Letters of the month

Skill S will be the new currency of the workplace

Rethinking talent experience is the need of the hour to keep up with the changing demands of the industries. An extremely important takeaway is that it isn’t just about establishing an alignment between talent strategy and business outcomes but also about a synergy between the organisation's purpose and goals and personalised skills and development of their employees. AI can be of special help here to access skill data in order to understand the people, their needs for the skills as well as to note the ones they already have. A personalised experience of learning will prove to be both engaging and empowering.

- BENjamIN CaLEB

A data-driven approach to career development and employee retention

Graph databases and graph data sciences are here to improve our traditional perception and employment of employee data. It allows organisations to connect siloed data ensuring application of it in various fields like workforce planning analytics and career development recommendations for employees. With its wide-ranging usage, the graph data can help organisations use different lenses to determine where upskilling is needed. In addition to this, it can also be leveraged to anticipate future skill demand. This will help in equipping employees for the upcoming technological change.

- RIPLEY TIaN

Why listening is key to employee engagement

The most under-rated skill ever is that of listening. I cannot think of anyone who says they would want their boss to listen less and talk more. Quite in reverse, any employee will be more engaged if they are given the chance to talk and be listened to. Too many bosses focus upon talking as much as they can in order to sound intelligent, and too few listen in order to be truly intelligent. And because of that, bosses who listen are all the more appreciated!

- LIm KENNETH

Caring, enablement, and human leadership

It is the other side of today's fears that employees, especially Gen Z, are becoming too entitled. Many leaders worry too much that we are pandering to the demands of the younger generation. Leaders were once young themselves and had needs that their own seniors did not understand. It is important to remember that what we see as entitlement may come from real and urgent needs we do not know about, so that we can practise compassion and enlightenment.

- WaYNE aDELINE

Interact with People Matters

Creating a neuro-inclusive hiring process

Knowledge of neurodivergence has climbed higher and higher in the present day as our ability to recognise and understand it improves. Indeed, we have even learned to leverage neurodivergence and put it to best use. Important that hiring must catch up and make the proper accommodations for talent with neurodivergence.

- aRIa CHEVELLE

Leverage employee experience for business success

With companies becoming more interested in finding talent within before looking outside, it is becoming increasingly important to reimagine organisation culture as one where employees feel their voice is valued. Priorities of companies in HR in 2023 would be to retain valuable and diverse talent, accelerate digital transformation and prioritise learning and development programs. Also, very importantly, it is hightime to recognise and fill the disparities that exist in the workspace. A push on the female tech-progression is needed so that gender parity can be ensured within organisations.

- ISLa jaSmINE

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Disrupting the quiet quitting trope

Quiet Quitting indeed has become the part and parcel of the new normal. One of the practical steps every organisation can adopt to avoid the trend is becoming a ‘listening’ organisation. Moving away from the onesize-fits-all approach is the first step to be aware and develop an understanding of the employee differences and eventually, cater to them. Other steps include establishing a high performance, high compassion culture, constantly upskilling and reskilling the employees according to the time and needs, and developing an environment that embraces change and encourages innovation.

- HaSIm GINa

The hags of Indian business

Could not agree more! Biographies written to exalt and inflate leaders in golden light are interesting only to the leaders themselves and the people who wish to get into their good books. The rest of us will much prefer to read about more realistic true events that the leaders have encountered or created.

-

IVaN ENzO

HireRight @HireRight

With HireRight’s 2023 Global Benchmark Survey now open, Marcellus Solomon, General Manager of India at HireRight, shares last year's survey's #talentacquisition and #backgroundscreening insights from #HR professionals in India with @PeopleMatters2.

G-P @GlobalEoR

G-P Founder @nicolemsahin spoke about the transformative impact of #RemoteWork on economic equity & opportunities, and in a recent interview with @PeopleMatters2 shared insights from her session about #AI, #Fintech & #HR Tech in #Employment. Check it out

Intuit India @IntuitIN

At Intuit, we want to grow our people’s careers meaningfully. We encourage our employees to own their career and navigate via self reflection, continuously identifying and assessing their strengths and growth opportunities' - @_mohan_ kumar @PeopleMatters2

Compono @Componotech

Yes - matching with the right business can lead to happier, more fulfilling careers @PeopleMatters2 #workculture #workhapiness #careers

HRCurator @HRCurator

Why we should rethink averages peoplematters.in/article/strate… @PeopleMatters2 #HR #HCM #HRM #HumanResources #HRData #HRAnalytics

Skillsoft APAC @SkillsoftAPAC

The list of the 10 most in-demand professionals for 2023 in Australia: the market has turned to digital services, forcing companies to #reskill their staff, hire technology workers and improve the online customer experience. bit. ly/3YfJDRK via @PeopleMatters2

H r tECH no Lo Gy Rezolve.ai raises $11mn in Series A led by SIG Venture Capital

Rezolve.ai, an AI-powered employee service SaaS platform, has raised around $11 million in a Series A round led by SIG Venture Capital with participation from Exfinity Venture Partners.

