When you walk into the plush 1.6 lakh sq ft office of Cadence India at Noida, you feel at home right away. This is the corporate headquarters, called the Corporate Resource Center, of Cadence in India, which also has another facility at Bangalore. A cafeteria connects the older building with the new one. All major meals are complimentary and amenities, like a travel desk, doctor-on-call and Les Concierges that provide basic day-to-day services for a fee, are available in-house. The idea is to recreate a home in the office. That's Cadence, a company that has been one of the most consistent performers on employee satisfaction in our Best Employers Survey over the last three years. 

Cadence came to India in 1987 when it acquired India's first EDA company, Gateway Design Automation. Today Cadence India's team comprises around 550 people at Noida and another 50 at Bangalore. While India's contribution to Cadence's overall revenue still remains modest at around 9%, the importance of the Indian component is on the rise. Today, Cadence has around 160 chip design clients, up 145 since 1998.

Hire, Train, Ramp up
EDA or Electronic Design Automation is a niche segment, so, people with highly specialized skills work at Cadence. This is what makes this company slightly different from most of the other participants in our Best Employers Survey. Typically, India does not provide a readymade talent pool for the EDA industry. So Cadence follows a simple model: hire, train and ramp up. Every new employee goes through assimilation training for a day, followed by a day of getting a synopsis of the EDA industry and the global picture. Each department then provides a mandatory two-week induction training in technology. This apart, there are several training programs, internal as well as sponsored, that are conducted in collaboration with IIT, Delhi. There are technical training programs designed to groom freshers. Some of the collaborative training programs have been specially designed to help the EDA professional meet industry requirements.

Sameer Wadhawan, director, HR, Cadence India, says, “We try to amend the recruitment process in such a way as to create the right alignment between technical competence and organizational competence.”

Self-Development Boost
Cadence has come up with an innovative initiative that encourages self-development. While self-development is a critical component of career development and growth, it is consciously preached and promoted at Cadence. Says Jaswinder Ahuja, corporate vice president and managing director, Cadence India, “My development is in my hands. The manager can only facilitate the talent development process.”

Organizational Diagnostic Surveys help identify the developmental requirements of the employees. Feedback is taken from about 20 parameters to arrive at the areas that require nurturing at an organizational level. Various task forces that exist in the organization formulate policies or special initiatives to facilitate individual development. 

A culture of learning, where the line manager plays the role of a teacher, also aids self-development. In addition, 70% of the training is with internal faculty and each senior technical or executive manager is expected to share experiences, teach and mentor others through knowledge sharing sessions. The “TECCI” conference, Cadence India's internal technology conference is another example of knowledge sharing. All employees, including the leadership team, invest time in learning in the technical or management space.

Building Leaders
The leadership development program at Cadence is based on the belief that not all quality engineers make quality managers. People may have the requisite managerial traits but these traits need to be identified and cultivated. Says Wadhawan, “The biggest challenge is to move a technologist to a managerial role.” Today, more than 80% of the managers at Cadence come from within the company. This is in keeping with the leadership culture followed at Cadence worldwide.

It is a deep-rooted belief of the Cadence management that managers bred in-house have a clear understanding of the leadership culture of the company. Selective hiring at the managerial level does happen from outside but this is done with the objective of bringing in fresh thinking and perspective. Ahuja himself drives the Shared Learning Series, a leadership development initiative on cross-geographic efficiency. A lateral hire at the managerial level undergoes a manager induction program (MIP) that provides an orientation to understand the culture of the organization with the help of several modules.

Compensation and Beyond
Cadence is one of the best paymasters in the industry, but that's typical of specialized players. Says Ahuja, “We operate in a niche domain and our compensation is median in the peer group.” Today compensation is nothing but a hygiene factor and the industry unanimously acknowledges this fact. Compensation is a necessary component of satisfaction but not the only one. As Wadhawan says, “You cannot hold back people just because you happen to be one of the best paymasters.”

Compensation is no longer the most important differentiator. In fact, most hygiene factors have become an accepted prerequisite in the IT industry. Says Wadhawan, “The industry has reached a threshold with respect to hygiene factors. You have to give more than just hygiene to retain the best talent.”

So, apart from leadership development programs, career development initiatives, learning and self-development programs, the Cadence management works consciously to make employee contribution more visible. There is heavy focus on the quality of work that happens at the India facility. Employees are encouraged to file patents, write papers and create a sense of ownership. While Indians are still not particularly conscious about creating their own IP, employees are constantly educated to build awareness on the importance of patents. 

Employee involvement in various socio-economic causes is also encouraged. For example, MACS (Make a Child Smile) is an initiative where personal computers are set up in slums that Cadence employees help support.  Then there are special interest clubs that promote and encourage hobbies like photography, trekking, music and dance. Salsa classes have also been started on a weekly basis. The idea is to involve employees in self- and community-development programs.

Says Wadhawan, “We try aligning our HR in such a manner as to understand what provides the maximum kick to the employee and try to use these leanings in our processes and initiatives.” To sum up, it's a culture of care for the employee at Cadence.

Bhaswati Chakravorty
bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in