Anju Talwar

Senior Vice President and Global Hiring and Training Leader

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Photo by VADSCO

Genpact | Gurgaon, India

There Are

No Shortcuts to Excellence
When youre in the business of instructing people how to run theirs, you have to be at the top of your game. Heres exhibit A on how to get there.
By Paul Harris Its fair to say that the term knowledge worker has slipped so casually into the modern vernacular that much of its lofty connotation is lost. So consider the high standard set for top employees at Genpact Ltd., Gurgaon, India, and perhaps youll give the term renewed respect.
Genpact was launched 13 years ago as a business unit within General Electric Co. to provide business process services that could improve GEs efficiencies. It has since been spun off as an independent provider of business process and technology management services, with nearly 40,000 employees and revenues of $1.12 billion. The company brings its process expertise and Lean Six Sigma heritage to a hotly competitive space that includes Accenture, IBM, and Capgemini. As with the other companies, the lions share of Genpacts investment is in its own people, especially hiring, training, and retaining them. And being an Indiabased service outsourcing firm, it aggressively competes for talent within a national culture that prizes academic advancement and personal growth. In 2009, Genpact introduced a proprietary framework for managing the enterprise-level processes of its clients. Called Smart Enterprise Processes (SEP), it is a comprehensive package of services to help companies wring out costs and generate revenue. It does so by focusing on the granular-level data of transactions that flow through an organization to create an end-to-end view. But before it could take SEP to clients, Genpact had to launch an exhaustive training initiative to ensure that all affected employees could understand and discuss every relevant nuance. Its training challenge was to stratify the learning content to suit its disparate personnel needs, explains Piyush Mehta, senior vice president and global HR leader. A frontline associate needs to understand SEP and so do middle managers, subject matter experts, leaders, and salespeople, but all in very different contexts, he says. A learning and development team of 50 senior trainers and 15 SMEs was established, and a suite of five training programs was created to fulfill the specific developmental needs. Among the five programs was the SEP Academy, a unit created to ensure that all impact leaders obtained both broad and deep knowledge of SEP including , key verticals and technologies. Some 300 top executives have been trained so far to competently detail the frameworks elements to C-level customers across the globe, especially its cash flow impacts. The future thought leaders have also been given extensive one-on-one coaching to ensure that they fully grasp a combination of process technology and domain knowledge, all under the watchful eye of Genpacts CEO. Before completing the learning curriculum, each leader is required to

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OCTOBER 2010 | T+D | 45

In India, people place a lot of value on academics. So we have searched for relevant programs for them, and brought in numerous professionals and domain-related experts to train them within the office environment.
Anju Talwar Senior Vice President and Global Hiring and Training Leader, Genpact
appear before a top-tier panel of executives and other experts in a 20-minute give-and-take session designed to simulate a customer interface. All are graded on their performances, including their passion for the new program. The SEP training program is currently being broadened to include a blended learning approach to attract a wider field of candidates for the prestigious field positions. Continued refinement of an SEP knowledge portal is also a priority. Another major learning initiative at Genpact helps young employees fulfill their career-oriented goals of garnering professional and academic qualifications. Called Education@Work, it offers subsidized education opportunities from more than 80 academic programs spread across 11 domain verticals. Some 8,000 employees, roughly 20 percent of its workforce, are currently enrolled via a network of educational partners that includes prominent universities throughout the world. In India, people place a lot of value on academics, explains Anju Talwar, senior vice president and global hiring and training leader at Genpact. So we have searched for relevant programs for them, and brought in numerous professionals and domain-related experts to train them within the office environment. Talwar calls Education@Work a big ticket initiative that meets our business needs. While it amounts to running a large university within the company, she says that the payoff for Genpact is enormous. Thats because in a business specialty where attrition rates of 50 percent are normal, Genpact reports
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an enviable 6 percent attrition for employees in the program and 8 percent for post-program workers. Meanwhile, the firms education partners offer the company discounted tuition for its student-employees. Yet another successful learning initiative is Genpacts Global Operating Leaders Program (GOLD). It is aimed at delivering true operating excellence for clients by elevating the performance standard set for the companys leadership team. Genpact launched the program three years ago after concluding that a suitable academic program on operating excellence was unavailable from any university. Being a company that prioritizes operating excellence, we felt the need to do so, says Mehta. The program has put 100 of its high-potential frontline managers through an 18-month, exacting leadership training program on operating excellence. Each individual rotates through three functions or regions of the Genpact business, while also participating in classroom sessions and leadership interactions. Managers are then assigned to participate in one specific initiative. For example, one participant began her experience within a finance unit of a leading Fortune 500 client company. Her second rotation took her to Europe as a business development resource, where she reportedly helped the client achieve $1 million in growth. A panel of senior vice presidents evaluates each candidate at the end of the program, promoting only the highest achievers. Graduates of this program are the new leadership of

the organization, says Mehta, who readily concedes that the concept was borrowed from GEs financial management program. On the subject of finance, Genpacts Technical Training Academy is yet another demonstration of its varied approach to learning. Financial accounting is Genpactss largest business vertical, employing some 8,000 people throughout the world. To support it with skilled knowledge workers, the academy uses a six-step modular approach to advance knowledge from basic to expert. It employs a true blended learning approach that includes classroom instruction, e-learning courseware, webinars, knowledge portals and blogs, access to global knowledge sharing communities, and even an ask the expert website. All are created by SMEs working with international accounting consultants. Learning is tracked through the Oracle LMS. In addition, courses ranging in length from three hours to 12 days deliver training on topics such as the U.S. GAAP and IFRS accounting concepts, and the Sarbanes Oxley Act. The academys adaptive training methods typify Genpacts continuous quest to help clients achieve excellence while also ensuring that employees possess every tool needed to succeed. Those tools include a versatile knowledge platform that enables all employees to grow and collaborate. Indeed, every employee is invited to leverage the portal at his own discretion by storing documents, creating wikis, writing blogs, conducting surveys, searching for information, and creating communities. Not surprisingly, the invitation is being gratefully accepted. At last count, more than 750 communities make use of Genpacts KM tool to collaborate and disperse information across the organization. T+D
Paul Harris is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to T+D; pcharris007@ comcast.net.
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