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WORK
CULTURE: i2 Technologies
It
is an organisation which feels committed to shape the careers of
its employees and hence the constant emphasis on training and re-training.
I2 Technologies India is focused on product development, global
customer solutions management, consulting, sales and marketing.
The fact that more than 60 percent of i2’s global R&D work
is carried out of India, reconfirms the importance of its Indian
talent pool.
The
management at i2 Technologies believes that an employee’s productivity
increases if he works in a friendly atmosphere. So i2 recruits the
majority (nearly 58 percent) of its employees on the basis of employee
referrals. This way, when a new employee joins, he or she has a
friend who also acts as a mentor during the first few days in the
company.
i2
also goes in for campus recruitment and advertises on different
portals and billboards across cities. The average age of an i2 employee
is 30 years, with 80 percent from a technical background. Of the
rest, 70 percent are postgraduates and 30 percent graduates. Most
of the company’s employees are from the IITs or the RECs.
Employee
training programmes
 All
new inductees have to attend a one-day orientation programme which
gives them an overview of the company. The programme traces the
company history and gives new hires a bird’s eye view of HR
policies. It also lets them know of the facilities i2 offers and
gives them a financial overview of the company. Technical recruits
go through the three-week boot camp with sessions focusing on the
principles of programming and other modules that vary as per the
inductee’s area of expertise.
All
employees—technical and non-technical—participate in monthly
training programmes that combine Web and classroom sessions, on
presentation skills, software testing, Unix administration, design
patterns and J2EE. Web-based courses are largely developer-centric
while the technical courses are database-oriented (Oracle and DB2
fundamentals). Public speaking and cross-cultural exchanges (the
‘Move to India’ programme where some i2 employees who
have moved back to India share their experiences with those based
at the Indian centre). Sankalp Saxena, managing director of i2 Techn-ologies
India and senior vice president of i2 Technologies Inc says, “We
give more responsibility to our employees at an early stage of their
career to mould them for the job roles they would attain in the
future. We invest heavily in our training programmes to ensure that
employee skill sets are enhanced and tuned perfectly.” Every
employee’s work at i2 is assessed on a quarterly basis and
he or she is given incentives accordingly.
Then
there is a ‘train the trainer’ programme where a couple
of employees from each department are nominated for a training session
or workshop to enhance their interpersonal and departmental skills.
JM Prasad, vice president of human resources at i2 Technologies
says, “There is a manager in our central training department
who keeps a track of programmes, workshops and seminars and shortlists
them for various departments. The departments, in turn, send their
representatives for the workshop. After these employees return from
their training session, they brief their departmental colleagues
about the programme, which improves their interpersonal skills.”
The company has been following this policy to maintain employee
productivity.
Says
Saxena: “This is important because we cannot put all the employees
in a particular department on training at one particular time, as
we have to maintain our productivity. The ‘training the trainer’
programme greatly helps in developing co-ordination among employees,
leading to an increase in overall productivity.”
KSV
Prasad, technical architect with the supplier relationship management
team of the company, who has been with the company for more than
six years, says, “I really like the work culture at i2, here
you get to interact with employees across geographies and locations.”
Madhuri Agrawal, a consultant for the solutions centre who has been
with the company for a year now, echoes similar sentiments. She
remarks, “I enjoy the level of responsibility one gets even
at an early stage of one’s career. I have a lot of independent
say in projects undertaken by the company.”
i2
recently introduced a training programme called “Team Lead”
for managers. The programme helps develop effective leadership skills
in them. Prasad says, “It is a ten-day programme and is aimed
to make the managers understand the commercial implications their
decisions may have on the overall performance of their department.”
Quarterly
performance assessment
All
employees are assessed on a quarterly basis. The assessment is based
on balanced score card with three different parameters to judge
the performance of employees positioned at different levels in the
organisation. The first parameter is based on the performance of
the company as a whole, the second is based on the performance of
a particular business unit within the organisation and the third
is at the individual level. All employees have to reach a certain
level based on their position in the organisation. These quarterly
appraisals form part of the cumulative annual appraisals that shape
the salary curve of an employee and the bonuses he or she receives
from the company.
Employee
activities
Employees
at i2 keep themselves involved in different activities like online
clubs where they invite guest speakers from outside to share their
experiences with fellow employees. There are knowledge sharing sessions
and offline activities such as sports and parties. Service awards
are given to those employees who have stayed with the company for
a long time, and are given on the completion of three, five and
ten years of service with i2.
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