On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Rohas Nagpal, Chief Blockchain Architect at Wrapped Asset Project. 

Rohas started off his career in hacking and then spent over a decade as a blockchain architect and crypto expert. Hence, it goes without saying, we discuss everything related to blockchain. 

Episode highlights:

The Regulation of NFTs

It’s not like we don’t have fraud in the stock market. With regards to NFT, there is a legal agreement in place between the issue and the buyer of the NFT. Next, if someone defaults on something, you will be blacklisted from raising money from NFTs in the future. However, there is always a small amount of risk with any financial instrument. 

Why will the Metaverse be the next big thing?

In the real world, people are not 100% how happy they are. In the Metaverse, you can create a digital avatar with the perfect you. It would be fun to explore the world and the universe by sitting from the comfort of their own home. It would also redefine working from home. You can sit in your office with your colleagues without actually leaving your home. 

The Use Cases of blockchain

Blockchain use-cases should be around crypto. Blockchains developed around data will not 
work because the technology was not created to hold data. It was created for smart asset lifecycle management. You only have to create a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, and the technology would take care of everything. 

Things you should know before Investing in Crypto

Firstly, you need to do your due diligence on crypto before starting your investment. Understand what cryptocurrencies are and how they work. You need to understand how crypto exchanges wallets work and how to maintain them securely. It is only after you get to know the basics that you should start investing. Lastly, as a rule of thumb, you need to know the ABCDE of crypto. 

A = Avax
B = Bitcoin
C = Chainlink
D = Decentralization
E = Ethereum 

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Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Aditya Sreekumar

About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement and retention.

The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun and interactive games platform for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system

Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Joshua Bowlin, CEO of Autimely. Joshua has taken the future of car buying by storm.

Autimely is an automotive startup that aims to streamline the car-buying experience. It claims to be the first platform that allows users to purchase vehicles using cryptocurrency.

He shares some valuable insights on the new wave of car buying, AI, & cryptocurrency. We discuss with Joshua:

• The story behind founding his first company.
• What next for AI in Autimely?
• What will 2022 look like for Autimely?

Episode Highlights:

What’s Autimely?

Autimely is an automotive digital retail platform that provides consumers with the ability to negotiate with multiple automotive dealerships at the same time. Consumers can use cryptocurrencies to make payments. On the other hand, dealers can use our virtual sales rep, an AI that helps them negotiate with consumers on their vehicles. The AI can pick up emotions, feelings, etc., to build and get the deal done.

Making an Easy User Experience

If you offer a great customer experience, people will come back to you. You look at Tesla, which has taken much of the buying process online. You can look at the prices, see deals, and much more online. There’s no chance of someone fleecing you on a payment plan or the cost of your car. On top of that, they have kept the offline experience of seeing and experiencing the car in the showroom. So, it’s a great customer experience all around.
What’s Next for Autimely and AI
"We want to expand our AI into the financing part as well. You can get answers on financing through our app itself. I see Autimely growing into potentially having our dealerships."

 So, we will hold multiple brands under our umbrella with test centers. People can test out different brands and select the car of their dreams. 

Visions for 2020

Our goal in 2020 is to bring 1500 dealerships into our app. When consumers come to us, they have a wide variety of options. With COVID, everything has changed. People are trying to find new ways of doing business. They are more open to trying things and are interested in doing things online. Lastly, we will have 13 different cryptocurrencies, and you will be able to purchase a car through SHIBA COINS. Shiba coin is a cryptocurrency that got into the limelight when Elon Musk tweeted about it. 

Follow Joshua on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Moshe Vhanunu

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is James Ellis or should we call him 'Alton Brown of Employer Branding'? James Ellis is a Senior Employer Branding Manager at Recursion - an organization decoding biology to radically improve lives.

James is a noted employer brand and talent strategy thinker, keynote speaker, consultant, and podcaster. He has done it all. Oh, and that’s not all! He is also the author of a total of 7 books.

In this wit, energy, and humour-filled conversation we discuss Employer branding: what, how, and everything in between.

His passion for employer branding absolutely blew us away!

Episode Highlights:

How can recruitment agencies attract the best external talent they desire?

James talks about how recruitment agencies can retain top performers and attract the best external talent they desire, and the importance of developing a compelling employee value proposition (EVP) that is relevant to the company's employees and potential candidates' needs and wants. Additionally, James discusses how recruitment agencies can make themselves desirable to potential candidates in the highly competitive labour market even before starting the hiring process. Besides, he also explains the importance of ranking top in the individual’s list.

