[CTQ Smartcast] Pranali Save on How HR Evolved In the Pandemic Era
Pranali Save is Chief Human Resources Officer of the unicorn tech company Icertis. There, she leads the company’s diverse, global team of more than 1,000 employees based in 17 countries.
Pranali drives the company’s implementation of innovative global strategies to accelerate hiring of top talent, nurture the company’s strong and enduring corporate culture, and institute employee development programs anchored in the company’s FORTE – Fairness, Openness, Respect, Teamwork, Execution – values.
Pranali helps us understand how HR evolved in the post-Covid era and how it can drive the Future of Work. In this Smartcast with CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, she tells us why she thinks 2020 became the ‘Year of HR’.
(note: for technical reasons, this episode is audio-only)
Listen on your favourite podcast platforms or read the transcript below.
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SOME THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
How HR should enable the “Future of Work”
What young HR professionals should do to stay future relevant
Changing one’s attitude to work with algorithms and tools
Managing multi-generational talent
Identifying and percolating cultural values, the right way
The new levers of influence in a distributed environment
Preparing for a life in a hybrid, flexible work environment and the 10-40-50 model
Managing Gig Workers
The new skills we should all learn
If you enjoyed this topic, watch the CTQ Smartcast on What Companies Get Wrong About Cultural Values
TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
[CTQ Smartcast] Pranali Save On How HR Evolved in The Pandemic Era
[00:00:00]
Harish Kumar: Pranali Save is the CHRO of Icertis, a Pune-based unicorn company that provides contract management software to enterprise businesses. Pranali comes with rich experience, having worked for two decades in the HR function in the Indian software industry. In this smartcast, we spoke to her about the future of work, how the HR function has evolved over the years, how organizations should build their company culture, and how things have changed the distributed work environment. Pranali also spoke about the skills required to stay future relevant. We loved her insights and hope this chat helps shape how you think about future relevance, the way it helped us.
Harish Kumar: Hi Pranali, welcome to this CTQ Smartcast.
Pranali Save: Hello, and good morning.
Harish Kumar: We always talk a lot about future relevance. Choose to Thinq is about upleveling for future relevance. Let's dive in straight into just describing what this means. From a CHRO’s standpoint, what does the future of work really mean?
Pranali Save: I think work has been evolving for several years now. The way we work, the nature of work, with whom we work. It's just that pace, the acceleration has been super-fast over the last few years, and that pace is going to increase even more as we go on. Working in a multi-generational workforce, working together with bots, together with technology, that itself has changed the nature in a big way. Work as we knew it when you went into place X called an office, and you finished your work and came home. That doesn't happen anymore. Now, I don't know where work ends, [00:02:00] and if you call it life begins. The term work-life balance itself is getting outdated. It's more about work-life integration. Then how do you switch off in this always-on world? All of these changes that are coming in, how do you map with this change? How do you ride that wave and make sure that you still deliver in an ever-demanding market scenario? I think that's all about the future of work. More and more, it's about human behaviour as opposed to anything else.
Harish Kumar: Right. It's one of those things that nobody has trained for, nobody is prepared for. People are learning as they go. The business leaders who are at the helm, how do they try to take advantage of how the future of work is actually shaping up?
Pranali Save: You need to get ahead of the curve. The change is going to come. That's the only thing that is certain. Nobody knows what will happen, when, how fast, etc. The only certainty is that it is going to change. I think getting ahead of the curve, to me, for business leaders, I would say, it's also about listening very keenly to the signals, listening to your employees, listening to what are the signals outside and what's being passed on within. There's a lot of content out there, there are a lot of predictions being made, etc. All of that is there. But I would say, put your ear to the ground, listen, and a lot of these things are about what's the natural human reaction to things. When you look at it from that angle, I think it's new for everybody, but it puts you in a place where you can respond better. Of course, business leaders can lean towards great HR professionals to guide them through this. [00:04:00] That's another way you can prep up as well.
Harish Kumar: That leads me to the next question, Pranali. What role should the HR function play in enabling this future of work?
