“Portugal continues to be the epicenter in attracting and retaining employees” – ECO
It is in Portugal that a Talkdesk has the most workers. The first “head of human resources” of the national unicorn, Filipa Ferreira, spoke with People about the challenges in a hot market in HR.
She is the first person responsible for human resources at Taldesk in Portugal. Filipa Ferreira takes on people management in a market where the national unicorn has more than half of the approximately 2,000 workers – after Portugal, only the US has more employees – and where, until October alone, they have already recruited around 500 people, as many as the startup had announced in March that it wanted to hire this year.
In your first interview, until recently employee experience head Taldesk speaks of the challenges ahead in a market that, he does not hesitate to admit, is hot in terms of attracting and retaining talent: “We felt the loss increasing and this issue of remote work even made it possible for foreign companies to come to Portugal’s pool. This causes us greater challenges not only in terms of attraction but also in talent retention. ”
Unicorn is still designing the future work model, but everything points out that it will be hybrid: “We’re not going to force people to go to the office.”
The company is following the new Telework Law and admits that there are rules that impose some challenges on associations.
… the first HR head from Talkdesk to Portugal. What is the challenge?
I started at Talkdesk with the challenge of employer experience, a global function that I maintain. This challenge for me is viewed very positively. We are from the standpoint of attracting and retaining talent in a very competitive market and I feel the need to make a difference to people who want to or are working together. It is also a growing company, which allows us to innovate, to think differently. It forces us to look for new solutions at a time of great incerity. In HR, there was already a lot of talk about transformation, but the pandemic made it more assertive, for a future that no one has ever experienced. There is no primer, effective results. For me it is a motivational factor, which made me have this commitment to accept this challenge, because it is necessary and we can value as people, a competitor for greater happiness and purpose within the organization.
In March, they announced their intention to hire 500 employees. Technological companies have shown difficulty in recruiting given the lack of available talent. How is this process going?
In Portugal, this year alone, until the end of October, we have recruited around 500 people. We expect continued growth in Portugal, particularly in the R&D teams, but we continue to have a strong international commitment. Not only are we growing in the markets where we operate, we are also continuing our growth in new avenues such as APAC, LATAM. In the coming years, this continues to be a very strong objective from the point of view of attracting new talent for the growth of the business.
Are there already any recruitment targets for 2022?
I still can’t give numbers, we are in a phase of closing the strategic element for 2022, but there is still a focus on global growth in new geographies and also on continuing to grow in Portugal.
Will Portugal remain in focus, or given your international expansion, could it change? They recently strengthened their leadership in Asia. Is it around?
We have about 50% of employees in Portugal, in second place comes the USA. Portugal continues to be a major epicenter in terms of attracting and retaining employees. When we talk about R&D, we mostly talk about Portugal in terms of teams. When we talk about Singapore, Australia – announced very recently -, it is a logic of going first as commercial teams, in a logic of creating avenues for the company’s growth.
They still have about half of the team in Portugal. Despite the fact that the country attracts many international companies that set up here because of their talent, almost all of them complain that it is not enough to feed the rate of growth they want to print. How do you plan to overcome this?
We continue to bet on Portugal, but that does not mean that we are limited to Portugal only from the point of view of attracting talent. Continue to be a priority, the field of “Tech Dojo”, a program that attracts recent graduates to join Talkdesk – our numbers are practically 100% retention after the six-month internship – and we also have the challenge to get more senior people or people with other experience in the market. The Portuguese market is hot, it’s very competitive from the standpoint of attracting talent, but we’re not just looking at Portugal’s pool.
Our strategy for workplace it is still a chosen being but, most likely, it will have a hybrid strategy, in which people choose whether or not they want to go to our workspaces, which will, of course, be different from the past. We’re not going to force people into the office.
Are you also attracting international talent to settle in Portugal? What were the difficulties? Many companies complain about the bureaucracy, there is no e-Residence.
