Lessons from a TechSparks panel: Retaining employees and building a culture

Partnerships form the core of any business, whether it is between the founders or founders and employees. Getting the right set of people is only half the problem solved, the other half is retaining them. Sequoia MD Shailendra Singh explored the issue with Alok Goel, CEO, FreeCharge and Shashank ND, Co founder and CEO of Practo, at a panel discussion during the TechSparks Grand Finale.

Some of the key takeaways from the discussion were -

Be transparent across the organization - One of the biggest keys to retaining talent is to build the right culture, Alok said. One has to build excitement in the team for what they are doing. Commitment to the cause and hundred percent involvement has to be there in every member of the team. There should be no expectation mismatch before and after hiring. Company culture is not replicable. Transperancy, Independence & focus on people are the pillars of culture at FreeCharge.

Focus on Problems, give complete ownership of Solutions - Alok also emphasized on focusing on the problem instead of focusing on titles and designations. When people come up with solutions, we must give them ownership of the solutions. Talking about their culture, Alok said in the last one year they did not have even a single employee leaving them voluntarily. "We were able to retain a key employee even though a big company offered him twice the package!" All this owing to the culture they have built at FreeCharge.

Open dialogue inspires growth - The culture at Practo, according to Shashank, is open discussions and transparency in processes related to job descriptions and appraisals. Owning to their practices, Shashank mentions a success rate of around 80%-90% in hiring. The hackathon culture they built at the company is addictive and is crucial to attract engineers. He also spoke about building such a strong connect that people will talk about you and share their experiences with you.

Hereis the list of top 30 technology companies that showcased at TechSparks. For complete Techsparks coverage, click on#tsparks