Pranali Save: As I said, the changes, there's a lot of technology dominating the changes itself, but how we adapt to this is all about human behaviour. How do we manage the liquid workforce in the future or a hybrid workforce in the future? HR is a better place than the other functions to be able to decode this and to be able to respond to these changes. The role of HR as such is getting more and more critical. It's becoming more of a business imperative, where earlier HR kind of stayed on the fringes. HR needs to then step up about how do you coach leaders in an organization to deal with this change? How do you make the organization itself more resilient to change? Also, how do you help the workforce, in general, to keep themselves updated, and continuously learn, continuously upskill to stay relevant? Then if these three things are done somehow, it sounds easy, but it's not at all. But these three levers are where HR needs to focus.
Harish Kumar: Pranali, can you give me some concrete examples of how people can actually do this, and the HR functions that you have been leading, how have you enabled this for employees in the workforce?
Pranali Save: Let me take an example of the upskilling part, staying relevant. Earlier on, it was an organizational responsibility [00:06:00] to make sure that everybody is upskilled and relevant. Now it's moving towards enabling that to happen, it's about creating awareness for the need for it to happen. It's about providing visibility as to the extent possible about what's coming up, and what are the skills that will be needed, and it's then providing an environment. We have moved to real-time, on-demand at your work. I don't know whether to call it, a workplace, but wherever, learn anywhere through any device. That's the format. It's about you decide what you want to learn when you want to learn. There is just an environment provided. A lot of tie-ups that we have done to provide licenses to Icertians, so they can decide what they want to come, and when. That's one example where you help people.
When I talk about awareness, it's also about building that sense of urgency. To a lot of people, it's a lot of everything's fine, why change things? It’s helping them understand that sense of urgency. The second is building a sense of security. With all the changes that are happening, there is that inherent trait where we are all trying to latch on to something secure. Creating that sense of safety and security is very important in this scenario.
We've been doing that at Icertis in what we call the four rings of responsibility, it's a framework where we are telling employees to make their decisions with a certain amount of prioritization.
The first ring is essentially taking care of yourself. That's the most important thing, and there's nothing selfish about doing that. It's the airlines’ [00:08:00] example, classical, put your own oxygen mask first before you help others. If you're not able to take care of yourself physically, mentally, as well as staying relevant in today's world, you can't be of any use to anybody else. The second ring goes on to say, take care of family, because that is what matters to us. You can’t just switch it off and start thinking about work differently. How do you do that? There are a lot of initiatives we have started at Icertis which are aimed towards the family because as work has moved to home, family members are in a way pseudo colleagues. You see them at your workplace because that's your home, you are invading their space, the cafeteria, the new cafeteria is your home kitchen, and so on, so forth. How do you help people to take care of their family and to do it in a way that it is a priority and it's okay to do that. The third is taking care of the community. We feel that we are in a position where we can make certain choices that are not available to some other brick and mortar companies, for example. With our business status, etc., we are able to help. That's an encouragement we are making to all Icertians, how do we help the community? The fourth ring is taking care of business, the customers. A lot of people say, how can you put that last? But, it's when you get the first three off the mind, that's where that safety security net is there, then you can really focus and it works beautifully.
Harish Kumar: This is really insightful, Pranali. Any feedback from the employees? As you said, a lot of people find it surprising, but was that [00:10:00] something that people came back to you saying, should the company be the last in the four rings? And how did they take it?
Pranali Save: In fact, there was a lot of positive feedback on the sequencing. I would say that maybe the apprehension was more in our minds when we put the four rings out there. But it resonated so well with people, they talk about it, they bring it up, they really appreciate it. It's not just employees. Customers have gone out and said this, candidates have gone out and said this. It's a simple framework, and it gave people the freedom to take care of that basic Maslow's hierarchy. You first start your basic needs, and I think we ended up doing that. We got a whole lot of positive feedback from the organization and more. It became like a decision-making framework for us. A lot of the ‘when do we start working from office decisions’, etc., which you struggle to find some rationale to do it. We put it in the four rings framework, and we said does it pass this test? If it does, then this is the path we go. Or do we leave it to employees, rather than some centralized person making calls? It empowered people to think, it gave them the structure to think, and most importantly, it took them to that safe zone where it was okay to think like that.
Harish Kumar: Pranali, you're talking about what is existing in the company and how you are building this. But in a fast-growing company, there's always this influx of people coming in, and they will come with their own thought processes, you may want to call it baggage or whatever. That does influence. [00:12:00] Yes, the larger community is going to influence them more, it will be stronger, but there is going to be something. How has your process of hiring talent changed over the last few years, keeping in mind the future of work? Also how you're building Icertis with the four rings of responsibility?
