Maintaining a fine balance

The severe expressions on the faces of the security personnel guarding the MS Office centre are, perhaps, the most ---sombre ---elements you will come across on the three floors that IT company Aditi Technologies occupies at Manyata Tech Park in Bangalore. Otherwise all you sense, hear and see are exceptional expressions of fun, flexibility, freedom, open culture and innovation.

A walk across Aditi's 1.25 lakh sq ft office throws up some unusual sights — scenes very rarely, if ever, seen at workplaces: Four to five techies suddenly squat on the floor to discuss the nitty gritty of their projects, a scholarly looking geek tees off on a mini golf course created right in the middle of the office, and a young employee (obviously a fresh recruit) scribbles a message for her manager on his white board. By the way, one wall in every senior's cabin is a white board and almost all these white walls are filled with messages.

Is being ‘sporty' a resume essential, you wonder? And then you meet Stefan A. Perrson, Aditi's Brand Manager, who has also acted in the ad films of Sprite (University of Freshology) and of a leading laptop maker (that was shot in the Aditi campus.) The colourfully-clad Stefan can be found working while seated on his beanbag or while standing in an aisle, with his laptop resting on the wooden partition of a cubicle. That is when you desperately start looking for the nerd. Aren't there any around, please?

You see four techies working seriously at their desks and breathe easy. “OK, now there are some signs of a workplace,” you think. And then you suddenly sight a carrom board comfortably perched atop a table between their cubicles as they decide to take 10 minutes off to pocket the queen.

At lunchtime, you realise that employees at Aditi Technologies are passionate about foosball. Foosball is a table-top sport with rules loosely based on football. Observing that more and more employees are turning into foosball experts, the company initiated an Aditi Premier League (APL) on the lines of the IPL. Like Indian cricket's premier league, APL too has team owners (Aditi employees) who bid for players (with virtual money) and for six weeks, eight teams battle it out for the top place. “About 50-60 per cent of the employees now know how to play the game and the rest of them follow it closely,” says Niranjan Nelamangalam, Vice-President, People's Department. Aditi employs about 1,000 people in India.

Before more such scenes catch our eye, we catch Sahil Sagar, Technical Architect, who has been with the company for six years now. Looks casual, talks technology. Whew. Before I can say, “well, here's the familiar IT employee that one sees often enough,” Satish Handa, Lead Global Marketing Communication and India Sales, who's also my escort for the day, lets out a secret: the rule at Aditi is that Sahil plays loud music and nobody objects. “Actually, we enjoy the music and only sometimes ask him to change it,” quips a colleague.

“All Day I Think Innovation,” croons Shrikrishna A., Head, Recruitment, who has coined an acronym out of his innovation statement.

Great, but does ‘freedom' at work impact work? That is when you meet the seniors and realise that Aditi has to deal with all the other elements and issues of a workplace: deadlines, targets, challenges, learning and development, quality control, performance appraisals, promotions, hiring talent and losing talent.

Fast-forward

Jasbinder Singh Notre, Group Project Manager, says it's not cutting edge but bleeding edge technology that Aditians work on. “We started working on cloud technology almost two years back. People are passionate about their work here and everybody wants to work there,” he says pointing to the MS Off centre.

Aditi is a development partner for a number of Microsoft product teams, developing features, modules, and, sometimes, entire products. So, teams working here have first-hand exposure to new technologies before they are released in the market; therefore the security at the MS Off doors, explains Handa.

Long-stay employees such as Prashanth, Dhanlakshmi R. K. ( Head, IS and Technology) and Naresh Kamath, Manager, Quality Assurance, say that freedom here is well-grounded and comes with responsibility. “There are three things that we are always doing at Aditi,” explains Kamath, “In the short term, it's about interesting projects, in the mid-term, it's people's learning, and in the long term, it's creating assets.”

Speaking of learning and development, Novex Alex, Head, Lead (learning and development), is the person responsible for initiating the training and development programme which, again, (you guessed right) is a mix of fun and learning. So, while employees do have their share of expert insights on topics such as Facebook Architecture, Future of Services and Cloud Computing and Experience the Interface, there are also talks on fitness, photography, happiness and mutual funds.

Alex says that Lead has been designed keeping in mind the learning needs of today's workforce. “Learning has to be made fun and traditional methods have very little impact,” he points out.

On APL, Nelamangalam says it is refreshing to see the energy, dedication and spirit with which it is played and ‘is indicative of how we make our clients win.'

Not all fun and games

Sachin and Richa Singh, two of the campus recruits at the IT company, realise that the freedom they enjoy at Aditi is actually given to make the transition from college to corporate smooth and seamless. “Although there is a light-hearted atmosphere, we are given responsibility and we realise that,” says Richa.

The path for a new employee at Aditi is very clear. Every newcomer has a mentor who is his or her single point of contact for at least four months. “In fact, we start extending the warm hand even before the new recruit joins,” says Nelamangalam. ‘Starters' is a pre-joining informal dinner hosted in honour of the would-be employee (just after accepting Aditi's offer). Present at the dinner would be all his future team members. “This is to make him or her feel comfortable. The key is not to lose the person even before he or she joins,” explains Handa.

Sagar (of the loud music fame) points out that hiring at Aditi is done with a lot of caution. “We recruit individuals and not resources. We look for smart kids who fit into the culture, rather than kids who can just code.” And so, at Aditi, you have golfers, models, fitness freaks, yoga experts and, of course, foosball players, who also code.

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