In this series we take you UpClose with some of the world’s top HR leadership teams who share their experience, insights, lessons learned and how they are shaping the future of work for business and society.

Episode 2/4 - UpClose with Wipro

Wipro Ltd is India's one of the leading tech-companies, providing IT Services, including Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services, globally. The company provides comprehensive IT Solutions and Services, including Systems Integration, Information Systems Outsourcing, IT Enabled Services, Package Implementation, Software Application development and maintenance, and Research and Development Services to corporations globally.

Episode highlights

Wipro’s 5 Leadership Habits
How to Give Feedback as a Leadership Team?
How Wipro is Driving Innovation & Transformation in the Hybrid Work Era?
Turning the “Great Resignation” into the “Great Re-engagement”
Creating a Great Employee Experience and Empowering your People

Speakers

Deepak Parija, Senior Vice President & CHRO
Sarah Dixon, Head of Delivery Operation Europe
Bonnie Pelosi, Chief Marketing Officer
Omkar Nisal, Managing Director, UK & Ireland
Katrina Buglass, Head of Global Workforce Transitions and M&A Practice - UK&I and Europe

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Chris: Let's dive in! Walk us through the story behind Wipro and the journey to where we are today.

Deepak: Thanks, Chris. Thank you very much.

Just to give you a little background, we are a 🔗75-year-old story, beginning from manufacturing vegetable oils, now to a 🔗$10 billion global IT Services organisation. Our story is about experiencing Wipro. It's about enduring entrepreneurship, and organisation, which prides itself in living its values. It’s a place where people can actually belong and, in the process, give opportunities to people.

We are one of the largest IT Services setup organisations worldwide; operating across multiple nationalities, almost 70 odd countries, 230,000 people globally, and one of the best things for us is that we are deep in terms of sustainability across communities and societies at large. 70% of our profit actually goes down to people in need, as well as extensive work. That's sort of the purpose and the story, because our customers and our wider ecosystem relate to that significantly.

The other thing is, we recognise that the world is changing. There's a lot more that we need to be doing. As a conscious move, as one of the first founding leaders with a consortium of one of the best organisations worldwide, we've signed up for the 🔗Transform to Net Zero.

Today, as we speak, there's a future; a bold ambition that we're all looking for. So, in a nutshell, that’s the story of Wipro.

Bonnie: I wouldn't mind adding something in terms of pride. Working at Wipro was not only a career opportunity for me, but it's also given sustainability. Particularly, in COVID times, we opened up hospitals within our offices to support those in need, and more recently Project Hero, which has contributed to the Ukraine war. And that gives me a great sense of pride to say that I worked for 🔗Bitcoin in terms of how they've contributed to the communities

Chris: That's something that's come to the forefront over the last few years; many people had the opportunity to sit down and think, ‘who do I really want to work for, and is this organisation aligned with my ‘why’, and my ‘purpose?’

What is your ‘why’, and what is your ‘purpose’, as an organisation?

Katrina: I now think it’s changed to ‘do I want you or my CV?’ from ‘do we want you to work for us?’ I think the ball’s very much in the candidates’ court.

It’s not just about winning business, it's about building an inclusive and sustainable environment for all to thrive. And that's our purpose and our destination. We have the Five Habits at Wipro, and everybody instils in the south, and that's the behaviour set that we live by.

Chris: I have to ask you for those Five, now.

Katrina: I knew you were going to ask me that. Being responsive, being respectful, demonstrating stewardship, building trust, and always connecting it and communicating it.

Deepak: The best part of our ecosystem today is the leadership team, and worldwide we see that. We've seen after the Big Churn where more and more people are joining in every day, and loads of people that we are hiring 🔗across countries and nationalities. We see how they live by those values on a day-to-day basis; building trust, for example, is a critical element as we are working through this change, and the business fluctuation that is happening is allowing us to start looking at people in their own self. That's critical. The team here is interacting with our customers daily and living those values through them.