Pranali Save: That's an interesting question. The war for talent has always been a big hot topic of discussion. Talent has gone more global. With the pandemic, it is even more location-agnostic than earlier. There are interesting things, interesting dynamics happening in the talent market, even from an availability perspective. New pockets of talent have become available. The gig economy, which again, from an Indian perspective, some industries have taken to it others have not. I think that is gaining, it's becoming a little more mainstream than earlier. A lot of people who could not otherwise physically come to a workplace are able to do that today. That's another pocket opening up. Compensation-wise, certain metros, tier-two cities have been high on the com factor or there have been people who had to migrate to these locations to look for right opportunities, which also is going away. In Icertis, we started this concept of Icertis everywhere. You can work out of your home, native village, you can be at a farm, close to nature, wherever and still have the same job you would otherwise have to relocate for. Those things have opened up the talent market.
At the same time, it's also increased the competition in strange ways. The change from a hiring standpoint [00:14:00] is less about finding the talent, more about the ability to brand or sell what we have to offer. What does Icertis stand for? What is the flexibility we can offer to you? I think these are the questions that are coming up. How effectively can we brand ourselves? Talent is smarter than earlier, they find you, you don't need to find them if you position and brand yourself correctly. By branding, I'm not saying that you go out and just make false statements. It's about the experience that you give and how authentic that experience stays when the candidate becomes an employee.
Another thing is, people are no longer looking for jobs. They're looking for a purpose, especially the millennials. Are you able to offer them a purpose? That's the focus of talent acquisition, as opposed to just another job where they come, spend a year or two, and then move on to something else. How do you do that? How do you create that purpose? How do you make them understand that purpose? How do you effectively paint that entire picture is one big change? There are, of course, many more, but this is where I'll stop.
Harish Kumar: A lot of these have got accelerated over the last one year, as well. Over the last year, if you think of it, has that been a boon for the perception of the HR function in organizations? Here, I'm not asking you about only Icertis, but a more generalized view of how HR is being [00:16:00] viewed. How leadership now looks at leveraging HR strengths, as compared to back in 2019 or before that. Has there been a market change?
Pranali Save: Certainly. It's been a carpe diem moment for HR is how I’d put it. HRM has been, on the fringes, struggling always to prove relevance. It's a generic statement I'm making, not specific to Icertis. Every wave of change brings its heroes. In the financial crisis, you had the CFOs taking centre stage. The whole information security wave, and digitization got the CIOs to the forefront. This last year and the pandemic is all about HR taking that centre stage. Interestingly, it's where you sort of have to lean in on a lot of the basics. Revisiting the basics is how I put it because as we move to the high tech, I think a part of the high touch was lost in the last few years, which has resurfaced with the pandemic and remote and how do you re-engage with people? Even if it's remote, how do you bring in the human element? That's where HR has become business-critical. Companies have realized that everything is fine, but if they don't get this part of it fixed, and the workforce engaged and motivated, it's not going to help anything. 2020 has been the year for HR and of HR.
Harish Kumar: Like you mentioned, about the airlines, about taking care of yourself first. Similarly for [00:18:00] an HR professional, especially someone young, who's just starting off with a career in HR, what do you advise them to do to make sure they are staying future relevant?
Pranali Save: I think this is a great time for young HR professionals. Earlier, there was always the apprehension that for a young HR professional, that now they are getting into the field, there are so many veterans, so much experience. In that sense, the pandemic has been a great leveler. Of course, there's a background that comes with it, but it's essentially brought people on the same footing. In fact, I would say younger professionals tend to have an advantage because you're more digitally native, or at least familiar. They’re in a better position to use technology to their benefit. That's my one piece of advice, get friendly with technology. There are a lot of advancements that have happened in that space, and you can leverage them and use them to your advantage.
The second which is contradictory to the first is, I'd say get even more human than earlier. It's all about getting that human connection back. There is a tendency with younger, not HR only, but in general, younger professionals that the knowledge resides on the net. Yes, it does. But there's a lot more knowledge in the real world. Talk to people, listen to people, experiment, that's what my urge would be. We have enough thought leaders out there, everybody's reading about those. There is a wealth of information when you talk to your employees, your peers, your colleagues. My advice would be to leverage that and use that collective [00:20:00] wisdom to experiment, maybe fail fast and find the right way forward.
