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What one year of remote work has taught IT and energy sectors
On March 23, 2020, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, limiting the movement of the nearly 138 crore population of India as a preventive measure against the emerging Covid-19 pandemic in India.
Subsequently, the corporate world scrambled to ensure its business and employees remained safe. The idea gave way to the rolling out of the work from home (WFH) policy across sectors. Following the same, ETHRWorld tried to assess India’s two prominent sectors that are responsible for the nation’s economic bulk on how they have fared in the remote work culture: IT and Energy.
IT making its way
Speaking of the initial challenges faced while managing various HR operations remotely, Satyanarayanan Visvanathan, SVP and Head – HR (Global) & Corporate Quality, CSS Corp, said the uncertainties caused by the pandemic, coupled with isolated working, had been difficult for many employees.
Accepting the change gracefully was the only effective way to move forward and IT service management company CSS Corp was able to transmit this equipoise across the organisation with its CHEER framework.
“Our CHEER framework (Communication, High-lighting accomplishments, Energising teams, Engagement with employees and Recognition of achievements), developed specifically for the Covid times, has been instrumental in driving high employee morale and positivity,” Visvanathan said.
For Chirag Doshi, Head of People, ThoughtWorks India, the initial challenge was figuring out how to make sound hiring decisions bereft of any in-person interactions.
“While remote interviews have been commonplace at ThoughtWorks for a few years already, before the pandemic, we usually ensured at least one in-person interaction for every candidate,” he said.
However, in 2020 the software company adapted to assessing candidates’ culture-fitment during the remote interviews.
Workplace should be gender neutral and inclusive for everyone: Industry leaders
While sharing her experience of facing misogynist attitudes in the early years of her career, Shefali Mohapatra, Senior Vice President – Human Resources, Act Fibernet, said, “It only propelled me to decide that when I reach a position of power, I will ensure workplaces are free from such regressive approaches.”
A woman in a key business position shouldn’t be an idea, result of a morning meeting but an accepted reality which has been missing in corporate spaces for long now. The equal participation of women in the workplace is needed as the offices are not just missing an identity but a personality which makes half of this planet.
While major changes are taking place in the corporate world with initiatives by companies and policies of the government, the equality the world strives for, is still a moon day away awaiting the sunrise of equal opportunities for all.
When leaders Choose To Challenge: International Women’s Day 2021
As a part of the She Matters campaign, we asked leaders to raise their hand high and show that they commit to “choose to challenge” and call out inequality and create an equitable workplace.
In the wake of major social and political changes over the past decades, leading companies are taking steps to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion. According to a number of researches, we have found that diverse companies outperform with more homogenous demographics, have lower volatility, a better return on equity, and the higher the degree of creativity and cognitive conflict during the decision-making process.
While organizations around the world understand the need for diversity and are putting efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive work (workplaces), the progress doesn’t seem to be much. Programs designed to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace often fail.
She Matters, an annual campaign by People Matters that aims at enabling organizations to help their women employees to thrive and be empowered at work.
This year’s women’s day theme is #ChooseToChallenge. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.
As a part of the She Matters campaign, we asked leaders to raise their hand high and show that they commit to “choose to challenge” and call out inequality and create an equitable workplace.
The glass ceiling, the broken rung, or whatever name you give it, gender inequality at the workplace continues to be a looming issue. The tech industry too has a long way to go toward achieving equality in the workplace. In fact, at the bigtechs too (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft) women make up barely over a third of the workforce.
The divide becomes even more prevalent at the top, where men are 30% more likely to be hired for managerial roles than women. In fact, only 23% of C-suite positions are held by women, with women of color receiving even less recognition, making up just 4% of senior leadership team, according to World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which noted it will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality based on the current rate of progress..
Now that the world has become further disrupted – thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic – and organizations and individuals are geared towards the ‘next normal’, it is even more important to think about the future of work for women in technology. What are the new challenges for women in tech? How are the new generations of women leaders breaking the glass ceiling? And how this entire conversation can change the future of work? With these and many more questions in mind, CXOToday reaches out to men and women leaders in the tech industry who enlighten us about the current scenario and the future of women in technology in the next normal.