Chris: We're in this digital environment, so how do we communicate that? Before, you could walk through the hallway and bump into someone, spark a conversation and connect, but now most of our employees are working all over the world, and disconnected as well. When someone joins your organisation, how are you overcoming that challenge?

Deepak: Irrespective of whether it is in person, or in virtual, it's pretty much possible to be able to entrance some of those behaviours. When people see leaders and managers emulating those behaviours, then they take it back to their own teams.

The second thing are the sessions. People are passionate enough to come across not to just hear about the Five Habits, but how to actually make it live. That's how we’ve been taking it forward, even during the pandemic. With all the new onboardings that we've been doing, the values are part of our Performance Management across a variety of streams, going on from the very beginning.

Omkar: And what we also do very well, Chris, is take continuous feedback. For somebody like me, who has been here for 10 years, I’ve really experienced this. As an organisation - which is very agile – we’re learning. We are ready to absolutely incorporate that feedback either in our individual behaviours or as a team, so that the next set of experiences has embed those learnings back in.

It’s an important aspect when we look at the many new joiners coming in that the managers and supervisors also interact more, and we have a very good mechanism by which we incorporate interactions with our clients a lot more. All of that goes on to improve the employee experience significantly.

Katrina: This isn't just about the infrastructure in the process of reviews and panels, etc. There's also a more informal network around one of our values which is ‘always be responsive and connected’. I'm a relatively new joiner, I'm 9 to 10 months in, and I have to say that being connected in that informal discussion, whether it's virtual or in person is a bedrock of the organisation. It's more about how do you empower it? And how do you meet that structured corporate way of doing things.

Bonnie: One thing we've added into the Five Habits is our reward and recognition scheme. It's not only our employees who are embracing the Five Habits, they're also recognising those behaviours in other individuals and their colleagues and piers. That's been a really good introduction into our reward and recognition scheme.

Chris: This all goes back to the point mentioned earlier; it has to be embedded. You can have these values and the wider purpose, but unless that's reflected in your compensation, in your rewards, it's not going to drive the right behaviours.

Deepak: There is one thing that we do well, which is find the best peoples’ manager. Across the globe, we’re picking up people, and managers, who are living those values. And a people manager needs to be showcasing those values, and then those people managers speak to people on a wider forum to spread that theme.

Chris: What are some of the things you're doing as an overall organisation? What are some of the projects that you're most excited about?

Omkar: We know there are two key components that drive our vision. One is our customers. Second is the markets. That's effectively how we are driving a lot of our future.

First and foremost, we underwent a significant organisation change; we pivoted the organisation to a market unit, and that has helped us focus clearly in the markets that we prioritise. For us, the excitement comes from a complete rethink of the business thanks to the pandemic. We want to transcend to become future-proof.

The whole emergence of 🔗Cloud is a significant means by which these digital goals can be achieved. We’re clearly focused on the digital agenda of our clients, which includes the whole Cloud journey. That's been the big shift for us; creating the workforce of the future.

Sarah: The market dynamics, from a workforce standpoint, have changed enormously. It's not just the impact on us, and how we are preparing ourselves and looking ahead of the market, but about looking at the skills and talent we need, making sure we're building the right programmes to support our teams, and building their talent and their skills. We need to be looking at that with our client’s hand-in-hand as well. We’re experiencing this change quite acutely, in the same way that they are, so we need to make that connection and work together, because the marketplace is tough.

Chris: When I first came here to meet you, I got the feeling that, behind these black curtains is an amazing space.

Deepak: We used to operate six to seven offices just in and around London, but now, we don't call it a proper office; we call it a Collaboration Hub where different teams can come and work together, inviting customers and partners to come in and ideate along with us. It's not really about doing business, because when you sit together, we’re finding solutions together.

Katrina: What we focused on as we come up after the pandemic, is how the hybrid working environment operates, and you've got to do that with other businesses to understand the learnings. We’re understanding what they're doing and their best practices, so that you can adopt and change our approach and style.

