Work Culture

The ‘global’ journey

Not only are all employee benefit schemes defined in detail, special attention is given to women employees as well-gender friendly policies and sexual harassment guidelines are in place. Renuka Vembu looks at GlobalLogic.

GlobalLogic is a company which is into product development, customization and enhancements. Iti Kumar, Assistant Vice-president, HR (Operations), GlobalLogic, started off by saying, “We realized that the key to building a strong GlobalLogic culture is to integrate the principles into everyday work.” For a company like GlobalLogic, managing their employees who are dispersed across three diverse continents becomes an important task. They address this situation by promptly involving all their employees while defining their core values and encouraging people to create cross-functional task forces to solve complex problems.

Recruitment, training and development

Every prospective employee who is finalized and taken in to become an integral part of the company’s operations is welcomed by the recruiter and the delivery manager or head. They are kept abreast of the company updates till the time they join, and after they join in, the buddy programme helps them assimilate in the company. Training consists of the mandatory intensive blanket covering induction, technical, competency enhancement and management development programmes.

HR schemes

The people processes and all the initiatives are well structured, properly planned, firmly laid down and dutifully implemented. They range from transparency in operations to flexibility in timings, providing employees with all the possible facilities to work effectively, as per their own convenience, which not only lead to increased productivity, but also a more matured, responsible, motivated and satisfied workforce.

• Openness and transparency: Rather than just priding on word of mouth announcement of following a transparent culture and open door policy, the organization has their focus right and initiatives ingrained into the organizational work culture.
• Town hall: It is a quarterly event conducted in each location of GlobalLogic and chaired either by CEO or COO of the company. Information pertaining to business updates, revenue updates, new accounts, next quarter goals, insight sales pipeline, functional updates, etc., are shared with the employees. They are also given an opportunity to question the senior management and obtain clarification on an issue, if any.
• Skip level meetings: This meeting takes place between the COO and a specified team every fortnight, excluding the team manager. The group gets to voice its opinions, share views and provide inputs on project improvement and challenges.
• Webinars with top management: This is a platform for all employees to interact with the top management through Web chat.
• Discussion forums: Employees are encouraged to have open knowledge-sharing discussions on the forum. Any individual can open a conversation thread in topics as varied as social clubs, tennis classes, quality of food or new technology. These help people to exchange ideas and views, and bond together. Besides, employees can also put postings for discussing various policies and practices of the organization and convey the same to the HR and the senior management.
• Organizational surveys: Kumar said, “We believe in checking the pulse of the organization on a regular basis, and working out action plans for improving consistently. In order to meet this objective, periodic employee engagement survey at company wide-level and internal customer satisfaction surveys are conducted. The findings of the action plans are shared with the employees, and the same is tracked by the senior management on a regular basis. Uniqueness of the approach is that action planning and implementation is owned by the people and not the HR.”

She added, the company also conducts the below mentioned surveys every six months:

• Employee satisfaction survey: This is done on broader dimensions as it covers all the areas like career growth and development, compensation management, managerial effectiveness, various policies and processes, pride in company association, work culture, etc. In their previously concluded survey, more than 80 percent of employees participated and the employee satisfaction index was over 73 percent.
• Support functions survey: The objective of this survey is to find out the services level index of support functions like HR, administration, internal IT, finance, PSA and ITG team.
• Reverse feedback and 360 degree feedback: The survey is a self development tool for the managers.
• Leadership anonymous survey: This is conducted on need basis. As and when line HR partners find any gap in employee engagement level in the team, these surveys are conducted to understand the engagement level and pulse of the team.
• Whistle blower policy: It demonstrates the true reflection of one of their core value—openness. It allows and encourages employees to bring to management’s notice anything unethical or unprofessional happening including violation of core values in the company, thereby ensuring timely, appropriate action and transparency in the organization.
• Flexi-work schedules: No one is expected to adhere to strict timings in GlobalLogic. Every individual is free to schedule work as per one’s own preference.
• Extended HR Family: Line HR partners adopt a collaborative approach and facilitate business in day to day operations. They work more as a consultant and do not reflect power centre approach in any of the actions

People process

• The SLA driven processes at GlobalLogic are measured regularly.
• Any kind of information sought or request made is routed through the online bug system and the same is tracked and linked to the timelines for closure.
• Surveys like Employee Satisfaction Index, 360/Reverse Feedback system, support function surveys and leadership anonymous surveys help the company to benchmark its positioning and also provides a platform to its employees to share their feedback for improvements.

Additional employee benefits

The employees of GlobalLogic are privileged to have benefits which move beyond the normal work routine.

Sponsorship for higher education, recreation facilities like gymnasium, meditation room and sporting areas for table tennis, soccer, cricket, basketball and badminton, are available to the employees.

An attractive and beneficial scheme is the interest free loan policy. It is applicable for benefits like salary advance, exigency loan for self marriage, medical treatments, etc., 10% top up loan for the purchase or registration of home and also 10% top up loan for the purchase of car, is furnished. This loan is interest free and is recovered in equal installments.

These provide maximum benefits to the employees in terms of meeting their personal aspirations as well as professional targets.

Gender-friendly policy

This policy assembles all the female employees at a certain band level to form a community. They meet at regular intervals, discuss the challenges that need to be countered, understand the personal aspects of each other, and also help each other with insights on career growth and development. Sexual harassment guidelines for its employee, in alignment with the whistle blower policy, are already in place.

Valuing employee contribution

The company has a string of rewards that recognize and appreciate employee contribution and performance. These are conducted on a periodical basis, for both, individual and team work, based purely on performance, potential and talent. Kumar mentioned, “All the recognition plans are aligned with the core values of the company—integrity, openness, innovation and teamwork. In the process, each individual is identified based on his or her outstanding contribution in line with the core values of the company.”

• Monthly spot appreciations: Here, an individual or a team is picked up for exemplary piece of work, rewarded with a lunch or a movie. The names of these employees also appear in the confluence page (Intranet).
• Quarterly awards: Two percent of the workforce is identified every quarter and awarded with Individual Excellence Awards, Leadership Excellence Awards and Team Awards. In the case of individual award, identified employees are given rewards in the quarterly Town Hall by the COO or CEO. In the quarterly awards category, selection is done based on customer satisfaction index and attrition factor. There are three kinds of team awards given, namely Cohesive Team Awards, Integrated Team Awards and Support Pillar Awards.
• Annual Excellence Awards: It is given to those who perform extraordinarily in view of the company’s vision, values and objectives.
• Longevity Awards: This is awarded to employees who have been with the organization for two or more years.

Family focus

Employee families form a part of all their celebrations, events, festivals, functions and picnics. The company also does not have any restriction on blood relations working in the company.

Social awareness

IndusPrayas, a group at GlobalLogic, which works towards social causes, provides avenues to each employee to be a part of the larger society, and work towards issues facing humanity. The objective of this team is to work in areas like donations, education and awareness camps keeping the underprivileged section of society in mind. They have undertaken a wide array of activities supporting the needy society in the year 2007—blood donation camps, celebrating Mother’s Day and Children’s Day, plantation drive, outing for SOF kids, woolen distribution during winter, t-shirt distribution, and computer donation.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com