Cost to Company

Thank you for tuning in every week. With this episode, Cost to Company is coming to an end. Do tell us what you liked about the show, what we can do differently, or if you have any fresh ideas in the careers space for us. Write to podcasts@the-ken.com.

If you liked Cost to Company, we are sure you'd like our other podcasts First Principles and Daybreak.

We have newer, bigger shows coming real soon! Stay tuned to the ...

Each individual episode of Cost to Company is like a part of the elephant in the hands of a blind person. Only but a piece of a much larger story.

In this special 50th episode of Cost to Company, the hosts discuss the sum of trends they have observed in workplaces. And what that tells us about the changing nature of the economy, and of work.

This episode was produced by Sneha Vakharia, and engineered by Rajiv CN.

Cost to Comp...

Company culture (as we know it) is broken. Seventy-seven percent of the global workforce is disengaged and burnt out, says the latest Gallup report. In fact, there's a new term floating around – loud quitting. These are employees who stay in their jobs and take actions that directly harm the organisation and sabotage its goals. This is a new low, and a huge signal that there is a dire need to change. Companies are looking ...

We released a survey for working mothers.

The objective was to build a collective of the wisdom of working mothers. Ask them for their needs. And their hacks. How can families and businesses best enable working mothers? And how can working mothers enable themselves?

As of writing this, It’s been a week since we put out the survey. 630 mothers replied. This is what they had to say.

This episode was written and hosted by Sneha...

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

But that's not the case with PIPs.

Which, more often than not, is planned to fail anyway.

In this episode of Cost to Company, I speak to Sharthok Chakraborty (Co-founder, Klaar; Ex-Cipla) Nimesh Mathur (Investor, Advisor, HR Leader; Ex-Haptik), and Sumit Singla (HR Consultant, ex-Accenture) on one of the most contentious tools of the workplace, the Performance Improvement Plan.

And why ...

Reverse reference checks. Combative questions during interviews. And employees on why it isn’t the employer’s market yet. With layoffs and recession fears, you would imagine employees are settling for less. You would imagine they are taking up a job, any job, to evade unemployment. Instead, they are making decisions about their next move in the most deliberate and calibrated manner. On today's episode, we will talk about e...

There’s hustle. And then there’s excellence. Startups give their employees abundance of the former, but not as much of the latter. In the long run, this can seriously hurt career prospects.

This week, we set out to understand the skills startups give their youngest employees.. The skills they don’t. Where this can land them in their careers. Who is responsible for this.  And if you are such a startup employee, what you can...

If you ask any tech employee about their dream company to work at, it’s usually a Microsoft or a Google or a cool startup. Nobody aspires to work at a healthcare company or a bank, really. It’s where you end up. Not choose. At least that’s the perception all around.

But what if I tell you, you’ve been looking at the talent market all wrong? That the cold sectors of yesterday — manufacturing, BFSI, FMCG companies, and so...

How do you evaluate the risks you take in your choice of jobs? The size, stage of the company you’re going to work for. The type of roles you choose. How long you wait in a particular role before you make your next move, look for the next jump.

How do the risks we take, and don’t take, shape our careers.

This week, we turn to three of the most risk seeking category of professionals, founders. We ask them how to take risk...

The tables have turned.

But the mistakes keep spilling over.

In this episode, we spoke to Ria Shroff Desai (People and Culture Lead, Blume Ventures); Udayan Walvekar (CEO, GrowthX); Bhakti Dhanak (Associate Vice President - Human Resources, CIIE.CO) to understand some of the unobvious errors that candidates are making while applying for jobs in the 'employer's market' of 2023. 

Cost to Company is a careers and workplaces po...

For months and months now, there’s a word that’s been whispered among recruiters, founders, CXOs, and executives who are hiring for key positions in their companies.

It’s a word used to describe a cohort of professionals whose salaries are out of sync with the reality of the market. It’s a word that is used for people who work in product management, engineering, marketing, and even cross-functional roles.

Meet the “unhireab...

This time last year, companies were giving away eye-popping rewards to retain talent. From BMW bikes to sponsoring vacations, they did it all to lure top talent.

Times were good. Talent was scarce. And start-ups and companies were flush with money and endless capital. But, not anymore.

On today’s show, why retention has gone from broad-based to focussed, open to hidden, and most importantly – equal to unequal. Companies ar...

The situation has changed. And the equation has too. 

If the past two years were all about throwing money to attract top talent, 2023 has seen a general sobering up of appraisals and job switch hikes.  

In a strange turns of events, some employees are okay with taking a cut on their annual compensation in exchange for ‘stability’, in this highly volatile job market. 

I speak to Saaquib Dawoodani (Head of Talent, R...

This week your host Sneha will take you inside businesses at war, through the voices of those fighting in the trenches. We’ll hear how the same war — the war against inflation, a funding winter and shrinking markets — is being fought differently in different businesses. We’ll see how war sharpens, and sometimes disfigures, a business. We’ll see what is martyred and what is protected.

This is what a business fighting for su...

MBAs – love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore them. Over the years, they have taken over every business vertical – general management, sales and marketing, growth and strategy, human resources, and even product and technology. Name it, they have been there and done that.  

But there was one bastion that remained unconquered by the MBAs for the longest. One last holdout – hardcore finance. Sitting at the apex of th...

In the last few months alone, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce announced that they were going to begin the process of flattening their organisations. That they were going to have fewer and fewer hierarchies in their organisations. Fewer hierarchies means fewer managers.

The pattern here appears to be that in tough economic times, when efficiency becomes paramount, businesses are rethinking their need for managers. And concludin...

You've heard about them. You've worked with them. You've thoughts around them.

But have you really heard from them?

In this episode, I speak to Kaavyya Kesarwani (Growth & Community, Juno), Sherina Poyyail (Policy professional, Ex: The Quint), Bhavya Narula (Founding team, GrowthX), Sindhu Shivaprasad (Chief of Staff, Obvious) and Shashank Baliga (Writer, a major OTT platform) to understand what the 'new kids on the blo...

Here are some messages Cost to Company has received over the past months.

“I believe working with GenZ is the toughest thing I do at work.  They look at their jobs as a means to the next job. This has dramatically reduced their qualitative output, even if their quantitative output is enough. “

“Workplace hierarchy is its absurd with GenZs”. 

“There is an increasing gap between values of older generation and new generation of ...