Tally Solutions Explains Mantra Behind Attracting Talent And Offering Continuous Support
The unprecedented workforce disruption with the outbreak of COVID has compelled organisations to revaluate the future of work. The companies will need to consider long-term strategies in order to ensure resilience and apply the learnings to develop a strong talent roadmap that are future-proof for any given situation.
As we embrace normalcy in our day to day lives, in the current scenario, organisations should empower the employees by upskilling and encouraging them to focus on self-regulated learning to build skill-sets so that they adapt to changing dynamics. It is also important for companies to focus on restoring the organisational culture that were prevalent during the pre-pandemic times to encourage employees and keep them motivated, even during these precarious times.
Tally Solutions promotes and has implemented initiatives to support its workforce as below, which can also be further elaborated by Chetan Yadav, CPO, Tally Solutions.
Whether an employee will be more efficient while working from home or office is highly dependent on each individual’s role. There are roles where WFH is a net value positive in work effectiveness. Similarly, there are roles where being in office is critical for the work to be dispensed implying that these employees being in office is more effective. However, there is a very high chunk of roles where a hybrid work set-up is the most effective way of working and hence the call to a high degree is dependent on the type of role and to a certain degree on employee preference.
It has been a little over 2 years since WFH was implemented and the immediate challenge to move back to work from office will be the need to reorganise and relocate with family, for those who have moved cities in the last two years. A certain level of uncertainty still persists around about the pandemic and while the industry is better prepared to face them, some challenges might arise from that aspect. One of the key reasons employees will opt to working from office is the collaborative work and social interaction with colleagues. However, if there are only limited people opting to work from office, this purpose is not fulfilled, which can deter the morale of moving back to office amongst the willing employees.
Another concern can be that the lack of amenities provided by the organization considering the lower number of people opting to work from office. Although, this can be managed by respective organizations. The third and slightly bigger problem that may arise in near future is when half the employees start working from office while the other half still opting to work remotely. The need for system and tools that allow collaboration in such a situation will be very different from when everyone/majority were working remotely. For instance, if a few people are in a meeting room with some joining on call, how to ensure that everyone on call is equally collaborating and feeling included in the discussion as compared to their colleagues.
At Tally we encourage and support all employees to equally share the responsibility with their spouse and at home with internal campaigns like #ShareTheLoad that we initially launched during the first lockdown. We do understand that women employees have additional needs, and we are supportive of this fact. We have tie-ups with top creche and have introduced several women specific benefits to support them like extension of maternity leave by a few months, if required. In fact, we have recently included Period leave of 1 day per month for all women employees.
With a healthy diversity ratio of 1:5 and growing , there are numerous other situations where we have gone the extra mile and supported women employees during time of need. We take conscious decisions to support all employees in balancing their work-life needs by having an accommodative approval system for individual’s personal flexibility needs.
Over the last two years we have taken several steps to ensure that every employee is fully supported and provided with systems to make their work seamless. A complete IT infrastructure support in terms of collaborative software tools and hardware to be able to work effectively from anywhere was made available. We also extended monetary policy support for effective and ergonomic work from home set-up which helps towards efficiency.
We have been hosting a comprehensive set of online and hybrid engagement and bonding activities to build a sense of camaraderie. This includes quarterly webcasts with senior leadership, townhalls, leadership workshops called Disha, annual R&R programs, strategy meets called DigiSabha, Women’s Day celebrations, new product launches etc. While we also hosted some of these events before the pandemic but only in an on-ground/in-office manner, post-Covid this has changed to a more hybrid way where everyone can participate irrespective of their work location.
We have also revamped our learning initiatives which have been very well received by employees across teams. These are online and hybrid learning modules and have proved to be very effective. There are several personalized learning programs designed as per individual’s learning pace. A recent initiative called ‘Core-Score’ program witnessed session from expert trainers along with simulation-based activities and content that an individual can work on at their convenience and pace to get feedback on how they fare on that specific competency. The level of personalization, both in terms of learning and pace has increased the effectiveness making learning more fun and increasing receptivity amongst employees.
There can be three major areas where employees can face technological challenges- 1) hardware, 2) software and 3) connectivity. We have looked at all three areas in detail and ensured to provide the best possible support for work effectiveness. From the hardware point of view, ensuring that all employees have the necessary hardware to do their work seamlessly. On the software side, providing all employees effective software tools to collaborate or anything that an individual may need to get their work done like licensed versions of a specific software.
In terms of connectivity, while we have an extended support for good internet bandwidth, we have also ensured that there is an uninterrupted connection through supporting infra like power supply back-up system, or internet through dongles which takes care of the continuous connectivity.
Over the last two years, we did get some feedback form employees about the work hours getting extended and the diminishing line between personal and professional space. We immediately took measures while communicating our approach on having a healthy work-life balance to the entire organization. Moreover, each function also looked at it and took steps curb this. Some functions set up time in the day/ days in a week as no meeting time, established ground rules for work schedule etc. We also conducted manager and leader sensitization programs at organisational level to effectively manage the problem and have taken care of the same at a great extent. We are still cognizant of any feedback that comes on this matter and do what is necessary to mitigate it.
Any company’s overall effectiveness is very highly dependent on the level of FEEL ((Function, Eudaimonia, Efficiency and Effectiveness and Learning) that employees are able to get and that should be the primary driver for each organization to take a call on the role that an office space can play. Also, as mentioned in the earlier point, it is highly dependent on each role on which kind of work environment will be best suited- a complete work from office, a hybrid work mode or complete remote work set-up.
These two factors have much more impact on the output and achievement of the organization. Whatever the answer is, in its implementation there may be some consequential savings which of course an organization should take, but ideally cost should not be the deciding reason for the approach.
Depending on these two factors, each organization can have an answer to what kind of commercial space is needed and what role/purpose will that space play. Will it be a place of work, a place to collaborate, a place to brainstorm or simply a place to connect socially and bond with rest of the employees.
People will certainly need some time to adjust in the work from office environment and set-up, just like they took time to adjust to the work from home set-up. There will be some adjustment required in the flexibility and work style of WFH.
The qualities people have developed and should keep honing are to be more inclusive, collaborative, communicative, understanding and patient. These will be key to the new way of hybrid work
We are working on a two-pronged approach to ensure communicational transparency despite the nature and mode of work across organization. The first is to have effective policies, system, and software process to ensure seamless communication on work and organization related things. We have a comprehensive internal communication structure and required tools and systems to support this. It includes collaborative and interactive tools like intranet boards, Yammer, WikiLinks etc.
The second is to drive a behaviour change. With over two years of WFH, people have been using these tools effectively and the intent to continue driving their usage in future as well. This will help ensure that when most people return to office, those opting for a hybrid set up or pure WFH set-up continue to get all communication and insight in alignment as the rest of the organization who may be working from office or any other location.
We take psychological well-being very seriously and it has been our priority, especially since the pandemic. We have partnered with an online counselling and emotional support platforms which can be used by employees anonymously to discuss their issues. In-person professional counsellors are provided with whom employees can engage with and seek guidance. We also have policy to support any employee in seeking help from certified mental health practitioners so that people can take the first step and reach out for help.
Initiatives like sending out psychology and mental health surveys to access employee health have helped us access their psychological well-being better. The result of these scientific psychological surveys were analysed by external experts and mental health reports were shared with employee who voluntarily participated in the survey. This also helped identify instances where people needed additional support and was communicated in these report briefing which was done with all employees. All our efforts have been taken in order to overcome the initial inertia of someone reaching out for help. To that effect we have also held several wellbeing sessions by renowned speakers to boost employee morale, encourage open internal conversation and remove stigma around the subject.
