CEO Insights Magazine

The corporate realm is getting more and more competitive every year, with new players mushrooming constantly. This makes it hard for organisations to separate themselves from the rest and get a proper foothold in the market. Over the years, top-notch marketing has become the most efficient way to stand out from the rest. And if you look at the market, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies offering digital marketing, e-learning, social media marketing, blogging and other services.

However, Clearly Blue Digital is a pioneering business organisation which nurtures its core strength, namely, content, design and enterprise strategy to build world class services and solutions across verticals. Their basket of offerings is targeted at enterprise B2B customers. This kind of razor-sharp focus on a specific market segment and the importance they place on content and design is unique to Clearly Blue. Shwetha Vishwas holds the office of Chief People Officer at Clearly Blue. Under her guidance, the company has been able to break new business frontiers and streamline its business operations at the same time.

In an exclusive interview with CEO Insights, Shwetha talks about her professional journey and how she is making a name for herself in the industry.

Throw some light on your professional background and experience.
I have a bachelors in Electronics and an having done my internship at the Indian Institute of Science, I was able to get a job in my domain at Ernst & Young. I worked in the Resource Management team and was able to move up the ladder to senior resource coordinator. I continued my journey with Brickwork India Pvt Ltd and am now with Clearly Blue for the last six years.

How are you leveraging your expertise as Chief People Officer to craft strategic solutions for Clearly Blue Digital?
As Clearly Blue is a knowledge

services company, our main asset is our people. Talented, motivated people who go the extra mile in projects drive the success of our organisation. This makes my role as Chief People Officer vital for growth.

My job starts from talent acquisition finding not just the right fit for the role in terms of skills but also finding the right person for the team. In my opinion, attitude trumps skills any day. I keep a close watch on our team members’ attitude, team spirit and will ingness to work with others. In that sense, the work continues with talent nurturing or support .

The other facet of my job as CPO is to ensure we are an organisation that is always learning. Learning starts with onboarding our employees and freelancers into our ways of working, and continues with constant training and professional development to ensure that their skillsets and mindset are on par with the best in the industry. Constant learning is key to innovation; we firmly believe in this precept at Clearly Blue.

This work supports the larger responsibilities I take on with the management at the strategic level, where we set organisational goals for the coming years and strategise on how we achieve them.

How has been your response to the challenges posted by the Covid affected market and the need for new operational strategies? How would you describe your role in tackling those challenges?
Covid shook us up as it did the entire world. We have always been a hybrid workplace, supporting work from home, partial telecommute and other forms of working. But the prolonged work from home of the two Covid years, accompanied by multiple responsibilities and illnesses at home, has affected our employees. Work, however, was not affected. After the initial six months, our customers adjusted to the new normal and work proceeded as before.

As the CPO, I have had the responsibility of supporting various permutations of work people falling sick, recovering from illness but wanting to get back to work, onboarding new employees during the pandemic, supporting young employees who just don’t have a space to work out of at home and so on. It’s been a tough couple of years.

I’m amazed by the resilience shown by our team and their ‘never say die’spirit. We delivered some major projects in the midst of all the tumult. We have had people go to the extent of recording audio in closets as the studio in the office was inaccessible during the lockdown. It’s heartening to note that despite all the twists and turns, employee attrition has been low. We’re also proud that as a workplace, we did not cut salaries. The physical office remained a bastion of calm that employees could visit between lockdowns for respite from home.

There were tough decisions for us in management, but I do believe they will help us in the long run. We’re now back in the office and continue to support partial work from home options for all our employees.

How do you maintain the perfect balance between your personal and professional life?What is your success mantra and what drives you today as an industry leader?
I am a singer in both the Hindustani classical and light music styles. Between work, concerts, music classes and other events, life can get quite hectic. My beagle(fondly called Google) helps me relax at home, as do long drives and vacations with my husband.

I believe the mantra to success is ‘Serenity’. Life throws us many curves, whether in the professional or personal spaces. If we have the mental makeup to face adversity calmly, evaluate all possible solutions and move forward with hard work and determination, nothing is impossible.

As an experienced industry leader, what advice would you give to budding professionals in this domain?
I would advise young HR professionals to strive for empathy. It’s easy to get caught in a maze of HR policy, regulations and restrictions. But strive to look at the human at the other end of every HR transaction. Understand every person’s unique needs and ambitions, and his or her abilities and constraints. That is when you can support him or her in the journey with your organisation and make it mutually successful.

Shwetha Vishwas, Chief People Officer, Clearly Blue Digital
She is a pioneering professional committed to constantly learning new things and developing herself so that she can always remain on top of her game. She has won multiple awards including the DivHersity Champion award. She has been featured in the top 20 DivHersity Champions three times consecutively by Jobs For Her.