Work Culture

Connecting communities

Working with leading developers, building cutting-edge Internet applications, creating new technologies, all seem a hard day’s work. But not when you are at Yahoo! India, where there's fun embedded all the way. Renuka Vembu tells you more

Yahoo! India endorses complete support and encouragement to its teams to work on new technologies, create new properties as well as resolve complex issues plaguing the Internet. Their core mission is to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge. Developers working with them have open access to established Web experts like David Filo (co-founder of Yahoo!), Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP), and Ash Patel (creator of My Yahoo!). This window provides developers a huge head start towards building innovative and cutting-edge Internet applications using the enormous scale and infrastructure. Likewise, this also presents employees with an opportunity to be associated and work hand- in-hand with the best and brightest minds of Yahoo!—globally and in India.

Values they stand by

By pooling in the best available diverse talented minds, it plugs in their contribution to provide the best platform for innovation with a tinge of fun infused into it. Their value system teaches some of the core ingredients of a successful business venture, espoused by its brand employees.

• Excellence: While winning holds the key, winning with integrity restores the company’s value in the eyes of its stakeholders. Since leadership is hard won and should never be taken for granted, they seek to achieve flawless execution without taking any shortcuts on the quality scale.
• Teamwork: Respecting fellow individuals, keeping alive an open communication channel, fostering collaboration while maintaining individual accountability, are some of the key attributes that every person working with Yahoo! aims to peak at. The company promotes and tries to develop on ideas that surface from any corner of the globe, in their offices across locations and geographies. Appreciating the value of multiple perspectives and capitalizing on diverse expertise helps them garner the best of creative talent and also foster employee engagement.
• Innovation: Creativity and ingenuity are the pillar-stones on which stands the foundation of a successful company. Yahoo! anticipates market trends and moves briskly to embrace it. They progress with a mind-set and attitude of not being intimidated to take informed, responsible risks.
• Community: They share an infectious sense of mission to make an impact on society and empower consumers as well. They are committed to serving both the Internet community and their own communities.
• Customer fixation: Respect for customers and never ever forgetting that they come to them by choice, is a viewpoint imbibed by every person working for Yahoo!. They share a personal responsibility to maintain the customers’ loyalty and trust. Listening to customer, trying to incorporate feedbacks and surpassing customer expectation is what they set out to achieve.
• Fun: Yahoo! believes that humor is essential to success. They applaud irreverence and don’t take themselves too seriously. They celebrate achievement. They yodel, which is their corporate blog.

Its fun, fun, fun!

Pranesh Anthapur, Chief Operating Officer, Yahoo! India, Research and Development, asserted, “Yahoo! boasts of a culture filled with fun, fun and more fun, breaking myths that IT companies are devoid of mirth and exuberance.” Their seriousness on fun is so evident that it even takes the prime position in the company’s core values.

The multihued and vibrant office floors are based on themes ranging from cars to music; so don’t be surprised if you find conference rooms christened with names like Porsche or Def Leppard. The ‘chill out nooks’ dominated by chess, table tennis, billiards tables and foosball—taking the cake, are a visual proof of their fun-filled work life.

Activities like dropping employees off from 140 feet tied to a bungee chord or making all employees launch a product by taking them to a film on the same day, same show, across the country, Yahoo does it all that is required to engage employees into the spirit and ethos of working with them.

Hunting for prospects

Being a technology master in the Internet space, they always ideate and innovate with their existing recruitment process. Be it the use of SMS as a form of recruitment or connecting with candidates through a boarding pass of flights across key destinations, upsurge of creative inputs is a key component in their recruitment scheme. Their innovations across universities also lead to the appointment of brand ambassadors within campuses, which has also resulted in a huge traction.

In recognition of their innovative practices in the area of recruitment and staffing, they bagged the Award for Efficient Recruiting and Branding Styles—Asia HRM Congress 2008.

Polishing the resources

There are productive training sessions and continuous encouragement programmes for employees to excel at Yahoo!

Higher education opportunity—Yahoo! sponsors the fee for employees who are keen to pursue higher education. This is immaterial of the university selected or discipline applied for. It is done purely to help employees enhance their skills and develop their interests.

Global mobility programme—Every employee who has been associated with the company for a minimum of two years can cash in on the opportunity and opt for working out of any other global location. This in turn gives them an exposure and experience of working at a different location with a tryst with varied cultures, people, etc.

Yahoo! provides its developers a huge head start towards building innovative and cutting-edge Internet applications using the enormous scale and infrastructure. Hack Day is designed with this intention of promoting talent instilling a sense of fun therein. This facilitates free flow of big ideas that bring bright people together. Basically, the thrust is all on celebrating coolness, innovation and creativity, and making the Web a better place to live, work and thrive.

All for employees

From providing transportation to enabling flexi-timings, from employee friendly insurance policies to medical benefits, there are a slew of facilities that are aimed at employee convenience:

• Since they operate from multiple locations from within a city, Yahoo! has cabs that run across these buildings every 30 minutes. No employee is constrained in his movement, irrespective of where they have to work from at any given point in time.
• All buildings are Wi-Fi enabled and encourage employees to interact closely on ideas and initiation.
• Care for women workforce is taken into consideration as there are reserved girls-only rooms to help them unwind during a late hour work period.
• Flexi timing: The emphasis is more on work getting done and not how many hours are put in. They have resting areas within the office, which includes beds for employees to take a break and get back to work with a fresh perspective.
• Employee friendly insurance policy, and complimentary annual medical check-up is in store.
• Counseling services are provided.
• There is no cap on sick leave.
• They have free access to clubs in addition to having an in-house gym.
• Personal help desk for running errands and other services are granted at reasonable rates.

Breeding togetherness

Yahoo! doesn’t have doors to go to anyone; there are no specific rooms for anyone, including the top brass. Everyone has a similar looking workstation, which encourages people to speak up and interact with each other without any barriers.

CSR initiative

Anthapur reflected, “Parikrma is a school for orphan children that Yahoo! India R&D started. It runs purely out of a minimal voluntary contribution from an employee’s salary. During weekends or holidays, our employees spend time with these kids teaching or just playing with them.”

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com