“We see ‘innovative disruption’ as an Opportunity,” said Anshuman Ray, Senior Director HR, Synopsys. Read on for his insights on the how to embrace innovative disruption.
What are the steps you take as a leader to embrace innovative disruption?
To stay competitive in today’s market, companies must think like a disruptor especially company such as ours that operate in the semiconductor & software security vertical which is at the heart of hi-tech. We need to be in an ever-ready state to overcome challenges posed by innovative disruption. Companies need to invest both in innovation that sustains their business as well as in the new revenue streams that can sustain the edge against the potential competitors. This approach includes fighting the temptation to be insular, conducting periodic market disruptor analyses, nurturing agility & dealing with ambiguity, dealing with change and fostering inclusivity within workforce to upscale innovation. Our job as leaders is to orchestrate the tone setting from the executive leadership. The right messaging helps us see ‘innovative disruption’ as opportunity to step up our engagement and accelerate innovation through differentiation and value creation. This approach helps us to sustain our leadership position in the market and become preferred partner for our customers.
As leaders we propagate the Company Values, Key Behaviors & evolve talent strategy that is at the core of enabling this culture of innovative disruption. The activities include:
- Listen to new recruits & analyze exit trends.
- Facilitate agility: speed the product development process and bring products closer to existing market needs.
- Our Values: Passion, Leadership, Execution excellence as viewed through the lens of customers, Integrity. These relate emphatically to leading market, have customers at the core and integrate social responsibility into business model.
- The 6 Key Behaviors: Build network, instill trust, global perspective, customer centricity, agile learning and Result Orientation. These behaviors are the DNA of Synopsoids.
- Organization Structure: Defined roles which are externally focused to leverage ecosystem partnerships (academia, industry, research and government), monitor market trends and collaborate effectively with customers. To that extent we have co– CEOs, one who is externally focused (research, market, customers) and other internally focused (operational efficiency and execution).
- Talent & Leadership Development: Our competency framework currently provides for nurturing extraordinary ambitious goals by focusing on core competencies like innovation, dealing with change and ambiguity, utilizing design thinking and data analytics, assess threats & opportunities, taking measured risks and finding disruptive opportunities along the entire value chain.
- Foster inclusivity which leverages our diverse talent demographics to upscale innovation.
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What are the strategies you employ to upskill your workforce?
Upskilling is seen as an investment in talent and is a part of our Total Rewards offering. Our upskilling plan is aligned to business needs, functional needs and individual needs. Learning& Development philosophy mirrors the 70: 20: 10 model that translates to 70% through experiential learning, 20% through mentor, coach, professional network and 10% through personalized and customized training. We deploy Global Learning Infrastructure that leverages technology and automation to offer customized, on-demand, just in time and agile learning solutions for our employees. The continuous learning culture translates to investments in career development through an established competency framework. Furthermore, we facilitate experiential learning & connect forums like global task force, peer to peer connect programs, executive connect forums as well as learning interventions like mentoring, tech-talks from acclaimed speakers, participation in professional industry forums for presenting papers. Our strategies for upskilling are based on:
- Customized Learning Framework: L&D framework outlining Key Behaviors & Competencies against career continuum made available through Learning Management System (LMS).
- Integrated Talent Management framework: System automatically maps the developmental needs (Skill, Behaviour and competencies) identified in Employee Development forms/360 degree to learning in Learning Management System (LMS).
- Offerings: Both mandated curriculum, opt-in programs and on-demand, just in time offerings.
- Adoption: Increase adoption of offerings by enabling environment of learning on- the- fly. This requires appropriate L&D infrastructure that leverages technology & sharing well researched learning solutions focused on addressing specific situations or needs. We are currently leveraging gamification and simulations to step up adoption and upskilling (eg. hackathons).
- Career Development: Leaders within Synopsys share their experience in nurturing career. What they pursued at different stages in their career, how they achieved mastery which propelled their career.
- Career Path: Identify high-potential talents to offer a learning plan to help them sustain the edge and build a challenging career path. Customized learning plans for offering an edge to high potentials to pursue their career goals.
- Eco system partnership: Leveraging world class institutions, ongoing research with academia, active and on-going engagement with customers & government.
