Work Culture

Nurturing a high caliber workforce

Every aspect to make the environment a suitable place to work for has been clearly laid down—from basic criterions like recruitment, training and retention, to initiatives that bridge gaps and enhance lives. Renuka Vembu checks out on Dexterity Business Analysts

Dexterity Business Analysts is on the leading edge of the knowledge process services and market research related software services industry. Hence, the company is very selective about the people it employs as it believes that it is essential to maintain a work culture that nurtures high performance and high caliber employees with a platform for them to grow and succeed. Siva Kumar, Vice-president, HR, Dexterity asserted, “We keep a very open culture in the organization; provide our associates with freedom and flexibility to operate, whilst keeping in view a high degree of goal-orientedness. High employee engagement level and a culture of listening and promptly attending to feedbacks are the highlights of working at Dexterity. We also believe in providing an accelerated career path to our employees and our prime focus is on keeping them engaged with the organization. There is a huge degree of investment that we make as a company on training our associates on high-end market research and analytics tools and software programming, which paves the way for them to get to the onsite business process services assignments.”

The employees of the company meet once every month and interact to understand each other and act as morale supporters and spirit boosters. Kumar explained, “The comfort levels of the taskforce are assessed and redefined where mutually desired. Seeds of leadership are ‘sowed’ in each employee by nominating on a round robin basis, every quarter an ‘Employee Champion’ who champions the cause of the employees with a management perspective. Every individual contributing towards excellence is recognized and appreciated, including the personnel from housekeeping, security and the electrical maintenance department. An annual appreciation reward for organizational co-operation is awarded wherein the recipient is chosen transcending the barriers of functions and departments.”

There are unique business objectives like ‘raising the bar’ which involves high performance drive, linked with innovative incentive systems and motivation models. Drive towards succession creation and mentoring is another initiative that pairs up a mentor and a successor for a certain period of time and the progress during that phase is observed and scrutinized.

Recruitment stages

The organization has a six-stage recruitment process comprising resume screening, analytical process assessment, aptitude for growth leanings, technical know-how levels and online tests and interviews with the hiring operations manager and the human resources team. Some of the characteristics to be scanned during these tests are:

• Analytical processes: This test is carried out with an objective to understand the level of domain, technology and process expertise. Situation and case study based evaluation enables the interviewers to understand the candidate’s responses and thereby their level of capabilities.
• Aptitude for growth: This quality is assessed through interviews with the operations or delivery manager and is validated by a seasoned recruiter.
  Employees of Dexterity are required to have a strong aptitude and the ability to be able to work in teams. The essential traits to be present in any individual who is to be associated as a part of the organization are:
• Qualification—graduates and masters
• Experience
• Domain, process and technology
• Willingness to learn and learning ability
• Career-oriented and self-motivated
• Consistency
• Concentration
• Communication—English (written and spoken)
• Comprehension and problem-solving abilities
• Analytical skills—mathematical ability and logical reasoning
• Team player

Training programmes

The company’s strong point lies essentially in its training programmes and retention plans. They have created their own in-house training programmes on market research and analytics and knowledge process services. This gives a cue on some of the training initiatives conceptualized and developed, which are delivered by both in-house trainers and also by external sources.

• For operations and projects team: The focus is on technology and process level training which is required for implementing each project with finesse. Guidance in this direction strengthens the domain knowledge of people. Skill of each and every associate is identified and they are once a month educated on upgradation of skills.
• For functional areas and support functions: Function specific training like understanding the organizational behavior, financial management and quality systems are provided to carry out the job at hand efficiently.
• Inducting the newcomers: Induction training is conducted in the first week of every month to educate the newcomers of each month about the policies, procedures and standard practices relevant to all the departments. This gives them an overview on the entire company than against only specific related information.
• Information security: Dexterity employees are expected to be aware of the information security systems and procedures to be followed and every month this activity this is carried out diligently.
• Personality development training: Making people adept with soft skills, leadership development, meeting skills and body language is an imperative feature which cannot be ignored.

