Human Resource Management Challenges in “Genpact”

Introduction

A very brief description of the company

Being a leader in business process outsourcing, Genpact has got branches all over the world and it has got one branch in China. Company has bagged ““Best Business Model of China Service Outsourcing” and Mitsuru Maekawa, CEO, Genpact China, won the “Award of Leadership of China Service Outsourcing Industry Development.”” (Genpact Takes Top Honours at ‘2008 International Forum of China Outsourcing Development & coorporation’ para 2).

Genpact was established in June 2000 in China. In China itself, Genpact has got centres in Shanghai, Changchun and Dalian. In Dalian centre, nearly 2-300 employees are working. “Genpact provides a wide range of services, including Finance & Accounting, Insurance, Collections & Customer Service, Supply Chain & Procurement, Analytics, Enterprise Application, and IT Infrastructure Management Services.” (Genpact para 2).

One of my roles in this organization is serving the executive level agendas and also doing all sorts of job related to recruiting or hiring employees. This includes preparing the lists of all short listed employees, fixing date for test/interview, telephoning, sending emails etc.

Description of human resources process

The important human resources process involved in this organization is selecting, developing, rewarding and retaining staffs within the organization. “Selection is a process that needs the involvement of both line managers and HR specialists for maximum effectiveness”. (Review Questions para 7).

“A Management Development (MD) program is a long-term commitment to develop company leaders.” (China HR: Training vs. Development para 5). These processes are important for the success of every organization and have to concentrate to invest more on these criteria. The reward and remuneration system increases the employee morale. “Employee reward and incentive schemes, ranging from those chosen from managers to employees nominating co-workers for consideration can make a big difference to employees’ morale.” (Hiring and Retaining Quality Call Centre Employees 3).

“Globally, the company invests US$8 million annually in employee training” as per the data in 2006 and it has tremendously increased in 2009. (Genpact Opens Second BPO Center in China para 6).

In-depth Critical appraisal of HRM process

Critical appraisal

The appraisal of human resources is the mechanism used by the management to understand the performance of each and every employee in the organization.

It is an important role of the human resource department. Appraisal involves each and every employee in the organization; the main aim is to make the employees effective to the organization. There are mainly two types of appraisals – they are the closed appraisal and the open appraisal. The open appraisal consists of participation of the employees in the appraisal, the decision making process and the review. The closed appraisals are those that have the control of external sources and the management. Action is taken by them which are confidential in handling of the reports.

Genpact is a company with a rich heritage and its parent company is the General Electrical (GE). The Company has the role in different kinds of processes since its operations are being conducted in different countries. It is the largest BPO, serving with 37,000 employees worldwide.

Strengths

The strength of the company include mainly the people; they are a people-oriented company where they find the employees as the major asset; they value culture and the benefits of the employees are given a major value; they give emphasis to the talents and the potential of the people for the career enrichment. The “Cornerstones are the strengths that differentiate our company. They include the four pillars that uphold Genpact:

• Customer Centricity.
• Process Excellence.
• Employer of Choice.
• Best-in-Class.” (About Genpact: Genpact Cornerstones).

Culture has importance and they value culture and the attributes like leadership, personality, innovation and team spirit. They value the strength like customer centricity which is the main area of success. They also value the process expertise. They have lot of processes and excellence in the process being done and they are the most reputed one and they have the label of the best in class among the outsourcing sector. They have the major strength as the outsourcing company to be independent within 8 years of formation and were listed in the New York stock exchange with the trading symbol of ‘G’. It has much of the new processes that are added to its credit and the company is the first one to offer the ‘six sigma’ for its transactions.

Weaknesses

There are different weaknesses for the company. As the company is concerned in its operations in China, they have to face certain threats which form the weaknesses of the company. They include low service maturity, low level of capability in handling of English language, weak project management in comparison with the other countries of its operation and the limited experience in the ITES industry.

Genpact provides good training for the people to excel in the work and to make them aware of the changes that are occurring and to educate them in different processes and to make them proficient in the work, “Genpact Content Solutions has developed GenChange, a pre-built toolkit to help manage change in organizations.”(Content Solutions: Our Approach para 2).

“Genpact has created a robust training mechanism and has over 5,000 learning modules, world-class training facilities, some of the best trainers in the business and strategic partnerships to further bolster our training mechanism.” (About Genpact: Training & Development para 2).

They also send the employees to other countries for intensive training and development. They give importance to cultural training, lean sigma training and on-the-job training and the calling process which may include the right place and the right method and the capacity of handling 5 batches a day with 1500 members simultaneously.

Motivations are provided by the management in a precise manner, they give much recognition and appreciation to the employees when it is needed. They have the online motivational awards for the employees like the cheers, which include providing the employees with gold, silver, bronze, platinum etc. The employee receiving platinum is considered as the prestigious employee of the company. The company also offer different kinds of tours to the employees to wonderful locations for the holidays.

HRM Literature

According to the study, small firms create a lot of job opportunities compared to the large firms; the large firms are often associated with reduction of employee strength and termination of employees. The smaller firms have added about 90% of jobs. (Mathis and Jackson1991)

The internal resources of the firm contribute a lot to the changes. The competitive advantages of the firm also contribute to the shift in the competitive advantage and the competitive advantage of the firm depends on the internal shift within the firm.(Wright at al 2001).