- Talent Mobility: Learning through Short Term International Relocation (STIR) and job rotations.
- Deep Technical Skills: Offer Tuition Reimbursement as a Part of Total rewards to nurture deep skills.
- Continuous Learning: Organize forums for experiential learning like global task force teams, peer to peer connect, executive connect forums. Learning interventions like: mentoring, tech talks from credible world acclaimed speakers, participation in professional industry forums for presenting papers.
- Recognize Impact: Acknowledging and Celebrating Excellence (ACE) recognizes business impact of Employees. The Patent & Publication rewards seeds deep technical skills and accelerates innovation.
How do you win at talent management?
Since we are a Human Capital intensive industry and over 75% of the expenses are attributed to cost of talent, managing talent effectively is an organizational imperative. At the core therefore is the Leadership & Management capability of the Organization and the robust offerings in the form of tools, program and processes.
Managers know that employees are strategic assets of our organization. It is our employees who help us maintain the edge in the industry and help us achieve our Vision & Mission. Managers partner with Human Resource to hire stellar talent and continue to make them taller by offering careers and opportunities that continue to make them grow professionally day by day. This is our key to success.
Culture:
- Meritocracy as a culture
- Flexibility: Room for Work life balance
- Inclusivity & Diversity
- Innovation
- Continuous learning as a culture
Hiring:
- Hire for Careers and not the Job in hand (Values/ Behavior/Potential)
- Hire the best with Managers as Talent Scouts
- All Managers go through Behavioral Interviewing which helps them hire the best
- Incubate talent and don’t resort only on lateral hiring
- Strong yield through Employee Referrals
Employees (EE) as Key Stakeholders:
- Involve employees in decision making (committees) and action planning
- Structured engagement to get VOEs and act on feedback
- Value employee experience
- Competitive Total Rewards proposition
Career Development:
- Quality jobs and opportunity to continuously learn on the job
- Option to pursue technical ladder or managerial ladder
- Opt in programs extended to employees so that they can learn & excel in field they would want to
- Global DNA: Talent Mobility (across domains, geographies)
- Fast Track careers for hi-pots
Well-orchestrated Workforce:
- Execution: Every Employee has annual SMART Goals and Objectives which are aligned with Organization and Business Group goals. The progress is reviewed periodically
- Communication (Organization Wide/Region Wide/Business Group Wide): Transparency & Information Exchange
- Manage “utilization of employees” and “leverage the Organization Structure” to stay focused on employee productivity
What role do you think culture plays in increasing efficiency at work?
Culture is synonymous to the Operating System (OS) which is a prerequisite for the apps to operate. At a macro level CULTURE offers the medium to optimally leverage resources (Men, Machine, Method, Money, Material, Market & Time) for superior outcomes. Culture is key to organizational success as it translates to ingraining the values, code and key behaviors amongst employees and aligns employees towards Organizational Deliverables. Simply put, it is the Culture than can maximize contribution of employees by synergizing efforts and obtain a result of one plus one as eleven; as against two.
For Synopsys, Culture is key to our success. It differentiates us from others and offers the environment to lead rather than be led in the space that we have ventured so far.
What role do you think technology plays in talent management? How can technology bring about a change in the talent management lifecycle?
Today technology is leveraged to manage the entire Talent Lifecycle Management. Talent Management Systems offers a dynamic and well integrated platform to manage talent through a paperless environment. Bot, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence will redefine the role of Human Resources. It will breed efficiency and effectiveness. Bot economy brings in Digital Workforce which will make human touch around repetitive processes redundant. Virtual assistance is leveraged for support & assistance to Employees rather than HR Personnel manning the help desks. This change is transformational as it will get HR to focus on areas that require compassion, care and judgement. Predictive Analytics is leveraged to manage engagement & experience of talent within organization. Employee engagement surveys leverages big data to bring out the most meaningful and big ticket items that organization should focus on.
Right from offer to candidate to employee on boarding, monitoring performance trends, tracking the Employees total rewards, their Career Path & progress, strengths and possible next roles, the development needs and available learning solutions, internal mobility can be tracked at a touch of a button through the Integrated Talent Management Platform. Huge amount of data can be processed for better and more informed decision making. Today technology has helped to scale & customize our offerings to employees.
