Anand Narayanan is a Vice President at Beroe and dons the dual hat of Head of Marketing and Head of HR. Beroe is a global SaaS-based procurement intelligence and analytics provider.

In this conversation, Subbu sits down to discuss how Anand and his leadership team have instated a people-friendly work environment at Beroe. In particular, the discussion focuses on Beroe's successful experiment with implementing a 4-day workweek for all of its employees, which has been in force since 2017.

Key points

0:50 - About Beroe and it's organizational history + operating context

8:30 - How Anand Narayanan took on the mantle of HR Head at Beroe

12:30 - Confronting the reality of high employee stress

16:00 - The pivot from effort-based to productivity-based output

18:00 - Strategies to arrest attrition 

25:00 - The genesis of the 4-day workweek idea

26:30 - Ideating with different flexi-work models keeping in mind peak-productivity

29:30 - Debating the pros and cons with the management team

31:00 - The announcement and conditions of the 4-day workweek experiment

35:15 - Praise from the ultimate stakeholders: customers

37:00 - Recruiting and working with a core group of change evangelists

39:45 - Cultural reaction to the change

43:35 - Results of the experiment - impact on productivity, customer feedback, employee engagement, culture

48:00 - Being ready when Covid hit in 2020

49:00 - How meetings are managed at Beroe

57:00 - Feedback on Glassdoor and actions from the management team

1:00:00 - Is the 4-day week the future of work?

1:06:30 - The facets of culture that enabled a 4-day week at Beroe