The significance of brand position and marketing in the recruitment industry

In the second part of his interview, James throws light on the significance of brand positioning and marketing in the recruitment industry to occupy a distinctive place in the candidates’ minds who are looking for jobs. He further adds that building authentic relationships and standing out in an over saturated recruitment market is arguably the best way to enhance loyalty and brand advocacy. Plus, James talks about the reasons why employer brands break down and how to get it right. He also shares new content strategies and frameworks that most of the top employer brand specialists apply and use to design a successful employer-branding strategy.

Drawbacks of employer branding

Lastly, James sheds light on his two newly released books on employer branding and his weekly newsletters. So if you’re looking to attract the best talent, then this is a must-listen.

Follow James on Linkedin.

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Gerry Crispin, co-founder & Principal at CareerXroads- a premier talent community for recruiting & HR professionals willing to collaborate, innovate and lead.

Having been in the industry for more than 30 years, he is best known as a ‘Virtual Encyclopedia’ for all things HR, talent acquisition, and recruiting.

And, that’s not all, Gerry is also a co-author of 8 books and over 100 articles, and a lifelong student of staffing.

We discuss with Gerry:

• Common mistakes most recruiters make
• Recruiting tips from talent acquisition leaders 
• How has recruitment marketing changed in the last 30 years?
• It's all about the data: TA & Data. 

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

Common mistakes most recruiters make

In the first part of his interview, Gerry talks about why most recruiters consistently make common mistakes. He discusses a new initiative of the International Standard Organisation (ISO) for fair recruitment and critical listening. Engaging with the hiring manager may help improve the recruitment process.

Recruiting tips for talent acquisition leaders

Gerry also shares the recruiting tips for talent acquisition and recruitment professionals. He discusses how recruiters need to align their hiring strategies with hiring managers to measure the same success metrics and get the appropriate skills needed for the role. Besides, Gerry talks about how recruitment and talent acquisition professionals must work against their biases to draw the best talent and support candidates through the process to make informed decisions.

How has recruitment marketing evolved over the last 30 years?

Gerry Crispin walks us through the evolution of marketing practises over the last 30 years. He discusses how recruitment technology now helps you solve diverse recruitment challenges and the ability to collect the Candidate Net Promoter Score (CNPS) to measure and improve candidates' experience with your company.

It's all about data: Talent Acquisition and data
Gerry also talks about how timely and precise data is essential for a well-functioning talent acquisition program. It is the most important metric for talent acquisition professionals to be efficient and improve their hiring skills in a data-driven culture. Lastly, Gerry shares some of his favourite recruiting tools and traits that helped him reach the top of his game.

Follow Gerry on LinkedIn.

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Tushar Dadlani, Principal Product Manager at Walmart.

He shares his inspiring career journey - from founding his own company to being one of the senior employees, to now working with Walmart - the world’s largest retailer.

With a background that extensive, it’s no surprise this episode covers a lot of ground.

Episode Highlights:

1) How does an Employer Hire Culture-Fit Employees?

Tushar Dadlani believes finding culture-fit employees is very crucial for success and growth. He shared how they ensure culture-fit people in Walmart. They find people in their network; who are either referred from an existing employee, ex-employee, friend or relative of the person etc.
The second thing to consider is a willingness to learn and aspirations in the long term. They ask a set of questions to eliminate non-serious candidates and understand their culture-fit quotient.
A culture-fit employee brings valuable soft skills to the organisation.

2) Strategies to Improve Remote Team Productivity

Managers should allow employees to work with liberty; they should come out of their ego. In his words, these are ‘recipes of cultural disaster’. Management should understand and involve the expert person in the role.
In addition, write down notes when working remotely. It helps in keeping everybody on the same page and avoiding misunderstandings or missed project deadlines. 

3) How to Improve the Employee Onboarding Process?

Onboarding has become more and more important during contemporary hybrid or remote work cultures. Managers and HR should communicate and build a friendly relationship with employees. Do not be rigid. Flexible with policies and processes. He also mentioned the ‘First Ninety Days’ book as a good reference to understand the onboarding process.

4) Employee Benefits and Compensation Ideas

For employee benefits and compensation, organisations can hire a benefit provider. It will help them to assess quantitatively. Secondly, keep communication open and grow a feedback culture for qualitative evaluation of employees and management.
Show your support during hot spots or transitional periods of their life. This could be marriage, childbirth, divorce etc.

Link to Tushar's Linkedin & Blog

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Adam Stonehocker, Head of Sales at Gemini, a workforce planning and analytics tool for every company’s most important resource – its people.

Having been in the industry for 15 years and worked with brands such as MarketStar and peek.com as a director of sales, Adam knows a thing or two about building and leading a successful team.

Our conversation with Adam covers:

• Top skills for a career in sales
• Effective ways to structure your team 
• How to build a great salesperson from scratch
• Developing a feedback culture in your sales team

Episode Highlights:

1) Top Skills for a Career in Sales

Adam Stonehocker points out skills that he wants from their sales representatives. The best salesperson should be natural with a strong mindset towards achieving goals. They should be competitive and resilient. They should keep trying even after failure, and improvise.