There are different kinds of levels among the people and the talents and the potentials are not equally distributed; when they are not distributed they will have an effect in the competitive advantage that may affect the human capital investment of the firm. (Snell at al 1996:65)

The difficulty in understanding of the mechanism where the interplay between human resources practices and the policies have the value and the HR systems are interdependent which consists of the principles and policies that are to be developed and which cannot be obtained from the competitors.

Description of organizational culture and management style

“Firms that have cultures with the required attributes can obtain sustained superior financial performance from their cultures.” (Barney).

“Genpact has created a culture that emphasizes customer centricity, teamwork and continuous process improvement. Our culture is expresses in the values and cornerstones that embody our core ideology and defined who we are.” (About Genpact para 1).

The thoughts and actions are a means of guidance and their cornerstones serve as an upholding tool for them. The company firmly believes that their key to success lies in the happiness and energy of their employees. It is highly committed towards the development of talent and skills of the employees to meet future challenges. They emphasise more on developing and retaining the staffs within the organization. The company takes special care in following best global HR practices to build a competitive workforce and an efficient rewarding system within them. For retaining the employees within the organization the company provides an open work environment where the employees feel friendly and sociable and this increases their output.

The company is providing a work culture which creates an environment for constant and continuous learning for the employees. Reward concept is internal to the organization and it strongly emphasises that excellence of the employees will be recognised at any cost. The company is having an online rewarding system by which employees are rewarded based on their performance. The business process is managed through a smart enterprise processes (SEP). “With SEP, Genpact elevates the management of business processes to a strategic tool that can significantly improve a company’s bottom line performance.” (Genpact Introduces Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM) para 2).

“Genpact is applying the SEP methodology to both common business processes (e.g., accounts receivable, collections, financial reporting, procurement, order fulfilment), and to industry-specific needs in manufacturing, healthcare, finance, insurance, logistics and consumer packaged goods.” (Genpact Introduces Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM) para 9).

What human resources challenges (recruiting, hiring, training, etc) does your organization face today?

In case of recruiting, hiring and training, Genpact has got set of values in their belt. Still organization is facing some challenges in human resource department. One of the main challenges while hiring and recruiting the employees is in thorough understanding the culture and behaviour of the employees. Hiring or recruitment is done through various ways such as “employee referrals, storefronts, online applications, campus recruitments and head-hunters.” (Mehta para 10).

Employee referrals are one of the frequent ways new employees are getting into the company. So, there are chances for an employee who is not fit for the company can get a job. This can happen in such a way that an employee working in the company can convince the human resource manager or person in-charge that an employee he needs to bring into the company is best and he can work according to the situation what company demands. But, it is not necessary that everything will be correct. This is one of the main challenges for human resource management people in Genpact.

Another main challenge is in training the employees. New employees coming to the company may be highly educated, but “they likely lack specific knowledge about the industries and companies they will serve.” (Swords para 16).

So, to train employees according to the company’s specification is major task or challenge Genpact is facing today. “The prevailing market scenario has highlighted the need for companies to cross-train, and multi-skill their employees in order to gain even more relevance in the current context.” (Kekre para 5).

So, to face these challenges, Genpact HR teams need to think a lot and it is prerequisite to implement new innovative ideas.

Other organizations, such as Zensar are also facing same sort of challenges in recruiting, hiring and training. Here also, analyzing the employee whether he/she will be fit for the organization is major task. In training section, making the employee to adapt with the organization’s atmosphere to ensure the workflow is another main challenge faced by this organization.

Overall Conclusion

In order to frame an effective and efficient workforce, the company has to take certain measures. This responsibility is vested in the hands of the human resources department within the organization. The human resources process varies according to the practices in the organization. In Genpact it is clearly proved that there is a higher degree of employee morale within the organization. The company is giving more value to its employees, and therefore, it arranges more training and development programme for the employees. This made the organization become one of top most business process outsourcing firms in the world.

Works Cited

About Genpact: Genpact Cornerstones. Genpact, 2009. Web.

About Genpact: Training & Development. Genpact, 2009. Web.

About Genpact: Work Culture. Genpact, 2009. Web.

Barney, Jay B. Organizational Culture: Can It Be a Source of Sustained Competitive Advantage? Abstract. J Stor: Trusted Archives for Scholarship, 2009. Web.

China HR: Training vs. Development. China Solved. 2006. Web.

Content Solutions: Our Approach. Genpact, 2009. Web.

Genpact Introduces Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM), Applying Science to Business Process Management. Andhra News. 2009. Web.

Genpact Introduces Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM), Applying Science to Business Process Management. The Wall Street Journal. 2009. Web.

Genpact. Microsoft Pinpoint, 2009. Web.

Genpact Opens Second BPO Center in China; Latest facility in Changchun Will have Capacity for 1,440 Associates. Business Wire: A Berkshire Hathaway Company, 2006. Web.

Genpact Takes Top Honours at ‘2008 International Forum of China Outsourcing Development & coorporation’. Genpact: Global Business Impact, 2008. Web.

Hiring and Retaining Quality Call Centre Employees: Rewards and Recognition. CC Talent, Kelly Services, Inc. 2006. Web.

Kekre, Priya. A Level Playing Field: Training is Deciding Factor. Data Quest, 2009. Web.

Mehta, Piyush. Genpact: Leading Through Uncertain Times: The ‘Employer of Choice’ Quest. People Matters: Leading People, Building Organizations, 2009. Web.

Review Questions. HRM Guide: Employee Selection, 2007. Web.

Swords, Tara. Winning the Battle against Attrition: Oracle Learning Management Prepares Employees for New Challenges. Profit Online: The Executive’s Guide to Oracle Applications, 2008. Web.