'Employees: Our Most Valuable Asset'

Xansa is a key IT services and BPO company, headquartered in the UK, with a
significant presence in India. It has achieved for the third time in succession
the UK certification for HR development, "Investor in People", a
marker of how, at Xansa, employees are indeed the most valuable asset. Inder
Mohan Kapoor, director, corporate services, Xansa India, spoke to Dataquest
about how Xansa handles its HR challenges. Excerpts:

Your advertisements often project Xansa as the place to be in. What makes
the Xansa experience unique?

We achieve this through our understanding of the relationship between
employees and the company. Changes in the work force and a talent crunch have
altered this relationship. Today, the employer is the "seller" and the
employee is the "customer". This power shift means that HR
professionals need to think like marketing professionals, since HR now
"markets" a "job experience" to the company's employees.

At Xansa, we aim at matching what people can and are motivated to do with
what the organization needs them to do. Xansa is a niche player, hence, our
focus is on expertise on knowledge, on doing it right the first time, and every
time after.

We are also willing to go that extra mile to help employees identify with the
overall Xansa effort. Xansa also lays a special focus on the appraisal and
reward systems, which is aimed at increasing employee involvement in the goals
and objectives of the organisation, and encouraging individuals to go beyond
their scope of work, undertake voluntary projects that enable them to learn, and
contribute innovative ideas in meeting the targets of the company. Employee
commitment to areas like human resource development, health, safety and
environment, and the community is given high importance. For instance, we have
creches at our sites, so the burden of childcare on employees can at least be
reduced. Similarly, we have employee-driven proactive community-outreach
programs. Our success in keeping our employees with us is directly linked to
such programmes because they help people express various facets of their
personalities when they are with us: our employees grow with us.

Attrition rates have traditionally been high in the BPO sector-how do
you get your employees to stay with you?

The industry attrition rates stand at about 25-30% and Xansa's own figures
are well below this average. Keeping the attrition rates down is indeed a huge
challenge, and we do this through a number of methods. Compensation packages, of
course, are an important component, and we keep these attuned as far as possible
with the best median industry figures. Another way to keep our employees with us
that has proved effective has been the provision of career paths between our IT
and BPO sections. In fact, Xansa's seamless integration of these two domains
has proved very conducive in providing for upward movement of employees, as also
in enabling more variegated domain skills, because people can work in the
different sections of the organization. Our USP here is that we encourage
employees to acquire greater domain skills as well as to make the move from BPO
to the IT segments if they have the requisite technical aptitude. Career
planning is thus very important, as are industry certifications — we encourage
employees to acquire technical qualifications, such as those from SAP, Cisco,
etc, and we fund a part of this, and sometimes make these prerequisites for
promotions. We also recognize committment through awards, such as "pat on
the back" that acknowledge outstanding performance. Ad hoc bonuses are
another way of rewarding employees for exceptional achievement that has added
value to the company above and beyond what would normally be expected.

How about programs for career development?

The key to creating a cutting-edge organisation depends upon its ability to
transform itself into a learning organisation. Xansa has developed specific
matrices, which help to determine the skills/ability/knowledge required to do
the present job, to do the present job better, and to prepare for the next job.
The company has a detailed online training calendar which can be freely accessed
by any employee. To enable growth, we we offer comprehensive world-class
training and development resources. Networking, coaching and mentoring provide
additional opportunities for people to grow personally and professionally
throughout their careers. We also have a strong focus on leadership development:
we want to identify tomorrow's leaders today, and provide the environment and
the training through "succession plans", which help motivate
leadership material amongst our employees.