Local touch or global roll-out?

It's a constant battle between globalisation and localisation for billion-dollar IT companies employing one-lakh-plus people across multiple locations. While Indian global IT services players Infosys and Wipro believe in a segmented approach to their people policies, US-based IT MNC, IBM, says in today's Rome you don't have to be Roman.

“All our HR policies across the world are the same and people are treated as global resources,” says Dr Chandrasekhar Sripada, Vice-President and Head, HR, India and South Asia, IBM. Local is global in today's context, he adds.

In contrast, Infosys believes in a differentiated approach for different geographies. Says S.D. Shibulal, Chief Operating Officer, Co-Founder and Member of the Board, Infosys Technologies Ltd, who will take over as CEO and Managing Director in August 2011, “Our people in China have their own bonus payout, which is different. So, each segment has its own HR policies.”

Differentiated policies are reflected across its different business units.

Wipro, too, believes in the ‘go global, act local' approach. Mr Pratik Kumar, Executive Vice-President, Human Resources, Wipro Ltd, says, “The realities of these geographies are different and the cost structures are different,” he says. Stating that his company's philosophy was to go global but act local, he says, “We are not one large monolith which wants to run across the globe in a similar manner. You have to relate to local realities and benchmark yourself with other companies in that geography.”

Terming IBM as a ‘globally integrated enterprise,' Sripada says the company has a common hiring and promotion process across the globe. In fact, the company's globally mobile resource pool is used to fill vacancies across the world. He calls it an expertise-based movement. “An IBMer is an IBMer and not specific to a location or a country,” points out Sripada.

Shibulal, on the other hand, stressed the importance of having different policies for different locations and job descriptions, “Whatever is locally required, we have to do. Whatever is required for different service lines, you have to do.”

Although global major Accenture is governed by a common set of principles across the globe, the company, based on local needs, has the flexibility to create local policies, says Prithvi Shergill, Lead, HR, Accenture India. “For example, our maternity and adoption policies in India address statutory compliance and local provisions while we provide differentiated benefits to our employees. Areas such as performance management and rewards are designed globally but we ensure they are locally relevant as well.”

On the contrasting differences in global firms' HR policies, Nischae Puri, Managing Director of HR consulting firm, Mercer India, says many factors influence the organisation's approach to different markets. For instance, in some companies every line of business is managed globally and so they have common policies across the globe, while some companies take the geographical model. Also companies in different life-cycle stages demonstrate different policies.

Karthik Ananth, Director, Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt Ltd, agrees with this. He says that 100-year-old companies such as IBM started the globalisation process more than 40 years ago and standardised policies much earlier than Indian IT services companies that are starting the process now. “Also, the services firms in India started working on the cost arbitrage model and that's why they have different policies for different locations.”

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