Enhancing Employee Experience @Genpact

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.” These lines by techpreneur Larry Page who co-founded Google along with Sergey Brin is more relevant than ever now. The pandemic has reset norms of conducting businesses, and firms are designing and reinventing strategies to cater to the needs of an evolving workforce.

“The future of work in India is centred on top-notch, digitally led employee experience,” says Piyush Mehta, chief human resource officer, Genpact. The IT services management firm is focused on widening the scope of employee growth, adding to their skill sets, respecting their sentiment or being responsive to their feedback. ‘Enhancing employee experience’ is how it summarises its strategy in a nutshell. “Today’s workforce expects employers to build meaningful experiences that are highly personalised, responsive to their needs, and constantly improved. Businesses that devote similar effort, investment, and focus on internal initiatives to improve overall employee experience, are the real heroes of tomorrow. Doing so not only helps the employer increase retention, but also enhances efficiency, and strengthens bottom line,” says Mehta. The firm is leveraging technology to give shape to its ideas.

Genpact, says Mehta, harbours a culture of “continuous learning created both from the top down and bottoms up.” “A lot of skills I have today may not be relevant two years from now. How do I learn, unlearn and then learn again?.” Businesses of the future will need to put greater emphasis on reskilling, upskilling and virtual training, he adds.

“The biggest challenge of work from anywhere is to keep the element of personal touch alive while working remotely,” says Mehta. Genpact’s AI-powered chatbot, Amber, analyses employee sentiment by talking to them. During Covid, Amber indicated how employees were struggling to cope with the pandemic, enabling the company to intervene and take measures. “We have revenue growth, profit and employee engagement as the three metrics on which my CEO and top 100 people at Genpact will get paid their bonuses,” says Mehta.

Thrust on enabling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is another area of focus for the company. “As of last year, women represented 41% of our global workforce, 45% of our board of directors, and 29% of our global management team,” says Mehta “We want half of our leaders to be women.” The company allows working moms to choose their own shift timings and work location. Besides, the firm prioritises racial diversity. For instance, Black and Latino employees meet monthly with group leaders to discuss the challenges faced by people of colour and identify ways to enable the firm to strengthen the racial equity agenda.