“Treat employees like they make a difference and they will.” – Jim Goodnight, Co-Founder & CEO - SAS
Meesho has always taken its people policies seriously. We strongly believe in and work towards employee flexibility and empowerment. Our employees are our biggest asset and we want to treat them right.
So, here’s the question...
We have a great set of HR Policies which are guided by our core Mantras (more on that later). We were recently recognised by xto10x’s “Startups Employees Love” for People Excellence and Best for Women. If you want to hear it from our female techies first-hand, check this out.
All our policies and practices are forward-looking, inclusive, and —to remain relevant with every wave of incoming talent — constantly reimagined and restructured when necessary. Here’s your 101 on our peoples’ policies:
Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion
Inclusion is a very important aspect of Meesho. It is one of our core values to ensure that talent stays at the heart of the organisation. That is why we have initiatives like:
- Gender Neutral Parental Leave
- Liberal “family” definition in Insurance —LGBTQ+ & Live-in partner insurance coverage under the GMC policy
- Infertility coverage for 1.5 lacs on IPD
- Gender reassignment leave for 30 days
- 64 optional leaves that cover a range of holidays, from festivals to special days.
You can study while you work
This “CEP(Capability Enhancement Program)” was formulated to encourage continuous learning so that employees can pursue any interest / skill / hobby outside of work on a fully-reimbursable basis. We focus on career aspirations of each and every employee through individual development plans(IDP) and even support them financially through it. We do this by offering education assistance (full time & part-time), certification assistance (online & offline) and personal development assistance (hobbies, language skills & sports)
You can own a little bit of the company
The “MeeSOPs” programme was introduced to give our employees a chance to have higher ownership of the organisation. This inclusive initiative allows every single employee, regardless of their seniority, to benefit from Meesho’s rapid growth. Unlike the ESOPs you might be familiar with, our MeeSOPs vest by the end of year 1. This provides both opportunities and control to opting employees and helps them cash in on Meesho’s frequent ESOP liquidation programs.
We have wellness leaves
We understand that any human being needs physical, emotional and mental security and support to be productive. These initiatives support employees when they want to prioritise their personal needs over the professional.
We offer “Infinite wellness leaves” of up to 365 days in a year, if an employee or their loved one is impacted by a critical illness or if an employee wants time off to pursue a personal goal, outside of work.
In 2021, we were the first company to introduce the annual “Reset and Recharge” 10-day, post-Diwali break prioritising employee well-being. Employees can completely unplug from work. Our next break is coming up in October 2022.
How do we come up with such industry-first practices?
Much like other functions of our company, we practice our Mantras while deciding our HR policies. We heavily rely on 4 values to ensure our policies focus on serving our employees.
User first
Since our employees are the “users” of the HR policies, the inception of all practices/ policies is centred on them. We practice the “Listen or Die” ritual extensively to understand what our employees need to be their productive best. To know the pulse on the ground and identify the right problem areas, we carry out multiple surveys. We adopted technological solutions like Coda, Miro and Asana to drive employee-friendly policies. To ensure seamless Async collaborations, we implemented Slack. We use Slack-powered Meebot to address employee queries quickly as well as gauge employee pulse frequently.
Problem-first mindset
Our operating model and ways of working at Meesho help us to figure out and deep dive into problems. That is what tends to make Meesho’s solutions so original. Only once we have an in-depth understanding of our problem, do we go ahead and start thinking of solutions.
People-centric workplace
A constant goal for our HR team is to create good workplace experiences for employees. We work really hard for this. In fact, even our HR team’s structure is based on our employee-focused goals for the year. The teams are organised around the problems we’re trying to solve in that year/quarter. Once delivered, teams will disintegrate and pick up newer problems hence the structure keeps evolving.
Hire and grow exceptional talent
We want to attract the best talent. We have a 4-scale stringent process to assess the quality of hire and a bar raiser process, which are tied back to employee performance. We strongly believe that if we offer a growth-conducive, balanced workplace experience through our policies we’ll attract good talent.
We invest heavily in our employees’ growth. Over and above our CEP program and IDP, we have provisions like Internal Mobility, MyAcademy, PEAK program for managers, Mentorship sessions, and Masterclasses held by our leaders for all employees. Over 40% of our talent bases use CEP. 98% of our employees feel the people that they work with are extremely talented.
Our hard work is indeed paying off. We have industry-leading retention (very low attrition) and as the testimonials suggest, people are quite happy! This list is by no means an exhaustive one. So, why don’t you join us and check out the rest?
Answer: Check out our careers page here.
Credits:
- Written by Ashish Kumar Singh (LinkedIn, Twitter)
- Edited by Sheeba Mammen (LinkedIn, Twitter)
- Illustrated by Shoumita Dhar (LinkedIn, Dribble)
- Special thanks to Sidharth Ananthkrishnan, Prateek Khatkar, Chandra Pal Singh, Chaitanya Chitrada and Ahmad Muneeb
