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 IT
organisations adopt many practices for retaining talented employees
and ensuring timely completion of projects. One of the most significant
being the focus on welfare and career growth of employees. However,
this concern varies from company to company. Though the basic structure
of HR policy in most companies is almost similar, every organisation
has its own work culture. What differentiates one company from another?
The style of functioning and the vision of the management. The flavour
of Sierra Atlantic’s HR policies is emotional binding of employees
with the organisation. The company believes in emotional binding
rather than other practices such as unrealistic pay structure, insisting
on bond agreement, etc, to keep its employees within its fold.
Referral-based recruitment
Like many companies, Sierra Atlantic also prefers
referral-based recruitment system as it believes that this system
ensures the quality of new recruits as the existing employees have
referred them. It also conducts campus interviews every year offering
entry-level jobs to new college graduates (NCG).
It follows a six-tier selection criterion that
typically starts at 8:00 am and lasts till around 7:30 pm. This
tiresome exercise is to intentionally make the candidates tired
and test how they would work under pressure. The exhaustive procedure
is aimed at testing the calibre of candidates and is followed by
the induction ceremony. Normally, this induction ceremony is concluded
within a day and quickly absorbs the new recruits into the organisation
fold as the company does not believe in taking long time.
“Sierra Atlantic conducts a three-month
rigorous training programme for NCGs to transform them into full-fledged
professionals. Our training programme aims at making the newly-recruited
swiftly fit into the company’s work culture. Since they come
from different colleges and possess varied backgrounds, the need
is to focus on ethics, transactional analysis, office etiquette,
etc. Usually, NCGs account for 20 percent of our recruitment. This
year we are expecting about 100 NCGs out the 500 to be recruited,”
says Col Gowrishankar Rama Rao, director (HRD & training), Sierra
Atlantic.
Career aspirations
The fact that the company is able to meet the
career aspirations of its employees contributes significantly in
curbing the attrition rate. The attrition rate is at 12.3 percent
as against the present industry average of 15 percent.
“When it comes to career growth opportunities
for emp-loyees, it depends upon the business growth. Going by the
Sierra Atlantic’s expansion plan, we are confident that our
employees will get good opportunity to scale up the career ladder.
We have doubled our headcount during the past ten months. During
the past nine years, 10 of the 12 current VPs who had star-ted their
career at the entry-level jobs with Sierra, have remained with the
company. This one example shows about the work culture in the organisation.
If the company takes care of employees, there wouldn’t be
a need for any code of conduct. We focus on emotional binding rather
than legally trying to retain employees through code of conduct
or any other practice,” adds Rao.
This US-based application management solutions
provider has a headcount of 650 personnel at its Hyderabad facilities.
The company plans to add 1,000 employees every year. It has drawn
up plans to set up its own campus in Cyberabad at an investment
of $ 4-5 million. The new campus is expected to be ready by 2005
and will accommodate about 2,000 employees. The company is planning
to expand to other cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Pune. It has
decided to set up one centre in one of the three identified cities
this year with a headcount Sierra Atlantic is on a lookout for acquisitions
to the tune of $5-$10 million. It prefers to acquire companies that
are involved in the SAP segment.
Sierra Leadership Programme
 The
three-and-a-half-month programme aims at building managerial and
leadership abilities among the employees. The focus is on expanding
their thought process to be able to work in all types of situations.
The company has evolved a diversified plan to cater to the different
attitudes of employees. While some prefer managerial responsibilities,
others have an aptitude to-wards technology. As part of the Sierra
Leadership Programme, the HR team advises the employees after considering
and analysing the attitude of each person.
After gaining expertise in the existing job,
those who are interested in technology platform can take up the
role of consultants. For fast-track development, the company organises
‘boot camp’ training and the methodology includes training
development life cycle. It follows 11 different methods to assess
the training methodology. It is in the process of getting CMM level-5
certification shortly.
“We invite eminent personalities from different
fields to deliver lectures in our training classes which inspires
the young professionals. The training programme has three dimensions—personal,
managerial/leadership and technical. The first two dimensions play
a vital role in career growth,” says Nitya Nivali, manager
(HR).
Benefits
Salaries are very competitive at Sierra Atlantic
and it has appointed a pay panel to review the pay structure every
year. Based on the performance appraisal, salary revision takes
place and is implemented in the beginning of the new financial year.
The company also provides travelling opportunity to every employee
to work abroad for a limited period of time. Currently, employees
and their family members travel to different countries rather than
working in the US, UK or Canada for prolonged periods.
The company offers mediclaim benefits to its
employees, in-cluding the gr-oup insurance facility. There is a
health check-up fac-ility for every employee.
“Sierra Atlantic is in the process of building
awa-reness among students about the company to attract the best
talent. For this, the company is launching a moderate publicity
plan, which also includes advertising on hoardings at important
places in the twin cities,” says Vyshnavi Reddy, executive
(marketing).
The company actively participates in corporate
social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. For this, it has formed
a group to serve orphans and lend a helping hand to charitable institutions.
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