The Hindu Business Line : Where employees get a ‘parent’

Chennai, Aug. 26 IT companies are known for their swank, bright and cheerful office spaces, where the employees are encouraged to put up pictures, drawings, etc. Mindtree Consulting’s West Campus building in Bangalore is no different, and has also initiated an interesting exercise to integrate the 500-odd new employees of the company.

N.S.Parthasarathy, the company’s Executive Vice-President, Delivery and Operations, explains that every year Mindtree recruits between 600 and 1,000 people from campuses. “This year we recruited 1,000 people and the challenge is how to assimilate these people into the company, which for all newcomers, is a big and unknown entity.”

After some brainstorming it was decided that in the campus induction programme, along with the training the new recruits would be exposed to a home-like atmosphere. “The idea was not to only to improve their technical skills but also to emotionally assimilate them into the wider MindTree community,” he said.

Child at school

The analogy adopted was the learning of a child that takes places between the home and the school. “We said there are two important actors there – the parent and the teacher. Once in a while you scold the kid if he is not studying and at other times you question the teacher saying you’re not teaching my child properly. But in the context of an organisation the parent does not exist.”

So it was decided to split the present batch of 500 new recruits into three groups, and give them a classroom, as well as a ‘house’ – complete with a “parent”.

Parent, anchor, leader

“For this we pulled out three very senior MindTree minds (employees here are known thus), in the rank of general manager or above, and told them you’re going to be full-time parents for these kids for two months,” he said. This means that the three parents, called PALs (parent, anchor, leader), are available to these young employees through the two-month training period that began on July 4.

So each morning before going into the classroom for training, the youngsters assemble in the “living room” of the house, where the PAL interacts with the youngsters. This is the centre of all activity and interactions and is developed like an amphitheatre, and each youngster has his/her own locker or private space. On the display boards creative energy finds an outlet and one of the prominent sketches was that of the Mindtree Chairman Ashok Soota with these words: “It is ok to smile, Ashok”!

Parthasarathy said such comments or banter are encouraged, and the ‘parent’ is also available to the youngsters to clear their doubts and “give advice on career, food, life… anything they feel like asking.”

After a 30- minute session, the recruits go for their training sessions and the evening too winds up with the ‘parent’. “These three batches will pass out in September and we feel they will integrate much faster with the organisation,” he added.

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