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The company places employees at the centre of what it does, which is reflected in the multiple employee-friendly policies
People obsession is the mission and happy hearts is the primary people goal of 24[7].ai. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to understand consumer intent, [24]7.ai’s technology helps companies create a personalised, predictive and effortless customer experience across all channels.
The company places employees at the centre of what it does, which is reflected in the multiple employee-friendly policies that ensure a transparent, celebratory, balanced, supportive and safe work culture. The organisation invests in resources to develop its employees and build a culture of innovation and ownership. It believes in the values of respect, transparency, teamwork, ownership and results that are the foundation stone and the building blocks of trust. The company recognises the efforts and the contribution of its employees through multiple spots and structured appreciation avenues.
Best Practices
Radio [24]7.ai launch: During Covid, 24]7.ai launched Radio [24]7.ai channel, an hour dedicated to music, which is anchored by their in house RJ every fortnight. The RJ decides on the theme for the fortnight and plays theme-based music as well as entertain audience requests. This is combined with a dialogue with guests who vary from internal leaders to young employee couples and occasionally external celebrities too. This radio channel is now a household name and all employees from senior leaders to families look forward to it as a welcome break from work stress with many logging into this video event from around the world. Radio [24]7.ai is an initiative that has brought all its employees together. Everyone enjoys this informal chat combined with great music of their choice and an opportunity to exchange notes on anything but work.
Customer Experience Ecosystem (CEE): The CEE is a quarterly initiative where all employees are encouraged to identify problem statements and challenges at work that impact external or internal customers. They bring in innovative ideas and projects that will result in better customer impact, either financial or experiential through improved process efficiencies and effectiveness. Projects are encouraged to be taken up by individual employees or functions to pick up challenges at work and push themselves to excel and also bring in enhanced process changes. Each quarter, the best three projects are awarded based on impact assessment, including actual or potential.
Employee Testimonials
“[24]7.ai is a firm believer in the notion that happier employees are more productive and creative. Therefore, [24]7.ai strives to create an environment where employees are free to express their creativity, whether by offering new solutions for the same problems or simply in the way they work.”
EGO OUT OF THE DOOR
The company’s culture is based on teamwork; Admiral Solutions believes in a collaborative approach and the culture of appreciation.
Admiral Solutions believes in the ‘Happy Employees Happy Customers’ ideology where if people enjoy doing what they like, a company can always expect better results. The employees including the senior leadership consider Admiral Solutions as a “big family and utmost care is taken when it comes to employees as family members”.
The company’s culture has always been based on teamwork and ‘the ego out of the door’ within the company. It believes in a collaborative approach and a culture of appreciation.
The primary business operation of Admiral Solutions is to offer customer services support to the Admiral Group UK car and household insurance policyholders within the general insurance domain. The customer service operations kick-started with 16 employees and are now 610+ employees, with a promise to steady growth soon. Admiral Solutions is the India branch office and an extended arm of the parent organisation, Admiral Group Plc. headquartered in Cardiff, United Kingdom.
Admiral Group is listed on London Stock Exchange and also is a part of the FTSE 100 index, with a market capitalisation of £7+ billion with a workforce of 9500+ employees, having its global presence across nine countries including the UK, Spain, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Mexico, Turkey, and India, with 5.46 million customers globally.
Best Practices
Thoughtful Tuesdays: Every Tuesday, the company publishes one inspiring story for staff members so that they feel motivated. The story does have a moral or a conclusion at the end that helps staff to adopt a positive attitude in life that will further help them to keep their morale high.
Buy A Book Scheme: Following in the footsteps of the Admiral Group, Admiral Solutions extended this privilege of funding the purchase of books to its employees, who can order a maximum of two books per month. These are self-help books to support individuals’ development and make them better with respect to their job responsibilities.
Employee Testimonials
“Admiral cares about its customers and employees. We make sure we are aware of what our customer is feeling and seek for improvement whenever required.”
“Admiral goes an extra mile in making sure that the employees get something out of the company’s profits, which is really great.
TO INNOVATE CONTINUOUSLY
Adobe has thoughtful benefits and policies for its employees. The company rewards employees consistently, enhancing customer experience and staying true to its founding values.
aAdobe is considered among the global leaders in digital media and digital marketing solutions. Adobe India has the best culture and balance of business and engineering. Employees get to work on cutting-edge technology and have all the tools and facilities provided to do so. Adobe offers one of the best benefits with special attention to the education and wellness of its employees.
Adobe also supports diversity at the workplace by sponsoring all-women events, training and mentoring women employees. Adobe has extremely thoughtful benefits and policies for its employees and most employees are proud of being associated with a great team and brand like Adobe. It encourages all employees to innovate continuously and rewards them consistently thus enhancing customer experience and staying true to its founding values.
Best Practices
Employee Advocacy Program (Everyone is a Recruiter): The Employee Advocacy Program at Adobe equips employees to tell their Adobe story, get active on social media, regularly use their products, and get involved in corporate social impact efforts. Employee ambassadors, who together form Team Adobe, are enabled with opportunities to grow their presence online and offline, share the latest Adobe plus industry news and set themselves apart as thought leaders, and attract top talent for Adobe.
Ground Sensing Reports: A ground sensing report is published every month to share/channelize the ongoing inputs and feedback received in the form of queries from the employees with the respective stakeholders to take corrective measures to resolve the grievances/issues. There is a regular follow-up on the issues until they are resolved. Through this process, they are continuously airing employee issues to enhance employee experience. It is an insightful tool for process improvement and changes in policy or procedures. Adobe takes People Resources decisions on data analytics using a new ERC tool Service Now (SNow). The organisation is supported by a strong technology framework that helps capture data for all employee queries and grievances. This intelligent data analytics has enabled them to get real-time feedback for various People Resources initiatives, measure metrics, and proactively build channels to address employee grievances.
