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 Being
a cash-rich company even when the volatile telecom industry is going
through tough times, is quite an achievement in itself. Aspiring
to become the most respected company through employee, customer
and community care, Tata Telecom has set on a mission to strengthen
its leadership position by providing best-in-class business communication
solutions, thereby maximising stakeholder value.
Starting
their operations in 1987, the company has successfully established
its niche as an undisputed total business solutions provider. Providing
a complete set of communication solutions for business enterprises,
its product range includes, EPABXs, KTS, Voice Mail Systems, Interactive
Voice Response Systems (IVR’s), CTI and Networking Solutions.
For the past 16 years, Tata Telecom has been making steady progress
and it is only now that the company is willing to talk about its
activities. So what prompted this sudden need to break the silence?
BN Jha, director-people excellence, Tata Telecom, answers, “Since
the beginning, the company has believed in the policy of first proving
its mettle and then blowing the trumpet. At this point of time we
have achieved a certain degree of success in the financial, business
and human resources front, and we believe that it is a farce to
talk about people development initiatives, when it is actually not
implemented at all the levels.”
 The
core philosophy of their HR endeavours is but one keeping the employees
happy. “We believe that our employees are the only sustainable
competitive advantage and therefore we have aligned our people practices
with our goals. Apart from performing traditional HR functions,
the HR department has been focusing on creating a high performance
environment which is conducive to innovation, risk taking, teamwork,
recognition, competence, accountability and speed,” he adds.
Firmly
believing in the values of team spirit, continuous growth and result-oriented
efforts, the organisational culture has always been obsessed with
delivering the best to its customers. According to Jha, the purpose
is to establish an “open and a friendly” work culture,
with a special focus on the transparency of the performance management
system. This will help them identify and assess the potential individuals,
who can act as ‘assets’ in the future. To take this further,
the company is also designing a special training and performance
mapping initiative, which will enable an employee to assess his
strengths and weaknesses and check himself. This will further encourage
them to become more responsible individuals, be it in terms of their
professional or personal growth. Under the performance management
system, Tata Telecom is also planning to provide training based
on an individual’s competencies. Adding to this is an increased
focus on building competencies at the managerial level, by encouraging
them to become better leaders/coaches/mentors.
“The
system integrates the company’s goals with an individual’s
objectives and helps employees to set measurable targets and goals
for themselves. It also lays down a system for objective assessment
of an employee’s performance and potential, and works as a
tool to measure results and behaviour. It also helps decide the
pay for performance. We believe that our core strength has been
the introduction of global standards in the ‘People Excellence’
function, which has only impacted the company’s business and
helped it register higher revenues and standards in employee satisfaction
surveys,” points out Jha. He adds that the objective behind
this system has been to institute a target oriented culture (so
that it helps an individual understand what is expected of him),
and reinforce principles of structure (which helps an employee understand
his evaluation process). Besides this, the other objectives are
providing input to career planning, align individual performance
with organisational goals and offer continuous feedback to employees.
Some
of the people excellence initiatives being run by the organisation
are competitive compensation, opportunities for personal and professional
development, quality of work/life, concept of pay-for-performance,
reward and recognition, and family engaging activities. Tata Telecom
has also started different schemes like career development programmes,
professional institution membership and internship schemes.
Jha
points out that the company believes in the philosophy of recruiting
only young graduates, who can be trained as per the requirement
of the organisation. The company presently has 546 employees BEs
(34 percent), diploma engineers (35 percent), PG diplomas (12 percent)
and those coming from ITIs (six percent) of the total workforce.
Jha however says that in the past couple of years, the company has
stopped recruiting diploma holders. The institutes frequented by
Tata Telecom for campus recruitment are Delhi College of Engineering,
Netaji Subhash Engineering College, BITS Pilani, Vivekananda College
and others in Pune, Chennai and Pondicherry.
Till
recently, the organisation has been conducting its own internal
employee satisfaction surveys, but has now appointed an outside
agency for the job. “Our aim is to achieve global standards
and help HR take a pro-active or a leadership excellence role in
the organisation,” says Jha proudly.
The
fact that training is a key area, is evident from the budget earmarked
for the same in the current financial year, that is Rs 4 crore.
The induction programme is a three-week module. “The focus
of our training programmes is to enrich our knowledge repository
and become as interactive as possible so that an individual does
not feel bored and loses interest,” informs Jha.
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