I think organisations today are taking into consideration many of these things. It's not the nine to five coming in the office. It's that flexibility of how do you make sure that you continue to have that culture despite a lot of people not coming into the office?

Sarah: It's also about exploring what else has changed with that dynamic. We've appointed in Wipro a head of open talent, so we're actually exploring what that means, because there are many people now who want to retain that ability to work remotely; they want to have flexibility to choose their roles and build their careers that way. So, the question is, how do we effectively tap into that type of community? And again, how do we take the benefit of that, and actually help our clients on that same sort of journey?

Chris: That is one of the big challenges, right? I had a friend recently who said, ‘I want to work from home forever’, and then three months into it, he really wanted to go back to the office. As managers, leaders, organisations, we have to have that freedom within the framework, that trust, that affects everything all the way down the line.

Sarah: That comes down to thinking about how we keep our employees engaged. That helps shape ourselves going forward and attract the talent and retain the talent that we love. Having those sort of thought processes around to maintain the right balance, so that we do attract the right set of people, is going to be extremely important.

Bonnie: We've now got employee experience at the core of our HR strategy. We’re a dedicated team, looking at all the initiatives that can come out of that.

Chris: That kind of leads quite nicely into the next question; how are companies aligning HR with the business strategy? Many of us will say, well, HR is the strategy and vice versa. Right? I'd love to hear your perspective.

Omkar: One of the big shifts for us as we move forward, from a business perspective, is about the entire change in the workforce strategy; to find the overall capabilities that are required for the kind of work that the clients and the market demands. We have 230,000 employees and it’s still growing today, but how do you ensure that all of them make the shift together, to the futures skill sets and to the future hybrid operating model? It plays a very important role for us in terms of ensuring that we embed our teams into our client teams, and they work as a single team.

The other part of our HR strategy is the whole 🔗diversity aspect. As we get into solving future problems, such as diversity of thought, diversity of talent, it’s important that we’re not just about having the traditional engineers doing the work, but having product managers and marketing teams involved in the solution for the customer. I think that's the big play where the business strategy and the HR strategy are getting interlocked on a continuous basis and evolving together.

Deepak: The key really comes down to solving the customer's problems. It's not really about putting processes or methodologies or initiatives into it, unless we are fundamentally solving the end customers outcomes. But our all-out strategic priorities outside of the organisation, building talent at scale, and looking at the entire suite from an end-to-end perspective. It is one of the core strategic pillars.

Katrina: Traditionally, you would have had somebody doing the same job over a number of years; those skills and what's needed in business has changed the innovation that's needed. Because we continue to upskill our people, we achieve our clients’ goals, but also help our team to achieve what they are wanting to achieve out of their career.

Wipro does a really good job of moving people around; there's quite a lot of relocation, but also people moving to different roles and acquiring new skills that meet the needs of customers, as well as the needs of themselves.

Sarah: Just coming back on the diversity point, we're very happy to look externally as well, and take thought leadership in that space. We're stepping forward with our Be Bold events, which is bringing other organisations and people with different views on the World of Work together, to maintain a diverse workforce whilst keeping up engagement.

It’s about having that knowledge and that understanding. It's about our leadership teams and the business having open forums on how to create that environment, and how we actually move forward in the right way.

Deepak: We have almost 90 to 95% retention of the team that has joined us, which is fantastic. That has a straight-line implication in terms of our business strategy, because that's exactly what drives our growth in terms of new opportunities, working at scale, and large acquisitions. recently acquiring CAPCO, for example. It gives us deep domain capability in the banking and financial services, and that itself is complimentary, because we get the technology capability, and they get the consulting and the domain capability.

Chris: We've all heard of the Great Resignation, and the Great Re-imagination, and the Great Renegotiation. How are you tackling that 🔗War on Talent and turning the Great Resignation into the Great Reengagement?

Deepak: As individuals, we’re looking at value for time and the work life balance. What we are experiencing with the Great Resignations is the fact that the pandemic has given them a choice; an option to rethink themselves.

