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 One
of the few product-oriented companies in India, Aditi Technologies
has been a pioneer in HR for a long time. The company continues
to innovate with talent development systems and policies with a
special focus on keeping its 226 employees in India and the US motivated
in a market that is just bottoming out.
“Our
goal is to maintain a high-energy culture,” says SS Sharat
Kumar, general manager, people development, Aditi. This, he claims,
is the company’s single differentiating factor vis-a-vis the
competition. Aditi’s HR department works overtime to foster
and facilitate this culture. “We don’t want to lose it
at any cost,” states Kumar.
Aditi
boasts of an open culture. To this end all employee morale related
programs are run by the employees themselves. The team in question
is called Vibes. “When the management runs such programs, they
tend to fail,” comments Kumar.
In
these difficult times, cost-cutting is a way of life at all companies.
What’s unique at Aditi is that “employees come up with
suggestions on how we can run programmes with minimal costs,”
says Kumar. Morale boosting activities include ‘Thank God It’s
Friday’ and an annual bash.
The
intranet is a powerful tool used for automating all routine HR functions
including leave management. This frees up HR to strategise. The
intranet also lets project heads know what kind of skills are available
in the company at any point of time. This goes to a point where
a project head can review earlier appraisals for two otherwise identical
candidates for a project. Access is user-based. Managers and business
unit heads can access records relevant to their team or unit.
Efforts
are on to get the appraisal system into the intranet. Other features
that are on the anvil include defect tracking, time sheets and invoicing.
Of course, there are also fun activities like polls, techno forums
(discussion forums for technical topics), ‘Know an Employee’,
garage sales and even merchandising (company branded T-shirts and
mugs).
Aditi
chose automation over outsourcing due to the power of automating
HR processes. Today if an employee wants to take off, he uses the
intranet to send a leave request to his manager who approves it
after which the employee’s leave account gets debited automatically
by the software.
 An
important measure at Aditi has been to de-link pay from the review
process to the extent possible. “Linking pay and the review
derails the process,” feels Kumar. The review process is aimed
at developing employees and getting their feedback.
Every
job role at Aditi has been analysed with Job Performance Factors
(JPFs) defined that are specific to that role. These JPFs ensure
that employees know what is expected of them from day one. HR at
Aditi sees its role as a facilitator.
Recruitment
“We
have been very successful at recruitment,” says Kumar. “We
have never lost an offer because of compensation issues. Aditi has
a very strong brand. Plus we are open about job roles and responsibilities.
As soon as an offer is made, we send a corporate T-shirt and bouquet
to the prospective employee’s residence. This exhibits our
corporate culture of warmth and helps eliminate last minute doubts.”
Recruitment
takes place from IITs and RECs. Aditi has an internal written test
for all candidates. Despite the company not being the highest pay
master in the industry it is nevertheless a Day One slot at any
campus and manages to get its share of India’s best and brightest.
Kumar attributes this to the strong communications process. This
includes initiatives such as the recent one when Aditi donated a
cyber cafe to IIT Delhi.
A
three-pronged strategy is at work here. The first option is direct
recruitment from campuses. The second is a programme running with
placement agencies. A special group of consultants and placement
agencies are part of the Preferred Partner Scheme and these agencies
and consultants are given all required information about the company.
“They are our brand ambassadors,” quips Kumar. These folks
are called to periodic meetings and Aditi’s strategies at a
broad level are communicated to them.
The
third and perhaps most powerful medium of recruitment at Aditi is
the referral program. This was one of the first such programs in
India. It has been a smash hit with employees referring hires. Employees
do the selling of the job to friends and 50 percent of recruitment
happened from this mechanism at one point. Today that has tapered
off but it is still a very powerful tool at the entry-and mid-level.
The
workforce
Every
second employee is an engineer. Seventeen percent are from an IIT.
One in 20 is an MBA, 7.5 percent are from Arts or Commerce and one-fifth
are from a Science background (graduates and post-graduates). 61.5
percent of employees have less than five years of experience. 28
percent have between five and ten years under their belt, while
8 percent have between 10 and 20 years and two percent have been
around for over two decades.
Training
Aditi
has tailor-made training programmes for its employees. However,
there is a common induction program for all. All tech training is
internal and is handled by the technical training department called
Talent Development. Necessary skills are transferred to new hires.
“We go to campuses for high IQ guys who tend to be easy to
train and put them through a two month training program in emerging
technologies. It would take more time with experienced guys,”
says Kumar. This training program is intense with weekly sessions
in which employees are grilled and evaluated. It is less classroom
oriented with more interactive workshops with occasional use of
CBTs and online tests. Based on performance in this programme, new
employees are allocated to different teams.
Developers
get to work on real projects only after getting certified by the
Talent Development Department which happens only after they go through
several mock projects. Every employee undergoes 40 hours of mandatory
training in a year. This is non-technical stuff geared at team building
and communication skills among other things.
Aditi
does not send employees for external ‘open’ training programs.
It does, however, have a panel of external trainers.
Mohd
Nahas, project manager, joined Aditi back in 1995 when it was known
as Netquest. He joined in the MIS department and shifted to software
development. “I have seen the complete spectrum from our Netquest
days when there were 40 to 50 people to when Aditi was 400 to 500
strong (before Talisma was hived off). For the first two years I
worked in the MIS department. Then I switched careers in the same
company and got into software development. There’s no turning
back.” Nahas has done a short stint in the US and handled a
total client project for an Italian client among other achievements,
which include setting up the intranet. He’s proud of the fact
that he can switch career tracks again and the company will support
him to the hilt in his decision.
He
adds, “There is pressure at Aditi, but in the right sense.
Every project team has the freedom to manage its time as long as
the project and client don’t get affected.”
Chandramukhi
R, senior project manager joined Aditi four months ago. She is an
industry veteran whose last job was at HCL Technologies. She heard
about Aditi and gathered further information from its website. Chandramukhi
finds Aditi to be, “open and friendly. Visibility to the management
is high. In a bigger organisation you have a mix of old and the
young. Aditi has a very young and energetic crowd which is very
enthusiastic.” This is borne out by the statistics which show
that the average age of an employee is 28.4 years. Only 5% of employees
are aged 40 and above.
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