Virtusa: HR best practice for the millennial Enterprise

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) needs no introduction in Sri Lanka. It has been operating in the country for nearly 160 years and has earned itself a reputation of excellence, not only from a commercial perspective but also for its workplace ethic. At the recently concluded HRM Awards 2012 organised by the Association of Human Resource Professionals, Standard Chartered was recognised for its accomplishments in HR with Special Award for its Performance Management System and a Gold Award for overall HR practices.

“We are extremely pleased to have been recognised at the HRM Awards this year and we believe that our success at the awards is a reflection of our commitment to build and nurture long- term employment relationships with our employees”, notes Ms. Deshika Rodrigo, Head of Human Resources at Standard Chartered. “We have in place robust people management policies and processes, and continually strive to maintain the highest levels of employee engagement whilst sustaining partnerships with business stakeholders. The key success factor is the fact that our HR practices are strategically aligned to business goals and objectives”, stresses Ms. Rodrigo. “And, of course, we have a great HR team at SCB who make all the difference”.

SCB is very unique from an HR perspective. It has a truly diverse workforce where gender equality is a reality with approximately 48% of the workforce constituting of female employees. The workplace culture is one where due prominence is given to balancing work and life roles. A performancebased environment and an emphasis on continuous learning and development is at the crux of the HR practice, and the organisation is more than focused on creating a platform for employee engagement.

“SCB has created a market niche for itself as an employer of choice”, says Ms. Rodrigo. “We have done this by focusing on our employees’ wellbeing, having a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace. We offer superior benefits to staff and have created a unique workplace that can’t be matched. For instance, we have a crèche for our employees and we were the first to offer paternity leave, adoption leave and the ‘100 Day’ maternity leave policy to our staff ”, she explains. “We work hard at being the ’Employer of Choice’ in Sri Lanka by providing our employees with a career, not just a job; and by creating an inclusive, supportive culture that helps them to balance a variety of life roles whilst working full-time”.

Standard Chartereds’ people policies are built around the Bank’s strategic intent and key priorities. “We strive for superior financial performance and continuous improvement through efficient manpower planning and performance management; we also work hard at multiplying our leadership capability through development opportunities and effective career management of key talent, and we work hard at strengthening relationships with the communities in which we operate as well as reinforcing our brand promise of being ‘Here for good’,” says Ms. Rodrigo. “Our people play a huge part in achieving these goals; and hence our people management policies are developed in line with these priorities”. All of SCB’s policies are group-driven and aimed at promoting better HR practices in the countries in which it operates, with people at the core of its operations.

“At SCB our retention strategy is really quite simple”, says Ms. Rodrigo. “We have created a unique workplace that employees want to be a part of and we make sure we look after our people well”. Indeed, this seems to be the case, because at SCB line Managers are constantly trained on how to be better people-managers and staff engagement levels are quantitatively measured. Learning and Talent Development is also a major priority. Every employee is responsible for his/her own development and does this in collaboration with his Line Manager.

Some of the talent development activities include overseas assignments, cross- functional training opportunities, e- learning – both mandatory and voluntary - and, of course, class room training activities. “We also have a strong performance- based culture where employees’ compensation, career progression and development are determined by their performance; whilst asking employees to take responsibility for their own career paths, we share the responsibility with them by providing them with the tools and the framework they need to do this”, notes Ms. Rodrigo as she sums up the winning HR culture at SCB.

Virtusa is proud to be a top ten Gold Awards winner as well as the winner of the Employee Relation and People Administration award at this year’s National HRM Awards.

Virtusa, a global enterprise today, commenced operations in 1996 in Colombo with just eight employees and has grown to include more than 6000 employees worldwide.Headquartered in Massachusetts, Virtusa has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Singapore with global delivery centers in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai, India, Colombo, Sri Lanka and Budapest, Hungary. Listed on the NASDAQ, Virtusa provides Information Technology (IT) consulting, technology and outsourcing services. Using an enhanced global delivery model, innovative software platforming approach and industry expertise, it provides high-value IT services that enable clients to enhance business performance, accelerate time-to-market, increase productivity and improve customer service. Virtusa serves Global 2000 companies and the leading software vendors in the Communications & Technology, Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Telecommunications, and Media, Information & Entertainment industries.

