iGATE: What It Takes to Be the Best Employer Dr. Srinivas Kandula explains how passion and respect help in the creation of a transformational HR framework |
 A company that has been known for servicing intensive IT projects for more than a decade now, iGATE Corporation is more than your average IT firm. This company has been ranked as the number one employer in the IT industry for the year 2008, leaving behind other larger industry majors. Dr. Srinivas Kandula (Global Head-HR, iGate Corporation) gives an insightful account of how companies can aim to brand their HR function the right way. Q. What values and vision does iGATE stand for? A. The values that inspire us can be summed up in just one word: PRIDE. This is an acronym for Passion, Respect, Innovation, Denizen and Excellence. Passion: Passion means believing in what we are doing, enjoying what we are doing, being inspired and consequently doing our work immensely well. Passion for work drives individual, team and organisational success. Respect: Respect means treating all people with fairness, dignity and courtesy. It includes acknowledging the changes brought to the workplace by diversity and welcoming the same. At iGATE, we promote a congenial and non-threatening work culture of openness and empowerment. Innovation: Innovation means rising up to challenge the status quo and finding new ways of improving the way we do business. Innovation means taking risks rather than avoiding them. At iGATE, we encourage people to constantly come up with new ideas, resulting in continuous improvement. Denizen: A denizen refers to an inhabitant or a citizen of a certain place. At iGATE, we take pride in social responsibility and in being good citizens of the community. We take a holistic view of business and cater to all the stakeholders; namely, shareholders, employees, customers, society and the environment. We translate this into action by providing voluntary support to various not-for-profit initiatives. Excellence: Excellence to us means ensuring customer delight by making commitments and delivering them. ‘First Time Right’ is a way of life at iGATE. Excellence implies that each achievement is a ‘milestone’ and not the final ‘destination’. iGATE’s vision is to enable the transformation of global businesses into virtual enterprises. iGATE is not merely another static business entity, providing IT services, business consulting and business process outsourcing. Instead, it is a dynamic force that seeks to transform the way the world does business. iGATE will evolve and change over time to meet the needs of the evolving markets. It will proactively shape new solutions and set the pace of change in the marketplace. Q. What are the top HR priorities you have as part of this vision? A. We operationalise our values and vision by keeping our employees involved with the organisation. We conduct dedicated sessions for employee induction programmes, which are mandatory for all employees. We also stress on the importance of prompt acknowledgement for performers, by giving rewards such as CEO awards and recognising employees who demonstrate the company’s values. We also make sure that employees know about the long-term strategy of the organisation. We practice an in-house annual initiative called Udan wherein we chalk out the annual plan to achieve the vision and mission. |
 Q. Tell us about yourself. Where was your first job?A. I hail from a small town in coastal Andhra Pradesh where I completed my schooling and college degree in Telugu medium institutions. I moved on to do my masters in HRM from Andhra University, campus faculty at Visakhapattanam, a district of Andhra Pradesh. Following this, I did my doctorate (fellow programme) in HRD from Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur. My thesis was one of the fastest theses work completed in XLRI and it has also been published by Prentice Hall. I have authored 8 books (7 of them on HR), which besides English have been published in multiple languages including Chinese and Hindi. My non-HR book on self management is called You Can Fail. I started my career as an HR executive in National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), the largest power generation company in India, where I worked for 13 years. I later moved on to Sasken Communication Technologies and subsequently to iGATE, an integrated technology and operations firm. Q. What is your biggest challenge handling such a large and diverse employee base? A. We integrate our employees through our values and culture. Employees imbibe the values and culture of the company through various forums such as technical skill groups; they get imbibed in the employees’ hobbies and sports and through corporate events such as annual day and longevity awards. Leaders at iGATE exhibit values to employees through their behaviours and make sure that people are well-informed about various symbols and company initiatives. Q. iGATE was ranked India’s best IT employer in Dataquest-IDC’s 2008 survey. What specifically helped your company achieve this distinction? A. Two reasons contributed towards this. The first was our holistic approach to people management where we accorded equal importance to all sub-systems of HR, from hiring to separation. The second and more importantly was the way we went about executing this. We have not aspired for short-term gains. Instead, our vision is set on the long-term. The HR model of iGATE is driven by people and has been highly customised for its growth and existence. Q. What is the attrition rate at iGATE? How do you ensure successful retention and attraction of employees? A. Our annualised attrition rate is around 11%. We attract and retain employees through our 5C iGATE HR Model. This model has been inspired by Harvard Model of Human Resource Management and Maslow’s motivational framework. The 5Cs stand for: 1. Compensation: Designed effectively to ensure quality of living for employees and also to taking care of future investments 2. Camaraderie: A socialisation intervention meant to ensure a great peer group to employees 3. Culture: A non hierarchical and enterprising work environment 4. Career: An employee by navigating on the intranet can use a defined methodology to plan his/her career growth for 15 years 5. Competency: This is targeted at helping employees actualise themselves and their goals This framework is in alignment with our organisational mission. |
