Before Covid, the idea of work-from-home was a fantasy to many. With the onset of the pandemic, multiple businesses were forced to close their office set ups and operate remotely. This definitely accelerated the concept of work-from-home, beyond its discrete existence amongst the tech companies earlier. But a complete work-from-anywhere avatar was something, which almost no firm had executed on. However, with Covid having receded and people immunised, it has obviously taken a strong hold, with many enterprises allowing their employees to choose their workspace – whether they want to work in the office, remotely, or in a hybrid work…
Author: Guest Writer
Joining & attrition scenario these days Organisations are hiring vigorously these days as they’ve realised that they need good talent to scale business, reduce the time taken to complete projects and grow the company. However, at the same time, they are not able to convince candidates to accept the offer or retain them for long. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the recruiting landscape. Companies have figured out how to create systems and workflows such that people can work from home and companies can recruit from anywhere. You would think that with a wide geography to recruit from and a lot…
Despite an increasing number of women adhering closer and longer than ever to the route of career success — higher education, industry-selection, technical qualification and upskilling — the process of closing the gender gap remains tedious. Even the expected expressways to the top corporate echelons such as B-School Education don’t seem to provide the same traction and pace to female professionals as their male counterparts. A recent research study published in the journal Organisation Science, earlier this year, suggests that undervaluing high-achieving women is one likely culprit. The authors surveyed former and current hiring managers and recruiters to evaluate a…
What determines the success or failure of a startup? Is it raising seed capital or is it getting the minimum viable product (MVP) right? Or is it getting the product-market fit (PMF) or the path-to-profitability right? It is all of these and something more. A factor that is more important than others — hiring of the right people for the team. A 2013 research paper published in the Journal of Management noted that 60 per cent of new ventures fail due to problems with the team. People are the lifeblood of every organisation, but it is especially true for startups…
A company’s attrition rate is the rate at which people leave. It is calculated by dividing the number of people who have left the company, by the average number of employees over a period of time. Early attrition is the percentage of people who leave within a specific period of time. Let’s say, 100 people joined your company in the past 90 days but 20 of them quit in the same 90-day period. Here’s how you will calculate the early attrition rate — Early Attrition Rate = (No. of employees that left / Total of employees) x 100 Early Annual…
Last week, my cousin who works with a large IT company called to share that he is joining a new firm. He’d received a 75 per cent hike, and with 10 years of total experience in technology (coding), the new offer was well above Rs 45 lakhs. A truly attractive package that even many MBAs or even those in mid-senior management fail to earn. On asking him why he had started looking for a new job in the first place, he narrated the circumstances that had pushed him to it. Apparently, many of his peers had quit because of which…
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where —” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass —————————————————————————————————————- I often see organisations initiating multiple culture-shaping projects to shift the people and culture to the highest level of performance and productivity. However, some organisations may have chosen to develop a coaching culture simply because their rivals have started to do so, or they may feel…
The corporate world has been abuzz recently with more organisations mandating that employees return to the office. While some have welcomed the move with open arms and excitement, many are resistant and do not see the real need behind this mandate. Managers are now faced with yet another challenge as they manage and navigate this change, not only for their organisation and teams, but also for themselves. An article in Forbes magazine1 referred to this as The Great Disconnect, where more employers than employees want to return to the office. As I was reading through articles from around the world…
The workforce of the world has been imbibing the from Anywhere (WFA) culture over the past several months. Most of the employees are seeing their co-workers, friends and family members on device screens only. As a result, 75 per cent of employees feel more socially isolated, 57 per cent feel more anxious, and 53 per cent admit to feeling more emotionally exhausted according to Harvard Business Review1. When employees feel unsafe, employee engagement is a far cry. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace2 report, only 15 per cent of the employees are engaged at the workplace. But that…
There are familiar ways of doing things that have worked for so long that people operate almost on autopilot in many organisations. It’s not laziness – it’s just that human beings are built to repeat patterns that work. We often drive the same route to work every day, have weekly meetings with standard agendas and prefer to choose our favourite meal every time we visit our favourite restaurant. The role of a manager has long been to make sure things happen according to familiar patterns, often labelled as processes or plans in a business context. However, the world is changing.…
What if there was a strategy for staying in touch with former employees and getting more out of our associations with them? Even if employees resign from their organisations, a lifetime relationship will remain a win-win for both former employees and their organisations. Therefore, it is best to continue this synergy even after employees have completed their employment. Typically, neither the organisations nor the employees are leveraging benefits from a solid corporate alumni relationship to its full potential. When companies contribute to their alumni networks, the value to both parties can significantly increase. Few organisations such as Mckinsey, PwC, Deloitte,…
The minute I walked into my manager’s office, she sensed something was up. I like to think I have a good poker face, but this time was different; I had to tell my manager I’d be moving to another team. I was devastated. I loved the team I was on and the work I was doing, and because of an unexpected need to relocate, I figured it was all over. As I meandered through my apologies and explanation of the reasons behind my decision to leave, my manager interjected with a question that changed the course of our conversation —…
Airplane travel has thankfully rebounded to some extent, since the dark days. Now, many people are spending more time on planes again. At over thirty thousand feet in the air, one’s passenger seat is much like a secluded ‘cocoon’. The interruptions of the outside world are put on hold. No pesky calls or messages. No uninvited intrusions upon one’s time and thinking space, and no in-laws visiting either! So, given this gift of temporary isolation, how do you choose to spend that time? I, for one, find this elevated perspective particularly exhilarating when it comes to the process of ideation.…