BetterPlace acquires Indonesia-based MyRobin

Bengaluru-based SaaS and frontline workforce management platform BetterPlace has forayed into South-East Asia with the acquisition of a majority stake in Indonesia’s blue collar workforce

ECono M y & p o L i C y India's Union Budget focuses on infrastructure and tax relief

The Union Budget for 2023-24, announced on 1 February by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, pumps record capital outlays into railways, transport infrastructure, and urban infrastructure, as well as boosting affordable housing. The salaried middle class will fulfillment platform, MyRobin, for an undisclosed amount. Launched in 2020 in Indonesia, MyRobin has enterprises such as Shopee, Astro, Sicepat, E-Fishery, Kopi Kenangan among its clients. BetterPlace receive larger tax breaks, and MSMEs get additional credit boosts. There will be additional support for digital infrastructure and technological innovation. On the other hand, certain luxury goods including imported cars will be taxed more heavily. The Budget underscores the government’s emphasis on a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy, with strong public finances and a robust financial sector, against the recently raised $40 million as part of their extended Series C round which resulted in international investor Macquarie Capital joining the captable, along with Jungle Ventures, Unitus, BII, Capria and 3one4 Capital.

Existing investors 9Unicorns and Tri Valley Ventures also participated in the round. The company has plans to use the funds to scale growth and further advance capabilities of the platform. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Rezolve.ai was founded in 2017 by Saurabh Kumar, Manish Sharma and Udaya Reddy.

7,000 staff

gramme to cut costs and streamline its operating strategy. The company's quarterly earnings call in early February revealed a fall in revenue from video channels and increased operating losses, including a drop in advertiser and affiliate revenues. CEO Bob Iger said he is he is targeting $5.5 billion of cost savings across the company and the layoffs will help achieve this. This is the third time Disney will have restructured in the last five years, and the second round of layoffs in three years.

backdrop of strong growth where the Indian economy has increased in size from being 10th to 5th largest in the last nine years.

McKinsey cuts 2,000 jobs

McKinsey is undertaking one of its largest rounds of job cuts in history, with plans to eliminate almost 2,000 positions. Most of these will be support staff in nonclient-facing roles. According to the company, it is still hiring for client-facing positions. The move is reportedly intended to preserve the compensation pool for its partners. McKinsey posted a record US$15 billion in revenue in 2021 and surpassed that figure in 2022.

Jo B s & Layoffs

PwC adds 30,000 new jobs in India

Global consulting giant PwC is adding 30,000 new jobs in India to further expand its presence in the

Dell lays off nearly 7000 employees as demand for PCs drops

Dell is getting rid of 6,650 employees, affecting roughly 5 per cent of its global workforce, as demand for personal computers continues to decline. Dell's Co-Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Clarke, has claimed that the company is facing tough market conditions with an uncertain future, and that country. PwC's India workforce currently has over 50,000 people. To further this agenda, PwC India and PwC US have entered into a joint venture in India to accelerate growth, expand client relationships and enhance quality, the company said in a statement. Sanjeev Krishan, Chairperson, PwC in India, described India as a strategically important geography for the PwC Network and said the company will continue to focus on enhancing local capabilities and capacities. The move is part of PwC's its new global strategy, The New Equation, launched in 2021.

Boeing lays off 2,000 HR and finance staff

the layoffs will help the company to navigate the current economic downturn and be better poised for a market rebound.

PayPal lays off 2,000 staff in cost-cutting drive

PayPal is downsizing its workforce by 2,000 amid a macroeconomic slowdown impacting business operations. The cuts, which affect about 7 per cent of employees, took place over February. CEO Dan Schulman, who is himself retiring at the end of 2023, said that while the company has made “substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do.” PayPal’s stock has been battered by the slowdown in growth in payments volume on its platform after the pandemic began to recede. In response, the company has vowed to reduce expenses — including through job cuts and the shuttering of offices.

Boeing is cutting white-collar jobs in a round of layoffs announced in February. Nearly 2,000 employees from the HR and finance divisions are being terminated through a combination of attrition and layoffs. The company revealed that it is outsourcing about one-third of these jobs to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in India and that it will continue to modify its corporate structure by “lowering staffing within some support functions.” The move is intended to focus more resources on manufacturing and product development, and follows on a similar reduction of finance staff in 2022 as well as increased hiring in the engineering and manufacturing departments last year.

CoMpEnsation & BEnEfits Zoom CEO Eric Yuan takes a 98% pay cut

Zoom has announced pay cuts for its executive and management staff, at the same time as it is laying off 1,300 employees or approximately 15% of its workforce. CEO Eric Yuan will be reducing his salary by 98% for the coming fiscal year, and other members of the executive leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20%. Yuan has admitted that Zoom's exponential growth during the pandemic was not sustainable once the crisis ended. Departing employees will receive up to 16 weeks' salary and other forms of support including healthcare coverage, annual bonuses, vesting of stock options, and outplacement services.