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e-mpowering,
e-nergizing, e-ngaging, e-nabling!  e-HR
@ HSS
This paper is based on actual e-HR strategy and interventions
at Hughes Software Systems Ltd. ("HSS"), the #1 communicationsoftware
company in India. It describes the overall context of the software industry as
well as HSS, and how HSS has found, in e-HR, an innovative and powerful yet simple
way of making its dream organization come to life. It describes the overall e-HR
Model developed by HSS as well its evolution and deployment in the organization
today. Picture this... An
organization which grows multi-fold but retains its "small company"
personal touch. An organization where each individual is empowered, informed and
independent and each system and process runs itself. An organization where all
employees are in touch, "in-sync", aware of all that is going on in
even the remotest corner of the organization and the world. An organization where
employee recognize their peers and role-models and drive their culture, all by
themselves. An organization where employees and managers have even the most specific
facts, reports or information on company happenings always available at their
tips, even when they are at home or travelling to any corner of the globe! An
organization where all processes (even "salary-slips"!) are "paper-less"
and available to the employee, anytime. An organization where people sitting thousands
of miles away work together on a project or share ideas in real-time. An organization
where changes are deployed in minutes and change management is truly decentralized.
An organization where the employees decide and drive their own job path, even
across functions! An organization where "help" for any problem is available
in minutes, be it work-related, technical, logistical or personal. An organization
where not just the employees but the potential hires as well as "alumni"
are always in sync with the latest happenings... In short,
a value-based, culturally-strong, empowered organization, where distances are
notional and the right time is right now!! This is the story of HSS and HSS’ innovative,
all-encompassing, strategic deployment of an empowering, enabling,
engaging and energizing "e-HR"... The
Context 
The Organizational Context
Hughes Software Systems started,
in 1992, as a software development center with Hughes Network Systems (parent
company) as the sole customer with a total staff of 50 at the end of first year.
Today, HSS is the #1 communication software company in India with nearly 1700
employees and with customers worldwide. In the last 10
years, HSS has seen explosive growth and a lot of change. The revenues have grown
at an average rate of 60% annually. HSS has grown from a single customer to more
than 140 customers around the world, has moved from providing software services
to developing hi-tech and hi-end products and solutions in the extremely competitive
global communications market. The high growth rate over the years combined with
the typical high employee turnover of this industry has meant that historically,
HSS has been a perpetually new company, with 60% or more employees who are new
at all times. Starting out with a single location at Gurgaon
(a New Delhi suburb), HSS now has 5 development centers spread across Gurgaon
and 2 more at Bangalore. Along with this, there are a dozen sales and support
offices spread across other parts of the world. The
"People" Context The IT industry is a young
industry of young people. Employees are typical Generation-X with 75% people in
the 21-26 years age group with low need for personal communication and bonding.
This highly mobile, intelligent, ambitious, workforce (predominantly comprising
of engineers) has high expectations from itself as well as the company. Also,
in this industry, and company, there is a lot of focus of the people on work,
and a lot of their satisfaction comes out of work-related accomplishments or activities.
Most of the interactions between managers and their team members are work related,
and they spend hardly any effort to develop extended personal relationships at
the workplace.
The "Values" Context (The "HSS Way") HSS
has a set of clearly defined guiding principles that have been a part of the ethos
right from inception and have shaped (and continue to shape) HSS’ culture. This
is called the "HSS Way". The "HSS Way" is based on the values
of "Ownership", "Respect", "Integrity", "Proficiency",
"Openness" and "Quality Consciousness". This is the "Values
Yardstick" against which all decisions are measured and to which HSS’ people
philosophy is aligned. An uncompromising commitment to
"Ethics" and "Respect for the individual" is the corner stone
of HSS’ culture right from day one. Retaining and enhancing this culture is a
top priority at HSS at all times.
