Employees First not Revolutionary
By Shalini Singh

By any standards of the world, Indian tech and IT major HCL is a successful company.  HCL was launched in 1976 and successfully overcame a number of obstacles in the pre Manmohan Singh liberalization era to grow from strength to strength.  Today, it employs 62,000 professionals in 26 countries looking after many blue chip clients.  It currently has revenue of about $5 Billion.

The HCL CEO Vineet Nayar is described in the company’s website as: “with the goal of establishing HCL as a thought leader in the IT Industry, Vineet has sharpened HCL’s strategic focus investments around three key missions: creating next-generation business aligned IT services and solutions, ensuring customer engagement around the cornerstones of trust, transparency & transformation and empowering HCLites through the ‘Employee First Customer Second’ (EFCS) philosophy. Vineet joined HCL in 1985 after earning his MBA from XLRI, one of the leading business management schools in Asia. In 1993, he started his own company, Comnet, where he pioneered many of the innovative management practices like EFCS which is now taught as a case study at Harvard Business School”.

In every mainstream media interview, the HCL CEO discusses his philosophy of ‘Employee First Customer Second’ philosophy’ and how he was the first to discover it.

Delhi based Consultant Gautam Ghosh had a successful career in HR and Learning at a number of blue chip companies like Deloitte, Dell and Hewlett Packard before be started his own business.  Widely regarded as a business blogging guru, Gautam’s blog has been listed by HRWorld amongst the top 25 HR blogs worldwide, the top 50 HR Blogs to watch in 2009 by EvenCarmichael.com and also amongst the Career 100 – a list of the top 100 career related blogs globally in the English language. His blog is also featured on the Alltop Careers and Alltop India categories. Gautam is regularly quoted by media.

Gautam has blogged about how the Employee First policy is not exclusive to HCL, but has been used by a number of other companies as well.

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Employees First is not a “Revolutionary” Management Practice
Posted by Gautam

I got a PR pitch to review a book written by an IT CEO. The PR person claims the management practice is "revolutionary"

Well, obviously she hasn't read this article which shows that service companies like Southwest Airlines and Marriott already practicing it from some time before 

Here's the pitch..

From: xxxxxt <xxxx@xxxxxx.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 5:06 PM
Subject: Employees First, Customers Second
To: gautam@xxxxx.com

Dear Gautam,

I write to you on behalf of HCL Technologies (xxxxxxxx is the image management consultancy working with HCL).

I wish to introduce you to Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS), an employee-focused, democratic philosophy—an interesting new concept for both international and national companies.

The relevance of the 'Employees First Customer Second’ philosophy lies in the fact that it is considered as the next big management innovation idea originating from India and being recognized globally, stirring debates in the media (NYT, Sunday Times as examples), analysts (Gartner), Harvard Business School.

Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS) practices are catalysts for fundamental change—ideas, big and small, that create unstoppable momentum for an organization - A spray of blue ocean droplets can create an ocean of change.

EFCS practices—things like making management accountable to the employees in the “value zone” and recasting the role of the CEO—originate from ideas whose genesis lies with employees throughout the organization.

About the Book:

Authored by Vineet Nayar (CEO – HCL Technologies), the book Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down (Harvard Business Press, February 2010), argues that the best way for companies to meet their customers’ needs is to stop making customers their top priority. Instead, companies should shift focus to empowering employees to solve customer problems—in part by making management accountable to employees who are the real creators of value.

The book raises important philosophical questions. Is there inherent value in every employee—in his or her knowledge, creativity, commitment to tasks and capacity to collaborate? To create the most value for customers, should we focus on how employees are empowered? Do employees, in short, make a difference?

Conventional wisdom says companies must always put the customer first. But in many businesses—particularly services businesses—true value is created in the interface between the customer and the employee in the value zone. By putting employees first—and by making management accountable to them—companies can engender a fundamental change in the way they create and deliver unique value for their customers. Customers actually understand the value of an Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS) approach before—and better—than a company’s own management (especially at first), because it’s the customers who benefit the most.

The author has detailed every step – ‘Mirror, Mirror’, Trust through Transparency, Inverting the Organizational Pyramid, Recasting the Office of the CEO, that was used to transform the company.

Would the topic be of interest to write about on your blog? Enclosed is a summary of the book.

Should you need any information on the book or a copy of the book, do get in touch with me.
 
Look forward to knowing your thoughts.
 

Kind Regards,
Xxxxxxxxxxx
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(Techgoss thanks Gautam for allowing us to publish his views)