Nishith Kumar is a lifelong entrepreneur and best known as the founder and CEO of Interstellar Systems- helping startups & brands achieve their digital goals. 

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, Nishith shares his journey from being a Computer Science Engineering student to founding Interstellar Systems.

With over 15+ years of experience, he had plenty of expertise to share in this conversation. We discuss with Nishith:

• Effective employee retention strategies
• Steps to develop a continuous learning culture
• Importance and ways of improving Employee Relations
• Ways to increase employee productivity with Rewards and Recognition

1. Increasing employee retention by flexible working opportunities 

Nishith feels that people should be motivated to work from home as it can help them generate better output. Managing resources was a challenge for their organisation during the pandemic, but eventually, the employees started adapting to working from home. After the initial hurdles, the employees started investing more time and eventually, they liked the opportunity of working from home.

2. Maintaining productivity without hampering employees’ personal lives

According to Nishith, there were trust issues in the initial part of the lockdown. However, employees started micromanaging things, and the reduced productivity started falling back into place. He thinks that employers shouldn’t bother the employees after 7 pm unless it is extremely crucial. Working from home allows managers to extend the time and provide flexibility to the employees.

3. Changing workspace dynamics and concerns

Because of the pandemic, Nishith’s organisation had to dissolve some of its offices. Rather than having three offices, they now have only one office in a metro city. Some employees are frustrated because of working from home. Therefore, they should have the option to come back to the office, according to him. This is because employees don’t have the necessary infrastructure like optical fibre in their homes.

Virtual workspace for meetings, parties, etc., help the employees engage while working from their home. Arranging a dinner once a week from the company’s side where everyone can have dinner together virtually, and activities and games that can be played together are some ways of engaging them. Once in a month or six months, the employer should sponsor team or project wise trips according to the budget and projects. For that, employers should allocate a budget that can include these things.

Slack, Zoom, Skype, WebEx, etc., are the tools that they use for communication and employee engagement as per the requirements of their clients.

4. Effective rewards and recognition policy and its impact on productivity

Nishith Kumar feels that sending surprise goodies to employees is a good thing to motivate them. They give quarterly credits that add value to their appraisals, goodies, and monetary benefits to the employees, including Amazon gift cards and vouchers, which are some of the rewards they prefer to give to hardworking employees. It happens via both peer-to-peer recognition and management to employee recognition, but most of it is the latter.

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

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Madhavan Malolan is the Founder & CEO of Questbook, an app that makes it easy for busy professionals to up-skill other professionals with bite-sized courses. He has also worked as a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.

On this episode of The Shape of Work, we picked his brain to have a litany of tactical insights on Web3, blockchain & more. We discuss with Madhavan:

• The most common recruiting challenges and how they overcame that
• The no-code potential in the Web3 world
• DAO & its future/potential
• How to assess candidates for job-fit

Episode Highlights:

Building a crypto community on Discord 

Madhavan Malolan shares his snippets about his journey of building a crypto company and nurturing an active community on Discord, a platform with a large population of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. 

Issues in the Web3 and Crypto space 

The Questbook founder talks about the potential of cryptocurrencies in a world where even highly educated professionals are not fully aware of crypto and Web3 and what can be built using these digital currencies.

Incentivizing community members in the context of Web3

Madhavan strongly feels that without incentivizing the community members, it is impossible to sustain a business that is so heavily dependent on its community. He talks about how individuals are now upskilling in the field of Web3 and cryptocurrencies, and they use Questbook as a marketplace to find opportunities. 

Recruitment challenges faced by companies dealing with these technologies 

While it’s a great time for product managers and user experience designers to establish themselves in the tech market, there aren’t sufficient Web3 developers in the ecosystem. It is why Madhavan has built Questbook - to enable developers to learn Web3 technology. As a company, Questbook is focusing on helping developers upskill and reach their potential to survive in today’s thriving digital economy. 

