INTERVIEW WITH ANAND PILLAI OF HCL
Turning Conventional Management Upside Down
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Interviewed by Stuart Crainer
Editor
Business Strategy Review
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Anand Pillai, now the former senior vice president and Global Head of Quality, Talent Transformation and Intrapreneurship Development at HCL Technologies, and I talk about his views on business and leadership.
Tell us about HCL Technologies.
HCL Technologies was founded in 1976 and is based in Noida, India. Worldwide, the company employs more than 80,000 people and operates in 31 countries. HCL offers an integrated portfolio of services, tied mainly to IT solutions but also including infrastructure management, engineering, and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The company is involved in work in many industries, including aerospace and defense, consumer electronics, energy and utilities, health care, media and entertainment, retail, transportation as well as travel and hospitality.
You’ve been very much in demand around the world, judging from your travel schedule, because of HCL’s “Employees First, Customers Second” philosophy. Has the response been what you had hoped?
Yes. For example, I’ve just returned from Dallas and the kind of traction from Employees First, Customers Second is truly amazing. Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down was authored by our CEO, Vineet Nayar. That motto has been the guiding light ever since we started our transformation journey in 2005. It places employees on top of the organization and provides them with all the requisite support to succeed. This has helped tide us over every situation and build a strong, committed, and passionate workforce.
Has HCL won business as a result of this philosophy?
When one chief information officer read the book, he said, “This company is doing things differently; let me hear more.” So we did three workshops for his staff in a little more than three months, and that tilted the balance in our favor. Compared to eight months ago, we now have more than three times the business we were doing with that company.
Do you think there’s an appetite in Western companies to learn from Indian companies?
Absolutely. The biggest war being fought the world over is the war for talent. But attracting talent is one thing; helping them to be (and stay) productive is what makes the most difference. Our approach to employees and clients helps us achieve more. That is something everyone is interested in these days, everywhere.
How would you describe your job in relation to winning that war?
My job is basically getting the “three E’s” to our employees. That is, my work centers on engaging, empowering and enabling our employees in such a manner that we can deliver non-union productivity.
Do you encounter much cynicism and skepticism as you travel around the world speaking to executives?
Absolutely. One reason is that, for good or bad, Indian companies are not credited with thought leadership. If you look at any management book, it is always an American company that is coming out with something new. Now there is an Indian company that has produced something dramatically new. And I’m not talking of something that happened just one year ago. We’ve got six years of track record to prove what we have done and reliable data to support the impact this business philosophy created on our business results, customers, and employees.
What do you say to people who are cynical and skeptical? How do you convert them?
I remember that, when we announced this initiative in 2005 in the midst of about 400 customers, some were unhappy and, in fact, walked out of the meeting. But we believed (then and now) that employees are our greatest asset and if we have an engaged, empowered, and enabled employee, that employee will go beyond the call of duty to satisfy customers, which benefits everyone in the end. So, yes, people are initially cynical, they’re initially skeptical, until we present them the business case and present them the data, which is easily verifiable.
Now, many companies are clamoring to learn about what you’re doing, but where are you looking for inspiration, new ideas?
I want to learn how other companies have faced similar challenges and what it is that they did to overcome these challenges. Southwest Airlines would be a classic example. It has a long history of considering employees as ‘the first customer.’ So HCL and Southwest have much to teach each other.
Levels of engagement among employees in companies in the West and throughout the world are actually very low, aren’t they?
Absolutely. If you look at so many of these organizations, you will find abysmally low levels of engagement, anywhere from 15 percent to 17 percent. A worldwide study by the Gallup organization found that, annually, the cost of disengaged employees for the U.S. economy is $26 billion. And this was only among the organizations that participated in the survey. So $26 billion is the cost of what we call “quit-but-stay” employees. They have mentally quit, they’ve emotionally quit, but they’re physically staying on in the organization.
Given current economic challenges, what specific measures are you taking at HCL?
The current environment has increased our focus on utilization and customized training programs. We have also introduced a number of new initiatives to allow employees to enhance their skills. For example, following our ‘blue ocean’ strategy, our goal has been to find and create new markets and find opportunities in new geographies. Operating in new markets has its challenges, but we also have a number of programs that are customized to the needs of a region, which will assist employees to excel.
For instance, the Cultural Sensitization Academy enables employees to work effectively with different types of people and, at the same time, recognize and appreciate the cultural differences within their own organization. As we move into newer geographies and customer bases, we will invest more in creating new academies. For instance, we have just created one academy in the insurance practice called the actuarial science academy. We realized that just having an insurance specialization is not good enough—we needed to have a micro-specialization in the science of probability.
Is there a way to monitor how employees feel about their own level of engagement and interest?
We use a unique learning assessment tool called EPIC, which stands for Employee Passion Indicative Count. We believe that every individual is motivated and driven by one passion or another, such as challenge, diversity, specialization, or tangible rewards. To find out what drives our employees, we designed an instrument that measures people’s passions or, rather, helps people know what their passion drivers are. With this instrument, which is rolled out once per year, people can measure how they have improved or grown in their passion.
It comes back to engagement, doesn’t it?
You cannot build a learning organization unless employees are engaged, and that means more than just interested. I have three things that I recommend to any organization. First, get top management ownership of the idea of employee engagement and empowerment. Second, make sure that employees at lower levels are motivated to learn and participate in the engagement effort. And third, try to get some immediate demonstrable results, some early wins, so people maintain their interest.
About the interviewee
Anand Pillai is the Sr. Executive Vice President & Chief Learning Officer at Reliance Industries Ltd, He has been recently appointed to become a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership 2011, given his thought leadership in the field of Leadership & Innovation. With more than 29 years of experience in the corporate world, Pillai has handled challenging assignments in general management and as head of operations in companies such as TATA Group (10 years), Hughes Network Systems and Bay Networks and with HCL. His passion for training and working with people led him to take on this role in developing the human capital. Learn more about Anand Pillai (or contact him) via
http://anandpillai.in/blog/.
© London Business School [2011]
http://bsr.london.edu/lbs-article/635/index.html
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