The Challenges This unique combination of the characteristics
of the industry, organization and the people creates a unique context with some
unique challenges for the organization. As the company has shown high growth,
there has been a constant need to change and automate various processes and systems
in the company. Along with this, there has been a need to consistently develop,
reinforce and retain the right culture (along the "HSS Way") given the
specific context of this industry and its workforce. HSS’
"5-e" e-HR Model HSS decided to
transcend these challenges to create a vibrant, value-driven workplace, with a
high focus on the 4 "e"s: - e-mpowering
the employees by providing them maximum access to key information, interfaces
and resources, an ability to share their views and impact their own as well as
the organization’s future.
- e-nabling people to manage their jobs
and personal transactions smoothly, speedily, efficiently and independently.
- e-nergizing
the organization’s internal environment with a positive energy in a way that makes
each and every employee feel energized and charged up about life too!
- e-ngaging
employees so that they develop a sense of bonding with the company, its values
and ethos as well as its constituents.
The 4"e"s
undoubtedly have close-linkages as well as overlaps. Therefore, these needed to
be driven "seamlessly" through an engine that can reach each and every
employee, is flexible enough to drive each of these initiatives differently, is
sophisticated enough to present these to employees in a compelling way, is reliable
enough to be efficient and is scalable for future growth. And of course, still
simple enough to become successful. The "core"
or the engine that HSS chose to drive these 4 "e"s was, in fact, the
5th "e", that is, "e-HR". e-mpowering!
e-nabling! e-nergizing! e-ngaging! The e-volution of e-HR @ HSS! e-HR
is often defined as deployment done electronically, in part or wholly — via a
Web browser through the Intranet or even the Internet. Right from HSS’ inception
in 1992, the seeds of e-HR were sown. The need that e-HR was addressing at that
time was for every employee to be able to access all kinds of information (such
as policies) readily and to be able to interact freely across the organization.
At that time, the web had not taken this form, and the information exchange used
to happen through innovative use of emails as well as the LAN (Local Area Network).
Further levels of sophistication were built into the system gradually as HSS was
experiencing high growth rates and it was anticipated that as the organization
grew, e-Hr would become even more critical. Around 1995-96, an Intranet called
"Anthra" was set up. Another key step was taken around 1997 when "EDB"
or the "Employee Database" was set up as an oracle based application
for HR. The emergence of e-HR in its present, evolved form
happened about four years ago, when suddenly, a lot of innovative applications
that used the core information from the EDB and the interface provided by "Anthra"
completely changed the way HSS worked, interacted, learnt and even, behaved! Today,
the e-HR system at HSS is an elaborate, multi-faceted system that comprises the
following key elements: - "EDB" or the "Employee
Database": This oracle-based database is the core data repository of
employee information (personal, educational, official or professional) right from
the time that the employee first came into contact with HSS. This is updated on
the day of joining and all other applications draw the basic data from this.
- "Anthra":
The HSS intranet site "Anthra" is every employee’s prime interface with
the organization and the organization’s key interface with the employee. This
is the center-point of communication and information and is accessible by all
HSS employees at Gurgaon (5 locations), Bangalore (2 locations), the USA and in
fact from any location worldwide by logging-in through the Internet. Anthra is
the interface "page" (which looks like a slick, informative web-page/
web-site). This is the "place" from which the employee can launch any
application or view any information or make use of any e-HR resource.
- A
well thought out structure of innovative applications and modules: that rest
on the core-information and interface provided by these two elements (EDB and
Anthra) to dictate the organization’s working, interaction, learning and even
culture!
e-HR has the advantage of being highly
versatile. Based on the need of the situation the various e-HR modules can provide
varying amounts of speed, confidentiality, data security, wide access, focussed
responses, customized outputs, error-free transactions and attractive formats.