Employee Testimonials
“This company treats its employees as its assets instead of operational expense. That’s something every employee cherishes and gets to see every day in their work schedule. Be it events, facilities, awards, recognitions, morale, etc, we employees feel very valued here and this has been especially highlighted during the pandemic.”
“The best thing in this organisation is that employees are made to feel at home in the workplace. HR Policies for employee satisfaction are extremely helpful and are religiously followed throughout the company’s worldwide offices. The higher management is friendly and reachable and the organisation has a beautiful environment to work in. This is my first company and I feel proud to be working here.”
PROGRAMS WITH A PURPOSE
At ADP, the process of how a method is perceived and how it performs is given importance; execution and implementation are the core elements for any new practice launch.
aDP is a global provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions that unite HR, payroll, talent, time, tax and benefits administration, and a leader in business outsourcing services, analytics and compliance expertise. Its experience, deep insights, and cutting-edge technology have transformed human resources from a back-office administrative function to a strategic business advantage.
ADP offers programs with a purpose behind them for all employees. How well a method is perceived and how it performs is given importance. Execution and implementation are the core elements for any new practice launch. The company has a respectful work ethic.
Best Practices
ADP Pariksha: ADP Pariksha is a cloud-based solution for the campus and graduate hiring program. This tool is a one-point solution for administering the test, the test results, gathering feedback from candidates on the overall experience of the test and communicating with the candidates on interview timelines followed by the offer itself. The tool has the capability to accommodate 10,000 candidates to take the test at once without sending the same question to any of them. This tool is used to communicate the test results, interview slots, and results effectively to the participants or students via SMS to gain process excellence.
Business Resource Groups: The idea of Business Resource Groups (BRGs) is to reinvent the associate practices and programs to keep them relevant and benchmarked with the market’s best practices. There are multiple BRGs within the company. These are voluntary, company-sponsored networks of associates with common interests and experiences. Their suggestions are incorporated into the decision-making process. Each BRG is responsible for promoting the value of diversity and cultural awareness, delivering professional development programs, identifying target market business opportunities, supporting talent acquisition initiatives, and participating in community outreach activities.
Employee Testimonials
“Employees here are treated as the most important resource and the way the management supports the employees is awesome which encourages them to not only manage their professional work life but also their personal life.”
“ADP has a great work culture and it has taken care of its employees, clients and the overall business. ADP is transforming into a technology leader in the HCM domain backed up by great service. Despite hard times like the Covid pandemic, ADP leadership has shown great determination and grit in doing what is very much needed for its employees, clients and also ensured that the business is smooth sailing.”
CREATING GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
Aegis Customer Support Services has taken measures to ensure a seamless transition into a different work model for a huge population of employees.
Startek is a global provider of IT-enabled business process outsourcing solutions. The company has over 42,000 outsourcing experts across 49 delivery campuses in 13 countries worldwide that are committed to delivering seamless and transformative customer experience for clients. Startek and Aegis, a portfolio company of Capital Square Partners (CSP), are both providers of outsourcing and technology services merged to create a combined entity, Startek in 2018. Startek was established in 1987 whereas Aegis was established in 1992. Ranked among the top BPO players by NASSCOM, IAOP and Gartner and serving 80+ clients across verticals it has a reach with clients and delivery locations across geographies like India, United States, Canada, Jamaica, Honduras, Argentina, Peru, South Africa, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Aegis has done stellar work in the area of diversity and inclusion. The measures are taken to ensure a seamless transition into a different work model for a huge population of employees also deserves special mention. There are ample opportunities offered by the organisation to employees to learn and grow. The company has also won numerous awards owing to its business and transformational HR practices, diversity & inclusion initiatives, and skill-building apprenticeship program thereby positioning Startek as an ‘Equal Employment Opportunity Provider’ & an ‘Employer of Choice’.
Best Practices
Catch Them Young and Watch Them Grow: An impactful campus recruitment program to bring fresh talent directly from campus and help them develop. As part of the program, the communication, recruitment process, and positioning on campuses changed. Pre-placement talks were crafted around the GET-SET-GO philosophy. The talks started with a brief presentation on the organization, followed by the theme videos and EVP song. This helped in positioning us as an organization creating skills that were important for the uncertain future of the industry and how it ensured enhancement of employability of people associated with it.
Employee Testimonials
“Gender diversity and equal compensation and employment opportunities across genders is a major strength. Customer service and the ability to retain customers says a lot about the quality of service and ‘listening to customers.”
“This organisation has assembled a dream team to build a billion-dollar company in less than six years. This is an incredible journey packed with speed, resilience, and resolve.”
CHALLENGING THE NORM
Akamai Technologies best practices look to foster a growth mindset and focus on openness and curiosity as a team
Akamai is a globally distributed intelligent edge platform that surrounds everything from the enterprise to the cloud so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart and secure. Top brands rely on Akamai to help them realise competitive advantage through agile, cloud-agnostic solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away.
Akamai Technologies offers a good work-life balance and multiple benefits to its employees. Leadership supports employees for their growth. Working in a fair environment, people feel motivated to perform well. Employees work together to create innovative solutions.
Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access and video delivery solutions is supported by customer service and through the year monitoring. It provides solutions across multiple industries such as automotive, business services, financial services, healthcare & life sciences, hotel & travel, manufacturing, media & entertainment, online gaming, public sector, retail and consumer goods, software & technology, Software as a Service etc.
