Neelima and Pradeept (names changed), two of the 7,000 IT pros at Zensar Technologies, want to become a social servant and a guitarist respectively.
People like them generally nurse such dreams for some time, and let them fade reluctantly as the demands of the profession kill their enthusiasm.
What if their dreams come true, without disturbing their profession in any way?
Professional goals
IT company Zensar Technologies launched an initiative called Jugnu (or firefly). This company-wide programme is aimed at knowing the secret aspirations of employees and allowing them to pursue those aspirations.
“We have started off this programme with 50 of our colleagues. We asked them to tell us what they want to become after five years. A girl wants to do social services like Mother Teresa and a boy aspires to become a rock star. We are in the process of ascertaining how these personal dreams can be aligned with the agenda of the company,” Ganesh Natarajan, Chief Executive Officer of Zensar Technologies, said.
“Jugnu asks our associates to bring their personalities along with their passions and interests to work. We will extend this to all our 7,000 employees in phases,” he told Business Line .
The company holds workshops at different business units. “We will find out the specific excellence in them and the business unit, and then creating a common dream that is owned by the members of the unit,” he said. “This will be followed by an ideation session wherein people will decide which part of the dream they would like to contribute to. They will form action teams to implement the ideas,” he said.
Retaining critical HR
Earlier, addressing at the human resource summit organised by the ITsAP (IT industry association of Andhra Pradesh, he said retaining critical talent is very important for companies. “In any organisation, you have some 10-12 per cent of the staff who can be considered very critical. You need to retain it. Attrition in this category should be less than one per cent,” he said.
kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in