Best companies to work for 2012: How Agilent Technologies throws light on a steady career path and more

Rajeev Girdhar, 28, who works the graveyard shift at Agilent Technologies, has renewed enthusiasm to come to office nowadays. After all, the 'Night Shift Committee', launched last year based on employee feedback, is up and running.

His dinner served in office is more delicious and further subsidised, there is a nursing staff available in case of emergency even in odd hours and the security guard who accompanies people in cabs is better trained. Apart from all this, a top-level leader is present at regular intervals to hear out his concerns.

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"People are more satisfied now. They don't need to worry about anything, be it food, health, safety or security. They can simply concentrate on their work," he says. The 'Night Shift Committee' was the result of employee feedback during 'Coffee Talks' with the Country Head and the HR Director, a regular exercise held every three months.

"There were concerns among people in the evening and night shifts. We realised that certain conveniences that day-shift employees had, was missing in the night-shift and took steps to address the same through the committee," says Zacharias Cherian, Director HR at Agilent Technologies India. Cherian contends that the company looks at everything from the employees' perspective, from attraction, retention to development of talent.

This may be the reason why Agilent launched HR Analytics two years ago-a process that makes HR think like business and line managers. It follows a simple rule —HR does not manage people but managers do. Quarterly meetings are held between HR and function heads to discuss a function's HR data.

These discussions are focused on data points which include rank and level-wise attrition data, rank-wise distribution of compensation ratio, percentage of employees below minimum compensation ratio, comparison of attrition/pay between new, existing and exited employees and employees on a corrective action plan. This helps business heads own HR data with reference to their respective departments.


Though the HR team helps business heads with tools and consultation, the ownership of the entire programme remains with the business heads. This helps them make more prudent HR decisions, such as determining salaries. "This has helped us to use the existing salary range in a more efficient way with the best performers getting paid higher salaries and low performers the lowest within the same range," says Cherian.

With increased levels of transparency, the company has also been working to make a new hire 'feel at home' with a slew of initiatives. For instance, new hires are internally called SPARKS and are given an 'i-Spark' badge on the day of joining. The badge is supposed to be worn for a week during the time spent on campus. This helps other employees in identifying a new hire and welcoming them into the Agilent family.

For Parmeet S Ahuja, president & country general manager of Agilent Technologies India, every activity within the company is woven around the 'Employee First' fabric. "It means that everything we do-from an employee event, to a fleet policy, to relocation assistance from HR-the interest of the employee is kept at the forefront," he says.

For instance, Agilent doesn't have an approval system for leave. Once an employee submits his leave, it is automatically approved. A discussion happens only if the manager disagrees for some reason.