Harish Kumar: That brings me to the next question that I had. I'm going to change that slightly, now that you've mentioned it. My question was about the role of tools and digital systems. What should HR folks do to start getting comfortable working with algorithms and tools, rather than get replaced by them? I'll add a subpart to it, what should the older folks do? You said the younger folks are more comfortable with these tools. What should the older folks do about changing their attitude towards these tools as well?
Pranali Save: The answer lies in your question. It's the attitude. There's this whole paradigm about HR being not able to deal with numbers or with technology, and I think it's also a self-created monster. It's how you approach that, and become friends with technology, as opposed to fearing it. I think the debate of does technology replace is passe. You kind of use it to your advantage. There are people who say AI will take over the world. Human intellect will still ride above that. Even about that human emotion will ride above that as well. Stop being afraid of it, stop being afraid that it's going to take over, stop being afraid that how do I even understand this, and start practicing.
With simple examples I can give through the pandemic, we've seen senior citizens, [00:22:00] using apps for purchases, groceries, and things like that. My parents, for them the phone was just about receiving and making calls. I see my dad doing so much more, and he's 80 plus, so if he can do it, and if so many people from that generation can do it, it's a no-brainer that it's about the attitude and not so much about the skilling part. Maybe some of us get stuck with using technology, just to get data. How do you get those insights from that data? That is where the focus should be. That's when you work as a partner, as opposed to an either-or kind of relationship.
Harish Kumar: Where have you seen these tools being used very well, over the last, two-three years?
Pranali Save: Definitely in the talent acquisition space. There are places where it's worked brilliantly in terms of in-volume hiring, narrowing down, weeding out the mass, and bringing it down to a focus group where you can actually engage in an in-person dialogue more effectively. That's been one space. The other is again, more of last year is the whole usage of the video JDs and video interviewing techniques. We've been able to reach out to pockets where that talent was not able to come to a certain place for an in-person. That's, again, been a place where technology's been useful. [00:24:00] I'd say it also needs somebody to look at it from an HR angle because then you need to think about how do you make the candidate comfortable with that technology? How do you make sure that the space where the person is currently located does not form a part of your… you are taking away the biases that would otherwise come in. That's been one area where there's been significant movement. The well-being space, engagement space, again, so much usage of technology to reach out and get a feel. In the office, it’s easy, right? You take a walk down the floor, or you just have lunch in the cafeteria with a couple of colleagues and you get a good feel of the pulse, which you don't now. Leveraging technology towards that, many changes and apps are coming into play there. There are examples from all fields. Learning is another space where technology is an integral part of that.
Harish Kumar: Another thing that you touched upon about the multi-generational aspect of the workforce. In fact, it won't be too much of an exaggeration, if you say, a 50 or 52-year-old senior director, her son, or daughter is probably joining the same organization after engineering. That's a distinct possibility now. In your experience, how have you been seeing people deal with this? If not their own child, probably the child's best friend is joining the same organization. How are you seeing this pan out in the Indian tech industry space?
Pranali Save: There are several examples in what you mentioned, I've actually seen it happen in places [00:26:00] I’ve worked. You said senior director, now, it's also a bit different sometimes when the person entering the workforce is not a trainee anymore but comes with a lot of background. In startups, particularly where it could be that person is closer to that director title. Experience and positioning in the workspace itself have changed so much that even from a multi-generational, one element is the way of thinking, how people respond to different scenarios. The other is also the whole challenge, the whole mentality of you need to have X years of experience to reach a particular position. That’s not very easy for people to follow. I've seen brilliant examples of senior people very happily reporting to, and I don't mean, just from a hierarchy perspective, but reporting to, learning from, getting mentored by younger entrants into the workforce. I think it's beginning to change, it will take time, maybe IT industries and startups, in particular, are a little more ahead of the curve than others. It’s a brilliant change that's happening. It helps to smooth out how you look at your own families back home when you see that experience. I see the younger generation at work contributing so well, so much better than I did when I was that old. I look at my kids now with even more respect than I did earlier. [00:28:00]
Harish Kumar: That's a good one. Let's move to the next section. Here, we wanted to talk about the culture of organizations, and the values that they follow. We know for a fact because we've also worked on the FORTE values at Icertis. Fairness, Openness, Respect, Teamwork, and Execution are integral to the Icertis DNA. We know for a fact, but we wanted you to give some concrete examples of how FORTE really governs the culture and decision-making at Icertis.
