Economic Times article of April 2007

Summary of article are –
A. Key Findings:
1. Engagement Up - staff engagement rising to 82% in 2007.
2. Career growth critical – career opportunities remain the biggest driver for employment.
3. Leaders hold the key – quality of leadership has the biggest impact on co’s performance.
4. Soft skills important – esp. in customer focused sectors.
5. Talent Shortage – and attrition rate are on the rise.

B. Why do best employers score over others?
1. Effective & committed leaders: leaders who know to walk the talk, who consistently demonstrate the organization’s values in all behaviors and action.
2. Astute Management of Talent: CEO’s make it a point to groom leaders within the organization. That way co’s have a reservoir of talent, promote from within.
3. Spotting Talent: The best cos have elaborate and robust performance & competency mapping systems. Satyam has developed a Leadership Capability Model i.e. used for hiring, performance management and succession planning for leaders.
4. Setting High Goals: Best cos are serious about goal setting. They reward risk taking rather than a conservative approach. They know how to raise the bar on performances.
5. Coaching for Performance: Best cos have a cadre of managers who are good at performance coaching.
6. Strong Review and Reward systems: Best cos drive performance differently through variable pay plans linked to performance (100%).
7. Building Skills for the future: Best cos say they have managers that provide clear direction on skills required for their future success in the organization.
8. Building growth into every job: Best cos have the tools and training to grow in their current job.

C. Key points made by Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of AV Birla group, the best employer.
1. We are allowing employees to have more control over their careers.
2. We are focusing on the quality of life of our manager’s esp. those who live in townships like Nagda, Chitrakoot.
3. I believe in people power, empowering them within a defined framework.
4. Biggest challenge is to attract and retain talent.

D. What is it that gives Indian employers an edge?
1. Delayered DNA: MNC’s are driven by policies & practices formulated in distant headquarters with layered bureaucratic procedures. Indian cos HR policies are not tweaked for India but designed from scratch.
2. Contextual Edge: Born here Indian firms have a better understanding of pulls & pressures, emotional needs & social underpinnings of executives.
3. Indian MNC’s: earlier MNC’s offered global postings as a carrot. Indian cos with expansion plans & M & A deals have become great magnets to retain talent.
4. Humility: Come to think of it engaging employees is all about managing egos and emotions as well. Despite their new found growth Indian cos have kept the humility intact.

E. Key points made by B Ramalinga Raju, Chairman Satyam Computers, 2nd best employer.
1. We have created an organization structure that will create true entrepreneurs.
2. We believe that today’s structures needs to be interdependent rather than monoliths.
3. It is not possible to know every employee although I would like to know each of the 40,000 employees by name.
4. As the business grew larger realized the need to increase the number of leaders from 30 to 1,500 by giving managers independent businesses to run.
5. Every activity was split into a business unit and then benchmarked with the best in that business for e.g. recruitment was made into a business unit and benchmarked against the best players in that domain.
6. To make sure that business and corporate objectives are in sync Satyam evolved a framework which measured all business units on a common set of criteria.
7. Spends about 10% of its payroll expenses on learning & development.

F. Small Rewards & Incentives keep the spirits high: J W Marriott, 3RD best.
1. Reward coupons are kept by the head of HR to give employees who show the extra bit of commitment to excellence during the day.
2. Employees are asked to nominate a colleague who has gone beyond his call of duty. On the 25th of every month winners are declared such as leader of the month and so on.
3. There is a home drop facility for all women after 7pm and those who are pregnant.

G. How do you bring voice of salespersons in the Board room – Eureka Forbes, 4th best?
1. There was a need to bring the voice of the star performers, Eurochamps into the board room. So Eurosenate was launched. Objective is to allow Eurochamps to bring issues that are relevant to strategic development of the organization.
2. Through an election 14 representatives were chosen from 56 members to form the Senate. Each candidate prepared an election manifesto (meaning business goals), solicited votes through various channels.
3. Employees can now see their opinions reflected through corporate decisions.

H. Freedom with accountability at Cisco, best co no 5. 
1. The company does not track people being at work, attendance, nos of hours. However, work pressure is intense. Weekly targets are given and those who do not meet their targets could loose their job.
2. It provides employees with a lot of resources and freedom to help achieve targets.
3. We are no longer running an Indian business from India but running a global business from India.

