Motley crew

Kripa Raman

THE most painful feature of the process of merger and consolidation of two companies, say managements, is the bringing together of two sets of employees from differing work cultures.

It is particularly so with the IT industry where each company has allowed and encouraged the development of distinctive work cultures in order to attract talent.

Two sets of people who have worked in two different vertical industries or even two different technologies may be brought together easily. ``But bring one serious IT professional and one bratty sort, and the peace in your company can be shattered,'' says the HR head of one company.

While every IT company likes to spout lines about the unlimited challenges it offers its employees, the bounty of its HR policies and the satisfaction in terms of work, here is what the industry has to say about the work culture of some corporates in the IT industry.

According to Indian companies which have gone through a couple of merger and consolidation processes, the biggest challenge is the HR one. ``It is simple. Only one of the two finance directors can be finance director, only one HR head can be HR head, and so on. The employees of one company may resent a boss from another, may resent their peers and so on.''

``It is particularly acute in the IT industry. Employees may work hard, but they have not known bad times. They think they deserve nothing but the best and cannot stomach anything negative,'' says the managing director of a middling IT company. In his and in several others' opinion, this is one of many, but important reasons why companies such as Wipro and Infosys Technologies are treading so very warily on acquisitions.

The industry perception is this: ``Their work culture is so homogeneous that anybody from another company, especially people in larger numbers and who have worked for some time elsewhere, will find it very difficult to blend into the HR spirit. They are like cogs in the wheel.'

Of course, this has worked for Wipro and Infosys, remark other company professionals in the industry. ``The growth of prima donnas does not happen in these companies. But employees are united by this culture that `looks after' them. They are good (almost goody good), hardworking, straight, middle-of-the-road but rather flat, nothing distinctive, taking themselves rather seriously, is what we would say.''

``They are well looked after, not just financially, but in a rather emotional sense too. Each of these companies is headed by a big benevolent father figure or schoolmaster figure who holds forth about responsibility and so on. It is like a large family. In fact, people who leave them might feel a little orphaned in another organisation.''

A different cup of tea

Tata Consultancy Services is a different cup of tea, holds the general perception which says its culture is: ``The top man says the minimum he possibly can at any public forum. Men may come and men may go, but TCS goes on forever. Whatever you do, beyond a point you do not command super-fancy salaries. There is no mothering or fathering. At the same time there aren't many prima donnas here either. It is the largest software professional training ground in the world. Everyone joins in like the army and they leave like that too. TCS does not mind at all. That is not going to make them roll out the red carpet and shower rose petals to make you come back. Come back, they may say, but only once. If you don't, then too bad. That is the way they have functioned and it has worked for them, especially in the present crisis in the industry. TCS appears to be charging ahead unhindered.''

Other companies, such as Hughes Software, Aditi Technologies, NIIT or Silverline may tend to have ``characters'' growing in the midst of their employees or directors. The industry says: ``These are the companies who do not like to be considered nut-and-bolt ones. They want to project some kind of intellectual front end.''

Some degree of temperament is tolerated. In fact, companies that wanted to grow aggressively deliberately developed this profile to attract talent. ``But in times of difficulty, it can get very difficult to have stars on the firmament, of course. At the same time should there be different kinds of employees in the organisation, it becomes easier to bring in others, because you have had all types of personalities anyway. You find companies like these going in for acquisitions.''

The CEO of another middling sized company says the company rather regretted its acquisition when the time came to face employee rationalisation and redefining and reassignment of roles. ``The Indian mind is not used to this. Even reducing salaries to the level of the merged partner company in bad times is accepted very badly, even though it is logically understood. This is done so very often in the US; but it is taken very personally here and the morale is affected very badly. I do not want gloomy faces in the organisation. Instead of working till 12 midnight, my boys and girls might go home at nine. So rather than bring down the salaries of one lot, we have to increase the salary of the other lot.''

It is also difficult to get the black pant-white shirt sort to adjust to the T-shirt-and-cargo-pants lot, say HR professionals. In design and some other segments, one may find the latter, and woe betide if such a design company is bought over by a big ``mama-company.''

The dotcom culture, some hardy pockets of which flourish, is completely different. And sometimes they are taken over too, by the larger companies. Here it is in to be cool and hip, to pretend not to take oneself seriously. And sometimes it is in to be completely down and out too. (``If you have to be kicked to the ground and lose your VC's money, might as well make a fashion out of it,'' says one). It is great to say one was part of the big Internet mass marathon and participated in that dream-cum-debacle, collapsing before reaching the tape.

Sums up one HR head: ``Having had the luxury and the money to allow personalities and cultures to grow and to flourish to keep their profiles distinctive, IT companies now have to marry incompatibles to keep themselves afloat. And that is difficult when the animals in Noah's ark are so different from each other.''

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