TecHRseries Interview with Sam Naficy, CEO at Prodoscore

HR is going to have to be more nimble in the ‘’new normal’’ and understanding how to cater to every remote employee and their needs while learning how to have celebrations of success and important elements like discipline maintained remotely will become part of the new HR norm feels Sam Naficy, CEO at Prodoscore in this TecHRseries interview. Catch the complete QnA where Sam comments on the top HR transformations that are needed in tech due to the global pandemic.

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Tell us a little about yourself Sam…what are some of the biggest highlights of running Prodoscore, how has the journey been so far?

To put it simply, the journey has been exhilarating at times and painful at times, which I think is pretty standard for a company at our phase of growth. We deal with all the normal ups and downs of a startup — including hiring, infrastructure, and putting the right process and people in place.

The most important area of focus for me as the CEO is, of course, raising capital.  The pandemic certainly threw us all a curveball, but I think we’ve settled into this new environment, and we’re really thriving. We’ve certainly adapted some of our go-to-market strategies around the expedited migration to remote work, but the big picture is business as usual for us.

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What are some of the measures and steps the team at Prodoscore has taken during this time of the Covid-19 pandemic while working from home, to ensure their own productivity and motivation?

We’ve been a remote organization since our start, so, as far as our everyday work environments, nothing has really changed. The team has the freedom to manage their own time and maintain a flexible schedule.

Our business has seen a significant spike since the pandemic started, which has kept the team extremely busy and also very excited. We’ve primarily viewed the office-to-remote ratio at around 80/20 (80% in-office, 20% remote). Our thesis was that it would stabilize at around 50/50 within the next 3-5 years. COVID obviously expedited that, and we feel that we will normalize at 50/50 much sooner than we anticipated.  That fact alone keeps the team highly motivated, as it presents so much opportunity for a solution like ours.

When it comes to assessing employee productivity with mostly everyone working from home; what are some of the factors business heads should keep in mind?

There are so many benefits to remote work for different layers of each organization. We’ve seen that remote employees are productive sooner in the day, and they’re more productive throughout the day.  So many companies have reported improvements in productivity since the shift to remote work.

More important than productivity are healthier and happier employees. Employees are no longer having to deal with exhausting commutes or distractions at the workplace.  Flexibility in the workday can relieve a great deal of stress.  People are finding time to do more of the things that matter to them.

Another area I can’t forget to mention is cost savings. Companies can save a ton of money on rent and office space. Employees can save money on gas and transportation. It’s really a win-win for everyone.

The benefits to remote work are massive for both employees and businesses.

When it comes to maintaining consistent levels of productivity, though, I think providing the right tools, like CRM, chat and video platforms, project management systems, are really key. Staff need to be able to get their work done efficiently and also feel connected. We believe Prodoscore is the glue, or cohesive mesh, that binds together all those tools that companies are using, so the data is aggregated and available in one place, and leadership has a really easy way to measure daily contributions.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic induced remote work and hiring as well as general businesses challenges have also led to a shift in employee management norms, what are some of your thoughts now on how the work culture is going to look like in the next few years – we’ve heard a lot about various aspects of the new normal, but more specifically when it comes to HR and employee experience: what are your top thoughts?

In my opinion, the number one area that HR professionals should focus on is culture. Culture has historically been driven by the in-office presence of employees — such as happy hours after work, bagels and free lunches, birthday celebrations, and great coffee in the breakroom.

If we think about the amazing culture that’s discussed at places like Zappos, Tom’s and Google, we wonder how to repeat that in a remote environment. I believe this is truly the biggest area for HR and CEOs to consider.

Is there culture in a remote environment? How do you motivate? How do you galvanize? There are tools out there to manage projects, automate processes and gauge productivity, but do you lose culture at the expense of those?

HR is going to need to be nimble. They always have been, but the post-pandemic normal will need to be more nimble. Remote employees will have more and different needs. Celebrations of success will have to be done remotely. Discipline will have to be done remotely.

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We’d love to hear about Prodoscore’s recent partnership with Telarus…what will this partnership help bring to end users and what are some of the other near-future plans you have in mind for Prodoscore?

Prodoscore and Telarus are going to market with a uniquely positioned workforce management solution. Telarus customers using other cloud-based applications will have the technology ecosystem complemented with Prodoscore to better assess employee performance.  Additionally, adoption rates of cloud solutions (like voice and CRM) can be accurately measured with very granular supporting data.  Most importantly, the Telarus/Prodoscore solution takes the guesswork out of managing remotely distributed employees. That means better information, improved performance and impactful results from each employee who contributes to an organization’s overall success.

As the number of globally distributed employees using Prodoscore across various disciplines and many different vertical markets continues to grow, our subject matter experts are providing enhanced analysis relative to human behavior in the workplace. This credible and validated information will be further leveraged to deliver qualified, prescriptive recommendations about employee coaching for our customers.

Furthermore, as Prodoscore expands data collection through integration with many additional applications used by various roles in organizations, our core competency with deeper analytics related to organizational behavior in the workforce is widening.  Ultimately, through continued leverage of AI, machine learning and natural language processing, Prodoscore has created an entirely different segment of human capital management SaaS solutions.

How would you advise businesses and teams, especially HR and other business leaders to stay a step ahead of the game as the global economy tides through these uncertain times caused by the Covid-19 pandemic?

An exciting fact to keep in mind throughout all this is that we’re not tethered to the geography of a home office in a remote environment. We can hire and be agnostic to the location of the employee, which means access to a broader pool of talent.

A few general thoughts / tips for businesses worldwide dealing with the current world pandemic?

I’m going to go back to culture. Don’t forget about it. Culture is one of the most important things to be affected by the pandemic and remote workforce.

As we build and accept the new normal, at the end of the day, the need for culture will help make employees productive, which will make businesses more successful. There’s such an important human element in all this, and I truly believe it culminates with culture.

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