Pranali Save: CTQ has been partnering with us on this journey. You've been witness to what we've been doing. Examples I'll take, FORTE is it's truly embedded in everything that we do. It's not a standalone PowerPoint or a plaque on the wall. Every time we are making a hiring decision, it starts from there. One part of the decision-making is, does the person fit into the FORTE values? There is a bit of assessment from a behavioural standpoint that happens. Unless we are convinced about this, we have said no to candidates who are otherwise brilliant.
Similarly, decisions on promotions, decisions on internal mobility, all of these also go through a FORTE lens. Rewards is another obvious one. Our bonuses are linked to FORTE apart from other business metrics. That linkage is taken very seriously. It's not something that's put there so people earn that part of the bonus. They need to really make an effort. [00:30:00] Recently, we launched a recognition framework, we call it the VIA framework. VIA is for values in action. Even there, when we went through a huge discussion around what should we call it because it should reflect the real purpose, we settled on the values there again, interestingly. There is a very strong connection with FORTE, even in some of the awards which are directly linked to business results.
The basic hygiene factor in making the cut for any selection there is all about passing the FORTE. We also run once in a year, because this topic is a subjective thing that you can't really quantify. How do you then calibrate the organization or what does fairness means in Icertis, or what is openness in Icertis? Every year roughly about 100 or 150 of the senior leadership is brought physically. It's a huge expense and investment, but they are physically brought to one location. This year, unfortunately, we had to do it virtually, where we bring out actual FORTE cases.
Their real-life use cases, of course, are anonymized to protect identities, etc., but these are brought up. The case is placed on the table, and the leaders are invited to share their interpretation, how would they respond to it? Which of the FORTE values would they resonate with? There are very different perspectives that come up. It's one of the exercises that is really valued, and, this so much of learning, so much of common calibration that comes out of it. Then when those leaders go in parts of the organization, and they are expected to replicate this with [00:32:00] their teams, that's where we cascade it. That makes it easy for the decision-making process, also, because everybody is then speaking the same language with respect to FORTE.
Harish Kumar: I can clearly see a lot of effort going into the propagation of the values, but we often see organizations either do lip service to these value statements or sometimes they even fail to identify the values of their culture. Why do you think that happens? Is it because of the inability to assess and propagate or the effort that it takes? What could be the reason why this does not happen in more organizations?
Pranali Save: The topic itself is a subjective one. I think a lot of places or a lot of leaders shy away from it because as you rightly said, the assessment is difficult. Or how do you calibrate it? Or how do you explain it to the people? That becomes a challenge. Maybe that's where instead of jumping head-on, people maybe take a backseat. Even where they are identified, and I'd say most organizations today do articulate their values. But, they do become lip service, because the test is really when there are tough decisions to make. Our CEO Samir Bodas, often says that is it that we are following our values because we can afford it? Would we continue to do that, even if we can't afford to? That's the real test. Even when, in places where you know your choice of customers, for example. Are you willing to let your values drive that? Are you willing to say no to something? [00:34:00] I think these are the questions that business leaders should upfront ask themselves, before making that commitment. Once you do, there's no going back. Then if you slip, that's when, everything that you've done, but all that remains is lip service.
We've had those kinds of testing decisions where we've had excellent performers on the team, a lot of business riding on them, but they didn’t make the FORTE cut and we've had to make tough calls. Or the other way around where we said that we would still continue to invest in this individual. It's all about that and the challenge is, it becomes lip service, if you do it once and then you don't talk about it often enough. In Icertis, every presentation that we have, for a larger audience, larger means even a small team meeting is larger, anything more than two or three people, starts with looking at the slides on the vision, mission, and values. There's so much hyper-communication around it that people now sort of even if the slide didn't appear, kind of mentally start seeing it on the screen. When you have these technical glitches, sometimes it's nothing on the screen, but I can still see the FORTE slide there because it's ingrained here. You need to keep reinforcing it, to make it come alive. That's another thing that makes a difference between whether it's lip service, or it's really followed.
Harish Kumar: We've also noticed a slightly different problem at a different end of the spectrum. Where we've met cofounders of young companies who really understand the importance of building a culture, [00:36:00] identifying the DNA of the organization, but two things hold them back. One is they feel it's going to be a very effortful exercise, just to identify these things. That leads to the second challenge where they feel that this is something really important, I need to give it time, so let me do it at the end of this month, next quarter when things are slightly more comfortable. As you know, next month, next quarter never comes. They have the right intentions, but they don't do that. Is there a middle path of chugging along on this path, so that you get it right sometimes, or is it advisable to stop everything, get this right once, and then move forward? What's your recommendation to these kinds of people?
