Flutters of slowdown have not yet been felt internally

Rani Desai, who recently joined Geometric as the global head of HR, has
charted some key plans to build a global DNA for this leading engineering design
services company. Prior to taking on this role, Rani was heading the HR
functions at Mahindra Engineering Services. In an exclusive interview with
Dataquest, Rani talks about her immediate plans, challenges in the wake of the
present economic scenario and her views on the IT job market. Excerpts

How does it feel to take on a new role especially during such volatile
times?

I have joined Geometric because of certain inherent strengths that the
company has in its practices, policies, corporate governance and ethics. The
company has always been the frontrunner as far as the technical competencies are
concerned and have provided young engineers the opportunity to work on core
engineering projects through our strategic partnerships with leading software
OEMs around the world.

I have joined at a time when the entire industry is going through some
challenging times and there are a lot of uncertainties that lie ahead. For an HR
professional it is very interesting to work in a situation when a company is
doing very well and also when the company is facing certain challenges
externally. Right now we are facing certain challenges on the HR front, but I am
still relatively new to the company and am adopting a fresh approach to mitigate
them. One of the greatest strengths of the company is that we have immense
capacity to absorb the external environment and its impact. What is also
commendable is the level of professional commitment that is visible among the
senior management of the company. The flutters of slowdown have not yet been
felt internally, may be because we are not directly impacted by what is
happening out there in the industry. Nevertheless, we are taking a cautious
stand and have become stringent in the intake of employees and are emphasising
more on quality than the numbers.

What areas are you looking to ramp up within Geometric?

I see the external environment as an opportunity for Geometric. This is a
time when we need to consolidate our strengths further and come together. We
have always had an edge in the talent and technical intensive area and are
looking at building it further. In that direction, we have already started some
key initiatives such as mapping the technical competencies of the individuals.
This mapping exercise has been broken down into a very granular level for each
of our practices and we are presently carrying out the assessment process.
Having identified the gaps in the skill sets, we are working on filling them
through a lot of emphasis on training. We already have in place a 360-degree
training and work-force development model named PLMI which is very unique in the
industry. PLMI helps us map the skill sets of our work-force and build specific
training programs to hone their skills and fill the niche areas of expertise
required for ongoing projects. This training process is another key strength
that we need to build on.

On the recruitment front, we recently introduced psychometric testing at the
managerial level. We also have plans to go in for e-recruitment procedures. If
you look at the overall HR practices and the value chain within the organization
they are already at a very mature level.

What is the one big people challenge within Geometric? How do you plan to
tackle it?

Today, Geometric has a strength of 3,000 employee across 10 global delivery
locations in the US, France, Romania, India, and China. Our work-force has
witnessed a sudden spurt of growth as we have grown through acquisitions while
adding certain key strengths to the portfolio. We need to continue the process
of integration, both on the structural and people front. And HR has a key role
to play in reaching out to these employees and integrate them into our
multi-cultural work-force. The one challenge that I plan to work on is to give
Geometric a global identity or DNA. We are already engaging with employees
across all geographies to map their talent needs and chart out a career path for
each of them. A Geometrician whether in Europe or in India should follow the
same core values and be given the same opportunities. Hence, we have coined the
phrase internally Be local, yet be global.

How has the global slowdown affected the IT industry as a whole? And how
is Geometric coping with it?

I think that the IT industry is still in a wait and watch mode. The
employees as well as the employers are treading cautiously to see what will
happen next. Some companies who have been directly impacted have taken a
knee-jerk step by retrenching the employees. However, we are somewhere seeing a
change in their attitude and a display of humanity as they are giving employees
the option to join back after a period of 3-5 years. This at least shows an
attempt to be more humane even in such distressing times. Most companies have
adopted a low tolerance attitude and have become stricter with low performers.
Also, while some may not retrench the work-force, they have been very slow in
filling up vacancies and are trying their best to optimise the workforce.

According to me the key decisions will be taken and the real impact will be
felt only over the next 2-3 quarters. The market situation has not yet affected
Geometric because we have still not entered the league of the large IT players
and do not deal with the financial services sector at all.

What are the major training gaps that exist in the industry?

There is a serious lack of required technical competencies to suit the
business of the organization. This is one of the biggest challenges that the
entire IT industry has been facing. Unfortunately, the engineering colleges
provided by the government are not adequate; some of them are sub-standard and
lack basic infrastructure and faculty. Nevertheless, we have been working with
some of the premier institutes such as VJTI, MIT, Thadumal, IIT, etc to bridge
this gap. Industry-academia partnerships will help only to a certain extent as
we can only suggest changes to the university syllabus and cannot create new
teaching modules altogether. Companies will have to focus on internal training
to solve this problem at least for the next few years.

How are you dealing with the middle management crisis?

This is again an industry-wide problem. Typically, the lower cadres are
filled up with campus recruits and some lateral hires. There is a huge lack of
people that fall under the 5-9 year experience bracket within the managerial
cadre. To solve this issue a lot companies are already taking efforts to give
the required training to promote employees internally rather than explore
lateral hires for this bracket. At Geometric, we have a large number of
employees who have been with us for 8-14 years and are holding key positions
within the middle management level, driving key projects. However, as our
business keeps growing, we might also start facing similar issues and may have
to explore lateral hiring in addition to our efforts to promote talent
internally.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in