The Hindu Business Line : When employers date would be employees

For instance, the Bangalore-based Automated Workflow Pvt Ltd (AWPL) has battled concerns such as employee attrition, job satisfaction and remuneration structure through some homegrown theories.

At AWPL, prospective employees are given an invitation letter before an appointment letter. "We invite candidates to go through a seven-to-14 day project with the company before accepting the offer," says Mr Sunil Savara, CEO, AWPL. Subsequent to the interview and the test sessions, candidates are put through a crucial two-week programme when they work on a project. This is primarily a selection-rejection process at AWPL.

At the end of the period, candidates make a presentation of their accomplishments to the company. Meanwhile, peers appraise the candidates and communicate to the top management about "their performance as a team members."

This is a kind of an open offer period where candidates and the company assess each other. "This is to ensure that employees join with full knowledge of the organisation. We want to rule out any surprise element which may result in early exits," explains Mr Samik Ghosh, Manager, Human Resources, AWPL.

Generally, one out of seven candidates that reach the project round get selected. "At the senior management level, the ratio is 1:4," says Mr Ghosh, adding that there have been instances where candidates have turned down job offers at AWPL after the two-week period.

Since the company's genesis in 1997, it has departed from the usual and experimented with new exercises in people management. "At that time we decided to implement a radical remuneration policy wherein employees measured their contribution to the company and fixed the salaries themselves," says Mr Savara. Initially it worked well because individual contributions were easy to measure. But as the company grew, policies had to be more sophisticated and the processes more streamlined. Therefore, a three-member employee team designed and charted out 75 Best of Breed Polices and Processes which the Bangalore-based document and business process management company is following today.