Internal marketing studies aim to conceive employees as internal clients, implement their thoughts and feelings into every step of service and production, and prioritise internal clients above external clients in terms of appropriate marketing strategies (Ergan, Yıldırım, Bayram, 2017)1. Coaching services for internal marketing provide a practical, economic, result-oriented, sustainable and innovative approach to improving the organisational values of enterprises. Coaching improves employee commitment and increases customer satisfaction from inner to outer circles. Sectors that offer services while experiencing globalisation and an increase in competition, can study internal marketing concepts and lead their sectors with their acquired understanding and assistance…
Coaching and mentoring are terms often used interchangeably even though there are significant differences. It’s important to identify which role will fit the need at hand. There is no point in providing employees with a coach when they need a mentor or vice versa. At the workplace, the term ‘coach’ has a vastly different meaning than what we see in the world of sports. In fact, most of us would have first heard the term ‘coach’ at school. Coaching in the corporate world is way different. Coaches: Coaches offer a partnering relationship to the clients to help the individuals become…
Behind every successful executive is the contribution of many others. We will lack humility if we attribute our success only to ourselves! While these others may be our families, friends and colleagues, they may also be mentors and coaches. The well-known batsman Sachin Tendulkar, for instance, has attributed his success to his coach Ramakant Achrekar. High-profile corporate leaders such as Alan Mullaly and the late Steve Jobs have had coaches who have helped them accelerate their business success. Coaches enable people to succeed in their pursuits. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, we are surrounded by a…
Several years ago, I was invited to deliver a presentation on coaching at a conference for brand managers. I was introduced to a senior manager of one of the companies – a strong, self-confident businesswoman in a black suit. We chatted briefly, and she shared that her company was presenting at the conference on a new brand being launched. We exchanged a few more words and she, being very busy, hurried along to another meeting. The story about a highly-anticipated innovation was of great interest to me as I had relatively recently left a position with a company to launch…
It is becoming more prevalent, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people have been unable to travel for business for members of teams to be located around the globe. With remote and hybrid teams representing the future of corporate work, there is an increasing demand for leaders and individual contributors to navigate this new and evolving world of work. Professionals used to travel internationally to establish rapport and solve problems with their global counterparts. These activities and numerous meetings are now conducted virtually or via email, introducing a significant potential for miscommunication, misunderstanding, and even missed business deals. The opportunity…
When people experience the power of coaching, it changes how they lead! As a coach, I have to confess that this intangible benefit caught me by surprise. I knew that professional coaching was transformative and expected it to bring about personal growth. I also began to witness that those leaders who experience the power of coaching often begin to adopt a coaching approach in how they lead their people. Like osmosis, coaching creates an atmosphere in which, through gradual and unconscious assimilation, a leader begins to model what they have experienced. An executive director that I coached monthly for several…
I have lost count of the number of times in these past 365 days I have asked myself, ‘Where are the leaders? Why aren’t they coaching these employees?’ My journey to becoming a leadership coach is probably not unusual. After four decades as a professional in the not-for-profit healthcare sector, I had been ready for my career encore. During the last 25 of those years as a C-Suite, I have mentored, coached, trained, and supported countless employees. I have coached leaders from across the organisation. It was my job and my joy! While working, I pursued certification in coaching at…
Some years ago, a friend of mine made a telling comment about the high-tech company from which he had just retired. He said, “Give us a technical problem, and we’d be all over it. Give us a people problem, and everybody’d head for the door”. What must have happened there? Probably, after being moved around the company from one team to another until no one was left to take them on, the “problem people” got shuffled off to the HR. When this happens, the HR is drawn into a classic interpersonal dynamic: triangulation. Triangulation occurs when, rather than address a…
‘Compassion’, ‘empathy’, ‘care’, ‘humility’ — Never before have such words received so much attention. Thanks to the troublesome ‘COVID years’ — a period of much change, anxiety and uncertainty — these qualities have gained momentum. We all have experienced the effects of the coronavirus in one way or other in our lives in the last two years. No one has remained untouched by the fear, grief, unease and insecurity that it has brought into people’s lives. It forced people to assess their real selves and experience the dark sides of emotions. During this period of gloom, the role of leaders…
The concept of agility is not entirely new. However, it is getting more attention as organisations are exploring options to transform their ways of working. It is especially relevant now as we still face many uncertainties and concerns brought about by the two-year pandemic, such as ‘The Great Resignation’, the talent war and thoughts about the future of work. Having completed a college degree in information technology, which includes a combination of both technical and business classes and having worked with organisations that are undergoing agile transformation, my curiosity on the topic grew. As I dug a little deeper, I…
On February 6, India woke up to some tuneless news. The voice that had soothed the nation for over seven decades had ceased for good. Lata Mangeshkar, one of the heroes of independent India, had left to join the cosmic chorus. While her songs will still provide a permanent background score to India’s growing story, there is another aspect of hers which is not spoken about as much. She was also one of India’s first true creative superstars. She showed many, how a career could be forged along paths, which at that time, were extremely off beat. In doing so,…
The traditional workplace culture is rapidly becoming outdated. Technological advances, employee expectations, and new ways of working and collaborating amid the pandemic have all impacted how we see the workplace and what we expect from it. Companies that still follow the traditional approach are at a critical point and risk losing their employees to companies that adapt to the future. The ‘Great Resignation’ trend, while not as apparent in India as in the US, is still affecting some companies. They are struggling to find and retain top talent, putting themselves at risk of falling behind competition and becoming irrelevant in…
HR professionals are grappling with multiple challenges. As if getting the right talent isn’t challenging enough, there is the issue of ‘fink out’ to deal with. In American slang, fink out, means to back out or fail to do something as promised. Here, you would have guessed, we are referring to offer dropouts. Being a senior recruiter, I have been facing fink outs. Many of my clients have approached me for ways to counter or minimise fink outs. Most organisations are finding it difficult to hire IT professionals, who happen to be in great demand. Offer back outs, offer shopping,…