CEO INTERVIEW: EVALUESERVE, LTD. Evalueserve Fosters CARE Marc Vollenweider (CEO and Co-Founder, Evalueserve, Ltd.) talks to Ramneek Makhija and Dhruv Bhatia about ensuring employee health and fostering a work culture that displays care |
 Ethics prevail. Applying ethics in business makes good sense. A business that behaves ethically induces other business associates to behave ethically as well. If a company and its managers exercise particular care in meeting all responsibilities towards employees, customers and suppliers, it is usually awarded with a high degree of loyalty, honesty, quality and productivity. Mr. Marc Vollenweider (Co-Founder and CEO of Evalueserve) strongly believes and lives by the significant essence of ethics. His journey here began with his greatest challenge and his biggest personal success, with his departure as a Partner from McKinsey & Co. (which he had joined in 1990), after which he co-founded Evalueserve alongwith Dr. Alok Aggarwal (Former Director of Emerging Business Opportunities for IBM Research Division Worldwide) in December 2000 - a company that aims to be ‘your global knowledge partner’. Quite obviously having a binary approach as far as ethics is concerned, he tells us, “You are either ethical or not. There is no in-between.” Training, he says, can only go the distance of providing insights and teachings into the matter of zero tolerance pertaining to ethical issues. The company’s policy clarifies that any unethical behaviour would result in straightaway termination rather than a series of warnings. This reinforces how seriously Evalueserve tackles such issues. This is, however, just one aspect of the manuscript that propagates the work culture at Evalueserve. Mr. Vollenweider underlines meritocracy as an important feature of adding to people’s careers, and critically points out the significance of professionalism. He says that the latter deals with facets that employees can be trained on, such as punctuality, mannerisms, and presentation. Leadership by example is promoted at the organisation, and he states an incident in this regard, “Unfortunately, formaldehyde had been used in the construction of our China office building, a substance that had been banned in Europe a long time ago. It started causing headaches and nausea among the employees. The manager called me and said that he needed to shut down the office and let everybody go home because the substance was dangerous and a potential health hazard. We knew that some clients may get angry and we may lose some revenue, but I nonetheless accepted the proposal. We provided doctor visits for all employees to know about the effects of the chemicals. In the end, the positive results of such an exercise were that employee loyalty improved, while our clients appreciated us for the decision. This proves that while people can be trained on various things, leadership by itself can make a lot of difference. That is why I am working very hard on it.” This focus on exemplary leadership is reflected in the performance appraisal process as well. The team at Evalueserve is trying to streamline it as far as possible, and is also bringing in focus on softer issues to aid development of people. Says Mr. Vollenweider, “Employees need to keep growing. You need to act whenever there are problem areas for employees. That is where leadership traits comes in. There is a saying in German, ‘The fish starts rotting from the head’. The quality of leadership is always reflective of bad or good characteristics.” |
 Evalueserve (EVS) is a Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) firm (a term it coined in 2000), providing custom offshore research and analytics services. It has offices in China, India, Chile and Romania and employs 2500 people globally. The company provides professional services such as customised financial and investment, business, and market research; intellectual property, legal support, and supply chain support services; and, knowledge technology. Such progress has won the company several awards such as The Red Herring 100 Asia, Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia 2006, and the NASSCOM IT Innovations Award for its innovative business model. In store for the employees are dual career tracks as per their aptitudes, interests and strengths; global exposure aligned with networking across countries; merit-based work culture for pioneering excellence; competitive compensation; and, world-class training and development sessions. Among the numerous pioneering HR initiatives present, the most interesting one is that of ‘Care’, aimed at the goal of fostering a good and healthy work culture. We were so inquisitive to find out more about this that we felt like Scrat from the Ice Age films, after which Mr. Vollenweider explained more, “Fundamentally, we are a people business. We do not have any product assets like the iPhone with Apple. Therefore, we need to take care of our employees. In fact, my favourite topic to discuss is employee health.Regrettably, the health of the young employees in India is deteriorating. They do not take care of themselves; neither do they stretch, nor do they practice yoga. They just sit in one place and eat very oily food! Therefore, we are trying to raise health awareness levels. For example, for women, we have organised information sessions on cervical cancer and included inoculation for the same. In China, we had sessions on swine flu information wherein people were educated about the virus and the necessity of vaccination.” Such social workshops are supplemented by various CSR activities that take place at the company’s offices around the world. For example, several employees at Evalueserve China grew a beard/moustache for charity. Whenever somebody noticed the recently grown facial hair, he/she was educated about the fundraising activity and was requested to donate towards the cause. Evalueserve Chile encouraged employees to pool in for Teleton 2008 – Fundraiser, the largest fundraiser in the country. The funds collected through it were given to handicapped children for their treatment and recovery. In India, an exhibition was organised in collaboration with Literacy India, which received an overwhelming response from EVSians, as it showcased handmade accessories with a special focus on gift items for Diwali. The Go Green Campaign was also launched to communicate simple instructions on how to be more responsible and friendly towards the environment. This involved sending fortnightly communications as well as organising group activities. |
