| 32 | HCL Technologies: Enhancing employee engagement K.N. Rekha and Srinivasa Reddy Gurram Hindustan Computers Limited (HCL) started in 1976 (About HCL: HCL 2010) to serve the need of computers maintenance in India. In the initial stages, the company diversified into multiple computing areas by creating a strong base in R&D. Over three decades, HCL developed two major arms—HCL Infosystems (Hardware) and HCL Technologies (Software). But HCL Technologies that had emerged as a spin-off from R&D could not add much to HCL brand through application services. In 2005, the IT industry was flourishing in IT services and software-driven solutions, not hardware. The biggest players in the international market space were competing based on scale by using the so-called “scientific management” approach. Scientific management refers to breaking down the projects into smaller pieces to enable lower-skilled employees to accom- plish small and easy assignments in order to drive down costs. But HCL Technologies decided to take a different approach. The organization focused on adding value by meeting the customer needs through closer ties with them. This required interventions to engage the employees in a manner that would ensure and inspire them to deliver the high quality customer service. Organizations typically provide importance to serving the needs of customers often at the expense of meeting legitimate needs of employees. The HCL management realized that placing the employees first will energize them and in turn help in meeting the needs of customers. ‘Thus, the transformation journey started in 2005 across HCL Technologies with the theme of “Pride-Passion—Results” to reenergize the employees. The transformation journey was built around multiple innovative initiatives powered by the new CEO, Vineet Nayar. To begin with, they created a motto: Employee First, Customer Second (EFCS). A group of young and dynamic employees were constituted to work on this theme, The message was communicated clearly and strongly across the organization to get employees’ attention. The strategic goals of EFCS were to create a unique employee organization, drive an inverted organizational structure, create transparency and accountability within the organization, and encourage a value-driven culture. The leadership team believed that the employee engagement 391is of utmost importance for any change to happen. Several initiatives were taken for enhancing, the engagement of employces. U& I Intranet communication web portal served as a forum for the employees to post their questions and comments on the webpage to the CEO. The comments ranged from questions ‘on company’s strategy to personal concerns like “I havea problem with my bonus.” The CEO along with the leadership team answered on an average 50 questions a month, The objective of the portal was to foster a culture of open conversation to build trust and create transparent culture. Initially, the portal was filled with cribs, complaints, and angry remarks from employees. ‘The CEO was rather shocked to read those comments or questions in the portal. He initiated a discussion with a group of employees. They expressed that the comments also reflected growing confidence among employees that there is a leadership team that is approachable and that listens to their concerns. Now they believed that someone somewhere would do something about the issues being raised in the portal. Leadership gained confidence that the trust building was beginning to happen. The portal helped to provoke discussions among the employees. It also facilitated the transfer of responsibility of problem solving from CEO and leadership team to the employees. The portal gave the employees access to the questions/comments raised by their colleagues. This initiated employees into addressing those issues and providing solutions rather than waiting for the leadership team to respond. Clearly, the leadership team could see a radical shift of employees’ mindset from “what was wrong” to “what could be done about it.” Smart Service Desk (SSD) was initiated to reverse the accountability from leadership team to the employees. Any employee with an issue could open a ticket for a problem or a query ora request. Once the ticket was entered by the employee, the system automatically assigned it to a support executive in the concerned department. The concerned support executive was expected to take necessary action to resolve it. The manager was kept in the loop right from the opening of the ticket to the closure of the ticket. If the assigned executive did not attend to the issue, it was automatically escalated to his/her reporting manager. The ticket could be closed only by the employee who opened the ticket when he/she was satisfied with the solution. The intervention paved way for the leadership team to observe certain patterns of issues/ queries raised by the employces. They started analyzing the issues/queries raised frequently along with ways to tackle the same. They found that there were three root causes of many problems: an unsatisfactory policy, inadequate or unclear communication, and poor execution or implementation of a satisfactory policy or process (Nayar 2010). The leadership asked the team from the enabling function to address these problems. Thus, it provided a means for relooking into the policies/processes in order to modify them to meet the employees’ needs. The goal was to reach state of a zero ticket. Through this process, employees could see that many unattended/nagging problems of yesteryears started to disappear. This initiative minimized sources of employee frustration and changed the employees’ perception toward the company. 