Future and existing potential of DAOs 

DAO at its fundamental level facilitates decentralization of decision-making. Madhavan shares his thoughts on how Facebook, a highly centralized platform where Mark Zuckerburg takes all the decisions, is likely to move faster compared to DAO. He sheds light on how the need of the hour is to design economic incentives such that companies achieve both decentralization and speed. 

Choosing blockchain to build products 

Every blockchain has its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, you need to choose them based on the use cases depending upon whether you prioritize security, faster transactions, or other things. For example, to achieve high security, bitcoin is a suitable blockchain. 

Comparison between ETH and ENS 

Madhavan says that ENS solves the issue of sharing addresses that one encounters while sharing an address on ETH. ENS is gaining prominence over other projects because of its emphasis on community, people, and the non-greedy approach of founders across tech companies. 

Future of NFT and Web3

Though people buy NFTs only for further sale, Madhavan feels that it has got huge potential ahead. He also believes that NFTs will not reach millions of users but instead will be used as an identity or as credentials by professionals.

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On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Sandeep Kumar, Senior Manager Operations Pune and Operational Excellence Lead India at Rich Products Corporation which is a multinational food-products corporation.

With over 15 years of experience across world-class organizations ranging from manufacturing, FMCG & power division, Sandeep's experience as a production engineer has given him an in-depth look at driving a manufacturing plant, production management, quality engineering and process improvement.

In this far-ranging conversation, we discuss with Sandeep:

• The three most important leadership lessons 
• Post-pandemic effect on the manufacturing industry
• How to address and solve for workforce shortage following the pandemic
• How to reduce attrition in your manufacturing workforce
• HR challenges in the manufacturing industries: recruiting, attrition, engagement, productivity and innovation

Three most important leadership lessons

Building trust among employees, creating an unbiased approach toward everyone to provide them with equal opportunities, and supporting them to have a strong belief in themselves are the three most essential leadership lessons that Mr. Sandeep Kumar learned from his mentors and seniors.

Recruitment challenges in the pandemic period

As employees left organizations on a large scale, Sandeep says that caring for employees is one of the best ways of addressing employee attrition. According to him, supporting employees during such challenging times is the key to managing attrition. Therefore, they experienced zero attrition in their Pune plant, due to which they did not face any major recruitment challenges.

Ways of improving employee retention rate

Security and future prospects are the two main factors an organization needs to take care of to improve its employee retention rate. Setting clear roadmaps for employees, i.e., adopting transparency, is also a key for employee retention, according to Mr. Sandeep Kumar. Employers who manage to take end-to-end responsibilities of their employees like their future, family responsibilities, work-life balance, etc., tend to retain their employees easily even if the employees get a better opportunity in the market.

Ways of fostering an engaging work environment

Sandeep says they use a tool called Total Productive Management that makes every employee accountable for their daily deliveries. The design of this tool promotes diversification and inclusion in the organization. Therefore, this tool can be a gamechanger in the manufacturing sector. The culture they foster in their workplace is so engaging that the employees are ready to visit the factory even during the pandemic.

Leveraging the latest techniques and tools to attract the talent

On this front, Sandeep feels that during the onboarding process, they need to focus on giving the employees an exact picture of how working in their organization will feel like. Along with the latest recruiting techniques, their global team is also working on acquiring tools to make the recruiting process smoother for both the interviewer and candidates.

Lowering labor cost with engagement, productivity, and automation

According to Sandeep, automation can reduce the numbers and remove the risk that comes with manual operations. Sandeep feels that they need to think global and act local. As a result, they try to observe the concepts of the global market and analyze them to understand if they will fit into the context of local markets.


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Wonder what tech hiring is like down under, or how to build a culture when the team is geographically distributed?

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we talk with Shubham Rastogi, Founder & CEO of Recro.io that connects vetted and skilled developers with fast-growing startups.  Shubham's experience as a CEO has given him an in-depth look at India’s broken hiring culture and how it is costing talented developers their professional growth and causing businesses to miss out on real talent.

