A major chunk of efforts at Clix Capital goes towards imparting necessary training to upskill employees:
Clix Capital is a new-age NBFC revolutionizing the lending space by offering differentiated digital lending products. Its range of lending products to a varied spectrum of customers across the MSME and consumer segment includes personal loans, MSME loans, healthcare loans, and mortgage finance. Santwana Periwal, CHRO at Clix Capital shares about key HR activities and objectives.
Hiring Plans
Clix Capital currently has almost 400 employees. This year, the company’s hiring strategy is to support its growth plan. For this, it will focus on closing all positions deemed as its growth engine – the sales, collections, and credit teams. Santwana Periwal reveals: “Since April 2019, we have hired 235 men and 38 women in our team. We intend to hire another 100 employees by the end of this year.”
Enhancing Diversity
Diversity is vital for any organization. Organizations with gender diversity experience substantial increases in innovation revenue. Teams with diverse experiences, opinions and backgrounds also develop innovative ideas and create solutions. A recent Gallup study supports this as well. One of the key women leaders at Clix Capital is its Group CFO, who has also acted as the interim CEO for 9 months in the previous fiscal. The company has introduced women-friendly policies such as creche reimbursement, refer a friend, etc.
Santwana explains: “Our endeavour is to ensure that we meet and evaluate candidates with equal representation. Our current male-to-female ratio stands at 87:13, and our aim is to take collective steps to bridge this gap in the organization this financial year. Our leadership team has always had a good blend of diversity. Maintaining the same trajectory, the current diversity at the leadership level is 30%. There have been regular engagement events planned for women of the organization to keep them motivated and supported.”
Knowledge Transfer
Clix Capital’s strategy for employees focuses on offering ample opportunities for them to pursue their interests without any limitations of function/roles. It is a strong believer in providing opportunities to internal talent and building from within. Clix Capital had employees moving from its finance to the IT team and from operations to products. The company always encourages employees to put their best foot forward at work and will continue building on that in the days ahead. Santwana claims: “This has greatly helped the organization’s growth by facilitating the transfer of business knowledge from one domain to another. Our proactive efforts have always been towards filling critical positions through internal moves. Thereby, a major chunk of our efforts goes towards imparting necessary training to upskill employees. We are proud of our open and collaborative culture that drives every individual to work towards achieving organizational goals, not just individual or functional objectives.”
Proactive Conversations
Mapping the external market for the positions and initiating proactive conversations with candidates have also helped Clix Capital in identifying potential external successors. In doing so, its focus area is maintaining a healthy diversity balance. Santwana underlines: “As an initial step, we have consciously made an effort to ensure 50% diversity at the time of evaluating external candidates. Agility is of utmost importance to it, which can be driven through the right analytics and insights. Apart from hiring externally, our priority will be to invest in internal talent and build from within.”
Well-being & Caring
Employee well-being has always been important at Clix Capital. The pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of its employees and their families, be it generating stress, anxiety or just a feeling of helplessness. Clix Capital has an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which allows access to trained counsellors so employees can speak to someone and seek support if they or their families need help. Santwana explains: “Deep care is one of our core values. To some extent, we have also deprioritized the business, so that employees can take time off to focus on their families and not worry about work 24×7. Being agile and nimble with a people’s approach has helped transform and achieve our desired growth plans as a business.”
