Creating an Equitable Workplace Culture with Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer at Freshworks
This episode features an interview with Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer at Freshworks. Suman has spent her entire professional career in HR, holding positions at publicly traded companies like The Nielsen Company, Dell Technologies, and Whirlpool. At Freshworks, Suman pilots the global people strategy to develop and engage their employees.
In this episode, Amanda and Suman examine diversity in the workplace. They discuss Suman’s passion for women in the workforce, key elements of workplace culture, and why it's better to hire people that add to that culture versus fitting in.
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“There is no one size that fits all. Human experiences at the workplace is all about different moments that matter as an employee throughout your journey. How do you create experiences that can delight your employees? Just like how we talk about customer delight. We have different personas. Whether it's an early career employee, it's an experienced employee, senior executive, women and we try and create experiences for each one of these that are different and that are important to them. And to me, that's what it's all about. It's human experiences at the workplace that create delight.” – Suman Gopalan
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:50): Suman’s career journey
*(03:50): Segment: Story Time
*(04:01): Suman’s passion for women in the workforce
*(08:41): Suman’s definition of employee experience
*(12:06): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(12:31): The key elements of a good workplace culture
*(15:45): Hiring to fit the culture vs adding to the culture
*(19:33): Segment: Ripped from the Headlines
*(23:38): How the pandemic affected women in the workforce
*(26:25): Freshworks’ pledge for equality
*(33:47): Asking for a Friend
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