Virtusa enacts good HR policies: In pursuit of excellence

Daily News Business interviews a HR Head in a company fortnightly from this week to educate readers on the importance of HR and its new developments.

Virtusa HR Head Prasanna Obadage, an accomplished HR professional with a proven track record in Human Resource Management is featured this week. He has contributed towards organizational growth by developing people strategies to facilitate corporate strategies, locally and internationally counting over 15 years. An old boy of Ananda College, Obadage holds a MBA from the Post Graduate Institute of Management.

Virtusa is a global Information Technology (IT) services company providing IT consulting, systems integration and application outsourcing.

Virtusa focuses on simplifying IT by consolidating, rationalizing and modernizing core customer facing processes into one or more core systems.

The company leverages a global delivery model to offer solutions at a cost effective price point and employ new methods such as Agile and Accelerated Solution Design methods to insure that the right system is delivered the first time. As a result, organizations can reduce the cost of their IT operations while increasing their ability to meet the changing needs of the business.

Excerpts of the interview:

Q: What made you to select Human Resource Management as your career path?

A: I started my career as an instructor in computing. Then I became a Personnel Officer at a Belgian approved manufacturing company. Since I found management fascinating continued in it as my career path.

Q: What is the nature of your company?

A: We are an organization operating within the Global IT services space partnering with Fortune 500 companies in providing them with IT services to leverage their business using technology for competitive advantage.

Q: Why is the HR department so important to a company?

A: Success of todays organization is underpinned by delighting the customer with solutions that are faster, cheaper and better. These imperatives are met sustainably only through people. HR Department of today has to partner the business and steer the organization to gain competitive advantage through its People.

HR Managers need to be business managers as opposed to functional managers, understand business realities and be a catalyst for organizational change and transformation.

Q: What is Virtusa's most valuable asset?

A: Virtusa's most valuable asset is its people. Our experience with leading global enterprises, our platforming approach, our focus on state-of-the-art technologies and best-in-class infrastructure enable us to attract as well as retain world-class technology professionals who strive to help our clients succeed. Our people are acknowledged for their exceptional talent, passion, dedication, commitment, innovation and creativity.

Q: What are the significant HR challenges in your company?

A: Our HR mission is to develop a culture that harness competency and performance where people realize their maximum potential. As our CEO Kris Canekeratne often says, our greatest assets walk in at sunrise and walk out the door at sundown. Our greatest effort is to keep Virtusans intellectually stimulated through their work and constantly challenged. Our second biggest challenge is to work around the limitation of the supply of professionals in the market.

Q: How do you attend to those problems?

A: We have a unique organizational culture focused on pursuit of excellence, team centricity, transparency and matured leadership. Our Leadership culture is one that promotes growth through mentoring at all levels, and encourage Virtusa passion for creativity and innovation.

We relentlessly strive to create a competent talent pool with a culture for excellence and high performance.

Our performance management process aligns employees to achieve individual as well as business excellence. We have developed a set of world class HR practices which integrate with the business from one end, and engage Virtusans to be the best they can be at the other.

Q: What are the HR issues that companies should give their attention to with global changes?

A: Todays global environment is characterized by uncertainty and rapid change. HR should focus in developing teams who are resilient and thrive on change:

Enabling employees to be global team players who can interact with customers and suppliers and colleagues from diverse cultures.

Developing teams that are creative and innovative with shorter learning cycles.

Q: What are your business challenges?

A: There are a number of business challenges. The intense competition globally is one. Then rapidly changing economic environment and increasingly shorter technology lifecycles.

Q: How are you planning to meet global challenges?

A: By developing tools for better predictability, having greater insights of the markets.

Creating a culture of continuous innovation, developing resilient teams, creating nimble and agile organizational structures, and developing a global savvy leadership.

Q: What are the competencies required to become a HR Head?

A: Ability to gain in depth understanding of Business, ability to understand, create and transform organizational culture, ability to develop competent leaders and have a good sense of humour.

Q: How did you handle the recession with least burden to staff members?

A: We reduced cost structures, increased utilization and productivity and had constant communication on direction and did radical changes during this period.