Human Capital interacted with Shilpa Narang Jerath, Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO), OPPO India, on the relevance of a positive work culture given the larger impact of the pandemic on the daily functioning of an organisation and the steps adopted by OPPO India to infuse positivity among its workforce.

One of the biggest drivers for the success of an organisation is a vibrant and happy workforce, which can be achieved with a positive work culture. What do you believe are the key elements that constitute a positive work culture within an organisation?

Happy employees are more creative, innovative, and committed than their unhappy counterparts, and this has been echoed in studies and reports worldwide. In today’s job market, employers need to offer more than handsome salaries and benefits to attract talent, retain them and earn their happiness. Modernday employees want to work in an organisation that provides a healthy work culture and encourages balance in work and life.

Company culture is an integral part of any workplace since it influences employee morale and directly impacts the company’s success. As a firm believer in the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”,’ at OPPO, we constantly focus on building a humanfirst environment to ensure a happy and motivated workforce.

I believe in getting the basics right to maintain a culture that promotes growth and agility. Effective communication with employees comes first, and growth opportunities follow. A workplace must ensure opportunities for learning and development for all employees. Aligned with growth are rewards and recognition, which aim to drive high performance through trust and autonomy and recognise top performers through rewards and faster promotion.

Another important factor contributing to building a positive workplace environment is the culture of collaboration and this helps foster a camaraderie among employees that boosts both performance and morale. Providing a culture where failures are considered an opportunity to reflect and learn is crucial for future workplaces.

OPPO is a fast-growing young technology company that promotes the culture of continuous learning and offers immense scope to learn on the job and through organised learning efforts. We provide dynamic opportunities to employees with high-stakes projects, enabling them to challenge themselves and promote cross-team movements.

Change is seen as the biggest challenge that disrupts the preexisting harmony within an organisation and creates an aura of distrust and disharmony between the employer and the employee. However, Change is crucial to enforce workplace agility which is the need of the hour. What is your take on this?

Change is an inevitable process, and hence, agility is an essential characteristic that a business should possess. Organisations should create a culture of exploration, adaptation, execution, risk-taking, and creativity. This can be achieved by empowering employees to take on risks, challenging them to move beyond their comfort zones, and creating projects to enable crossfunctional expertise and exchange, thus developing a culture of agility. At the end of the day, it is all about creating value, sustainable competitive advantage, and winning in the marketplace.

Albert Einstein offered his wisdom on the topic, saying, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

Today, the environment is genuinely and visibly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA). We have been increasingly focusing on employee wellness for the last two years to ensure a safer work environment. Over months, we have also seen a significant change where employees can now address VUCA better, and are currently gathering themselves for bigger and better challenges, are more mentally prepared and have built up on resilience. 

Return to Office (RTO) is a term that everyone scoffed from employees to top management since they had been working all along, albeit from the comfort of their homes. Also, organisations experienced that the Gen Z employees are not very eager to Return To Office and have also quit their jobs. How has the transition from WFH to RTO been in OPPO? 

COVID-19 brought forth unprecedented times, leading employers and employees to take quick actions to adapt to the changing circumstances. Working from home has been a massive adjustment for businesses worldwide, but it was easier for Gen Z than the others due to their comfort with technology. While they adapted to remote work, issues like lack of social interaction with co-workers, boredom, mental health challenges, and feeling of isolation have grown massively. A balanced solution is the need of the hour, and hence, hybrid work culture is set to gain traction.

Our workforce is completely working from home at the moment; however, whenever we decide to open our offices it will be a slow transition and we will definitely opt for a hybrid model.

Before the recent variant of Omicron came into force, we introduced multiple programmes to induce and encourage an environment of collaboration and to ease the transition to WTO. One such intervention is #OPPOReconnect, an outbound experiential learning series that was launched to warm up employees to gradually come back to the physical set-up, encourage old employees to welcome and support none of the key positives of the pandemic was that it created multiple avenues for employees to upskill themselves, and this proved to be highly beneficial for organisations. Several companies also came forth with initiatives and rewards for employees who learnt new skills. How did the learning ecosystem at OPPO ensure constant upskilling among the employees? 

