This episode features an interview with Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer at Freshworks. Suman has spent her entire professional career in HR, holding positions at publicly traded companies like The Nielsen Company, Dell Technologies, and Whirlpool. At Freshworks, Suman pilots the global people strategy to develop and engage their employees. In this episode, Amanda and Suman examine diversity in the workplace. They discuss Suman’s passion for women in the workforce, key elements of workplace culture, and why it's better to hire people that add to that culture versus fitting in.
This episode features an interview with Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer at Freshworks. Suman has spent her entire professional career in HR, holding positions at publicly traded companies like The Nielsen Company, Dell Technologies, and Whirlpool. At Freshworks, Suman pilots the global people strategy to develop and engage their employees.
In this episode, Amanda and Suman examine diversity in the workplace. They discuss Suman’s passion for women in the workforce, key elements of workplace culture, and why it's better to hire people that add to that culture versus fitting in.
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“There is no one size that fits all. Human experiences at the workplace is all about different moments that matter as an employee throughout your journey. How do you create experiences that can delight your employees? Just like how we talk about customer delight. We have different personas. Whether it's an early career employee, it's an experienced employee, senior executive, women and we try and create experiences for each one of these that are different and that are important to them. And to me, that's what it's all about. It's human experiences at the workplace that create delight.” – Suman Gopalan
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:50): Suman’s career journey
*(03:50): Segment: Story Time
*(04:01): Suman’s passion for women in the workforce
*(08:41): Suman’s definition of employee experience
*(12:06): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(12:31): The key elements of a good workplace culture
*(15:45): Hiring to fit the culture vs adding to the culture
*(19:33): Segment: Ripped from the Headlines
*(23:38): How the pandemic affected women in the workforce
*(26:25): Freshworks’ pledge for equality
*(33:47): Asking for a Friend
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Links:
Connect with Suman on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Suman. Thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. How are you doing?
Suman Gopalan: Doing great. Thank you for having me lovely to be on this podcast.
Amanda Berry: I wanna talk about your role and what you do at FreshWorks, but can you first walk us through your career journey and how you got to where you are?
Suman Gopalan: Sure. I actually started my career in computer science. I have a degree in computer science, but post that when I did my MBA is when I got interested in human resources.
And since then, there's been no looking back. I've been in this field for over. 25 plus years. Now, over the course of my career in HR, I have done a number of different roles. I have led regional global teams at Whirlpool, then Dell technologies and at the Nielsen company. And I took some time out prior to joining FreshWorks to focus on my family.
And today, along with my role at FreshWorks, I really enjoy working with other startups. I actively mentor and. Many of them. I also enjoy working with a number of women, founders, young and upcoming women leaders. A couple of years ago, a group of us founded what we call as act for women. It's an initiative that focuses on improving participation of women in the workplace, especially amongs startups.
And also it focuses on bringing women back to work. So it's been a fulfilling. 25 plus years in HR and just continuing to enjoy.
Amanda Berry: Well, tell me about your current role as the chief HR officer at FreshWorks my
Suman Gopalan: team and I, we support the growth of FreshWorks and help scale our organization, our culture, but our biggest role is to create a happy work environment that enables.
All our employees to do their best and be their best. We take care of all things relating to organization, talent, leadership, people, culture, including talent, acquisition, talent development, org development, employee experience, total rewards, social impact diversity at a whole range of other things that come into.
Amanda Berry: Let's move into our first segment story time.
Producer: Welcome to story. Time, story time. Let me tell you a story time.
Amanda Berry: You just mentioned that you are an advocate for women. You talked about the group, you're a part of acts for women. And like I said, you're an advocate for women in the workforce and leadership.
Why is this one of your passions? I
Suman Gopalan: grew up in a large family, right? Big group of cousins, all of them. And we were always told and made to believe that we could be anybody we wanted to be, and we can do anything we want to do. And that's. Kind of the confidence with which I grew up, but when you come into the workplace, you realize that there aren't too many people like you.
