Case Study:
Vineet Nayar Case Study
In 2005, the India technology service was losing market shares and was having difficulty obtaining top talent. Vineet Nayar, leader of HCL Technologies, out to revitalize the organization changing the hierarchy upside down and giving frontline employees more power. To get his point across, Nayar played Bollywood music and started dancing, which in turn made everybody dance. His philosophy was that the employees needed inspiration, and doing the least expected could inspire other. For this company was advised to" say things in a way that people won't forget and try to take people to the next level".
The company HCL, is a company that offered offshore technology services such as implementing, upgrading, and debugging business software applications. However, the company had tough competition from larger company's both foreign and domestic. The whole point of the dance was to grab the attention of the employees, representing a fresh and exciting start. Then once the dance was complete, Nayar would then get down to business, exploring the organizations problems, product development, and outsourcing possibilities.
Nayar noticed that although HCL executives are present in the room, clients were always more so focused on the front-line worker because they were the ones who worked directly on their accounts. Nayar came to believe that the front-line employees were the real source of value and vessel for moving the company forward. This way of thinking was the creation of "Employees First, Customer Second" philosophy.
This centered around three areas of increasing employee authority, expanding communication and transparency and paying more attention to the employees concerns or needs. The company demonstrated this by creating a "value portal", where employees could submit ideas. Nayar also reformed management by having management held accountable to the workers by creating reviews of the leader and encouraged management to publish the results. Other forms of transparency came in the way of employee opinion polls, executive meetings with front line employees over company strategy, and online forums that allowed them direct communication with him. Nayar would then give value points, where all employees voted for which colleagues created the most value for the organization, which was a way to also show off its top performers.
Nayar promised not to lay off any employees during the global recession and mixed incentives that left the employees annual compensation contingent to them deserving their full bonus unless they underperformed badly. Before long, new ideas were pouring in, the employment turnover dropped and revenue increased almost six fold.
Nayar's vision for this company is not much different from decentralized management and might carry a level of risk to some organizations. However, the front line approach in my organization could be helpful. Although, the front line officer handles the majority of the complaints in my profession, but many times the result is at the direct order or decision of the command staff or perspective state.
References
Spector, B. (2013). Implementing Organizational Change: Theory Into Practice (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.