In this conversation, Shubham shares the story behind building Recro.io and plenty of expertise around tech hiring, culture, up-skilling and the future of work.

We discuss with him:

• Secret sauce: The three building blocks for tech hiring like a pro
• Why is motivation or qualifications most important in a candidate
• Why upskill and repeat needs to be a part of the future-ready workforce
• Why hybrid is the 'easiest escape route' for companies today
• How to build a culture when the team is geographically distributed
• What new-age HR should be doing

1) Secret Sauce: The Three Building Blocks for Tech Hiring like a Pro

India is a big talent pool, and if a company can not hire in India, they can not hire anywhere.
The three building blocks for tech hiring like a pro is:
Screening from the highly skilled database, Rounds of assessments, and Matching engine to facilitate volume hiring.
2) Why is Motivation or Qualification Most Important in a Candidate?

Hiring companies assess candidates before employers do. In addition, people are working remotely. They need to be self-motivated and qualified for the job role. It makes hunting, vetting, and selecting easier.

3) Why does upskill and repeat needs to be a part of the future-ready workforce?

There is knowledge everywhere, and companies need not spoon-feed upskilling for their employees. Recruits should have a hunger to know in an environment that facilitates upskilling or repeat.

4) Why is Hybrid work culture the easiest escape route for companies today?

HR also has to learn asynchronous communication, performance management, meet employee demands etc., in a market driven by candidates. People have more options than ever. Companies are experimenting with hybrid work culture as the easiest escape route to fulfil their requirements and candidate demand.

5) How to build a culture when the team is geographically remote?

Culture is the implementation of values. If your value system is in place and properly communicated, there is nothing to worry about a geographically distributed workforce. There should be a feeling of ownership among employees.

Write down values, communicate what you stand for, act to justify your values, and implement them through tools and automation.

6) What should a new-age HR do?

New age HR managers need to consider employees like customers and build policies & processes around them. A paradigm shift requires a sense of belongingness and a data-driven approach

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“A company is nothing without its people. That’s fundamental and every top employer will always value their employees.”

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Sameer Malhotra, CEO of Shriram Automall India Ltd. With over three decades of experience, he is the first in the Indian Automobiles Industry to have introduced the concept of physical bidding of used vehicles and equipment, establishing 85+ Automalls across the country.

He is also counted as a veteran in the commercial vehicle and infrastructure/construction equipment industry. 

With a background that extensive, Sameer has plenty of expertise to share in this conversation. He discusses with us:

• The hiring practices in the automotive sector
• How companies should frame their hiring policies to align with the changing dynamics
• Ways to assess organizational fit
• Practices to improve business processes & boost employee retention
• Secrets of successful change implementation

Episode Highlights

1) The Hiring Practices in the Automotive Sector
The whole automobile industry is changing. There has been a significant difference between pre- and post-Covid era hiring practices. We need to hire people who can adapt to the dynamic needs of the industry. Employees should have the right skill set to manage technological requirements and customer demands.

2) How Companies should Frame their Hiring Policies to Align with the Changing Dynamics?

The right talent and technological knowledge are a couple of challenges that the automobile sector was facing even in pre-Covid era. The automobile sector needs different categories of employees.
We need to show them career prospects. Companies require the best talent to align with the changing dynamics.
Employees have to adapt according to the internal and external environment. The need of the hour is the right set of people with the right set of skills.

3) Ways to Assess Organizational Fit

A company is nothing without its people. Organisations should focus on three prominent aspects to hire and assess candidates: cultural fitness, behavioural skills and tech skills.

4) Practices to Improve Business Processes & Boost Employee Retention

Five dimensions to improve business processes are credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and trust. Companies need to focus on transparency, open communication, and higher employee participation. There should be liberty to express ideas and grievances.
Companies can employ soft-skill training, mentorship programs, budding programs etc. to boost retention and upskilling.

