What makes a company a place to love working for? Is it the policies and perks, the culture, the people, or everything packed together nicely? For employees, the X factor of a brand is reflected in the way it treats talent, whether it is a part of the workforce or, more importantly, when it leaves the workplace.
To answer these essentials; All Things Talent hosted Vikas Goel, CHRO of o9 Solutions. With centers of excellence in Bengaluru and Coimbatore, o9 is a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making.
This engaging conversation with Vikas revolved around the guiding principles of good employer branding and o9’s hiring plans in India.
Balancing Diversity at o9
You are a culturally diverse, multigenerational workforce, with varied styles of working, how do you achieve balance diversity-wise?
o9 is spread over 20+ countries, with people from different ethnicities, cultures, races, religions, etc. We consider it a feather in our multicolored cap. It is one of our core strengths. As a global workforce; we have hired, cultivated, developed, and valued diversity. Even in terms of our client base, we serve an extremely diverse set of clients globally.
For us; creating balance is going beyond diversity and focusing on how we develop a common sense of purpose. The way we go about making that space is based on shared core values. At o9, everything we do is driven by those core values. Be it client value delivery, leadership, or social impact. That is how we achieve balance and foster a thriving culture.
Vikas passionately spoke of acknowledging the differences with utmost respect. He adds,
We have people from different cultures and we make it a point to celebrate their cultural events wherever we are. For our employees from East Asia, we honor their cultural events. Similarly, if we have people from India, we celebrate events like Diwali and Holi. These celebrations are among the key elements that drive success in such a diverse environment. It’s essential for employees to feel at home, to feel assured that they have joined a place that cares for them.
Managing Remote Working and Smooth Onboarding
How do things work at o9? Especially when a good portion of the workforce functions remotely. What are the policies in place for smooth onboarding of employees?
I have been with o9 since the company started in 2009, and we have been a global team from the very start. Being in the technology space; remote working was a muscle that” existed. During COVID, remote working became 100% necessary for every company, including us, and we had to adapt. Our clients are global, and luckily for us, they had teams that worked remotely. There were some natural synergies as we were trying to scale and grow o9.
The onboarding experience for o9 starts before Day 1. When a potential candidate has accepted our offer, we ensure the creation of an experience in which the employee feels a part of the o9 family. Through our communication emails and educational material, we help them understand the company. We have a solid internal education and skill development program that ensures they understand our products.
Ensuring leaders are accessible to the new joiner is a key requisite of the onboarding journey. A ‘meet and greet’ is set up with the senior leader of their respective function, to welcome and guide the new o9er and help them integrate into our work environment.
Hiring Plans and Skill Focus:
What are you doing differently in terms of talent management? You are constantly in touch with the talent in India and talent globally. What is it that sets you different from others in your approach?
India is one of our biggest centers of excellence in terms of our global scale. When we look at both talent hiring and talent management, some aspects are common, and some are unique to o9. Our talent hiring process is fairly rigorous. It includes knowledge evaluation tests and multiple rounds of interviews that focus on different aspects. We have stayed true to quality. Even when the talent supply market was very constrained, we maintained a set standard of quality. It makes scaling a little harder, but the focus on quality was not diluted. For example, during COVID, the talent market was fairly constrained. However, we chose quality and made sure our standards of hiring remained the same.
Vikas highlighted how o9 strongly believes in nurturing in-house talent. He enunciates,
We have hired people from diverse backgrounds. Being a software technology firm, we have hired people from the industry, consulting, and, software and technology backgrounds. This diversity brings different perspectives to bear, which is critical to delivering value to our clients, and in turn, critical for our success.
In India, we focus on developing talent in-house. This means that a significant portion of o9ers in India were hired from colleges, and over time, we invested in them through upskilling and development. We believe that this has been one of the key factors in our growth. We consider it a success when we make those early investments.
While we are a technology and software company, we also think of ourselves as a knowledge company. We spend a lot of time with o9ers on various aspects of knowledge. Using the example of supply chain, we spend a lot of time building their domain knowledge and developing talent in this area. We also spend a lot of time developing their industry knowledge. We play in 25 different industries, across consumer products, retail, manufacturing, and automotive fields. We ensure that o9ers get opportunities to understand different industries. We invest a lot of time in making sure they learn the best of the technology we have and understand the cutting-edge innovations of our platform.
Talent Management Strategies
What are your plans for hiring in India? What are the top preferred skills you feel an organization like yours would be investing in for this year?
In the last 3-4 years, our growth in India has been more than 6X, and we continue to see the same growth path for the company in 2024 and beyond. The India Centre of Excellence caters to our global client base across our global footprint.
We have already made offers to 250+ college graduates in India this year. We also hire individuals with 10-20 years of work experience in the industry. Globally, in Q1 2024, we have onboard more than 190 o9ers, and a very significant percentage of that is in India. We continue to see that growth in Q2 as well.
In terms of skills, we are hiring for client-facing skills, product management, programming, and coding. When we look at our hiring plans, we seek a diverse set of people, irrespective of gender and cultural background.
We are very excited about our growth in India and how our Center of Excellence has thrived. Apart from Bangalore and Coimbatore, we are planning to launch our third Center of Excellence in Hyderabad this year.
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Employer Branding and Talent Retention
How does o9 Solutions differentiate itself from its competitors in terms of employer branding? And also, how does that help in attracting talent, talent retention, and talent management?
Looking at Gen-Z, what they seek professionally is fairly different from when I started working. It is very important to our sustainable growth that we meet the expectations and aspirations of millennials and Gen-Z.
‘Inspire o9ers’ is a significant initiative of ours, where we continually practice creating a balanced culture in which we work hard and play hard. We also have a project called ‘Passion Circles’ in India, where employees form groups to share their passions, whether it’s playing music, expressing their creativity, or discussing topics they are passionate about.
These are some of the initiatives we practice at o9 to attract and retain the best talent. Eventually, it’s a journey. It’s not necessarily a milestone, but something that we have been committed to from day one. We hope to create a company that we are very proud of.
Vikas Goel is the Chief Human Resources Officer at o9 Solutions, Inc. He has over 15 years of consulting experience across Consumer Goods and Retail sectors. Prior to his current role, Vikas held senior leadership positions at i2 Technologies and JDA.
