Quick Reads

HR tEcHNoLoGy HR tech platform HONO raises $5 million in series A funding

HONO, a leading HR tech solutions company, has raised $5 million in a series A funding round led by Aakash Chaudhry, managing director of Aakash+BYJU’s, a test-preparation company. With this investment, Chaudhry will join the board of directors of the Gurugram-based company and will be actively involved in guiding its business operations.

HR tEcHNoLoGy HR tech platform Claira raises $3.5 Mn in a Seed funding round

Competency analytics engine Claire has raised $3.5M in a Seed funding round led by Heartland Ventures. The round also saw participation from Trend Forward Capital, Connetic Ventures, Invest Detroit Ventures, and Northern Michigan Angels. The company will use the funds to advance machine learning capabilities and accelerate the rollout to key customer segments.

HR tEcHNoLoGy Hiring platform WizeHire lands $30 million funding round led by Tiger Global

WizeHire, an easy-to-use online recruiting system for small businesses, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global with participation from prior investors Amplo and Mercury. This round brings WizeHire’s total funding to $37.5 million and its valuation to $250 million. The platform plans to introduce new offerings like tax, payroll, and insurance advice. WizeHire has also recently launched a mobile app for iOS and Android that allows business owners to easily manage their hiring process on the go, connect them to the services they need to scale and put valuable hiring advice at their fingertips, the company said in a statement.

REcRuitMENt Uber to recruit 500 plus tech talent for its India tech centres

Uber Technologies has announced its plan to hire 500 plus tech talent by December 2022 for its India tech centres. The app-based mobility and delivery company already has a 1,000-member tech team across its centres in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The new hiring plan is a testament to Uber’s commitment to India, and its recognition of the engineering talent in the country. Recently, Uber hired 250 engineers to its India teams in 2021, with the accelerated expansion in full force at all its tech centres across the globe, including the US, Canada, LatAm, Amsterdam, and at its twin centres in India.

REcRuitMENt IT firm ACI infotech plans to hire 1,400 plus employees in 2022

New Jersey, USA-headquartered IT firm ACI Infotech has announced its planning to recruit 1,400 plus new talent in FY22. As per their press release, the recruitment would be focussed pan-India with key areas for talent acquisition include the entire spectrum of digital transformation, customer experience platforms, intelligent automation and more. The large-scale hiring will take place through multifaceted processes incorporating direct advertisements, LinkedIn, employee references, aggregators, etc.

EMpLoyEE ExpERiENcE Work is the biggest threat to mental health, report suggests

A new report from JobSage, an employer review platform, has found that mental health issues are the biggest reason for more than a quarter (28%) of recent employee exits. While work is report revealed that more than half (53%) agree the reverse is true - their work is suffering because of poor mental health. Some of the other mental health benefits offered include flexibility (40%), mental health coverage (39%), access to counselling (36%), wellness programs (32%) and access to mental health programs (31%).

EMpLoyEE MaNaGEMENt Airbnb employees to live anywhere and work from anywhere

Airbnb has announced that it will allow employees to live and work anywhere and that the company will partner with destinations to help them attract remote workers. The announcement was made to the employees through a mail sent by co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky. According to Chesky, though remote work did work well for Airbnb, some functions are executed better in the physical presence of people. He believes that the work has to be executed over a blend of the best properties offered by Zoom calls and those offered by a physical office place. So, people belonging to a team that needs to be physically together, may either attend office spaces or move together to any location within the country that they operate from.

negatively influencing mental health for a significant proportion of the respondents, another

coMpENsatioN & BENEfits Median salary increment to be around 8.13% this fiscal year: Report

A recent study conducted by TeamLease found that, unlike the last two years, this year most of the job roles from across sectors have been considered for a salary hike. the study titled Jobs and Salary Primer Report for FY’22 states that increments will be moderate. Out of the 17 sectors reviewed 14 have indicated a single-digit hike. The median salary increment will be around 8.13%. Ecommerce and Tech startups, Healthcare and Allied Industries, Information Technology and Knowledge Services are the only three sectors that have registered a salary growth greater than 10%.

EMpLoyEE MaNaGEMENt As offices reopen, commuting costs curb employees' enthusiasm over return to office

Nearly 54% of office workers across Australia plan to stay parked at home to avoid the high costs of commuting and close to half of their counterparts around the world say they will do the same, reveals the results of a OnePoll survey conducted by Citrix Systems, a cloud computing and virtualisation technology company. By working at home just one day a week, Australians are set to save $394 in public transport costs over a year, according to the Productivity Commission. Nearly seven in 10 Australians (68%) believe their employers should help them offset the costs of travelling to the office when they choose to by either increasing their salaries or providing a fuel allowance, the survey adds.

Newsmaker oF the moNth

Managing heatwaves and the climate change agenda

By Jerry Moses

The record-breaking temperatures in South Asia have once again put the spotlight on climate change. In India and Pakistan, the rise in summertime temperature is not unusual. But this year, the heatwave started much earlier (from March and April), and it lasted for much longer.

If a weather station experiences a maximum temperature of 45 degrees Celsius or above, or if the temperature is 4.5 degrees Celsius to 6.4 degrees Celsius above normal, the IMD declares a heatwave. For instance, based on the first criteria, in 2010, 11 weather stations in India crossed the 45 degrees Celsius mark 23 times. In 2022, 25 weather stations crossed this threshold as many as 56 times.

March was the hottest in India since records began 122 years ago. The month of March recorded 62 per cent less than average rainfall in Pakistan and 71 per cent below average in India, creating a great deal of uncertainty for crop production at this time of the year. It is estimated that there would be a 10-35 per cent reduction in crop yields in the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab due to the heatwave.