And the number of women typically is very, very few again, that didn't di my confidence or anything like that. The first ever time I experienced that was when I took a break. I told you before joining FreshWorks, I took a break to focus on my family. And I figured that after 15, 20 years of being focused on my career, I can take a break and come back without skipping a beat, but I was really disappointed that it was just so difficult for me to get back into the workplace without having to answer so many questions.
And that made me think about how hard we make it for women to be a part of the workforce and come back to the workforce and make the choices that they need to make for their professional and personal lives. Right after I joined fresh. I decided that if I'm in a place where I can create impact today, then I wanna make sure I pay it forward.
And so that's part of why I've been so passionate about giving back and creating a place where it's equitable for women to be a part of fresh works and also broader amongst the startup community as.
Amanda Berry: Is there a specific moment that you can point back to that really helped push you to be focused on the employee experience, changing the workforce.
Is there a moment that sort of clicks to you where you go? I wanna change this. I wanna be in HR. I wanna really focus on the employee experience.
Suman Gopalan: I'll talk about a couple of different things, right? In India, we have the saying that everybody does computer science or has a degree in engineering and then figures out what they wanna do.
And so I graduated from college really young. I was still a teenager. And so I pretty much wasn't sure what I really wanted to do. And everybody did computer science. I did computer science too. I was good at it. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I didn't really have. Passion for it. I could do it, but I really didn't find meaning in it.
And so part of it was really searching for what is it that I can get excited about. And that's how I found human resources and something that I really enjoyed doing, which was impacting, creating impact and creating change. But let's talk about employee experience right over the course of the last 20 years.
You've seen that at the workplace, we've talked so much about human capital. Talent as a currency, all of that today, I think the world has changed so much. Today's generation of the workforce. Doesn't really look at careers as a 20 year career, 15 year career, 10 year career. They're all looking at experiences.
And so you start to think about what is it that you can do to create experiences that can enhance and enrich their professional life. And I think. Biggest differentiator that organizations can have is actually employee experience. Everything else. Anybody else can recreate the compensation or all of that others can recreate.
The biggest thing employees look for today is employee experience. Right? I personally felt it when I was looking to come back to work. And I was thinking about what is the kind of organization I wanna be part of over the course of several years. I've been part of so many different industries, so many different organizations.
And after having taken a break, I wanted to come back to do something meaningful. And to me, the question was, what can I do that creates impact? That leaves a legacy. And to me, the biggest thing in being part of a startup. Was being able to create that legacy impact and experience. So that was my aha moment to say, I wanna do something different.
I wanna create something different and FreshWorks just provided the perfect opportunity and platform to do
Amanda Berry: so. I love what you're saying here. Talk about what you mean when you think of the employee experience as we're talking and you were just giving that answer. I was thinking, wow. The employee experience for women is different than maybe for men.
And then we get diversity equity inclusion. That's a different experience. So what is a, an, an employee experience on what is a, how are you trying to make a good one?
Suman Gopalan: That's a fabulous question and I could talk to you for hours about it. Right? And so when we started thinking about, I love that what is employee experience?
And we talked so much about customer experience. Every company spends hours trying to decode customer experience, and you realize that there is no single. Solution that fits all profiles of your customer. It's exactly the same with employee experience. We actually took the same principles that we apply with our customers and tried to apply that to our employees.
And so when we started unraveling, what do we call as employee? There's actually three distinct categories that it falls into. And it's a sum total of how do people experience fresh works? How do they experience their role and how do they experience the culture? And it comes out in a two or three different ways.
The first and foremost is what we call is the workplace experience. And most often companies talk about experience as a workplace experience. Great fusball tables, good food, funky offices, all of that, which is important. But that's not the only experience that people look for. There are two bigger things.
One is what we call as the digital experience, which is how work happens. But to me, the bigger one is the human experience. And that is where there is no one size that fits on human experience at the workplace is all about at different moments that matter as an employee throughout your journey, how do you create experiences that.
