Work Culture

The key to retention

Srinivasa Rao Dasari writes about the various strategies adopted by SumTotal Systems to retain its employees.

SumTotal Systems, a $70 million US-based enterprise applications and product company believes that organisational growth and employee welfare are interdependent, and talented human resources are the main pillars for an organisation’s success. SumTotal Systems has two offices in the US, apart from one facility in Hyderabad. The organisation offers total transparency in its working environment. It takes great pride in its flat structure, and anyone can directly access top-level management people.

Career growth is not a constraint for the right candidate as any employee can reach the highest level, depending on their talent and dedication. The organisation claims it has low attrition. The attrition rate of the company is 15 percent as against the industry average of 30 percent. level. One of the main reasons for this is the series of measures for the benefit of employees.

Sudhir Koneru, Senior Vice-president (International operations), SumTotal Syste-ms, says: “The major challenge before us is recruiting and retaining the best talent available in the market. We primarily focus on mentoring employees to scale up the ladder of career growth by providing them necessary training on different technologies, various skills and domain knowledge. The company is ramping up the headcount from 450 and targeting $300 million revenues by 2007. We are moving to our new facility at Mindspace IT Park shortly. With this, the total office space will go up to 45,000 sq ft, from the existing level of 24,000 sq ft. Irrespective of qualifications and experience, our employees get more incentives and hikes based on their performance. We review the ongoing activities in the organisation every week and this helps us know the views of the employees and other difficulties in the work environment. After conducting six-month reviews and based on the feedback process, we give promotions to the deserving employees based on their performance and not on seniority.”

Job rotation

Job rotation enables employees to get varied experience and the results are quite encouraging. For this, the SumTotal HR department co-ordinates with various departments like engineering, technical support, documentation, delivery teams, marketing, website and project co-ordination.

Lekha Sishta, Head, HRD, SumTotal Systems adds, “We focus on developing deep expertise of employees on key areas of technology. As part of our global exchange programme, every quarter minimum 20 professionals go abroad to work on overseas projects for a period of six months. Generally, in other organisations, employees don’t travel much, but our employees travel a lot. They share their views in our newsletters. We believe that every employee is important to us as he has the SumTotal experience, apart from valid project experience. He may not be the best in the market, but is important for us.”

Recruitment process

The company focusses less on experience and primarily insists on fundamental skills. It does not prefer to recruit in large numbers as it is very selective in hiring professionals and fresh engineering graduates. Behavioural skills of candidates plays a major role in the selection criterion. They need to go through four interviews before the final selection. Employee referral is also a common practice as the organisation finds it extremely useful.

Training programmes

Aimed at making employees more competitive and productive, the organisation gives utmost priority to training programmes focussing on open sessions, external programmes, technical training, and training on competency. Per employee expenditure on training says a lot about the organisation’s commitment towards enhancing skills and expertise. On an average, the organisation spends about Rs 50,000 per employee. It has earmarked Rs one crore budget per annum for conducting training programmes.

Once in a fortnight or month, it organises Knowl-edge Day for networking employees of different departments. Interactive programmes among employees and speeches are organised on a given topic.

The Knowledge Day focusses on key factors like motivation, leadership skills, lifestyle, yoga, stress management, etc.

Employees are also taught e-mail etiquette and behaviour in business meetings. Considering the future requirements in the industry, the organisation trains employees to gear up for meeting future challenges.

To ensure smooth functioning within the organisation, SumTotal conducts quarterly business reviews. This system helps in ascertaining the exact situation of the working environment.

As part of the review exercise, it takes a number of parameters like targets, challenges and performance under consideration for making analysis. Every employee is a part of this exercise.

Based on the productivity and contribution to the organisation, SumTotal gives the Best Employee of the Year award. Employees celebrate all major festivals in the office premises. The company also sponsors birthday celebrations for employees along with their families at five-star hotels.