In addition, for a computer-friendly, engineering organization, "e-HR"
is definitely a medium that is appropriate. HSS has tried to capitalize on the
versatility of e-HR for each of the modules/applications for each the 4"e"s,
to make optimum use of the medium to meet the strategic and operational needs
of the organization effectively. Following
is an explanation of the way e-HR makes each of the 4"e"s come alive
at HSS…
e-mpowering! e-HR @ HSS ! e-mpowering the employees
by providing them maximum access to key information, interfaces and resources,
an ability to share their views and impact their own as well as the organization’s
future The first key role that e-HR plays at HSS is that of
"e-mpowering" the employees. Empowering employees is all about being
"open" and "transparent", providing them with enough information
for them to understand the organizational context and operate in it independently,
to connect them to others across the company, to have available to them resources
and support to help them succeed at their jobs. Obviously,
"information-availability" is the key input required for this sense
of empowerment to grow. As the "HSS Way" is also based on these values
of "Openness" and "Trust", information access (by having all
Policies and Key Information available on-line to all employees) and creation
of on-line "discussion groups" were the first e-HR initiatives launched
at the time of HSS’ inception itself. Over time, this has
evolved into various specific, sophisticated modules including a full-fledged
"Policies" section on Anthra along with real-time help on individual
queries through the electronic "HR Helpdesk". In fact, e-Help-desks
for all internal support functions such as IT, HR, Purchase, Corporate Communications
and Quality exist. These log as well as track closure of issues raised by any
employee from his/her desktop, on-line. This is a timely, interactive and personalized
way for e-addressal of individual issues, queries and suggestions. There
are various discussion-boards and virtual forums where employees can voice
their views, ideas and even "cribs" and get the views of others across
the organization. In addition to the help-desks, on-line
surveys and "opinion polls" are also conducted on Anthra
to give employees a chance to voice their views, share suggestions and even make
decisions! For instance, recently when there was a proposal to change the office-timings,
an opinion poll on Anthra was conducted to let employees themselves decide on
the issue. "Directline" is an on-line,
electronic access through which any HSSian can share his/her comments, ideas or
questions directly with the President of the Company. To
build on this sense of openness and involvement, "Anthra" also features
new "HSS news-stories" (updated everyday) to share with all HSSians
the accomplishments and events as they unfold company-wide. In fact, nowadays,
it is not uncommon to see "film clips" of company parties and get-togethers
on Anthra too! Anthra also features the key relevant news / technical articles
from around the world to heighten employees’ awareness. Empowerment
is also about making personal choices and taking charge of one’s own future.
There are various systems and modules of e-HR that support this, one of them is
"IJPP". "IJPP" or the "Internal Job Posting
Program" allows employees to look for job change within HSS! All new
positions are posted on Anthra, employees can apply on-line in total confidentiality
(without even their managers’ knowledge) and the selected candidate can
move to a new job, maybe even in another function! Empowerment
is not just about independence in day-to-day job related issues and career-paths
but also the things that are "personal" to the individual employee.
This is the area in the model where "e-mpowering" and "e-nabling"
start overlapping. An example of this can be seen in the case of Compensation
Management. The employee can log on to the "CTC calculator"
on Anthra to see the details of his/her individual compensation. The monthly "Pay-slip"
is also available on-line through Anthra. At the time of compensation review,
the new compensation is also communicated to the employee through an automatic
e-mail. Employees can also do their income tax calculations on-line. This not
only empowers the employee to manage personal finances more independently and
effectively, but it also empowers the employees in the support functions to spend
their time on the developmental aspect of their jobs. e-nabling!
e-HR @ HSS ! e-nabling people to manage their jobs
and personal transactions smoothly, speedily, efficiently and independently e-HR
is particularly well-suited to managing the "operational efficiency"
of people processes with high-level of independence, reliability and cost-advantages.