Best Practices
Socha hai Sessions: The goal of #SochaHai meetings is to stimulate the brain and ask questions that challenge the things taken for granted. The team meets for 30 minutes and picks one work-related topic to question, with the intention of learning more. This activity has been a great way to foster a growth mindset and focus on openness and curiosity as a team.
AugMentor Program: AugMentor program is a just-in-time staffing model designed to bring time to hire and time to productivity down to zero days from the 110 and 180 days respectively to ensure business continuity in the face of employee turnover making workload manageable for the employees on the team. Under AugMentor, candidates up to one year of industry experience are hired on contract for roles with high turnover. These AugMentees are then trained on functional skills and mentored for three months.
At the end of six months, the AugMentees are either offered a full-time position or the contract is extended or is terminated – based on business need and performance of the AugMentee. This has helped the business with a pipeline of suitable candidates and provided career opportunities to a more diverse pool of candidates.
Employee Testimonials
“Akamai is very unique; this is an organisation that is focused on employee’s development and it gives them opportunities to develop on their skill sets and help grow within the organisation.”
THE HYPER-COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
Altimetrik’s initiatives pay special focus on three key elements – talent assessment, talent transformation and the engineering ecosystem.
Altimetrik makes the induction process interesting for new employees by gamifying it. A good mix of technology and personal touch is used to engage with the employees. Skip-level lunches, CEO Club, 1-0-1 connect and AI Chatbot is used to connect with employees on a pro-active basis to understand any potential issues that can be addressed and resolved early. Employees actively lead and participate in the company events, CSR initiatives. Employee contributions are awarded in various roles such as referral and trainers. Celebrations are done thoughtfully and blended creatively to raise awareness around wellness, environment, inspire while having fun.
Best Practices
The Altimetrik Playground: The Altimetrik Playground has been instrumental in driving enterprise business transformation. The Playground – in both its digital and physical manifestations – is a combination of three key elements that make Altimetrik unique: talent assessment, talent transformation and the engineering ecosystem. It is a hyper-collaborative environment that provides all the help to drive innovation, collaboration and solution development for teams to take an idea quickly to a proof of concept stage and make it ready for deployment.
#48 Fitness Challenge: The campaign title ‘#48 Fitness Challenge’ encourages employees to create videos of any fitness routine like pull-ups, push-ups, etc for 48 counts and post them in Altimetrik’s exclusive Facebook group ‘People of Altimetrik’. Several leaders and employees participated in the challenge and inspired each other to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Employee Testimonials
“Altimetrik shows great care and concern to their employees, both professionally and personally. During tough times in Covid, it has been demonstrated that the organization is extremely supportive for its employee as well as client base.”
“Altimetrik completely adheres to its values set: Accountability and ownership, customer-centric, flawless execution. I worked on multiple projects during my last four years with the organisation and can highlight that consistently delivering value to customers and at the same time making people, partners happy along with improving processes and products is something unique I found across the organisation. Altimetrik is definitely a Great Place to Work.”
MAKING A DIFFERENCE WITH AN ALL-IN APPROACH
Employees’ opinions and suggestions at Aspire Systems are solicited and incorporated; the organisation offers several learning and growth opportunities, especially for freshers.
Aspire Systems is a global technology services firm serving as a trusted technology partner for its customers. It works with some of the world’s most innovative enterprises and independent software vendors, helping them leverage technology and outsourcing in their specific areas of expertise. The services include product engineering, enterprise transformation, independent testing services and IT infrastructure support services.
Management at Aspire Systems (India) is accessible and has a clear vision. Managers are empathetic and supportive. Employees’ opinions and suggestions are solicited and incorporated. The organisation offers several learning and growth opportunities, especially for freshers. Employees are treated equally and valued. Freedom at work and empowerment reduce pressure and promote learning.
Best Practices
Day One – Parent as a Partner: New joiners, especially fresh graduates, need a moral support while they are embarking on a new career journey. There can’t be a better alternate than having parental support during this remarkable moment. Hence, Aspire lets them be accompanied by their parents on the first day of work virtually.
Best Practices Continue: This program missions to train the middle management team exclusively about the significance of listening. They have created a mandatory training module for mid-level managers to help them understand the best practices in listening. The managers undergo periodic assessments on their understanding and ability to leverage this skill. This initiative is primarily to ensure that Listening becomes integral to their organisational culture.
Employee Testimonials
“I always wonder how our organisation considers not only the opinions of the managers but also a developer with equal importance, evaluates the outcome and come up with great ideas and works. This particular quality of this organization is truly respected.”
“Leadership is really building the organisation on long term sustainability model and not for selling the organisation for short term benefit. The company encourages learning and experiments. My company cares for its people.
UNLEASH THE POTENTIAL OF EVERY TEAM
Pushed by the pandemic, Atlassian has increased listening and taking care of its people, increasing collaboration between the teams and accommodating people’s needs.
Creating software that empowers everyone from small startups to the who’s who of tech is why Atlassian India says it is here. The company build tools such as Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello to help teams across the world become more nimble, creative and aligned — collaboration is the heart of every product Atlassian dream of. Atlassian says it is committed to an environment where everyone has the autonomy and freedom to thrive, as well as the support of like-minded colleagues who are motivated by a common goal to: Unleash the potential of every team.
Pushed by the pandemic, Atlassian is doing what it is good at even better, listening and taking care of its people, increasing the collaboration between the teams and accommodating people’s needs. It is caring and generous, adding both more PTO days and providing financial support, its leaders are great listeners (bi-monthly pulse surveys) and act on employee needs. It reaches out to communities and supports BLM initiatives.
