Transparency, empowerment, and equality at work are the reasons why the Hewlett-Packard subsidiary is an IT powerhouse and also India's Third Best Employer.

By Paroma Roy Chowdhury

It is barely 8 in the morning, but Ganesh Ayyar is already in his doorless office on the fourth-floor of Hewlett-Packard India's headquarters in New Delhi. After checking his voice mail and his own home page on the H-P employee portal, the 39-year-old India President of the American computer equipment major walks out with a cup of coffee into the neatly-cubicled hall. He stops by at workstations, which are already filled with H-P 'ants', to chat about issues on hand, get updates on sales targets or a deal, or even to discuss the latest cricket match.

During the day, Ayyar may have structured and unstructured strategy meetings, wish employees during a Birthday Bash function and take new recruits out for lunch. And make sales calls, and manage regional and global interfaces. But through the day, his glass-enclosed cubicle remains open to H-P employees. Says Ayyar, who beginning April 15, 1999, took over as H-P's Asia Pacific chief: ''I don't see myself as a super player. I am at best a coach whose success depends on the success of his team. I am a dispenser of hope who is available any time.''

Ayyar obviously dispenses it well. For the swish corporate office of India's Third Best Company to work for seems to be buzzing with a quiet energy. There is no studied informality of a techie company here. No shorts, no earrings, no ponytails or reversed baseball caps. Instead, there are little knots of formally-dressed people-business suits, blazer-shirt-tie combos, salwar kameez, skirts, and sarees-all over the four floors.

It is obvious to any visitor that here's a bunch that believes in getting work done. And it really doesn't matter if it's done sitting at the conversation pit in the atrium with coffee cups at their elbows; or holding impromptu meetings at the stairwells; or virtually, over the net or phone. The mini-conference rooms with quaint names like Trishanku, Patanjali and Guftagu, among others, are almost always full. To good effect. H-P's revenues in India have soared by 85 per cent over the last two years-from Rs 699 crore in 1998 to Rs 1,238 crore in 2000-despite the company spinning off its tests and measurements businesses into Agilent Technologies in 1999. Its attrition rate is at an impressive 6 per cent. Says Sameer Wadhawan, General Manager (HR), H-P, with a smile: ''Sometimes even people we want to let go don't leave. And the people who we want most definitely don't.''

In People We Believe

They don't, actually. Take Jesudas Andrade, Vice-President, H-P Services. He joined H-P in 1988 and left a few years later to join AT&T. ''I feel that H-P beckoned me. I missed the enabling environment and the culture of teamwork,'' he says, remembering the time in 1997 when he joined back. Or take Barkha Deva. This 20-something Territory Account Manager (Channel Sales) has been with the company for five years. She originally handled marketing communications and wanted to quit when she got married and relocated to Mumbai. Instead, the company kept her on a flexi-time arrangement till she settled down and came back to work full-time in retail sales. A year later, when she had to relocate to Delhi again, she quit, thinking it unfair to ask for the same favour twice. H-P, however, wasn't about to give up on her. The company called Deva back and offered her a position in sales. Says Deva: ''It is not surprising that people like me don't want to leave.''

The belief in people is historical. For worldwide, the company that Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett set up in 1939 in a Palo Alto (California) garage, has always followed a set of rules that includes creating a climate of trust, sharing, and empowerment. From keeping the parts bins and storerooms in factories open and accessible, through internal job postings to flexi-hours, H-P globally has had many firsts to its credit. The local operation is no exception. The founder-CEO of H-P India, the charismatic Suresh Rajpal, openly claimed that employee satisfaction was the first goal on his business agenda, followed by customer satisfaction and he built this into his personal objectives through the mechanism of Hoshin Kanri, a Japanese expression that literally means compass and used by H-P CEOs worldwide to chart goals over-and-above business ones. And to prevent it from being only manualspeak, he institutionalised employee satisfaction surveys. Singapore-based International Survey Research Corporation conducts them at regular 18-month intervals, covering 19 areas relating to leadership, work environment, job content and pay and benefits. The score has climbed from 74 per cent in 1996 to 80 per cent in 1998.

The score is not surprising. For H-P takes the culture bit, with its three key stones of egalitarianism, transparency and empowerment, pretty seriously. Right from Rajpal's time to now, the entire H-P office has been a glass-n-wood one-open with doorless cubicles, including that of Ayyar. Says he: ''This way, every one gets to know when I'm busy or meeting people. And come right in, when I'm not.''