Pranali Save: I'm a bit of a puritan when it comes to values, I don't think you can, do it in parts or pieces, or be like I'm 90% on trust, you can't have that. It's zero, or it's 100. This is not something where you can say that let me make my first million and then I will follow the values. You need to commit to it on day one. You have to jump off the cliff. Of course, it's evolving as well. Day one when you make the commitment doesn't mean that you're going to be able to reach out to all employees, whether you're a small startup of 30 people, or you're 30,000 people in your company. That might take time, how you percolate it down the line might take time. It's okay to set your expectations, spread them across a bit. But the initial commitment needs to happen and you can't take shortcuts then. It’s like [00:38:00] in life. If you're hungry, and you have no money, do you steal food and eat it? Or do you still try to earn something through some format and then buy it. It's always a choice. That's why they are called values, right? I would just say that once you make that choice, the returns that come are worth it.
Now skills are sort of out there for anyone to get. Similarly, information is out there for everybody to get, so the list of differentiators is really shrinking. It's about attitude, it's about values, it's about culture and choices. Bigger organizations have a different challenge in how do you keep that belongingness and connectedness. But with smaller setups, especially… We get a lot of feedback from candidates that in the interviews that they go to, they see the consistency in the interview process where people talk about the values, and they find that attractive enough to come and join. That could be my invitation to especially the younger organizations who might think the timing is wrong. It's not. It's actually the right time to do it.
Harish Kumar: I'll move to the next section, which is around distributed work. We'll come back to this topic here, in the last one year and with the whole distributed work, suddenly lots of levers that you would have otherwise had in terms of influencing culture, like people seeing others in action, as you said, the physical space [00:40:00], the headquarters, all of that just disappeared, right in the last one year. With respect to influencing people, mindset, and culture, what are the levers of influence that you still have? How have you used them?
Pranali Save: One has been coaching the managers to stay connected with their teams. How do they do that? How do they assess performance differently? How do they find opportunities to reward people and recognize people? Ensuring some basic frameworks in keeping an informal connection. One part of it has been that. The other has been a little more tricky for us from a cultural standpoint. How do you get, especially people who've never been inside of an Icertis office, never shaken hands with a colleague, it's all been remote. How do they experience a slice of Icertis culture, values, and leaders?
As you are aware, CTQ has been partnering with us in this.We've done a series of initiatives. One I can call out has been iConnect, which has been creating a set of stories. It's a storyboard around experiencing the Icertis culture. We spoke about FORTE. How are the values of Icertis? What are the legends around those? How do other people leverage those? These are stories that have been contributed by Icertians, they are about Icertis people, our experiences, and these are shared. It's a live storyboard, where people can go read up, contribute their own, recognize colleagues, etc. That's been one of the things.
The other has also been an attempt to recreate the spontaneity of the [00:42:00] office. With remote, what happens is that you become a slave of your calendar, your meetings are structured, your agenda is structured. You know the next 30 minutes, you will be speaking to Harish, and then to somebody else, and this is the agenda. That's it. Whereas when you meet physically, as you walk to that meeting room, you might bump into another colleague, you have a different conversation, someone from a different team. Recreating those moments of serendipity, recreating those random conversations, which all connect in the end. Creating that diverse network within the organization. That has been something we've been trying to replicate this randomness, even in the remote world. It's not been easy, we're still struggling. That's one of the levers that's helped us to stay connected. It bumped up our ENPS scores. It's allowed people to still feel a part of Icertis even while they are working remotely, and in many instances, not even in the same city.
Harish Kumar: I remember Pranali, we spoke back in June for the first time, and you were already sort of preparing for what life will be two to three quarters down the line, especially when things go hybrid. You're one of the first few people that we spoke with, who was already looking towards the future. In the light of what you just mentioned, about people talking and thinking about their own mental wellness, this monotony has crept in, in spite of all the efforts. How have people been [00:44:00] dealing with it? Has it been a case of having accepted this? People want to go back to the older days, people want the hybrid model as the next thing, they want to take the best of both worlds? What is your sense of how people want to do it and how businesses want to do it?