Delight your employees, just like how we talk about customer delight, right? At the time of an interview at the time of your onboarding at the time of career experiences and moving across jobs at the time of life experiences, think about COVID right. And what people went through. the kind of experience they have, or even when somebody is say, leaving your company, the exit experience or the alumni experience, those are all the different things that employees experience fresh works through.
And that's how we actually create what we call is employee journeys. We have different personas. Whether it's an early career employee, it's an experienced employee, senior executive women, and we try and create experiences for each one of these that are different and that are important to them. And to me, that's what it's all about.
It's human experiences at the workplace that create delight. I
Amanda Berry: think that's such an important call out. And thank you for talking through that, that there is no one. Employee journey, employee experience. It's so important right now. And I, I love talking about this just because for me, the pandemic was so interesting to go from where I would go to work every day.
And you see people at work and you may see like a picture someone has on their desk with their kids and their spouse to all of a sudden. Now you're seeing them holding their cat and rocking their children. Like it's been this incredible human experience to see people being in their human. At work, which has been really, really incredible for me and really inspiring for me to see a lot of humans with children and really taking care of themselves in their home.
So it's been an interesting experience. I wanna keep talking about this a little bit. So I'm gonna move into our next segment called getting tactical.
Producer: I'm trying to figure out tactics and to be perfectly honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much. Here I am in charge and trying to say, why did you sleep through tactics tactics?
Amanda Berry: I know FreshWorks went from a startup to a publicly traded company. You credit. A good company culture for that. So I'm curious how you create that good workplace culture. And if you could just talk about some of the key elements that make up that culture,
Suman Gopalan: see culture for us was organic. We did not suddenly get to a stage where we said we need to define culture and that's the nicest part.
And I tell any company, any startup that you have to be deliberate about. From the word go, right? Just as particular as we are about the kind of products we create, we have to be deliberate about the kind of company we create. And early on in our journey, we did not call it culture. We actually used. First principles in terms of how will we work together?
What kind of a company we want to be? What kind of people do we want to hire? How do we make decisions? Those are all first principles on how we work together over time. That is our DNA. Still. We've gone from a seven member startup to a 5,000 member company that DNA still exists. And over time, That is our culture.
And we keep adding to our culture. We keep evolving that culture, but it's really important to know what is unique about your company. It is really important to have a point of view on what kind of a company you wanna build, you wanna create. And that is what defines your culture. Culture is less about a statement you make.
It really is about the way you operate and it has to permit everything you do. And only then it's truly culture and it's meaningful. It comes to life in how we make decisions. We had a culture called we still do called. Creating a happy work environment, which is optimizing for employee happens. And I'll give you an example when this whole pandemic came about and took us all by surprise, we had to make decisions around hiring.
We had to make decisions around compensation, all of that. And like every other company we paused and we said, okay, let's just understand the impact it'll have on our business before we do anything. Is it really gonna have a huge impact, minor impact you don't. And we paused it for a a month or two. And ultimately we decided that look, if we stick to our first principles and we optimize for employee happiness, let's just go ahead and do all of it.
Our business will come back. Our people will appreciate it. And that's what we did. And yes, of course our business came back and we found that our employees were just so proud to work for a company that prioritized them. That's what I mean, culture is about everything you do, how you make decisions, how you work together, and we've always had these principles or core values.
That have defined it. And that's really what has helped us create the culture. We have, the four or five elements we talk about, which is craftsmanship, happy work, environment, agility, and accountability, and be a true friend of the customer. Those four values haven't changed over time and it's underlines everything.
We.
Amanda Berry: Let's talk about the employee side of that for a second. When you're hiring employees to sort of fit into the culture. And I know you, you are a proponent of not fitting into, but adding to, so I want you to talk about that difference because I know a lot of the roles I've been hired for, you know, I've heard well, you are a good fit for our culture.
