What kind of business is HCL?
HCL is a $6.2bn global IT services company. We work with clients to impact and redefine the core of their business. In particular, our focus is on “transformational outsourcing”, underlined by innovation and creating value for clients.
HCL offers an integrated portfolio of services including BEYONDigital, IoT WoRKS and next-generation IT outsourcing. Overall, we work with clients to redefine their business models for the digital age, providing a unified experience to end–users.
We have in excess of 100,000 employees globally, delivering transformational business value to clients. For example, we are the official digital transformation partner for Manchester United, looking at innovative ways to help the club connect with its 659 million fans around the world.
Central to our success is our “relationship beyond the contract” mantra, which means that we will go above and beyond to make our customers’ business more efficient through everyday innovation.
While we are global, the UK is a big market for us and was one of the first countries where we moved. We currently have around 4,500 employees across Europe and the region generates about 30% of our revenues.
What’s your role within the organisation?
As the global chief marketing officer (CMO), I’m responsible for all of our marketing and strategic functions to drive demand, growth and customer delight.
Our team spearheads the company’s growth, driving business and initiatives into new markets, as well as HCL’s global strategic positioning, to offer compelling business value to customers. We are also responsible for driving the company’s thought leadership in existing as well as new areas.
In a global company such as HCL, how do the senior team relate to each other and the rest of the staff?
Here’s an example. I live and work in New York; our global head of financial services lives here in London; and our CEO lives in New Delhi. Despite being time zones apart, one of the things that’s special about HCL is that we are really integrated as a senior team and with the whole business.
Just recently I travelled to Seattle, where we have a global delivery centre and held a town hall meeting with 150 employees. I personally engaged and listened to their ideas and concerns.
All of this comes from our CEO, Anant Gupta, who leads from the front, holding monthly “Coffee with Anant” events, during which about 20 employees chat openly with him for two hours. He’s the chief executive of a $6.2bn company, so you can imagine what two hours of his time is worth, but he thinks it’s an extremely worthwhile exercise.
Anant is also a thought-leader when it comes to the 21st century enterprise
and the skills required for businesses to become more experience-centric, outcome-based, agile and lean, and service-orientated. When an organisation wants to truly focus on its culture, the CEO has to play a role and we’re very fortunate to have him.
Why do you think it’s important to involve your employees so closely in running the company?
Our employee–led innovation culture has been the key to our success. It questioned the traditional top-down approach and brought the spotlight back on those who created value for the organisation – the employees. We don’t believe in the traditional management pyramid, with the leader at the top. We’ve turned it upside down. As I mentioned earlier, for us it’s all about building relationships beyond the contract.
What we learned is that in the IT space, you have an enormous amount of people who work with your customers, day-in and day-out. They’re the ones who work closely with customers on specific projects, getting to know their businesses better than anyone else. So unsurprisingly, they’re the ones who have a whole range of ideas about what we can do better. We recognise that employees are the people who create value within a business, so we empower them to make a difference.
We call that “ideaprenurship” – meaning that employees are given the power to carry their ideas through to fruition. That, combined with our values of trust, transparency and flexibility, is what ensures a continued value creation for our customers.
With millions of employees around the globe, how does this work in practice?
We have offices across 32 countries worldwide and more than 100,000 ideapreneurs collaborate on a daily basis to generate value. We have a range of digital vehicles enabling employees to participate, such as our “value portal”. This platform enables employees to generate project or account-specific ideas, driving incremental business value for our customers. Those ideas are reviewed and enriched, before they are presented to the customer for implementation. If a commercial opportunity comes from any idea, the employee who submitted it receives a financial reward.
Another initiative is our Make a Difference Jamboree (MAD JAM), where we hold a global, online brainstorming session. We pick three key topic areas, for example innovation, operational excellence and new tech trends – and then online discussion groups are created to encourage the generation of ideas.
We ask everyone: “What do you believe are the top three things we could do in HCL to become more productive?” And: “What are the most innovative things that you’ve seen that we’re not doing yet?” We’re hearing from our employees, particularly millennials, that they love the fact they can interact and influence.
It all comes back to our premise of putting employees at the forefront. If you believe that culture is the key differentiator, you have to act to build that culture. You increasingly hear of the importance of employee-led brands – the notion of brand and culture becoming one.
We believe that our values of trust, transparency and flexibility – fuelled by our philosophy of “ideapreneurship” – helps set us apart. We grew by approximately 12% in 2016 (constant currency) and I believe that our employee–led innovation culture is the underlying element that made it possible.
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