Reference no: EM132539263
Anjali Sharma at RA Group1
As Anjali Sharma stepped into the office cafeteria, she saw a long queue of employees waiting to pick their lunch. As she scanned around, she found most of the tables occupied with no place available to have a quiet meal. It had been a hectic day with multiple issues with the project and
she wished if she would just get a corner all by herself. But was quick to realise that even if she waited for the next 15 minutes in the queue to pick her lunch, she didn't expect the place to become any less crowded. Just like many other days. She reminisced about the old days when the cafeteria used to be a relaxing place to take a break and sometimes also hang out with colleagues with light conversations. She took a deep breath to assess the situation and walked out to the nearest restaurant outside the office complex.
While at the restaurant, she thought of how stressful the last six months had been since June, 2016, when the company, RA Group, moved to a new swanky office building in Bengaluru. She remembered her excitement in joining this organization after her engineering degree three years back. Her short stint at this organization had been an enriching experience with lots of learning and growth opportunities. The company had also treated her well by providing some of the best perks as per the software industry standards. However, her experience of working with this company had drastically changed in the last six months. I do not recognize this company anymore, she thought. The first goal for the new year for me to look for a new job.
Background: The RA Group
RA group started in 1990 as a technology consulting firm. The company developed world-class technology solutions for clients in strategy design, implementation, and subsequent implementation. The organisation assisted clients in creating backend infrastructure for global service delivery for companies., helping clients visualise the bigger picture of their service operations. RA group was known for its approach for understanding large clients and using innovation to drive productivity for the client's businesses. The company focussed on large accounts and had a strategy of meeting service delivery through highest level of quality. The group worked with 5000 employees across 10 locations worldwide. The company was headquartered in London and started its operations in Bengaluru in 2003. The company had built a good presence in India and was being known for uncompromisable quality solution delivery. Global and domestic competition in the technology consulting domain was rapidly increasing with the arrival of newer players in an already-crowded market space. Many existing consulting companies were diversifying to technology consulting. To get contracts, these new players would bid at prices that were much lower than accepted market rates. The consequence was intensive competition to retain old clients and even more to get new ones. To survive, companies were inventing new business models and in many case, diversifying business segments.
The Change at RA Group, India On 15th June 2016, the employees at RA Group received an email from their India CEO that the office of the company would be relocated to a new swanky, independent, ten floor building in Whitefield Bengaluru in the next thirty days. Earlier the office was situated on the outskirts of Bengaluru on the Mysore Road requiring considerable travelling time for almost all employees.
Anjali and her colleagues needed to travel 90 minutes each way to reach office and with the change the travel time would be reduced to half. The announcement of the new office location was coupled with other key changes - unveiling of the new logo, color scheme and a new
employee slogan - "We can make it happen!".
The new office was bright, with murals on the wall, and a lot of relaxing common spaces, breakout areas, and more number of meeting rooms. Inspired by the IT However, it removed the concept of tall-walled cubicles to 'open office', where there were no partitions across desks. Employees needed to sit on a desk situated in a large open area along with others.
The transition of change was planned to reduce any inconvenience (during the change) to employees. Employees were shown the photos of the new office to increase their interest of the new building. The transportation vendor, IT department and overall administration did a commendable job during the transition and made it as seamless as possible. Nameplates, individual desk phones and other items belonging to every employee were meticulously transferred to their desk in the new office before the employees reached. Employees had no trouble getting to the new office as, on the day of the transition, the pickup cabs automatically dropped them to the new office location. This change was sold to increase productivity and to provide a more 'multinational' and 'modern' feel to the office. However, the old employees considered it an attack on their privacy.
The employees were used to the snug cubicles of the old office, and this new arrangement meant that someone could be looking over their shoulders all the time. The office space became much noisy with so many people conversing at the same time. It also meant that personal discussions and sharing are not possible without anyone overhearing the conversation. Anjali and her colleagues thought that the office environment had become too distractful. Anjali shared - Sometimes, while working, you need to relax a bit or organise your thoughts when you are trying to solve a problem. With so many people visible in my line of sight and the noise around, it is difficult to focus. Moreover, when we are working and have to take a work-related call, it becomes difficult to talk freely.
An attractive incentive that the RA Group offered was an individual chauffeur-driven cab service. Bengaluru was infamous for its rude auto-rickshaw drivers and costly cab services; thus, this facility was a respite for RA's employees, particularly during odd hours. Therefore, this facility helped mitigate employees' reluctance to work late in the night. However, after the change, the facility was converted to a shared service at fixed intervals. Anjali shared - "Earlier, when we were just a bunch of 100-150 people, we used to get private cabs for pick-up and drop. Coming to work and going home in a chauffeur-driven car gave a sense of pride. Things were still fine when the employee strength grew to 400-500. Occasionally, we had to share cabs with other people who lived on the same route while returning from office. But now, it has become a nuisance. You only get cabs at designated time slots.
Moreover, the cabs are forcefully cramped with four people, some whose destinations may be nowhere close to yours. Even the morning pick-ups are delayed because multiple people on the same route are clubbed together. All this has taken away the feeling of being 'coveted'. It feels like we are a bunch of corporate labourers. I wonder what they'll do next. Dispense with the cabs and start a bus service??" Ever since RA group started working in India, they have been very selective with recruitment. However, the recruitment drive increased many fold by diversifying the recruitment campuses. For example, for the role of Business Technology Analyst (Anjali's role), they strictly hired only from the top twenty engineering colleges of India. However, with the recent change, they had opened their doors to many more colleges in the country. The number of employees in the spacious building increased by half with the new hires. The old employees, who used to have an identity of being in an elite club, felt disgruntled. Anjali said, "When I was in college, getting into RA was a huge feat. It was special. Nowadays, it's become so easy. Anyone and everyone can make it to this place."
Anjali was told by her friends that the expansion strategy had also taken a toll on the quality of deliverables. The induction of new Technology Analysts (TA) led to an imbalance in the Technology Analyst to Technology Consultant (TC) ratio, who were there to guide the new recruits in the role of Technology Analysts. Not only did it make the organization pyramid very bottom heavy, there was also the struggle for TCs to manage so many TAs and review their work for errors. Many new recruits were working on a project without supervision, and the process of allotment to a team was perceived as random. Earlier, RA Group took pride in the quality of its work and had a long-standing legacy of delivering the best quality to its clients. In fact, this was one of the major reasons why only 20-25% of its clientele consisted of new organizations; the rest were companies which had remained RA's clients for more than a decade. Everything reached the client after thorough reviews at multiple levels, which resulted in impeccable project presentations, client reports, and other deliverables. In fact, just to emphasize the importance of quality in deliverables, project managers and senior leaders were often quoted saying - "Even Six Sigma allowed 99.6% quality but RA Group did not allow anything short of 100%."
The attrition rate in the last quarter was around 25%, which was much higher than the industry standard of 15-20%. During the last sixth months, a lot of BTAs left the organisation. The employee engagement suffered, particularly among the old employees. However, some of Anjali's colleagues who joined along with her, were taking on new responsibilities in the changing circumstances in the organisation. They did not seem to mind the crowd of the cafeteria as much as Anjali.
The way ahead Anjali went to her boss, Mr. Malkani to share her frustration but he seemed to busy to talk to. She decided to not discuss her issue, and just inform him of her decision to leave once she has a job offer. She sat on her desk and started searching for opportunities.
Questions
1) Analyse the case with reference to Anjali's viewpoint. What should Anjali do?
2) Analyse the case with the viewpoint of the organisation. How the organisation should have planned this change?