At a time when families in Assam are dealing with the loss of loved ones, homes and livelihoods, Saraf Furniture has pledged 500 jobs for people impacted by the floods. Times Now Digital speaks to Raghunandan Saraf, Founder and CEO of Saraf Furniture. Given below is a short excerpt of the full interaction. Q. Can you help our viewers understand the job roles that Saraf Furniture is then offering at the moment to all those impacted and how many positions have been filled so far? A. The job roles will be varying from operations to logistics to backend operations as well and to different front end customer facing units as well. So we've got about basically five areas of jobs that we will be filling with the people from Assam, and we have just started working on it. We've just started this idea and agenda and we are setting up teams to reach out and to formalise and to actually put this into action. So as of now, we haven't filled any role yet because this is the very beginning of this initiative, but we are hoping to fill at least 150 roles by next week. This is what we are planning to do. And the major areas would be operations and logistics and the back-end teams. Q How does your firm aim to ensure job security and stability as well as long-term opportunities for all these people? A. Luckily, in the past 20 years of this brand's existence, our attrition rate has been just next to negligible. We just had only 1% attrition rate. So that somehow means that people who are joining us do actually find job security here in terms of the culture that you're offering and in terms of the growth that the brand is offering. And of course, all the things required to make sure that the person is taken care of in terms of medical, in terms of health, in terms of family relocation. We provide all sort of assistance with that. Q. Your message to all other corporate leaders who may want to step in and support those affected? A. So I would go ahead and assume that everybody, all other corporate leaders are doing equally for the community and society, and if not more or less. But the only message that I could possibly give is to extend the scope of CSR activities because I think right now maybe CSR has been limited to a few types of activities or actionable things that accounts for CSR, but then everything that one does as a business which helps the community is CSR. So extending the scope of CSR would be my message. Q. I want to ask you that when your team and you first brainstormed about this, what led you to pledge the 500 number, what led you to say that, okay, now we're going to start doing this from next week, as you said, what really was the reason that drove all of this and put this plan in place? A. So we have been discussing about this hiring since about a month now, and during the meeting, one of the team members came with the idea that since we are anyway, we're to do it. Let's do it from Assam, and since the idea was so great we decided that we should just do it and, this is the right time. We thought to speed up things and starting from next week itself. So the idea came from the team member himself who assisted Assam in the entire hiring, and then we thought let's do this as as possible and let's not wait for things to get delayed. Q. What are the learnings that you've had since you've been trying to recruit these people, whether it's in terms of identity, verification processes, are there any challenges that you all have faced then while trying to do this? A. So the challenges that we assume to be facing is of course, to match the person's profile with the job profile. That is one challenge that we might face because it's a substantial number and we are hoping that we should be able to match the job profile with the person's profile. In terms of reaching out to them and helping them relocate also, that is also one of the challenges. Sakshi Bajaj is a seasoned Associate Editor with over 15 years of experience in broadcast journalism. She has anchored, scripted, produced shows and w... View More