Best Practices
CSS Got Talent: With offices and everything else closing during the Covid-19 crisis, the team came up with innovative ways for employees to connect in a time when nobody was able to meet up in person. Hence, a talent event was launched to celebrate the creativity of their peers. Everyone who had a special talent got involved.
Supporting the Community: With a total collection of 1.3 lakhs, Atlassian team was able to support a few NGOs and small businesses that were working towards the upliftment of women and giving them a self-sustainable life. The organisation also sent out kudos cards created by Atlassians with Covid Hygiene kits to 500 police personals in Bangalore, supported 100 migrant workers families with a month of home supplies and also distributed stationery and play kits for over 500 children from marginalised income groups, to support creative learning since they do not have access to education and resources.
Employee Testimonials
“The culture and the values that the company stands for is reflected in all the day-to-day activities of the people as well. I think that is just amazing.”
“The feeling of openness and fairness is apparent. The way top leadership has handled the Covid crisis to take swift decisions to work from home, providing monetary support, day-offs for everybody to help cope was very admirable.”
TRAINING FOR UNCERTAINTIES
Cadence Design Systems focusses on training leaders and employees on VUCA and resilience strategies, undertaking several employee focussed initiatives in the process.
Cadence is a provider of system design tools, software, IP and services. It also operates in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality.
Training for leaders and employees on VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) and resilience strategies, WFH Diaries group on FB, Cadence Conversations, special pandemic leave policy, re-opened enrollment into Top-Up Benefit are some of the initiatives undertaken by Cadence.
Best Practices
VUCA Training for People Managers: Leaders are finding themselves operating in a VUCA environment that needs the right skills and mindset to navigate and respond to the turbulence around them. To help the managers understand, absorb and prepare for this change, Redefining your own VUCA, leadership series was launched. The series comprised of four modules and the participant went through one class per week. Each session was of two hours and covered aspects that shall enable and prepare them to manage their teams more effectively and prepare them better to deal with unpredictable forces.
Wave of Change: To avoid falling into the routines of doing things or following the status quo as opposed to trying new things, this initiative was introduced. It consists of a small group of employees who identified areas of opportunity and put together a strategy to implement those changes. It included employees from each business group at Cadence. They worked together to take feedback from a variety of areas such as the High-Performance Culture survey from employees globally. The Wave of Change initiative has already begun implementing improvements to the Cadence experience when it comes to their culture, employees’ development and the facilities at their sites around the world.
Employee Testimonial
“Cadence is one of the best places to work for. This company nurtures the talent, not just hires them. The work experience is in itself simply amazing. During the pandemic, the company took a lot of effort to make things better for us. Be it helping to set up a home office, paying internet expenses, or supporting every employee in any way possible, the company has put a lot of effort. The organisation catered to every requirement of the employees. This year was unique and Cadence is that amazing place that does exceptional things to make our work and life better. I am actually quite contended to be a part of Cadence.”
ENCOURAGING SERIAL INNOVATORS
Cisco supports budding innovators by partnering with HackIT, Cisco’s long-running, global, one-day coding hackathon. It also incentivises ideas that positively impact the world, by adding a new track for submissions addressing social and environmental issues.
Cisco is a lead player in networking for the internet. 85 per cent of internet traffic travel across Cisco’s systems and it supports, manages and operates business systems for various and major third parties.
As a workplace, Cisco offers a healthy working environment and culture. It offers its employees work-life balance by allowing flexible timings, telecommuting, work from home, and has a variety of services on the campus that benefit employees in managing their home and work. The facilities and infrastructure ensure that employees have a stress-free work life. Cisco has some of the best diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Best Practices
Connected Recognition: Connected Recognition reinforces behaviours based on Cisco’s values and empowers employees to contribute to and do their own recognition. The awards are a mix of monetary awards and gift awards, which employees can redeem at a store of their preference. This is all digitised and done at speed. Employees can thank each other, nominate their peers, and redeem awards with the Connected Recognition app on their smartphones or their desktops via the site. It’s powerful for building teamwork when employees and this program allows nominators to attach a message, photo, or video to personalise and make shout-outs even more meaningful. Connected Recognition has its own social media platform, so employees across Cisco can see recognition as soon as it’s given and send congratulations. To respect those who don’t crave the limelight, nominees are asked beforehand if they’d like a shout-out on our website and social media or if they’d rather keep it quiet.
Collaborating for Innovation: The Innovate Everywhere Challenge (IEC) is the company’s signature program. IEC encourages people to innovate across functions and develop their entrepreneurial skills. The IEC follows startup-like phases — ideate, validate, fund, build — over about nine months. It helps employees grow their ideas by providing them with the skillset, resources and visibility their ideas need to thrive. To help employees get past initial failure to success, they sought ways to encourage ‘serial innovators’ to build out ideas that didn’t win at first. Cisco also supports budding innovators by partnering with HackIT, Cisco’s long-running, global, one-day coding hackathon. It incentivizes ideas that positively impact the world, by adding a new track for submissions addressing social and environmental issues.
Employee Testimonials
“There are so many things that help an employee at Cisco learn, grow and make a career with the required support. But what makes us say we are proud to be Cisco is the way the world looks at us. Our leadership team is transparent, fair and strong. We do not just talk about what is happening within our organisation, but the community we are in. Be there a pandemic, a natural calamity, or a sociopolitical issue — we talk about the right thing, in the right way to benefit all equally.”