5) Secrets of Successful Change Implementation

Three pillars of an organisation are CEO, CFO, and CHRO. They need to work together for the successful implementation of desired changes.

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On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Prakhar Agarwal, VP of Operations and Technology at Combustion Research Associates (CRA) which makes solutions for the Energy, Defence, and Aerospace sector.

In this episode, Prakhar shares his distinct career interest in sustainable energy and mobility that convinced him to study Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

In addition, we discuss with Prakhar:

• Using local experts within teams, projects and platforms to think deeply and guide architectural discussions
• The importance of cultivating a culture of ownership in the organisation
• Performance management that makes a difference
• Effective ways to reduce employee attrition

1) Using Local Experts within Teams, Projects and Platforms to Think Deeply and Guide Architectural Discussions

Teamwork and collaboration are crucial considerations for a successful organisation. People can manage school and colleges alone through textbooks and other resources. But later in life, when challenges become higher, we realise the importance of teams and working together.
About local experts and architectural discussions:
Companies or leaders need to plan in three levels: short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Long-term people should be reliable, able to identify and train local experts. They should take responsibility for their decisions.
He also said hiring depends upon the volume and stage of the company. The hiring requirements of a company with hundreds of employees and an MSME company cannot be the same.

2) The Importance of Cultivating a Culture of Ownership in the Organisation

Ownership in an organisation, especially, manufacturing is a very well-read topic. There is a Japanese concept known as ‘kaizen (continuous improvement). It emphasises ownership at every level of the organisation is essential for consistent growth.
Sense of ownership makes a lot of sense in manufacturing, where people on the shop floor are often neglected. Every individual should feel like they are part of the organisation.
This creates a sense of responsibility. Therefore, a culture of ownership increases productivity, retention, and maximum participation.

3) Performance Management that Makes a Difference

Companies should develop a system of feedback for effective performance management. Feedback should be honest, in-time, and in a proper way. Employees also need to take feedback constructively.

4) Effective Ways to Reduce Employee Attrition

The best way to reduce attrition is to be kind, humane and invest time in the employees. Companies should focus on branding the work and build a good work narrative.


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On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Karthik Sridharan, Co-founder of Flexiple, Remote Tools, and The Remote Clan.

Flexiple- an online curated freelancing platform aiming to empower both companies and freelancers.

Remote Tools - fastest growing online remote working community that features top tech, remote-first, product tool stack used by actual remote teams and insightful reads on the Future of Work among many other exciting things. 

The Remote Clan - a community for remote workers to build a strong career with the help of those who are pursuing the same goals. 

Having more than seven years of  experience across investment banking and technology, Karthik joined JP Morgan straight out of engineering and slogged for three years in the Investment Banking industry.

After having enough of the IB lifestyle, he joined IIM Ahmedabad for an MBA and started exploring his passion for entrepreneurship during this phase, which led to the start of Flexiple.

With a background that extensive, Karthik has plenty of expertise to share in this conversation. It’s no surprise this episode covers a lot of ground.

We discuss with Karthik:

• How effective change management empowers employees and improves business performance
• How to hire and manage your first 10 employees
• Onboarding tactics that help new hires success
• Common mistakes when leading remote teams
• Work friendships are key for team camaraderie, but how do you cultivate them remotely?
• Ways to embed continuous learning when working remotely

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

What is effective change management related to business performance?

Like Flexiple, a big name in the B2B market, there are millions of start-ups striving consistently to provide value to companies and build trust. Starting as remote work, every start-up finds a unique way to hold on to the essence of working in remote teams, cultivating friendships, and depending on continuous learning to deliver a multitude of tasks.

Two Things Defining the Structure of Your Start-up

Clarity
Have a transparent thought process with the techniques, including bootstrapping and funding sources. It determines the chances of your start-up being better placed than struggling to shuffle across the wrong fit.
For instance, Sridharan was quite clear to choose B2B space rather than B2C space as it did not suit his interests. But, on the other hand, the B2C area needs funding and an enduring vision to power its functionality.

