Syntel CEO’s Town Hall report
By Bala Shah

Over the last ten months, Techgoss had published a series of exclusive reports giving details of all that was happening inside the BPO, KPO and IT divisions of one of India’s most successful IT-ITES companies Syntel.  One report showed how that in the recent past Syntel BPO was overly reliant on couple of key clients. Also, reported were the exits of the CEO and key HR people.

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym. 

Techgoss had exclusively reported on the acrimonious exit of the previous Syntel CEO Keshav Murugesh in Feb, 2010 and the appointment of the new President and CEO Prashant Ranade.

By all accounts, the dynamic, hands on Syntel CEO, Prashant Ranade, seems quite serious about employee satisfaction.  In his first Town Hall he had promised regular town halls and he kept his promise by organizing one in Pune on Aug 26, 2010.

3 different Techgoss Tipsters who were present at Mr. Ranade’s Town Hall in August have sent us detailed accounts from which we have worked out what happened.

The first Town Hall was held at 3 pm and the next at 530 pm.

The noon session began with the Syntel CEO Ranade announcing the good news that the company had done very well in the last quarter.  He thanked employees for their dedication and hard work.

Mr. Ranade told everyone present that he had kept his promises by conducting regular town halls, launching CEO Connect portal where anyone could see his answers to every question put to him, and regular employee feedback surveys the next of which is scheduled for Oct/Nov.

The Techgoss Tipsters says that many employees do have faith that the CEO really wants to further improve the organization.

There were not many questions asked during the afternoon session.  One which stood out was from an employee who queried that even though Syntel was doing well in terms of the bottom line, some employees are not paid much.

The CEO replied that a company can either provide monetary growth or growth in terms of designation. What Syntel is providing to the employees is growth in terms of designations.  Mr. Ranade also said that Syntel has commission a 5 Floors building for the Healthcare vertical in Pune and with the induction of more processes there would be even more opportunities for growth for an employee.

One employee was heard quietly saying: “what the management also needs to concentrate on is that the ‘growth’ happens for the deserving employees and not to those who are influential or are the favorites of a manager.”

The evening session of the Town Hall was more interesting.  The CEO announced that the organization would grow by another 1000 employees in the coming months.

The Head of Internal Reconciliations (an alumnus of IIT Khargpur) asked Mr. Ranade: “Why is there a bias between the employees of KPO and IT?  The IT colleagues get preference in car parking and so sometimes I have a problem in parking my car. The company must either provide separate parking for IT and KPO employees or parking preference must be given based on designation and seniority basis”

The CEO, Prashant Ranade, replied that in the previous company he worked with the first thing he did was cancel the pre allotted parking space provided to him and he is following the same principle in Syntel. He went on to add that "we are all employees and there is nothing called seniority and no special treatment would be provided to anyone just because he/she has a higher designation"

Mr. Ranade’s frank answer seemed to energize the room.

Another employee told Mr. Ranade that he was working for a process and a few months back the company had recruited 600 employees.  Many of the freshers were undergraduates (people who had written their graduation exams but awaiting results).  Once the graduation results were announced many of these freshers had failed the academic exam and so were sacked from Syntel.  He asked Mr. Ranade if hiring undergraduates and then firing them was correct.

This frank question sent a seismic shock wave in the town hall.  Just as they show in movies, all eyes turned to the HR Personnel in the room who had formulated this policy to hire undergraduates.  At least one HR manager seemed to be trembling in nervousness.

The CEO, Prashant Ranade, said that he was not aware that such a thing had happened and asked one of the key managers Madan Kore for an explanation on the issue. Mr. Madan replied that the employee seems to have incorrect data and he said some 600-700 employees were recruited in April/May 2010 since there was shortage of graduates in the market.  Out of the 600 employees, only 26 failed to graduate and hence they were terminated.

The CEO politely said that even 26 is a big number and such recruitment should not happen in the future.

One Techgoss tipster feels that the number of undergraduates who did not pass their exams and were terminated may be closer to 100. Could it be that junior HR managers were not giving the correct information to the senior HR managers and the CEO?  Apart from the impracticality of hiring under graduates, there is a huge cost in getting them on board and then firing them.

All 3 Techgoss tipsters felt that the CEO should address this HR policy as a matter or urgency so it does not have a negative impact on the different processes. Taking a step in this regard would surely prevent further Helium's and Allegros from happening in the future.

(Tipsters, Big thank you for all your tips and photos. If you need to speak to us in confidence or write for us, email us at techgoss[at]hotmail.com. Or use the Anonymous Tip form at the top of our website. Anonymity guaranteed. We pay Rs. 700 – Rs. 1000 for 100 – 200 word snippets. Unfortunately, we cannot use any tips which are not backed up by enough facts)