Pranali Save: That's a tough question. It's about what the business wants, then what people want. It's also so much a factor of when you ask them. In June, the scenario was very different from how it was in the November-December time frame. Just when people recalibrated, they felt that this monotony is getting too much and we want to get back to work. Along comes wave two, there's again, panic in the air, and you sort of take one step forward, two steps behind, sometimes the other way round. Hybrid is the word really, it's flexible and hybrid, that's all one can do. You need to ensure that you provide flexibility. That's where our four rings of responsibility again come into play. Everybody's personal situation may also be different.
We are thinking about the hybrid model, where we have 10% of folks who will always be working inside of an Icertis office because they want to or because their roles are such. We would have roughly 30 to 40%, who would always be working totally remote because that's again using the liquid workforce, the gig economy. Then there's the floating population in between who want the flexibility to come in a few days not come in some other days. We're looking at redefining [00:46:00] work more about being in office for collaboration, sometimes for extremely focused work, where you want to be in a zone, which is allowing you to concentrate, but otherwise, you work from anywhere and in any format. That's how I see us moving forward.
At any point in time, I think that the whole 10, 40, and 50 mix might change in whichever way and that's the whole dynamism of how this pandemic is playing out. Even post-vaccination, etc., when the pandemic fear is not there, it's a matter of choice. People have gotten used to the choice. It will continue to be that. A lot of other things we did in terms of trying to make things lighter for the people while they work from home. We had these wellness hampers, we've had fun events, we've had family involvement. It's been also cluttered with a lot of these other initiatives.
Harish Kumar: How have you managed yourself over the last year? What has your new routine been like?
Pranali Save: I joined Icertis, right before the pandemic hit. I had my agenda charted out, this is what we would do, etc. Then comes the pandemic, and suddenly, my to-do list is not my own, newer priorities fell there. It was interesting. Personally, I think I've thoroughly enjoyed 2020. For me, that silver lining [00:48:00] has been much bigger than the cloud itself. Particularly in my role, and that applies to a lot of people. We all work on a global platform today. I think it allowed me the opportunity to have equal access to every Icertian, irrespective of where in the globe they were, without having that pressure or that feeling that am I spending more time with the people in the office I go to, am I traveling enough. It took away a lot of those other things and allowed me that opportunity to connect equally with everybody. The second is, it gave me a lot of flexibility as a person to put my own schedule there, figure out my own cadence in what were the times I was maybe more active at the office, what was a time I had taken out for some personal space? It's been a journey. I think we all went through that journey and how we brought in a lot of discipline into our time schedule, so on so forth. When I look back, I've enjoyed every minute of it. It's been much better than a normal, average year would have been.
Harish Kumar: One more thing that you briefly touched upon, and I want you to unpack that a bit. In the last year of the distributed work mode, how has that affected the whole idea of diversity and inclusion in organizations?
Pranali Save: It’s interesting, and there are two parts to it. One has been from a positive note. It brought in a lot of equal opportunity to folks. [00:50:00] As I mentioned earlier, it didn't matter where you were working from, you could choose to be in any location and have equal access to the kind of role you wanted to play, the kind of place you wanted to be. A lot of people, especially women who were otherwise finding it difficult to hold a full-time job, had to step in at nine in the morning, a typical 40-hour week, nine to five jobs. They got that flexibility and could take up different types of employment while being at home.
So from a perspective, that was a blessing to a lot of people. At the same time, it also brought some hidden challenges. Redefining, for women, particularly, maybe for some of them, it was easier when they went into the office space, and for that time, they had a different role. Now, when they are in the same home set up, especially with joint family systems, etc., there's a conflict in who focuses on what chair of the household, elderly care, childcare, etc. That also puts different pressures on different segments of the population. That is something, which we need to kind of be cognizant about and empathetic about and take that into account, while we assess performance or reach out to people, set work times, etc. That is one piece, which I would say slightly, I put it in the grey zone a bit.
The other fresh element which we will see, when we start getting back [00:52:00] in larger numbers to the office, in a hybrid model, is this new set of haves and have nots. There's a new power dynamic that's waiting to be played out in terms of physical access to the office environment, maybe better technology, or even to the bosses, does that give you a different edge? How do you keep that equality with those who are then working outside of the office and may not have the same access? How do you include people into a meeting wherein a conference room, you have eight people inside and four outside? How do you ensure they have an equal opportunity to speak up? There is this whole set of new dynamics from the inclusion perspective, that's popping up. It's going to be a space we need to tread very carefully is how I see.
