Partha Neog – The Critical Role of Employee Engagement for Growing Companies

Connect with Partha:

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Vantage Circle
• Salary.com Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 23
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 21

• “When you are a small team, a lot of information is [communicated] through osmosis... but as you keep on growing, it’s very important to have a formal communication channel.”
• “Wellness is a very important part of the value proposition of an organization.”

Announcer: 0:02
Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology.Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly.And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent,that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

David Turetsky: 0:46
Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. And with me, as always, my friend, Dwight Brown,co-host of the HR Data Labs podcast, Dwight, how are you?

Dwight Brown: 0:57
David! I'm great.How are you doing?

David Turetsky: 1:00
I'm okay. I'm okay. And with us today, we have a special guest Partha Neog, who is the founder and CEO of Vantage Circle. Partha, how are you?

Partha Neog: 1:11
Very good, David,and nice to be with you both David and Dwight.

David Turetsky: 1:15
We are very happy to have you, sir.

Dwight Brown: 1:17
Appreciate your being here.

David Turetsky: 1:18
Give us a little bit of background as to who you

Partha Neog: 1:20
Yeah, so I'm the founder and the CEO of Vantage are.Circle, we're in the employee engagement space. So I've been running this company for almost13 years now. 12 and a half years. Before this, I used to, I have an engineering background,I used to work with coding assembly language in a telecom segment. And I worked across India, UK, with Nokia, all those things I did. And then I realized that, you know, I need to do something on my own. And I realized that internet is something is happening in the internet space. I'm talking about the early 2000s there. So I joined India's number one internet company at that time,and I joined as a product manager there, stayed there for three years. And 2010 I decided it's time to do something on my own. Today where we are and what the starting point was very different. Of course, I thought in one year, I'll be very profitable. And you know, we'll have a great life or something like that. But soon you realize,as Mike Tyson says, When you get punched all your plans go for a toss. So So yeah, so that's the journey. It has been very exciting here in the last 10 12years.

David Turetsky: 2:33
That's awesome.So Partha, we ask all of our guests and we have to ask you,what's one fun thing that no one

Partha Neog: 2:40
Okay, so I'm not sure if no one knows about it,knows about Partha?but it's I think, generally not there. It's not there in my LinkedIn profile. So I used to work on the science systems for Navy, Indian Navy. Okay, so my first job was that where I test those missile systems, so we used to go out on those ship testing, the ships were getting built, and then they will take it out for five, six days to the sea to test those ships. So you can imagine those crash testing you might have seen the car dummy testing, they do. So those kinds of tests and all kinds of missiles would be fired in the sea and it was fun and we used to we save those bunkers kind of not a bunker like a bunk bed.And alright. It was a fun experience, experience and I've been there like four or five times in these journey. So not many people even my son the other day, you went on a ship with the Navy? Yeah, that's my claim to fame!

David Turetsky: 3:41
Partha, the one fun thing you got to do is you got to blow crap up.

Dwight Brown: 3:45
I totally, I totally want that job. I am so suited for that job.

David Turetsky: 3:51
We all love blowing crap up. I mean, as a kid I used to use bottle rockets and firecrackers and blow crap like GI Joe. I used to blow crap. Like, like little toys are used to blow up. So we are very envious of you Partha.

Partha Neog: 4:05
And I sometimes look back at it like yeah.

David Turetsky: 4:09
Although I think the fish may disagree with all of us.

Dwight Brown: 4:13
Oh, they're dead anyway. It doesn't matter.

David Turetsky: 4:16
It's true.

Partha Neog: 4:18
It is not like a cruise ship, right. So cruise ships, you go you don't have any problems, you know, these ships are actually going to give you sea sickness, you know?

Dwight Brown: 4:26
Oh sure.

David Turetsky: 4:30
Of course. Well,it's something you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.So there you go.

Partha Neog: 4:35
Absolutely

David Turetsky: 4:35
You kept India safe. That was the important part.

Partha Neog: 4:39
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 4:40
So today we're going to talk about employee engagement while a company's in growth mode going from two to200 employees. And I think we've always talked about employee engagement in large companies.So it'll be really fun and fascinating to talk about this.So Partha, the first question is, what is the biggest challenge for a company moving from two to 200 employees?