He does not believe great resumes and attractive degrees make the best salespersons. Sales skills come gradually with experience. People should be ready to learn, humble, and coachable. 

2) Effective Ways to Structure Team

He does not believe in SDR (Sales Development Representative) or BDR (Business Development Representative) for small and medium businesses. These structures are viable for large corporations and organisations. For smaller companies, these positions can cause high cost, attrition etc.

The better option is having AE (Account Executive) and assigning them a task to get four to five calls a week. For medium-scale companies, smaller teams are a good option.

3) How to Build a Great Salesperson from Scratch?

An employee should know their day in the life at work, even before starting an actual job. Adam conducts a hiring event every month in his organisation, where the candidates go through an orientation before the interview. They explain their expectations and job role such as quota, activity metrics etc.

Companies should be aware of new employees about the work culture at the organisation. After that, show them perks and ramp them up with the system during training. 

4) Developing a Feedback Culture in your Sales Team

A feedback culture is crucial, especially during contemporary WFH situations. They conduct feedback sessions after every 3 or 6 months. Managers should be taught to become better coaches.

The manager should focus on the consistency and productivity of employees. They should build a one-to-one relationship. The effort and ability to perform among employees is very crucial. He believes tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce can help to identify activity metrics and performance. 

Consistency is a superpower; it has snowball effects on the organisation's structure and functioning. 

 Follow Adam on LinkedIn

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we speak with Srikanth Adiga, Founder of OpenSpecimen - the world's most widely adopted open source bio-banking (bio-specimen) LIMS platform. 

Having been in the industry for 20+ years, Srikanth knows a thing or two about building and leading a team of creative thinkers.

In this episode, we discuss with Srikanth:

• Positive work cultures are more productive
• ‘Employee First’ philosophy in workplace design
• Redefining the role of the leader in the re-skilling era
• Factors to consider in organizational design

Follow Srikanth on LinkedIn

In this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Ajay Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO of TheHouseMonk - a property management software platform that helps real estate businesses market, sell, and manage their portfolio.

Ajay has founded multiple companies within the same domain over the past decade. With years of experience being an entrepreneur, we picked his brain to share his learnings & thoughts with us. 

Episode highlights:

• Organizing the future of work with technology.
• Hybrid work best practices to guide your new normal.
• Impact of the hybrid model on employee retention.
• Re-skilling and up-skilling: a strategic response to changing skill demands.
• Successful L&D strategy to improve employee engagement & performance.

Organizing the future of work with technology

Hybrid work culture requires engaged employees and regular motivation. For this purpose, structured planning and workflow are needed. It can be achieved through digital tools such as Google Tasks, Google Calendar, Cloud, Zoom, etc., which help one work, manage and communicate with the team online. Utilizing technology for the future of work is the new normal.

 Hybrid work best practices to guide your new normal

Maintaining team alignment should be the top priority for every type of firm. One of the major challenges in this is communication. Things like aligning employees' daily activities to the company's macro objectives through digital software, planning physical meet-ups once every quarter or six months, etc., regulate the work culture and allow employees to understand each other well.  

Hybrid model impact on employee retention

A reduction in in-office expenditure occurred due to the rise in the hybrid work model. Digital tools allow employees to focus on the task at hand. If there is a lack of it, organizations can fix it through practices such as fun activities, get-togethers, etc.

 Reskilling and upskilling: A strategic response

Large firms tend to have a structured plan to train new employees. However, small-scale firms don't usually focus on training new employees and onboarding them directly. Training is necessary as it adds value. Therefore, small-scale firms must initiate training methods to reskill new employees. Large companies can conduct skill-updating activities to help keep employees abreast of the latest work trends. 

 Successful L&D strategy to improve employee performance

It’s a myth that people change jobs for a raise in salary. Work culture, team behavior, management, etc., are all reasons why one changes jobs. They also leave when there is a lack of learning opportunities. Firms must keep this in mind and focus on implementing a continuous learning policy, planning events and fun activities, maintaining digital tools, and focusing on employees' states of mind.

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Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Shradha Mundhra

In a post-pandemic world, the rules of HR are changing. On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we have Sumit Lakhani, Chief Marketing Officer at Awfis Space Solutions Private Limited.

With over 15+ years of experience & having worked with giants like Yes Bank, Tesco, and Tech Mahindra it is no surprise this episode covers a lot of ground.

Sumit shares insight on some of the biggest questions right now in both hiring and the future of work.

Episode Highlights:

1. Pros and cons of the hybrid workplace model
2. The workforce of the future
3. Effective strategies to reduce employee turnover
4. All about the pulse of the organization, feedback, and 1v1 with the team.