“The freedom to try and fail immediately and the support provided by the management is immense. We started a new approach to partner enablement a few years back and it greatly evolved during the last year as we had to go almost completely virtual. The cross-functional collaboration in getting the processes and platforms ready was immense but smooth due to the right engagements at the top management and execution team levels.”
CONTINUED CARE & COMMITMENT
Citrix intensified its care for its employees and communities during the crisis period. It committed to continuing 100 per cent pay to its employees and to external contractors and vendors among other similar veined initiatives
Citrix offers a digital workspace, networking, security and analytics technologies. Citrix offers a streamlined experience, powered by automation and personalised insights. The company simplifies the IT landscape with flexibility and choice by bridging disparate technology ecosystems. This gives IT the ability to reliably manage, deliver, and secure any app on any device, network, or hybrid multi-cloud environment.
Citrix intensified its care for its employees and communities during the crisis period. It committed to continuing 100 per cent pay to its employees and to contractors and vendors, offered an extra week of PTO to all employees, provided a $1,000 discretionary, etc. Uplifting is its engagement in social justice, its continued check-in with and listening to its employees through pulse surveys, and its increased activity in donations to non-profits and charities.
Best Practices
The Lean Innovation Challenge: This is an in-house program where employees are encouraged to come together to present game-changing ideas that align with the Citrix strategy. Selected teams are given three months to invest a portion of their time every week to do further market research, validate their ideas, build prototypes and present to executives to take it to the next level. All participants are also given pitch training and selected teams undergo vigorous Lean Startup Bootcamp Training. They are also assigned mentors to help them give shape and form to their ideas. Teams are often formed to include members from various teams and backgrounds to have all the required skillsets to make the idea into a product.
Employee Testimonials
“Citrix definitely has some of the best minds; people here are open to ideas and appreciate your thoughts. Work makes you learn new things, new technology, and also ways to improve existing technology. And I feel accountable and responsible for my work. In the pandemic as well, it went beyond to make sure that employees were fine, and an email from our CEO reflected that Citrix takes care of its employees.”
“Management has always provided opportunities for growth for individuals irrespective of which location they come from. Especially during the pandemic, Citrix has treated every employee equally and has provided every help possible to sustain and overcome the situation. Leadership is highly approachable and has adapted further to the ‘remote working’ by providing more venues to voice out opinions and concerns, and have ensured to implement meaningful changes suggested. Overall, I am proud to be a part of this organisation.”
BUILDING A CULTURE OF REWARD & RECOGNITION
Extensive efforts have been taken to percolate and imbibe the organisation’s values and philosophy. The company believes in open and transparent communication and lays strong emphasis on facilities so that employees can give in their best
Happiest Minds enables digital transformation for enterprises and technology providers by delivering seamless customer experience, business efficiency and actionable insights through an integrated set of disruptive technologies: big data analytics, internet of things, mobility, cloud, security, unified communications, etc. Happiest Minds offers domain-centric solutions, IPs in IT Services, product engineering, infrastructure management and security. These services have applicability across industry sectors such as retail, CPG, ecommerce, banking, insurance, hi-tech, engineering R&D, manufacturing, automotive and travel/transportation/hospitality.
Extensive efforts have been taken to percolate and imbibe the organisation’s values and philosophy. The company believes in open and transparent communication. It lays strong emphasis on facilities so that all employee can give in their best be it flexi-hours, concern for women employees, or it ‘Wellness & Wellbeing’ framework. Reward and recognition are woven into the culture of the organisation.
As a mindful IT Company, the focus is on ‘being mindful’ and ‘doing mindful’ which involves perceiving immersively, processing non-judgmentally, and performing empathetically. 60 minutes in a week is committed to inculcating a mindful approach within the organisation, using a select set of tools and techniques. Headquartered in Bangalore in India, Happiest Minds has operations in the US, UK, The Netherlands, Australia, Middle East and Turkey.
Best Practices
TA Project Office: Happiest Minds Talent Acquisition team has a specialised team called TA Project Office to look into the analytics and operational aspects of talent acquisition. The role of the project office encompasses analytics i.e tracking, measuring, collating, and analysing candidate, employee and vendor data to use it in making better hiring decisions. Its planning and decisions are made based on the recruitment metrics – offer to join ratio, time for the fulfilment, source mix ratio, gender diversity ratio, cost per hire, decline ratio, along with the other operational aspects of recruitment. This team constantly provides inputs to the rest of the talent acquisition team for removing any delays and improving the turnaround time.
Employee Testimonials
“The executive board and our chairman are exceptional leaders and have a vision for the company. The policies laid down by the organisation look at the healthy growth of any employee on the professional and personal front. The mindful approach towards process, people and way of working is what differentiates Happiest Minds from other IT organisations.”
“Happiest Minds is a great place to work because it has an open, transparent, healthy and supportive culture. The higher management executives value talent and hard work and greatly appreciate the employees. We always feel like we are making an impact and contributing to the growth of the company directly.”
TO HAVE FUN WHILE WORKING
HERE Technologies has defined its true north and implemented values-based people practices especially inspiring, development, etc. It has sustained innovative practices in the 2020 pandemic situation as well.
HERE is a player in mapping and location technology. The company enables real-time location applications and experiences for consumers, vehicles, enterprises and cities. By partnering with world-leading automakers, it powers four out of five in-car navigation systems. It has over 30 years of experience in transforming mapping technology with over 8000+ people in more than 56 countries.
HERE Technologies has defined its true north and implemented values-based people practices especially inspiring, development, etc. It has sustained innovative practices in the 2020 pandemic situation as well.
