Virtusa Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTU) accredited by the prestigious CRF institution, has been recognized as one of Britain’s Top Employers for the third consecutive year and has been honored with the Asia’s Best Employer award and Golden Peacock award for HR Excellence recently.
Virtusa employs over 7000 people globally, from three generations –Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. Being a multigenerational organization can prove challenging – to manage the varying needs and simultaneously leverage the unique strengths of each group. Yet,Virtusa’s employees continue to be motivated and contribute to operational excellence. So how does Virtusa manage to overcome this fundamental human resource issue?
“It is a fine balance, ensuring that all employees feel engaged and their individual needs are met”, according to Sundararajan Narayanan, Vice President and Global Head of HR at Virtusa. In many corporations, this balance continues to be one of the top HR challenges. Commenting on how Virtusa engages their multigenerational staff, Sundar said, “At Virtusa, we recognize that generational diversity adds intellectual capital to our organization. To harness each generation’s strength,Virtusa makes it a point to provide workers with the right set of tools, support and resources to create an energized and innovative workplace”.
Virtusa, which currently serves the Global 2000 companies, develops different strategies to connect with its employee base of which 86% are Millennials (Gen Y), followed by Gen X and Baby Boomers.
According to Sundar, engaging each generation requires a different approach. “It is important to note that the demands of each generation are often polarized. Millennials demand instant gratification, constant connectivity, expects job mobility and values training and development as the highest employee benefit. Whilst Gen X is realistic and skeptical, has a strong entrepreneurial spirit and values work-life balance. Baby Boomers conversely are optimistic, driven, relish long work weeks and define themselves by their accomplishments.”
The essence of engagement is to understand who you are talking to and what drives them to excel, opined Sundar. “For instance, Millennials have varying expectations of how services should be delivered and the way they interact is different compared to Baby Boomers and Gen X. Millennials, with their tech savvy approach and networking mindset, expect to be technologically enabled at all times and rely on social networks for guidance and opinions. Baby Boomers,on the other hand are often referred to as technophobes, largely reluctant to use technology to communicate and prefer to discuss issues in person, while Gen X embraces technology as a way of life” he expounded.
Virtusa ensures that appropriate systems are put in place harnessing talent to formulate innovative and creative products. According to Sundar, communication platforms are established to help Virtusans stay connected while sharing information across the globe using social media networking sites such as Yammer, V+ and Vingo. He also commented that team member friendly HR policies including flexi work hours, telecommuting and part-time work is available to ensure work-life balance.
In addition, Sundar also commented that feedback is an important part of Virtusa’s engagement and strategy. “We believe in a structured approach of internal feedback by conducting surveys half yearly to promote service excellence across all functions. Virtusans are given complete empowerment to express their innovation and creativity. Idea portals such as vInnovate help employees bridge their ideas to leadership teams,” he added.
With the changing workforce dynamics, Virtusa believes in building consistency across all their initiatives, especially addressing the Millennial and Gen X ecosystem through building robust talent engagement frameworks for sustenance and prolific business outcomes.
Commenting on Virtusa’s HR practices, Sundar said, “Human capital plays a vital role in Virtusa’s success. Focusing on attracting, developing and retaining the right talent will lead to the growth and success of the organization.”
Virtusa Corporation is a Global consulting and IT outsourcing company that combines innovation, technology leadership and industry solutions to transform the customer experience. Virtusa provides end-to-end information technology services to Global 2000 companies and helps customers accelerate business outcomes by consolidating, rationalizing, and modernizing their core customer-facing processes into one or more core systems.
source-ceylontoday