Partha Neog: 5:12
I think the biggest problem is things creeping,okay, before you realize anything they like you change from 10 to 50. 50 to 100, and100 to 200. So it's slowly all the changes start creeping in,you never know. And you have to adapt to the situations and you never know, when is the right time to make this certain policy changes, some certain practice changes there, so you don't know, when there are no trigger points that on this number, I will do something like this. The second is that most small companies, the founders or the founding team up are not experienced in the sense that they have been a CEO of a bigger company or a person who has led like huge teams. So a lot of learning has to be done. No,you're not always sure what you are doing, you will be questioned. And you will have to keep on questioning themselves yourselves. So that is very, you know, other challenges you don't know. Okay, you don't know what the trigger points is. You don't know what needs to be done. And also, I think, the largest, the biggest challenge, which I found was the whole initial employees,the first 10, maybe 20 30employees are very, very passionate. They believe everything, they believe in the mission which is there. As your team increases to 250 plus kind of thing, that same passion is not there and sometimes might be difficult, as a founder to take it. Okay, how come? You don't have the same passion as me? So I think these are challenges which we faced.

David Turetsky: 6:53
Absolutely. I've been in companies that have been very large and very small. We,Dwight and I were both part of a very small company previously.And so there's a lot of things about culture and rules and policies that are very different from a very small company to even those mid sized companies you're talking about. And I think there's a major transition that happens because when you start instituting policies people start looking at you're like, wait a minute, don't we have to be flexible? And at the end of the day, for a 200 person company, flexibility is not really an option anymore.Whereas you could have had lots of flexibility at two or five.200, 250? Flexibility means the rule is flexibility.

Dwight Brown: 7:33
There's kind of the tipping point at like 150 to200. You reach that tipping point?

David Turetsky: 7:38
That's right.

Partha Neog: 7:39
Absolutely. Not every day. So I think the last year was this year for us that we went from about 130 to 200plus in '22. And everything,even a good thing you do, is questioned. Okay. Why? Why do we need to do this thing? Why do we need to put something in writing? I mean, you talked about David, flexibility, right?Why do you need to put it in writing? We know it! Once you put it a rule there is like,okay, what's happening in this company?

David Turetsky: 8:07
Right.

Partha Neog: 8:07
But yeah, I think the continuous communication is also important to tell them why we are doing certain things.

David Turetsky: 8:14
And I think the why communicated appropriately,at various points along the way,is very important. Those inflection points, those major inflection points of movement,of size, of maturity, as Dwight said, you know, it's different when you go from two to 50. And I think you said this as well,when it goes from 50 to 100, or100 to 150. Those are inflection points along the way, there's that need to be that true up to maturity, and to growth. So that people all of a sudden, don't wake up one day and go, I don't know who's on my team anymore. I don't know, who's part of the other parts of the organization.You know, I may know the people around me but you know,especially in remote work,Partha, people working around the world, they may never ever meet their teammates!

Partha Neog: 8:59
True.

Dwight Brown: 9:00
There's this sense of a loss of control that people have. You know, you you hit those inflection points and, and we've all lived it, where all of a sudden, you start to feel like, well, I had control of this and now you're, now you're taking that control out of my hands. And, and sometimes it's an illusion of control, but it's, it's a feeling nonetheless, you know.

Partha Neog: 9:23
True, and I think you made a good point about the remote working so you can imagine '21 '22 You know, remote working, and the team expanding and all kinds of issues coming up with that. So it was a challenging time is the remote working.

Announcer: 9:41
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David Turetsky: 9:51
So Partha, let's go to the next question. What did you learn along the way to get you the opportunities to grow your company?

