COLLECTIVE RCM
Q: What are the main components of a ‘great workplace,’ in your opinion?
A: A great culture, team and clients automatically create a great company – it is an interdependent cycle. A people focussed working culture transforms a team into a happy one. And a happy team does great work and transforms clients into happy clients.
Happy clients take care of the company financially. Thereafter, the company can share the benefits with the team and take care of everyone involved more frequently. If a business goes out of its way to maintain this every day, it serves as the core that holds this cycle tighter.
Q: Do higher salaries help create a great workplace?
A: Ours is a well paying company but any organisation can become one. It would be easy if this is merely about money.
However, what we want is to create a culture where there are more factors to consider when someone thinks of working in a ‘great workplace’ in addition to the salary aspect. We want each of our team members to be our brand ambassador. When people interact with our team, their personal achievements should reflect what Collective is.
Q: Do you believe that technology plays a part in creating a great workplace?
A: At Collective, we recurrently invest heavily in two things – viz. people and technology. That is the backbone of our business.
We’re heavily reliant on robotic process automation (RPA) and AI. Technology ensures that our results are more efficient and accurate while making team members’ lives easy too. As such, it plays a major role in creating a great workplace.
Collective operates in a niche sector that is heavily reliant on knowledge. Given this, we want our team’s core contribution to the company to be their knowledge.
Furthermore, we do not want to grow by the number of heads; instead, we aim to do so in terms of our financials and capacity with the same number of people. We want to ensure that the company retains the right people with the proper knowledge and attitude, and in the appropriate roles.
We must use technology to achieve these goals.
Q: How critical is employee engagement and happiness in the context of nurturing a great workplace culture?
A: A client’s perception of the services or products delivered by a vendor is what defines how good of a vendor it is. In the same context, an employee’s honest perception of his or her workplace is what defines how good it really is.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We have our human resources (HR) department watching over our team members very closely.
A phenomenon we have observed over the years is that most cases of underperformance begin with some sort of personal matter or dissatisfaction of an individual.
If we see these negative patterns, we take the liberty of approaching these people to discuss what’s going on in their lives, how they manage their finances, if there is any way the company or their colleagues can help and so on. Following this, we advise, guide and support them – even financially if we must – for them to come out of any dire situation.
We encourage our team members to question their own quality of life. We want them to look around and see if they’re inspired by the people they work with. This should tell you about the workplace culture.
Q: And how do you view the role of senior management in promoting an open and engaging culture?
A: Sometimes, people judge a good workplace based on the tenure of the company, or by considering its size, the number of people in it, the quality of its advertisements or even marginal increments gained when moving from one place to another. But these factors do not constitute a great workplace.
At Collective, our senior management is equally focussed on client and employee satisfaction as the organisation is people oriented at all levels. If you let one of these aspects go, both will collapse sooner or later.
As open as the company’s senior management is to maintaining a great, friendly and healthy workplace culture, we share that responsibility with everyone in the organisation. An individual can have a vision but one cannot build a great workplace alone. Every team member has a major part to play in it.
Q: And finally, what advice would you offer to the organisations and startups joining Sri Lanka’s corporate sector?
A: We would like to advise young companies to think through how well they contribute to their people and help them achieve their dreams along with organisational goals.
These are actions that you should conduct for everyone in the company, rather than only those who occupy particular ranks. According to Collective’s methodologies, people who are deserving should not be divided by designations.
If you follow these guidelines day in and day out, you’ll effortlessly become a great workplace.
If someone merely wants a job and the money to pay his or her bills, there are thousands of companies out there where this can be achieved. But if someone wants a satisfying job with notable improvements in their lives year after year, we believe Collective shines brightly in terms of its ability to provide this.
We would love to see Sri Lanka’s entire working culture transform into this someday. Although we’re a young company – counting only five years in the sector – we hope to be an example to all companies out there.
