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Beyond the Paycheck brings you candid conversations with CHROs and top people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact more than just employee bank accounts. From the first paycheck to financial wellness programs, we explore how money shapes identity, equity, purpose, and power at work, and how forward-thinking companies are using pay and perks to transform lives, not just attract talent.
This podcast is sponsored by Aura Finance, the financial wellness platform designed to help employees feel confident, secure, and in control of their money.
See more at aurafinance.io
Beyond the Paycheck - Tarangita Gupta
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INTRO: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to Beyond the Paycheck, where we bring you candid conversations with CHROs and people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact far more than just employee bank accounts. From the first paycheck to financial wellness programs, we explore how money shapes identity, equity, purpose, and power at work, and how forward-thinking companies are using pay and perks to transform lives.
This podcast is presented by Aura Finance, a psychology-based financial wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and financial management. Now, let's get started and jump in with our next guest
Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome Tarangita Gupta, global HR leader at Tenarai Inc. We're so excited to have you today. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background, your current role, and where you're calling in from
Tarangita Gupta: Hi, Kelsey. Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me to this podcast. About me, I'm [00:01:00] based out of Bay Area. I've been here for a decade and plus here. About my background, I think, which I always keep telling people, all I know is about people, and people. I work with multiple geos, different cities have helped me doing my role as a human being and as a professional better. So yeah, I'm calling from Bay Area, and part of Tenarai, leading a lot of HR initiatives globally.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And tell me a little bit about Tenarai. How many folks work at the company and what does the company do?
Tarangita Gupta: So we are a business consulting organization which is focusing on accelerating AI enterprise-level growth for different enterprise. We are very proud the kind of logos we work with. We are spread out of seven to eight geos with 6,000 people plus. Lot of good work what we are doing, and I would really request all of you to go on tenarai.com to see how amazing work we do.
We are very proud to share all our case studies about the kind of work what we are doing. It's a group of [00:02:00] passionate people who want to drive innovation and actually make AI transformation happen at an enterprise-level companies.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. I have a lot of questions on your role at the company, but before we get there, I have my favorite question for you, which is can you tell me a little bit about your first job and if you remember what you spent your first paycheck on?
Tarangita Gupta: Perfect. I'm not gonna date myself and tell you which year, but yes, the first job is always special for everybody. This will tell you a little bit more about myself. So I am born, brought up in a very small village, which had very conservative thoughts about when a girl child is born, so to speak, right?
Again, as I'm saying, these are decades ago. My first job was very important to me because I was the first woman in my family who was working, studying, or even knew how to speak in English. So I did work at a place where I was a student counselor or a marketing coordinator who had to talk about the educational offering services and [00:03:00] people to join at that education institute. My first paycheck was supposed to be 6,000 rupees. Mind you, it was what? In today's context, $60? And probably I did so well in the first month itself, they gave me a 9,000 rupees check, and I was like, "Okay, it, was it a mistake?" But having said that, I'm so happy, and I was very proud of that, and I gave that check to my dad because he believed in me.
We always discussed about this, that he used to say that, or he still says that, "First deserve and then desire." So I worked hard for it, and I desired to be working professional, and I thought I owed that check to him.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Such a beautiful story, and I imagine he deeply appreciated the kindness that you shared. But it goes both ways. It sounds like he gave a lot to you and wanted to return that favor. Can you tell me a little bit about how you think your earliest money memories [00:04:00] or experience in the workforce has shaped how you think about supporting your people and make decisions in terms of pay, benefits, and beyond?
Tarangita Gupta: I think HR as a role has a lot of accountability and responsibility. I'll put it like this, any role has to do, we need to do it right. But as an HR, there's a lot what you do not do directly. You are also never directly generating the revenue. You're not directly responsible for the IT requests or IT things.
You're also never directly responsible for the financial reports, right? But you're dealing with people, you are dealing with benefits which are associated for people and their family. You are also responsible for doing right by the organization, right? What is right. You're also always looking into what is the right by the compliance and regulations. So that's where I say the HR always play that balanced role in terms of what money you have. It's always finite. What are the [00:05:00] best benefits you can give it to your employees, and how do you make yourself as the best employer choice? So I try to keep these three things in mind: compliance, employees, organization, and then come up with a solution. And at the same time, I'm very big on, and this is I've learned from my mentors and my managers, that always seek feedback. One can never be perfect, right? It's an evolving world. Once you anytime execute a initiative you strategize something, you have executed it, seek feedback after one month, after three, two months or three months, whenever. Get that genuine feedback and then try to improvise it in the next time you are trying to come up with any of the program initiatives or benefits. So that has helped
Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me a little bit about those programs and initiatives specifically? We're seeing a lot of companies right now do a lot of interesting work investing in whether it's mental health, physical [00:06:00] health, financial health. I'd be super curious, what initiative are you particularly excited about and proud about that you'd be willing to share and elaborate on?
