19 May2021WORK CULTURE WILL BECOME MORE HUMAN CENTRIC ­HOW IS THE INDUSTRY PREPARING FOR IT?By Rebekkah Kumar, Founder & CEO, FoursevenWith skills in marketing, business strategy development, and management, she has headed the topnotch companies such as Microsoft and has worked as freelance marketing consultant.OPINIONIn a small business, human capital is always make-or-break, there are no two owners for any given task. In addition, priorities are ever-changing in small, growth-stage companies such as ours. Therefore, hiring the right talent is even more critical.The looked-first is for the interest match between the candidate and the role in a company, while second is the existing skill set. If there's a passionate, intelligent person who believes in the company brand and what it's trying to do as a company, people can help them becoming successful in a role that they are truly interested in. But the reverse of that is not true. If the candidate is a highly-skilled domain expert who is not really interested in a company brand, the category or the role itself, no amount of support or guidance will change that.In fact, there are several bright employees who are hired, but later found that their true interests lay in other areas than the role for which they were hired. Where possible, a company would actually carve out a new role for that employee, knowing that they could add significant value when given the right set of responsibility areas. I have personally mentored many of our employees to get to the heart of what really drives and motivates them. There were retail employees moving to marketing or customer-service positions, finance employees moving to materials management, and merchandisers moving to business development. If they are doing something they actually enjoy, they are more likely both to be successful and to stay loyal to us.There's also an element of being human-centric that makes it critical for employers to be up front and truthful with candidates during the interview process. An interview is not a sales pitch and a job description or not an advertisement. Experience is a distant second to what's most important ­ the overall fit between the candidate, the brand, the role and the company culture. That's why companies get down to brass tacks from the first interview itself.UPSKILLING - THE NEW MANTRA FOR EMPLOYEE SUSTAINABILITYIn a small, growing company, all employees are exposed to a broad cross-section of the business. That is to be expected as a company's professionals are all working very closely together-- even while they are all working from home.REBEKKAH KUMAR, FOUNDER & CEO, FOURSEVEN
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