this form, it won't take more than a minute. If we like your idea, you may get invited to the show too! 

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

The Metoo movement normalised calling out bad behaviour, but it concerned itself much more with naming and shaming individual harassers. Not the workplaces that emboldened them. Not the cultures that created conditions for it to happen.

But sexual harassment isn’t an interpersonal issue. It’s workplace issue. It’s the organisations that must be held responsible for behaviour tolerated by its employees.

25 years after the first Vishakha Guidelines were passed, we discuss the ways in which the laws remain insufficient to create safe workplaces. We probe to uncover where the gaps remain.

And then we find solutions. 

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