Manage your people to grow

One of the most important resources for a company is its people. Managing
one's workforce is key to the progress of a company because at the end of the
day it's the people who make or break the company.

DQ Channels spoke to various solution providers across the country to see
what are some of the HR practices that they follow. Typically these are SMB
organizations with an employee base ranging from under ten to almost 3,000.
Human resource management as a function is vast and hence the focus was limited
to policies pertaining to training and development as well as motivation and
reward schemes for the employees.

Training and Development

Many partners opt to train their employees solely through the vendor
sponsored programs or through initiatives undertaken by the association itself.
Vinayak Computer Consultants is a Gujarat-based company that provides services
clients to the corporate and government sectors. With seven people on board,
three are into sales and another three are working as service engineers, the
company has been around for 16 years and is a small-scale organization. Piyush
Patel, Director who heads the team of six talked about how he trains his
employees, "We are a part of the Baroda IT Association (BITA) and I send
employees to training seminars, which are conducted by the association. We don't
have internal training." Ajay Bharadwaj, Director, TMC Infoways based out of
Hissar in Haryana looks after nine employees. "Being in a small town, it is
difficult to get access to training resources locally and it is expensive.
Additionally, vendors do not organize training camps in small places. Whenever
it is possible I send my staff to get trained at the vendor sponsored programs
at places like Delhi, which is the closest for us. On the downside however,
often our employees leave us after getting trained because they find better
prospects elsewhere," he said. Gujarat-based Saitech Systems' F. Rahman said,
"We have ten employees as of now who are with us and we do send them for vendor
sponsored training programs."

There are other partners who encourage on-the-job training as a method of
learning. Navdeep Singh, Director, Tos Adven revealed, "We have around 13
employees on board and we encourage our employees to learn something new and
present it to the rest of the team in the last week of every month. Pune-based
Openview Technologies has about hundred people on roll. Parag K, Director,
Openview Technologies said, "We don't follow any extraordinary HR policy, we
just stick to the basics. We get the freshers to work with experienced staff so
that they learn on-the-job. Besides this, we also nominate certain employees for
paid training sessions.

Training for soft skills is something that partners invest in. B Shankar,
Director of Mumbai-based Ashtech Infotech, which employs 232 people said, "We
spend money on training for soft skills and especially on communication as an
area of improvement. We do this not just for the sales staff but also for the
non-sales team from across departments and in various cross functional roles. We
also encourage learning through spot tests with spot rewards," said Shankar.
"Once in a quarter we internally train those employees who are not up to the
mark in the area of soft skills so that they can scale up," said Parag of
Openview.

Chandan Datta, GM of Kolkata-based Compu Care Info Solutions said, "We have
been around for five years now and have six people working with us. We have
training on software once in every quarter for our staff." Atreyee Thekeden,
Director, Web Com India, an Assam-based SP said, "We have a staff of around 25
working with us of which half are in the technical line and we get them trained
on the new technologies. We have signed them for online certification programs.
We also send them to cities where important training sessions are scheduled. We
also encourage peer-to-peer learning." Sailesh Nahar of Aaren Informatique is an
SP based out of Mumbai. "We have fifteen people working for us and with around
ten of them being from the technical team, training becomes an ongoing process
for us. We have in-house training for the first two months after the employee's
joining and besides this once every quarter we have sessions for our team," said
Nahar. Sushil Kulkarni, Director of Pune based Vintech Electronics Systems
highlighted some of his company's policies. "We have more than 100 people who
are working with us. We conduct several training and follow-up sessions for our
employees. Besides this we also bring in third party trainers to train our
department heads and help them in aspects like goal setting."

The larger a company is, greater are the training needs and therefore there
is a need for dedicated training resources. Allied Digital from Mumbai is one of
the biggest SPs in the country with a workforce of around 3,000 people. Bimal
Raj, CEO, Allied Digital said, "We have a separate training department for our
company and there are five full time people working on training. Besides all the
senior technical employees assist in the training process. Training is done for
technical certifications wherein we often sponsor our employees to take up
certification courses or subsidize it for them to a great extent. We also offer
soft skills training to our employees besides updating them on the new
technologies and how to sell and deal with customers. We identify line managers
and get them to move up in the certification hierarchy. For instance if someone
is CCNA certified, then we encourage him to go for CCNP certification. Often
these certifications can cost close to a few lakh of rupees but being one of the
vendor's partners, we get them at a discounted rate for our employees who have
the chance to improve their career prospects."

