There surely is no place on earth where the educated workforce is growing faster than India. But, the reality is that manpower supply has not kept pace with the high demand for quality labor — especially in the areas of business and technology services. The competitive strategy of most service providers operating out of India is now centered on attracting, training and retaining key employees. Arguably, a good employee is to a service provider what an investor is to a startup, at least at this point of time.

While companies adopt various strategies to attract quality manpower, including a raise in the pay packet, MindTree Consulting is widely acknowledged to be in a league of its own when it comes to “empowering” its workforce with new skills and education. Training and collaboration aren’t occasionally offered at MindTree — they are a constant part of the work experience.

What makes MindTree Consulting, a midsize player with just about 3200 employees, emerge at the top of the Human Capital Development ranking, ahead of stalwarts like Genpact, Wipro and Infosys, that have also focused extensively on training?

Primarily, it is MindTree’s value system and emphasis on institution building that has become time-tested in the span of six years of the company’s history. During the slowdown following 9/11, the management decided to impose a 10% salary cut, and to let go of the bottom 5% of all workers. The middle managers discussed this idea with their teams and came back with a counter-suggestion — a 12.5% salary cut for them with suspension of the layoffs until the slowdown was over. Simply put, a culture of empathy is a core value that is deeply engrained in MindTree.

Apart from IT-skills training, as many as one out of every eight employees in the company go through leadership development, which is distinct, as it is practitioner-led rather than faculty driven. Most of the programs are participatory, to the extent that there are explicit requirements that the trainees sometimes speak of — for as much as 80% of the time — while the trainers just anchor the program. In fact, many a time, programs are modified, sometimes even scrapped, and new components added by the leaders themselves.

Ashok Soota, CEO, Mindtree Consulting

Apart from the initiative, a more technical reason for MindTree’s impressive showing is the fact that the company hires as much as 70% of its workforce laterally (from other firms). The average experience of a MindTree employee is two and a half to three times higher than that of many bigger companies, contends the company. Also, the fact that MindTree has not entered into lower margin areas such as BPO and call centers indicates that the average value created by each employee remains high, leading to a better index of human capital development.

While corporate revenue is growing at an impressive clip, MindTree is still small compared to an Infosys or TCS; it has less than 10% of the employee base of an Infosys. MindTree is adding large numbers of new employees to its workforce each year — still seeking to retain the core culture, which defines the company. Its evolution to the highest ranks of global service providers will depend largely on whether it can meet that challenge successfully.