HRD Talk

Mr. Pawan W. Borle heads the HR department of Pramati Technologies, Hyderabad.

Tell us about the team working at Pramati.

Pramati has one of the finest teams in the world working on Java technologies, especially on Enterprise Java Beans and Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform. It is a dedicated and dynamic team with everyone working towards achieving the organisation's, objective which is - to deliver a successful, global, high technology product from India.

The team is an ideal mixture of the best of the lot - bright and dynamic professionals in engineering, sales and marketing, technology consulting, communications, documentation, quality and support groups like HR, finance and administration.

Being a software products company, our recruitment is not volume based and therefore we take extreme care in hiring only the best. A random sample of any functional team in Pramati will show employees who have been toppers from the best of institutes in India and abroad.

Give us an insight into the corporate culture at Pramati? What are the upsides of working in your organisation?

Pramati has a simple yet a very progressive corporate culture. A culture, which is based on the values and principles that we strongly believe in. It is a culture which is truly democratic, participative and where there is a lot of respect for individuals. For instance, there are no internal designations or grades at Pramati. We are based rather on functional roles with a lot of cross functional synergies. There is no concept of a senior / middle / junior management here. It is a culture that is based on mutual trust and respect.

There are no HR ``policies'' as such in Pramati - there are just guidelines - that strongly suggest that there is utmost mutual respect between the management and the employees. Everyone feels important and carries the ownership of the company. One positive fallout of this has been that 90% of our recruitment happens from references from our own employees, and 99% of times the references have been world class! Also our attrition rates have been phenomenally low - over the last 3 years there have been only 10 regretted exits. This has given us stability which is so important for the sustenance of a product company like ours.

Coming to the second part of your question - there are many upsides to working at Pramati - besides the compensation of course. First of all - you work with a real ``best-in-the-world'' team. The level at which we work in technology is unmatched outside the US.

Also the joy of working with such a fantastic set of people makes one very emotionally attached as one big family.

What training do you provide for employees? What are the other initiatives undertaken to ensure that employees are well equipped?

Being in the forefront of Internet technologies, most of our training inputs come from within the organistion. Though at this point of time there is not a formal training calendar at Pramati, but nevertheless, training keeps happening informally at all the times. The older set of employees take it as their responsibility to train, induct and mentor the new employees be it in technology related inputs or those regarding adjustments.

We frequently invite renowned experts from various fields of technology and management to come and share their experience with our team. Then there are various seminars and external training programs. We have invested in a fairly well stocked library but what really keeps Pramati informed within is the web-based intranet system we call Corridor. Each department has a channel it owns and publishes news and information on it. While an employee can subscribe to all channels, there is also a facility to own your home page on the intranet and publish on it.

The Corridor is also our main delivery channel for internal product and technology releases, learning material, training, administrative formalities, indents for purchase and requisitions. The Corridor is growing and will soon connect our offices at San Jose and New York in a secure way.

What are the yardsticks you have to measure performance, and how do you reward high performing staff?

We are instituting a very comprehensive objective based online appraisal system, which incidently has been developed in-house. We measure performance on a host of parameters comprising an ideal mixture of functional and managerial factors. One thing we do for everyone, including the CEO and the top management, is a 360 degrees review that forms a very important part of the appraisal process. Our whole approach towards performance appraisal and measurement is building on individual strengths. We also measure an individual's contribution towards achievement of the overall objective of the organisation, besides his functional commitments. This requires all our employees to be absolutely the best!!

Though monetary compensation is a factor for recognising high performing staff, we strongly believe that the main motivation comes from being duly recognised which is reflected in an increased responsibility and importance within the organisation.

Java is losing its popularity as a programming language for web- enabled solutions. Do you anticipate this trend having a negative impact on your business and what is the technology that will take its place?

Nothing can be farther from the truth. Java is not losing its popularity as a programming language. On the contrary, enterprise Java technologies like EJB and J2EE are fast gaining acceptance in the marketplace and end users have begun asking for it.

One of the reasons for such doubts is that Java, being a community driven technology, never got to be in the limelight as Microsoft's .NET is currently doing. That does not mean Java is being beaten down. As for negative business impact, we are far from it. We have had our second round funding at a time when money was scarce in the market. However yes, pessimism is contagious and the market is investing in new and migratory J2EE applications rather with cautious optimism.

What are your expansion plans?

We have just opened our offices in New York, from where we will cover the eastern region of United States, including Chicago and Boston. Our first office in the US is in San Jose, from where we cover the western region (mainly the valley), and parts of mid west.

U.S. is our target market. That's where the big bucks are for enterprise Java technology providers. It's a mature market in the US, and if we want to be known as a truly global software brand, we need to first strike gold there. The market is so busy out there; we need to have as many sales people per square kilometer as our competitors do. Eventually, as business expands, we will open our offices in Singapore and Europe.

This is an imperative that would be impossible to achieve without the sound human resource policies I mentioned earlier.

ARCHANA JAYAKAR

archana.hyd@careercommunity.co.in