Harish Kumar: What you mentioned on the D&I also addresses my next question about how do you manage remote workers? I wanted to ask, is there a distinction that you make between managing the gig workers, because they're, after all, at an arm's length as compared to the rest of the organization. They've come in for a certain project or certain tasks. How do you then ensure that they're being treated? Should they be treated or will they be treated as the regular workforce? Is there something different in how you manage them?
Pranali Save: It's a learning curve. We don't have as big a proportion of gig workers as we would want to have. There is time before we get there. My own personal take on it is whether you're engaging with the organization for two days a week, [00:54:00] four hours a day, or you're on 24/7 - For the time that you are engaging with Icertis, I want that person to have 100% of the Icertis experience, and not feel any different, because that commitment for that moment is still 100%. In that sense, I wouldn't want to make too many distinctions from an experience perspective. There are, of course, other elements of the legalities and how the employment policies are built around it, etc. Those need to be addressed separately. From an experience perspective, I expect 100% irrespective of the terms of engagement, and I would also want to give 100% of the experience in the same manner.
Harish Kumar: In these times, do you think some skills have become more important that people should focus on learning?
Pranali Save: Resilience is topping everybody's charts, of course. I put it out there upfront as well. Agility, again, big time, very important. I would call out empathy. I would call out self-discipline, maybe because the focus is now on how you run, how you organize yourself and manage yourself as opposed to expecting a supervisor or a manager to do it for you. In the same breath, I would say that coaching skills for people leaders is becoming relevant and important now, with the entire managing and supervision getting outdated. [00:56:00]
Harish Kumar: Let's move to the last section, where we will give you some words, topics, and we would want your hot take on the future relevance of these things. I must admit, I've been on the backfoot here because you have addressed a lot of the things that we wanted to ask you. I'm still going to ask you these things for the simple reason that I want you to think of the future relevance in a couple of decades for these and think if your answers change. The first thing that I want to ask you about is the future relevance of HR as a function.
Pranali Save: Business-critical. People are and will become more and more the differentiators in the future and any function that helps to leverage that element is going to be business-critical. HR is here to stay. Over several decades, the next evolution is also about HR not being specialized to a couple of people in that function, but HR is going to be a part and parcel of every people leader. That function will be like coaching skills. You don't have a coaching department. You may have an expert coach, but you don't have a coaching department. Everybody needs to have it. I think HR is going to be that where it's going to go to every people leader as a hygiene factor and then you will have a few experts who will ensure that everything stays on track.
Harish Kumar: The next one is company headquarters. [00:58:00]
Pranali Save: No mothership anymore, I think it's going to be satellite offices all the way. Headquarters now is more like having a virtual background, like I have. Everybody has the same virtual background, and I could be sitting in a park, I could be at home, or I could be in one of the satellite offices. It's convenient, it's reducing commute times. The accessibility is now so easy that you don't need that physical huge statement out there, have a nice big office with shiny windows and all of that. It's all going to go out.
Harish Kumar: The next one is coaching. What is the future relevance of coaching?
Pranali Save: Again, a big one. It's getting more and more important, it's going to be part of the basic skill set for any manager. I wouldn't even want to use a term manager, any leader at all levels. Very highly valued as we go ahead. It's a form of learning as well as a form of giving.
Harish Kumar: The final one, organization design in general.
Pranali Save: That's a tricky one. I don't have the answer to that. I'll just say that the future is about how that structure is going to change even more, more dynamically than it did before. It's about how do you build an agile structure? How do you leverage cross-functional networks? Moving away from… the old will definitely go out. What is the new, I don't know except for the fact that it would be constantly changing [01:00:00] and constantly readjusting itself. I also feel that apart from sort of one common structure, we might have different avatars within the same organization, need-based sets of many organizations coming together working in a cross-functional fashion, and then dispersing after that.
Harish Kumar: All right. On that note, Pranali, let me admit that this interview was actually an exercise in agility for me because you kept wrong-footing me by answering questions that I would have planned later. I had to be super agile in this interview, so it was a great experience chatting with you and picking your brains on how things are going to change over the next few years. Thanks a lot, Pranali.
Pranali Save: Thanks Harish, and maybe I've been sort of treading in many different spots. So if I have upset your questions, I will give you an apology for that, but I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for inviting me.