Advantages and drawbacks of the hybrid workplace model:
 
The hybrid workplace model gives a choice to the employees to choose to work remotely or at the office. It also depends on the work requirements and productivity of the employees. After the pandemic, most people have found remote work to be more comfortable, forcing workplaces to introduce hybrid work models.
 
Hybrid workplaces increase the productivity of the employees and save expenses and time on the commute. A survey found that most of the employees spend 1-1.5 hours on commuting which makes an additional 44 days of working. On the other hand, remote working seems not very efficient for freshers. They cannot experience the same exposure and work environment working remotely.
 
The changes in work nature for Gen Z:

The future workforce, which is Gen Z, will create significant impacts on workplaces. A few years back, things were changing as for the preferences of the millennials, but Gen Z is taking over that. They are directly participating in the gig economy. Their approach towards work-life balance is very different from other generations, which will change the way workplaces function and open the doors to work on preferred time slots.
They seem not to be very interested in the 9-6 work model, which can rise to the 24x7 opening of physical offices. Now organisations should be more focused on the safety, well-being, and flexibility of the employees to increase their productivity.
 
Practical strategies to enhance employees productivity:

In almost every sector, employees spend half of their day. So, their productivity is directly related to their well-being. The workplace environment should force them to come to their work every morning happy and recharged. This is only possible if organisations promote a learning culture, socialising, and collaborations. Every employee should enjoy their work rather than taking a toll on their mental health.
 
Organisation's approach to improving employee engagement policies:
 
Any workplace negativity affects the productivity of their employees. They will feel hesitant to discuss important issues with the core team and eventually leave the organisation. This negativity comes from poor management, lack of communication, unexpected changes in staffing, and inexperience management.

To tackle this and improve employee engagement policies, organisations need to focus on feedback from the staff and bridge communication gaps.

BONUS: Willing to figure out ways to save your employee turnover cost? Read our latest blog post.

Follow Sumit on LinkedIn

Being the Executive Director of a nonprofit is like being shot out of a cannon. It’s a tough and demanding job. But what exactly does an Executive Director do? And more importantly, how can Executive Directors manage their time to truly be effective?

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we speak with Tyler Radford, Executive Director of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, about what it really takes to be an effective big boss of a nonprofit organization.

We discuss how to balance big-picture strategy and leadership with day-to-day management. We also delve into how to manage the unknown and the unexpected while still moving an agenda forward. In the episode:

• building talents Vs buying talents
• How to design people friendly policies in social organization?
• Tips to lead a successful humanitarian firm

The tips offered on the podcast by Tyler are valuable to every Executive Director as well as those that aspire to lead an organization.

Episode Highlights:
 
How can NGOs attract and retain talent?

The primary concern of every humanitarian firm working in a competitive market is to attract and retain talents, where a secret weapon of purpose and meaning is used to hire people with the same motive to connect technology with human needs rather than just focusing on the provided salary. Hiring people with the same objective as the firms allows the team to unite more and retain talents longer. Further, providing flexibility to employees, fun activities like yoga, and analyzing work results on a daily basis enables talents to stay for a longer period.

Managing issues and challenges by HR in a non-profit sector 

When asked about the issues and challenges HR faces in NGOs, Tyler defined and provided solutions on persisting in a competitive global market, building a team to benefit social spaces, etc. The balancing of big-picture strategies and leadership with daily management is the key. Focusing on social firms, Tyler talked about the day to day issues HR faces in order to run a smooth work culture in a non-profit organization.

How do Humanitarian agencies hire the right employees?

Strategies of salary transparency and salary framework are used, which allow people to view salaries of every individual working in the firm through a website. The intention is to find people with sense and ambition, instead of people looking for higher salaries. Tyler defines the mechanism as efficient for hiring people effectively in a short period of time.

Employer branding in nonprofit organizations

Employer branding is another key factor to be focused upon while dealing in a global firm. NGOs’ focus should be towards establishing themselves as well known and considered in their sectors. Public discussions, social media platforms, community references, building connections and networking with professionals of the same company allows effective employer branding in a nonprofit organization. Policy framework for human benefit leads to the success of humanitarian firms too.

Tips to lead a successful humanitarian firm

Inching closer to the end of the podcast, Tyler shared worthwhile tips to executive directors and those with the same notion. From the discussion about HR automation in NGOs to maintaining only valuable aspects for speedy growth, the tips dealt with the current challenges in the field of social work and professionals working to provide empathy. Tyler Radford focused on maintaining a happy and healthy work culture, building connections, and quality social work rather than the pay scale. Likewise, HR leadership skills must have a favorable impact for the firm to stay and move closer in the global competition of social space experts.

Follow Tyler on LinkedIn

BONUS: Willing to figure out ways to save your employee turnover cost