The Hindu Business Line : Accenture's HR innovations `going global'

Work culture
From barely 250 people in 2001, the company is poised to hit the 35,000 mark by August.
Accenture invests up to $700 million a year on training and HR.

Hyderabad, June 14 At Accenture — the $16.5 billion IT outsourcing and consultancy services provider whose employees' strength is soon expected to touch 35,000 in India by August — some innovations in their human resource practices are being rapidly replicated in other global markets.

The Senior Vice-President of Human Resources, Accenture, Mr Rahul Varma, said: "These are exciting times where innovation is making a difference to some of the HR practices in the corporation. What we do in India right from hiring talent to grooming them to Accenture work culture and then on to help build careers offering them leadership role, is now being replicated in other parts of the growing centres in the world."

Strong Demand

From barely 250 people in 2001, the company is poised to hit the 35,000 mark by the end of this fiscal (August 2007). It is experiencing strong demand for services.

With 1,52,000 employees in 48 centres, the outsourcing momentum calls for a significant ramp up. For Accenture, the outsourcing component has grown to 40 per cent up from 17 per cent some four years ago. In fact, the company added two more centres in India at Pune and Gurgaon and ramping up presence in the Philippines, Japan, China and South Africa.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Rahul Varma said: "The Accenture approach to human resource management is modelled on employee engagement." Describing this as a metrics driven model, where it is possible to assess how an employee work is engaged and manages to strive over and above their capability, he said this "goes beyond the conventional mode of employee satisfaction."

Unique Traits

The Accenture's holistic HR management approach is based on three unique traits of creating growth opportunities, offering them learning and development prospect and lastly compensate and reward them.

Each of these has a wide breadth of services that is complemented by learning support. In fact, Accenture's courseware, apart from other career building options, covers a set of over 15,000 courses, which include cross-cultural issues.

The demographics of the Indian employees and the work culture is such that the leaning has a lot of inputs for other marketplace. Accenture invests up to $700 million a year on training and HR.

New Initiatives

Mr Varma said that there has been a seismic shift in human resource practices. Recruiting is now like part of a large supply chain. It is like manufacturing with specific requirements. In fact, the market is such that even before we run out of people to hire, we may be short of HR professionals.

"As a part of this initiative, we have partnered XLRI Jamshedpur and the first batch is poised to come out. A lot many new initiatives have been planned, including a tie up with a leading B - school in India. Just as we have arrangements with MIT, we plan to replicate in other markets," he said.

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