Employees First Customer Second

I’ve been a big fan of Vineet Nayar (Former Chief Executive Officer, HCL Technologies) and especially his book Employee First Customer Second. Must read for business executives. Will avoid giving the gist of the book, better you read that book… What I will do is give my perceptive around this subject…

In the last couple of decades, the Information Technology industry has observed a lot of churn with respect to employees, with an average 25% (year on year) attrition. Small Cap companies have now become Mid Cap, and Mid caps are now Large Caps. And during this transformation, every company is running after financial numbers (trying to achieve at least 20% year-on-year growth). And growth levers are mostly from increasing employee headcount. More headcount More growth… Big questions are -

1. Do employees really care about what is the size of the company (whether it is 1 billion or 10 million in revenue)?
2. Are employees emotionally attached to the company? Or they are attached to people (mostly small groups) with whom they work?
3. Are managers putting enough effort in grooming employees and generating value-based offerings?
4. Are extended (~ 10–12 hours a day) work hours adding value to customers? Or is it more of labor work? Is it a sustainable model?

If you introspect, somewhere we are losing track of REAL GROWTH. Ideally, goal should be -

1. Do more (in revenue) with less (people).

Have talent density, just don’t do body shopping for staff. The idea is talented engineers will more produce throughput. More throughput will yield more revenue.

2. Provide more value to customers with each engineer and demand appropriate billing for an engineer

3. Physically and mentally fit staff.

Many factors like age, health, external environment might affect fitness. But, the goal should be to avoid extended hours, have a focus on the physical/mental fitness of staff. And have inclusive growth for the person

How do we achieve this?

Employee first customer second (EFCS).

What do customers gain from EFCS?

Employee first customer second does NOT mean the customer is a second class citizen.

If we follow Employee first customer second philosophy, customers will get a trusted team, more value from each engineer, and a highly energized team.

Remember, people work for people, people trust people, people buy from people… So, if people are generating high value, trust, customers are the first ones to benefit out of that.

What Managers can do to achieve this?

1. Keep your employees at the center of all the decisions
2. Measure and monitor employee work hours, vacation days. Put monthly metrics around it. For example, If people need to work more than > 9 hours on regular basis, some corrective action is needed. If people are not taking vacation days, then they might need coaching around the importance of vacation.
3. Leads should be held accountable for estimates, aggressive commitments. Hand of God (a.k.a. bosses get their way, bosses get in way, etc) should be questioned.
4. Customers should get value out of Employees first. Managers should have a clear idea of how we’re generating value for customers through this. And come up with metric (/empirical evidence) to showcase that
5. Employee first does NOT mean laxity at work. Productivity should get improved and customers should get better solutions
6. Delivery is going to come from the bottom of the pyramid. Constant up-skilling, coaching, physical/mental well-being should be nurtured and should be part of a regular job (rather than one-time activity).
7. Keep stakeholders (especially customers, employees) informed about such initiatives and show them what they can gain out of this. Getting critical mass along with you is always a key.