While digitalization was underway before COVID-19, the pandemic accelerated its pace. As a result, organisations started to operate digitally, and new, tech-driven job roles emerged. Hence, L&D has taken centre stage for employers to equip their employees with the skills they need to stay relevant in the competitive environment. Reskilling and upskilling have gone beyond simply training the employees to learn new skills; it is now also a matter of broadening learning to help solve mission-critical problems.ew members in the team, and help them connect with the leaders too. This in-person meeting also helped enhance experiences and made a personal connect that was missed in online interactions.

One of the key positives of the pandemic was that it created multiple avenues for employees to upskill themselves, and this proved to be highly beneficial for organisations. Several companies also came forth with initiatives and rewards for employees who learnt new skills. How did the learning ecosystem at OPPO ensure constant upskilling among the employees?

While digitalization was underway before COVID-19, the pandemic accelerated its pace. As a result, organisations started to operate digitally, and new, tech-driven job roles emerged. Hence, L&D has taken centre stage for employers to equip their employees with the skills they need to stay relevant in the competitive environment. Reskilling and upskilling have gone beyond simply training the employees to learn new skills; it is now also a matter of broadening learning to help solve mission-critical problems.

At OPPO, we have facilitated multiple online learning sessions on leadership, self-management, and many other domain-specific subjects. There was a special focus on cross-department learnings where SMEs from departments shared their knowledge to upskill and reskill our employees. This also has helped us facilitate and generate interest in cross-department career moves. Amid COVID-19, we also launched OLearning platform to ensure our on-ground staff can be regularly trained remotely. The app provides a very interesting gamified learning experience to its users. In addition to these learning interventions, the platform also provides them with upskilling courses and pop-ups on tips to be safe. Recently, we have also partnered with BITS Pilani to upskill our R&D engineers in advanced technology areas. 

How do you ensure employee well-being within the organisation given the fact that you employ a sizeable number of Gen Z employees who are highly tech-savvy and extremely passionate, but are bothered about the blurring of lines between work and home and is impacting worklife balance?

The work landscape has changed significantly, with work-life balance taking lot of attention by leaders, and millennials and Gen Z leading this transformation. Akin to every other aspect of their lives, the new age workforce seeks something more significant and profound than regimented work-life that allows little room for personal growth or time to celebrate personal milestones. Work from home has blurred the lines between personal and professional life, leading to employee burnout. Hence, employers are redefining their strategies to ensure that their workforce can have harmony at work, leading to content employees. HR leaders are coming up with innovative initiatives for the overall well-being of their employees.

At OPPO, we are taking proactive measures to keep employee stress at a minimal level and offer to the employees a much-needed psychological safe workplace. We encourage our leaders to push their teams to take regular time offs, avoid long working hours, reduce meetings and allow flexible working hours so that employees can manage their work-life according to their comfort. We also regularly introduce various initiatives and benefit programmes to keep their enthusiasm up. 

How relevant are the different forms of well-being for employees – physical well-being, mental and emotional well-being, financial wellbeing, career well-being, social wellbeing and community well-being. How have you ensured that all of them are ensured for the workforce at OPPO? 

The well-being of employees today is one of the most important aspects of any organisation. We constantly focus on physical health and ensure mental health is given equal importance, and I cannot emphasise the focus it has taken for HR in recent times. At OPPO, we have undertaken multiple initiatives for our employees and their families for their holistic development. The well-being initiatives include a fully funded vaccination drive for employees and their family members, availability of online doctor/psychologist consultation, distribution of COVID-19 care kits, awareness sessions on health management, online meditation, yoga sessions.

We ran a Happiness Campaign called “Sukoon”, covering areas like yoga, meditation, healthy diet; encouraging employees to pick up hobbies by running sessions by experts on areas like mocktail making, having your kitchen garden to boost employee morale and keep them engaged. Sessions on ‘resilience to resurgence’ helped them build an ability to grow from challenges. Furthermore, we are currently running TGIM (Thank God It’s Monday), which aims to enhance positive emotions, make people more engaged at OPPO, look forward to work, and get more passionate about it. Under this initiative, we organise various workshops, talks, games, share positive updates regarding the brand and the industry with the teams to start the week on a good note.

Since we have now gone back to the ‘Work from Home’ model after the latest variant, we have partnered with experts to roll out fitness programs to ensure employees’ mental and physical wellbeing.

In addition, there are regular pulse check calls from the Employee engagement team to connect with employees at an emotional level, know their concerns and address them. These initiatives have helped us increase employee engagement, improve employee productivity & morale, and served to increase employer branding.