WORK CULTURE
One Company, One Team
One Company, One Team
Four Soft has developed a culture of openness, learning and a mindset to embrace change instead of fearing it, writes
Nikita Upadhyay
At Four Soft, the most important element of their work life is the work culture. The company promotes a culture which is a blend of innovation,
performance, technology, reward, fun, trust and openness. Its vision and values, performance acceleration oriented systems, robust reward and recognition systems, are instrumental in achieving the desired culture. It creates an atmosphere that values uniqueness and diversity, and respects the talent of every individual.
Working together
People at Four Soft create a spirit of ongoing homage, accomplishment and evolution so that everyone works together to move the organization towards the future. This creates a chain-reaction of openness, learning and a value that professes embracing the changes. Some of its shared values and philosophies include employees taking ownership of the company’s success which makes them more responsible as well as gives them the freedom of following their heart. Delivering the highest quality of products and technology has been a challenging philosophy which keeps people abreast of the recent innovations. Maintaining integrity at work, along with building strong relationships, Four Soft is striving towards creating a great workplace.
The value system
Four Soft carefully hires dedicated individuals possessing strong domain background with diversified skills. “Our corporate strategy encourages team-building activities that ultimately lead to respectful and positive working relationships throughout the firm,” stated Parthapratim Patnaik, Deputy GM, HR and Admin, Four Soft. This facilitates an environment that enables individuals to demonstrate their unique talents in an enthusiastic and dynamic corporate culture. With an intent to make the company one of the best places to work, talented people are employed and also encouraged to bring their personality to work. This in turn gives them the freedom to make a difference at the workplace. They also ensure that every small success is appreciated so that the employees are aware of their contribution at work. By way of this, the company strategically aligns individual goals to the company goals.
An unified effort
Four Soft prides itself in fostering an entrepreneurial environment wherein employees are motivated to realize their full potential and create new possibilities to bring value and to achieve the goals. The company seeks high quality domain experts, software engineers, testing experts, and sales and marketing people, to join its team. Its values include a one-company, one-team approach. This philosophy is the basis of the organization’s management strategy, thereby enabling it to retain extremely talented and self-driven people. Although employees work in different teams, pursuing different service offerings, the company tends to align its cross-functional synergies to provide unparalleled service to its clients and thereby ensures a personality-job-fit. “Our employees are our biggest asset. The crux of training and development is the constant focus on improvement and ensuring that our employees become individual contributors. They are equipped with skills to meet challenges through better turnaround time and more productivity,” expressed Patnaik. The training and development undertaken at the company is not considered as a one-time investment which only the top hierarchy is taken through. Learning happens across employees of different tenure, irrespective of the employee position. This is evident from the diversified training that is conducted, as reflected in the training calendar of the company.
Grooming the leader
Four Soft has an embedded mentoring culture and it adopts the same to guide and coach its employees. This aims at the development of the learner, be it a new hire or an existing employee, and makes them feel confident and connected to the organization goals and products, thus increasing the overall quality of output.
It also encourages employees to choose their own internal or external mentor for technical know-how. For functional knowledge, the company assigns a set of mentors to coach the employees.
The organization also works parallel for the development of future leaders. It hand-picks people who are capable of seeing the big picture, welcoming change and having the vision coupled with the right attitude and the right mix of product and technical knowledge. These selected employees are then assigned to the mentors to fine-tune their perspective and capabilities, and thus emerge as apotential leader.
HR as a partner
Four Soft is in a constant drive to further strengthen the culture delivering magnificent performance which includes celebrating and rewarding the employees to recognize their commendable actions and results. The employees’ voice is instrumental in determining the work culture and this is possible due to the company’s sincere efforts to care for the employee perception. The organization provides a positive, creative and productive work environment for the employees to flourish. As the organization matures, the HR practices also mature. The HR function is undertaken in three different stages. In its evolution cycle, it starts as a business function, then moves on to becoming a business partner and later a strategic partner. In each of these cases, the role and the impact of the HR department becomes progressively more strategic in nature. At higher levels of maturity, the HR function can add tremendous value to the leadership potential, top-line, bottom-line and long-term sustainability of the organization. At each stage, the attributes and values added by the HR function changes and the tools required vary significantly.
Employee challenges
With an increase in the competition, locally and globally, Four Soft has become more adaptable, resilient, agile, and customer-focused, to succeed. The focus of the HR manager at the organization is on strategic personnel retention and talent development. “We coach, counsel, mentor and are the succession planners to help motivate employees and maintain their loyalty. We also promote and fight for values, ethics, beliefs, and spirituality within the organization, especially in the management of workplace diversity,” informed Patnaik. Employee involvement in the company is a management and leadership philosophy about enabling people to contribute towards the success in the best way. The benefits of involving employees are:
- Improved, innovative and efficient work methods and procedures
- Attraction and retention of employees
- Greater staffing flexibility
- Increased service and product quality
- More effective resolution of conflict and reduced number of grievances n Improved morale and job satisfaction
An employee satisfaction survey is conducted to get a feel of their satisfaction levels. This survey is comprehensive and covers the entire HR practices undertaken at the organization. Skip-level meetings are initiated once in a month and the project team members get to meet the top management. The objective is for the latter to familiarize with the team members who do not directly report to the top management. ‘Your word’ is a dedicated e-mail id for those employees who are not comfortable with the idea of speaking out in different forums and thus find it convenient to send e-mails. Employee motivational levels are kept high by following non-hierarchical work environment and spiritual activities. The company focuses on spiritual (non-religious and secular) dimensions and holds talks by spiritual leaders. They have initiated an ‘Employee Hour’ once a month that allows the employees to resolve matters in relation to insurance claims, taxes, PPF and gratuities, with the help of specialists in the field. Experts from other companies and industries are invited to share their company policies and experiences for people to learn and grow. Business orientation and the travel programs have helped employees to be more confident while interacting with their clients as they are equipped with the knowledge and the processes of the organization.
Bridging the gap
Four Soft prides itself in fostering an entrepreneurial environment wherein everyone is encouraged to realize their full potential and create new possibilities to bring values and to achieve the goals. The company determines the requirements for those individuals who will work to hold and to further the company’s mission, vision, and values. So it strives to bring such individuals to areas where needed. It further creates and implements an orientation program that eases the adaptation of new employees to their jobs and to the company. The company also identifies the requirement for internal and external training that will accelerate the employee’s technical and personal development and actualizes these training programs. “We retain the human touch and want to make the company a fun place to be at for all stakeholders. We do not believe in external pressures and targets. We believe that the desire to excel should come from within. We go out of our way to help employees with their personal lives too,” opined Patnaik.
Societal responsibility
The team at Four Soft is making a continuous effort in supporting the various activities that will help improve the standard of education in schools. Their interventions have already brought a ray of hope to the community, teachers and children. Being involved in activities like celebrating Independence Day, taking children out on trips, enhancing the quality of learning by providing school stationery and books, the volunteers from Four Soft are actively involved in spending quality time with them. The organization is working towards reaching more people who are in need and also to have an established in-house team named ‘4Smiles.’ This team works with high levels of commitment to create hopes and fulfill dreams of children to be a part of the developed society—self-sufficient and competent.