Welcome to the transcript of Advantum Health’s India Workplace Culture Roundtable Discussion. At Advantum Health, we believe that being a cross-cultural, modern workforce is key to our success! Today, we’re excited to share a roundtable discussion with some of the brightest minds from our India headquarters, talking about the importance of collaboration, understanding, and celebrating our differences.
October 28, 2024, 1:57PM
Trish Thomas 3:43
Hi everyone.
How are you doing?
Anuradha Dosapati 3:45
Getting great. Trish, how are you?
Anupam Tripathi 3:45
Hey, trace. Good morning. You’re good.
Mamatha Rao 3:47
I wish you good morning doing good.
Speaker 1 3:47
Hi trace.
Good morning.
Trish Thomas 3:50
To see all of you.
Speaker 1 3:50
How are you today?
Trish Thomas 3:52
OK, let me make sure we’re oh, good.
Anupam Tripathi 3:53
Great. Great.
Anuradha Dosapati 3:53
Thank you.
Trish Thomas 3:56
What time is it over there right now?
Anuradha Dosapati 3:59
7:30 PM.
Anupam Tripathi 4:00
It is 7:30.
Mamatha Rao 4:00
7:30 PM yeah.
Trish Thomas 4:03
Not too bad.
I’m not keeping you up too late.
Anupam Tripathi 4:07
Get on time.
Trish Thomas 4:10
Perfect. Does anybody have any questions?
I mean, I sent the discussion guide along.
Any ideas of other things you wanted to talk about, or did it look pretty good?
Anupam Tripathi 4:21
Maybe you can walk through it though we understand.
Mamatha Rao 4:22
No, I think.
Anupam Tripathi 4:24
But just to avoid any gap, maybe you can walk through that as well.
Trish Thomas 4:29
Sure. Yeah. I’ll be glad to do that.
Anupam Tripathi 4:30
What is it? Yeah. Yeah, perfect.
Trish Thomas 4:32
I’ll pull it up and share screen and we can just take a take a minute and get oriented.
Anupam Tripathi 4:37
Because what I feel is this is this is first time for everyone I believe.
Trish Thomas 4:41
Yeah, I I don’t.
Anuradha Dosapati 4:42
Exactly.
Trish Thomas 4:42
Any of you have been on one?
Yeah, a round table yet.
Mamatha Rao 4:44
Yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 4:46
Correct.
Trish Thomas 4:48
All right.
Way too many tabs open on my computer right now.
Yeah. So the way we usually do these, they’ll end up being about, you know, maybe 25 or 30 minutes when they’re edited down.
And we kind of take a topic and it’s it’s a free flowing conversation.
So I have the prompts to kind of get everyone started, but the point is just to kind of hear from you from what’s going on, what some of your ideas are sharing, some of your experiences, it’s really quite casual.
And you know, I can always, I can call on some of you, but I also want you to just kind of jump in and share where you feel like you’ve got something important to, you know, to put out.
So here let me get my screen sharing there.
Can you see my screen?
Anuradha Dosapati 5:50
Yes, yes.
Mamatha Rao 5:50
Yes, yes.
Trish Thomas 5:51
Perfect.
So I will kind of introduce everyone and what our topic is, which is kind of this cross cultural modern workforce and and talking about India’s workplace culture, I want each of you to just take a minute or two and introduce yourself what you do at advanta and.
Maybe just a little bit about your day-to-day job.
And then I’m going to kind of go into some of these topics.
And questions first being what some of the differences are, you know, between cultures, styles, how some of your teams work together and maybe how some of that diversity can be rewarding.
So I wanted to talk about that.
I wanted to kind of compare our US workforce to India from your perspective. What do you see as differences in in how our team operates from headquarters in Kentucky?
Compared to in India.
Wanted to talk about holiday, celebration and fun because you guys seem to have like three parties or birthdays or holidays a week over in the India office, which is awesome.
So just have an opportunity to talk about that aspect.
I know that kind of that that hard driving, high pressure career expectation in India is very real.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about.
Saying work life balance in quotations because I don’t know that we ever really achieve balance. But you know how we’re trying to support people from our India office and having a successful career and a happy life and trying to not not get too too wrapped up in work.
To the extent that you you can’t have a nice home life and then the last topic I want to touch on.
On is that youthful workforce in India? You’ve got such a large percentage of the population under the age of 25. I know unemployment’s a problem for for your younger generation.
And so just, you know, what are can we do to improve employment opportunities?
Job satisfaction and upward mobility for young workers in India.
So those are some of the things that were top of mind for me.
But how does that that list resonate for all of you?
Are there things you think we shouldn’t touch on or that I should talk about?
Anupam Tripathi 8:23
Let’s talk about, you know, let’s talk about it.
Mamatha Rao 8:24
I think these are pretty good, yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 8:26
Yeah, because yeah, yeah.
Trish Thomas 8:26
Those are pretty good. OK, good.
Anuradha Dosapati 8:28
Yes.
Trish Thomas 8:29
I’m glad to hear that.
OK, let me.
Get completely ready to go here. I wanna make sure.
