HR teams works as a truly global organization. Sharing experiences allows it to re-use best practices among other locations in capabilities development and be involved in improving the process to support more competency-driven organization. Also, as a team, it works on developing its own capabilities to support business growth with improved processes and systems. siliconindia engages in a conversation with Ramya Bharadwaj, HR Director-Operations, DXC Luxoft APAC in order to know more about the best HR practices and how it adds value to the company operations.

Please give an overview on Luxoft and discuss the core philosophy that surrounds the operations of the company.
Luxoft, a DXC Technology Company, is a digital strategy and software engineering firm providing bespoke technology solutions that drive business change for customers the world over. Luxoft uses technology to enable business transformation, enhance customer experiences, and boost operational efficiency through its strategy, consulting, and engineering services. Luxoft combines a unique blend of engineering excellence and deep industry expertise, specializing in automotive, financial services, travel and hospitality, healthcare, life sciences, media and telecommunications.

Luxoft started its journey in India in 2017 with a focus on banking and capital markets. It has since grown to providing engineering solutions to multinational clients from various industries such as automotive, hospitality, and travel to name a few. We now have presence across multiple cities in India with a workforce spread across the country. In fact, this is an upward trend we foresee continuing in the coming years.

We place our employees at the core of everything we do, and is reflected in our EVP of Grow. Unite. Lead. This is the base of all our functions, processes, and culture at Luxoft.

How has the HR services industry grown over the last five years? What are the new opportunities that have been created in this domain?
Our offering as a HR team should be as agile as our offering to our clients. If HR creates clunky, manual, low digital processes, you will have employees actively distracted by bureaucracy, meaning when you approach them with something really cool to boost morale, they will just switch off. There are two key tools to remain agile, continuous improvement and people strategy, that all your activities are in service of, and they, in return, create your culture. I would refer to our great place to work strategy that encompasses people basics (compliance activities, visionary leadership, learning).

This helps us build a vision for HR employees to build all their activities around, but also it is an easily relatable structure for leaders and employees alike. In my opinion, the biggest support HR can give in this regard is being up to date with market trends related to the workforce, sharing them with the business, and trying to understand how implementing possible changes will impact the organization. Knowing how our business works, what challenges we face as an organization, and what the business environment looks like are key to effective and successful relationships between the business and HR functions.

Therefore, the more we as HR know about the markets we operate in, our competitors and their advantages, the more we can improve our own value proposition and address the changing business environment. And I would say it’s less about reinventing business; it’s more about supporting the rapidly changing world our business operates in and trying to help people adjust. That’s why being up to date with business acumen is one of the critical capabilities of the HR function. Also, employees will appreciate our presence and managers will get more comfortable with our ideas.

You’ll soon be seen as a part of the business. This gives HR a chance to prepare for challenges in changing environments. In our company, we have an “Ongoing Feedback” survey that is conducted quarterly to help managers uncover issues in their teams well in advance. This helps us mitigate the risk of attrition.

Please tell us about the experience and expertise of the HR team at Luxoft. How do they work in collaboration to take the company forward?
We put our people first. Giving the employees a space to share their feedback through our regular mood monitoring checks at different stages of employee lifecycle allows us to identify concerns and challenges at the very beginning and react to the feedback in a timely manner. This approach supports and protects us from possible workplace issues. Moreover, acting upon the employees’ feedback allows us to show that we listen to them and we care about them – it naturally addresses workplace issues that an employee has and helps them focus on work, which in turn improves productivity. Company-wide surveys are a great way to initiate actions supporting process improvements, and it shows our employees that they can make the change – and they use this opportunity a lot! For example, we recently conducted a “How are you doing” survey to get the pulse of general employee moods and momentum.

The company wanted a lean and empowered team, so we designed HR tools that managers and employees could use to enter and retrieve their own HR-related information. Having these self-service tools allowed the HR team to become strategic partners rather than transactional assistants. In addition, we have great performance management and risk assessment tools. Most of our automated reports help us assess the results quickly. This gives us more time to spend building a good connection with employees as we follow our philosophy of open culture and flat hierarchy.

HR’s role is to take the theory of a strong people practice and turn it into a language our leaders and people understand. At the end of the day, HR engages our workforce while not forgetting the bottom line. I think HR teams that solely focus on policing policies stifle their business by creating resentment and frustration. An agile and dynamic HR will understand that competency-based practice, process improvement, and organizational capability are foundations for a solid, rewarding culture. Simple activities such as competence-based recruitment and selection means that the business is already going through the processes and determining the competences needed to start in the organization. We have formed a technical interviews hub, the UTIC referral program(Unified Technical Interviewers Community) and this is how we put competency front and center for our organization from day one. In addition, our vast library of training programs enables our employees to enhance their competencies. There are no restrictions to what they can learn.

Tell us about the role of HR in cross-cultural management and how HR professionals identify and accommodate cultural differences to avoid misunderstandings to achieve organizational goals.
As mentioned before, working in a global team ourselves, we help our HR team to understand and support managers in leading cross-cultural teams, as we can share our own experience and knowledge about our cultures. As an organization, we’ve always supported diversity in our teams, and years of experience have made us well prepared for managing possible miscommunication. As HR, we also use various assessment tools to support managers in understanding cultural differences and a variety of work-related behaviors. All those activities lead to better productivity, and overall, lead to us achieving organizational goals.