Express Computer, July 16, 2007

Work Culture

The human touch

SYSTIME takes great pride in being an organisation that gives a human touch to mechanical processes.

SYSTIME, a 100 percent subsidiary of the CMS group, has been providing global business solutions for the last three decades. As the company deals in providing solutions in varied areas like ERP, business intelligence, Oracle Apps, etc., it provides avenues to its employees to learn things outside their prescribed work profile and promotes cross-product skills.

What makes this workplace an employee’s haven is its unique work environment. Unlike very large IT organisations, which hire by the thousands, and where there is huge work pressure to perform and rigid standards to conform with, SYSTIME has been successful in blending process work with human needs. The company may be small when compared with giants like Infosys, Wipro and TCS, but Suma Nair, Senior Manager Marketing, opines, “Work environment and work culture, challenging projects, perks and salaries are the reasons an individual shifts base from one organisation to another, and more importantly in that order.”

People less than two weeks into the organisation get adjusted and are made comfortable. There is no apprehension about fine-tuning oneself with the new place and its people as the company and each of its 1,000 employees are well aware of the main focus being on giving a human touch to the mechanical routine. Tushar Mehta, VP, Global Delivery says his mandate to his workforce is, “Process-oriented working will cause the human touch to go away. Don’t make things so mechanical that people don’t find time to talk to each other.” He adds that there is something distinctive in the way they function and the manner in which they handle the initial process that can’t be explained but only experienced. 

SYSTIME helps its employees contribute towards making the company a better workplace and encourages active participation. There are initiatives to promote employees and all the valid suggestions go in the actionable items list under a single tracking mechanism. They are then prioritised and the action plan is implemented. Some of the programmes that help bridge the gap between the organisation and its employees are: 

• Open house: It is a forum by means of which employees can share their views, opinions, suggestions and issue resolutions to make SYSTIME a better workplace.
• Tete-a-tete sessions: This monthly activity allows employees from all departments, ranging from consulting to corporate to sales, to apply and register their names for a two-three hour quality time with key people high up in the hierarchy. It gives the selected 15-20 individuals direct access to the senior management and their thought process. The meeting does not have any specific agenda, nor is it a question-answer session or an issues resolution meeting. The basic idea is to facilitate interactivity. The meeting builds in on the mood of the occasion and captures employee perspective on various issues which is later minuted, documented and published. This bypassing of the hierarchy mechanism boosts their self-confidence and restores their faith that the company cares for them and values them.
• E-mail mechanism: This channel helps people who are constantly travelling to be in touch with the organisation. They can mail their ideas, opinions and suggestions and thus contribute towards the overall organisational growth and goal.
• CEO lunch: A non-agenda gathering, every month a group of five-seven team members are selected to have lunch with their immediate supervisor. Thus, once in every quarter, the cycle is complete and each individual gets an opportunity to have a discussion with his direct manager about a variety of issues which concern them and these ideas get formalised, as they are minuted, captured and tracked.
• Quality Ace Award: It is a monthly award given to the best performer who has not only excelled in his work but has exceeded the expectations of his manager. Every department nominates candidates and the winner is one, who apart from following the quality process which is mandatory, goes ‘above and beyond his/her call of duty’ and is presented with a trophy. It is a rigorous process done in a discreet manner-a group of three-four judges select the winner from the given list of candidates. All the relevant details are handed over to them but the name blanked out to help parity.
• Caring SYSTIME programme: It is a channel through which any person, who wishes to acknowledge and appreciate another person for their help, can fill in a message card with the message written, to be conveyed to the concerned person. Three entries are picked up on a lot basis and read out during the monthly programme and others delivered to the people personally.

So be it family outings, birthday parties or celebrating anniversaries, recognising the valuable inputs of leaving employees or acknowledging an individual for an extra-ordinary performance or on reaching a milestone, the organisation provides every individual an equal platform and multiple channels to communicate and interact. “Every individual has more potential than what he/she actually does. This is called creativity and we aim to tap and nurture it,” says Mehta.

The company sends a bouquet to all its employees on their birthdays. Mehta says, “Immaterial of whether the employee is in town or travelling, the gift reaches their place at seven in the morning. This is a way of keeping their families in focus and make them believe in the organisation; a method to establish a relationship not only with the employees but also with their families.”

Employee participation

The company encourages active employee participation, proof of it visible by the different committees appointed for managing different areas, from within the employee fraternity.

