Hi @Sharad Singh! Superb questions. Here's what I think: 1. How can one ensure the employee stories that are put out are authentic? As an outsider if you’re reading stories on SM, it’s hard to figure out how authentic they are. However, imo, your brand is what people say about you when no one’s watching. If employees say good things about the brand behind their back, then I’d say it’s an authentic brand and they walk the walk. Word-of-mouth can spread like wildfire.  Second, I think if there’s a disparity between what a brand shows on SM and what you see on Glassdoor reviews, you can conclude that there are authenticity challenges. If both the narratives match, then there’s a high likelihood that it’s an authentic brand in terms of great culture.

2. Does the importance of work culture influence a certain demographic more than others? I am not sure if there’s any concrete research done on it but imo, the younger workforce (millennials, get Z and Zoomers), their needs have dramatically changed compared to Gen X and boomers. The newer workforce emphasises on culture much more than the older generation and rightfully so. Second, I think knowledge workers prioritise culture above anything else. Gone are the days when employees worked in a sweat shop where number of hours worked depicted their productivity. With the very nature of jobs changing, old school carrot and stick approaches don’t work anymore. Gallup has found that millennials in particular have disrupted how the world works – how people communicate and how they read and write and relate. And there’s no going back. They are disrupting retail, hospitality, real estate, and housing and transportation, entertainment and travel – and they are radically changing higher education in the current times. 1. Millennials and Gen Z don’t just work for a pay check, they want a purpose. 2. Millennials and Gen Z don’t want a manager who fixates on their weaknesses, they want to be known for their strengths. 3. Millennials and Gen Z don’t want bosses, they want coaches. 4. Millennials and Gen Z are no longer pursuing job satisfaction, they are pursuing development. 5. Millennials and Gen Z don’t want annual reviews, they want ongoing conversations. 6. For millennials and Gen Z, a job is no longer just a job, it’s their life. Millennials and Gen Z are changing the very will of the world – and changing what it means to have a great job and a great life. When you have great managers who can maximise the potential of every team member, you have delivered on the new global will: a great job and a great life. And that is the future of work!

3. What are some of the creative ways in which you've helped brands show their culture in the past that have helped them increase the quality of applications? Here are some of the ways in which I have helped my clients showcase their culture: 1. Being authentic: No SM posts, or gimmicks will help if the reality vs persona don’t match. I have focused on genuinely making the leaders and CHROs believe and see the power of culture and linking it to strategy and business goals. It’s pivotal that your senior leadership has 100% buy in, otherwise, it just becomes an HR agenda. 2. Employee visibility: It’s good to go refer back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs here. If you look at the current demographic (millennials and generation Z), they are slightly more evolved. Most of them have their survival and security needs checked and are at prolly level 3 or 4 and beyond. They want to feel “*belonged*” and focus a lot on “*self esteem*” needs. So as a culture consultant, I first identify what are the needs of current workforce and then work backwards. Employee testimonials, a day in an engineer’s life at xyzy company, celebrating years and milestones and sharing on SM platforms are some good ways to depict culture and encourage good talent to apply. 3. Interview experience: Often times this gets overlooked. Providing exceptional interview experience even if the person gets rejected is one way to depict good culture. Responding people on time, being honest on why they were rejected and giving them growth feedback are some ways to show your values as an organisation. This further creates a good image in the mind of the applicant and like I said, they are likely to say good things about the brand behind the back or if the experience is exceptional, they are also likely to drop good reviews on Glassdoor. 4. Diversity wall: I am toying with this idea with one of my clients which is a profitable startup. We are planning to create a cardboard tree of sorts with leaves and branches. Each leaf would have the face of the employee in the middle surrounded by personal deets of the employee like - 16K Insta followers, born in Port Blair, love philosophy, a SRK fan etc. We plan to place it at the reception area so that whenever potential hires come or gusts drop over, this is what they see first. The idea is to make the person feel more than just an employee. An employee is a person first and about time we acknowledge their whole self. Hope this helps! I am sure there are many other creative ways to demonstrate culture. Feel free to share your ideas.