At HSS, these e-HR modules and applications start kicking in even before the employee
comes on board, and play a key role in shaping the entire work-experience of the
employee while at HSS. Through detailed information
and stories available on the web-site (about what it means to work at HSS), potential
employees start getting to know HSS even before they join. They can also interact
with HSS’ "tech-gurus" on-line and take their help in solving technical
problems. One of the first interfaces between a potential hire and the organization
is the web-enabled employment application forms on HSS’ web-site. The
"potential employee" then comes within the purview of the Recruitment
Management System. This is an e-HR application available in the Manager’s
work area of Anthra and all "New Hire Requests" are raised, approved
and tracked through this by managers as well as HR. This also serves as a central
repository of data about any employment related transaction. On
the day of joining, every employee can access the e-HR module called "Newbies"
to learn what HSS is about, where everything is, who everyone is, and in fact,
find out all that a newcomer would like to know about HSS. For most, this is the
very first direct contact with the elaborate e-HR system of applications and interfaces.
In fact, this is highly relevant for most people as it provides "just-in-time"
information, which effectively supplements any classroom orientation. The
e-HR application called the Time-sheet and Leave Management System is a
work-flow for recording and tracking all employees’ working hour information.
This is also accessible through an extranet. Now it is also used for generating
invoicing/billing information for our customers. Performance
Management happens through "e-PerMaSys", a Lotus Notes based
work-flow application that allows each employee and manager to set objectives
on-line, review progress, make adjustments and do an annual review for task, role
and behavior along the HSS way. It also archives all documents and allows HR and
other relevant interfaces to access company-level information on-line and even
displays the names of managers missing deadlines on Anthra, to create peer pressure
to comply! As mentioned earlier, Compensation Management too happens on-line. The
Skills Inventory System is the e-HR application that tracks the
skills and knowledge base of all employees and lets the function-heads or managers
use it for reports and decision-making support. An on-line
e-HR module called "Heads U Win" allows employees to send in
referrals to HR for suitable candidates for hiring at HSS. One can also see the
status of one’s referral online. There is even an e-HR work-flow
application called the Resignation Management System on Anthra through
which even the resignations, their review, approval and "no dues" clearance
happen on-line! In addition, there are several other applications
and features available including an on-line concierge service ("e-errandmall"),
travel desk, library booking, taxi-bookings, electronic
employee magazines, a software library, "info-channels",
on-line booking of discussion rooms etc. "Anthra"
serves as the one point interface for all of these and other e-HR modules and
applications, enabling employees, managers and HR to capitalize on the strengths
of e-HR to manage a multitude of people processes and interfaces much more quickly,
efficiently and independently than any conventional system. e-nergizing!
e-HR @ HSS ! e-nergizing the organization’s internal
environment with a positive energy in a way that it makes each and every employees
feel happy, energized and charged up about life too! While
"e-nabling" is all about smart ways of managing Operations, "e-nergizing"
is all about strategic deployment of OD interventions to build a positive energy.
Over the years, HSS has deployed several e-HR interventions
in the area of Recognition to good effect. Positive strokes are
strong motivators and great creators of positive energy. "HSS Applause"
is an on-line, e-HR recognition system that encourages managers to recognize
the contributions of team-members in real-time. The work-flow application not
only allows managers to nominate employees for award and respective group-heads
to approve them but to also independently publish them on Anthra with just a mouse-click,
without any need for intervention by HR or any other function. "Applause"
also hosts an e-HR application on "Popular Awards". These are
awards in 12 categories such as Best Sense of Humor, Great Reviewer, Best Leader
etc. which are given out every quarter based on the on-line company-wide voting
by all employees conducted through this application. This has been a key intervention
facilitating leadership development and "role-modeling". "HSS
Applause" is also linked to an "Awards Homepage" showcasing
all past winners, for all kinds of award categories. HSS-specific
greetings are available at "e-Greetings" on Anthra to encourage
peer-to-peer recognition as well as to build the habit of appreciation across
levels. As all-round development, a healthy work-life balance
as well as a sense of social engagement is important to a feeling of "high
energy", some of the e-HR modules on Anthra also facilitate this. For instance,
employees can develop their extra-curricular interests by signing up for a virtual
space called the "Club Zone" which includes, among others, a
music group, dramatics group, literary group and even a dance club. Anthra also
hosts information on recreational options, such as a "movie-guide",
a "travel-guide", "hot-deals" (special rates at restaurants)
and even the "menu" of the day at the company cafeterias is published. "Reach
Out" is another group that deals with various social work projects, including
an "adopted" local school that employees can help through volunteer-work.
