Brainstorming points - 1.What is work culture? 2.Meaning, Importance and Characteristics Of a good work culture? 3.Signs / Pointers of a Good work place? 4.How to promote Core Values at the work place? 5.How to maintain good culture at the work place? 6.How to improve work place culture? 7.Impact of work culture on Customer facing teams 8.How can HR automation improve the work culture?

1. Session: Opportune Master Mind Series - “Work Culture” on 26th June 2014

2. Topic: "Emerging Trends & Changes in Indian Work culture“
Discussion Moderator:
Mr. Pankaj Shah – Director, Opportune Technologies
Discussion Participants –
Mr. Dhwani Mehta – Director, Opportune Technologies Pvt. Ltd
Mr. Kapil Srivastava – CHRO, Eiffel Group of Companies
Mr. Amol Pawar – VP - HR, QED Baton
Mr. Harendra Deshpande – Founder Director, Creative training
Ms. Madhavi Inamdar– Manager – HR, IT Cube Solutions Pvt Ltd
Ms. Vandana - Co-Founder -MIND Spa (India) , Corporate Trainer
Ms. Veda Kulkarni – HR, MCCIA
Date - 26th June 2014
Venue- Malhotra Wekfield Board Room Hall, MCCIA, ICC Tower, S.B. Road, Pune
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

3. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Mr. Amol Pawar:
• Started with explaining the Indian culture & beliefs of Indian people, and impact of this
mindset on behavior or culture at workplace
• He also discussed how Indian mindset differs from western
• According to Amol, Culture is anything that can be seen or felt in group of people
• Amol shared his experience of cultural shift at Honeywell:
• He shared, “When Tata Honeywell became Honeywell, Indian centric company to
multinational, everything changed. Reporting structures, bosses were at international level.
It was difficult for tenured to get accommodate to this cultural transition smoothly, there
was non-clarity. We took initiative to enhance understanding of people through clear
communication.”
• Amol also talked about the Jugaad thinking of Indians and how it impacts the work culture
and overall quality.
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

4. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Mr. Harendra Deshpande:
• According to Harendra, Culture is reflection of or behavior based on, value
system
• For employee to be cultural fit there has to be amalgamation of personal and
organizational Values. At the root of any work culture there are Values of the
organization. Values are roots and behaviors are the Fruits
• He believes, True Culture is more visible in crisis situation, if it is based on values
it will survive.
• Harendra then shared his experience in Tata Power, even though he had
submitted his resignation, they treated him with respect. The perspective about
contribution of employee was not only restricted to organization but to the larger
society
• He believes as an Indian we always want everything in written, at the root of it
there is feeling of insecurity or fear. He also raised a question, “Why western
people don’t trust us?” It is due to our mindsets
• Harendra believes the less you talk about Values & Culture and more you
demonstrate them is better.
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

5. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Ms. Vandanaa:
• Culture is ultimately the experience of the company end customer gets & it basically
based on the believes of the founder
• Culture is demonstration of behavior, which even new joinee can test at the very first day
• Culture in family is totally different and we are challenging it at work place. Total different
demands are there.
Ms. Veda Kulkarni:
• Culture is built by leadership. It flows from top to bottom
• Organizational Culture is dependent on demography. Family background also creates an
impact
• It gets built over a period of time and improves
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

6. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Mr. Jayprakash:
• Culture is a set of Ideologies
• It is the way we express ourselves to the world. Business thrives on productivity and employee
interaction with customers. No other factor influences productivity and customer interaction more than
how the employees feel about their job. These emotions are heavily mired on the culture in the
workplace.
Col. Kapil Srivastava:
• Culture is the DNA we carry
• Actual success lies in the last man understands the requirements of the company
• Culture is the oxygen in the organization, which people coming from outside can feel
• Selection of new employees should be done on the basis of this DNA match or cultural fit
• Kapil also believes, real character of any person or organization comes out in Crisis, that’s where DNA
lies (Ms. Vandanaa complemented with example: when relationship breaks organization becomes
insecure about data, information sharing)
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

7. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Mr. Dhwani Mehta:
• Culture is like air in the room, one can immediately feel or sense its presence
• Culture should not be monotonous: you have to be sometimes strict, sometimes soft,
even though you are an employee sometimes you need to think or feel like a head.
• Dhwani believes, for building ethical culture two things are contributors:
• Intention to do something
• Possibility (feasibility) of doing something
• He thinks Tatas could build such a wonderful culture because they had good
intentions and affordability to build it.
• Harendra differed with this view and he believes affordability is not a question for
building culture. It is all about genuine intentions and believes of top management
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

8. Q & A Session with HR Leaders from Industry:
“What is organizational Culture?”
Mr. Punit:
• Work culture differs from sector to sector, industry to industry. He supported this with
example of difference between Advertise industry and News industry: in adv. Industry
people can argue with boss but in news industry CEO will ask “who is the boss?”
• Culture is all about thinking new ideas, innovating something new
• Culture is healthy when two people can argue healthily. (Can organization encourage
constructive conflict?)
• All theories are ok but it all depends on what organization do in the situation of crisis
• We should create free work culture. People should feel empowered
Ms. Madhavi Inamdar:
• Organization’s culture is depend on Vision, Mission and Policies of the organization.
It is the culture reflected through the actions / behaviour of the employees.
• For more understating of the culture from people’s perspective, exit interviews are
important. Organization need to know why people are leaving the organization
• While defining the vision & mission Organization should involve all levels (From most
junior to top management)
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

