AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. RAJ DAM, CEO OF QUIZWORKS AND FOUNDER OF PLAYDAY, AN AWARD WINNING PRODUCT ON GAMIFICATION
Human Resource is a function that has evolved out of industrial relations. It started out as the principles of management of workers in manufacturing sectors. With time HRM molded itself to the needs of large services based organization. But with the arrival of the start-ups which typically have a small workforce of multi-tasking individuals; do you think Human Resources still holds as much importance as it did earlier?
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that Human Resource Management is not their first priority when opening their startups, and that it is more important to focus on the product or the marketing. In my experience, whether it is a large organization, a mid-size one or even a startup, HR remains important. If you have a consultant in HR practices, a lot of future problems can be avoided. Most of these problems arise in the cultural fit in the organization. For instance, when you are hiring someone, it is important that someone with a hiring experience or understanding of psychometrics is involved in the process. Otherwise you might end up making a mistake which can cost a lot of time and money for a young organization. Two areas where I feel HR is particularly important for a startup is talent acquisition and talent management. In my own organization, we were very clear about it from the start. We hired an external consultant at the very outset to put in place clear policies regarding the induction and onboarding, ramp-up plans and the kind of cultural behavior expected at the workplace.
Your organization is an innovator in the field of gamification. One of your products gamifies some HR practices. Would you like to shed some light on the process?
Our product Playdayisamultiple award winning product including one from the People Matters magazine. We tried to focus on the employee engagement process in large enterprises. Mind you when I speak of employee engagement, I refer to knowledge engagement and not simply skill or task level engagement. I am talking about areas where learning and knowledge play a critical role. There are two types of engagement that might happen. One would be industry awareness. If you are working in a bank, then you got to know what is happening in the banking industry. Learning and Development teams make concerted efforts to teach people these things. However the problem that they face is that people tend to drop out or do not show a high extent of adoption due to the heavy nature of the content. People often do not use the Learning Management Systems that are present in their organizations. The other type of engagement might be there during the onboarding of new hires. We came up with a process of employee engagement that also takes care of new hire onboarding. At the end of the day we made a product that makes the content interactive, easy to understand, easy to consume and gives a view to the manager as to how his teams are performing as regards the particular sets of competencies they desire. We try and make it fun using game mechanics.
You were on the panel of judges for Innovation Jockeys, a competition to identify talent in the field of start-ups. In this context, what are the factors that you would look at to decide if a particular start-up has robust Human Resource practices?
The first thing that I shall look at is their onboarding process. Induction is something that is often handled very mechanically. People come, fill forms and after two days are given some content to see of which they lose track in two hours. Then within a few days they are expected to sit at their desks and ramp up to their responsibilities. I think this situation needs to change. An onboarding process like this tends to miss out on a lot of things. In fact, why only the onboarding process? I would like to see a good pre-boarding process. Ideally from the time that a person is given the offer, there should be an attempt to let him know about the organization. This is essential for a future ready workforce. Technology has made such processes possible. The next thing that I would look at is the ramp up plan of each person in the organization. This would include questions such as how long does it take for a new hire to get into a live project or how much time does it take for a person to start working independently without any supervision. This has a large cost impact. For all the days that a person is not on a live project, his Cost To Company is still being added to the company’s accounts. So I would definitely look at how effective this process is in the organization. The final thing that I would like to look at is whether the company has given a thought to its DNA or its culture. This would include questions such as why would someone choose to work in this company as opposed to another. Culture is very important. Culture is defined; it’s not something that happens randomly at any place. These are the three things that I believe are good indicators of whether a particular startup has a good Human Resource function in place.
What is your opinion about the new practices in the field of Performance Management in HR, such as the doing away with the bell curve?
It is a very interesting question. Unfortunately, I only have an outsider’s perspective on this. It is always good to have new ideas that are gaining acceptance from different companies. I cannot comment on whether it is good or bad. Any new idea should always be encouraged. HR as a process has always evolved as the industry evolves. With the millenials and the young people in workforce, such things are more and more expected in the industry.
We hear a lot about talent sharing these days. Do you think, with the rise of knowledge workers, there is a rise in the number of professionals who would want to freelance instead of being confined to a single organization?
If you are talking about knowledge workers being independent provider of services; that has always been there from time immemorial. It is not something that can happen across the length of designations in a company. For instance, the CFO of an organization is a position that can definitely be free-lanced as evidenced by companies such as mycfo.com. But can a position such as Product Manager in a product driven organization be outsourced? I don’t think so. But there are several other positions which can. Safety is an area of importance for many large manufacturing organizations. You can definitely have a consultant for that.
Finally, what is your opinion about the large established conglomerates entering into fields such as e-commerce, which were traditionally the bastions of start-ups?
Fundamentally if you go back to what C.K Prahlad said about core competencies of companies, they should do what they are good at. Of course conglomerates can do a lot of things. The Tata group can be in businesses ranging from tea to steel. But then it took a lot of time for Tata Group to become what they are today. My contrary view to this is that start-ups were born because they identified a gap that large companies were not able to fulfill. The large companies did not spend time looking at the gaps. To give you an example, look at Zoho, a million dollar company from India that works on CRM. Established companies such as Microsoft have been involved in this business. But it was Zoho who identified the potential for basing the business In cloud that totally revolutionized it. A lot of businesses, which were not innovating for many years, have been woken up from their slumber by a bunch of young kids who had a smart idea. I am not threatened by big businesses coming to areas traditionally held by startups. In fact, it is they who should be threatened by the smaller businesses who can affect a significant amount of their top and bottom line since they can do the same things in an easier and better way.