Tarangita Gupta: Absolutely. There are multiple. I think there are multiple. I've been with Tenarai for more than six years, and I really enjoy my work here because at the core of it we truly care for the people here. We truly care for not that we don't mean business but the underlying current of the DNA is caring and taking care of our employees. One of the initiative which I started three years ago, and it might just sound very simple, but I have received pretty good feedback about it. You do have benefits. Every organization has medical, dental, EAP, different kind of benefits, 401(k).. It would be surprising for you that 60 or 70-plus percentage of the employees or the leaders don't even know how to avail those benefits in totality, right?
There is a preventive care everybody knows, but beyond that, what all facilities, what are [00:07:00] benefits you have. So we run these monthly benefit session for our employees, it's open, wherein we invite the vendor month on month. So we have a calendarized, like sometimes it could be about 401(k), sometimes it could be about EAP, sometimes it could be about health equity, depending on what. Wherein employees get to know what are our end-to-end benefits what we are offering, and at the same time, they can ask questions from the vendor, which also helps us that next year when we have new benefits, what something more we can add. So for example, there was one year where people asked lot about the pet insurance, and we added that. There's another year people added, asked about something else about insurance in terms of accidental or personal or covering their family members. So we added that. So it may sound simple, but I feel communicate, and communicate so people to understand and avail all the benefits. The other [00:08:00] thing we did was, last to last year was with... In fact, this is after COVID, two years after COVID or closer to the COVID time. We did realize a lot of employees and leaders were going through uncertainties and everybody was dealing with a lot. So we enrolled Headspace for our workforce, and we gave them licenses free of cost. And we did run certain campaigns where we created groups, communication channels where people do share their favorite podcast, their favorite meditation technique. So all those things we've been doing, but it's by the people and for the people, and how do we encourage each, each other to have a better living?
Kelsey Willock Jones: So some of the programs you've described, especially in perhaps even the mental health case, in some senses can be more challenging to get across the finish line because maybe the case for [00:09:00] ROI isn't, showing up as obviously in the spreadsheet. How do you make that case? It sounds like you do a lot of listening to your employees, so tell me a little bit more about that process and what it looks like.
Tarangita Gupta: So you, the moment you bring in ROI, I think of finance team and the P&Ls and everything. You're right. beginning, HR's job is a very unique job where you have to balance it out, and not everything will translate into the ROI. Everything will not translate into the sales numbers or the revenue. You have to accept that there is no ROI directly you will get except the feedback mechanism, right? The NPS scores or the employee experience feedback survey. I have come to a point where, and I do not know whether the larger audience would agree with that or not, but not necessarily everything needs to have a KPI. There are few things you do in life or there are few things you do in the organization based on the data or based on what you are receiving from the [00:10:00] employees in the conversations, in the focus group, in the larger forum. You do it because that helps them. But not necessarily that will translate into the ROI.
It does, but these things would not give you immediately within three months. It will give you over a period of time. You will see better retention, you will see higher productivity, better wellbeing scores, so on and so forth.
Kelsey Willock Jones: I love that because it all still ties to the people, right? And listening to them and recognizing that there is significant value in that. And I imagine that working with teams that might not breathe people day in and day out, that can be a challenge. But it's a great way to show that progress that they might be seeking through data and metrics and NPS scores and all the things.
But at the end of the day, it's, are the people saying they get value out of it? And if they are, there is value to that. And if you expect more, you might not be happy.
Tarangita Gupta: That's true. You're dealing with [00:11:00] emotions and of course, in a-- it's a one work environment and not everything im-immediately translate into an ROI. But in
the larger scheme of things, you would see it does translate into business productivity and the growth of the organization.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me a little bit about a benefits strategy or experiment that you ran that didn't go the way you expected and what you learned from it?
Tarangita Gupta: We tried to run yoga. That was one of the benefit, and again right? It's difficult now. They-- we have hybrid culture and hybrid work environment, and nobody wants to come to the office. And also we are spread across, right? In US itself, we are in so many multiple cities, it's very difficult to get everybody into the office. So we thought we should do something, and one of the benefit we thought was yoga. I don't think so. We called it as Yoga Labs or something. This is again three, four year, four years ago, I would say. Chair yoga, laughing yoga, different kind of [00:12:00] yogas and expertise. Laughing yoga session was a hit because we called an expert person, and he did give lot of good tips to us. But that didn't go well in the sense that we didn't have a lot of adoption and Which is okay. But what we did learn was that it's okay. That's where I was telling you the ROI, listening to people, get a feedback proactively, and then drive initiatives. So I don't know if I have answered to your question or you were
Kelsey Willock Jones: No, that's actually the perfect one. I have not heard of laughing yoga, so I always learn new things every time I interview folks.
Tarangita Gupta: That's not
Kelsey Willock Jones: I imagine it was a valuable lesson and what people want and learning what they don't want is equally as important information.
Can you tell me a little bit about how important financial health for employees is to the organization and why?
Tarangita Gupta: When you talk about financial health, their own financial health is what I'm thinking about, what you mean?
Kelsey Willock Jones: Correct. Yes, exactly.