In the last financial year, Virtusa recorded USD 277.8 million in terms of Revenue, an Operating Income of USD 23.9 million and a 10 year CAGR of 32.47%. The company’s exponential growth is evident with it being recognized on theForbes list of 100 Best Small Companies in America in 2011 and many other accolades received in the US, UK, India and Sri Lanka for being best employer and having benchmarked HR practices. Some of the recognition received includes the Silver Stevie Award for the “Human Resources (HR) Department of the year in the United States of America, Top 20 Best IT Employers in India for the 3rd consecutive year and Britain’s Top Employers for 2011 certified by the Corporate Research Foundation (CRF) Institute. In addition, Virtusa was ranked as the most preferred IT/ BPO Employer in Sri Lanka, in the first Employer Branding Study in Sri Lanka conducted by TNS.

Virtusa aspires to be an organization that creates a conducive work environment for the predominantly millennial workforce. The Millennials are the next generation of employees and the cohort born in the late 70s to the early 2000s. Understanding, managing and leading this “wired” generation of employees is essential to any modern business and has created a buzz in the global business arena.

Today approximately 80% of Virtusans are Millennials or Gen Y’ers. Having recognized the need to introduce newer ways of working, Virtusa’s focus is set in motion to create a Millennial-ready organization. The people strategy, which rests on a firm foundation of organizational values, is built to enable innovation, create world class knowledge workers and nurture global leaders, whilst leveraging the most dynamic technological plat- forms. Virtusa believes that this approach contributes immensely towards ensuring employee growth, gives them room to voice their views, creates engagement and encourages learning.

Innovation is a significant cog in the wheel of Virtusa’s business. The organization strives towards staying ahead in the business of software services,with the objective of delivering the “next best-practice” in software solution to the global market place. At Virtusa, innovation is nurtured from the outset, where a majority of the company’s engineers have the opportunity to work closely with the customer.Thus, Virtusa creates an environment that is conducive for innovation and creativity. In this effort, the company has opportunities for employees to conceive new ideas that would add value to customers -which in turn would generate revenue - and get rewarded for them. Optimizing the internal social media platforms, by connecting and involving every Virtusan, is also yielding results in terms of creating a repository of collective wisdom that supports innovation within the organization.

Virtusa is focused on driving personal excellenceand has recognized it as a mechanism to grow employees that deliver superior performance. Generating paths for accelerated performance and growth are tremendously important in order to meet the demands of accelerating changes in the global IT arena. The company’s Personal Excellence Programme is a prime example of providing individual focus to creating capability, measuring quality and recognizing performance. Virtusa, to that exten,t is a knowledge hub similar to an internal university, which provides every opportunity to re-invent one-self through a culture of continuous learning.

The company has invested in solid learning platforms with the objective of continuously up-skilling employees, which extend from classroom learning to e-learning and to experiential learning.

The company also encourages collaborative learning and has a dedicated pool of individuals in the internal faculty that conduct numerous technical and soft skill development programs in-house. Being open to share knowledge with society at large is one of Virtusa’s traits that has been recognized by many local and foreign universities. Virtusans are frequently seen connecting with the local academia and students groups through programmes such as Campus Reach and Digital Reach interventions. Such initiatives, which are purely voluntary, have also provided many Virtusans with the opportunity to learn and grow in their own careers through the knowledge and skills acquired to enhance leadership ability.

Building global leaders and creating global careers will be a critical success factor for Virtusa’s growth. The organization aspires to fulfill and maintain a minimum 80 percent of its leadership positions from within. Being a sanctuary for career growth, Virtusa believes in providing employees the opportunity to take charge of their own careers. The organization’s systems and processes are constantly upgraded to facilitate its “You own your career” philosophy. The newly introduced Oracle based, talent management solution, which has built-in facilities to support an employee through “Hire to Retire”, will provide greater visibility and transparency to the Talent Management and Development process. Virtusa has instilled a performance culture so that every individual in the organization has been empowered and made accountable to set clear goals, assess performance continuously and give, as well as receive constructive feedback. Various social media platforms and dashboards, as well as interactions in terms of on the job training also enable employees to be informed of all the input required to progress in their careers.

With the growing Millennial workforce and the rapid demand for innovation expected from the global IT industry, it is evident that companies must have the ability to create the most conducive work conditions for individuals to perform at peak levels.

Having recognized the need to evolve towards becoming a social business, Virtusa has adopted practices based on Social and Web 2.0 in order to create an internal Facebook-like environment, which enables employees to collaborate, share knowledge and innovate. This platform is now being leveraged to connect employees across all spheres of the organization and as a repository of knowledge.

Virtusa focuses on nurturing a world class pool of high performers who are driven to reinvent themselves and contribute towards taking Virtusa to the next level. In keeping with the ever evolving nature of the IT business, Virtusa’s people focus is on maintaining an organization that engages its most important asset, its employees.