Surveys and data points say that 40 to 50% of people still want to move on, even if they don't have a job at the end of it. The answer lies not just about policies and processes. It's about coming back to how we treat employees, which has been a fundamentally basic right; it means operating in the zone of trust, allowing them to have meaningful work, learning and development from a perspective of building careers for people, and supporting the world of working remotely. They want flexibility. The last two years have actually shown that productivity has been fantastic. We've all delivered fabulous results for each of our customers. There's a lot more to be done on that course.

I think we've all started to understand each other's situation a lot better. As we move forward, we need to have the same level of compassion and empathy.

Sarah: It comes back to one of our Five Habits, which is all around trust. We have to trust our employees to do the right thing for us and for our customers, and that's part of our DNA. I think the other thing is, what does Best in Class look like for an experience at work? How do we get there? How do we make that happen? And that's something that the team are working really hard on to make sure that we can give that to our employees and offer that to people that we want to attract in.

Chris: What does this decision-making process look like amongst the team? Who is bringing new ideas to the table? Or whether it is challenging to each other? Do you have a specific process in place of what it looks like?

Bonnie: I think it's become a little bit easier in the last year or two, particularly with the Big Change that we've had around the operating model. Each region now has their own P&L. So now there're fewer silos, and each of the country manager sector heads now manage their own budgets. I think that has enabled decisions to be made quicker and well-versed decisions as well.

It’s also about making sure we've got the right decisions around the employee proposition, because it's always about people. The people are our biggest assets; they will bring in new business and to grow as an organisation. It's not just about what we do, it's how we do it.

Chris: I love that. So that's really the foundation, right? You can have all accounts in the world, but you can always come back to that foundation of is this align with our why purpose and people? And you can operate from there despite the chaos going on?

Deepak: I used to keep thinking, ‘how do you get the values back?’ It's really coming back to the Five Habits. You've got to be able to trust people. This way, you allow them to take those decisions and to operate in a zone where everybody else is.

We're going to still make mistakes. There are scenarios that we will come across where we fail, and that is the test of whether we’re going to break down, or are we willing to respect each other and pick up the learnings out of it. We're in a high-pressure zone, it's a high-performance situation. If you lose a customer deal, going across millions, we need to come back collectively and say ‘let’s figure out what we should have been doing better?’

Points of failures are also a point of reflection.

Chris: On that point, and how do you provide that feedback as a leadership team?

Sarah: We're an open leadership team. We're willing to get around a table, maybe virtually, and talk about these things, and what the lessons we can take are. We all learn and move forward. And that self-reflection is important. Our clients see that, too. They see the benefit and it plays down from leadership to employee.

Katrina: I think this goes back to always communicating. If you're making a decision, have you involved the right people, have you had the right discussions, listened, Incorporated, etc. I've had the support of the leadership team behind me, because they understand where we're heading, and understand the reasons why we're doing certain things. It's about that openness, and that consultation aspect that’s important. We're a friendly bunch of people.

Chris: Last question. I want to ask each of you this question; what is the one thing that you want people to take away from this conversation?

Sarah: This seems to be the theme of everything I've said, but working collaboratively with our clients, our partner ecosystem, that's really important to us, because you can't stand alone, and moving forward on this journey, where we are today, is key for us.

Deepak: We're an ambitious organisation. We're excited and looking forward to a bold future both for our customers as well as the communities at large. We’re truly a place where people can belong and enrich their lives to succeed.

Katrina: Behaviour and culture are super important. You can have the best idea or the best ambition, but unless you've got the mindset, the right behaviour to do it, the outcome won’t go as well. When I look at hiring people, it's not just about what they've achieved, but how they've achieved it.

Omkar: The thing to take away is the whole aspect of diversity. I think we are entering into a world which will require diversity of thought much more; it will require diverse teams to work together. Now the whole world is one single workforce. That's one of the big themes that we should be driving.

Bonnie: Building trust, recognising, and rewarding our people. And that we are one.

Chris: Thank you, everyone, for joining and having us. I appreciate it and keep up the amazing work.

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