I’m just reposting some of Bhavya's answers here so that they’re more visible for everyone to read: https://theshapeofwork.slack.com/archives/C02U3M4GE4W/p1653128424056209?thread_ts=1653036998.471689&cid=C02U3M4GE4W

@Bhavya Arora thanks so much for spending your time with us here and writing so many awesome answers to all our questions. We really do appreciate it. Do you have any closing words to round off the session?

<!channel> Happy to announce the launch of The Shape of Work community's website: https://www.springworks.in/the-shape-of-work-podcast/community/ Do check it out and share your feedback. Also, do not forget to share it with your fellow HR folks so they can also be a part of our growing Slack group 😁 Why did we build a website for The Shape of Work community? 1. Having a website will serve as the ‘face’ of the community. It will allow visitors who land on our website to see what TSOW chooses to focus on, while also allowing open access to all community resources such as discussions and AMAs 2. Since our community is on Slack, the closed nature of this platform means conversations here are private, and people can join by invite or application only. For us, a community website was a must-have to share our value proposition with potential members 3. We wanted to make it easy for people to join. Hence, we have embedded a signup form right on our homepage. Our goal here is to make it as frictionless as possible for visitors to click that button and get one step closer to becoming a member 4. And of course, so you can share the website URL directly with your fellow HR folks and ask them to join 💙 Here's to meeting more inspiring, and forward-thinking HR folks 🙌

Hello, Good Morning, Needed help with various Leave Encashment policies and procedures. 1. Draft Policy if Available 2. How is the calculation done during FnF 3. How are the leaves measured If anyone has any information, please do share the same Thank you in Advance 🙂

Custom Poll result

Hey all, posted about the community on LinkedIn. Show some ❤️ to the post if you’ve derived any value from this community and do share a short comment, if possible 🙏🏽 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6934804643935899648-thqa

<!channel> 📣 Hello hello everyone! 👋 The playbook from our 5th AMA session is out! 🎉 Do give it a read 📖 🎁 Here's what we discussed with our AMA host, @Bhavya Arora (Talent Management and Culture Partner at Outplay)👇 💡 How does Outplay build a work culture of going above and beyond? 📱 Guide for POSH compliance 💬 How to ensure the managers in your company act as role models in shaping the culture together? ❓How to ensure that the organization doesn’t become too hierarchical when scaling? 📈 Ways to create leave policies, appraisal systems and a continued culture of cohesion at a fully-remote company ✔️ Impactful things that organizations can do to support first-time (or inexperienced) managers 😄 Proven ways to manage the current talent that has multiple offers Feel free to provide your feedback on the playbook 🙌 Find it insightful? Share it with your fellow HR/People Ops folks 💙

Hey everyone!! @Sarlaksha Ganesh from SquadStack is looking to hire a 'People Success Partner' with 2-3 years of experience into culture building. I'm sure we have many folks here who have been at the forefront of building an amazing culture at their respective organizations. You might want to have a look at the detailed job description that Sarlaksha has posted on the #hr-job-listings channel 🙂

Thanks a lot for the post @[TSOW] Priya Bhatt

Hi All, We are designing an IJP guideline docket for our startup and would love your help: 1. Draft policy, if available 2. How can we coach managers to manage such conversations (with incoming/outgoing employees) 3. Eligibility criteria (factors to be considered) Looking forward to your inputs. Thanks so much in advance 🙏