Partha Neog: 10:00
See, I think one was the communication, which I learned a little late that you have to keep on constantly communicating. When you are a small team, a lot of this information is is, is through osmosis. You know, you're there,you get it from someone, the what is the company doing? What are even the basic things like what are the company's revenue numbers, okay? What are the company's targets, all those things just dissipate. It isn't like disseminate through the osmosis there. But as you keep on growing, I think it's very,very important to have a formal communication channel. Okay,which means for us, we did something like town halls. Okay,it's a regular Town Hall had to be there, okay. I initially used to feel, and everyone knows this, I mean, what's to talk about every town hall there,okay, if you have any problems,just reach out to me, but no, I think that communicating is very, very important is something which I learned. The second is this whole attrition thing, okay, is like it can be a really important, you know,competitive advantage. Why these days everyone knows that, if you reduce attrition, you will reduce your cost of replacing the people and all those things.But a small company,particularly small companies,like like us, what happens is a lot of this knowledge is not codified. Okay? A lot of knowledge about different systems about about the product is not codified. If it's not codified this person leaves, it can have a material impact, not just going to have a material impact on how you progress, your products will get delayed,roadmaps get delayed by three to six months, because someone leaves out, okay, someone leaves. So I think somehow attrition has to be managed. And and that is why the engagement has to be there, the employee engagement, to communicate the vision, the bigger picture, all those things we do. And third is I think the last point here is I think, we built up a second rung of leadership when we felt the need. We're still building the second rung of leadership,someone has to own certain functions, okay? I always feel that I am better in doing the job compared to this other person I hired. But then there's a balance between efficiency of doing this stuff and an overall efficiency of the company. The second rung who takes ownership is very important. And we are developing this team. I'm not saying that we have reached that. I mean, we've matured there, but I think that's very important to have that second rung.

David Turetsky: 12:32
Well, you have to have succession, right. And to your point before about attrition. One of the ways you can combat the loss of key employees is to make sure that there's that bench strength of people who know what's going on,who understand the processes,who have that key knowledge and learning and that's being shared. I think we often overlook, especially in small companies, the fact that there is that crazy need for a succession plan. Because I actually think it's more important to have a succession plan for a smaller company than it is for a larger, because there are a fewer opportunities!And also, there's, there's,there's a more important, to your point before, there's a more important risk of loss. And therefore you've got to backfill because you're not going to keep everybody. You can't. It's employment at will mostly around the world. And you have to be able to make sure that you do have, you can't wait six, eight months, like large companies can to fill a very important leadership role.

Partha Neog: 13:33
True.

Dwight Brown: 13:34
You know, even even when you get to the 200mark, you're still functioning like a small company. And the span of control of each individual is so wide that when you when you lose that person,it's and so to your point,David, you've got to have that succession plan. And that's a hard thing to do when you're going for being the very small micro startup to all of a sudden, kind of reaching this critical mass. And now, now you're saying, Oh, what do we need to do for the succession plan? How do we even approach that at this point?

Partha Neog: 14:07
And also, it's a balance, sometimes isn't like you need the bench strength as David, you've said, but when you're bootstrapped, you don't even have the kind of money to have, you know, multiple build bench strength. So I think all the balance has to be managed,but we have to be aware that this is the risk of this. So and plan accordingly.

David Turetsky: 14:30
Dwight, you said something interesting. I just wanted to touch on it a little bit. You said that when you grow to 200, it's not small anymore.But those teams in some of those groups are still small, and can act and react as a very agile team and can still have that feeling of small even in the smaller, big, bigger or smaller,big organization. They can still act that way. You can still have some flexibility in those small teams and still have that culture. Whether it's entrepreneurship or whether it's, as I said, agility. But I think this goes back to Partha your point of communication.Those teams, especially,especially in the larger small company, as they grow, they definitely need to keep those lines of communication open.They need to be able to impart the knowledge and the what was given as part of that you said osmosis, the process before now needs to be more diligent and more thoughtful, right?

Partha Neog: 15:32
True, true.

David Turetsky: 15:35
Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well,you're in luck, we have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind, go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today.So let's go on to the third question, which is if you had three examples of things that a company that grows from two to200 would worry about,especially around engagement,what would they be?