“In more ways than one, the pandemic has changed our overall approach towards work and life at large. While the change enabled women to manage their work schedule and simultaneously attend to the needs of their personal life, it has also blurred work-life boundaries with increased responsibilities affecting their wellness. On the positive side, it has opened up avenues for women joining back from sabbaticals with the benefits provided by companies like limited hour engagement and absence of login/logout compulsions. The technology industry is one of the spaces where a woman can explore a plethora of options like contract/consultant-based jobs to carry on her career journey without much sweat. It calls for playing the balancing act well with appropriate support systems and mentorship. The tech industry has been increasingly providing opportunities for women to not only enter the industry, but also break the glass ceiling. But ultimately, the onus is on women themselves to make the optimum use of opportunities through constant motivation, continuous upskilling and networking with other leaders to grow in this space.”
– Kalpana Sudharsan, Senior Director, Corporate Quality at CSS Corp.
CXOs are increasingly recognizing that stepping up their digital game would lead to more efficiency, innovation, and customer satisfaction. But the problem is, ‘where does one even begin?’ Experts recommend, it begins by mapping your digital customer experience journey – which is pretty much like a road trip. It helps brands in understanding their customers’ needs and behavior that can help improve the brand’s product or service.
In an exclusive chat with CXOToday, Vivian Gomes, SVP & Head – Marketing & Inside Sales, CSS Corp., discusses why mapping your digital customer journey is becoming more important than ever in the current scenario, the key challenges and opportunities in this space and how brands can develop their customer journey map, going forward.
Why is digital customer experience getting more important given the current business scenario?
Since the onset of the pandemic, the relevance of creating no-touch experiences has become even more apparent. The entire ecosystem today is evolving around virtual operations, especially, in the B2C context. Customers are becoming more empowered and self-service is a rising trend that is seeing applications in many fields as an enabler in facilitating seamless customer engagements. With this changing business landscape, mapping the customer journey becomes critical to creating digital experiences that will differentiate.
How and why is it important to map your digital customer experience journey?
Businesses today are dealing with digitally-savvy, conscious consumers whose purchase priorities and buying behavior have changed. With the digital highway wide open, brands are understanding the importance of using modern, new technologies such as real-time messaging tools, AI, automation, chatbots, and self-service among others to remove friction from customer interactions. Mapping the digital customer journey becomes imperative to ensure that customers receive a seamless experience and any impediments along the journey are removed.
What are the biggest obstacles companies are facing around digital customer experience?
Digital customer experience is a goal that is easier said than achieved. The key to providing best-in-class CX is personalization, which relies on gathering intelligence about the customer context. This calls for smooth and efficient data capture mechanisms and analytics-led decision making. With so much dark data that is not being used and functions operating in silos, organisations are still grappling with data ecosystems that are yet to mature. Also, many companies are caught in the web of technical debt which prevents them from creating agile infrastructure ecosystems needed to engage today’s consumers effectively. Finally, structuring CX calls for a cultural and mindset shift in the organization. All this takes time as there is an inertia that impedes progress.
What are your recommendations to CXOs looking at designing their CX strategy?
If we look at the evolving technology landscape, cloud technology, data analytics, AI, automation, and other next-gen technology enablers, which were considered cutting-edge before, have become table-stakes today. It is not only important to create a holistic plan to weave in these technologies into the overall strategy, but also to create champion change agents who will be willing to adapt to change and drive it at the grassroots levels. It is also important to build the right digital infrastructure that can support omnichannel experiences. Lastly, mapping the customer journey to create frictionless and empathetic brand experiences should be the way forward for companies.
It’s important to be mindful of trends in the digital customer experience space so that CXOs can quickly adapt their strategy to meet the latest industry insights and create an effective customer experience. In this video, Gomes talks about the recent trends in the digital customer experience space.
Understanding Metaheuristics Algorithm In 800 words
The term optimisation is not only mathematically important but also closely linked to any business. Everyone aims to optimise the way things are executed, processed, or delivered. For a given problem, there is always going to be the best way among the many possible solutions or approaches, and this is usually referred to as an optimised solution. Here are a few examples of business optimisation:
To solve any optimisation problem, there are three main fundamental elements that one needs to understand.
In the context of optimisation, a heuristic is defined as a method driven by rule-of-thumb without any specific procedure. A metaheuristics method is designed by leveraging more than one heuristic methods and thus inheriting all heuristic methods’ characteristics. Natures inspirations, such as ants searching for food, wolves hunting their prey, the formation of water droplets, diffusion of two chemicals, cell formation, the attraction between electrostatic objects, gravity, have resulted in the ‘Metaheuristics Algorithm’.
