Shibu Nambiar, COO Genpact Europe: The fusion of experience innovation and process innovation will become ‘table-stakes’ in the next two years

How are the CEOs and managers of large companies addressing aspects related to leadership and busines resilience within their industries and with the aim of reaching the business objectives for 2020 and 2021?

Within the editorial project “MOVING THE BUSINESS FORWARD” powered by Outsourcing Today, we held a series a series of interviews of the high-leveled professionals, CEOs, GMs and leaders of different departments of companies acting in local industry. We talked in a recent interview with Shibu Nambiar, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Europe in order to find out what is the role of leadership in the current environment that becomes paramount to inspire and motivate teams and companies to move forward.

Many businesses have been quick to respond to COVID-19, with people and operations swiftly adapting to work-from-home conditions

With everyone interacting remotely, keeping people connected has been an ongoing concern for businesses, too. It’s clear that many leaders are looking to secure and even enhance the value of strong workplace bonds – along with the morale they generate.

I believe that flexibility will be the advantage that leaders and companies will need to have. Flexibility will give employees the opportunity to start and stop work whenever they need, to be efficient and help the fight against mental fatigue. Agility is another important skill that all leaders need to acquire as it can change our mindset so that we can adapt to any unexpected situation. Moreover, in the middle of this crisis, emotional intelligence can be, in the same time, one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for leaders, therefore, leading with empathy and care should be positioned amongst the top skills a leader should possess.

A constant reminder for me and my teams is to Be Grateful. As well, let’s make sure Balance is key

During the critical context we’re finding ourselves in, we need to remember how fortunate we are and how grateful we need to be for the growth pace our industry is experiencing, while others are constantly facing extinction.

We are all learning new definitions of balance, empathy and care as the meaning of adaptability, agility and speed is changing. The opportunity we have is to challenge every old school thinking we’re holding on to, and push the boundaries. Everything is possible as long as we move with speed and agility

Those that do will use digital innovation to rethink business models, forecast demand and performance, redefine agility, and realize a new era of opportunity

The world faces a unique, complex challenge that’s disrupting our lives, businesses, and confidence. But it’s the companies that can find their legs within these rough seas that can also emerge stronger. Those that do will use digital innovation to rethink business models, forecast demand and performance, redefine agility, and realize a new era of opportunity. We are proud to be helping hundreds of businesses around the globe adapt and rise to become stronger than ever before. We’re harnessing those lessons and sharing insights from our thought leaders to help businesses unlock resilience for the long term. As well, let’s keep in mind that we, all, in all types of industries, we do have a larger purpose that plays a critical role for our overall ecosystem.

Humans and AI will coexist for a long time now but in comparison to the machinery, only human beings can adapt to the new ways of working

With the 3-4 times faster digital adoption happening now, many digital projects are coming through. Another current challenge relates to reskilling as its stakes are going to be massive.

We can no longer approach education with a one-size-fits-all model and, personally, I think it should be the executives who need to become reskilling educators. Corporate executives need to rethink employment strategies to adapt to evolving job functions and better support employees through the retraining process. Skill shortages are and will continue to be a defining factor of enterprise competitiveness. The half-life of skills is 4-5 years and organizations and employees have to become agile in the way they look at the skills of the future to make sure they align with their future needs and aspirations. To help close the ever-widening talent gap, reskilling and upskilling are absolute musts. But mandated, one-size-fits-all reskilling and training programs don’t enable employees to discover their skills, identify their gaps, and hone their potential through customized knowledge paths and plans.

For example, we have built Genome, which is Genpact’s radically different learning framework. Genome enables all of our 95,000+ employees to learn skills that are highly relevant to their current roles and future aspirations. Inspired by work done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence, Genome helps:

• Groups of people Reskill through a unique collective intelligence-oriented “master/apprentice” model
• Our employees learn important skills and knowledge that is contextualized and practically applied to their real, ongoing work by leveraging “nodal experts”, or what are we calling as „Gurus” or „Master Gurus”
• Encouraging participation by emphasizing how the mastery of new skills will open up new growth and career opportunities for our people, rather than presenting the learning as a mandatory compliance requirement
• Our philosophy reflect that we win as teams, not as individuals

Because the pace of change is accelerating faster than ever, future readiness has to be a core organizational objective and a leader’s priority

Professional services firms have to continue creating value for their clients, employees, investors, and society at large. The future is all about new opportunities and new challenges, and how organizations leverage their core expertise, domain knowledge, and the latest digital technologies to deliver bold and long-lasting impact. Due to disruption causing massive shifts to business models, client needs, organizational constructs, talent demand and supply in every industry the very definition of work is changing as we speak and for that we must embrace agility to become future relevant.

At Genpact, we believe the fusion of experience innovation and process innovation will become ‘table-stakes’ in the next two years

As Genpact gets ready for the future, our goals are clear: strengthen our ability to win, drive large-scale end-to-end transformation for our clients, be a key source of value creation as well as help communities, professionals and business build resilience. Looking towards a near brighter future, enterprises will flourish if they will harness that collective intelligence. Connecting to each new network exponentially increases access to all the original thinking that individual weak ties support And there’s another advantage. The ‘Soft’ connections will expose recruiters to real talent in whatever remote corner of the globe they may find it, now that geographical boundaries are no longer an impediment in tapping into talent.

The crisis response team had 1 single focus: ensure the safety of our employees by enabling them to fully work from the safety of their homes and families

Looking back at first quarter of the year when the pandemic state of emergency forced lock-down all across Europe, Genpact team’s response was to quickly move and adapt into a protective mode as to ensure safety of our people.

The crisis response team had 1 single focus: ensure the safety of our employees by enabling them to fully work from the safety of their homes and families. 8 months down the road, we are constantly adapting to what everyone calls the new normality. Although the journey which we have taken has been amazing, we are rapidly moving towards new ways of working and started to pilot what we call „Work from Anywhere”.  Our work-around has 3 dimensions to be kept in mind:

1. This model is the future, hence we need to experiment and continously improve it
2. The talent is no longer geographically bounded
3. We have to completely reimagine our workplace, to cater for all the new needs which employees are having

Now that the technology is in place, keeping people connected and emotionally present has been an ongoing concern for our businesses.

This is why we are constantly looking to secure and even enhance the value of strong workplace bonds as well as maintain our Employer of Choice Genpact Culture. With everyone interacting remotely, we’re making sure the culture is passed on and the current employee morale is mantained. All of this with the help of our AI Assistant, Amber, that conducts regular check-ups with our people. Another behaviour that we’re focusing on is showing flexibility to our employees by strongly supporting them to have clear cut offs between work and personal family time, so that everyone would be able to maintain a safe work-life balance.

Morevover, to help maintain a balance for everyone’s mental health we’ve introduced one of the top 2 world leader mindfulness Apps along with scheduled breaks during working hours and regular health webinars hosted by our Healthcare provider. We show our support by making space for social connections in the short term through virtual happy hours, birthday celebrations, and other unscheduled activities that previously happened face to face. We also know that in life it’s the little things we do that make a world-changing transformation, therefore, synchronously, we’re amplifying the power of our people to help build community resilience. We’re channeling their desire to support communities around the world by giving them access to a micro-volunteering platform that helps them find and serve the areas in greatest need.

With everyone enabled to donate at least one hour a week to their chosen initiatives, the collective micro-volunteering weight of more than 95,000 employees unlocks 45 years’ worth of impact every single week. That’s a lot of impact!