I. Learning to get Young at Godrej Products, best co no 6.  
1. Made a conscious decision to lower the average employee’s age to 34.
2. The co has a Young Executive Board that reports to the Chairman. This gives exposure to young employees during a 2 year stint, grooms leaders.
3. Employee’s gets freedom and experimentation is rewarded.
4. Built two teams, red & blue that presented different views on a 3 year strategic plan for any particular business.

J. Showering care in Gallons Agilent Tech, best co no 7.  
1. Care for their employees, always tries to anticipate employee needs and how to make working more comfortable for them.
2. CEO pays great attention to fitness.
3. New employees are made to feel welcome. My nameplate was there and so was my email id. I felt welcome.

K. BPO with a banking edge Scope International best co no 8.  
1. Getting the gender ratio right has helped in man management.
2. 2 way talent movement between BPO and bank i.e. Standard Chartered has resulted in common talent for the group.
3. Transparency and scope of leadership has made Scope a better place to work.
4. There is a demand for a higher incremental learning opportunity considering it is a BPO.

L. Chasing Growth with Care TCS best co no 9.
1. The world of all the 90 group Tata companies is available on the group Intranet.
2. To keep the giant function smoothly it has put Ultimatix in place. Pulse (an employee satisfaction survey), PEEP (one to one discussion with management), Icalms (career planning and learning).
3. Recognition of good work is very high.

M. Change job, not the company, Kotak Mahindra bank, best co no 10.
1. Institutionalize HR practices that bank followed when they were smaller.
2. Internal job posting is an important HR practice, now proposed to be done online.
3. Elaborate reward & recognition system for its sales team which lays down clear standards of performance that puts sales executives into 4 categories: qualifiers, challengers, achievers and high fliers and maps out their career path.
4. Employee appreciation system on the intranet so when an employee achieves something their names are displayed on the intranet.

N. What makes a Winner?   
1. As business environment change & corporate strategies are tweaked best employers need to reinvent their people practices and constantly realign/reevaluate them to maintain relevance.
2. Earlier best employers like TCS, Infosys, P & G did something unique, innovative at each point of time hence they were best employers then.
3. Key driver to employee engagement has consistently been ‘career opportunities’. It tops the key drivers list because it represents deeper, long term planning in contrast to many drivers like pay, environment which are more her and now.
4. Today global mobility is longer a differentiator.
5. Today career opportunity is all about multiple careers within a single organization. Its all about variety, flexibility and value add.
6. Today change in the names of best employer is largely dependant on the ability of the organization to keep pace with changing employee expectations.
7. In order to retain their relevance, employers have to be willing to listen and act upon feedback, create a more open work environment, be more accepting to all kinds of diversity, and enable their employees to realize their potential.

O. Looking beyond Numbers    
1. Best employees are using corporate social responsibility to give back to the society in the process offering another platform to engage with their employees.
2. One of the Dr Reddy’s core values is harmony and social responsibility.
3. Satyam, 10% of the organization will devote 10% of its time in volunteering for the co’s social responsibility.
4. CSR could involve supporting schools, working with NGO’s, adopting villages, organizing healthcare camps.
5. Satyam worked on toning up emergency response system in Andhra Pradesh since it is affected by cyclones.
6. Agilent helped a village school with computer lab and school equipment.
7. Examples are many, good employers always give back to society in one way or another.

P. Living with Attrition
1. Even best employers have to deal with it. Just that they know how to work around it.
2. Change & Flexibility: Getting bored will happen quick & easy. Employees want to have option of multiple employment contracts – full time jobs, consultancy, project based jobs to retainer ships. Job rotation to be institutionalized.
3. Dreams Unlimited: A firm’s training and growth potential will be critical judging factors for jobseekers.
4. Democratic Workplace: Cos can no longer be very headquarter driven. They have multiple nodal structures with decentralized command structures.
5. Life beyond work: Caring companies need to connect with their staff beyond work and be able to engage with them better. Satyam Idol a mega show organized by the IT major encourages people to show and reinforce their talent. For children they have a 3 day residential program like Global Racing Star where 13-18 year olds are groomed in presentation, behavioral and attitudinal skills.

Published in the NHRD Newsletter