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Work culture: LogicaCMG
Since it merged with CMG in December 2002, Logica
has scaled up to 450 people from the 216 staff members at the time
of the merger. LogicaCMG plans to reach a headcount of 600 people
by end 2003 and 1,200 by end 2004, for which the company is on an
aggressive recruitment drive. The merger has given LogicaCMG the
opportunity to merge the Human Resource processes of both Logica
and CMG—a task that is underway.
Recruitment policy
As LogicaCMG is in the process of ramping up
its presence in India and needs to recruit people rapidly, it has
tied up with a number of placement consultant agencies across the
country. Emma Fisher, senior staff manager (offshore services and
international) of service centre, LogicaCMG says, “We have
used preferred HR consultants all around India and have given them
a detailed description of what we look for in a candidate. We prefer
to recruit people who have had prior international experience.”
Every month LogicaCMG organises a HR roundtable where it meets up
with the representatives of HR consultants from across India. The
company also advertises in dailies. A major chunk of its recruitment
in Bangalore has been outsourced to Iqura Technologies. With more
work coming to India, LogicaCMG is aiming at around 10-15 percent
of the candidates coming from campus recruitment.
 The
recruitment process involves several rounds of interviews. The first
round is a telephonic conversation with the candidate to assess
his generic skill sets and to reconfirm statements in his or her
resume. A technical interview is followed by a HR interview to access
the candidate’s willingness to relocate, communication skills
and salary expectations. If a candidate passes these rounds he or
she undergoes a final round of a personal profile interview. Here
the stress is on assessing the candidate’s understanding of
client processes, behavioural patterns, global IT market, the business
model of their current company and interpersonal skills, apart from
other skill sets. The process generally lasts for two days after
which a candidate is immediately given an offer letter.
Training programmes
Every new employee goes through an induction
programme that gives him or her a complete overview of LogicaCMG’s
operations. This is followed by an introduction to the company’s
internal quality system called CORTEX (a company-wide process-orientated
methodology that describes how LogicaCMG manages and undertakes
work for its customers and includes the mechanisms that LogicaCMG
needs to run its own business). New inductees get taken to dinner
by someone on the management team. The dinners give them an opportunity
to interact with management team members and to get to know each
other.
After the induction programme, the new inductees
are allocated a staff manager who manages 15 people in a group.
There are 27 such groups across LogicaCMG’s operations worldwide
headed by 27 staff managers. The staff manager may be located at
a different location in the world but will be in touch with employees
through e-mail and over the telephone. As employees work on different
projects during the course of their employment with the company,
they will be working under line managers who are in charge of the
respective projects. These line managers are subject to change with
each and every project that the employee works on. The staff manager,
however, will not change and remains the same during the course
of an employee’s career with LogicaCMG.
LogicaCMG invests a lot into training its employees
and with the coming together of Logica and CMG, there will be a
fusion of CMG’s people focused training programmes and Logica’s
technology-focused programmes. The unified programme should be rolled
out by January 2004. Before the merger, Logica’s training programmes
were driven by project needs. There are however customary training
programmes like technical training, which includes training on Microsoft
and Sun platform, Oracle, Unix, C++ courses. There are also programmes
to develop an employee’s soft skills.
LogicaCMG has associations called Syntillations
for activities such as parties, chess and table tennis that are
enjoyed at all staff days. Whenever a project team achieves success
in their projects their staff managers take them out for an outing
where they unwind.
There are some awards like the LogicaCMG recognition
of excellence, which are given to the best employee, best programmer
and so forth. The company is also planning to institute loyalty
awards, which would be awarded to employees who have stayed for
a long time with it.
Performance assessment
An employee’s performance is assessed annually.
Employees are asked to fill self-review forms along with their career
aspirations in the company. Employees can substantiate this form
with e-mails and letters of appreciation received from clients.
The line managers under whom the employee has worked on different
projects also make a separate report. These reports are then submitted
to the staff manager of the group who does an assessment of the
employee’s performance. There is an annual meeting with the
HR managers where all the staff managers (where they are unable
to attend in person they do so by means of video-conferencing),
present their assessments of their people. Then, based on the decision
taken at the meeting, employees are promoted and given incentives.
Sriram C, senior consultant, offshore services
at LogicaCMG who has been with the company since 1998, says, “The
creative freedom which we get here is just amazing. They let you
do what you want to do.” Another employee Manivannan Peri-samy,
IT consultant with offshore services, at LogicaCMG and who has joined
eight months earlier says, “There is an excellent environment
to grow and you have the freedom to contact the top rung of the
company for any matter which concerns you.”
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