About HR in Accenture :

4 days now, and what I can say is that its been an "interesting" experience.

The background :

They have ramped up 1500 people in Blr over the past 6 months. In between, they had a ramp up plan of 500/5 ..where they got 500 ppl in 5 weeks. The current headcount is abt 1500 in Blr (and abt 1000 in BBay)...the plan is to have 4000 ppl by Dec.....adding abt 200 a month to CRM and abt 150 a month to BPO ( and the rest to IT).

What is fascinating abt this place is that is a BIG (and BIG means 12 billion dollars revenue, 77000 ppl) and small ( India - 2500 ppl, growing rapidly) place at the same time., Hence, the pace and image of growth we saw in polaris is inverted here. An offer letter template is not in place, but the perf mgmt tool is. There;s a fabulous induction process, but the lotus notes id takes a week.

To help in the initial months, they brought in HR (mainly recruiters) ppl fr all around the world to chip in here, and set up things. The recruiting process, HR recruitment, perf mgmt tools, trng tools, etc have been set up and the expats are in the process of leaving over the next month.

Structure :

Currently, the HR is structure's like this..

each arm - IT (or IDC), BPO and CRM hv separate HR.

in addition, there is a "shared services" team, which is like corp hr..it has perf mgmt, comp n ben, recruitment processes, and pl note - HR capabilities ...all alloted to diff ppl.

BPO HR -

this is headed by Girish. and has 3 parts to it - (total ppl expected by 1 sep - 30)

1. shared services - where there r ppl working on policies, induction, emply commn, comp n ben, "HR for HR", processes etc (8)

2. Business HR - which is essentially HR reps for various deals.

Pl note : hr reps are part of the HR team, they hv dual responsibilities sometimes, but only one reporting- to girish. they dont even have dotted reporting to deal head.(8)

3. recruitment . - rect has a lot of emphasis - each rect team has people assigned to diff functions - sourcing, channel mgmt, candidate mgmt, transit coordinators, recruitment analyst, recruitment processes, executive search etc etc. seems to be working well till now.

and each of these arms wl hv "leads" who wl report to girish.

the current ratio of no. of hr ppl to total ppl is awful. but they r prepared for the days ahead. the hr teams shd be in place.

had the HR induction yest....15 HR ppl had joined across businesses....all these senior HR mgmt, i.e. the expats made prsns and shared the story so far and what is expected.

again, all roles are well mapped out...lines of responsibility well defined....but it has a unreal feeling abt it....as if some textbook is being read...can that textbook come alive? only time wl tell.

what one can certainly tell now, is that they are serious abt HR....and naturally hv high expectations...no HR person is xpected stay in more than one role for more than 15 months....either u move up or laterally, or go out. the message is v clear.

HRIS :

People in Polaris, count yr blessings that u arent HR rep in Acc....the HRIS here is sooo bad its diff to believe. Its designed by peoplesoft, captures half the relevant info in ugly visuals, and generates reports on which u hv to work for half n hr to get the info u want. that wld be ok if one says that its still in infant stage, and things wl be better once feedback goes.

where wl feedback go? it takes 3/4 months and innumerable meetings to get anything changed.

empower, where art thou?!!!

Me :

I am HR rep for a deal - it is an old BPO taken over by accenture recently. I hv to work with a lady who;s been here for 3 yrs. She;s not an mba, or a hot-shot HR exec, ...but v nice n pleasant. that makes a lot of diff to me.

The office - hmmm....for those in chennai, pl remember shakti towers..for those in delhi, pl remember nehru place.

goodbye, fancy lunches n coke n pizza meetings, dell flat screen comps n snazzy bathrooms.

well.....lets see how it turns out....in terms of environment, its definitely exciting...in terms of work, wl find out soon enough!!