Best Practices
Talent Sponsors: The objective of this program is to offer employees career benefits and help them with a pathway to leadership by supporting their development. For middle managers and people leaders, they have a talent sponsor program. A sponsor is usually a senior leader or influential individual with a broad understanding of the organisation who can help high-performing professionals assess their strengths and blind spots and can advocate on their behalf to put them in positions to develop more fully as a leader.
Sponsorship is a leadership development mechanism designed to offer a sponsor many career benefits, including opportunities to expand their network; exposure to executive’s enterprise-wide; insight into the organisation’s culture; a clear understanding of the expectations associated with the pathway to leadership and the backing of a senior leader or key influencer for an elevated and critically important role in the organisation.
PULSE Taker: A special initiative called ‘PULSE Taker’ was launched specifically to listen to challenges senior leaders faced and partner with them for finding solutions. A CXO level meeting was then called where results of the survey were shared, and a focus group discussion was held with volunteer senior leaders. Ideas and sentiments were sought and discussed at the senior management level. Thus, there was an emphasis on listening to how a specific set of employees felt during this special time and addressing their unique concerns by collaborating with them.
Employee Testimonials
“HERE Technologies as an organisation is a great place to work mainly due to the fantastic work culture they provide their employees with wherein we have freedom of speech, opportunity to develop personally and professionally, encouragement to innovate and explore, and yes most important have fun while working and give back to society as and when possible.”
“Enjoying working with coworkers is one of the hallmarks of a positive work experience. Feeling understood and valued can significantly increase our happiness at work and eventually help us get connected to the organisation. We are able to share ideas quickly and work together easily which eventually makes this organisation a great place to work.”
THE SENSE OF FAMILY BETWEEN EMPLOYEES
Many benefits are provided to employees and the community at large so that work-life balance is achieved. The organisation does significant sustainable charity work with the communities it operates in
HP’s vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere, every person, every organisation, and every community around the globe. This motivates and inspires them to do what they do, to make what they make, to invent, and to reinvent and engineer experiences that amaze.
The company’s management genuinely cares about the employees and their needs. Many benefits are provided to employees and the community at large so that work-life balance is achieved. This in turn generates a sense of family bonding between the employees. The organisation does a lot of sustainable charity work with the communities it operates in, which makes the employees immensely proud. Management is accessible to ready to resolve employee queries or issues and reliable as well.
Best Practices
Career Tree: Career Tree career pathing is an initiative to ensure job rotations and ease of access across the board. It provides in-depth details on the responsibilities, education and experience required, and the knowledge and skills the employees must acquire to climb up the ladder. To ensure employees have visibility to career paths within and across business units, the idea was converted into the actual 3D Model in record time. The digital interface at the centre of the 3D modelled tree carries information that would help, give their non-exempt population direction on job descriptions at different levels, within and outside of the contact centre. This information at their fingertips will help them identify a career path and navigate through.
Employee Testimonials
“HP treats its employees with great respect and care. The management understands what employees expect from them and make sure that they are given feedback at the right time. I was fortunate to get nominated for a Women Leadership Programme (Disha) which is a great effort to create women leaders in the organisation. Also during this pandemic, our organisation ensured that all employees stay safe and they arranged informative sessions to keep our spirits high during this time and also conducted interactive sessions with doctors to clear our doubts/fear.”
“HP’s culture is something that I cherish dearly. Employees are treated not as employees but as family members which says a great deal about the employee-friendly practices that the company has. The managers are very supportive in understanding a person’s aspirations and they try to help individuals in achieving them.”
UNINTERRUPTED FLOW OF IDEAS
Impetus focuses on hiring and retaining the right talent with a structured hiring and on-boarding process and intimating the candidates during all stages of the recruitment cycle.
impetus is a product development, software services and solutions company focused on creating new ways of analysing data for businesses, thereby helping them gain key business insights across the enterprise. The company brings together a mix of data science capabilities and technology expertise across the big data ecosystem including Hadoop, NoSQL, NewSQL, MPP databases, machine learning and innovative visualisation.
A great deal of emphasis is on team celebrations and camaraderie, combining fun with work. Impetus focuses on hiring and retaining the right talent with a structured hiring and on-boarding process and intimating the candidates during all stages of the recruitment cycle. Reward and recognition are woven into the culture of the organisation. They have a learning and development framework with a multitude of programs, and methods deployed. Impetus provides people with workplace facilities, flexible work hours and benefits.
Best Practices
Open Hour: While Impetus has many formal ways in which managers talk to and learn from their teams like the ‘all hands’ meetings and one-on-ones with the direct reportees, some of the best exchanges are less formal. Their ‘Open Hour’ session provides a platform for employees to connect with their choice of senior leaders, one-on-one and discuss any topic, grievance, or improvement in the specialised areas. This one-hour window conducted every Friday, allows an uninterrupted flow of ideas, feedback, and suggestions.
Impetus Subject Matter Experts Sessions: Impetus subject matter experts hold sessions for college students as well as industry professionals. This is done in collaboration with engineering colleges to create awareness in students about new technologies and what it does. They also invite professionals who are working in the industry and deliver expert-level webinars on different topics. This is to showcase their technical expertise and thought leadership.
Employee Testimonials
“Impetus is a technology-driven company. It is very updated with the market trends and work on some of the most trending technologies. I feel very happy to be part of this organisation which can allow you to work on the latest technologies.”
“Impetus focuses on employees’ skills which are required according to current trends by facilitating ramp-up plans and certification programs to get certified in trending technologies. The company policies are very good and beneficial for the employees. People are easily approachable at Impetus. Impetus has a good work-life balance. I personally believe it’s a very good company for people who are seeking to learn new technologies.”
