Blog 3: Customer Interviews

What we thought the problem was?

We thought that the problem with human resources leaders was that they couldn't tell how stressed out their employees were

We thought that they faced challenges with effectively managing their employees' workload due to them not knowing how stressed they really were

We thought that the company culture was impacted by how stressed out and overworked the employees felt

We thought that the company's high turnover rate was related to employees leaving due to how overworked and outburned they felt.

We thought that the employee's productivity was based on how overworked and stressed out they felt. (Less stress = More productivity)

Blog 3: Customer Interviews

Professionals we interviewed

Hannah Lee - Amazon Human Resources Manager

Ms. Lee is a graduate of the Mays Business School at The Texas A&M University, where she studied Business Administration with a focus on Human Resource Management.
Hannah is currently a Human Resources Manager for the E-Commerce Giant and Big 5 IT company, Amazon. She supervises and coordinates employee engagement and satisfaction, which plays a direct role in productivity.

Erfan Bhuiyan - Capgemini Consultant

Mr. Bhuiyan is an alumni of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship & the C.T Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, where he studied Business Administration with a focus on Management Information Systems and Entrepreneurship.
Erfan is currently a Consultant for one of the top consulting firms in the world, Capgemini. He works on versatile cases with a multitude of companies in various industries. Capgemini is consistently awarded high praise for their internal HR and HR solutions they provide for companies.

What we learned from the interviews

Interview with Hannah

Two types of HR -
- General HR - Time(Hours), Payroll, Benefits, Compensation
- Management HR - Attendance, employee quality, employee productivity, feedback reports
Our technology would be most suitable to be utilized in the Management HR sector
Amazon currently invests in the mental health of their employees through several programs (EAP, benefits, etc.)
Tracked on rates, productivity, and quality
While many of these programs and services are beneficial to the wellness of employees, they are more qualitative and do not have much data to back up claims (Employee Surveys, questionnaires, etc.)
HR managers would be able to utilize data in reports for executives and create stronger arguments for new initiatives or programs.
For Amazon, their employees are their first customer
- Satisfy employees and you will satisfy your customer
With Amazon being such a fast-paced company, stress management is a big sector in their training
Operations are laid out at a regional level rather than on site
Hannah believes that our tool is one that Amazon would be interested in

Link to Full Interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s7Gq5wTv6Mz6X1o6Ks2BaAtdNhZ2rKklSmROAb2Mpus/edit

Interview with Erfan

Capgemini is a consultant company they are focused on people and having the best consultants that are able to communicate
- Capgemini’s people are their product
People are these HR-focused/Consulting companies biggest assets
Initiatives like wellness Wednesdays on a seminar like budgeting, life, to help with outside life
ERG employee resource groups are like clubs that have outings and events
No real way to see if anyone is stressed out
Only people that visually witness stress levels are the people that are close to working environment.
Track performance by Value Assessment, Assessment Appraisal
- VA: People manager (Person above you) - Someone that doesn’t relate to your work to value your work and what you’re doing and see how you are doing great, good, need improvement
- AA - Writes down a bunch of objectives (Goals that you set out for yourself and then give them to a person above you to grade you on the objectives that you want to achieve
- Timesheets - Tracking on how much you are working billing your hours to your bench or project
- Utilization rate - How many times you have been used
- Send objectives to a mentor or guide and they keep track
- Review and write down comments
- Both occur every Quarter
Capgemini emphasizes work-life balance and in turn makes for employees whom are more happy and calm, relaxed
Our technology & product to have some type of direct value that is able to make a change for them
Sell information of Data to these companies so that they can gauge employee productivity
Help a company see what parts of their company are stressed out the most and where there might be problems from a people perspective

Link to Full Interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HwWCgH_95-f4XWOOPk8NQHi_d_d8lPbrBpxR32Mq0r8/edit