Would you talk about that? The benefits on what it looks
Suman Gopalan: like? I think culture fit is a much used and abused. If you use it well, it'll work for you, but I'll tell you why it doesn't. Because oftentimes when we define cultural fit, we define it in terms of it personality. We don't define it in terms of a certain value.
That's where I see most companies falter. And when you define it in terms of a personality, then you're always gonna hire a certain type of personality and you end up finding yourself in a spot where you have zero diversity. When we say we add to the culture. What we really mean is we look for people who have the core values.
We don't go by artificial definers of culture, like pedigree, in terms of educational qualifications, the kind of company you should have worked for the exact specific work experience you need to have you find that you kind of get straight jacketed into the kind of people you're. that's why we always say that we look for people who are talented, who have shared values with us and who have the right work ethic and who have the ability to learn everything else.
To be honest, you can teach the knowledge on the job you can teach, but you cannot change somebody's value system. You cannot change somebody's work ethic and early. that's how we started hiring for, and even today, that's how we hire. That's what we mean by adding to our culture, not just fitting into our culture.
Amanda Berry: So you being in HR, I have a question about that. So how do you work with hiring managers to help them change their mindset as I'm listening to you? I'm going, I think I would still like even subconsciously go, well, they've got the good experience. They've got the education. So how do you work with hiring managers and people across fresh?
To make sure that we're focusing more on value add rather than fit. It
Suman Gopalan: is easy to do when you are an early state startup, it gets much harder when you are a bigger company. Because you do take a lot more risks when you're an early stage, but when you have a lot of people who have come through a diverse route that actually adds to that.
So that's the first thing. We have so many examples around us. Of people who have been fabulous hires for us and have added to our culture, but don't come from the traditional background the way we define it. I think that's the first and foremost thing that gives a lot of encouragement to hiring managers.
That's one, two, the other thing we do, and we insist on. Every single high rank manager has to go through a round of training on how to hire for fresh works before they actually get to interview. And almost 99%. Very rarely. We skip this round. We do what is called as a culture round. And that is somebody who is outside of your regular technical panel, who evaluates for.
Culture and they look for do they have shared values and all of that. So that's one way we ensure that our values still remain the same, but our hiring team and our hiring managers really work together in terms of how do we really cast a wider net in terms of hiring for talent without being so narrowly focused.
Amanda Berry: I'm gonna move on to the next segment called rip from the headlines.
Producer: You hear the news, xray, xray, read all about it.
Our stories rip from the headlines, rip from the headlines, rip from the headlines.
Amanda Berry: I wanna keep talking about this employee experience because most of the world is either working remotely or hybrid because of the pandemic.
I know FreshWorks has implemented a hybrid work environment. What are you doing? Cross-functionally make sure they have a great employee experience. So the
Suman Gopalan: one thing I will tell you is for the most part. Our employees have just loved coming back to work, even if it's for two to three days a week. And it's just the kind of workplace experience they have the joy of the workplace and being able to meet colleagues, being able to have those fight bar conversations, hallway conversations, meeting people you have never met outside of your zoom conversations.
It's just been such a joy. To come back. And so we've not had to nudge people to come into work. As we announced that our offices are open for anybody who wants to come in, we actually saw a huge amount of football. We actually had to ramp to make sure that we are ready for that kind of number. So that's the first thing I'd say is in hours it's been organic.
People have been overjoyed to come back, be a part of the community, getting to know folks again, beat people face to face. So the joy of the workplace is certainly there. But even before the pandemic, we always were flexible and allowed people the choice to work remotely when they had personal situations that warranted.
Now, we've just expanded that. And we've had people who. Now work from different locations and we've been absolutely. Okay. In terms of having people located where there is no FreshWorks office as well. The thing that is interesting to see is how do you create the same experience for them? Where they're not part of a FreshWorks office on a day to day basis.
And so part of what we do is really redefine what does workplace experience mean for people who are not in the office? And I will tell you this, the first time we went into the pandemic, the first thing we did was to say, if happy work environment is a cultural value, we have to help people create happy workplaces for themselves.
