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| Patni to hire up to 1,500 next year |
| Shivani Shinde / Mumbai Nov 23, 2009, 01:04 IST |
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India's sixth largest IT services provider, Patni Computer Systems, has firmed up its hiring plans for 2010. To begin with, it plans to hire 1,200-1,500 employees with almost 75 per cent of this lot being freshers for which the company will visit campuses towards mid-December. As of end of September 30, 2009, the company's total headcount was 13,607.
“The 1,200-1,500 are new hires that we are talking about, and the number is based on the view that we are seeing among our customers. Over the next two quarters, we will absorb all the campus hires that could not join the company due to the staggered hiring policy we had. We had been extremely careful about intakes due to the slowdown,” says Rajesh Padmanabhan, EVP, Global Head – Human Resources.
The company had 300 pending offers from the 2008 campus, which will be absorbed by Q4 2009 and Q1 2010. About 900 offers were made in 2009 of which 600 are pending and the company expects them to take on board by end of this December and some in 2010.
Padmanabhan adds that the company has undertaken several initiatives on the HR front to tackle the downturn as well as give enough support for employees who want to hone their skills.
One such initiative was to reduce the training time. Currently, the training time for a fresher is 9-10 weeks, but “we want to reduce this period to six to seven weeks,” he added.
Efficient bench utilisation will be another focus. For the quarter ended September 30, 2009 was around 78 per cent.
“When it comes to bench we will be as fungible as possible, and have an efficient bench strength. Going ahead we will also look at contractual hiring. This particular aspect was not so rampant in the boom market but will now be looked at,” said Padmanabhan. Patni’s current bench strength stands at 350 - 400 (but this number is a moving target).
Two other major initiatives taken by the company are the setting up of a Leadership Academy and moving on to a role based organisation.
The Leadership Academy went live in the third quarter of this calendar year. The company plans to launch this a centre in US and Europe. It is also eyeing tie-ups with foreign universities and B-Schools for content development as well as for faculty. Padmanabhan added, “The focus of the academy will be on capability building. Most of the programmes will start from January 1, 2010. But we do have close to 115 people who are doing various courses as a part of this academy.” The academy will be available for employees from project managers and above. “In the second phase we will also look at the employees below this level and introduce plans that will prepare them to reach the Project Manager level faster,” he said.
Since the company is aligning its operations to create intellectual property (IPs). The firm will also look at creating Fellowship Programmes for technology specialisation. Patni in a few months will identify a few people who are keen in technology side.
The other major initiative has been a shift towards role-based organisation. The firm is looking at the total number of roles required to man the company. This will take into account positions from Project Manager level. “Currently the systems that we have has several overlaps. With the new system this will be taken care of. But there will be no does not mean role reduction,” he added. Padmanabhan added that in the next 16 weeks the process of job evaluation will be complete.
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