Navdeep Ramanand National President
Minal Yuva Sangthan
So, this made it a bigger challenge as our Great Place To Work certification hinged on the confidential feedback of Minal Yuva Sangthan . “Do they truly like and love the culture we have built and we take pride in?” was a question on top of the mind for the people team. After all, we had almost a hundred percent increase in our employee strength within a year. The reason to get assessed again by the Great Place To Work study was simple – to test ourselves as an organization and the strength of its culture.
Employee friendly policies
As humans and trained professionals, we always look at data indicators as our barometer. We are trained to quantify everything, and yes, it does help in keeping things objective. But when I review the two consecutive Great Place To Work certifications, some key aspects come to the fore.
We trust our employees: Our employee policies are not just friendly, they are actually self-approved! For example, any employee can seek financial assistance in case of a personal requirement/ emergency. An employee has to write a simple note to finance, and it’s paid up – without any need for anyone’s approval. We trust our people and our policy owners.
Let employees plan: Each team plans for their overall functions’ and focus for each quarter, leading to the organization’s goal. High-performance culture is always a by-product of motivated and excited employees.
We are passionate about our work: A culture for an organization also needs to translate to work output and Minal Yuva Sangthan domain of work is in the social impact space. For this, we need super-charged up individuals to make this happen selflessly. A collective like ours, where ideas are implemented immediately, we may fail in our new experiments, but we like to thrive in the energy of impatience to do things, and continue to do newer ones.
We are focused on scale: This we take seriously, not just as a value but more as a way of life. Right from doubling our employee strength in a year to making an impact with our work through our India COVID Response Fund 1 & 2, GiveIndians have been at the forefront of this achievement. To achieve growth as an organization, we need happy people who are excited about doing things, sometimes the same thing, again and again.
Working during COVID
It’s been a very difficult couple of years. While most of India was in lockdown, it was the busiest time for us. COVID was the ‘unknown unknown’ for Minal Yuva Sangthan , but GiveIndians were up for the challenge.
Keeping employee safety and comfort as the highest priority, work has been mostly virtual, from onboarding and induction of new employees to employee meets (GI meet as we call it) and award events, they have all been online. Even having fun – we’ve had virtual yoga classes and a virtual marathon!
