Making Mergers Work – Intuitive Human Capital Approach

At Ascend Telecom Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd.,

  Dr. Harry C.D (Chief Human Resources Officer) & Farooq Ahammed M (Deputy Manager – HR)

Introduction

Ascend Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited, incorporated in the year 2002, is a leading independent owner and provider of world class passive telecom infrastructure on a shared, multi tenancy basis for the mobile services and wireless sector in India. Ascend is a Category-I Infrastructure Provider (IP-I) registered with the Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. This venture was initiated with the mandate to be a leading integrated telecom infrastructure provider and tap a sizeable share in the growing telecom infrastructure market. Ascend provides end-to-end telecom services for large and complex projects. We provide services for site location, design, execution and maintenance of infrastructure for telecom network operators. Ascend has a vast footprint of over 4000+ towers across 18 telecom Circles in India with over 100 employees per circle.

Human Capital @ Ascend?

Ascend‘s investment of Human capital is a strategy stemming from the fact of it being part of a service oriented company. Human capital is one of the key intangible assets of the company and the company’s Leadership team is competent, committed and sensitive to this objective help with their experience, potential and capacity to build a human capital which is leveraging towards the success of Ascend.

The Leadership team is envisaged to provide corporate management support to the business success of the circles. The HR policies of Ascend are framed to provide an atmosphere of bringing people together and create a culture of employee empowerment and Ownership.

Why is Human Capital an increasingly important issue at Ascend?

The infrastructure industry in India is in its evolving phase and the industry is still to have established norms and benchmarks of measurements. The technology introduction into this industry has been minimal. Sufficient skilled personnel to understand the requirement of this industry are yet to evolve. Notwithstanding above, Over the past few years the industry is facing a uphill task in maintaining a sustainable growth , which is primarily due to slowdown in capital expenditure by telecom operators. This is despite the need for significant further investments in telecom to further Governments objectives with respect to,

· Rural penetration &

· Rollout of Broadband services with /3G/BWA technologies

Low growth rates combined with negative business outlook for the sector is resulting into consolidations among existing infrastructure providers This results in mix of employees from two or more corporate cultures, competencies, skills and experiences creating the challenge of uniting them as one and providing them the environment to work towards the goals of the unified organization.

Recently India Telecom Infrastructure Limited merged with Ascend Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited to draw synergies in terms of Financial Capital and Human Capital. The merger of the two organizations was aimed at resulting in a larger footprint and giving greater opportunities to service the existing as well as potential customers.

The merged entity gave larger canvas to our employees. A unified organization was meant for more opportunities with a better platform of growth for all the employees. The initial glitch on the resource integration was taken into planning and substantial measures were taken by the HR for creating a workplace that has a unified culture and people practices. Managing Human capital in a merged scenario is a challenging task. Operational interface and the strategic management play a vital role.

HR’s role in Managing Human Capital at Ascend

For decades HR wanted a greater legitimacy for their role; often without playing a vital role in decision making of the organization. With human capital now being such a source of competitive advantage, the door is open for HR to bring to the table the value they have for many years been espousing. Human Resources function is considered to be the business alignment function wherein it plays a critical role of realigning the workforce strategically to meet the business objectives. Accordingly we at Ascend had taken the following measure to meet the Business strategy in the merged scenario.

a) Understanding the Business Strategy

We as a critical business function assessed the current state of the organization in terms of short-term and long-term business goals. This was understood to enable the strategic realignment of the HR measures to be effective.

b) Assessment of HR Strategy in relation to Business Strategy

The Gaps with respect to the HR strategy and business goals has been identified and accordingly the policies and procedures of Ascend have been realigned to meet the business goals.

c) Establish linkage between HR and Business goal

The link to the Business goals and HR processes has been defined using causal analysis to establish cause-effect relationship. Accordingly the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) identified for the leadership team and passed on to the bottom line through top down approach.

d) Measure and Analyze

By using the above causal linkages to key performance indicators and tuning the HR parameters we created a mechanism to measure and analyze the performance of the employees. The tracking and tuning process was a very important step taken to the following activities that needed attention.

