Attracting and Retaining the Right Talent in Today’s Market: Q&A with Kislay Chandra, Chief Product Officer at Sprout Solutions

No HR leader wants to see their top talent leave their company for another one. Today’s employees want more than just a job or a salary. They want career growth, they want to be part of upskilling programs, learning and development programs, mental health and fitness programs and more. In short, they want to spread their wings beyond the job description. This is why it’s crucial to clearly define your organizational culture, your values, and what benefits you’re willing to offer way before you onboard your new top talent. But how can you do that? What HR tools and technology do you leverage in your company?

Kislay Chandra, the Chief Product Officer at Sprout Solutions, shares his expertise and experience of how to attract and retain the right talent in today’s competitive market.

How does the right talent add value to your company?

At the end of the day, the success of any company depends on the people that put in the work. Everything from expertise, experience, suggestions, initiatives, and even failures, are all of the things that make a company what it is. Think of an organization like a well-oiled machine, and the employees are your gears - it won’t function properly without the correct gears to help make it work.

How important is culture when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent? What should other business leaders take into account when retaining and nurturing top talent?

Culture is important when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent because that’s how they get a sense of belonging in an organization. If they feel like they’re in an environment where they can flourish and thrive, then the organization will be more enticing to not only apply to but to stay in.

Business leaders should take into account not just the credentials of the top talent that they want, but how they’ll be nurturing and investing in these talents. It’s not enough to just get them to be a part of the organization, their journey in the organization must continue beyond being hired. Leaders should be able to upskill, appraise, and develop their employees as it’s beneficial for both employees and the organization.

What would be some fresh and innovative ways that businesses can adopt in the new age of recruitment?

In our 2022 State of HR Report, we found that digital recruiting platforms—LinkedIn and even Facebook—have made recruiting top talent a lot easier as opposed to using third-party agencies, job boards, and job fairs. 81% of the respondents in the report said that they prefer to use LinkedIn for talent sourcing. With talent being more prevalent online, this enables them to discover more job opportunities and in turn, they become discoverable by employers as well.

Another innovative way to recruit in the digital age is by automating it. In the same State of HR report, large enterprise companies have taken the lead in terms of automating recruitment, that’s why it comes as no surprise that they’re able to handle and manage the recruitment process in the same way as SMEs.

Since the pandemic, organizations have led a hybrid approach with the way they’ve worked, that’s why automating HR processes, such as recruitment, was truly the way to go in order to attract top talent. Leveraging HR technology and digital tools ensures that competitive advantage to get the top talent you would need in your organization.

How do wellness initiatives impact the employee life cycle?

According to our report on the State of Mental Health in the Philippines in 2020, 30% of respondents felt they were in companies with no mental health resources, 28% were unable to control the important things in their life, and 18% of respondents felt they could not overcome the difficulties that were piling up. Although these seem like small numbers, it’s important to note that when it comes to mental health, these outliers are actually quite significant. This tells us those wellness initiatives not only impact the employee life cycle, but are something that employees are looking for.

What are some essential benefits that attract and retain talent?

Some essential benefits that attract and retain talent are company-provided allowance, mental health wellness programs, and health and fitness programs. In the 2022 State of HR Report, 79% of HR professionals have implemented physical and mental health programs in line with the Mental Health Act.

Learning and development programs are also a benefit that can attract and retain top talent. Having such programs enables employees to continuously hone their skills and to learn something new in preparation for their bigger career goals.

How important is upskilling your employees? As the leader of the organization, do you think it impacts the overall performance of the company?

In the past few years, and especially since 2020, competition for talent is at an all-time high. The need for companies to attract and retain talent, provide consistent feedback, and offer career development is key to improving the employee experience. In recent surveys, the 3 main reasons for employees to leave were: a lack of clarity on their role expectations, their perception of stagnant career growth, and not feeling that they belong in the company. To add to that 89% percent of hires seem to not have remained with companies due to a lack of soft skills. This has led to an increase in focus on these soft skills, both in terms of assessing, recruiting, and training.

All these issues that could make or break a company’s workforce can be alleviated by providing them with clear data about their roles, investment in their careers, and continuous feedback. Placing great emphasis on learning programs is something that HR leaders have realized. The next step now is to revamp and adapt to the evolving needs and priorities of the hybrid workforce.

What is the story behind Sprout Solutions?

Sprout started very organically. Initially, it was a tool that was created to solve the payroll and timekeeping problems of a growing company, KMC Solutions. Sprout’s CEO and one of KMC’s founders, saw that other companies were having similar problems, so he decided to productize their internal solution and bring it to the Filipino market.

Since then, Sprout has focused on elevating the HR landscape with solutions that can cover anything from recruitment, to HR analytics, employee engagement, benefits, performance management, growth, and development, etc.

How do you think your company’s technology has changed lives?

We are guided by our north star: To impact the lives of every Filipino by improving business in the Philippines. By leveraging technology in HR, we have been able to provide businesses with the digital tools they need to optimize their business operations. Our ecosystem of products paved the way for easy, seamless, and smooth processing of HR functions such as payroll, timekeeping and attendance, recruitment, and more.

Beyond the technology, Sprout is more than just a bunch of products. Everything we do was designed with the end-users in mind. That means that we didn’t simply build a tool that automates payroll, but a way to allow payroll processors to be with their families during the holidays, to get the emergency cash they need when their family members are in hospital, or when they need to buy milk for their child. Every day, a group of dedicated rockstars go to work to help improve people’s lives.

 We are not here to just build products. Sprout is a group of talented individuals whose mission is to take care of people. That’s why great employers use Sprout.