Motivation and Rewards

One of the popular methods employed to motivate one's workforce is through
cash incentives. Sham Natarajan, Director of Chennai-based Akshara Computers
said, "We have around 15 employees of which three are technical people, four
executives, two field executives, four faculty staff and two administrative
heads. There are two directors including me who handle day-to-day operations
including the HR function. We don't have a systematic HR policy in place but we
do offer performance-based incentives to our employees." Singh of Tos Adven
said, "We have certain key result areas for our employees and we measure their
performance every month as per some parameters. We reward them by offering
profit sharing schemes on an annual basis." Stephen Arundale of Chennai-based
Drad Infotech also offers cash incentives to his employees. "I have about 15
employees of which only three are non technical. We keep a track of their
service performance and reward them with cash incentives." Openview
Technologies' Parag said, "We either increase the salaries or give bonuses
earlier than scheduled as an incentive to our employees."

Chandu Shekhar, Director of Bengaluru-based SLN Technologies shared his
views, "We have some good policies in place with regard to goal achievement and
target oriented schemes and we are able to assess each employee on a project
basis as per his or her grade." Shankar of Ashtech said, "We offer higher
incentive schemes for our sales team. Currently, we have schemes that are once
in six months or once a year but we are looking for innovative thoughts for
motivating our technical engineers."

Many partners also measure employee performance via customer feedback. "We
talk to our customers and ask them to rate our employees on the service levels
and accordingly reward them on the basis of that performance metric," said
Rajesh Sanghvi of Mumbai-based Softech Computers. Datta of Compu Care Info
Solutions added, "We look at the customer call reports and other sales reports
to measure employee performance. We monitor aspects like lead time to repair or
how many calls were logged and serviced, and accordingly give incentives like
commissions to our sales staff." Nahar of Aaren Informatique said, "We offer
cash incentives based on customer feedback on the service calls made to them by
our employees."

Several partners invest time and effort to motivate their team through
non-monetary incentives. Bharadwaj of TMC Infoways said, "We have times when we
watch movies together on weekends and occasionally go to an outstation location
for a picnic. Also we celebrate the major festivals. We have get-together
parties organized for our employees from time to time," said Datta. Some
companies offer coupons where employees can avail discounts. "We give gift
vouchers and coupons from Shoppers Stop and Big Bazaar to our staff" said
Shankar of Ashtech. Ashish Sehgal of Delhi-based Ace Genesis Technologies said,
"We offer free movie tickets and holiday packages besides offering other cash
incentives like raises." Fellow city SP, Zero Defect Software Solutions' Raj
Dhawal said, "We organize parties and celebrate occasions with our employees."
The company develops payroll software solutions and has around fifteen people
who work for it. "We offer holidays and other perks like Sodexo passes, vouchers
for Garuda Mall, Fame Cinemas to our employees as non-financial incentives,"
said Shekhar of SLN Technologies.

Some partners use formal methods to measure satisfaction and recognize
performance. Kulkarni of Vintech said, "We have a formal employee satisfaction
survey that is conducted and that helps us to measure the level of satisfaction
in our team. We also recognize the efforts of our team by having monthly awards
like Best Engineer, Best Salesman and Best Admin Staff of the month." Raj of
Allied Digital said, "A company's policy can also help to motivate the
employees. We have a policy wherein we recruit from outside for the lower end of
the workforce base. Most of the times, we recruit internally so that our
employees know that the company is investing in them and want them to continue
working and growing with them.

In companies with a small team, it's usually the senior management that looks
after the HR function along with other things. Another trend is that there are
usually no systematic policies in place and those that are have a limited scope.
Overall, HR is managed on an ad-hoc basis in smaller companies while in bigger
companies, there are formal HR policies in practice, which are more encompassing
and there are systems in place to manage employees in the company.

Finally, it is important that one does something to take care of one's
people. By offering rewards and other schemes which are linked to cash and
non-cash incentives, one can foster team unity and motivate one's employees not
only to stick with the company, but also to perform better. Without proper HR
policies in place, it can be difficult for IT SPs to retain their employees in a
tough and competitive scenario, where people look for the best opportunity.

john jacob

johnj@cybermedia.co.in