Mihaela Popa, Wipro Technologies: “My advice for HR professionals is to be creative and walk the talk”

“HR has changed a lot meaning that we are living a lot of paradoxes. Employee experience vs. virtual employee experience, hiring vs. retention, pandemic vs. performance, work from anywhere vs. work from the office. We try now to bring the home into the office. In Bucharest we started to reshape our offices, so that employees can have high-end technologies plus the comfort from home,” Mihaela Popa, Associate Vice President/ HR Lead., Wipro Technologies said during People Empowering Business Forum 2021 organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“Is this done by force or it’s happening by nature? To address employees, everything starts from the culture of the company. 79 percent of companies have more performances when they have a purpose. In Wipro we are currently focusing on 5 habits which we are giving to our employees: common sense, to be respectful, to be responsive, to communicate always, gain trust.

Besides that, we have focused very much on diversity and inclusion. We want our employees to feel they are part of a community. We are very much inclusive. Wellness and education are also very important. All these things are done via the HR team, which was recently digitally reskilled.

Emotional intelligence is another point we are focusing on. We are discussing topics like stress management, mental health, including the vaccination part.

We are looking to the creativity in our teams. We need the right persons in the right place, we don’t want to make the mistake of rushing a decision.

Work from anywhere is good news and bad news at the same time. Our employees have the freedom of working from a different city for example, but we still have the challenge of remote technical support. In the short and medium term we have accommodated easily.

At the beginning of the pandemic, 74 percent of our people wanted to work only from home. After one year, 87 percent of the people said they want to work from home. This is a challenge for recruiters because candidates ask up front if the company allows permanent work from home or not.

My advice for HR professionals is to be creative and walk the talk.”

Full recording of the event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NOugHtxJ4M&t=5965s