Partha Neog: 16:13
See I, we have been thinking about this for the last few years. And I say so you have product advantage, you have marketing advantage, all those.So I say the passion advantage,okay. Is is an amazing thing.And we have seen in so many times the underdogs, beating the established players, you know,everything comes down to the passion part of it. So I say the passion advantage, which you have. Now, this passion advantage can come only if you have engaged employees. So what we have, I mean, in terms of like what we have been doing,when we are communicating and making sure that this basic stuff about hygiene factors,salary, your policies, all those things are taken care of. But we also show a slightly bigger purpose and impact. Okay. And this is not just just to talk about it, we made sure that this is something which we truly believe in. And we communicate the same thing and how they're making an impact setting in a small town in India, and you're taking on huge established players globally, serving companies in like 60 odd countries, show them the results, okay, what they are doing, and what are the impact it is happening. So I think that is is one example in how we are trying to create this whole engaged employees. Second is on the wellness part, I know everyone talks about it, but we don't take wellness as a, you know, some kind of to reduce our insurance premiums kind of way.

David Turetsky: 17:46
Right.

Partha Neog: 17:47
We are saying wellness is a part of engagement. Okay. It's like we do some fun activities around wellness stuff, we keep on talking, we have sessions on wellness. So those are like employee engagement activities,which we do. And we don't try to measure, you know, how much every employee has participated in all those things. It's an engagement activity, everyone participates, but we keep on nudging those things. So there's a second example. And third is again, we still strongly believe that what we do is not rocket science, okay? Anyone, if they keep on doing the same stuff,for I know, for three years becomes an expert. So we said don't worry about this, okay, we don't have mobile development experience. Just keep on doing,Apple actually took us in the developer conference, okay, for one of our applications, which you had done there. And that they found us we didn't find them kind of thing. Our SEO marketing team, okay, no one had any Google SEO experience there.What did these guys do? They went in 2019 April, we used to do about 4000 unique visitors to our site. Today, we do 2 million unique visitors to our site.These guys have no training, no expertise, okay? They just kept on doing kept on doing in two years time in a two to three years time they become. So we try to instill into this that okay, you can do really big things. Okay, if you keep on doing this, these things again and again, and you become an expert on this. I think so these are some of these things which we have seen the bad examples. I mean, which you asked about what we didn't know, I think this whole formal communication process we could have started earlier, building up the second rung of leadership, we could have done a little bit earlier.Okay. I think we delayed by a couple of years there. So the succession planning, which,which you mentioned about I think we should have started a little bit earlier on that.Yeah.

David Turetsky: 19:51
Don't be too hard on yourself Partha. It's really hard.

Dwight Brown: 19:53
It is, there's so many priorities and you don't know which one you don't always know which one has to be your priority one, you know?

David Turetsky: 20:02
And also, a lot of the statistics point to the fact that most organizations that are really tiny don't last either. they don't grow.

Dwight Brown: 20:08
Right exactly.

David Turetsky: 20:10
Either they don't, they don't last because they go out of business or they don't grow, they just stay where they are, which in many organizations is just fine. I did want to pick up a couple of things you were talking about one about the wellness. It was a study published today, that was highlighted in the news in Boston, that talked about the linkage of mental health and work. And that at work, you really need to be mindful, and pun intended, of how you treat your employees because it could be negatively harming your employees' mental health, like creating boundaries, meaning at10 o'clock at night, you shouldn't be working. Sorry, I had to laugh, or literally setting boundaries where people don't check their email after hours, which, you know, we all we all do. But But wellness is a very important part of the value proposition of an organization,not just because, you know, the organization provides some kind of benefits around it in some,in some countries, that's not necessarily true with socialized medicine, but that care about your employees. How do you take care of your employees? How do you treat them? And how do you make sure that they are doing what they should do for the rest of their lives, not just the 24minus w equals L, but the 24minus L equals W.

Dwight Brown: 21:35
Companies even,you know, I would argue that, at200, you're, yes, you're progressing. But at the same time, I think a company of that size is uniquely positioned to be able to add, you know, have that value equation, that wellness value equation for their employees, as you grow bigger and bigger, it becomes more programmatic, and it seems more like a check the box thing,but you're you're still at 200uniquely positioned and, and definitely what you say makes sense that this is a part of employee engagement, and probably one of the key parts of employee engagement.

