The three pillars of Tietoevry's employee strategy
All Things Talent
A niche HR-centric knowledge platform bringing business, talent and technology together.
COVID has significantly changed the way we work in the IT industry. It caused such a mental shift in people that going back to old habits is no longer an option. Our work culture and office culture as a whole had to evolve to accommodate the new standard of productivity. I would not be exaggerating if I said?around 20% of our employees have not seen the offices and colleagues in person, which is an?engagement nightmare for HR and managers.?Changing a job became as?easy as logging into a different company laptop!
Post Covid, as growth picked up in all sectors, like most other companies, we, at Tietoevry India, also resumed investments in expanding our business and hiring new talent. Attrition had become an industry challenge as a result of high talent demand (I should say talent war), with all major IT companies struggling to retain their key talent. We also saw a spike in attrition, especially in key skills like Salesforce, SAP HANA, ServiceNow, full-stack developers, React JS, Cloud Infra Technologies, Angular JS, and Android developers.?
Good people often had more than one offer at any given time because there were so many opportunities for them. During this time, we saw the joining ratios of offered candidates plummet to nightmarish proportions.
Rebuilding the organisation
It was a three-pronged approach that helped us keep our heads above water:
We rediscovered our agility and resilience as a workforce as we moved from 100% “work from office” (WFO) to 100% “work from home” (WFH) in 2020, when Covid struck. Then, by the end of 2021, after careful deliberations about the ‘future of work’, we adopted a hybrid work model that balances employee aspirations in terms of flexibility and business requirements while aligning with SEZ and government regulations. The hybrid model was fully adopted by our company in early 2022.
Our new work model is not just about shifting from earlier ways of working but about adopting a whole new work culture. In this case, the main goal of HR was to make sure that employees, managers, and customers all continue to have the same level of trust in one another.?
We were able to bring our?attrition rate down by around 10% over a period of nine months. This was possible because the company changed from a reactive to a proactive retention strategy.?We found the skills that were in high demand and hired more people to make sure there was a steady stream of talent. We proactively switched from “exit” to “stay” interviews. We conducted multiple employee engagement surveys and took corrective actions proactively. We devised a retention bonus model for high-risk employee categories.
While employee well-being was a priority for us even earlier, the shift that happened was that from being a ‘good-to-have’ initiative, it evolved into a ‘social contract concept’ with employees. This means that employee wellness is now at the centre of many business decisions that we take.?
To communicate with the very last remote worker, we completely redesigned our employee engagement strategy. We provided our employees with increased flexibility in choosing their work location. We have introduced many new initiatives for proactively rewarding and recognizing employees. We introduced a ‘Higher Education Assistance Program’ to provide our employees the opportunity to pursue virtual higher education while on the job. We also revamped our long service awards to further reward longevity in the company.?We also started a formal program called ‘Comebackers’ to attract many former employees who returned to Tietoevry.?
HR Experiments
In 2022, we made many changes in key areas that helped improve HR effectiveness.
Hiring and Onboarding
We had a steady flow of hires throughout the year.?We closed 2022 with around 2000 total joiners and an overall joining ratio of around 60%.?A few hiring practices we adopted this year included:
领英推荐
Employee Wellness and Engagement
Last year, we offered a comprehensive Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to our employees in collaboration with an external partner. This year, we?are launching a?holistic wellness platform that will?focus on the physical, emotional, mental, and financial wellness of our employees.?
Rewards and recognition play a vital role in keeping employees motivated. This year?we monetized some of our employee awards and?revamped our ‘Staunch Awards’, which recognize achieving milestones and completing long tenures in the company. Both these changes have received an overwhelming response across all our sites.?
We were able to bring our?attrition rate down by around 10% over a period of nine months. This was possible because the company changed from a reactive to a proactive retention strategy.?We found the skills that were in high demand and hired more people to make sure there was a steady stream of talent. We proactively switched from “exit” to “stay” interviews.
Compensation and Benefit
On the payroll front, we brought in many big and small process improvements this year. We have various one-time payment schemes like “retention bonuses,” off-cycle salary corrections, and long-term incentives, to name a few.
Learning and Development
Employee Referral programs
What happens in 2023?
2023 would be a year of digital skills and new-age technologies in cloud computing, AI, and data. Working from anywhere will become a reality. This would be another significant step towards the flat-world paradigm.?
Businesses that can provide more opportunities for employees to learn and grow will be able to retain employees better.?Cost management, as always, would be critical. Certain sectors would see tremendous opportunities, while some sectors would have a challenging year in 2023. Diversification is key. Companies that have a diverse customer base across sectors will ride the wave better.??
Tips for jobseekers
The overall demand for technical skills is increasing; however, technology evolves very quickly. Learnability is the key since many technologies have a shorter shelf life than before. Full-stack developers, data scientists, and engineers would be in demand.?While hybrid ways of working provide a lot of flexibility, they also put the onus on employees to be more mature and credible in handling the newfound flexibility.??
Prepping for business cycles of hiring and slowdowns in 2023
Author: Vinu Sekhar is an Executive Vice President and India HR head with Tietoevry . He has around 29 years of industry experience, predominantly in the IT sector. Before joining Tietoevry, Vinu worked for Infosys for over 17 years in various capacities in HR and Business.
If you like the article and are interested in more such insightful stories,?join India's leading HR community.