FOSTERING A DIVERSE & INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE
Programs designed at Intuit India integrating new hires are well structured and executed. Various innovation platforms and the patent program encourage employees to collaborate and ideate.
intuit Inc. is a business and financial software company that develops and sells financial, accounting, and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California. The culture at Intuit India embodies its values, especially customer obsession.
Programs such as A4A, D4D and CDI, unstructured time depict the organisations’ inclination at creating a unique culture. Programs aimed at promoting a work-life balance and supporting employees during life events are commendable. The organisation’s efforts at fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace are laudable. Programs designed to welcome and integrate new hires are well structured and executed. Various innovation platforms and the patent program encourage employees to collaborate and ideate. The management is transparent and believes in taking feedback.
Best Practices
Candidate experience: It’s an app for a virtual tour of #IntuiLife for the interviewing candidates. To create maximum impact on candidates during their onsite interview, Intuit launched an App for the candidates that gives them a visual tour of life at Intuit. As candidates come in to interview with Intuit at their premises, they are given an iPad which they can keep through the day until the interviews conclude. They can browse through different sections of the App that has information about Intuit. The App prompts continuous feedback from candidates, making insights real-time. Broadly it is divided into the following sections: About Intuit, mission, and vision, Overview of the day’s itinerary, Business overview comprising information about business units, major products and the tech stacks they work on, Benefits comprising an overview of health, finance, and workplace offerings.
Assessing for Awesome (A4A): A4A has proved to be an effective interviewing and assessment model that empowers its top employees, called Awesome Assessors, to quickly pinpoint the best candidate for the role ensuring they hire only top talent and exceed hiring managers’ expectations as well as the candidate’s expectations. The interviewing and assessment model has three main components: Awesome Assessors pinpoint the must-have skills and values needed for the role. The candidate presents a craft demonstration. The team makes a hiring decision the same day as the candidate is interviewed. Depending on the role, assessors will choose skills, values and a craft demonstration that relate to the candidate’s role. Assessing for Awesome is a fair and unbiased interviewing process because the hiring manager is not the only one making the hiring decision. A4A is now the standard for all Intuit professional hires up to the Director level.
Employee Testimonials
“Intuit has always kept employees at the centre of all that they do. It’s not something just said. You will see it very much part of the day-to-day culture and workings of the organisation as well. This is the reason why we give so much of ourselves to our work and feels like we are part of a family. Because of this as an employee, I’m not quick to judge Intuit and I will always assume the best intentions.”
“Intuit offers a personal touch on all occasions and we get the feel of one Intuit family supporting each other. Openness and transparency create a strong bonding even during the pandemic time. Family support time off, opportunities around internal mobilities, mentorship, putting employees well being first really makes it a great place to work.”
EMPOWERING THE EMPLOYEES
Novac Technology Solutions has people-friendly policies and practices that continue to inspire employees to come to work every day and be contributors to the bigger picture.
Novac is a digital transformation and cloud solutions company with technology and domain expertise in financial services, insurance services, retail solutions and digital learning.
Novac Technology Solutions has people-friendly policies and practices that continue to inspire employees to come to work every day and be contributors to the bigger picture. The company values its people and has initiatives in place that ensure full and transparent information sharing with the entire population, along with initiatives that ensure bottom-up communication – that enables them to share their ideas, opinions, suggestions and feedback openly. The company has a collaborative culture where employees are given empowerment and are involved in decision-making. Overall, the employees experience an inspiring work culture – one where their development is focused upon, they are appreciated for their efforts and are well taken care of.
Best Practices
Gift Wellness: Novac chose to gift wellness to express gratitude and care to employees. As a token of thanks, the company is sponsoring gym membership coupons, Zumba/yoga class enrollment. Employees get to choose from a wide option of wellness such as fitness coupons, organic provisions, herbal skin care range, eco-friendly utilities.
Zen Corner: Novac promotes short 10 minutes break every two hours. There is a corner ‘Zen Corner’ in each bay where all provisions for boxing, meditation, and music with headphones are provided. The room is with an alarm to indicate the end of break time. Employees choose their break time according to their work schedule and ensure to use the ‘Zen Corner’ effectively to relax and resume to work more energetically.
Employee Testimonials
“Work-Life balance at Novac is great and I have been treated fairly regardless of my work outcome. I can feel the independence given to innovate and implement new things is excellent and my company has always guided me in performing in a better way whenever it is required. I have always felt recognised for all my new initiatives and work accomplishments. I am really satisfied to work with my organisation.”
“I have worked in this organisation for the past 24 years. I have found the organisation to be a good place to work for women. They are treated with the same respect as men in the workplace. The team leaders also appreciate the work done by us.”
GOING A STEP FURTHER
From sourcing and donating PPE, to donations and contributions to those in need, communities, and small businesses, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its employees through the crisis and a strong response to racial injustices — Salesforce.com thoughtfully covered every base.
Salesforce.com is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) service and also provides a complementary suite of enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics and application development.
Salesforce went above and beyond in every aspect of its Covid response. From sourcing and donating PPE, to significant donations and contributions to those in need, communities, and small businesses, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its employees through the crisis and a strong response to racial injustices. It covered every base and did so in a thoughtful way. It went further than most organisations in so many areas including the care for employees at home and providing time to do this without using PTO. The way it provided virtual employee development went a step further than most by having the CEO challenge employees to high levels of achievement and creatively reward this.
