Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of the Bharti Group, is happy to attfribute the pioneering company’s success to a small group of passionate, talented leaders, “who have taken charge and moved ahead to make Bharti what it is today”.
There is no doubt that India’s thriving telecom sector promises tremendous new career opportunities. All the big telecom companies are constantly scouting for the talent and skills that will give them an edge over their rivals.
The search extends to the top. The mergers and acquisitions of recent years have meant that companies are looking for chief executives or managers to run complex enterprises and, if need be, casting their net wide to find people whom they can groom as future leaders.
Recruiting and retaining people has become a priority, with human resource management (HRM) and human resource development (HRD) becoming an integral part of every corporate strategy.
These days, there is little that companies will not do to hold on to people, from career counselling to welfare measures and unusual “conflict-resolution” schemes. The big telecom companies ?? Bharti, Reliance, Tata Teleservices, Hutch, BSNL and MTNL ?? are all investing in staff.This concern has led to a change in the traditional administrative and welfare role of HR managers. From the fringes, they have moved into the limelight where they have to perform new functions: lead change management, communicate a vision of the future, shape implementation programmes, and follow through to ensure that corporate goals are achieved, in addition to the “normal” tasks of plotting the career paths of employees.
That extra little bit of attention that is paid to employees can, it seems, pay rich dividends. According to HR consultancy firms Hewitt Associates and Grow Talent Company, Nokia India is a good example of a company that ranks high on employee satisfaction. The two firms rate employers every year on certain criteria. Nokia India registers a high satisfaction level and one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry.
Nokia
Nokia has a “flat” organisation with effectively only two key designations: executives and managers. It does not offer routine promotions every two to three years and no grandiose designations. But this does not detract from opportunities to grow; employees can map their own career paths in consultation with the HR team which formulates a personal development programme for each employee.
Every year, Nokia employees across the mobile phones, networks and R&D divisions set up teams comprising between six and eight employees. Each of these cross-functional teams has employees from marketing, sales and logistics.They submit a performance rating for themselves, the company, and the division. The teams are told later to formulate an action plan to improve on the areas with the lowest scores. The HR department coordinates this exercise and reviews progress every quarter. With such detailed tracking, good work rarely goes unnoticed or unrewarded.
According to a senior official in Nokia, the company functions like a commune, with all employees treated equally.Everyone flies economy class and everyone stays at Taj hotels. Everyone has a Communicator as their mobile. And everyone, from the person who joined yesterday to the CEO, enjoys the same profit-sharing arrangement. This could range from 1 to 5 per cent of its EPS globally.
TTSL
Not far behind multinationals like Nokia are companies like Tata. As R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons says: “We want to attract good people, retain the better people and advance the best people.”
The Tata Group, of course, has a long tradition of focusing on the welfare of its employees. Some of its employee measures have been copied throughout India, even being enshrined as legislation ?? the eight-hour working day, free medical aid, welfare departments, grievance cells, leave with pay, provident fund, accident compensation, training institutes, maternity benefits, and bonuses.
But the situation has become more complex of late. As a senior TTSL official notes, “I don’t think young people join the Tatas any more based only on its work culture and benefits. There are several factors that go into making a career choice.” With this in mind, Tata has created a new focus on leadership development. This includes:
TTSL, which launched basic services in March 1999, embodied not only the traditional Tata values but also a new integrated HR system which included competitive salaries and the opportunity to progress within and across group companies. Its performance management system is the crux of TTSL’s people-related initiatives. Like the other companies in the group, TTSL follows the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), based on the Malcolm Baldrige Award.Implementing TBEM is a component of the performance appraisal of senior staff.
“The pride of being a part of the over 100-year-old Tata legacy does play a big role in attracting employees. And though they might not be the best paymasters in the business, the attrition rate is less than 5 per cent,” observes telecom analyst Mahesh Uppal.
Bharti Airtel
Bharti exploded onto the telecom scene in the mid-1980s. Today, it is a leading, integrated telecom service provider. It is not only considered to be the highest-paying employer but is acquiring a reputation for some very innovative HR practices. “Even when we were small, we attracted good people, not necessarily IIT or IIM graduates, but talented people nevertheless, who were innovative and ready to take charge,” says Mittal.
In its early years, its workers tended to be very young, the average age being about 26. But having decided to take in relatively inexperienced professionals, it did not want to curb their creativity or contribution.Senior management was advised to invite criticism from them. At first, these young professionals were circumspect about airing their views but gradually, as they became accustomed to talking to senior managers, they began to offer their ideas more willingly. Airtel’s HR success was powered by a well-defined rewards and recognition system, backed by training. Some of its key HR initiatives have been:
Young Leaders Programme:The company visits the top 15 institutes in the country every year in order to recruit “young leaders” who are chosen through a very rigorous and well-defined process.These young leaders are taken through a year of tough training where they are expected not only to work on projects and learn technical skills but also mesh with the company culture and learn people skills. At the end, they are confirmed on the basis of a performance review and an assessment of behavioural traits.