Metaheuristic algorithms’ adoption rate is surging in engineering, finance, retail, healthcare, insurance, and biomedical science. The optimisation is a critical factor in solving business and engineering problems. These algorithms can be summarised as a form of stochastic optimisation (an optimisation method that generates and uses random variables) independent of the surface gradient for optimisation. Most of these algorithms are inspired by different sources of nature and evolved from a purely mathematical model to a highly intelligent method of solving problems. Metaheuristics, along with machine language, is gaining wide acceptance in solving complex problems.
TSIA and CSS Corp co-author a report on outsourcing trends in 2021
CSS Corp a new-age IT services and technology support company in association with The Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), has released a co-authored report named ‘2021 Trends in Outsourcing’.
The report uncovers two major 2021 trends in outsourcing- an increase in outsourcing contracts and service providers creating sophisticated digital capabilities’ businesses to meet the needs of enterprise customers.
The first key trend predicts an increase in outsourcing contracts this year, as many companies were grappling with their business continuity plan due to several reasons like lack of infrastructure and inability to transition to a 100 per cent work-at-home model. The second key trend focuses on how service providers have begun creating separate business units to make digital capabilities easily available to meet the requirements of large enterprise customers.
Leading service providers have made great advances in sophisticated digital capabilities, including artificial intelligence and robotic process automation. This has led them to identify opportunities to effectively scale operations and accelerate development of digital expertise in support functions across enterprise customers.
The report highlights the trends and patterns that are going to be mainstream in support outsourcing in 2021 and how enterprises can leverage the right digital support partner. It showcases how the outsourcing value proposition has evolved in areas such as near-shore outsourcing, outsourcing of non-traditional functions like sales that form a significant portion of costs in XaaS companies and the rise of outcome-based commercial models.
It also talks about how outsourcing can enable organizations to expand into new geographies. The pandemic has ushered in an era of work-from-anywhere which has further dwindled location dependencies and provided a fillip to remote operations.
John Ragsdale, Distinguished Vice President, Technology Research, TSIA, said, “Technology companies are increasingly forming strategic relationships with outsourcers to not only help scale support operations cost-effectively and guarantee a high-quality customer experience but also to accelerate digital transformation. 2021 will see this trend amplify further and service providers like CSS Corp are well placed to emerge as strong outsourcing partners for technology organizations.”
“The Covid-19 crisis has emphasized the need to adopt digital technologies to build agility and resilience in the organization’s operations. Technology service providers like CSS Corp, have deep industry expertise in enabling business transformation for its customers and driving impact by blending human ingenuity with cutting-edge intelligent technology tools.
As organizations look to strategize in a post-Covid business environment, it will be critical for them to strengthen their core capabilities while partnering with apt service providers to help them in their digital journeys, driving innovation and creating better experiences for customers.” said Sunil Mittal, Executive Vice President, CSS Corp.
Prioritizing technology innovation in response to a rapidly changing world has never been more important. The ‘2021 Trends in Outsourcing’ report is a useful tool for companies wanting to rapidly accelerate their digital automation journey with insights on effectively partnering with technology service providers to leverage their full potential.
Survey shows companies in Indian cities plan to hire freshers between February and April
Around 15% of companies in Indian cities plan to hire freshers between February and April 2021, shows a survey by learning solutions firm TeamLease Edtech shared exclusively with ET in February 2021. “Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, hiring of freshers continues to be on a strong growth trajectory,” Shantanu Rooj, chief executive of TeamLease EdTech, said. “For the period February-April 2021, freshers hiring intent has improved by 2.5 times from the lockdown period, and, as the economy opens up, it is expected to go up further.”
The survey covered more than 800 companies across 18 sectors and 14 cities, and asked them about their intent to hire graduation freshers from both engineering and non-engineering backgrounds. The top job roles freshers can expect to be employed in are business development or sales professionals, graphic designers, digital marketing associates, content writers and web developers.
IT companies are the top employers, with 24% of them expressing intent to hire, followed by telecom companies (21%) and startups in e-commerce and technology (19%). This is followed by healthcare and pharmaceuticals, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and financial services. The lowest intent to hire was in travel and hospitality.
The top soft skills in demand from employers are reasoning, analytical thinking, complex problem solving, and active learning and critical reasoning. Among technical skills, spreadsheet skills, product/service marketing, data analytics, web development and mobile app development are most in demand.
“Freshers constituted a significant section of our hires. We interviewed and identified over 500 candidates across colleges. The largest chunk joined from October 2020 onwards after completing their college formalities,” says Brijesh Balakrishnan, SVP, Talent Fulfilment and Digital, CSS Corp told TOI in an earlier report.
