Recently, Tech Mahindra inducted three industry veterans to its senior management lair. All had one thing in common; they were groomed at HCL Technologies for a good part of their career.
Reputed to be a training ground, HCL Technologies has produced some of the best leaders in the industry over the last 29 years. A 2005-report counted 100 CEOs who had been with HCL Technologies at an earlier point in their career. Hindustan Lever is another company that shares a similar reputation.
From an organisation?s perspective, there are many pieces in the leadership grooming matrix, like sharing a common goal, providing opportunities, coaching/ mentoring and training. Most companies have their own training agenda and budget.
IT and consulting major Accenture, with more than 140,000 employees worldwide, says it spends up to 10% of its revenue on training. Raymonds, a prominent textile brand, conducts ?learning melas? every year where employees can pick and choose from a menu of training programmes. Fast food major Domino?s India Pizza has upped its training budget by 75% this year, just when cost-cutting is in vogue the world over.
?At HCL Technologies, with 50,000-plus employees, training has become scalable, by ingraining it in the culture rather than conducting it as a stand-alone activity or an event?, says Anand Pillai, head-talent transformation & intrepreneurship development. The nomenclature itself indicates the expectation from Pillai?s team. Still, nothing is left to chance. HCL Technologies has a formula right from identifying focus areas to delivery mechanisms, and assessing impact and return on investment.
The company has 3,000 employees as part of the ?leaders teach? team at HCL technologies. The training they impart is in three areas—technical, behavioural and business. Of these, business training is domain-specific, focusing on industries and specialisations within, such as banking, asset management life sciences, insurance and so on. Most in the ?leaders teach? team are practicing managers, and have, as part of their key result areas, a mandate to spend 10% of their time on training.
According to Pillai, ?The service industry tries to focus on skill-based training. But the older legacy industries and public sector industries are more focused on knowledge-based training. For instance, at HCL, our technical trainers are all subject matter experts, certified in a particular version of java, oracle etc. Practicing managers impart training focus on the ?how? of training rather than on the ?what? or ?why?. Public sector undertakings, in contrast, will typically have a staff training college, typically a way from the company?s campus, where training is theoretical and disseminated by outside trainers. Once the employees return to work there is no debriefing and they simply return to the old way of doing things.? HCL does appoint external trainers. But the company has found that the ground an external trainer cover in a day would be covered by an internal trainer in two to three hours. Additionally, ?As many of the ?trainers? are usually supervisors to the ?trainees?, this exchange helps in team building as well and creating a bond.?
Training budget at HCL is quite conservative, and what Pillai has to say on cost relating to internal trainers is counter-intuitive. ?What really adds up the pressure on the training budget is the opportunity cost. While hiring an external trainer would cost the company anything between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 a day, going up to a maximum of Rs 50,000, training conducted for a few hours everyday by a ?practicing manager? would cost the organisation upwards Rs 35,000, and for the time spent by CEOs and other leadership, the opportunity cost is tallied at Rs 1.5 to 2 lakh a day.?
For all the costs it entails, training has its rewards. A common theme across the 25 companies that Hewitt ranked last month as the best employers in India 2009—right from HCL Technologies that was ranked No. 1 to LG Electronics, Domino?s Pizza India, Becton Dickinson, Accenture and Whirlpool of India—was that although these companies may have competitors who are better paymasters, employees are motivated to work with them because of the culture and the career opportunities they provide. A fact testified by other companies as well, such as Raymonds, which has taken a hit because of the downturn in the textile market, which makes up 75% of its business, but continues to retain employee loyalty because of a culture of care which translates into engagement, development and camaraderie.
?malvika.chandan@expressindia.com