Kind of Start-up
Second, what kind of start-up do you want to build? Again, it will impact your move as deciding the structure also includes financing the resources well to all the teams. It dramatically affects business performance as a product of effective change management.
Remote working is the core of today’s start-ups.

Staying upfront in the conversations of remote working was essential for Sridharan while starting with his first team. He believes every team member must understand the responsibility to work remotely. Also, it operates as a remote bank, similar to a two-way street, for everyone to deliver their best, right from the first level.
Secondly, communication needs to be in place. For instance, the modern world’s chat lingos may also find a functional space for your start-up to stay updated. Also, Sridharan quoted that most of the hiring in his start-up was based on referrals: shows the trust that grows in a start-up, morally! Then comes the idea of documentation so that every person in the company finds the right solution at the right time.

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On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Vipin Sharma, Head of HR at VT Netzwelt Pvt Ltd.

Having been a part of the HR industry for over 20 years, Vipin is a strategic HR thinker with hands-on expertise in managing internal HR MIS and reporting matrices, HR yields and matrices for the success of entire human capital management.

In addition, he consults HR leadership on how to approach and create strategies on all elements of talent acquisition, RPO, leadership development, and total rewards to enable achieving business and operational goals.  

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

• The failure-accepting culture: strategies for learning from failure
• The rise in voluntary attrition: why it's time for a remote employee retention strategy
• Agile talent management strategies for changing workplace
• Why do you need a skills-based approach to hiring and developing talent
• The power of frequent employee recognition
• Soft skills in the workplace: Why they matter

Failure-accepting culture: it covers strategies to learn from your failure.

Orthodox practices of HR practice do not seem fit for today's corporates. It is the world of a hybrid working style, with the Work From Home model for most employees after the pandemic. With the acceptability of opening opportunities and trust among the companies to switch to the new model, there is a broad acceptance for learning from failure. However, it primarily depends on the kind of trust and category you are looking for in your organization's resources.

The importance of retention strategy

People working from home have a different set of problems, which is required by HR to understand. Indeed, today's HR should work as a corporate monk, with the right tone of communication. Moreover, as there is a shift from rational to emotional model, there should be an engagement value added to the HR's responsibility to build people's trust.

Agile talent management strategies for changing workplace

It majorly depends on the industry a person is working with. For instance, if the drive is from the IT workspace, the primary concern to provide a better life to employees revolves around the concept of power. Talent management keeps your organization's business continuity running to prevent any risk for failure. Plus, the strategy to use talent management also includes grouping the tools where the individualistic frontier of an employee is valued.

What are the skills-based approach to hiring and developing talent

Firstly, talent acquisition teams have to change the gears for the recruitment channels they are utilizing. Secondly, how the organizations are reaching out to the resources is a big question to deal with. Indeed, creating trust in the arena of the talent pool is equally essential to retain the best talent for the organization. So, instead of head-hunting, recruiters should consider the different aspects of where the selection starts and where recruitment starts!

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

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On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Abhinav Ramesh, a tech entrepreneur focused on Blockchain. 

Having been recognized as one of the top 100 Blockchain influencers in Asia, Abhinav currently brings that expertise as the Founder of Chainflux, a blockchain-based company helping enterprises make their products and services more reliable, transparent and secure. 

He leads a passionate team that builds applications on public and private blockchains- including Shine Blockchain, a SaaS-based traceability solution that enables any supply chain to incorporate product traceability and source verification metrics. The other product is called Shine-Green which is India's first Green bonds issuance, trading, and monitoring platform built entirely on the back of a Blockchain platform.

