How does Capgemini do it better than others?

Last few years have witnessed a sea change in the way employees are cared for in their organisations. Amongst the companies that have taken a big leap in this area, is Capgemini.

We spoke to Anil Jalali, CHRO, Capgemini to know more about how they have raised the bar for fun and happiness at work.

At Capgemini, HR is more technology driven and has evolved to become more focussed on business and outcome.

“For us, employee relations is all about making sure that we are always on the ground and are always accessible to people and their concerns. We ensure that their grievances are addressed and employee experience across different dimensions (beyond HR) is positive at a desired level,” says Jalali.

Being a part of a transforming industry, Capgemini sets a precedent for the HR function too. As a part of a cumulative transformation process, it has focused initiatives around learning and development, reskilling, upskilling, and so on.

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Learning & development

Various programmes initiated by the learning and development teams have successfully upskilled more than 60,000 employees in 2018. The digital talent academy is available to employees on a broad basis to learn, develop and upskill. This digital platform provides flexibility to learners, who are able to schedule when, where and how they wish to learn.

“Technology has been leveraged to provide L&D in multi-platforms and user-friendly interfaces that can be accessed at their convenience,” emphasises Jalali.

“We are a large organisation with a large presence in India. We ourselves are a talent marketplace, and have taken appropriate steps towards leveraging that marketplace. We consistently launch new initiatives and enhance the existing ones towards bringing that marketplace to talents,” explains Jalali.

‘Ace your career’ initiative

‘Ace’ is connected to the ace of spades in a deck of cards, and the same spade forms the logo of Capgemini too. The HR at Capgemini is driving the initiative to ensure accelerated career growth for the employees. They have improvised the internal job posting programme and launched a career café. The latter facilitates café style dialogues between employees and industry experts. The casual setting encourages conversations and the employees benefit tremendously from it as they get a road map for their careers.

The HR has strived to optimise the internal talent through frequent promotions and rotation of talent within the organisation with smaller promotion cycles.

Reward & recognition

Time and effort have been invested to improve the reward and recognition framework in the organisation. An award for excellence in people leadership has also been instituted. “We believe that employee engagement is an outcome of effective leadership, and to encourage that we award leaders who demonstrate the same. As our industry is going through disruptions, these managers will help people stay agile and navigate through change,” says Jalali.

A reward-related programme is run globally wherein employees can participate in the ESOP option. The objective of ESOP was to enable the staff to be sustainable partners in the development of the Group and benefit from its potential performance. In 2018, subscriptions increased by 50 per cent as compared to 2017.

Capgemini strives persistently to transform talent to align their skill sets with the present, not just in terms of core technology skills but also in terms of building leadership.

A career-acceleration programme for mid-level management is also on offer, wherein a select cohort of talent is taken on a journey spanning six to eight months. They enjoy a variety of experiences, learnings, assignments, and so on. It is a platform that helps them accelerate their careers in the organisation.

“We believe that employee engagement is an outcome of effective leadership, and to encourage that we award leaders who demonstrate the same. As our industry is going through disruptions, these managers will help people stay agile and navigate through change”

Elite programme for hiring fresh talent

“We are one of the prolific hirers from top B-Schools and the aim of the Elite programme is to accelerate early career talent into senior leaders through a rapid career path,” opines Jalali.

Diversity

Capgemini is making rapid strides in the area of gender diversity and building women talent within the organisation. One of the programmes that Jalali highlighted was the ‘Power Ahead’ programme, which is focussed on building women’s leadership.

“We mark the journey of the employees with a series of experiences, including allowing them to shadow leaders from the industry so they can learn first-hand from the expert. They get a chance to interact with the likes of Naina Lal Kidwai through our special initiatives for women employees,” says Jalali.

Monday is the new Friday

Capgemini quit the formal dress code and initiated casual dressing on Mondays. The move was eagerly welcomed by the employees and has helped tackle the eternal problem of ‘Monday Blues.’ The casual dress code policy has now been extended to all days of the week.

“This programme further resonates with our philosophy and culture of minimum governance. Formal dressing makes the staff feel uptight and imperious. Since Fun is our core value, we decided to take it forward by initiating casual dressing on Monday,” reiterates Jalali.

Capgemini has transformed the workplace to create an environment that motivates creativity and agility, with open spaces, casual sitting rooms for conferencing, and so on. It is as ready for Gen Z as can be.