Work Culture

A personal touch makes all the difference

Capgemini India is a large company, but takes pride in possessing the positive traits of a small enterprise. Check out more about the company’s work culture and its people processes from Renuka Vembu

Capgemini India has grown up in scale exponentially in the last few years, but it proudly claims to possess the touch of a small enterprise as far as people relations are concerned. Qualities such as informality, personal touch, non-hierarchical culture and non-bureaucratic style are unmistakably evident. These cultural elements are reinforced through the behavioral patterns displayed by the senior members of the organization for others to emulate. They carry and spread the right message and the desired conduct across through their actions.

While defining people processes in any company, the challenge is to ensure that interests of the employees are balanced vis-à-vis the mission statement of the organization. Employee empowerment, their role and participation in forming a process or a policy are determined in a collaborative manner based on ownership from leaders across all functions. The organization undertakes the required actions without fanfare. Capgemini espouses some core values like honesty, boldness, trust, freedom, modesty and fun which are the essential elements that make for a good and enhanced working atmosphere.

Stringent recruitment

To get a new individual and a perfect fit enrolled into the organization, the company needs to have a strong and good database of prospective suitable candidates. Also, the onus is primarily on the HR team to get the person through the initial stages. The recruitment process at Capgemini focuses on ensuring that the business needs are met in a cost effective and timely manner. Some of the key elements of this process are:

• Focus on getting the right mix of freshers and experienced people as per the business needs and the market environment.
• Sourcing talent through multiple channels based on the demand-supply graph, the post on offer, the target group of people, etc.
• Stringent evaluation measures like aptitude and technical knowledge tests are arranged through specialist service providers. The selected contenders need to clear up to four rounds of interviews for every lateral.
• A thorough background verification for all employees is done to get a sense of perspective from the previous employers and other references.

There are two independent technical evaluations—one is the HR round and another with a senior manager to ensure that the candidate is evaluated in depth, before being offered the post. The purpose of the four rounds of interviews, wherever applicable, is to ensure the certainty of fit between the candidates and their prospective employer. The company has created a list of all the roles and a comprehensive competency framework for these roles which is in line with their global competency framework. The framework is being rolled out so that employees can be mapped on to specific roles and managers can work along with employees to educate them about the career path options. This will help employees decide on possible careers of choice and sketch appropriate development plans for the same.

The company lists down some HR initiatives that it has embarked upon to enrich the working life of an employee. These include:

• A strong and extended on-boarding program to ensure that new joinees are properly assimilated.
• Buddy program for new joinees to help them settle down fast and orient themselves in the organization.
• New manager assimilation program to ensure that new managers understand the expectations from them in their role as managers.
• Grievance redressal council for employees to represent their grievances and get resolutions.
• Assistance program for employees to get external specialist counsel for all types of individual problems in a confidential manner.

Extensive training

After due completion of the employment stage, the next step is to train the candidate to make him/her adept at the required skill-sets to perform the job at hand efficiently and effectively. During incubation, the training for employees is focused on the technical aspect for specific skill areas and behavioral and quality training.

After incubation, it shifts to need-based technical and behavioral training, certification programs, process, quality and managerial effectiveness training. The company carries out these teaching schedules with the help of multiple methods such as instructor-led training, e-learning, experiential training and knowledge sharing sessions through various forums.

M Hrushikesh, Associate Director, People Relationship Management, Capgemini India, explained further, “All lateral hires are taken through a two-day on-boarding program called Discover. This gives them an overview of the company’s policies, procedures and various business units. This is to help them settle comfortably at their workplace. It is followed by some mandatory sessions on quality process, information security, etc. Campus hires are taken through a six-week induction program covering OOP concepts, database concepts and programming languages. Depending on the disciplines and projects that they are likely to get attached to, the technical training can be of six to eight weeks on SAP, mainframe, .Net or Java. These trainings have rigorous assessments at the end of each module. In case of new managers (lateral hires), it is mandatory that they undergo the new manager assimilation program to help them imbibe Capgemini values and culture, understand the performance management process, the career and competency framework, various  tools, quality process, etc.”

Grooming leaders

To ensure that the right leadership pool is developed, Capgemini has instituted focused training programs with a blend of methodologies aimed at senior leadership development and middle management leadership development. Employees with potential are chosen for these programs and groomed for future leadership roles. They also make sure that the individual career objectives support the organizational goals.

The goal-setting process tries to align individual objectives with organizational requirements. The organization recognizes individual contributions through performance ratings and career movements like new opportunities, promotions, and lateral movements.

The roles that individuals are allocated in the work space are varied based on the interests of the individual and the business opportunities that exist. The roles and competencies framework helps individuals and managers better understand career possibilities and expectations and capability requirements and plan for it suitably.

Some light on the other initiatives that are built into the company:

• Leave policy which allows for paternity leave and adoption leave amongst others.
• Onsite policy which allows employees to travel frequently to meet families.
• Specialist counseling support to employees to address issues that an individual may face.
• Tie-ups with external service providers for services such as fitness clubs and concierge services.
• Special campaigns by external service providers in the office premises to ensure that employees have choices at their doorstep. This is with reference to arranging promotional campaigns of several external vendors such as banks, insurance service providers, other service providers and vendors for running campaigns at the work place so that employees can have some of their personal requirements taken care of without having to leave their office.

Capgemini communities

There are several roles such as programmer, programmer analyst, subject matter expert and technical architect. The competency framework helps by listing and describing the specific competencies that are necessary to perform each role and the depth to which each of the competencies are required. The forums that are used are global communities, learning support groups, Capgemini University and expert faculty. Global communities like EM, SE, architect community and learning support groups help the workforce leverage collective knowledge about the organization and arms them with state-of-the-art industry knowledge, leading practices and SME. This knowledge can be shared across organizational and geographical boundaries on a real-time basis and thereby increases the speed of knowledge transfer and speeds up organizational learning.

Hrushikesh added, “These learning support groups are a group of core team members who drive learning and certification within the community. The role of Capgemini University is to foster international networking amongst peers, cultural integration notably for new entrants into the community, connection to their leadership community to develop common goals and ideals, knowledge sharing and the roll-out of best practices, capabilities development through global learning programs and development and support of communities of professionals.”

Expert faculty employs practitioners from the field who utilize their best quality people to help others reach high levels of expertise and excellence. In 2007, Capgemini created the university qualified facilitators initiative to officially recognize the contributions made by key individuals to the university. Key facilitators ensure the success of their learning programs at the university by adhering to quality standards and consistency of learning.

CSR: focus on the girl child

To ensure that they contribute to the society in a meaningful way, Capgemini India has taken up a specific program in conjunction with a national level specialist NGO, Naandi Foundation, to focus on girl child education. The objective is to enable support for underprivileged girl children get education up to secondary school level.

There are no organizational diktats in the company. Joint celebrations for project successes and company-wide town hall house sessions reflect the non-hierarchical culture that cascades down. ‘Fundoo Fridays’ which are held on the last Friday of every month encompass activities like ad-mad shows, tambola, laughter clubs and magic shows showcasing the diverse talent of employees. They also have a program called ‘Pehchan’, where the parents of newly inducted trainees are invited to the office. This gives them an opportunity to interact with the management and see for themselves the work culture and the people. It helps to foster a sense of bonding with the organization, at the same time parents feel a sense of pride in seeing their child do so well.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com