Best Practices
Community Service: During the pandemic, Salesforce India donated $24,000, impacting more than 15,000 people across the country. The grants were split across six NGOs in India focused on bridging inequalities around education, sanitation and nutrition. More than 30 Salesforce employees also volunteered with a helpline for more than 20 days to help 7000+ migrant workers connect to a safe means of transport back home. Employees also raised funds to support 400+ migrant families with groceries needed to support them until they find a means of income.
Trailblazer Community Labs: With schools completely shut down for the past five months, more than 70 per cent of students in India are struggling to learn. To address this challenge, Salesforce along with its partner ecosystem is setting up Trailblazer Community Labs in rural areas to facilitate access to technology and continuous learning. These rural community learning centres will be safe spaces where children can explore and learn on the internet, in books, with games, and more.
Employee Testimonials
“I love the familiar feeling that people and the entire organisation had built. I think this is by far the best organisation I have experienced or known in terms of treating employees very well and does not do gender discrimination. I have seen and heard things about other organisations that management does and take advantage of their position, I seldom felt that here at Salesforce.”
“I have never seen a company that gives so much importance to employee wellness as Salesforce. They genuinely care for people not just as employees, but as a family. They always keep raising the bar and it astonishes me as to how much thought they put into thinking about their employees. I feel blessed to be working with such a wonderful company.”
INVESTING IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
To continue supporting employees’ professional development plans during the unique and challenging times, most of the training initiatives at SAS Institute India were converted to virtual programs and optimised for online learning success.
SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 75,000 sites make better decisions faster. SAS has products across advanced analytics, business intelligence, cloud analytics, customer intelligence, data management, risk management, supply chain management, etc.
The company undertook a bold act by committing to not letting any employees go. It maintained the speed and breadth of providing online and virtual resources both to its employees around the world and the public. Extensive resources made available for health and wellbeing and parents, online learning, fitness classes, 8 EAP sessions per issue. SAS is already extensive in care for employees before the pandemic, which continued and much pivoted quickly to virtual.
Best Practices
Virtual Learning & Development: In order to encourage and support employees to continue investing in their professional development plan during these unique and challenging times, most of the training initiatives were converted to virtual programs and were optimised for online learning success. The team designed and delivered the ‘Doing Business in Covid-19’ training classes to all the sales team members with help of a regional sales delivery specialist to help them adapt to the new normal in a smooth manner.
One-on-One Connects: The HR team connected with all employees across all functions by calling them one-on-one to check on employees and their family’s wellbeing. This helped to have a personal touch with employees and hear how they are accommodating, their lives around WFH set-up, and if they need any further support. This also helped the team to resolve any potential HR, operational issues on a high-priority basis.
Employee Testimonials
“During Pandemic SAS has taken great care of its employees. Currently, we are given options to either work from home or office. HR conducted lots of webinars regarding health, work-life balance, work-from-home issues, etc. in order to help the employees. In case of any IT issues, the IT team ensured that the problem is resolved at the earliest. HR and admin team got in touch with every employee to check about their health and other needs.”
“The company has an amazing work-life balance culture and a flat hierarchy which helps in better productivity and performance from employees.”
CLUTTER BREAKING PRACTICES
SAS Research and Development makes use of storytelling, gamification and the like to encourage peer to peer interaction and networking
SAS R&D India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SAS Inc., USA, is a key development centre for the research and development of products and solutions for SAS. The Pune office, being the largest R&D centre outside the US, is focused on developing strategic products and solutions for SAS.
This organisation has developed an environment where employee innovation thrives and which motivates employees to put their best. SAS imbibes its values well in almost all programs from hiring, welcoming and recognising employees. This environment is established in the form of various employee benefits, facilities, training, employee engagement, etc, which are best across the industry.
Best Practices
PSCC Culture Connect: Peer to peer storytelling, designed in a gamified format, has become a unique way to connect over culture in the PSCC department. This method encourages teams to choose a ‘culture’ topic and connect their personal experiences and journeys with it. Listening to peers’ stories adds additional context to the understanding of the topic. Each topic is unveiled in a gamified format, adding an interesting element to the discussions. The series is managed by PSCC managers and supported by HR. Some of the sessions conducted in 2019 were: Unique and Special benefits Compensation strategies and practices No Blind Spots – Fair and Objective decision Making The session cannot be conducted virtually as it requires a lot of personal attention and conversations. The session will be resumed next year.
Swalekhan – empowering the visually impaired to write: Swalekhan challenged students to make use of scribes (writers) to write their exams. This doesn’t showcase the candidate’s actual potential and makes them more dependent on others for their needs. To overcome this, Niwant wanted to develop an android app that is intended at enabling blind students to be independent of these scribes. The application aims to provide a platform to blind students that facilitate keyboard usage for typing, navigating and editing text. This app leverages text-to-speech services in combination with human-recorded audio providing better support for regional languages. SRDI came forward and decided to help Niwant to fulfil its dream of holistic development of visually challenged students to pursue higher education. The donation amount of around Rs. 23,71,500 helped Niwant to develop this android app.
Employee Testimonials
“A unique thing that I noticed about SAS over the last 10 years is the graceful adaptation of mass-scale changes. SAS has had a complete revamp of its technologies and developments and delivery models over the last couple of years, but none at the cost of employees’ discomfort. All the teams and employees feel more involved and grown than ever before. The entire transformation was so smooth and well-focused over harmonious growth of employees and company together.”
“The organisation gives equal importance to employees’ families and provides encouragement and support. It also makes them contribute to and participate in various events. In the current pandemic, the organisation has provided all types of
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