Winning Hearts

In early 2000, British Airways decided to hive off the Operational
Applications group of its subsidiary Speedwing. Having had a marketing
relationship with Speedwing for nearly three years, Kale Consultants were
approached as potential buyers. For quite some time, Speedwing and Kale had been
discussing several alternative partnership models and the acquisition was
something of a last moment option.

Amongst the many business diligence checklists, we had a short but deep HR
checklist for the due diligence exercise.

Challenges on the people front

While we were experienced in the passenger solutions area in the airline
software solutions business we had a serious knowledge gap in the application
domain, in the Cargo area, as well as in the development technology of the
products being acquired. Therefore, we had to identify a critical mass and the
best of talent in the four product groups. We addressed this by assessing the
development history of the products, and meetings with various employees.
Second, an economically viable model was that the development efforts as well as
customer maintenance would be transitioned to India. We achieved this through
presentations about Kale and focussing on our corporate value of relationships.
Very quickly, although we were not established, we did speak to the key
prospective employees and initiated a dialogue with them.

Third, is that our company was not established in the European continent. We
had to understand remuneration and employment philosophy and policies and
implement a good HR process. We did not really know how many employees would
eventually work with us and had to keep the entire team engaged. Finally, it was
also very necessary to lay a foundation that an Indian company can be a darn
good employer and provide a career canvas to globally competitive European
employees.

Needless to say, when it all began we were not the best of friends. We were
fighting a cold war.

Transition and setting-up

The first thing to do was to define a transition team. We already had a
presence in the passenger solutions segment and associated skills. Very quickly,
we had to assemble a team comprising a mix of existing and new employees. There
were also a lot of administrative arrangements that were very quickly concluded
in the one-week gap between signing of the contract and the start of the
transition exercise. Along with the suite of products, the customer contracts
were also handed over. We were therefore blessed with a large client base and
saddled with unknown technological platforms and tools, which when coupled with
a relatively unknown business area, it made for an exciting challenge!

A HR policy manual was drawn up, as also employment contracts with diverse
and flexible arrangements to suit the company’s as well as the prospective
employees’ needs. For example, we had tenure bonuses for a few employees to
ensure retention, flexi-hours for some others, fixed-term contracts for some,
hourly contracts for some more, daily contracts for a few and full-time
employment contracts for the rest.

While titles, remuneration packages, and the new role definition did prove a
starter, what also mattered was how well they would get along with us. In the
success of the transition, what eventually mattered was the ability of every
member in the team, whether a technology person or a business domain expert, to
win the hearts of the Speedwing employees through competence, long hours of hard
work, and genuineness during the learning effort.

We had our chairman, MD and two of our Business Presidents involved at
various stages in the whole process. We spent our weekends in our London hotel
debating several alternatives and scenarios. We had our qualitative plans as
well as our numbers very firmly in place at all times. It was human technology
at work–good people connecting to good people, communicating, learning,
teaching, rewarding, reviewing, critiquing and praising. An HR manager’s
ecstasy.

Vinayak Kamath vice-president (HR),
Kale Consultants