When the management was formulating the vision statement of the company 22 years back, Rajendra S Pawar, chairman of the NIIT Group, had to take a call on what to put first on the statement--people or business. It was people that he chose to put before business and the decision came without much hesitation from the head honcho. Says Arvind Thakur, CEO of the year-old NIIT Technologies (NIIT Technologies emerged an independent entity after corporate restructuring in 2003), "People are very important in knowledge-intensive businesses like ours."

NIIT has many firsts to its credit when it comes to initiatives in the HR front. Remember dating allowances and paternity leave? Small initiatives that touched its employees in a big way.

But that was yesterday. Today, the IT industry has come a long way. The industry has seen boom in the late 90s followed by the great depression between 2000 and 2003, and has finally bounced back. People challenges in every matured industry are different. The Dataquest-IDC Best Employers Survey 2005 revealed that employees today look for growth and challenges at work. Remuneration featured far below at No 7 in the priority list. Most employees surveyed believed that remuneration is something that comes naturally, as a consequence to growth. The bottomline: Give your people a growth path and the right challenges, and retain them forever.

Motivating one and all: These Umang posters not only create awareness but also encourage more and more employees to participate. The current level of participation is in the 60-70% range

NIIT, like most other players in the industry, realized this a couple of years back and since then the management has been actively involved in restructuring HR policies and practices to suit the personal and professional aspirations of their manpower.

Nurturing Talent
A couple of years back the management's brief to the line managers was very clear-stay focused on business acquisition and talent acquisition, in that order. The brief's still the same, but priorities have reversed. Today, talent acquisition is the most important responsibility of line managers. Says Harita Gupta, head of practice at NIIT Tech, "We believe that if we have good people on board, the business will grow effortlessly."

NIIT Technologies strictly follows a competency-based recruitment policy. Training programs-officially called the Performance Planning & Development Process (PPDP)-conducted twice every year to identify and close gaps in business critical areas, complement this. The company chooses to be completely democratic in the mentoring and training process. Supervisors identify training needs of individuals, but employees get the opportunity to choose their own mentor from a list of names posted on the iNIITian, an internal web-based portal. "Mentoring should be a self-driven process and this is why we give individuals the liberty to choose their mentors," explains Gupta.

NIIT also offers a competency-based framework to cope with dynamism in the IT work environment. Centers of competence in three areas-technical, behavioral and functional-have been formed and are driven by market trends. NIIT offers seven Centers of Competence in the technical domain. Individuals get the opportunity to be a part of these centers--Java and J2EE, .Net, Open Source, RFID, BMA, Testing & QA and Data warehousing & BI--between projects. These Centers of Competence do not foster individual growth and development only but also help individuals cope with emerging concepts in technology. Says Rosita Rabindra, senior VP, HR and a veteran of 22 years in the group, "We focus on a set of competencies according to industry demands and remain focused on the set unless there are some drastic changes that may demand immediate updating." Average training for everyone is around 10 days, every year, while technical people get over 20 days. The objective is very clear: technology, if not made productive, is wasted, and that is what the training program is geared towards. Adds Gupta, "We also have strong technology alliances with companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Mercury among others to help us adapt better and faster to newer technologies."

Measuring Growth
Last November NIIT initiated a unique program entitled UMANG (Using Measurements for Accelerated NTL Growth), which allows employees to measure individual growth and track improvement. Says Gupta, "We realized that improvement is possible only when you can measure and evaluate performance. This is what Umang facilitates."

Together we make it happen: (L-R) Rosita Rabindra, sr. VP, HR; Arvind Thakur, CEO and Harita Gupta, head, Practice

Umang, too, is self-driven. There are eight modules and each module is designed as a discussion session of 2 hours, every month, and coordinated by the team leader. The modules are aligned with project goals and teams can decide what to measure. At no point is one expected to measure more than two parameters. The identified parameters are put on an Excel-based Data Capture System that captures the data, learnings and observations, does a root cause analysis and determines corrective actions. Umang allows one to move from "feel-based to data-based self management," according to Rabindra.

How successful is Umang? Fairly successful, given that the usage is in the 60-70% range and the initiative is less than a year old. The 30-minute sessions give people the opportunity to share feedback and thereby learn from his or her mistakes.

Changing with Times
NIIT Tech's attrition rate is in the 10-12% range, which is testimony to the fact that it has not only matured over the years but has also managed to meet the growing needs of its manpower fairly effectively. NIIT sheds the bottom 5% of its workforce by design, something that allowed the company handle recession far better than most of its competitors. A significant number of people who were asked to leave the company during the bad times have returned, which reveals their faith in the company and its management.

NIIT has moved beyond just making the office a fun place. The six-year-old iNIITian portal addresses 85% of the issues-handles leave-related matters; structures and personalizes compensation; holds auctions (especially helps employees who are relocating); has bargain corners; allows internal buy and sell; the list goes on. The management stays out of most of these activities while involving itself in more important matters like compensation, bills or eSeed, an online version of the existing brick and mortar model SEED (School for Employee Education & Development). The portal gets more than 2,000 hits a day, which establishes its utility and popularity among employees. Explains Rabindra, "The idea is to automate regular, mundane and relatively common matters and allow HR to only address the exception." Whatever be the objective, the strategy, no doubt, is the winner.

Best Practices @ NIIT Each one get one: You'll find posters like this all over the campus. Employees are encouraged to make referals and are given due incentives when referals get translated into offer letters. The objective is to create a bond and show that the company cares and wants to create a warm work environment An open culture, where employees are encouraged to voice their opinions and suggestions. The best ones also get implemented. Centers of Competence in three broad categories--technical, behavioral and functional--where employees learn emerging technologies or hot skills that are currently in demand in the industry. Employees get the opportunity to opt for these programs between projects. Competency-based framework for growth and development. A 270-degree appraisal process (minus the customer) that makes the entire process transparent and fair. People processes have been assessed at PCMM (People Capability Maturity Model) Level 3. Formal assessment for Level 5 to start by the end of the year. UMANG, an initiative to facilitate career growth through improvement of personal work processes. A self-driven program, which allows individuals to quantitatively measure, evaluate and improve individual performance

Professionalism Matters
Whether it is HR or marketing or operations, it pays to be professional and this is something that the management at NIIT believes and follows to the tee.

Last September, NIIT was assessed at PCMM Level 3-which is a representative of the company's focus on quality and efforts at integrating people, processes and technologies to promote a culture of excellence and innovation. This not only allowed transparency in HR practices, but also helped institutionalize NIIT's HR practices across centers. Says Rabindra, "Sustaining initiatives without a formal framework is difficult." The formal assessment for Level 5, the highest level in People Capability Maturity Model, will begin by November this year. Three years back, any senior management personnel could conduct an interview. That's no longer the situation today. Every individual is trained and assessed before his or her induction into the interview panel.

NIIT has also devised a model to measure employee motivation. The HR department is expected to run the model in the next couple of months.

The 3,000-member NIIT is small, especially if you compare it to the likes of TCS or Infosys. Nevertheless, it is one of the rare companies that have been most proactive on the people front from day one. Rabindra and team want NIIT to be a party for her people. But it's not just a party; it is truly an institution of the people; by the people and for the people.

Bhaswati Chakravorty