392 HCL TECHNOLOGIES360 Degree Feedback was another initiative to use the feedback as a developmental tool rather than an evaluative tool. Another major focus was to create openness and transparency of communication by expanding the evaluators to include relevant members from a larger group. To ensure confidentiality, credibility, and accurate data encryption, a third party was called to audit and certify the survey. It enabled all the employees to participate in the feed- back process. The employees were able to evaluate not only their respective bosses but also their boss? boss. The feedback of all the employees including the CEO was posted on an intranet website which enabled everyone to view anyone’s feedback (positive as well as negative). Initially, employees were hesitant to post the feedback. CEO led the process by posting his survey (that is, feedback) on the website. Following him, senior managers also started posting their feedback. Another interesting feature of the feedback process was that if the feedback was positive, the employees felt motivated and started striving for better scores next time. If the feedback was negative, the employees were forced to face the reality of unsatisfactory performance and how he or she was viewed by others. Surprisingly, this did not demotivate them because managers were aware that in a culture of trust and acceptance of change, a negative review would be seen as a constructive input. It was considered as an opportunity for improvement. If a manager chose not to share the feedback, then it was perceived that s/he was hiding something which tends to be even worse than a negative feedback. Hence all the employees participated equally in the process. “Feedforward” system was introduced in order to view the intervention as developmental rather than evaluative tool. In the feedforward system, employee would be provided review on three critical competencies about themselves. Each competency would be marked as strength or developmental area along with specific steps to improve. ‘The management kept up the process of communication and interaction with the employ- ces about changes required for the organization. Ata certain stage, the CEO started assessing whether the transformation messages communicated were found to be relevant to the employees or not. He wondered if the employees would care more about how this transformation affected. them personally, that is, their careers, and their families rather than the corporate well-being. Hence, he realized that the emphasis must be on what employees consider important instead of marketing their interventions, He felt that the company must understand the needs of the employees. Hence the focus shifted to identifying ways which enable them able to work faster through EFCS. A host of questions emerged from this realization. « Would employees be able to do their jobs better? + Would they learn new things? ¢ Would their jobs become easier or more enjoyable? This realization led to the introduction of the initiative “Directions.” K.N. REKHA and SRINIVASA REDDY GURRAM 393“Directions” was an initiative led by CEO and senior management team. It was an annual company-wide event that took strategic directions where employces at all levels participated in the process. It had a series of informal conversations. The CEO and the senior team spent two weeks every year on planning this event and another two weeks in organizing the event. The employees, CEO, and the senior management team gathered every year in an open forum. Firstly, the video on the company’s strategy was played to the audience. Then, the CEO and the leadership team engaged the employees in a discussion where they were encour- aged to raise questions on company’s strategy. The leadership team then responded to all the questions posed in the interactive sessions. The unique feature of this meeting was to ensure that all the employees including CEO and the leadership team spoke in the same language. They also understood how their individual contributions fit in a larger organizational framework, Talking about the initiatives, the CEO remarked (Cappelli et al. 2010): “Our compe- titive differentiation should be the fact that we are more transparent than anybody else in our industry. Customer likes us because of transparency, employees like us because there are no hidden secrets.” He added: “If you are willing to be accountable to your employees, then the way the employee behaves with the customers is with a high degree of ownership.” A strong service brand requires focusing on constructive customer interactions. In turn, this requires energized and engaged employees. For the organization, EFCS is the important building block for building and honing this fundamental strength. REFERENCES ‘About HCL: HCL (2010). Retrieved September 15, 2010, from HCL Web site: http://www hel.in/about-hel asp Cappelli, Peter, Harbir Singh, Jtendra Singh, and Michael Useem (2010). The India Way: How India’s Top Busines Leaders are Revolutionizing Management, Boston, Massachussetts: Harvard Business Press. Nayar, Vineet (2010). Employes First, Customers Second, Boston, Massachussetts: Harvard Business Press. 394 HCL TECHNOLOGIES