HCL Comnet starts leadership forum

In an effort to inculcate leadership capabilities among its employees, HCL Comnet, the country's leading infotech infrastructure management company has recently initiated the Comnet Direct Leadership Forum.

Industry leaders across the globe will interact with the employees of the company via a two-way satellite broadcast system at this forum.

The inaugural session of the forum was addressed by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) president Kiran Karnik in Delhi, who addressed HCL Comnet's 1,200 employees across 18 centres -- some as far flung as Madurai, Guwahati and Coimbatore.

At these sessions, employees at remote destinations can see pictures live and interact with speakers through voice and text messages.

By using such technology, the company is leveraging its competence in the area of IT and communication infrastructure management.

The leadership forum is an extension of HCL Comnet's weekly e-zine that reaches out to a community of over 5,000 CIO's and IT opinion-makers, and provides them a platform to express their views on upcoming trends and concerns in the IT industry.

"We felt our employees needed to know about the larger issues in the IT sector to grow as complete professionals. We often found many of them would be so involved with their current project or day-to-day work that they lacked thorough understanding of the external business environment," said HCL Comnet Chief Operating Officer Sanjeev Nikore.

The company plans to make the forum a fortnightly affair and will bring in speakers like KV Kamath of ICICI and senior analysts at IT research firms.

HCL Comnet's parent, HCL Technologies, has traditionally been a training ground for many entrepreneurs, and the company believes that such initiatives will go further in kindling the entrepreneurial spirit of the employees.

"The average age of our employees is just 26 years and they are very impressionable. They can certainly be inspired by our industry icons and imbibe their leadership skills," added Nikore.