Tarangita Gupta: I think it's important for everybody, but I also [00:13:00] feel it's to each their own, right? There are people who are very happy to invest all of their money or a large portion of their money in their 401s and in the S&P 500. That is an area we do not explore much. That's an area as a benefit except our standard 401(k), we do not.
We do have running sessions, as we said, once in a year, twice in a year, where we call strategic financial advisors who come and do share what are the best practices. But it's a very personal area, I still think. And it's an area where I don't think so we have explored much. But again, as I said, we do take a lot of feedback, and our employees are very open. There's an open-door policy, and if we do hear from them, we definitely will partner with somebody to take this forward.
Kelsey Willock Jones: In this kind of AI-forward world, we're obviously post-COVID, what are some of the things that you're hearing from employees that you'd be willing to [00:14:00] share?
Tarangita Gupta: I think people are warming up very well. I don't think so now anybody's in the denial. Till last year, I think people-- there were some people who were denial, there were some people who were in that rigid mode that, "I don't need to learn it," or there were some people who were very anxious about it that, "Oh, it's gonna take away my job." I do see that at least that part has gone. People have accepted it that AI is important. People have accepted that AI needs to be used in their personal and professional or financial, all kind of jobs, right? Whether it's the travel tool, whether it is their own CPA to get more tips before they go to CPA. From an organization-wise, as Tenarai also, we are investing a lot in terms of personalized AI coaches, right? Giving tools to our employees, to our sales, to our different teams to have their own AI personalized coach. We are creating personalized AI learning platforms for people, customized training paths for employees. our rewards and [00:15:00] recognition, our performance management, our goal objective, most of it is around the AI transformation and how are we developing ourself around AI, right? We also believe if this is the way forward and AI is moving at a speed of AI, which is very hard to catch up. But yeah, there is a lot of focus and a push on that.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Double-clicking into that, we're seeing innovation just skyrocket at such a pace that has been, phenomenal to watch, even in the Bay Area.
Tarangita Gupta: Mhm.
Kelsey Willock Jones: How are you staying current on all of this new technology and innovation? Are there specific conferences that you attend, peer networks you've been a part of, startup communities that you've joined?
Tarangita Gupta: Yeah, at my personal level, and I can't speak for the employee level, but I know a lot of employees are doing a lot. At my personal level every weekend one is I divide my own personal learning in three parts, right? The 70% is what I learn from network conferences, what I [00:16:00] see. The 20% part I would tell my managers and my leaders and the people whom I look up to, what they have to teach me. And definitely the 10% is some certification what you do, because really you don't get to learn so much, at least in my, I spend a lot of time in watching some of the YouTube, our own internal learning platform. Like recently I learned, okay, what is the difference between API and MCPs, right? I've been working with some AI vendors and building, okay, what are the different feature building means? How do you connect? I do talk with different people in the network. In Bay Area, I have a lot of small founder-led conferences, meetups, so I do join and try to understand how does it help in employee engagement, experience, GTM enablement, so on and so forth. I do seek a lot of feedback from them. We have fantastic AI leaders in our company. What are they doing for the client? What are they doing internally? How does it associate, right? Asking a lot of questions and curiosity. And 10% is what I would say certification. I still have to [00:17:00] yet to complete some certification I do start. I think just-- and the news, right? The more you read about what Anthropic is bringing out, what is your five-layer cake thing by Jensen. There's a lot to learn. There's a lot of material out there. I think stay curious, stay hungry, and have the confidence and courage that you can make the difference in the AI world.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And my last question for you is, what is a change that you see coming within the world of compensation, benefits, or even just HR in general that you don't think most leaders are ready for?
Tarangita Gupta: I think and I hope it's going to be a beautiful mix of data and sentiments, right? AI is doing a lot. Like it could read your emails, it could read about everything what you may have missed what happens is, as a human, you will only remember what has happened to you in the last three months, and that's how you sometimes come up with, with, "Okay, this is the rating, and this is the performance, and this is the bonuses," with AI, if you stitch everything into a system and [00:18:00] it's an integrated platform, right? Which talks about the rewards you got, the client appreciations you got, the projects you did, the certification you did, what is the initiatives you drove, what are the new ideas you got in. It will stitch in everything together. So you don't have to trust your memory. Everything will be at your fingertip. You can use Claude and you can have co-work reports generated on a weekly basis based on whatever the priorities and the rubrics you need to put in. So that's gonna be interesting that it will be a mix of data, it'll be mix of sentiments and all of it together.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Now I'm very curious what it's gonna do to me cognitively, but I definitely I like knowing that if I don't remember something that happened during a meeting or a conversation, that there's that peace of mind that we have the technology now to help us go back in time and revisit it. Thank you so much, Tarangita, for your time and your candor.
It was a joy speaking with you. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond this [00:19:00] conversation?
Tarangita Gupta: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best way and I'm, I try to be as active as possible, but I'm absolutely happy to collaborate and talk to more people about this. There is a lot to learn and lot to lean in, so
I'm somebody who wants to learn from everybody.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Wonderful. Thank you, and have a wonderful rest of your week.
Tarangita Gupta: Thank you, Kelsey. Appreciate it.