Kumar briefed, “The company’s initial training plan focuses on educating our associates on market research processes and analytical techniques. This is followed by client and industry specific training and a working knowledge of the client platform. Thereafter, the employees are deployed on client accounts. There is a periodic training support while on-the-job thereby improving and strengthening the learning curve of each individual leading to both skill and managerial development. We are also currently involved in developing a full-fledged learning centre consolidating all the various training programmes that we have in-house to be shared unequivocally.”

Leadership and mentoring

Leadership building is ingrained into the fabric of the organizational structure. With the senior leadership actively engaged with the first and the second line of leadership, there is a spiral of learning and sharing. Additionally, they have offsite and two-day sessions every quarter for the entire team to instill, build and enhance the spirit to create a clear career path for their employees. All associates from every cadre are given training relevant to move up to the next cadre leading to transparency.

This is done to ensure that they are well-educated about their role in the higher cadre which would make their upward transition easier, smoother and more fruitful when they are actually promoted.

The company gives an account of the value system it espouses:

• Client delight: To develop into a leading IT service provider for the market research segment by continuously and closely understanding the customers’ requirements and innovating the processes that will lead to client delight.
• Employee delight: To provide an environment that nurtures high performance and establishing a long-term employee relationship with the company. To achieve high performance amongst individuals and teams by adopting efficient motivation models, training and empowerment.
• Investor delight: To practice the best management principles at work, to improve the performance and profitability of the organization and to make the workplace an attractive place to invest, not just for its profitability but also for its perspective.
• Process excellence: To weave high quality, and add uniqueness and premium in services through critical analysis of all processes at each conception phase to achieve high performance.
• Relationship by trust: To integrate high standard of ethics and values in all interactions with each of the client, vendor, employee and investor.

Rewards and recognition programmes

• Best employee: This award is given to the employee who has been performing extremely well in his/her project and training, and maintains a healthy inter-personal relationship with all the departments and team members.
• Best team: Each year, the best team which churns out the best productivity within the given constraints is nominated as the Team of the Year.
• Organizational co-operation award: This is an inter-departmental appreciation given to the employees who have extended their co-operation towards activities pertaining to other departments as well.
• Long service award: On the Foundation Day celebrations, people who have completed five years of service with the company are awarded with a gold coin and gift and dining coupons.
• Award given to support members: This yearly recognition is given to the support staff like security, house keeping and the electricians to motivate them and make them recognize that their service also plays an important role in the success of the organization. For these people, the guidelines on the basis of which awards are granted would be on the lines of:
  * Timeliness on the job
  * Evaluation of the time sheets
  * Feedback from employees
• DROP card: Deserve Recognition Of Performance card is given to project heads who would in turn hand over the same to their team members who are doing a commendable job.
• Dinner with the CEO: On an annual basis, when people do something extra for the growth of the organization apart form their routine defined activities, the CEO takes them out for a dinner with him and his family.

The employees perform above par and surpass expectations because the company clearly communicates to them well in time their role and customer needs. Dexterity, in turn, is able to closely monitor and constantly adapt to client requirements due to implementation of the following pattern of actions:

• Effectiveness of training application on-the-job: The quality department provides inputs and feedbacks on-the-job training requirements.
• New technology and process areas: Business development fills up people who require to be familiarized with new skills.
• Alignment of operational initiatives with training: A regular monthly review of progress with the customer is executed to capture their assessment and inputs for training intervention.

Coming closer

The Vision Sharing programme is conducted at the onset of every calendar year at an exclusive location wherein the CEO and the employees share their goals for the forthcoming year and offer suggestions to improve processes and systems. Kumar elaborated, “Further, the culture of fun and keeping one another engaged through learning and motivational interventions comes right from the top. We continue to learn as an organization and each day we implement something new, something that makes our workplace even more exciting. In addition to this, the importance given to ‘job-person-fit’ and continuous learning at all levels add to our pride.”

Corporate social responsibility

‘Social Catalyst’ is the unique CSR initiative of Dexterity and is aimed at bringing about a substantial change in the working of NGOs. This is done by assisting people in setting up NGOs and trusts, and empowering the existing organizations with the right processes for social work. It caters to them by giving them a structure for finance, fund raising, managing accounts and carrying out daily activities. It has a pool of volunteers who are mobilized as per the needs of the NGOs.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com