Hey everyone (<!channel>), I’m excited to share that Livspace’s Associate Vice President- HR Business Partnering, Smriti Khanna (@Smriti K) will be joining us on Thursday (26th May, tomorrow) for the next AMA session. There are two ways to get your questions answered by Smriti: 1. Join us live during the session from 8 a.m to 8 p.m. on May 26, Thursday (tomorrow) and ask your questions 2. Leave your questions in the #general channel below already so that Smriti can answer them tomorrow Here are some topics you might like to ask Smriti questions about 👇 1️⃣ Career path to becoming an AVP- HR Business Partnering Smriti has been with Livspace for over 3 years now and has grown the scope of her role during that time. She started as Head- Talent Acquisition & Workforce Planning at Airtel, then Human resources Business Partner at Nestle, then became the HR Manager, then Director HR at Livspace, then Senior Director, and is now the Associate Vice President- HR Business Partnering. Maybe you have questions about her career path and how to scale yourself within a growing company? 2️⃣ Her experience driving and executing HR strategies in scale-ups (such as Livspace) and larger companies (such as Nestle and Bharti Airtel) Perhaps you’d like to understand the nuts and bolts of what that looks like? 3️⃣ ‘Back to the office’ strategy - Livspace is back to the office. Smriti has set policies and priorities in place to ensure an easy transition back to the office. You might want to know the 'secret sauce' to get people to come back to the office. 4️⃣ Building processes - Smriti worked on various frameworks for setting up some core talent foundational pillars like employee experience, Diversity inclusion and equity or performance systems, organizational structuring, managerial effectiveness etc. 5️⃣ Anything and everything else! As an experienced people ops leader, Smriti has seen most of it. As with all ask me anything sessions, fire away with your questions about any people ops topics. Looking forward to seeing your questions 💥 @Smriti K over to you. Thanks so much for agreeing to be here for the AMA 🙌

It's always a pleasure to connect with awesome minds and collaborative community here!

Some questions that I have at the outset: 1. What kind of org structure would you recommend for a fast growing startup of roughly 150 people that is looking to double itself in the next year. 2. What are the most important foundations that have to be set right in the People Success function before you start venturing out into trying new stuff or building it big? 3. What initiatives can be taken to ensure that hybrid workspaces are able to engage people who come to office and people who work remotely equally well?

@Smriti K What were the challenges faced by Livspace with the 'return to office' policies and how did you overcome them?

What are your thoughts on incentivising 'back to work' or rewarding employees who leave remote work behind?

1. How to work on career trajectory for employees at different levels? 2. When is the right time to implement OKRs, and how to go about it? @Smriti K Thanks for doing this

Oh wow! Some very intriguing questions have started pouring in. Reminds me of a very famous quote that success for a leader lies in asking smart questions. These questions speak how dramatically the focus and thought process behind HR has evolved. Its so much more holistic and business tied! To start sharing some of my perspectives.. Will go with Sarlaksha's first question on org structure. • First of all the org structure depends on the kind of industry, and talent you are placed in and similarly what kind of talent base you would be adding in the future. • Some of the major areas start up are venturing in are tech based, fintech/similar nbfc space, and supply chain. There are obviously content, community, manufacturing etc based start ups also running close behind. However talent in each space would be very different. If it's tech, it's ideal to keep the span high, hierarchy flat, trust based, framework based org structure, with large bands for jobs. On the other hand if it's supply chain execution focussed, it may need slightly layered org for doer level folks, supervisory roles and mgmnt roles. In such cases job bands are slightly more tightly defined and more sop driven org structure. But this to give idea that the type of talent and industry and success metrice company is envisaging is the guide to org structure. • As a general principle, a range of 150-300 org size should keep span of mgmnt large to keep the bonding, engagement, alignment and finally cultural assimilation high. The more trust based and framework based instead of rule based you go, the easier to scale during such initial phase.