Partha Neog: 22:14
And I think this is where with this being the small company, we also have the flexibility to take care of our employees. I mean, we don't have standard policies. I mean, I have an example where, you know,an employee was struggling to save, you know, a little bit of money because it saves us money,but I think it's actually thinking it's a such a small amount of money for the company,that, hey, we then then then put up a policy saying that, hey,we'll just give away this X amount of money if anyone needs it. Okay, no questions asked it's not a loan. Nothing. You need it, because it's a very small amount for the company,but it's a huge impact on the employee there. And that flexibility is there today with us and 200, maybe this flexibility will not be there at2000.

Dwight Brown: 22:56
Right, right.Right, exactly.

David Turetsky: 22:59
Let's touch on the passion as well, because you mentioned passion as being really important. Or an important example that you learned. Passion is really important for every company, but especially when you have passion in a small company, it really can be like David and Goliath,or you mentioned the the player,the small player with the against the experienced player,you really can, especially if you have passion, overcome huge hurdles. And that becomes part of culture. The one thing I didn't hear you talk about,which I was really surprised about is establishing that culture and making sure that passion is is a key part of it.Isn't that you know, and maybe I overlooked it, maybe you did say it, I apologize if

Partha Neog: 23:38
No it is okay. And that's what my job today is, is basically to make sure this culture is is there. If they understand the story, that they listen to the history, although sometimes when you don't have any idea of where this company came through what the struggles are, if my father tells me his struggles, I become more involved. Okay, in that I feel more about my father. The same way if I talk about the company's story, the history they talk about. So we try to make sure both things both the past when it all falls on the communication part of it, okay,the past we keep telling the stories and those anecdotal stories, okay, this this company, this client, I got, you know, standing outside the ladies room, you know, and those kinds of stories we build up and also we tell about the future that what is possible and what we're doing today is we're just scratching the surface okay,there's so much to be done. So both these two parts are important to create the passion and you take this example in any any of those sports, you know,sports movies, and all those things which you see, it's always what is possible kind of thing, okay. At the point which I mentioned about we don't need to be an expert you keep on doing something on a continuous basis, you will become an expert okay? Something which might look difficult in the short term,okay, can we be the number one player in two years? No, we can't. Okay. And even if you tried to put that goal, it's like, uh, what is this guy smoking? You know? If you say,can we be the number one in this field in 10 years time? Okay,then like people start okay,it's possible, then of course,it's your job to break it down into the smaller milestones.Okay, but it's possible to be there in the for this for the long term. Okay, we want to show the future to them. So that's how you create these passionate employees.

David Turetsky: 25:34
Awesome.Well, Partha, I think we've had a really interesting and wonderful discussion around how to engage our employees, from a company of two employees to accompany of 200. And how do you grow and keep those people impassioned, as well as engaged.So you talked about employees being passionate, you talked about them, and their wellness and caring about that. But you also talked about, they don't need to be experts to get things done, and to keep at something and to achieve it eventually.And hopefully, most companies can live by those things. Those are really awesome examples of how you how you can grow and keep your keep your company on a path to engage your employees.Is there anything else you want to cover before we end?

Partha Neog: 26:29
Nothing specific,but I think what you summarized it well. I think keeping the passion and that advantage is huge, okay, that attrition, if you can manage it. Engage if you can have engaged employees,nothing like that, okay, you can really beat things. I mean, you have seen Twitter going from whatever, 20,000 to 2000 people but it's still running. So I think having engaged employees is the key to being successful.

David Turetsky: 26:57
I totally agree.And Dwight, I think you'll agree as well. We love being engaged.

Dwight Brown: 27:03
Most definitely.

David Turetsky: 27:05
Partha, thank you so much. It was wonderful having you on the program.

Partha Neog: 27:08
Thank you, David.Thank you, Dwight. Thank you for the time.

Dwight Brown: 27:10
Thank you for being with us. We really appreciate it.

David Turetsky: 27:13
Yeah, we do. And thank you for listening, take care and stay safe.

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