Human Capital

A structured HR framework underpinned by digital culture

We believe our employees are a differentiating factor that has contributed to our growth and leadership in India and led us to become the third largest telecom service provider in the world (in terms of subscriber base). Under the overarching strategy of ‘Win With People’, the people development philosophy during the year 2017-18 was centered around ‘Learn, Lead and Grow’.

We aim to create a ‘best in class’ and seamless employee experience by coalescing employee journey with a digital culture, right from onboarding to acquiring functional excellence and leadership.

We curated a learning path and curve for each employee with a host of digitised learning solutions, (e-enabled, mobile-enabled or gamified) launched to enable employees to become a ‘Master of the Craft’ by achieving higher levels of functional proficiencies. Some of the learning initiatives were:

Pluralsight: A partnership to provide online video training courses in technology and innovation.

Skills on demand with Lynda & Coursera: We partnered with leading universities across the globe to offer certifications via mobile compatible and self-paced exhaustive catalogues on new age skills to groom employees.

iLearn: During the year, more than 8,000 learners completed over 2,000 courses and recorded more than 120,000 hours on iLearn.

The telecom industry has seen a paradigmatic shift in the last few months. Pricing simplification, bundled offers, e-KYC activations and many other factors have contributed to a shift in the way we expect employees to operate. With a view to reinvent mindsets, processes, collaboration, compliance and more, various functional and behavioural trainings were conducted throughout the year to equip our people with the required skills and knowledge.

Functional training: Including induction and functional knowledge/ skill building viz. sales mindset in changing times and customer centricity.

Behavioural training: Including collaborative relationships, problem solving, design thinking and communication

Leaders at every organization, set the pace and nurture the right mindset. At Bharti Airtel, we believe in grooming leaders of tomorrow who act as role models for the entire organization and make a difference especially in challenging times. Under this pillar, people managers are nurtured and expected to demonstrate what it is to ‘Lead Right’ by role modeling all key leadership behaviours, including ‘Leading Self’ and ‘Leading Others and Teams’. Some of the leadership initiatives were:

Coaching Conversations (Leaders as Coaches): A tool available on the intranet platform that makes coaching real and actionable for the employees. The platform empowers each employee to identify his/ her own coach.

Airtel Leadership Series: Airtel Leadership Series in 2017-18 saw a galaxy of speakers comprising of internal leaders and external experts from different industries such as healthcare, startup, consulting etc. sharing their valuable learning and experiences with our team. They shared insights on important topics spanning across technology, digital future, business partnering, brand value and transformation among others. The employees got a chance to interact with experts on several topics giving them a perspective of different organizations and experiences.

Leadership training: To groom managers to become future leaders.

Campus Programs: Under two key programs viz. Young Leader Program (YL) and Young Technical Leader Program (YTL), Airtel hires the best minds from the country’s top management schools and engineering campuses and grooms them for future leadership and world class technical leaders’ roles.

Career App: We launched the updated version of the MyCareer App, enabling skill based mapping of all roles within the organization for the employees.

Gender Diversity and Equal Opportunity

At Bharti Airtel, we consider ‘Diversity’ to be a key enabler for business and continuously put in efforts to build a team which represents the society at large. Our flagship diversity program, “WE- Women Empowered”, under its umbrella, focuses on empowering its women employees to curate their career journeys at Airtel via focused interventions including WE Mentorship, WE Chit Chat, WE Achieve and WE Lead. All these efforts have also culminated into the launch of ‘She For Change’ - our compendium featuring narratives of Airtel women employees on personal or professional impact brought in their ecosystem.

Fostering an engaging work environment

Employee connect has always been an integral part of our culture at Airtel. We foster an engaging work environment by leveraging various channels of communication. Some of the initiatives undertaken were:

Provide safe and healthy work conditions

We are committed to ensure a secure work environment. We have in place stringent workplace health and safety policies including Workplace Safety Policy, Health Safety and Environment Policy, Domestic Travel Safety and Security Policy and Policy for Safety of Women amongst others. To ensure occupational health and safety throughout our operations, a dedicated safety team, led by a Safety Officer, is in place to monitor and maintain safe, healthy and injury-free working conditions.

Awards and Recognitions

We believe in recognizing and rewarding our employees for their sustained efforts towards organizational growth. With the ‘Kudos’ program, we have been able to build a culture of recognition to celebrate the success of our team members by awarding them with various category of awards including Instant Awards, Planned Awards in the nature of Silver, Gold and Diamond Awards and Long Service Awards etc.