Transforming HR

Change is at the heart of innovation. And at the heart of change are two fundamental issues –


1. Are people ready to accept that the present is not ideal and change is required?

2. Are people unhappy with their present position?

All great societies, corporations have changed because they fundamentally believed in these two aspects – they had the guts to accept the need for change and they were unhappy with their present state. This why great civilizations could wear-off discrimination that were based on colour, race, gender etc. This is why great companies could change their strategies, core-competence and priorities.

The ones that have lagged behind are the ones who do not want to accept that something needs to be changes and are too happy in their own cocoons. The other day when I visited a doctor’s clinic and was waiting for my turn, there were other people in the waiting area too. Among them was a family of three – couple with their 3 or 4 year old daughter. The small girl very innocently threw the wrapper of the toffee she ate on the floor of the clinic. Her mother immediately pointed her to lift the wrapper. But the next moment I was disappointed, for her father further instructed her to throw that wrapper outside the clinic. ‘Clean Homes, Dirty Streets! When will this change?

Hr transformation in many companies is the need of the hour. From remaining glorified back-offices they need to be at the centre-stage of engagement based management of people to leverage competitive edge of their respective companies. HR department have to become more modern integrating cost-effective and technology based solutions. But for that to happen fundamental belief of the decision-makers of the company has to change and they have to accept that change is required and they have to be unhappy with the way things are going-on in terms of people management.

Wipro Technologies, the Global Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Limited has recently entered a partnership with Oracle to launch ‘Wipro SprintHR’, a cloud based technology to enable enterprise customers transform their HR processes.

This will be offered though deployment of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management. Leveraging its strong relationship with Oracle and co-development experience on Oracle Fusion Applications, Wipro SprintHR helps significantly reduce cost and deployment timelines. It offers a unique and powerful blend of fusion human capital management modules that include HCM processes like talent management, benefits management, besides core Hr administration.

The Gandhi-Hazare Dilemma

Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s speech read-out in absentia at a rally in Chamoli, Uttarakhand said that corruption cannot be fought only by speeches. The attempt is obviously to take-on social activist Anna Hazare. Well! Corruption cannot be fought only by speeches, agreed, but it also cannot be fought by ‘in-action’ which most of our political parties have done ‘actively’ over the years, as well. Being fair to Anna, atleast someone is raising the voice and loud enough to vibrate the ear-drums and the ground beneath of our political ‘Kumbhakarans’, having some chance of changing intent and shaping better action.

Goal achievement needs voice, intent and action and in the same order. Anyone one element plucked from the string shall stall or abort goal accomplishment. The intent or the mindset is mainly driven by culture and environment. If the culture and environment are not conducive then the intent can never be right. The voices then remain as plain hollow rhetoric and hardly translate into concrete action.

Wipro’s SVP India, Africa and Middle-east Anand S Ankaran expressed his ambition to beat IBM India and be the number one IT services company in India and be among the top three in the Middle East. Ankaran thinks IBM India has been lucky to get deals of Bharti, Idea and Vodafone in India and Wipro’s hasn’t been aggressive enough. Well I do not what stopped them from being aggressive in the first place. Additionally I do not agree with Sankaran’s comment that for IBM the Indian operations are only a ‘tactical substitute for the slowdown in western markets’.

Only time shall tell whether Wipro’s SVP claim has all three ingredients for success i.e. voice, intent (driven by culture) and action. To negate IBM’s 100 year-old legacy and the excellent engagement culture that prevails in the company shall not be easy to take-on for Wipro which is very differently focused. The culture of autonomy, real empowerment, work-life balance (read my earlier story ‘Space, not Place’) and resulting engagement shall be tough to beat. It shall take a bullet for a bullet to hit the ‘Big Blue’, a company that  holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide. Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science. Famous inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.

Just one more time, the culture shapes the intent and drives the action. Else, words remain as plain rhetoric. Hopefully Wipro can match words with intent and action.

Bad time to 'Claim' but excellent time to 'Tame'

Major IT firm in India are experiencing a sudden fall in the attrition levels. Available reports show that the rate of at India’s second largest IT firm in terms of software export, Infosys Technologies has declined from 17 per cent to 15.6 per cent during the last two fiscal quarters. At Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT firm, the attrition rate dropped from a high of 14.8 per cent in the fiscal quarter ended on June 30, to 13.7 per cent in the quarter that closed on September 30. Meanwhile, the attrition rate at mid-size IT firm MindTree dropped from 25.6 per cent in June last to 21.7 per cent in the quarter ended on September 30.


Now what should be attributed as a cause? There are companies like Wipro who believe that this drop is because of the efforts of their HR departments. In Wipro the attrition level is down by 4.7%. In a recent interview (link) the CEO attributed to their success to variable pay and other HR efforts.

Many industry experts however feel that trend is developing now since people are apprehensive that the economic problems in Europe could escalate into a global downturn. To lend support to this claim it has been observed that the dip in attrition levels is sharpest at middle and senior levels. Additionally, there is a slowdown in hiring, as reported by many employment firms.

It is irrelevant to argue who can be credited the plunge in attrition-levels – the HR or the economy. Instead this period should be looked upon as an excellent opportunity for the companies to engage their people especially their talent. In a recent speech at AdAsia at New Delhi, the PepsiCo Chairman and Global CEO Indira Nooyi said that corporation world over must look at the crisis as an opportunity and need adapt and recognize the fact that they live in a new world. She feels that it is an excellent opportunity for companies to groom talent and build leadership pipeline. (link to speech)

The best time to engage employees is now when most of them have decided to ‘stay’ so that this trend continues even when greener pastures return and beckon. And as of now, this is not the best time to test the power to keep people in one’s fold (the better times shall be) but definitely a very good time to see people remain in fold tomorrow as well. Lon and short of the story is - Bad time to claim (attrition-drop) but excellent opportunity to tame (engage the talent).