Best companies to work for 2014: With flexi system, Ujjivan claims to have staff retention rate of 85%

Samit Ghosh is fond of using the legendary ‘change the world’ job pitch by Steve Jobs when he enticed John Sculley to lead Apple way back in 1985. “I’ve certainly used it at times, and it still works. We’ve had to, since we’re always looking for the best talent,” says the Founder and Managing Director of Bangalore-based Ujjivan Financial Services, one of India’s top microfinance institutions.

Given the travails undergone by the beleaguered sector, post October 2010, till which time it was valued at over Rs 20,000 crore, it is perhaps understandable that Ghosh, a former banker with Citibank and Bank Muscat, has to resort somewhat schmaltzy measures as he continues to build the nine-year-old microfinance organisation. “We have ESOPs available to every employee and have also introduced a deferred bonus program. You have to remember that the viability of our business, as it is with all financial institutions, depends on customer retention, which is again, co-related to employee retention,” Ghosh says.

Ujjivan claims to have an employee retention rate of 85%, a highly commendable figure, given that a significant portion of its 5,000-strong workforce - its field officers - are not even college graduates. “There is a chance that the field staff may not stick around in the same job for too long. Therefore, our employees go through a mandatory, customized program, during which they undergo credit and audit training,” points out Vittal Rangan, Head - Human Resources, Ujjivan.

The focus on training can be gauged that Ujjivan has earmarked an employee training budget of almost Rs 4 crore for the current fiscal, a 350% increase over the last financial year. “We try and stress that ours is not dog-eat-dog culture. We want you to have a career and not just a job,” says Rangan.

And there are also no qualms in borrowing from the best. ‘We have learnt a lot from Bandhan - India’s largest microfinance institution - especially when it comes to managing costs,” says Ghosh. Employees are not encouraged to stay at work beyond 7 pm and it is their managers who have to face uncomfortable questions when such instances arise. Additionally, the company sends a number of its midto-senior management to other organisations working in completely unrelated fields, to observe, and if necessary, learn and adapt from them.

“We have a flexi-working hour system, which we have incorporated in a certain manner from Hindustan Unilever. We have to learn from the commercial world,” says Ghosh.

Ujjivan, which serves more than 1.3 million customers across 22 states, and has an outstanding loan portfolio of Rs 1,600 crore at the end of the last fiscal, is now looking to enter new business areas. “We are going into new individual loans, and it’s very important that we orient our employees accordingly. It has to be a collaborative effort, since we’re not selling toothpaste here,” Ghosh says.