India's best companies to work for 2017: Here's why interns love Adobe Systems

Rank: 6
Adobe India
Founded:1997
Employee Strength: 4875
Gender Ratio (F/M) 1:3.36
Rank 2016: 21

NEW DELHI: Shradha Budhiraja has been with Adobe for the past decade and this is her first job. Budhiraja was hired on Adobe’s US campus, took a transfer, and has been in India for the past six years. Now a designated senior engineering manager at the company’s Noida office, the 34-year-old says, “My friends always tell me a decade is a long time to be with a company, but I don’t think so. I am just happy here. If I ever want to change, I'd try an internal role change.”

Shanmugh Natarajan, managing director, Adobe Systems India, says that a company’s success isn’t just determined by setting ping-pong tables and serving up good food. At the core, innovation and a culture of bringing change are make a company a great “Adobe has been around lot of our products are world variety of work you get is unmatched. We provide a culture within which employees can evolve,” he says.

Over the past year, Adobe has invested heavily in developing its internship programme. Says Jaleel Abdul, director of Human Resources: “We don’t believe one size fits all, so we are defining our target personas clearly in terms of age groups, interest groups etc. Our 'secret sauce’ is giving interns challenging projects that make them stay.”

The company is also working towards reintegrating its returning moms. Six months ago, it began to assign buddies to employees who went on maternity leave. The buddy stays in touch throughout the leave period, making the transition back for female employees that much easier.

The company is also focused on hiring more women to its workforce. From its 23 per cent women employees in 2016, this year, it has ramped up to 31 per cent. “Diversity is a business imperative today,” says Jaleel.

“We have a sensitivity programme on how to be a more inclusive company”, The company is also focusing on strengthening what it knows in people practices, instead of adding new initiatives. It is making these practices deeper and leveraging customer insights to strengthen its employee base.

One senior engineering manager, Anmol Dhawan, 36, has grown in his role in the last decade since he first joined the company as an entry level engineer. Today, Dhawan has been able to register over 70 patents.

“Our products are being used across a number of areas like scalable systems, analytics, big data. It allows our engineers to stay current and relevant,” says Natarajan.

“What takes a company from a good to great place to work is people being able to come in every day and say, 'my job is interesting’.” And then there are the small things.

Saurabh Mehrotra, a member of the technical staff, who has been employed with Adobe for a year, especially appreciates the company’s new healthcare policy, which allows employees to submit bills for any healthcare activities that they take on their personal time, like a gym or swimming.