Jay Pullur, Founder & CEO, Qontext Inc shares with People Matters the growing need of a two-way communication with employees, partners and customers

How do you see future organizations evolving in terms of how people will interact, collaborate and share?

We believe that organizations that will be successful in the future would be ones that are constantly involved with their customers, actively listening to employees and innovating continuously. This is necessitated by the changing pace of markets and competition. This means that companies will have to get ready to build a culture and a brand that enables internal and external collaboration and sharing.

What changes do you foresee in the world at work? Are Indian companies as mature as their Asian counterparts and the western countries in this journey?

Currently, we see that most organizations do not really communicate well with their stakeholders, particularly employees and customers. The communications tend to be more broadcast, formal and need-based.
In the future, this communication with employees, partners and customers will actually be a two-way dialog with content sharing, commenting and other interactions that we are familiar with on social networks. The move is beyond email and websites.
Based on the conversations we are having, Indian companies are ready to embrace this change. Many companies have realized the need and are looking for ways to leapfrog in using new generation tools.
How else would an insurance company connect with over 50,000 external agents, answer questions on new offerings and get market inputs?

The new generation workforce requires new ways of engagement and connect. Are Indian companies ready to attract and retain this generation? How does one bring people from different demographic groups together with social technologies?

That is true. Firms that want to engage the next generation employee, realize that this generation has had exposure to social technologies in the consumer space, and they would be efficient in using similar technologies at the workplace. At the same time, today’s workplace also has many people from the email-generation so it is impotant to merge the familiar with the new.

What is the mind shift required for Indian leaders to adopt the social media trend? What are the business benefits of being an early adopter?

Very clearly, the leaders of companies today face a great challenge. The command-and-control paradigm is no longer applicable. The concept of a stable workforce (viewed as a resource) is hard to imagine. This necessitates a mind shift among leaders to view employees as investors of human capital who could potentially move out, unless effectively engaged.
Organizations need to assess if they are ready to make the transition to becoming a “social workplace”. Once they are ready, the business benefits are numerous and varied, but our clients share with us that they have experienced better quality information, prevention of knowledge drain with employees leaving, accelerated employee induction, reduction in email overload and productivity improvement through collaboration across silos – all leading to faster innovation and responsive business practices.