Hi @Gurleen Thanks a lot for doing this AMA session. We are trying to make our policies a bit more interactive and accessible and want to avoid the email stating: Here's your updated policies, end of message". Can you suggest some ideas on how we can make this interesting, engaging and fun for our employees? Many of our employees are working from home, so it needs to be done virtual.

Hi @Gurleen thank you for doing this AMA session. I want to ask a few questions: 1. How do we ensure employees are not over working? Do we put the foot down and ask them to stop? Some of it is business requirements and can't be ignored in emergencies. Can link this to the leave usage as well - how can you encourage leave usage? 2. How do you manage laptops for the remote? Fix a budget and ask people to buy? Or you buy and ship? Then what about repairs?

Hi @Gurleen Thanks for doing this AMA! I have two questions to ask: 1. What do you think about doing farewell messages publicly so everyone is aware? 2. Also, what do you think about 1v1s? How do you ensure managers do them regularly?

Hi @Preeti! Thank you for your question. You can design carousel posts using Canva. You can also use examples or comic style conversations highlighting FAQs in a particular policy. If your team is comfy with facing the camera, you can also create short videos highlighting the policies. Hope this helps.

I'll be answering rest of the questions tomorrow. Singing off for the day. Laters 🐊z good night!

Hi @Gurleen, Thank you for taking your time out to share your knowledge with us today. Appreciate it! 🤩 Here are some of my questions: • How can you encourage the management to conduct AMAs frequently? • What’s a good policy for hybrid? 3 day? fixed 3 days or up to employees • Should you incentivize back to work? If so, how?

Thanks for doing the AMA, @Gurleen According to a piece of recent news- a manager at Planet Fitness gym in Kentucky, USA allegedly threatened to punish their employees for discussing their pay with each other. What are your thoughts on this? Can employers prohibit you from discussing your salary? Are “Pay Secrecy” Policies legal?

<!channel> Brill questions, folks! I'll try to answer all of them but pardon me if I can't take all the questions. Expect responses by second half.

Hi everyone ! I don't know if it is the right channel to make this post, so I am really sorry if it's not. I am actively looking for full time job in the field of HR. If you come across any full-time HR job opening at your company or any other company, then please do let me know. It's super urgent. If you want to know anything more about me and my work, then please do ping me here. I'll share the relevant details with you. Thank you!

@Rohan How do we ensure employees are not over working? Do we put the foot down and ask them to stop? Some of it is business requirements and can't be ignored in emergencies. Can link this to the leave usage as well - how can you encourage leave usage? This is a great question and many organisations are trying to bring in good work-life balance aka integration. The first step as leaders is to ask ourselves what kind of culture do we want to promote? What are our priorities? Is work life balance one of the priorities? For example let’s look at Amazon’s case. They clearly state that they don’t care much about wellbeing and employee harmony. It’s a results orientated organization and they focus on being uncomfortable coz that’s where the growth happens. They have stretch goals and many times employees complain that it’s not a people first culture, but some people thrive in such cultures. Second, if your organization is such that focuses on employee wellbeing (like Pixar, Zappos, Patagonia) then you need to celebrate that. Let clients know that we don’t work on off days or give it a human touch like “In India, Diwali is an important festival and we make sure that our employees enjoy their off time with their family and friends, so expect a delay in response” - something like that. In today’s age, clients understand and many even appreciate that he organization focuses on employee wellbeing. Next is how leaders and managers communicate. Often times, leaders or managers drop e-mails or slack messages on off days/weekends and employees (especially the new ones) assume that they have to respond immediately whereas it may not be not true. Leaders being busy, the moment they recall something, they immediately pass on the messages without stating the urgency or priority. If messages aren’t expected to be responded urgently, leaders can always drop a PS that “you can respond on Monday or on a working day, it’s not urgent”. Small things and way of communication can help a long way. And about leave usage, some folks feel guilty when they take time off (especially if you have unlimited off days policy). In such cases, one can always ask them to take leaves but imo, it doesn’t make sense. As leaders, we have to build a culture where people can take offs unapologetically. And that can only happen when we give them some slack. It will be quite hypocritical of leaders if we say we have to be available 24X7 coz of our business type and then urge folks to take leaves. It doesn’t make sense. So, as organisations and leaders we gotta be clear on our priorities. Do we want to be a market driven culture or a clan like culture? And again, ultimately, culture is linked to your strategy hence, leaders and founders gotta be clear on their strategic goals and then work on culture.