To answer the second question on people success function. A company which is taking the zero to one journey from HR perspective (and not business one i mean) should: • Always always always cover the basic labour law compliances first. No negotiations there. Invest in a good labour law consultant to support this on services based charges to avoid fixed inhouse cost during initial days. • Secondly cover basic pointers around hygiene requirements for people's work environment - like work practices (hybrid/office/wfh etc), infra support that any employee would need as basic to do the job well, an intranet as one stop platform for any emp query, etc • Then move to defining the vision of people success function -- what would it take from talent perspective to achieve the organizational vision and values that each individual in the organization need to align to (in order to maintain the culture of the org) While it's not exhaustive or comprehensive, but some core guiding pillars are to have a stance and some practices formed for: 1. derisking the org (do a talent swot analysis for current state and 6 months later state, what skills would you need to hire outside from, what can be hinged on a consultant, what you can develop inside the org) 2. Talent acquisition setup 3. Comp & Ben philosophy (need not be extremely hashed out but a principle level guideline on what percentile, what broad ranges to be followed is enough) 4. Employee experience, retention and engagement related practices and policies (could cover L&D here as well). Any KPIs for HR team at this stage should be focussed on establishing right foundation and not the efficiency of it so much. • Just ensure whatever you create, should always align to org's value and vision.

Few questions I've been dealing with myself, would love to get your thought on: 1/ On a very meta level, do you advocate 360 feedbacks to be used for developmental or an input into rating purpose? Which has a greater Roi? Why i ask; the messaging to the org ideally should be around those lines which may influence how feedbacks come in. Eg, if it's for ratings, nobody may give others a bad rating etc... 1.1/ Cont the above, on a tactical level; have you found greater success with people nominating their rater network for 360s, or Pre populated lists (which can be edited) or Locked lists? If editing or nomination is allowed, how does one solve for bias and speed (in case approvals is needed) 2/ ONA - does it make sense for startups (say 1k strong) to be doing this? Or it makes sense beyond a certain number threshold? 2.1/ Again, tactical, in your experience how easy is it to get people to agree to give consent to have their mail recipients parsed ? (In order to do #2) @Smriti K thanks in advance 🙌

Thanks @Smriti K for taking this up! 1. What all to be kept in mind while building org. culture in a start up of 150 ppl? 2. In a flat structure org who are following hybrid model, what all innovative policies, initiatives could be introduced? The purpose is to retain existing talent and attract new talent.

To sarlaksha's third question on initiatives can be taken to ensure that hybrid workspaces are able to engage people who come to office and people who work remotely equally well -->> I would say remove the bias from your org's philosophy. Let transparency and logic be the guiding force in 4 major shift you bring in roles, employee environment, projects and workflows and policies. Ensure there is sufficient clarity internally and alignment amongst people on who and why is one working in a certain setup (WFH/ WFO/ Hybrid). • Start segregarting roles by productivity, energy, focus and collab required and let that decide what kind of modality brings max efficiency. Let this be clearly called out and known to all. • Look at how fungible employee environment of work can be - if possible, try for modalities where employees can easily choose to shift between various offline/ online work setups. • Company project mgmnt and workflows should get adjusted to a combination setup. Consider how does work get done , find the opportunities of automation or reimagine the workflows if possible. • Policies - build more trust based practices and policies with more power and flexibility to employees. Some quick turnarounds would be to ensure video visibility on team meets becomes a norm (not as mandate but by comfort) without background/ appearance biases, remove any KPI that had to do with irrationale presence in office and replace it with core productivity data, build more informal networking and connect channels as a soft platform to allow outside work agenda connects, train managers to remove biases that have to do with physical presence of a person.

@Smriti K there are a few questions from other channels in the community that perhaps you also have some perspective on. Here’s one: https://theshapeofwork.slack.com/archives/C03CYB9103A/p1653384237652759

Hey everyone. Here is a recap of how the sessions work. Feel free to post your questions below! 🙌

@Smriti K here's one more question that you might want to share your thought on https://theshapeofwork.slack.com/archives/C02U3M4GE4W/p1652437543934839

Thanks a lot for your time @Smriti K! I wanted to ask you which are the most impactful DEI initiatives you've seen/implemented.

If I’m not mistaken, I believe everyone’s questions have been answered! Wow - what a great session (@Smriti K) Thanks so much for spending your time with us here and sharing your insights with everyone 🙌 And thank you to everyone for all of the great questions as well!