In an exclusive interaction with MediaBrief, Yugandhar Penubolu, CEO and Founder, Winzard Solutions Private Limited, speaks about how Strategic HR companies are helping revolutionize HR practices and how technological innovations are streamlining these practices. He also speaks about the future of software-based HR platforms and outlines his plans for Winzard’s expansion and growth.
Give us an overview of Winzard and its journey so far?
Winzard was started by Anand Joseph and me in Nov ‘2019 with a vision to provide holistic talent and performance development solutions. Pritesh Parmar joined the company as the co-founder shortly after. Each of the founding members has 20+ years of experience and complement each other well as they bring with them varied expertise.
The team launched the first talent and performance development product in July 2021 and their second product in Nov 2021.
What are the services Winzard offers? How are they different from their competitors?
Winzard offers Goal Management, Talent Review, Workforce Engagement and Workforce Wellbeing modules that are hosted on our SaaS platform. The modules developed by us are focused on enhancing employee and leadership capabilities.
The Goal Management module focuses on the method of achievement in addition to goal setting. Unique features like Manager Intervention, Automated Check-in and Work-plan help individuals and supervisors communicate better and quickly progress.
The continuous and automated appraisal feature reduces the assessment cycle and eliminates the recency effect. The real-time Insights help everyone in the company.
We also provide consulting services and deliver Individual/ Supervisor/ Leader development workshops to enhance capability and productivity through in-house specialists and external industry experts.
Our philosophy is that creativity, learning, engagement, wellbeing, capability and analytics are key drivers to productivity. This, along with the passion for improving the Organization behaviour and development space is what makes Winzard different.
How does the current roster of Winzard’s clients look like, and where do you see yourself in the pecking order today?
In just 4 months from us going live with our performance and talent development product, we have been able to garner valuable clients. Successful SMEs and Startups like Offineeds, Apposite Learning, CentCart Insurance & Money have found value in using our platform.
A few months back, Winzard collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad to host an open workshop– An executive program “Leadership Skills for Performance Management”.
Over 25 senior leaders from various corporates such as Apollo Health & Lifestyle Ltd, Harsco, Vaastu Housing Finance Corporation Ltd, Société Générale etc. attended the executive program that was delivered by Winzard, IIT and Industry Specialists.
Since then, we have delivered a few other curated programs for our clients. Client engagement and the sales pipeline is also encouraging.
Tell us about Winzard’s Talent Review Module?
Winzard’s Talent Review Module takes into consideration multiple dimensions such as employee performance, potential, fitment, loyalty and development needs to further provide recommendations that help the leadership of the client organization.
These recommendations range from performance improvement planning, retention planning, reward & recognition to succession planning and thus help the organization with a holistic dashboard for finalising talent decisions.
How are B2B Strategic HR companies helping in revolutionizing HR practices? How are technological innovations streamlining HR practices?
SaaS has truly revolutionised the development of HR tech. Machine Learning has enabled HR tech with meaningful and customised analytics.
Strategic HR tech companies are now seeing the need for integrating learning systems with talent assessment and rewards management.
Strategic HR tech has empowered HR to now focus beyond recruitment and leave management into deeper talent assessment and development. There is also a significant focus now on wellbeing and engagement.
We have just developed the Winzard Workforce Experience SaaS product suite with the help of IIT, Hyderabad. This suite includes 3 modules – Workforce Wellbeing, Workforce Engagement and Strategic Networking.
Companies which focus on improving workforce wellbeing, engagement and networking would benefit from higher employee satisfaction, health, productivity, loyalty and advocacy.
What is the future of software-based HR platforms? What are the opportunities here?
HR tech companies will play a mighty role in helping organizations with people process engineering, agility and transformation.
Some of the key areas of focus in the future for HR tech firms shall be in: Providing deep insights for curated individual development; Pre-empting the need for interventions; HR communication as well as evaluation of consumption through wearables and Enhancing workforce synergies through strategic networking, process ideation and Machine learning.
What are your plans for business expansion? Top priorities for 2022?
Our next version product which is expected to be released by March 2022 shall include ideation and learning management in addition to the current performance management, talent development and workforce experience suites. This will make the product a very holistic talent and performance development offering.
We are exploring joint venture opportunities with a couple of companies where we see synergies in collaborating to quickly scale, add products that complement well with Winzard and add value to clients.
We have just started to ramp up the marketing and sales capabilities in India and also plan to open doors in 3 international locations by end of Q2’ 2022.