People were not used to having large. Workplaces, especially given how large our workforce is in India. You don't have those dedicated workspaces. So right off the bat, we gave everybody a way to create their own happy workplace that they can be productive from. They can enjoy. And we actually won't believe the joy.
It created. People actually started posting on social media. The kind of workplace they had created the work desk. They had created how they were trying to create that happy workplace, all of that onboarding people, remotely creating that sense of joy when they come on board, but not in a fresh work's office.
That is something we've been deliberate about, which is how do you create that moment of delight? That you're part of FreshWorks, you're just not in an office. We constantly try and create. Are there ways in which we can inject delight into how people work, even if they're. In a physical office. Plus also from time to time, we make sure that they get to travel, come be a part of it so they can experience, develop those connections and make sure that they get to see fresh works in operation.
Before they go back. So those are all ways in which you make sure that people have similar experience, irrespective of where they work. It'll be slightly different, but you wanna make sure that you're creating delight across boths. Whether people work in office, whether people work remotely, you have to be a more thoughtful in how you're being inclusive of everybody.
And not just those who are in the.
Amanda Berry: I know women in the workforce is a passion of yours, but I wanna talk about, in your opinion, how did the pandemic work from home and how is it still affecting women in the workforce? Talk a little bit. Why you think about any kind of changes there? I
Suman Gopalan: just think the pandemic had a.
Disproportionate impact on women, especially moms, I would say, and caregivers, we all know we've all seen all kinds of studies, et cetera. And we've seen so many women around us go through it. The responsibility of caregiving has been disproportionate on them. And especially during the pandemic, it's just been, you know, a continu.
The lines between working for home and working from home, just blurred for women. And so definitely I think it has been hard on a number of women, but that is something we recognized. When we went into the pandemic, we had a women's support group within fresh works. And we met often to really understand how is this going for them while we had some of them say, Hey, I'm enjoying the flexibility of waking up when I want all of that stuff.
We found that. Women had some really unique challenges just in terms of never ending work, especially those who were young mothers and had really young children with no online school and all of that. They were really, really slammed. And so we started creating support groups for them and you won't believe it.
Um, The entire FreshWorks community stepped up for people with really young kids who just needed a break. We actually had a group of people who came together and did zoom sessions on reading out stories for children. This was way back right into when we were in the early days of the pandemic. Just so.
Working parents got a few hours of time and breather to get other stuff done. So we did stuff like that. We worked with partners who would enable people with young children and drove them into some kind of an online storytelling daycare session, even though daycares weren't open and all of that.
Recognizing that so many of these challenges were unique to women. Most of the time, just coming together, having conversations and helping them understand that they were not unique. We all go through it. Irrespective of you're a CXO or your, uh, training. We have the same situation and sharing ideas on how we could make it easy, really helped.
We tried making. Flexible for them in terms of when they operate, how they operate. So we did a number of things to make sure that we were making it easier for women to balance both working for home, working from home, balancing personal and professional lives. And I think, you know, it's gone a long way in ensuring their wellbeing as.
Amanda Berry: I know from reading that FreshWorks has some pretty big goals on getting a certain percentage of women. I believe it's, I believe you're at that 35% women you're aiming for 40% to be at FreshWorks with 25% of those women in leadership roles by 2023. Um, I wanna know how that's going and what if anything, Freshwork is doing to attract women to work there?
I think a few
Suman Gopalan: years ago, just before the pandemic, when we were discussing about culture at FreshWorks and how do we make sure that we continue to be an organization that is diverse, continues to grow? We asked ourselves what is it that we want to be and what kind of goals or anything? And our CEO was the one who right off the bat.
The world is equal. There are equal number of men and women. Why should the workplace not be equal? And that's how we actually made a pledge for equality and said that our goal is ultimately to be equal. It's not good enough to say you have 30% women or 40% women. Ultimately it should be equal. And that is our pledge for equality.