· Measuring HR Performance with respect to bottom line business goals

o Choosing the right measures of tracking, leading and lagging indicators

o Establishing right cause effect relationships (through validation)

· Analyzing through real-time tracking and predictive planning through what if scenario

e) Realignment of HR Strategy to Business Strategy

The HR strategies, processes and goals were realigned with appropriate course corrective initiatives. This framework helped Ascend to make the Human Capital Management effective by connecting the corporate strategy to HR processes at all operating levels. Thus it is prepared to maintain a strategic edge over its competitors and provide the stakeholders a clearer picture of the business and the return on investment.

Challenges faced by HR at Ascend

The integration challenges were divided into further sub items for focus

· Assessment Centre

· Role fitment & Rationalization of Pay and benefits

· Organisational restructuring

· Unified culture and people practices

· Building a high performance culture

· Talent retention and acquisition

But how did we address these challenges?

Managing change in the unified organization is one of the key challenges we faced especially with the two companies one having all set designations, levels and hierarchy in place and the other where employees were playing adhoc roles frequently changing the role as and when required. The Role Identification Program (RIP) was carried out through effective mapping of competencies to that of individual and position and accordingly derived on the role, designation and level for an employee in the unified scenario. The organization restructuring exercise was carried out to optimize the cost and effective utilization of manpower to meet / align to the business strategy thereby to achieve the business goals using measured causal analysis.

The best practices adopted by each of the companies in the pre-merger scenario was taken into account for deriving an unified culture and people practices so that a minimal change is faced by the employees to avoid agitation among them.

The unified corporate culture is in the phase of moving ahead to build a high performance culture and we being an asset provider driving this culture among the employees. The leadership team act as a key to unlock the potential among the managerial and executive team through brain-storming, performance improvement programs, mentoring, coaching, conducting various learning and development programs to enhance the technical as well as behavioral skills, peer review, skip level meetings, employee engagement programs and Customer satisfaction surveys. The current position of the organization and the targets / challenges ahead are constantly communicated to all levels by the CEO through town-hall meeting conducted once a month. Roll out of rewards and recognition program was an added advantage in driving the high performance culture.

Since we follow a pay for performance culture as well the highly performing employees are incentivized as a motivation factor to perform to their fullest potential. By addressing the day-to-day employee grievances, suggestions through timely employee satisfaction surveys, showing the right path for an employee in his career progression through our performance management system helped us with minimal churn of acquiring, retaining and managing the talent of Ascend.

Taking these measures answers to all the questions on changing business strategies of Ascend.

Is Ascend ready to meet the future technology requirements of Telecom Infrastructure?

Yes, the resources of Ascend are highly motivated and constantly evolving in terms of technology requirement of the future like 3G and 4G of Telecom bandwidth. We as a people performance function constantly align the business strategy to the people strategy and gaps are filled through regular Learning and Development programs. People, the Human Capital asset with the right profile and capability provides an advantage which cannot be replicated easily by the competitors.

The culture of Ascend is purely driven on the high performance wherein the corporate leadership team is strategically aligned with the managerial and executive team to reap the best out of the current business offering. It was critical to adopt technology at all levels to ensure that the organization remains agile in implementing changes. Ascend has deployed technology in all functions. The Company ERP covers the all functional processes aligned to the business process from Sale to billing. Ascend has built a state of the art tower operations center “iTOC” to manage the sites most efficiently and providing Best – in – Class service to customer at the most optimum “ cost of service”.

The ERP is deployed across circle for management of employees, timesheet, attendance,. The industry has a high visibility and impact among society .The society’s participation at large in maintaining a high quality of service. ‘Green Towers’ initiative is an example of Ascend’s efforts to lead business in a manner that is truly transformational having a positive impact on the society we live in. Such technology initiatives give our employees a differentiating identity in society.

We are currently working on getting ISO accreditation for our quality systems and standards

All of these initiatives are a result of highly motivated and result oriented Human Resource. Human capital will continue to play a vital role in the success of Ascend in the long journey ahead.

The Human capital intelligence is emerging as an effective channel for us to create a business differentiator & to remain a agile and adaptable organization. HR functions to foster efficient behavior and create more value to the business that we are in.

With all these initiatives taken towards the merger work through intuitive Human Capital approach, Management of Ascend does not consider HR as a cost but as a business asset.