Bharti Global Secondment Programme: This is essentially to provide career development opportunities for high-performing employees with more potential. It is designed to train them for work on projects and assignments in telecom companies across the globe.
Comtel: In this, the large number of people servicing Bharti customers who are not employees of the company are made to feel a part of the Bharti Group. Their recruitment and training are according to Bharti guidelines. The move has boosted their morale and instilled a sense of pride and personal commitment.
Mission Global Star: In order to support and institutionalise the restructuring and change initiatives in the organisation, Bharti has started this programme of institutionalising leadership shifts across teams so as to enable the journey from “good to great”.
Performance Management System: This has been revamped to provide a sharper focus on target-based key result areas and leadership behaviour. It helps in reinforcing the kind of behaviour the organisation feels is vital to achieve its 2010 vision.
Advanced Management Programmes: As with a lot of Fortune 500 companies worldwide, Bharti sponsors senior personnel to enrol for management programmes at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. So far, about 15 top officials have been sponsored for these courses.
As for retaining talent, Bharti offers monetary benefits such as ESOPs to all employees, a deferred bonus plan for junior management employees, an annual performance bonus for all, and instant reward and recognition schemes. On the “personal” front, the company tries to help employees strike a balance between work and home so that they get enough time with family and friends. It follows a five-day working week and vetoes weekend meetings. Employees are encouraged to leave on time and it is mandatory for them to take 10 days off in a year. In addition, a special provision for a sabbatical (without pay or with half pay) is offered on a case-to-case basis.
It’s not that employees do not leave Bharti, or any other company. They do, for better prospects, better pay, different experience, etc. At a junior level, the lateral movement is higher as every job is treated as a learning experience that will increase the employees’ market value and prepare them for the next. In senior positions, the movement arises more from competing firms offering better money, designations and greater responsibility.
Reliance Communication
Reliance’s basic dictum is that anything to do with people involves emotions. “Majah awe chhe?” (“Are you enjoying yourself?”) was the question often asked by the late Dhirubhai Ambani to measure employee satisfaction and motivation levels. Today, his sons carry on the tradition and make their employees feel as though no task is insurmountable.
The group feels that HR is no longer merely about pay, perks and incentives. It also involves unshackling the latent energies of people, generating the impulse for setting new benchmarks, and then exceeding them. The emphasis is on the “Reliance Family” to which everyone ?? managers, workers, investors and stakeholders ?? belong.
The group is aggressive and has instilled a “beat the world” spirit into its work ethos. When Anil Ambani, head of Reliance Communication, handpicks his team, he wants only those who can create a world class organisation. “Anil Ambani wants to give a broader definition to the infocomm business and control the entire value chain in the industry,” says an industry analyst. Some of his company’s HR practices are:
Hutch
Hutch is guided by three basic tenets: employee value proposition, competitive pricing and pride. The employee value proposition revolves around the importance of keeping a job refreshing and challenging. “The most important question is, how do you live the brand? Taking initiatives such as organising a cricket or a football match does not set us apart from the rest. Our employee value proposition is the key,” says Steve Correa, director, HR, Hutchison Essar India.
“If you look at a brand, for instance, the brand has something you call a brand value proposition. Similarly, employees also have what I call an employee value proposition, and like a brand, it has got a price, packaging, promotion, etc. For us, it will always be about trying to enhance the employee value proposition. This covers all areas, implying that the job should give the employee something new and challenging every day,” says Correa.
Competitive pricing, according to Correa, refers to the salary, perks, benefits and overall compensation that comes with the job. “If we want to get and retain good resources, we have to make sure we are competitively priced in the market and that we are paying them compensation that is equal to the market price. It is vital that the employees’ short-, mediumand long-term needs are being addressed. So we make sure they are receiving compensation in tune with market levels.”
Another important element for Hutch is “pride”. “If you buy a brand, you are proud of using that brand, since using it gives you an edge. For an employee, when he works in an organisation, he must feel proud of the company he works for when he talks to his friends about it.We do extremely well in employee references. The fact that employees continue to call in their friends to join the organisation is testimony to this fact. It is a matter of feeling the excitement of the brand constantly, and promoting the spirit of the brand,” explains Correa.
No doubt, telecom is a highly technical sector. But it is also a service sector where, eventually, it is the people that count. Recruiting the right people and retaining them is a challenge all telecom companies are facing. In this talent hunt, there are clearly no full stops. It is a quest for the best.
