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There is a lot of innovation happening in the HR tech space. What is important for founders or management to know about HR software? How has remote and hybrid work affected the workspace? How have the last three years affected the workforce and HR tech? We invited Saad Siddiqui, Venture Capitalist for Telstra Ventures, to join the Employee Cycle podcast to answer those questions and more. Let’s first start with finding out more about Telstra Ventures.
What Is Telstra Ventures?
From their LinkedIn profile, “Telstra Ventures invests in market-leading, high growth technology companies with exceptional products and leaders.
Committed to supporting groundbreaking, high-growth technology businesses, Telstra Ventures offers synergy revenues to its portfolio companies and financial returns to its limited partners. Since 2011, it has invested in over 80 companies and has offices in San Francisco, Sydney and Shanghai.
Telstra Ventures is backed by two strategic limited partners: Telstra, one of the largest global telecommunications providers, and HarbourVest, one of the world’s largest private equity funds.
Big ideas. Exceptional people. Extraordinary innovation. Welcome to Telstra Ventures.”
Who Is Saad Siddiqui?
I had a great chat with Saad Siddiqui on our podcast. Here’s a little bit of information about Saad’s background and present role from his LinkedIn profile.
“Saad Siddiqui is a venture capitalist for Telstra Ventures who focuses on enterprise technology investments, particularly focusing on next generation enterprise infrastructure and applications. In his career, Saad has deployed over $100M in venture capital in over a dozen companies. In previous roles as a corporate development executive, he has executed M&A transactions valued at over $7 billion in aggregate
Prior to Telstra Ventures he was in corporate development at Informatica and was a member of Cisco’s venture investing and acquisitions team covering cloud, big data and virtualization.”
Now, let’s dig into the topic of the podcast…
How Can Software Enable The Fluid Workforce
Over the last decade HR has gone through an evolution. It’s been an interesting time, especially in the last three years with COVID, with massive increases in hiring, now a recession, and going through budget cuts. It’s a unique time to be in the HR space, with the realization that we are experiencing a fluid workforce.
What is the fluid workforce?
The fluid workforce is about allowing flexibility for employers and employees to do the best work they possibly can. Employers are looking to find the best people and giving them the tools they need to be the most productive. And, employees are looking for employers that are the best fit for their lives and the goals they have for their career, their future, and aligned with their world view. Employers can support employees with flexible benefits including remote work, flexible hours, onboarding, training, and more.
How are companies delivering on flexible benefits?
- Healthcare. As the cost of healthcare rises, there are massive increases of high deductible plans. New providers are offering HSA accounts. End Employers can partner with vendors to help them manage benefits or offload them and put benefits in the hands of their employees. Data and analytics are core. Employers need to understand which benefits are being used by which age ranges.
- Recruiting. The talent search has increased to a national and international pool. Selection becomes critical because employees have to be able to get aligned with the culture and processes and not feel like they are on an island.
- Onboarding. In the past, onboarding was a two-day process to understand tools and the processes for the job. Now, they aren’t sitting in a room anymore. Onboarding is happening on Zoom calls. People need software to train – technology is enabling the current onboarding process.
- Training. It’s important that employees know how to do their jobs. However, in addition to training on specific tasks for their roles, training now includes mentoring and planning careers beyond their current role. And, training must be married with the vision of the company.
Discover More
There’s much more we cover in the podcast, such as:
- Innovation happening in the HR tech space
- From an investor lens, where do we think we still need to tackle to use software with employers
- Usage rates of flexible benefits
- Changes happening with retirement benefits
- And much more!
Listen to the whole podcast here: How Software Can Enable The Fluid Workforce. This episode offers great tips. Enjoy!