Yeah, it looks like our recording’s still running.
And we will edit this.
We usually do a pretty clean straight take, but if you mess something up and you wanna restate it, just give us a good pause.
And say I’d like to repeat that and then go into restating what you said and that way our video editing team can just clip it out real easily and and make you sound as smooth and polished as you want to.
Mamatha Rao 9:11
OK.
Anupam Tripathi 9:11
Noted.
Anuradha Dosapati 9:12
OK.
Trish Thomas 9:15
Great.
Back to the top and we will get going.
OK, perfect.
All right, now give us a good pause.
But is everybody ready to go?
Speaker 1 9:33
Yes.
Anupam Tripathi 9:33
Yeah, we are ready.
Mamatha Rao 9:34
Yes. Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 9:34
Yes, we are ready.
Trish Thomas 9:36
Awesome. Well, you all look great.
Thank you for having your advent and backgrounds up and.
Anupam Tripathi 9:44
I think mine is different.
Trish Thomas 9:44
Being good to go.
Anupam Tripathi 9:45
My my background is different than.
Trish Thomas 9:48
I like that though.
Mamatha’s and Anu’s are different too, so a little bit different than sujay’s.
Sujay has the latest best places to work.
I think you have Kentucky and you guys have. Yeah, two of you have Kentucky 2 have Louisville.
Speaker 1 10:07
Hmm.
Trish Thomas 10:07
But they look good, alright.
Anuradha Dosapati 10:07
It it even resembles our roundtable discussion as well that like we are coming from different places and exactly.
Mamatha Rao 10:13
Different.
Trish Thomas 10:15
I know exactly. No it looks.
It looks great. It’s perfect.
Anupam Tripathi 10:16
That’s a sound that we are sitting on different places.
Mamatha Rao 10:19
Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 10:19
Right.
Trish Thomas 10:21
No, I love it.
You guys all look, you look perfect. It’s funny.
Anuradha Dosapati 10:25
That’s awesome.
Trish Thomas 10:25
I got we did a round table, I guess about a month ago. And Karen, one of the people on it, she wasn’t on video. We got on the call and she was like it happened to be on generations and she was the baby boomer and she was like.
Oh yeah, I don’t even have a video camera on my computer.
I was like, well, that’s that’s very baby boomer of you so.
It’s fit with the topic.
OK.
Here we go.
Welcome everyone to Adventum Health India workplace culture round table discussion.
My name is Trish Thomas and I lead marketing and communications at Advantum.
I’ll be moderating our conversation today.
A cross cultural modern workforce like we have at advantum health is crucial to strong performance as a company, but it also requires collaboration, understanding and celebrating our differences.
Today we’ve assembled a panel representing some of the best and brightest from our workforce in India.
And they’re here to share an open conversation about how our headquarters in India is fostering a cohesive and high performing team. Before we dive into our conversation today, I’d like to let our panelists introduce themselves.
So can each of you briefly tell us your name, your role at advantum, and maybe share a little bit about why this topic is important to you?
Sujay do you want to go first? Oh, go ahead.
Anupam Tripathi 11:44
So this is a good idea.
Let’s just say yeah.
Trish Thomas 11:52
Oh, you’re muted, CJ.
Speaker 1 11:54
Sorry, yeah.
So hi all.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for this opportunity.
So my name is Sujay Kumar and I have around 19 years of experience in RCM industry and I worked in like majority of the larger companies in India and in in Advantum I work as an AVP in in operations and my day-to-day activities is to take.
Care of the cluster clients and some bigger clients in cluster as well.
So that’s my quick introduction.
Thank you.
Trish Thomas 12:21
Excellent.
Anupam Tripathi 12:21
That’s great.
Trish Thomas 12:24
You’re up.
Anupam Tripathi 12:27
Ryan, thank you for this opportunity.
So my name is Anupam, full name Anupam Tripathi.
So almost like 16 year of work experience in revenue cycle management, healthcare. So in these 16 years of experience I have served with the multiple roles with the multiple responsibility before.
You know, being ABP in enterprise accounts, I laid the product in automation departments within the same company.
So almost eight years now.
So so these under the NAV.
Ier responsibility is to take care of the enterprise clients and ensure the revenue cash flow.
Clients are happy.
We are employee are happy, so cross happiness does the focus.
Trish Thomas 13:16
Excellent. Love it.
Anupam Tripathi 13:17
Thank you.
Trish Thomas 13:21
Who wants to go next?
Anuradha Dosapati 13:24
I’ll go next.
Yeah.
Hi all.
Good morning.
I am anuradha.
Here my full name is Anuradha Dosapati.
I’m working here as vice president. Hri. Majorly look after HR friend of India at Advantum Health II office.
I have close to 17 years experience as an HR and whereas I I have experience right from talent acquisition to exit, I would say like.
Right from hire to exit of an employee.
So this is in crisp about this.
This is in Chris about me.
And I’m really very happy to be a part of this discussion and I would know like different kinds of opinions I would get to hear from all of you.
This is awesome.
Trish Thomas 14:12
Great, I agree.
You’re in the perfect role for this this discussion.
Mamatha Rao 14:18
OK.
So good morning everyone.
My name is Mamta Rao and overall I carry almost 20 years experience in the US healthcare domain started right from, you know, medical transcription and CPC certified coder. And you know in all the domains, training has always been my passion and that has been, you know I ENT.
The field of training, it’s been more than 15 years.
I’ve trained multiple candidates in different roles.
And I’m working with advantum for the past three years.
And you know, training not only the new hires, training the employees.
So all this all this time, you know, I was the only person, but now I have a good team.
Who’s going to be training people on multiple domains?
So that’s a little bit about me.
Trish Thomas 15:06
Good, good to have a great team and I love we’ve got such a good group of panelists on this call.
You guys are from different parts of the company, you know, working in in kind of different areas.
Some of you have been with advantum for many, many years.
Some are pretty new, so it’s a great representative group of our India workforce.
So I wanted to start just talking about India as such an incredibly large and diverse country, right?
There’s so many cultures, experiences, languages, communities.
At Advantum, we have team members from all across the country with very different backgrounds and work styles. I’d love to hear from each of you an example of how a fundamental workplace difference on your team has maybe made teamwork challenging or has made it especially rewarding and impact.
I don’t know who maybe has a good case study to start off with, but talk about the diversity of of your India teams.
Mamatha Rao 16:07
OK.
So maybe I can talk about, you know, we get candidates, new hires from different states.
We have candidates from different cultural backgrounds and participation, you know, is a major challenge because you know there are few of them who are very assertive.
Who are you know who can talk? Very. You know very easily.
But there are a few who are very shy and they need some time to mingle with the others.
So initially there are going to be some you know for for all of them to get used.
Is a challenge, but in the long run, that is, that is a really good advantage because they get to meet each other. They get to know their differences.
They have a good support from the team and I think participation in a team is a is a biggest, you know, cultural difference that we have.
Anupam Tripathi 16:55
Right.
Trish Thomas 16:55
Great. So true.
Anuradha Dosapati 16:56
That’s right.
Anupam Tripathi 16:58
Right. I think I will add what Mamta said. So as is like cultural and style differences over all right, so of course the people who come from the different state of the India, the major challenge may be the communication. Mamata the Mishra I think right so biggest Ind.
You know, culture is one of the world’s oldest and most diverse, rooted in thousand of years in history, right?
Mamatha Rao 17:25
True.
Anupam Tripathi 17:25
So cabin occasion, point of view, almost like the I think more than thousand of languages are spoken in India.
I believe so.
So that’s the one. Of course the challenge is because though we adapted English as our business language along with Hindi being as a national, but again like traditional language is always gives the difference, right.
So coming to the Hyderabad, that was if I talk about so in Hyderabad, the original language is Telugu, right? People speak in English.
But when it comes to mingling together, talking together.
This they speak in their prisoner language, and then again if somebody is coming from north side of India like me. I don’t understand Telugu.
Mamatha Rao 18:03
Yes.
Trish Thomas 18:12
Yeah.
Mamatha Rao 18:13
Ha ha ha.
Anupam Tripathi 18:13
So for me, so for me the English is the my business language that I can use my day-to-day life here, right?
So. So that’s the one.
Mamatha Rao 18:21
True, true.
Anupam Tripathi 18:22
And of course, when this comes to the diversity, one of the thing that I felt is, you know, along with this tile also because in in the North India, you know people are different in traditional in a clothing, dressing a style.
When it comes to South India, the dressing is completely different than north.
Mamatha Rao 18:40
Percent yes.
Percent yes, yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 18:42
Right. But again, coming to the.
Overall impact point of view, I have also identified or you can say observe. You know people are more in coming with the problem solving you know concept with they are more in the creative problem solving method.
Basically, you know, they talk about, OK, they come with a problem. They talk about it and they say, OK, this is the area struck, how to handle it.
And then they gave these suggestions too, like OK.
This is how we can do it.
This is how we can do it.
So based on those suggestions, we can filter out which can work best for them.
And then again, inviting talk about I have people from the different state of India who are comfortable with the original language and many are not comfortable means they’re not aware of that language.
Mamatha Rao 19:21
Correct.
Anupam Tripathi 19:33
So the major part is the communication that day-to-day basis. I speak and they try to add in their value so that all the business point of view they can feel comfortable.
And deliver what we expect.
Trish Thomas 19:47
Absolutely. That’s a really good point.
Anupam Tripathi 19:47
So that’s that’s yeah.
Mamatha Rao 19:49
Cool, yeah.
Trish Thomas 19:49
Yeah, that’s a really good point, too, about the diversity of culture and language can actually lead to diversity of thought and help with problem solving and things like that. Just looking at things from a different perspective.
Anuradha Dosapati 19:50
Exactly.
Mamatha Rao 19:55
Yes.
Trish Thomas 20:01
Oh, Sujay, did you want to share something?
Speaker 1 20:03
Yes, Trish.
So when it comes to diversity and different part of India, I’m like they have different culture and the way of the approach towards the work will be different. And for example, if I’m giving a feedback to someone like there are there are four or five people in my.
Office and each person is from different places in India, so some people might take it negatively because they don’t like taking feedback. So and and this in the same meeting, the other person will say like, yes I I will take this positively.
This is.
This is the feedback which I needed.
So this is the challenge which we face on day-to-day basis, especially myself and Anupam when we are dealing in operations, when we get lot of feedback from our customers and from our from our VPS in us.
So what we do like we have to manage that, make sure like no one is unhappy, OK?
That’s that’s. That’s the approach that we take always.
Anupam Tripathi 21:02
Yeah.
Speaker 1 21:02
And and that comes with experience and it’s it’s not so easy to convince everyone and make sure to reach the goal.
Trish Thomas 21:02
Well, and that’s a yeah.
Mamatha Rao 21:06
It’s it’s not.
Trish Thomas 21:07
Definitely.
Speaker 1 21:09
Yeah, that’s the point which I wanted to add to anupam’s point.
Mamatha Rao 21:09
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 21:10
Well, that’s good point.
And that’s a really good point too that you kind of have to bring all of these, the different cultures and experiences and things like that work, styles that people bring into the workplace and kind of create a whole new adventum workplace norm that people understand how to, yeah.
Communicate with each other, give and receive feedback in a healthy way and and work together collaboratively.
And that’s kind of a process that you, you get people accustomed to and.
It takes some time, takes some time and some hard work.
Mamatha Rao 21:47
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 21:48
I knew from the HR perspective. Was there anything you wanted to add?
Anuradha Dosapati 21:51
Sure, this definitely.
Adding to all of their points, even I would like to focus on one more thing is like in a week build trust and collaboration by sharing a personal stories various traditions where we are coming from.
So that’s how we can really bond each other like that’s how we can create that bond when we share, when we have this festival environment like team building activities, that’s how people come together and they forget about like from where they are coming and which place which langu.
This start sharing their personal stories and this really helps us to bond us together and we understand. OK, which like if a employee like believes in assertive style or passive style and see our leaders are there like wherein they get all of them in a like same way.
That I mean to say same path and they make them understand, OK, this is the feedback and feedback should be seen as a feedback, nothing else.
We should not.
Attach any stories to it.
It is just a feedback, that’s all.
Trish Thomas 22:56
Yeah, absolutely.
And that really is something that I think even in the US you struggle with sometimes. How can you deliver feedback that helps someone perform better, but do it in a way that they can receive it in a positive way and actually utilize it to become better rather than.
Feeling, you know, dispirited or hurt or anything like that. So.
Yeah, I I really appreciate that.
That’s something that that you’re focused on on the team in India, let’s kind of shift topics. I wanted to talk.
Not just about the diversity of cultures and languages in India, but at advantum we have large teams both in the US and in India.
So our American team is largely based in Kentucky, but we have remote employees all around the country.
In India, our headquarters is in Hyderabad and most team members work in the office every day. So we have different time zones.
That’s always a big one.
But what else have you noticed about the differences?
Maybe in our US and India work forces, I’d love to just talk about what you’ve observed as different or similar.
When you’re working with team members across India and the.
Us.
Anuradha Dosapati 24:07
I would like to throw some light over here, like one of them advantage which we have is work environment, lively work environment. When we work in person because all employees are sitting over here and working here when they’re right in front of us. We can brainstorm together Sol.
The problems together and that becomes quite spontaneous, met, on the other hand, I must appreciate our U.S. team like who are working though they are working remotely, but still.
The like we are using make we are making. We are making best use of the technology technology.
And even we do not see that difference over there. So in fact like we have more advantage then at our US print by working from office all in single place.
Anupam Tripathi 24:56
Hey, what you said like overall if you talk about so one of the major things that I have noticed is which is there in our dnai believe that is adaptability focused on learning and flexibility these three things that I have seen you know we we are adapting all.
Mamatha Rao 24:57
Yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 25:14
Kind of situations frequently able to manage things. We are flexible to achieve the goals that comes either from the business point of view.
Or, you know any specific customer point of view, we don’t do.
It for for the, you know specific request coming from the heart level. We start initiating that.
We start working on that, though we understand there is a difference in the time zone because us working in EST and we work in IST.
But again, as I said, Indiana are flexible and adaptable.
So we adapted right?
Trish Thomas 25:51
OK.
Anupam Tripathi 25:51
We are working in in our IST Java and delivering the work for EST so.
Of course.
And then, as Sanorada said, right, U.S. team working team working remotely working remotely.
Still, the collaborations that we have right, knowledge sharing that we have and the both team working together to achieve the objective of the business, I think that’s what you know keeping us together and making the better workforce.
Mamatha Rao 26:22
Next track so.
Anupam Tripathi 26:22
And of course we have similarity as well.
Anuradha Dosapati 26:23
It is because of the shared vision.
We have exactly shared goals. At the end, we should be committed to delivering the best possible experience to our clients. The quality within work and within the tag turn around time.
Mamatha Rao 26:26
Yes. Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 26:37
That’s what drives or whether it is India team or U.S. team.
As long as we have.
Trish Thomas 26:43
I couldn’t agree more.
I see the same thing that alignment of purpose and that commitment to the client is a constant.
Anuradha Dosapati 26:47
Correct.
Anupam Tripathi 26:47
Yeah.
Mamatha Rao 26:48
Yeah.
So.
Anuradha Dosapati 26:52
That’s right.
Mamatha Rao 26:53
Yeah. And yeah, I would also like to add a point.
You know when you compare the Indian workforce or the US workforce, I think hierarchy is a major, you know difference when you talk about the US workforce, the hierarchy, it’s more open.
You know, the conversation is more open and everyone’s opinions are taken.
But I mean not at advantum when you compare to some other organizations here hierarchy just goes from the top level to the down level.
You know, people here have to just follow whatever the leader says.
But the best sync at Advantum is since both you know the US teams and Indian teams are working together.
There is.
You know, there is a flow of, you know, the opinions and each month’s opinions is taken into consideration before any decision is being made.
So the entire team is also, you know they are.
They are actually very.
They become very motivated, like OK, even our voices are heard. And, you know, even we are taken into account before something, a major decision is taken or a major changes made.
So I think that is the best thing that you know we see at advantum.
Trish Thomas 27:58
That’s really good to hear, ’cause. I know. That’s something that’s really important to leadership and and it is kind of a distinct cultural difference, I think, in just normally how how workplaces flow between the US and India.
Anuradha Dosapati 27:58
That’s right.
Trish Thomas 28:11
But I’m glad to hear that Advantum is doing a good job of soliciting that input from from the team in India before decisions are made and implemented. That’s really important.
Mamatha Rao 28:21
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 28:22
Anything else on that topic before we we shift?
All right.
Anupam Tripathi 28:28
Any colors?
Trish Thomas 28:28
Well since I.
Since I work in marketing, I see a lot of the photos, the videos, the social media posts from our India team, and it looks like you guys have a lot of fun.
Mamatha Rao 28:38
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 28:39
There’s a lot of holidays in India.
I know that our team in the office has lots of birthday celebrations and parties. I’d love you to just share what you like most about the culture and Advantums India office.
Maybe a few of your favorite holidays, customs or activities that you get to celebrate.
Speaker 1 29:00
I I would like to add to trace so it’s not lot of holidays. It’s only 10 holidays.
What are you?
Yeah.
Mamatha Rao 29:09
The 10 chosen ones right?
Anuradha Dosapati 29:10
It is patched that like we celebrate each and every festival right from New Year to Christmas. We celebrate all the festivals.
Speaker 1 29:10
Yeah, and and yeah.
Trish Thomas 29:14
I think you get to stretch them out for a few days.
Speaker 1 29:16
Yeah. So, So what we do after.
Trish Thomas 29:19
Yeah.
Speaker 1 29:20
Yeah. Yeah. What we do with the collaboration of HR team is like we celebrate those festivals in office, OK, majority of the things like that brings in team bonding and every every religion, people will mingle.
It’s not about any religion in the organization, OK?
We value every religion in the team.
Meaning in the company.
So whatever space they need, that will be given OK and apart from that, this fun activities are to come out of your stress, OK, all five days continuously they’ll be working.
They will be needing some fun activity which HR team is doing a wonderful job there. OK so.
Anuradha Dosapati 30:01
Was in collaboration with Off stream again.
Speaker 1 30:03
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.
It’s it’s all teamwork. Individually, we can’t do anything.
We all have to collaborate and and that’s what we are doing and that’s working out very well and I get calls from other companies VPS and the higher level people like you like they say like your company’s happening company now.
Mamatha Rao 30:25
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 30:25
That’s great.
Speaker 1 30:26
So yeah, yeah. I just wanted to add this point, Chris. Thank you.
Trish Thomas 30:26
That’s great.
Absolutely.
Anuradha Dosapati 30:31
That that is real.
Mamatha Rao 30:31
Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 30:33
That is correct, adding to point.
Because we have team members from various parts of India, so we just don’t want to disappoint anyone.
So we try to inculcate or, you know, celebrate almost all the Indian festivals we have, you know tons of festivals.
So right from New Year to Christmas 25th December, like we celebrate almost all the festivals whether it is Diwali, Christmas, Ramzan.
You know any any festival for that matter?
But that’s how people come together.
They celebrate with the dance music or but like when? Whenever they kick kick off this Friday with the fun, they’ll have some memories to carry forward to their home again.
They’ll recharge with their family and again come back.
So after all, we all are there. Extended family. In fact, I would say more than.
Mamatha Rao 31:23
Date.
Anuradha Dosapati 31:26
My family, I’m spending majority of time over here itself.
Mamatha Rao 31:30
Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 31:30
Maybe I just go home.
Have some and you know. Take rest and come back again to office.
So obviously all all the employees over here are a family again.
Trish Thomas 31:42
Yeah. No, I I love to see it.
I really sense that even from a distance in the usii feel it from the videos the.
Anuradha Dosapati 31:49
That’s awesome.
Trish Thomas 31:50
Yeah, just the collegiality, the photos.
I can tell that it’s a really, really important piece of, like you said, bonding and also helping people work really effectively together ’cause I think we we work best with people we know personally.
We have a bond with and we understand.
So yeah, it’s really, really important.
Mamatha Rao 32:10
Yes, Trish, I think I think, yeah.
Trish Thomas 32:10
You. Oh, go ahead, my mother.
Anuradha Dosapati 32:11
It should be like whenever we I just want to add one more point on this show.
So it’s like when we celebrate when we have these kind of things, whether it is fun Fridays or any celebrations, whenever we come across any employee over here right now like we see a smile on their face. It’s a kind of greeting each other because they are meeting.
Every week they are meeting.
Every week they are coming for coming together. Having some fun though it is for stipulated P amount of time.
It will have huge impact.
That’s what we wanted to create.
Mamatha Rao 32:48
So yes, so I think.
Anupam Tripathi 32:48
Yeah, of course, of course.
All this one activities festival mode that we have, I think this is reducing the stress and giving the positive wipes on the floor. Of course that is appreciated.
Anuradha Dosapati 33:03
That’s right.
Mamatha Rao 33:04
Yeah. So yes, adding to what Anuradha said.
You know, since we are dealing with a batch of interns, you know just graduates. This is something which they find very interesting.
You know, because of the fun activity.
They we see that there is no attrition, OK.
They come very regular to the, to the office and there’s a bond that has been developed.
So I think we are all following the Indian culture that unity and diversity you know, even though we are from different backgrounds, you know we are all just working together as one team so.
Anupam Tripathi 33:32
Correct.
Mamatha Rao 33:38
That’s that’s really good to see.
Trish Thomas 33:38
Absolutely.
Anuradha Dosapati 33:41
That’s right.
Trish Thomas 33:41
It is I.
I couldn’t agree more.
That leads really nicely into the next topic I wanna touch on our our team in India is very driven and hard working. Some of you touched on that in your comments and the social expectations around work in India are pretty high pressure. I’m sure it can be diffic.
To make time for family and excel in your career simultaneously, we also have a lot of women in our India office who have children to care for, responsibilities at home to manage. So.
You know, work life balance might be the wrong term because I don’t know if any of us ever really achieve that.
But I’d like to talk about ways we can support our team and having a successful career and a happy life.
What are some of the things you see at Bantam doing to help manage this work life balance in India?
And maybe how are each of you personally navigating some of the challenges in your career and your home life?
I’d love to just hear your ideas and thoughts.
Anupam Tripathi 34:39
I think at this work life balance, more question comes to the operations.
Because this is where we deal day-to-day basis, right?
Because we have to deliver the work.
So that’s where possibly the question says. So of course must come to at one time we have flexibility that we have given to the team members when it comes to the need of their family because as we said, like India has a lot of festivals, lot of celebr.
They have so sometimes.
In their family, also marriages there, their personal commitment with the family is there so they so we are flexible.
We provide them leaves and in case.
We feel there is a need of business as well in between so exceptionally we provide work from home as well based on the need of business and overall you know our main focus is you have to be stressful, you have to be able to manage both work versus.
Office because in the other day both are your responsibility for both.
You are accountable for so, so personal and professional. Both you have to be balanced and you have to fulfill at the same time.
Anuradha Dosapati 35:50
That’s right.
Trish Thomas 35:50
Exactly.
Anupam Tripathi 35:50
So so that’s that.
Speaker 1 35:51
Yes.
Anuradha Dosapati 35:52
And adding to Anupam’s point, it’s not that like you know and we are just.
I just want to say that like we are blessed to have leaders.
Who has he queue? When I say he queue?
Emotional quotient.
Emotional intelligence like this is also one of our value like wherein we have to think empathetically and again draw a thin line.
Wet like where should we give and where should we not give the leaves or flexibility in environment? It can be leaves or.
Even when they have this personal touch with employees, that is the personal rappo employees would come forward and share like this is the problem they have and they collaborate with leaders and take that forward.
So like I think this is working fine.
I wouldn’t say that we have achieved work life balance, but at least we are on the way to achieve that.
At least we are going forward.
Anupam Tripathi 36:46
We’re able to manage, we’re able to manage.
Anuradha Dosapati 36:46
We are moving forward exactly.
Mamatha Rao 36:48
We are, yeah. Yes, we are. Yeah.
Speaker 1 36:48
Yes, yeah, adding adding to Anu.
Trish Thomas 36:49
Yeah, it’s the same in the US.
You know, we we work hard too.
Speaker 1 36:52
Yeah. Add. Yeah. Adding to Anu, Trish.
See I I worked in other companies as well, but when it comes to adventure, when you log out and when you go home, you go home satisfied.
OK, that is for me.
Mamatha Rao 37:06
Exactly.
Speaker 1 37:07
That is, first and foremost that is very important. When I go home, I need to go home. Satisfied, meaning like we have achieved something, we have done something OK, because our leaders don’t talk anything apart from work.
OK. And and also how we are managing our team members is like we don’t ask them to work on OTS, we don’t ask them to work on weekends, we don’t trouble them, we don’t call them on the weekends.
Weekends is completely theirs and we just expect like 9 hours of production in that like they can take one hour of break and eight hours is the truly production hours that we expect from an individual.
So remaining hours is this like they can manage, improve on something, learn something.
Anuradha Dosapati 37:46
That’s right.
Speaker 1 37:53
Of time, which you won’t get in many of the companies.
Trish Thomas 37:56
Yeah, absolutely.
I I think that is important and it’s it’s something that I think is hard for us sometimes in the US that work kind of spreads into every day of the week and into the evenings. And that ability, even if when you’re at work, there’s a high productivity bar.
And there’s some stress involved, that ability to kind of turn off and go home and go into a different mode is really important.
So that’s a really good point, Sujay.
Speaker 1 38:22
And and that’s the result of we have employees working here five years, six years, seven years for instance.
Anupam is here for eight years.
I am here for three years. So. So it’s all like.
I’m like, I think like I have landed to a good place where leaders are very knowledgeable and they understand the ground level reality.
Anuradha Dosapati 38:44
That’s correct.
Anupam Tripathi 38:45
Of course.
Speaker 1 38:45
That is very important. Yeah, yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 38:45
Adding those, even adding to such I I’ve observed that like our retention rate is quite high compared to even even large organizations, larger organizations, while other organizations and industry is struggling to meet, you know, even to get the attrition lesser than 5%. But here we are quite.
Mamatha Rao 38:45
That’s true.
Anuradha Dosapati 39:07
Lesser than, you know, 4%.
So lesser than 4% in fact sometimes good number of times. So in that way we can.
Aye, that like yes, we are providing a satisfiable environment over here where it is helping our employees to stay like beyond years with us.
Mamatha Rao 39:27
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 39:28
Oh, absolutely.
Anupam Tripathi 39:29
It’s not about just like me working eight years or you three years.
We have.
We have a good number of people on the floor who have computer more than five year working with us.
We have a number of people more than eight years.
Speaker 1 39:39
Yes.
Mamatha Rao 39:40
Yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 39:42
You may see people on nine year as well.
I’m one year behind it.
Anuradha Dosapati 39:45
Correct.
Anupam Tripathi 39:46
Yeah, yeah. But my goal is to achieve more. Yeah.
Mamatha Rao 39:47
Yeah. And especially, yeah, especially talking about, you know, women working women with the additional responsibility of managing both home and work. I think Advantum is the only company that offers flexibility.
And you know, there’s no work pressure, which I mean, there’s no pressure that you carry home and that is that is where we are able to manage both home and office.
Anuradha Dosapati 40:12
That’s right.
Trish Thomas 40:12
It’s good.
That’s good.
Mamatha Rao 40:13
Yes.
Trish Thomas 40:15
No, I was.
I mean, I was always a working mom, so I I understand that from from my own my own life experience.
On the topic of kids.
India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25.
It’s a very, very young workforce, but I know that unemployment is high right now, even for very talented and well educated young people in India as much as 12 times higher than unemployment levels for older adults.
So I guess I’d love to hear from each of you.
What? What do you appreciate about having a youthful workforce in India?
And maybe what can we do to improve employment opportunities and job satisfaction and upward mobility for these younger workers that that are coming?
In the workforce in India, any thoughts?
Anupam Tripathi 41:05
I think when it comes to youthful so of course, like India brings a unique blend of energy, adaptability and phrase perspectives, right?
Anuradha Dosapati 41:11
OK.
Anupam Tripathi 41:14
So young professional are often eager to embrace new technology, right?
Mamatha Rao 41:18
Yes.
Anupam Tripathi 41:18
And then when it comes to the Employment Opportunity, I think the new people that are coming that they are more focused on learning, so upscaling and training program, that’s what we can look at it.
And then clear, you know objective that we can give in terms of their career.
Where they wanted to go for what they wanted to achieve for right in the same objective. If they are learning, of course they will achieve it and that’s where the India has most youthful and vibrant method in the business nowadays and everywhere technology are able to see in.
Mamatha Rao 41:35
Date.
Anupam Tripathi 41:54
The business world in most of the Indians you will see on the high level that.
Mamatha Rao 41:59
Yeah. Yes.
Anupam Tripathi 42:00
Right. Again, like increasing innovation and ownership.
That’s the again additional things for the people who are coming here.
Like, it’s not like every time you’ll be looking experienced people from the market, you always have to give the opportunity to the new new people coming to the this word.
So our training departments has already initiated that and that’s the fulfilling the Youngers need, right? Where people are coming, we’re joining freshers, providing them training on the multiple domain. For example, we are going to utilize them in our account receivable departments. We’re going to utilize them in our.
Prior author.
Department as well.
And then we have a people coming from the pest department as well.
So these three area that people we are hiring from the market, they are the new people, we are upskilling them, providing them the training.
So so we are working in the right directions to make people more the business point of view.
So I think that’s what I feel and of course, engagement beyond the work, that’s what bring the more knowledge.