Employees can also sign up on-line for "Common Cause" campaigns
such as "green sheen" (environment protection) or "Clean the Neighborhood"
or educating slum children. e-ngaging!
e-HR @ HSS ! e-ngaging employees so that they develop
a sense of bonding with the company, it’s values and ethos as well as its constituents In
a Gen-X Industry and organization with Gen-X workers, e-Hr provides a way to deploy
interventions to building "bonding" and "engagement" in a
unique way. The very simplest and most basic mode for getting
in touch with another HSSian is the "In-house", the on-line directory
of all employees. However, for employees whose job involves being on a PC for
most of the day, and the natural predisposition is not to seek out new relationships,
e-HR provides an innovative way to foster Communication and Relationship Building
across groups, locations and levels through various "e-Discussion
groups" hosted on Anthra. The groups range from as diverse areas as "Project
management" to "Junk" (a no-holds-barred group) to "Ideas"
(a group that explores new thoughts). In addition, each
work-group had its own Group home-page on Anthra where it makes available
information on its team, accomplishments and other particulars to all HSSians.
In fact, employees can independently set up individual home-pages too.
This shrinks distances and helps employees across the organization to "connect".
Of course, "Club Zone" (the activity zone) as well as "info-channels"
also serve this function. Culture building and "bonding"
with the organization also happens through understanding its values
and ethos. The Ethics and Integrity sections on Anthra that explains "the
HSS way", and have built in escalation mechanisms through "directline"
etc. In addition, specific "virtual events" launched through
Anthra from time-to-time also help employees develop a greater connect with the
"HSS Way". For instance, "The Hughes Mindsystem" virtual event
included on-line quizzing, a virtual treasure-hunt and other such activities to
allow employees across the company to interact and understand what the "Mindsystem"
is all about. Video-conferencing and "web-casting"
of company events across locations also help draw the company close. Engagement
also happens by the creation of "learning communities". "Pointers"
is the section that is the first start to a knowledge management system and a
place for approaching the "tech gurus" of HSS and learning from them.
For people outside HSS, a similar section is available on the website (www.hssworld.com).
Learning is managed through an online monthly training calendar,
an "ALC" or automated learning center and the "HSS Virtual
Campus", an e-learning portal, where employees can take a host of technical
or behavioral training on-line in interactive e-modules, at their convenience,
from their desk-tops. e-HR has also been deployed to keep
even ex-HSSians engaged with the organization! "Alumni Zone" is
an e-portal where ex-employees can join this virtual community and keep in touch
with the happenings, people and events at HSS and share their thoughts, opinions
and ideas with each other and other HSSians too. The
last word... At HSS, e-HR today is a way of life. It has
not only provided ease and efficiency to employees and managers but has also been
key in spreading, building and enhancing culture, recognizing excellence, building
bonds and relationships, facilitating employee and organizational growth. This
"5-e model" of e-HR has emerged out of the analysis of HSS’ unique context
(of challenges and opportunities), needs and "Values" (the "HSS
Way"). Therefore, e-HR at HSS is not a tool: it is a comprehensive, all-pervasive,
strategic intervention based on a scalable model that will ensure its growth and
evolution with that of the organization. For more details,
contact the following at HSS: Aadesh Goyal: aadesh.goyal@flextronicssoftware.com,
tel: 0124-6346666 x2111 Anupama Babbar: anupama.babbar@flextronicssoftware.com,
tel: 0124-6346666 x2367 TOP | 
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