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Work culture: Aptech Limited
 Nikita
Singh, assistant manager of corporate communications, Aptech, is
standing atop the seemingly invincible hill at Badlapur camp at
the outskirts of Mumbai. Rappelling, a part of the two-day experiential
training programme her company has organised, could be a treacherous
task, she realises and grows weary of the ropes harnessed on her.
Her enthusiasm is at its nadir.
But she also realises what her colleagues, standing
at the bottom of the hillock, are trying to do—they are egging
her to use her last ounce of courage, steel, and resolve and labour
on. However, Singh, known as an outspoken and effervescent person,
is completely taken over by fear and the only words that come to
her mind: “I can’t do it.”
Ultimately, as she rappels down the hillock,
watching her steps, what strikes her is the support of her colleagues,
who are perched on the edges of their seats down below clapping
for every small step and gasping in unison each time she makes the
wrong move.
Ask Ajay Oberoi, senior vice president of HR and
administration with Aptech, who has organised the outbound training
programme, as to why his team, which is supposed to be dealing with
IT training challenges and counseling IT professionals climb the
corporate ladder, has to undergo this adventurous cliff-hanger experience.
“It’s because human values are important for our business
and we can learn human values through monkey tricks—the climbing,
jumping, hanging…,” he answers. Aptech has designed these
activities to help the participants develop, sharpen and fine-tune
the behavioural skills.
Having reached the bottom safe, Singh feels, “Such
programmes bring out latent facets of one’s personality, I
guess.” She finds interactive sessions, nature trails, team-building
exercises, treasure hunts and camp-fires, part of this outbound
programme, appealing dimensions.
 Adds
Seema Saini, another participant, “Though it might seem to
be a company sponsored picnic, the objective is to help us understand
and explore the synergistic elements that contribute to effective
team performance. For example, rappelling, albeit an adventure sport,
helped us understand and move beyond individual paradigms and explore
our latent potential. It also brought out the importance of team
motivation with respect to individual performances.”
Around 80 percent of the 700-odd Aptech team
had underwent this “experiential training” a fun and adventure
mixed outbound training camp.
Oberoi says, “Built in the seemingly innocuous
management games and the adventure sports are learnings that employees
carry with them, from which emerge personal achievements and traits
that would have been hitherto unknown, and realisation of the importance
of the roles carried out by others. More pertinent, how important
it is for each member to work together towards the fulfillment of
a larger objective to achieve the organisation’s mission. Various
outdoor sports and games are used to understand the corporate and
organisation’s philosophy even better. They also help in self-evaluation.”
Experiential programming is just one of the ways
in which Aptech trains its people.
“There are three strands of training programmes—organisational,
functional and specific training,” Oberoi explains. Ap-tech
runs structured programmes like PRISM–for personality development
and communication. Experiential programming is one among them. All
the programmes are designed with a focus on any or all of the following
factors: Behavioural inputs, role clarity, individual effectiveness,
specific knowledge function and special individual needs.
Aptech, which has the Chennai based SSI Technology
as its major stakeholder, has some definable ideas about its work
culture and its desirable ingredient traits. PERFECT, its vision
related to organisational culture, sums its all: To nurture every
team member to be always Prepared, to act as an Entrepreneur, to
be Responsive, Focused, Enthusiastic and Customer Oriented, and
someone who would value Team performance.
Aptech, whose core business is training, has
major portion of its staff working in the development of curriculum
and delivery of courses, where attracting the real talent has always
been a challenge, and retaining is daunting.
One may want to know when the leading educational
institutions like IITs and IIMs seem to suffer from the lack of
quality faculty, and IT organisations of lucrative remuneration
are inflicted with the attrition rate, how does Aptech fare? Oberoi
says he is not comfortable with the phrase “attrition rate”
at all.
 “There
is a fundamental difference in the nature and attitude of manual
labours and knowledge workers,” he says, adding, “A manual
labour always expects security in his job. The knowledge worker
too wants security but he knows that it is related to his employability,
which again depends on his upgrading necessary skills. So, the knowledge
worker is always on a lookout for work environments that offer better
chances for learning.”
He prefers to talk about what he says is the average
employee service span (AESS). “We are proud of the fact that
our AESS is three years, which is far above than the industry average,”
adds Oberoi.
Aptech has ESOP in place—the only difference
is that ESOP here stands for Employability (ensuring exposure to
the latest technologies), Security (helping employees increase their
physical assets through schemes like “Own Your Car”, and
cover their health risks), Ownership (offering stock options) and
Performance-linked incentives (providing monetary or promotional
rewards in recognition of performances).
sankar@expresscomputeronline.com
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