The lunchroom is common, perhaps a tandem act in a structure that just has three levels-executive, manager and functional manager, apart from the president. The organisation has a matrix, customer-centric reporting structure, with a president who is also a business unit head. Says Raj Kumar Rishi, country Small and Medium Business manager: ''Everyone is hands-on, particularly Ganesh and our comfort levels with that are high.''

To ensure that comfort levels remain so, new recruits are put through a hiring grid-a three-way selection process, involving the hiring manager, the functional manager and the hr representative. Technical competencies and customer focus, are checked by the hiring manager and functional fitment by the functional manager, while hr checks the culture fit, achievement orientation, comfort with teamwork and transparency and ability to work in the flat, networked organisation that H-P is. For higher-level hires, regional and global interface is also mandatory.

Wadhawan himself was checked out by his regional head and vice presidents before coming on board. ''The idea is for everyone to have an equal say in the recruitment as well as to have the best fit. Even the very best software engineer could be wrong if he comes from a strong hierarchical company and expects things to be similar here,'' he says. Country sales manager (storage), Anupam Nagar, who came from IBM last year, initially had a huge problem with the way things worked at H-P. But he stayed on and learnt. Agrees Ravi Aggarwal, Vice President, business customer sales organisation: ''A team happens very naturally at H-P. It is a core value that is taught to every member at the time of joining.''

C E O  B Y T E S

Q. You lead a premier technology company. What are the primary tenets of business and leadership that you follow? A. We work in a knowledge-driven industry and that dictates the operating philosophy. If knowledge is your primary asset, people who possess and disseminate that knowledge become your primary asset as well. So, focus on people and development becomes a business and a leadership issue. In fact, it is the critical success factor. Strategic leadership and execution excellence are the other two important parameters for continued business success. How do you define the ideal Hewlett-Packard (H-P) employee?  The hi-tech industry is a dynamic one. You need free flow of fresh ideas, perspectives, and mindsets to cater to the shifting market and customer needs. A conformist and static mind is not desirable. At the same time, some basic attributes cannot be compromised upon. I see the H-P employee as an individual with honesty and integrity, commitment to the customer, and a belief in professional excellence. Qualifications are desirable but not essential. I am a ca but that has not prevented me from working here. Who is the ideal H-P leader?  Someone who has the basic belief that people are here to do a good job and creates the environment that enables them to perform that task. She should be essentially a coach and not a commander. But at the same time, she should have an unwavering performance focus, and be able to take bold performance-related decisions. After all, a company's primary responsibility is to create value for shareholders.

Communicate: It Helps Bond And Perform

The transparency helps. Communication, real as well as virtual, is of paramount importance in H-P. Every morning, an H-P employee gets an update of what is happening across the company's operations spread across the globe, along with latest stock prices and CEO Carly Fiorina's messages, if any. The local updates and key tasks too are highlighted. Any development has to be communicated to the employees first, before a release is made out for media and customers. For instance, last month the news of Arun Thiagarajan's arrival as President-he took over from Ayyar on January 2 this year-was communicated in a formal release to the employees first, despite persistent hounding from the media for the name. Says Lakshmi Kanchan, Communications Manager: ''There have been times when we have prepared an internal release followed by a press conference in two hours. But employees have always been informed first.''

Informal communication too holds pride of place. Coffee talks are a favourite channel. You can walk into the coffee room on a pre-determined day, though that is not mandatory and see a manager briefing his team on key concerns, with the group shooting off queries, even on personal issues. The concerned department which has to act on those issues, will be informed and there will be follow-up processes and there will be reviews by the same manager. Or take the H-P Birthday bash. Held once a month, it has the country manager briefing employees on the current month's performance; introducing new employees who have joined that month; and celebrating the birthdays that fall in that particular month with cakes and flowers.

Rewards too are given out for various achievements, from length of service to superlative performance. Underlines Ayyar: ''This is one of the best communication platforms where I can share business strategy informally and commend performance publicly.'' Other informal communication events include employee picnics (that's annual), employee ball, quality day, customer day (where you bring in your key customers and let them give their views and experiences about how they felt about dealing with H-P). Along with impromptu staff meetings and coffee breaks. Wadhawan, for instance, meets his group every third Wednesday of the month.

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