In this episode, we discuss with Abhinav:

• His journey from being a Consultant at EY to building Blockchain products
• The strategic lessons he’s learned over his many years of experience launching products 
• Interesting use cases of Blockchain
• Tech hiring challenges in web3 
• How to set up the right culture in a distributed workplace: from communication to engagement

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

Abhinav's Journey From Consultant To Entrepreneur

In the beginning, companies and technological giants essentially stumbled upon blockchain. There was a lot of awareness for employing hackathons and reading material on the subject. Right now, the crypto side of blockchains is the most popular. However, here the idea is to explore the applications even further to create a new base and satisfy demand in the blockchain.


When should one pursue a full-time startup? What role does an investor play in this?
Individuals are not immediately confident if their use case or product and service are sustainable in the market. In this case, inventors generally work on their use case part-time, with the support of full-time employment (essentially a backup).

Blockchain Applications
There are many applications of blockchain technology with many potential applications that haven't been explored, like:
NFT marketplaces
Music royalties tracking
Supply chain and logistics monitoring
Sustainability tracking and transparency
Secure sharing of medical data ( private and permissioned blockchains) etc.

Hiring challenges for funded startups:
After being funded, the hiring depends on the aspects in Chainflux.
The clients who are already present and their needs.
The future clients and expectations they can have from the projects.
The need for web3 in building certain products or use cases that can float in the market.

How does Chainflux create a good work culture?
Chainflux has recently become a seed-funded company; hence, there has been more hiring and clientele. To maintain a good work culture Chainflux hosts weekly meetings and discussions with its employees to create normalcy in remote working conditions. Abhinav also promotes holistic hiring processes that include looking at personality traits and characteristics along with skills and competence. 


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Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast Host: Aditya Sreekumar

'Culture is a mindset that comes from the top managers'

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we have Sanchit Malik, Co-Founder & CEO of Pazcare, which is redefining the way employee benefits are managed in India.

As a serial entrepreneur, Sanchit has founded a couple of more start-ups before Pazcare, including Padhaaro and Townscript.

In this episode, we sit down with Sanchit to talk about: 

• Ready and resilient: health insurance strategy for a COVID-19 world
• What a good employee benefits package should look like
• How can people managers ensure creating a robust organizational culture
• The importance of anonymous feedback
• Why the future of work is employee mental well-being

What does an adequate health insurance strategy look like for a COVID-19 world?

Insurance is a financial risk mitigation product. Healthcare expenses can go up to any monetary value, thus an adequate health insurance strategy is a tool that helps companies safeguard the health of their employees in this pandemic-stricken world. Just as you create wealth by investing in mutual funds, insurance enables you to protect that wealth.

Unfortunately, not many people buy health insurance for themselves and their families. So, after the pandemic, there are chances to re-establish the importance of buying adequate health insurance, and MNCs should include it in their employees' packages.
This has become a norm for most organizations. Now, employers also make it an essential part of employee welfare strategies. Thus, apart from the company's salary in their compensation letters, there is now an embracing change to include health insurance to benefit the employees and their families.

What can a good employee benefits package be for today’s workforce?

In the post-pandemic world, organizations are working to retain their employees with better facilities for their mental and physical health. Employees look forward to getting hired where the company provides health insurance. While building a robust organizational culture, giving insurance has proven competitive. So, today, the employee benefits package includes the retirement plan, provident fund, and gratuity, among the employee benefits, including wellness and cost of consultations.

What does a robust organizational culture consist of?

Organizational culture is a mindset that comes from the top, right from the managerial positions, and determines how accurately management thinks about their employees. It starts from the different benefits a company offers to the employees. For instance, as quoted by Sanchit Malik, if a company is not offering insurance benefits to the employees, it straightforwardly points to a weak organizational culture. Secondly, two scenarios highlight the culture of a company. First, suppose you, as a business, are offering health benefits, but only to the employees. It talks about a different culture than the second case where insurance benefits are provided to employees and their families.

So, essentially, it is the mindset of the management which determines the culture of the organization.


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Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad