I believe all the sectors will be able to realize that there is a new horizon that this crisis is opening: Prasad Rajappan, ZingHR

The new normal in a world where Covid-19 unfortunately is becoming a part of our life will bring about many changes in the way businesses will be conducted, and more importantly the way we live our life.

The nation-wide lockdown is in its 4.0 phase. Businesses and brands are now are making their way back into the business; planning their communication plans for a new world post the covid-19 lockdown.

In this story of Medianews4u’s new brand series, Back to Business, we spoke to Prasad Rajappan, Founder – ZingHR.

How are you coping up with the impact of Covid-19 on your brand & the Organisation? How effectively have you used the lockdown period?

COVID-19 has caught everybody in a situation that is highly volatile. In this pandemic, leaders across the industry are faced with a myriad of critical decisions like taking care of their workforce without hampering business productivity.

Amidst the COVID-19 and lockdown period, we have launched many employee-centric and innovative HR Software Products which can help Enterprises to enhance the productivity of employees, stay connected and have effective communication. This includes employee surveys, mobile learning platforms, contactless QR code attendance system, AI-powered chatbots, Digital I-card and much more.

The quest for a solution to a particular crisis helps invent new business opportunities and sometimes leads to a revision of existing business models … What sort of innovation has or will the Covid-19 pandemic bring to your brand & industry?

It is a very pertinent question. Today we need to redefine productivity owing to the changing demands of customers and employees. Both financial and emotional needs are changing, cash flows are disappearing and business models are changing. It becomes essential to remap the business models and redefine productivity. This will definitely help us in navigating better through these challenging times. Covid bought forward challenges like Business Continuity, Improve Productivity and Compliance, with questions like Collaboration, Transparency and Up-skilling. It becomes essential to remap the business models and redefine productivity.

We have recently achieved a feat of integrating its AI-powered chatbot with the Microsoft Teams application. Microsoft Teams is a chat service-based application which is highly intuitive, has a great User Interface, and serves as an extremely secure communication channel between employees in an enterprise organisation. We are one of the top HRTech companies in India to integrate this milestone with a communication channel based application. The goal was to provide employees with Anytime-Anyplace-Anywhere access to key information and functionalities pertinent to their organisation.

While the lockdown is easing out in some parts of the country have become Covid-19 free, cities like Mumbai and Delhi are still in a lockdown situation. How are you planning to resume business across cities that are not in the Red?

As we are aware that the covid 19 impacts will continue to spread in the near future. We are not soon planning to resume the business across cities for working from office till December at least. At a later stage, we will plan to resume business in a phased manner considering the situation and governance. We are purely technology-driven organization and currently, everything is managed in a streamlined manner without any hassles.

What will be your communication strategy post the opening of the lockdown? What will be the objective of the communication/marketing strategy?

HRTech plays a vital role and Businesses will be looking at HR Tech adoption keenly in the coming times. More and more industry business leaders are trying to reduce their fixed costs. This is where HR Tech adoption could actually play a pivotal role in managing Employee Lifecycle management processes.

We believe that HR Tech product should be focusing on two major important aspects: it should be Employee Centric and focus on Outcomation ™ (Outcome + Automation).  We have been adding a lot of innovation to our HRTech products like Artificial Intelligence powered chatbots, surveys, touchless attendance, Digital I-card everything available on mobile apps. This not only saves time but it can create a lot of positive outlook towards Digital Transformation and Future of Work.

How did you keep the morale of the employees during this lockdown period? On a personal note, what kept you positive?

Currently, we are focusing on the health and well-being of all our employees. At ZingHR, the wellbeing of our employees is of preeminent so we reach out to them regularly and ensure that they focus on more positive thinking.  We focus on building trust, empathy, and support as the basic pillars for all our interactions in our programs which are employee focussed so that a feeling of togetherness comes in everyone which kills stress and negative thoughts.

Many during this lockdown have lost their jobs, what are some of the post-lockdown business strategies that you will use to bring the business back on track or at least get it in the right direction and also create demand for yourself?

Personally after speaking to more than 550+ customers both SMBs, Start-ups and Enterprises we have come to the conclusion that our core objective of building HRTech products have a direct implication on the current market gaps and the HR needs of the customers.

These HRTech products can directly bring benefits to the organizations and help in building business continuity, productivity, reducing fixed costs. When suddenly Covid made us realize that People Management is an essential commodity. I believe all the sectors will be able to realize that there is a new horizon that this crisis is opening. Covid has been a great leveller. Everyone is now standing at the same point, and it’s an opportunity to start afresh.

Recently you launched new innovative HR Tech products, what has been the response and can you take us through the campaign strategy?

Sure, we have not only launched new innovative HR Tech products as I mentioned earlier but we have also revamped and redesigned our existing mobile app for all of our amaZing Customers, their Employees and our Prospective Customers. We always aim to simplify the User Experience and provide a compelling User Interface. Great design is always about the product.

HR now has the option to restructure things differently. Like we at ZingHR use the word OutcomationTM; do only what is going to give your business outcomes for organizations as well as employees. The best service HR can do is to make HR a trait niche manager and not keep it as a department. If HR can identify their purpose in the business; their job is done.