India's best companies to work for 2017: SAP Labs India has cracked the millennial code

Rank:5
SAP Labs India
Founded: 1998
Employee Strength: 6489
Gender diversity (F/M): 1:1.93
Rank 2016: 7

BANGALORE: SAP Labs India, SAP’s largest research and development centre outside its headquarters in Germany, is in the midst of a transformation of sorts.

Part of a connected network of 19 labs in 16 countries, the India centre is growing in strategic importance for the German enterprise software major. Over the past year, the R&D centre has focused on opening the Gerhard Oswald Innovation Space, its new building in Whitefield, built with an investment of 50 million euros.

Plans are also underway to expand the headcount by at least 2,500 to support the research that comes out of the centre.

“Our India lab has built a great reputation for being a centre of innovation. The philosophy is simple: we want to be the most innovative centre globally. Everything we do in terms of employee engagement must support that,” says managing director Dilipkumar Khandelwal.

Over the past year, SAP Labs India has been focusing on building a strong culture of entrepreneurship. Its accelerator programme, SAP Startup Studio, focuses on curating early or growth-stage startups that leverage disruptive technology to solve complex business challenges.

Three-month-long fellowships are also available to employees wanting to work out of the Startup Studio. “Supporting an entrepreneurial culture is important for the future of technological innovation. The Startup Studio gears up startups for success, and our employees can be part of the learnings as well,” says Khandelwal.

The company has also revamped its sabbatical policy to allow those who have completed two years or more at SAP to take a sabbatical for entrepreneurship for up to two years.

Employees looking to don the entrepreneurial hat would be given the assurance that they can return to the company if their venture does not work out. Two people have availed of this so far.

At SAP, there’s a real focus on looking forward, and building an entrepreneurial culture is just one part of that. The other part is ensuring employees are constantly development-oriented. Last year, the company rolled out ‘SAP Talk’ to over 8,000 early adopters globally on a trial basis, of which 1,000 were at the India centre.

“The goal was to move away from one-time ratings to a culture that is driven by a continuous dialogue between employees and managers – a dialogue that is future-focused and dedicated to employee performance, goals, achievements and developments,” says Shraddhanjali Rao, head of HR.

“This was done keeping in mind millennials’ need for instant feedback and the culture of quick gratification.” Over the past year, employees at the centre had real-time conversations with managers in order to be able to grow professionally and gain skills for long-term success, while managers were able to improve team performance and employee satisfaction.

This year, the programme will be rolled out to all employees. Women are given ample opportunities to grow their careers. Three separate programmes, Headway, Confluence, and Career Gift are aimed at building a leadership pipeline for women.

“The company pays close attention to creating a network of women leaders, and the mentoring starts from day 1 -there is something for every employee level. For SAP, it’s not just a branding initiative. Building the pipeline for female talent is something that’s non-negotiable,” said Swetha Susan Isaac, who works as a developer.

Diversity – it’s not just a buzzword at SAP. Last year, the company took steps to create LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) awareness. With the help of the Pride@SAP employee group, a blog series was hosted highlighting famous actors in the struggle for equal rights for gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals.

The company also ran an internal campaign to initiate more dialogue about the LGBT community. At SAP, individual requests are taken into account. Recently, development manager Kiran Venkataramanappa had the opportunity to travel to Germany on a six-month fellowship when he expressed the desire to have new experiences in a different team.

He recounts the experience: “Coming from software development, I worked in an HR role in Germany, despite having no previous experience in the field. The project that I was part of impacted 85,000 SAP employees globally. The learnings and insights on people management and performance I brought back have helped me in my current role as a manager.”

It’s not just requests on career growth. Any kind of special request is heard and taken up at the senior level, and fulfilled if possible. Prerna Mohta, user assistance developer, has a passion for emceeing, and says the company regularly lets her conduct programmes. “They’re happy to take into account this special interest of mine. Not many corporates would do that,” she says.