And that's where it all started. But we set milestones for ourselves to get there. And in the first year we committed that we would be a third of our global workforce would be women and we achieved that. And then we said we would be 40% by next year and we're already at 35. So we will get to 40 by next year.
Actually women in leadership is always the question at the early stage of their career. So many women coming in, but as you go higher is when you really see that they, it tapers off. And that's really where we started. and from having nobody on our board, we have three fabulous leaders who are women on our board from one management leader who was a woman that was me to now three.
Today we have 25%. We've already hit our goal of 25% women in the leadership positions and we're setting our goals higher. So that's really our approach. We wanna make sure that we continue to be an equitable workplace. And we wanna have equality across all levels and that's our pledge. That's our promise.
And that's what we're striving toward. So one of the things we found that we are very good when it comes to attracting women in early career, right. We have a graduate training program, management training program across all of those. We actually have almost 50% men and women, which is fine, but it's only later on that we find that.
Women tend to take a break and never come back. And so our biggest focus was on a couple of big areas. One is women in technology. We continue to ensure that we're being conscious in terms of having equality there. But the second big one is really how do you make sure that a, the women that we have feel support.
Through their life journeys and have the choice of remaining as a part of the workforce when they have caregiving responsibilities as well. But most importantly, there are so many talented women out there who take a break and we all just make it incredibly hard for them to come back. Our focus has been on bringing many of them back to the workplace.
So we learned something called as a career restart program. Both in India and in the us and will do so in Europe, shortly as well. And our aim is to reach out to women who have had to take a break for a number of different reasons and see what are the opportunities that we have. To bring them into the workforce.
And what we do is not just hire many of these women take a break anywhere between say six months to 12 years. I think the longest that we have who's come back to work is someone who's taken a break for 12 years. And a lot of times what we find is it's not the functional technical skills, right? You still have the knowledge.
A lot of times it's their. It's their communication. It's their ability to think about how do they balance and what does balance look like when they restart work? They require help on. So we actually work with a couple of partners in the us. We work with this group called women back to work. And in India, we work with a leading business school called SP gen.
And we, all of these women that we select as a part of our restart program. we put them through a 12 week journey that prepares them to come back to the workforce. Because most of the time, what we find is they kind of get thrown into the deep end and they're trying to grapple with so many of these different things.
So we wanna make sure they're set up for success. And then we bring them back into, into the workplace. And so far we're seeing good interests, good success. We just wanna be able to scale this to a much, much bigger level than what it is today. Wow.
Amanda Berry: How many people do you usually get in that program? This is
Suman Gopalan: the first time we've started.
So we've got about 18 to 20 people in India. And similarly, we wanna scale this to a hundred and beyond. We've got lessons that we have learned. And the first ever time we did it was actually last year. And that's when we learned that you just can't hire them and bring them into a role. You have to make sure that they're set up for success.
And that requires not just preparing. But also preparing hiring managers and leaders for it. So that's when we kind of said, okay, let's have a more structured way of doing it. And so now we have those programs in place. We just kicked it off this January. And so we continue to have cohorts every six months that come on board with us.
Amanda Berry: I wanna pull out a theme that I I'm hearing in what you're saying sum on. Now, this is like the third time saying, well, we've trained our leaders. We've trained our managers. I know you talked about and how to hire people and how to prepare, to bring these folks into the workforce. To me, those are such big symbols of a good employee experience when you invest.
And not just your C-suite leaders, but your managers and bring them all along on how, on these crucial pieces of how you want leaders to be in the workforce and invest in them to, to put them through training and help bring them along. That's such a big marker for me of a good employee experience. You could have leaders who don't listen, but I think overall the fact that you're all investing in your managers and your leaders is such a big, big green flag on your employee experience or FreshWorks.