The cafeteria committee works under the management’s directives. It rotates every six months and these set of people select the vendors, decide the menu and get the prices subsidised. The bus committee, to meet the route challenges and to incorporate recommendations, has an authorised individual in every route who co-ordinates and handles issues like diverting routes whenever necessary, adding buses to accommodate employees, etc. The SYS-Fun committee was created for solely making the workplace better. The company also organises ‘SYS-Fest’, a half-day event consisting of entertainment programmes and honouring of awardees, which is completely managed by the employees, participated by them and their family members-children, spouses and even grandparents. Every detail is published in SYS-Times, a theme-based employee newsletter, run by the editorial team comprising members of various departments.

Fun at work

All these activities help break the monotony and generate positive energy. Mehta cheerfully recollects the day when all the employees played housie, seated in their desks, without affecting their work or productivity. This was made possible by displaying the chosen numbers every hour on the notice board and the winners were to inform a centralised person via e-mail.

Employees thus participate and take efforts to make the place better by using the dynamic mechanism on the basis of their abilities and interests.

When asked about the fun at work concept disturbing the work itself, Mehta says, “Any deviation affects work. But working continuously for eight hours will affect one’s health, put undue stress on that individual and will anyways affect the future production and productivity. So it is better to take breaks at appropriate timings than to agitate oneself. These are not everyday activities and when compared to the output derived all through the year, this fun does not seem to take up a sizeable amount of time.”  

Alumni network

SYSTIME continues to maintain a healthy relationship with its ex-employees and also provides a forum for them to continuously remain in touch with the happenings at the company, where they can contribute in a significant manner. A special alumni website, with a registered user id, allows them to remain in touch with the company. The company periodically conducts an alumni get-together event for such contributors to come together and rekindle memories. 

Recruitment and talent development

The key to maintaining a healthy work culture which intertwines with the process requirement lies in the recruitment of appropriate staff. On the enrolment level itself, the HR personnel make sure that the employee fits into the cultural structure of the company, and technical know-how and functional expertise is considered next. Questions framed and asked are with a view to assess and judge the synchronisation level of the cultural values of the employee and the organisation. There is an intensive five-day induction training. Every individual is proactively read out his/her role in the current level, steps that will take them to the next stage and his/her role at that point.

This ensures transparency and is done to keep the spotlight on the organisational goals and the individual growth and help them go hand-in-hand. Mehta strongly believes in the principle that ‘a company grows only if its employees grow.’ While some people may show strong signs of leadership skills, there may be other hidden talents that need to be spotted and brought forward for them to shine.

The main facet is to work together as a team, share information and help colleagues and subordinates. According to Mehta, every employee who aspires for a change will get his due if and only if he creates a successor ready to take his place. Training subordinates and keeping a backup is essential for individuals to grow and move-on in the organisation, to explore and experiment new avenues.

They have a separate Training Department, which takes care of technical as well as management development training. There is a separate module for re-orientation of the existing employees. This year every employee has the target of 40 hours of training. The company has introduced a corporate values structure, which is a culmination of the efforts undertaken and the inputs provided by a group of ten people from every SYSTIME department/team worldwide, which has helped in framing these corporate values keeping in mind the cultural fit. While the average employee lifecycle in the IT is two years, SYSTIME has a five-year average employee lifecycle, which reiterates the fact that employee retention is given key importance in their agenda. 

To help execute projects that are in the list of actionable items, there is a need to augment the manager bandwidth as the inputs have been growing.

Thus, a new initiative called CSIG (Corporate Strategic Initiative Group) is coming into being, which will be headed directly by a senior manager or a group of senior managers as an exclusive one-year assignment. 

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility ) initiatives

On the corporate social responsibility front, the company as a group is taking baby steps. They organise blood donation camps regularly. However, a major leap in this frontier is expected soon.

The company hopes to come up with friendship bands with a CSR message on it, of three different colours, each with a different price attached to it. People can buy those bands and the amount collected will go to a fund.

The CSR programme is in the nascent stages for needs of funds management, the need to articulate it, set it up as an individual entity, register like a trust, opening up of a bank account, etc. On the planning stage is a vision by which employees instead of giving birthday parties to their colleagues can channelise that amount towards CSR initiatives which will go to the needy and deserving.  

The company thus takes a holistic approach to listen and meet the various needs of its employee community. Mehta ends by saying, “There is nothing right about everything. There is a good and bad side to everything and every person. We don’t know if we are good or bad, but the fact is that we are unique. As we grow, we hope to sustain this level of personal thought and get better.”