9. After initial thought contribution the mind & hence session charged up,
Curiosities and views started to flow -
Opportune Mastermind Series "Future of HR"
Curiosity and Views By Whom
How to manage the culture with Generation ‘Y’? Have they become
blunt? There is generation gap, how to bring everyone[generations]
on same level and gel them well?
Mr. Dhwani
•Communication is the key & it also depends on employee
engagement activities such as get together, functions, events. It helps
creating sense of belongingness and will nullify age barriers
•Generation Y is referred as ‘ME’ generation: they will not keep mum
about something is not working. They will raise voice, take names of
people
Ms. Veda
People should get involved in Vision & Mission activities. They should
get involved in decision making. The approach should be bottom – up
Ms. Madhavi
•These days speed to succeed as an organization as well as individual is
very high. In order to catch up speed it is observed that corporate
(generally in IT/ITes) copy style of western organizations without
evaluating its suitability for Indian work force.
•Large successful Indian business houses like Tata’s and Mahindra’s did
it in a nice way. They create sustainable work culture, and built it with
patience studying workforce over a period.
Mr. Pankaj

10. Curiosity and Views By Whom
•Vision, Mission should be developed through participatory process.
Employee engagement activities should also involve activities like
Rotational Leadership
•Help generation Y to align their personal Vision with organization
Vision
Ms. Vandanaa
•Employees should get engaged with their role and work. Activities &
events are just hygiene factors.
•Generation Y or for that matter any employee should feel and understand
his/her contribution to the organization’s Vision. Their contribution to Top
line and Bottom-line of the organization.
•It is only an issue about perspective. Generation Y don’t have larger
perspective, but it is our responsibility to give them that. Treat them
respectfully and caringly
•Generation Y is intelligent & they have high energy it just needs to get
channelised
•We frustrate them, it is system level issue and we need to solve it
collectively.
•We don’t treat them properly, we are skeptical about challenging our
assumptions. It is about 3 Es (Exposure, Experience & Expertise) due to
which we developed 4th E: Ego
Mr. Harendra
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

11. After initial thought contribution the mind & hence session charged up,
Curiosities and views started to flow -
Curiosity and Views By Whom
•If we involve young people in strategy and their idea gets rejected
then they may behave weird
•(Solution came that we should give feedback & clarify WHY behind it)
Mr. Dhwani
•Smart manager should identify corporate loop holes in his team.
•Leader should set the priorities and empower the people. He/she
should become invisible leader
•There are only two keys to gel two generations:
1) Transparency
2) Technology
•And there is only one commodity: Communication
•They are looking only for ‘what is there in it for me?’
•We (old generation in organizations) don’t have courage to give
feedback
•Make it easy for Y generation, they will follow the demonstration they
see
•Ex: PMS system in Army is very strong. Nobody challenges the system
Col. Kapil
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

12. Curiosity and Views By Whom
•How HR automation can help build, enhance the work culture? Mr. Dhwani
•Technology friendly initiatives are basic things. People & specially
generation Y is expecting it.
•They expect technology solutions, but it depends on where I am, in which
sector I am working, and what culture organization is following
•Now a days whole buying pattern has changed, everything is getting
impacted by Rating. So in cultural context also capturing and analyzing
information becomes necessary, where Opportune HRMS platform can
definitely help organizations
•If such platform is available people will become more interactive and
expressive
•E.g. Initial reaction of people to Mobile was not good but now you can
see what is happening
Mr. Amol
•Yes Opportune HRMS platform is useful but for such platform prerequisite
is well defined processes need to be in place, HRMS can be only fit in such
organizations.
•And it should not take away the personal touch
•Can be useful in paperless offices and where we don’t want to get caught
in transactional work (Babugiri). E.g. Organization’s library can be managed
through such platforms
Ms. Vandanaa
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

13. After initial thought contribution the mind & hence session charged up,
Curiosities and views started to flow -
Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"
Curiosity and Views By Whom
•If one builds such system which will not hamper human tough and
work effectively, then it is very useful
Ms. Veda
•We always say Vision should be like this and that, we can take some
activities which will tell us better
•We can capture ideas through systems
Mr. Punit
•We should not micromanage the youngsters
•And personal touch should not get hampered. System will be useful
but we should avoid too much mechanization: e.g. Exit interview forms
to be filled online
Col. Kapil
Gen Y People are spontaneous, we can capture their spontaneous
ideas and suggestions through HRMS
HRMS platform should analyze these inputs and channelise ideas for
deriving actions to implement upon it
Mr. Pankaj
•System should help optimizing Cost, Quality & Cycle Time Mr. Harendra

14. Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"
The passion and contribution of all HR thought
leaders was exuberant during the whole
master mind session.
We at Opportune Technologies thank and
appreciate all participants for their
involvement and contribution.
Hope readers get valuable insights reading
this and that way we feel we contribute to
society and ecosystem in

15. Token of appreciation to Col. Kapil from Mr. Pankaj
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

16. Token of appreciation to Mr. Amol from Mr. Dhwani
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

17. Token of appreciation to Ms. Vandana from
Mr. Pankaj
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

18. Token of appreciation to Mr. Harendra from
Mr. Pankaj
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

19. Token of appreciation to Ms. Madhavi from
Mr. Pankaj
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

20. Token of appreciation to Ms. Veda from Mr. Dhwani
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Culture"

21. Opportune Mastermind Series “work Culture"

22. If you want to connect with us
#opportuneHR(twitter)
dhwani@opportune.in / www.opportune.in
Call: 022 40365432
To exchange ideas !!!
Opportune Mastermind Series “Work Cluture"