Working here has a different logic. We have several offices spread across different geographies. The tendency was to recruit from nearby locations, so that they could be in the office, although we have always had some flexibility policy. Our strategy for workplace it is still a chosen being but, most likely, it will have a hybrid strategy, in which people choose whether or not they want to go to our workspaces, which will, of course, be different from the past. We’re not going to force people into the office. This immediately commented – looking only at the Portuguese territory – that we could have with us people who are in Vila Real, Azores and Madeira working, people who returned to their places of origin in order to have that flexibility.
We are not forcing people to come to Portugal to work. We have people working remotely in other countries in Europe, the USA or Canada. We are not going to force people to move between countries, because we have seen that this logic of remote or flexible work has paid off.
The Teleworking Law passed in Parliament requires trips to the office. For a technology company, does this type of measure make sense?
The purpose of the measure – which requires a face-to-face meeting between the manager and the employee – is relevant in a logic of prevention of isolation, of the mental health of employees. A concern we already have. During a pandemic we attribute team building budgets to the managers for use with teams. When we look at the legislation – it has not yet been published -, we are attentive and we will see how to work on this issue. But there are realities that we will have to work on. I’ll give you my example: I report to Laura Buttler, CRH who is in the United States, I probably won’t see her in person for two months. There are challenges here in the way we implement this in associations.
He said that you are working on your post-pandemic working model and that it will likely be hybrid. What hybrid model can emerge from your reflection?
we made some researches and we are always collecting the comments of the collaborators. Speaking of Portugal, people miss a meeting point, which is the beginning of the office. We recommend that, in this hybrid logic, the employee makes his/her choice. We don’t anticipate saying that people have to go two or three times a week, the employee will have to choose.
Is this flexibility already a requirement of employees when recruiting? It stopped being a blessing to be a must have?
Some employees who joined over the last year, one of the things they indicated is our value proposition, being able to work remotely. Clearly, the pandemic context also came to consolidate this must have, at least in the technological area where the market is quite hot and competitive.
Did the flexibility offered by the remote increase the rotation of teams? what are the must have that ensure that employees do not change just because they beckoned with a financial proposal?
We are talking about a competitive market. We felt the loss to increase and this remote issue even allow foreign companies to come to the pool of Portugal. This causes us greater challenges, not only in terms of attraction but also in terms of retaining talent. We talk a lot at Talkdesk about our growth, the need to recruit for growth, but our Mentality there is a lot of need for us to work on retention.
We have tried to listen a lot to our employees, to work with a balance of transparency, to understand what their needs are and to have transparency in communication: there are things we can achieve in the short term and others that we cannot. A first point is for people to feel and know they are being heard. People understand better the challenges we are going through.
We felt the loss to increase and this remote issue even allow foreign companies to come to the pool of Portugal. This causes us greater challenges not only in terms of attraction but also in talent retention.
There are four points that are part of our talent management and retention strategy. We want to work hard on empowering people. The company grew very quickly and has generated many opportunities for growth and internal mobility – something valued by employees. We are also working on this hybrid work experience, as we are going to be able to amplify our values on a daily basis, the feeling of belonging, one of the main drivers in engagement of people. How do we manage, whether in person or at a distance, to connect as people; how we function in this career development; how we work the feelings of pride in the organization’s values and purpose – having a purpose in the company that is in line with your personal values is relevant – and also respect, the individuality of each one, inside and outside the company. O welfare, more empathetic leadership, compensation and flexible benefits, are themes that we have been working on in order to segment our value proposition to different people.
With the greater massification of the remote, there is the receipt that workers can be penalized due to the gap they go to the office. Will that fear actually occur or is there even a danger of discrimination?
At Talkdesk I don’t feel this fear, this is already in the Mentality of people, teams are born with part of the people geographically dispersed, whether in Portugal or abroad. In companies that were born that way, there is a set of practices that support leadership in distance management. If you ask me in general, in Portugal or in companies that are making this transition, it is a very big challenge, particularly from a leadership point of view. This is an issue that we are also concerned about, because when we have our wide spaces again, we have to help the leaders themselves to manage at this level. I’m not just talking about the issue of promotions, but on a day-to-day basis how will I ensure that information reaches those who are far away as well as those who are beside me.