Talent Management - How A Salem Tech Firm Is Raising The Productivity Bar

The town, known for its steel and textiles, is showing the way in upskilling tech workers

- Chitra Narayanan

At a swank tech centre in Salem, in a quaint conference room that is designed a bit like an attic — this nearly hidden room has to be accessed by a spiral staircase and has large windows with picturesque views of the hills that surround the town — a weekly review meeting of teams is in progress.

But this is not the usual type of team or meeting. Gathered here are employees of Vee Technologies, a firm that does remote coding for healthcare outfits in the US. The staff has been divided into micro-companies that go by rather zany names, like Mirchi Miracles, Hawk Eye, Avengers, Techie Tribe, and so on.

These micro-companies are in the race for a grand prize of ₹10 lakh that their organisation has set aside for the winners. The team that comes up with the best ideas to improve productivity and quality standards at Vee Technologies walks away with the money. “We have divided our India operations into 137 micro companies of 15 members each. The challenge before them is to look at the way work is done in each department — HR, Marcomm, Quality, Admin and Learning and Development — and come up with ways to improve processes,” says Chocko Valliappa, CEO and MD of Vee Technologies.

As you sit through the session and listen to the employees — most of them in their first jobs — you realise this is a gamified approach to giving all employees exposure to all the functions in an organisation while, at the same time, empowering them with the skills to meet the new demands of work.