@Rohan How do you manage laptops for the remote? Fix a budget and ask people to buy? Or you buy and ship? Then what about repairs? This is quite a transactional question and it totally depends on the organization and their policies. I have seen companies renting out machines on lease, some allot budgets depending on the department (eg: designers and IT folks may need heavy machines, HR/Ops may need lighter configuration) and they can buy the ones they like, some companies also encourage BYOD (Bring your own device) and link it to sustainability (less carbon footprint). So there’s no one answer, it totally depends on company size, geography of employees (if employees are working outside the country, it doesn’t make sense to ship laptops, offering budget and proving reimbursement is better) etc.

@Dhristi Shah What do you think about doing farewell messages publicly so everyone is aware? Need some clarity on the question. When you say publicly, do you mean an all employees channel (which is internal to the company) or you mean SM platforms like LinkedIn? Also, what do you think about 1v1s? How do you ensure managers do them regularly? 1 on 1s are a must for every manager to connect with their team members. They key here is ‘_*empathy*_’. Leaders of the 21st century have to focus on individualisation as there are no cookie cutter solutions anymore. You can always help managers with a template of sorts that they can use to do 1 on 1s. But before that, you gotta explain the importance of 1 on 1s to the managers. Why should they do that should be clear. Here are some tips: - What are you working on this week? - What’s going well? - How can I help?               Asking these three questions to teams is the simplest way to lead with empathy. Let your team know that you care about them and help them pursue their projects.   Here’s a quick guide to build alignment with your team:   1. Weekly Catch Ups. Don’t underestimate frequency. During a webinar, Marcus Buckingham stated that employees who had monthly one-on-one check-ins with their managers were actually less engaged than those who didn’t have them at all. So monthly check-ins are equivalent or even worse than no check-ins. Make sure you meet your team members weekly and just help them with what they need. Meeting weekly shouldn’t just be a formality but a wholesome human interaction. 2. Make it short. Aim for one-on-one meetings that are no longer than 15 minutes with an emphasis on open and transparent communication. Ensure that there is an equal ratio of personal and professional topics.   3. Be present. Put your phone on silent. Take a few deep breaths before your meeting and set a baseline for the meeting’s outcome. The team member should feel secure and understood while being inspired towards developing a sense of personal responsibility. This is about treating the team member as the most important person in the room. Pay attention, listen with the intent to understand, and not to respond instantly. It is often the case that a person appreciates being patiently listened to, rather than being bombarded with advices. Hope this helps!

Here are two very short videos that showcases what organizational culture mean and how it's changing over a period of time. 1. 2. Might be useful for the community here

set the channel topic: If you have any questions/asks/requests, post them in the #general channel. That's also a great time to engage in another discussion thread and share your knowledge with other members

Hey! Question to all - • How does appraisal cycle works at your company? • Also, what's the eligibility criteria?

@[TSOW] Nisha Kumari How can you encourage the management to conduct AMAs frequently? This again is a very good question. First you have to talk to the management and make them understand why a regular connect with employees is important. They need to first understand and see the value of such conversations. Tell them that culture is not only HR’s job but leadership’s and culture is not foosball table, or free beers on the house, or pets at workplace or Friday fun parties. Culture is much deeper. It’s about “_*how*_” you get things done, “_*how*_” people communicate, “_*how*_” people take decisions etc. Second, you can prolly link AMAs to learning events like ‘Dialogues with Leaders’ or ‘Challenge the CEO’ - the idea is of course not to roast leaders but create a psychologically safe environment so that people can freely ask tough questions. And only the workplaces that provide psychological safety can thrive in the 21st century coz more and more organizations rely on innovative products and services and innovation can only happen in psychologically safe environments.

