Excerpts from an Interview with
Kalana Hewamallika,
Managing Director, Interpharm Pvt. Ltd
Q: How do you handle your workforce?
I was inspired to start from scratch by my dad and I had never had the opportunity to work for my father’s company until I gained the required experience. Building your career from the bottom gives you a better understanding of each level of the business hierarchy. You learn to respect every employee in your company regardless of your designation. It enables you to work with them with more sense and understanding. It’s clear that most of the employees in the corporate sector work for salaries. If we want to change that system, as directors, we should make sure to address them in the right way, treat them as part of the company’s success and much more. Whenever I make decisions in my company, I also take the viewpoints of others, with respect.
Q: We have seen certain companies run by the book, while some companies take more practical approaches. How do you think both these approaches should be balanced?
Whether work by the book or should we take more practical approaches depends on various factors such as country, city, the product we are developing, working culture, etc. Sometimes the country wouldn’t have a suitable backdrop to apply a PhD student’s knowledge since it’s too complex for them to understand. In particular situations, a more practical employee who better understands the community would perform much better. I would say it’s the directors’ responsibility to figure out which team would be ideal for a specific situation.
Usually, in interviews, recruiters tend to look for academic qualifications such as bachelor’s, A-Levels, science background, etc. When I was launching certain consumer products, I recruited employees who didn’t possess high academic qualifications. Most of these candidates hadn’t got the opportunity to study because their families couldn’t afford or showed less encouragement towards higher studies. Most often, these candidates /23 got rejected at interviews. But once I recruited them, they were grateful to the company and sometimes, I have seen them produce more results in the field than an educated employee. We should never confuse theoretical knowledge with practicality. It’s good to have a better theoretical understanding, but most importantly, we should apply that knowledge practically in our working environment.
(Excerpts from an interview with SiyathaTV. Transcript was done by Dilshara Hettiarachchige.)