India and Pakistan are not alone. Earlier in the year, central South America and Western Australia recorded the highest temperatures. Tackling heatwaves

Managing the impact of heatwaves comes down to how prepared and wealthy governments are. "The story of climate change is one of high inequality and we're seeing that playing out already in the poorest and hottest regions of the world," said Tamma Carleton, assistant professor of economics at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management to DW.

The number of hot days and affluence were the main factors in a city’s ability to minimise deaths during extreme temperatures, according to a 2022 Study by Carleton.

Experts note governments need to introduce laws that change building by-laws to insulate new constructions and push for cool-roof programs.

Among the action steps the companies need to tackle include – early warning systems, educating their employees about the possible signs of heat exposure and introducing staggered timings for work – especially for those working outdoors.

The future looks grim. According to the UK’s Met Office, the natural probability for a heatwave to exceed 2010 average temperatures would be once in 312 years. However, if climate change is taken into account, the likelihood increases to once in 3.1 years.

uNit4 appoiNts taNia GaRREtt as cHiEf pEopLE officER Multinational enterprise software company Unit4, which specialises in people experience software, has appointedTania Garrett as Chief People Officer. She joins Unit4 from Adobe, where she headed the international employee experience organisation and previously the EMEA employee experience organisation. Prior to Adobe, she was Group HR Director at law firm Parabis. She also held HR leadership positions at Experian, Willis Towers Watson, and paint and coatings manufacturer Valspar.

piNE LaBs appoiNts viJayaLaksHMi swaMiNatHaN as cHiEf pEopLE officER Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs has appointed Vijayalakshmi Swaminathan as the company’s new CPO. She takes over from Anu Mathew who will now transition into the role of the head of learning & development at Pine Labs. Swaminathan joins Pine Labs from Amazon India where she was heading the HR function. Prior to Amazon India, she was one of the founding partners at CoCoon Consulting, a cross-sectoral boutique HR consulting firm with expertise in solutions for organisational and leadership transformation and growth. She has also worked with FMCG major Unilever where, in her last role, she was responsible for bolstering the company’s employer brand.

diRac appoiNts pEtRa scHEdiN stERGEL as tHE NEw cHRo Swedish digital audio company Dirac has announced the expansion of its executive team with the appointment of Petra Schedin Stergel as Chief Human Resources Officer. In her new role, Stergel will be responsible for scaling the team internationally across all departments, new hiring and onboarding, performance management, and culture definition & implementation. She will report directly to Dirac CEO Peter Friedrichsen. Prior to Dirac, Stergel served in various executive roles at Cramo Group and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

covER GENius appoiNts GLoRia BasEM as cHiEf pEopLE officER Cover Genius, an insurtech for embedded insurance, has appointed Gloria Basem as its new CPO. Basem will lead the company’s global people strategy during its rapid growth, overseeing talent acquisition, employee experience, growth, learning, DEI, career development and compensation. Most recently, she served as chief people officer for Stash, a fintech company. She has also served as chief people officer at MediaMath, a global adtech firm, New Avon, Planned Parenthood of New York City and the CDM Group.

ModERN HEaLtH appoiNts MauREEN caLaBREsE as cHiEf pEopLE officER US-based workplace mental health platform Modern Health has appointed Maureen Calabrese as Chief People Officer with effect May 2022, taking over from former Head of People Ashley Killick. Calabrese joins Modern Health from social media management platform Sprout, where she had been Chief People

Officer since 2017. Before that, Calabrese was the Chief People Officer at digital payments platform Raise and public relations services firm Cision. She also held leadership roles in the HR function at Ipsos and The Nielsen Company.

kHoo EE LyN JoiNs avaLaRa as cHiEf pEopLE officER Avalara, a provider of cloudbased tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, has appointed human resources leader Khoo Ee Lyn as its new chief people officer. Khoo's responsibilities include overseeing all global people and culture-related initiatives, including human resources; talent management and acquisition; diversity and inclusion; learning and development; total rewards including compensation and benefits; and organizational development. She has held human resource leadership roles at global companies, including Amazon and General Mills, and most recently served as chief people officer at Redfin.

aLLisoN davis JoiNs wiLEy as EMpLoyEE RELatioNs diREctoR, apac Allison Davis has joined global leader in research and education Wiley as employee relations director for the APAC region. A senior HR leader with more than 14 years of experience in human resources both in a strategic and operational capacity, Davis has held various senior management positions within small local businesses and large multinational organisations. In her most recent role, Davis served as human resource director for iMedX Australia & New Zealand, a medical documentation company. GRaB appoiNts sHaNtaNu BHattacHaRya as HEad HR India's leading last mile logistics service for businesses, GRAB, has appointed Shantanu Bhattacharya as Head HR. He brings more than two decades of extensive experience in the HR domain, having led the people function across multiple global MNCs and Indian conglomerates, in the likes of GE, Nokia, ABP Group, Reliance ADAG and NISA Global. Shantanu joins GRAB from NISA Global where he served as the Vice President and CHRO. As Head HR at GRAB – a company with one of India's largest fleets with more than 1 lakh gig workers – he will be responsible for leading the company’s HR function as well as overseeing the frontline rider fleet of GRAB.

disco appoiNts JiGNasHa aMiN GRooMs as NEw cHRo AI-enabled legal tech platform DISCO has appointed IT industry veteran Jignasha Amin Grooms as the new executive vice president and Chief Human Resources Officer of the company. She has led human resources departments globally and trained teams to foster diversity, equity and inclusion at some of the world’s leading technology companies including Dell, Cisco Systems and, most recently, Epicor Software. In her new role, Grooms will be overseeing all HR functions, including recruitment, learning and development, performance management, diversity, equity and inclusion, and corporate social responsibility efforts.