Work Culture

Melting pot of many traditions

At Lionbridge Technologies, every employee considers himself to be a global citizen, discovers Sudipta Dev.

It is an organisation which takes great pride in its vibrant culture brought about by its unique mix of people. Where 50 percent of its staff come from diverse professional backgrounds and possess varied skill sets, attitudes and interests very different from the other half. For the management and the HR department of Lionbridge Technologies, the greatest success is to leverage on this differentiation of creative and technical people and create an enriching work atmosphere for all. A leading provider in learning solutions, the US-headquartered Lionbridge Technologies has 50 development centres in 25 countries. The India centres in Mumbai and Chennai feature significantly in its global operations and comprise more than 25 percent of the organisation’s global staff strength of 4,000.

Harish Joshy, Vice-president, Global Program Reengineering, Lionbridge Technologies says, “The same basic things motivate our employees throughout the world. Our aim is to build a diverse, vibrant and challenging workplace. It is very important that when employees visit a Lionbridge centre in another country they do not feel that they are visiting another company.” The company actively rotates people between the US, Europe and India, primarily to share knowledge and best practices from more mature centres to newer locations.

With the average age in the organisation being 27 years, the energy level is very high. “What differentiates us from others is the kind of people that we have—the technical people for application development and testing and the creative people for content development and localisation. We handle languages which no other IT company in India is doing at this scale,” says Robin A Lloyd, Vice-president and GM, Lionbridge India, who is currently based out of Mumbai to further build this global people-to-people culture.

Unique mix of people

While the technical staff is engineering professionals, the content staff comprises designers, writers, graphic artists, visualisers and multimedia personnel. Then there are the language experts (employed both full-time and part-time) for localisation. The organisation believes in exploiting this unique mix of personnel for the benefit of all.

The technical people are normally process-oriented, predictable and do things step by step, while the creative show a lot of enthusiasm, are somewhat less predictable and think out-of-the box. Lloyd elaborates how both benefit from each other, “The creative staff learn to become more process and matrix-oriented, which they acknow-ledge helps them in the long run while the technical staff feel enthused by the fun-filled creative atmosphere.”

Interestingly, the India centre is among the leading ones, which does world-wide services and the staff have to regularly interact with their global counterparts.

Since almost 50 percent of the staff comprises technical people, the question is why would bright young techies opt to work for a learning solutions provider than a software organisation? “Most of our engagement with customers is onsite-offshore and the chances of going onsite are very high. Furthermore, e-learning is only one horizontal, there is application development for various industries like healthcare and high tech. Having this domain expertise would be an added advantage for their career growth.” answers Lloyd.

Talent pool

The attrition rate being high in the e-learning industry has affected most organisations in this space though Lionbridge claims that its employee-friendly policies have managed to curb staff turnover. Deepak Deshpande, Head-Human Resources, Lionbridge Technologies, India adds that there are many technical people available, but the real problem is the content pool, “There are not more than 4,500 content talent in the country which has led to some overly-aggressive practices. Adding to this is the lack of training institutes in the content field to build the talent pool.”

Lionbridge has come up with a strategy to counter this problem of talent availability, With e-learning and localisation services growing rapidly in India, it is imperative that we develop our own talent. If we rely solely on ready-made talent from other companies, we will never have enough people to support our growth. Fortunately, there are excellent non-IT graduates available, and we can leverage the experience and knowledge of our global teams to train and develop these graduates quickly. We are launching ‘fresher-to-guru’ development paths for new recruits and existing employees alike,” explains Lloyd.

The company believes in attracting those people who possess the right cultural-fit. States Joshy, “We attract employees with a global curiosity, and create an environment that embraces and cultivates cross-cultural collaboration. Even those employees who do not travel abroad interact regularly with colleagues and clients around the world.”

‘Many traditions, one future’ is the common motto. The company takes great pride in being a global organisation in the true sense and regularly deputes people from other countries to come and work in India and vice versa.

“The fact that we are a global company has sunk into us and reflects in whatever we do or think. There is greater sensitisation than other IT companies and we consider ourselves as global citizens,” states Deshpande.