Anuradha Dosapati 43:04
That’s right.
Mamatha Rao 43:05
Exactly, yeah.
Trish Thomas 43:05
And I do know we’ve had really good success with some of the training programs that we’ve launched in the last year or so.
Yeah. What else would somebody like to share?
Speaker 1 43:17
I would like to but.
Mamatha Rao 43:17
Related to sorry.
OK, since it’s related to training, you know I would love to add that of course.
Anuradha Dosapati 43:24
That would allow it exactly.
Mamatha Rao 43:25
Yeah, see, the younger generation that we are getting in, they are full of enthusiasm.
They just want to learn.
They want to make a career, but they are confused.
They don’t know.
They have too many options.
They just want someone to show them a proper way. So as you know, as Anupam said, a career goal or a road map, if you can provide them a road map like you know this is you know this is a road map and this is your destination.
They will blindly go ahead and they will follow it.
So this and they’re they’re actually giving good competition to the experienced also.
Trish Thomas 44:00
Yeah.
Anupam Tripathi 44:00
Yeah, of course.
Anuradha Dosapati 44:00
That’s right.
Mamatha Rao 44:01
Yeah.
Anuradha Dosapati 44:02
Apart from that, they get fresh perspective in the organization and they always have a tendency to question, OK, why, why? Why this is right and why this is wrong and so even it helps us to brainstorm together and come up with innovative ideas. So yes, and even they.
Mamatha Rao 44:10
Yes.
Anuradha Dosapati 44:20
Are in like we are investing in them and they are our future leaders so.
And we are already exactly. We already have a school and we are on the right track.
Mamatha Rao 44:26
Exactly.
Trish Thomas 44:26
Sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 1 44:33
Is like 1.3 billion people of country. Yeah. And also and also this end generation, they understand that U.S. healthcare is the future. OK. The reason why I say that is this is a recession free industry.
Anupam Tripathi 44:37
So of course.
Speaker 1 44:50
Because.
Hospitals like like there is no day, there is no patients to the hospitals unless patients are going to the hospitals.
Mamatha Rao 44:56
Yeah.
Speaker 1 44:57
We have business right and this our youth is understanding of, OK.
I used to visit colleges in the past experience and I used to tell them like I used to address like thousand 1500 students in the in the.
Job fairs and I and I used to explain them these things and for example today there was a small ad in our social media and we have hundreds of people waiting in our office for the interviews.
So that’s, that’s the thing and we we have lot of options to choose and.
Anuradha Dosapati 45:28
Right.
Speaker 1 45:34
These fresh graduates come comes with good communication skills they already have at least 3040% of soft skills that is needed for this business.
So. So that’s the thing which I wanted to put here.
Anuradha Dosapati 45:48
Correct. That’s right.
Trish Thomas 45:48
Yeah, that’s great to hear that this young workforce has a good foundation and that Advantum is able to put in place this training and up skilling. And I loved what you said, Mamatha about showing them a career road map that it’s like, hey, you’re starting here. But look.
Mamatha Rao 46:01
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 46:03
Where you could be in eight years, like in a palm for instance.
But yeah, showing them that trajectory of where they can go.
Speaker 1 46:10
And also we have shown that in our team members also recently we are promoted around four people who were SMEs with US, OK.
Mamatha Rao 46:11
Yes.
Speaker 1 46:18
We are promoted them to deputies and they are doing a great job and we are not hiring any leaders from outside or like these in into the operations.
They are homegrown leaders.
Trish Thomas 46:28
Yeah, yeah, that that promotion from within is really valuable too to the company. Also, instead of having to recruit from the outside.
Speaker 1 46:29
Yeah.
Trish Thomas 46:36
So yeah, that’s fantastic to hear. And I know that’s really important to young people in India that have big dreams for their career, just like all of us did when we were younger.
Well, that’s kind of it for the topics we had wanted to go over as a group.
Is there anything we haven’t talked about that any of you would like to share? Any closing thoughts?
Anupam Tripathi 46:56
I think we we covered most of the major points basically that we supposed to because we we have festivals.
Trish Thomas 47:02
Great.
Anupam Tripathi 47:05
We we added in our topics, we added work life balance.
We added upscaling of the youngester.
You know, young people that come from the market, so a lot of things we added and of course that’s give the good objective about our organizations the way we are looking.
Business going forward and the company going forward.
Trish Thomas 47:25
Absolutely no.
We we covered a lot in, in a few minutes, so I’ll close our roundtable discussion. I want to thank all of you on the panel for participating, for sharing your experiences and ideas so openly. It was really nice to hear from Advantum’s team in India directly and.
Mamatha Rao 47:29
Uh huh.
Trish Thomas 47:42
I hope this helps educate some of our employees some of our perspective employees on what working for advantum is like.
So thank you all for joining me and I hope you have a great night.
Anupam Tripathi 47:54
Thank you, Chris.
Mamatha Rao 47:55
Thank you, Trish.
Anupam Tripathi 47:55
Have a good day.
Anuradha Dosapati 47:55
Thank. Thank goodness. Yeah, thank you.