@[TSOW] Nisha Kumari What’s a good policy for hybrid? 3 day? fixed 3 days or up to employees? Well, again, there’s no one size fits all solution here. Hybrid vs Remote vs In-person debate is going on from many months now and this is relatively a new trend and let’s be honest, none of us know the definitive model that will work the best, especially in the long term. The solutions range from a mix of different models depending on the industry, company size, phase of the company, etc. Also, for the first time ever, employees had more power than the employers. When Amazon declared people to come to office 3 days a week, there was a huge pushback. People refused. Many high performers left the jobs! And ultimately Amazon had to put their foot down and offered flexibility and let teams decide what’s best for them. Hence, looking at all these trends, the future of work is more and more flexible, human and focused on individuation. I personally really like HubSpot 's solution to this problem. They say on their company site - “As a HubSpotter, you select the work option that's best for you, once per calendar year: @office, @home, or @flex." I think. it’s a good solution that lets people decide what’s good for them without hindering autonomy and freedom.

@[TSOW] Nisha Kumari Should you incentivize back to work? If so, how? I think it’s not a great idea to incentivise people to get back to work. This will give out a message that productivity/promotions/good appraisals can only happen when you come to the office. This is what I think bad leadership will look like if they incentivise people for coming to office. You see, bad bosses mistake visibility for value. They reward face time over impact. Good bosses know reputation isn’t a proxy for results. They reward performance over presence and truly great bosses know that the quality of work depends on quality of life. They offer flexibility as a right, not a reward.

Folks I had such an amazing time interacting with you all! Thank you @[TSOW] Priya Bhatt for inviting me. If any of you wanna connect with me, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurleenbaruah/ And I'm sorry I couldn't answer all the questions today but nonetheless, had an amaze time! Lots of love 🤗🤗

Custom Poll result

Good Morning Folks, We are looking at implementing a POSH compliance platform/ Complaint Management System in our organization, could you please suggest any third-party vendors for the same?

Good Evening Folks! I am trying to implement a scorecard for the various teams, to understand and evaluate performance While it is easier to put targets and quantify deliverables for Operations and Sales/Distribution Having a hard time to work it out for Tech, Marketing and Product teams Would love to know and understand how you'll would tackle this and anything currently being followed on the same

Hi All,

Hi All, I’m launching R&R in my company. Need suggest, Is it ok to send mailer to all employees for spot awards or it should be restricted within teams? What is the best way to communicate about the spot recognitions? TIA

Hi all, what are the market standard timelines for Appraisal cycles in India ? When do the appraisals start and by when do they conclude ?

👋🏽 Happy Thursday, TSOW community! <!channel> By popular demand, we’ve just created a new community channel: #compensation-and-benefits. Make sure to join! This is the place for discussing compensation and benefits with your peers. If you have any questions, feel free to DM me. We hope this new channel helps you get a better idea of compensation and employee benefits standards across industries. 🚀 Also, thanks to @Bhavya Arora for suggesting name for the channel 😊

<!channel> 📣 [Announcement] Happy Saturday, everyone! 🤗 The playbook from our second AMA session is out! 🎉 Do give it a read 📖 🎁 Here's what we discussed in the AMA session with our guest @Gurleen 👇 1. How to ensure that the employee stories are authentic, creative ways of helping brands show their culture 2. Ideas on how one can make POLICIES interesting, engaging and fun for our employees 3. How do we ensure employees are not overworking? Managing laptops for remote 4. Farewell messages, 1-on-1 with managers 5. Encouraging the management to conduct AMAs frequently, good policy for hybrid and incentivizing 'back to work' Feel free to share it with any HR Leader/People Ops professional whom you think it might be helpful for 😇