Suman Gopalan: Thank you. I always say this right. People experience FreshWorks or any organization through their manager. Mm-hmm , it's not through a policy. It's not through the CXOs. They experience the organization through their manager. And so ultimately you have to prepare your managers to make sure that they're able to bring this to life.
I think
Amanda Berry: people fundamentally do understand, but then they don't really invest in there's this saying you don't leave jobs, you leave managers. And that there's a lot of truth to that. You know, when I think of maybe roles I've had, boy, I didn't have a great manager that impacts how I now feel about the entire company.
I'm sure our listeners can identify that. Or you have a great manager. You love your job. You don't mind going to work every day. You're looking forward to it. You, you enjoy it. So I think investing in managers is such a big component. I wanna move into our last segment, asking for a friend who's asking for a
Producer: friend, Hey, asking for a friend, asking for.
Amanda Berry: What do you think are the biggest challenges that HR professionals and leaders will continue to face in the future or any new challenges that you think will, will
Suman Gopalan: pop up a couple of things? Right? The first and foremost is as we come out of this pandemic. the whole concept of workplace has been blown apart.
Anybody can work from anywhere and all of that, which is a great thing in my mind. I think it allows a lot of flexibility, all of that, but the challenge for HR leaders. Is really in terms of how do you scale culture in an environment where it is so distributed? You've gotta throw out the old playbook and rewrite the playbook on how do you create culture?
How do you bring employee experience to life? Those are playbooks that needs to be rewritten in the. Normal as we call it. I think that's the biggest immediate focus. We've all talked about the challenges around retaining talent, detracting talent, but I'll tell you it's been that way for the last 20 years.
We all talk about war on talent, this, that, and the other, every single time. The biggest thing I will tell you is. How do you create great experience for employees, irrespective of where they are irrespective of where they work and create that passion and create that affinity and enthusiasm for your
Amanda Berry: company.
I know everyone's trying to get better at their jobs. What does that look like for you
Suman Gopalan: at FreshWorks? I will tell you this, even if you did nothing or did change jobs, you stayed in your same job. It'll look different two years from now. That's what a really fast growing company does to you, that you look back and you see how far you've come and how different your role is.
And so for all our employees, the biggest development happens on the job. But to me personally, um, , there are two things that I like to do. One is I do stay connected with my peers and mentors and look for ways in which I can continue to learn from others and know what's happening out there. What are others thinking about all of that, but to me, there's a great deal of innovation.
That's happening in the startup space, in the technology space. And I look at parallels that it can. To the HR space and to the employee experience space. And that's the one that I constantly learn as I'm speaking with so many new founders in terms of how they are creating new playbooks, how they are thinking differently about employee experience, how they're thinking differently about just modes of work.
Ways of working, how they're thinking about using technology differently. I just think there's so much innovation that is happening today in the workplace with employee experience, with technology work technology, that it's a fascinating time to be in the field of HR. And I constantly learn in working and talking to so many different new companies and startups and founders.
So that's what gives me joy.
Amanda Berry: Well, Suman, thank you. This has been a lot of fun before I let you go. Will you tell our listeners where they can find you? They
Suman Gopalan: can find me on LinkedIn. I think that's the place I'm most active on. And you just look me up on LinkedIn. So I'd go pile in FreshWorks. Is
Amanda Berry: there anything that we didn't cover today that you would like our listeners to know?
Suman Gopalan: I'd love to leave all our listeners with the thought that if you truly want to win the war on talent, you had to think differently about how you create meaningful experiences for everybody so that they feel like they belong and they can
Amanda Berry: thrive. Thank you Soman. I have a lot of respect for what you're doing for this spaces and diversity equity inclusion and bringing women into the workforce.
So thank you for all you're doing. I love your different perspectives. It's, it's really great to hear and I'm looking forward to all the stuff you'll do in the future. I'll keep an eye on that. So thank you so much for joining me today. This has been great.
Suman Gopalan: Thank you. Thank you for having me lovely talking to you and I loved your insightful questions.
You made me think a lot as well. Thank you.
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