Our team interacted with Mansi Parekh, Content Lead & Head of Operations, CLIQ, a Mumbai and Ahmedabad-based creative, brand-savvy digital marketing community. Here is an excerpt of our discussion.

Can you tell us about CLIQ?

CLIQ is a Mumbai and Ahmedabad-based creative, brand-savvy digital marketing community. Rhea Patel, CEO, and Founder of CLIQ launched this company with one primary focus which is to be able to provide unique, out-of-the-box creative digital solutions that can help brands enhance their marketing efforts. CLIQ works as an extension of a brand's in-house marketing team and helps enhance marketing efforts with its holistic creative pool of solutions.

Our CEO and Founder, Rhea Patel’s main motive to launch this company was to be able to capture a brand's essence and convey it in a compelling, authentic manner which in turn helps build strong relationships with the brand’s target audience. CLIQ provides 360-degree creative digital solutions, some of which include content marketing, social media marketing solutions, influencer marketing, production, animations, web design & SEO, film, styling solutions, performance marketing, etc. As a community CLIQ brings together the best of the creative fraternity with full-time and flexible engagements.

CLIQ offers creative marketing strategies for all businesses, be it small, medium, or large-scale and across all sectors like Retail, FMCG, Fashion, and Services to name a few. Some of the large-scale brands CLIQ has serviced are Adani Realty, Wagh Bakri Tea Group, Lubi Pumps, Aava Water, Rashmi Uday Singh, Umang Hutheesing, and Uncut by Aditi Amin.

COVID-19 pandemic is still here. How do you cope with the increasing uncertainty and its impact on the world of work?

We have been working remotely for the past one and a half years. Uncertainty is inevitable. However, standardizing certain procedures made things simpler and more streamlined. Businesses like us, who invested and believed in ownership of work and in inculcating a strong sense of belonging in teammates helped ensure productivity and efficiency even whilst working remotely.

What role does the HR team play in your organization? Can you share any HR initiatives taken for your employees at CLIQ?

We are a growing firm and our HR team is also growing. The significance of HR in the growth of a business can be truly understood if the right people are placed in the right positions for the profitability of the company. Most decision making and on boarding takes place from within our core team.
Besides the regular time-to-time hiring, we ensure everyone that works with us is made to feel a strong sense of ownership towards the community. We also ensure everyone is fairly paid, rewarded, and appreciated as and when required. Our simplest yet most cherished and appreciated HR initiative is flexibility. Unlike traditional firms, we offer flexible work solutions to our team members so they can maintain a good work-life balance and still be just as dedicated to their work.

Most companies are heading toward a hybrid workplace. Do you think the hybrid mode of work is going to stay for long? What have you done at CLIQ to ensure your company culture will survive?

For us, we have been working remotely for over 1.5 years. We regroup in person from time to time whenever safety permits. This helps retain the team bond. Beyond that, we do a daily morning and end-of-day call with the entire team. This helps everyone stay aligned and keeps our work culture and ethics intact. Times are uncertain and interacting every day is truly key to ensuring smooth operations. And I believe we must all only go back to our workplaces after all our team members (and their family members)are vaccinated and all things go back to normal.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to people management? Do you face it in your company?

We often have issues when new individuals are inducted as everyone comes with a new and unique perspective and work ethic. It is fairly difficult to build new relationships quickly that last a long term. We strive to do that with everyone we induct into our workspace by imbibing our work values into them. Since we also work with a lot of freelance talent we face the same issue there. Trust is something we have only been able to build with time.

Do you think the pandemic offered us an opportunity to create a better and more equitable workplace where everyone can unleash their full human potential?

The pandemic has helped reveal a lot, it helped us truly identify our loyal team members and it helped recognize employers who were fair and supportive. What it also did was made all team members work to their full potential. That however also often led to burnouts if periodic breaks weren’t taken. We have always advised our team at CLIQ to be consistent, hardworking, and diligent rather than being too ambitious in spurts.

Is CLIQ planning to hire more employees? Can you tell us about what you have planned for CLIQ?

At CLIQ, we are growing daily which means that we are hiring more than ever before. However, while we attempt to build our team very carefully, finding like-minded individuals with a strong sense of aesthetics and ethics we are also always open to building a network of resources with unique capabilities. These capabilities help us source the right talent for the right project ensuring we deliver quality for all brand investments.

Tell us how you have evolved as an HR for CLIQ during this pandemic?

We have a rather unique HR set up at CLIQ. Unlike most agencies we hire based on judgments of the various core teams that operate within our organization. They know the potential they would need to see in an individual before they can make them a part of their team and hence are the best to scrutinize potential members.

We have also attempted to humanise things via the conversations that we have on a daily basis via the online workshops we undertake where we invite different personalities to take up sessions. This keeps things light-hearted during these testing times.
The pandemic has changed the priorities of HR leaders globally. How do you see the changing role of HR Post-Pandemic?

It’s become more important to ensure people work the right amount and don’t overdo things. It’s important to be more involved and talk more than we used to ensure our team members are happy and satisfied at work. This requires teams to interact more, even though it may be virtual.

Any suggestions for HR’s venturing into the digital marketing business?

It’s becoming more difficult to fill up full-time positions and the design squad has become more acquainted with freelance work. Brands and agencies need to evolve to accommodate such a shift and welcome it with a unique business format.

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