The Asia Pacific HRD Conclave
The Entry of Hughes Software Systems (HSS) for Awards for Corporate Excellence

This paper is based on the interventions and experiments at HSS in the last twelve to fifteen months. It talks about organization behavior in information technology, the most significant example of a knowledge-based industry, and the one that has seen the fastest growth in India in the past few years. Being new, this industry is characterized by a lot of young people, who are very different from the rest. They are being called "The Generation X Workers" the world over. Building a unique culture that is well understood by employees in an ever growing and changing workplace is a big challenge. HSS used Appreciation as a tool to bring about change

Information Technology industry is one of the best, and perhaps most significant example of knowledge-based industries in India. In the last twenty years, IT and Software has grown the fastest (CAGR of >50% in the last 5 years) and goal is to have 25% of India's GDP through IT and Software in the coming 20 years, making India the Software Superpower.

The IT industry is young with 75% or more employees in the age group of 21-27, and represent the Generation X (GenX) in the industry. They are highly aware of themselves and the surroundings, very self-centered, have strong opinions, apt to look at things with cynicism, ambitious and mobile, and having no real role models. With annual growth rates of 50-100% and attrition of 15-40%, each company is always in a fluid state, creating a new company each year. At any given time, nearly two-thirds of the employees are in the company for less than a year! How does one go about creating a strong culture that everyone relates to? Traditionally, culture has been built by rubbing shoulders with the "old timers" and using war stories. There are no old timers in most companies, and the constant change that is taking place is creating chaos for everyone. Also, the somewhat mercenary-like approach of the GenX workers (and managers) creates a bottleneck in making bonding happen, which is essential for teamwork and retention.

Just over a year ago, HSS was facing similar challenges. In an environment where everyone was trying to do the best and meet world class standards, there was a general lack of appreciation for things that were happening right, and a lot of things were happening right. On the other hand, every time something went wrong or did not meet expectations, there was a strong negative reaction. This made us to think very hard on how can we get more appreciation and hence positive energy flowing. We came up with two major insights: 

The first one was that since we had people from the best universities and they were of a scientific mindset, anything but perfect would not satisfy them. That is, they expected the best to happen from themselves and others all the time. 

The second was the general discomfort associated with appreciating, especially face to face. High standards combined with discomfort were leading to very little appreciation taking place.

So we researched little bit and decided to use the problem as the solution, i.e., use Appreciation as the tool of change. We realized that if a system was to work in the company, it had to "catch fire", i.e., it would have to catch the imagination of majority of the people and they would start using it. Anything that required people to do something they did not want to do would not work, i.e., no "coercion" to try something was possible. The answer, as most ideas do, suddenly came up like a light bulb. We designed and launched a program called the HSS Popular Awards more than a year ago. 

The Popular Awards are a medium of employee to employee recognition and augment the pre-existing "formal" management-driven award system. In the last one year, HSS has launched 12 popular awards, which are behaviors pulled out from The HSS Way, HSS' culture and Value System. Each quarter, 3 characteristics (e.g., Great Communicator, Great Mentor, Terrific Troubleshooter, etc.) are chosen, and all employees have one vote for each of these. The employees can cast their votes for any employee of the company. The person who gets the maximum votes is declared the winner. The program works launched through HSS' Intranet to which all employees have access. This has been a tremendous success:

• Starting from 20% a year ago, 76% employees participated (cast their vote) in the most recent quarter. Gradually, a large number of people have started participating in the appreciation process.
• In the first quarter of the launch, we just declared the winner for each award category. In the last quarter, we were able to declare Top 20 for each category. Each of these people had sufficient number of votes. (More and more appreciation is taking place).
• An informal cross-functional task force has come up, which has promoted this concept and encouraged more and more people to participate by casting their votes. (The system is spreading to people who are not directly associated with this function).
• The awards have been won by people from all functions, and from all levels and by old timers as well as new.
• The HSS Way now has faces, people can relate to being a good coach by relating to the person who got voted as the great mentor, etc. Rather than mere words, employees can see and know "The HSS Way".
• These awards are highly coveted. The winners are being seen as role models and leaders. It has helped people understand what leadership is all about, and that it is not really the role of "senior management", but of all employees in a unique manner.
• In the last one year, there has been a visible difference in the overall culture: people are using other forms of appreciation a lot more, there is general concern about common causes (employees saying that we should do something for Kargil, Orissa, Blood Donation, etc.)
• The winners are contributing back to the system: The winner of The Best Leader Award takes the session on Leadership in the Supervisory Induction Program.

To enable the employees to provide more appreciation in normal course of life, in addition to the once-a-quarter opportunity, we also launched the e-greetings program. This works like a typical portal for greeting cards on the Internet. The difference is that it is available on the HSS Intranet, and has been specially designed for the HSS context. The children of employees have made some of the pictures used for this system. This provides a quick method of expressing your appreciation, and since it is sent electronically, the discomfort related to personally saying it taken care of. Also, it provides ready-made ideas, e.g., Teachers' Day card for the person from whom you have learnt a lot. Over the last few months, the traffic on e-greetings has increased continuously. In fact, since its launch in June 1999, close to 3000 e-greetings have been sent. Also, there is a distinct and visible change about appreciation. People are now taking initiative to send positive notes through other channels, e.g., emails, person to person, etc.

In order to provide support to these experiments, HSS also launched the Leadership Development Inventory (LDI) program for all managers. LDI is a 360-degree feedback program where managers get feedback from their supervisor, 4 peers and 4 subordinates and this is then compared to self-evaluation. LDI is again based on The HSS Way, behaviors that are expected from the HSS leaders. . In keeping with the HSS philosophy, LDI provides confidential feedback only to the incumbent, with no evaluative implications whatsoever. On the one hand, LDI provides inputs to managers on how they are being perceived on leadership behaviors. On the other hand, Popular Awards help create role models

In summary, The Popular Awards, LDI and e-greetings have enabled HSS in strategically building culture with an expanding workforce by having faces that represent The HSS Way. It has also helped in getting a large number of people in participating in the appreciation process, thereby building a sense of bonding, thus getting out of "being on my own" to "the people and things around me". The general level of cynicism or doubt is much lower than what it was. The awards also set high standards for leadership behavior for managers, putting peer pressure on them to become a more effective managers (more focus on soft skills rather than technical skills alone).

Hughes Software Systems
Plot 31, Electronics City, Sector 18
Gurgaon 122015 India

Tel: 0124-6346666 extn 2111 or 6346532
Fax: 0124-6343713
Email: aadesh.goyal@flextronicssoftware.com
Web: www.hssworld.com

<< BACK

Last updated : August 5, 2006