The COVID-19 crisis, along with world political strife and the mass job exodus, has brought about never-before-seen hurdles for HR teams across the globe. Companies are finding it tough to bring in, keep, and grow talent in this fast-changing scenario. In this climate, Hexaware Technologies, a tech consultancy firm based out of Navi Mumbai, is taking a gutsy step to grow its business and bring on board more than 8,000 workers.
Rajesh Balasubramanian, Executive Vice President & Global Head – Talent Supply Chain at Hexaware, thinks these challenges offer special chances to change. Hexaware’s big growth plan covering many areas like India, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Poland, and the United Kingdom, tries to boost the company’s skills and set it up to handle the tech industry’s increasing needs.
“The HR industry and talent management scene are changing faster than ever,” Balasubramanian notes. “World events have created an unstable environment, and people remain our most valuable assets. These shake-ups have a direct impact on them. By growing our operations and putting money into hiring talent, we are taking steps to tackle these issues and set up Hexaware for success in the long run.”
A long-term plan in shaky times
With recent votes in over 40 countries making world politics more complex, groups around the globe are taking a fresh look at how they manage their workforce. Hexaware has chosen to focus more on tech breakthroughs in AI that can create content, while still keeping people at the heart of their growth plan.
What makes this company’s growth plan stand out is its careful approach to expansion. “We don’t just hire on a whim,” Balasubramanian stresses. “We create a projection at the start of each year, and our hiring has matched those projections.”
This forward-thinking strategy has helped Hexaware steer clear of the knee-jerk hiring that’s led to job cuts at other tech firms. Instead, the company has zeroed in on growth backed by big investments to develop its staff. A key example is their team-up with upGrad Enterprise to train more than 100 employees to become Gen AI architects.
Reshaping expertise in the AI era
The usual ways of measuring expertise are causing a revolution in this fast-changing tech scene. “The time needed to get good at new technologies has gotten much shorter,” Balasubramanian points out. “While it used to take years to get your head around a new thing like smartphones now you can become a pro in just a few days.”
This speedup has big effects on hiring and checking skills. Instead of just looking at how long someone’s worked, Hexaware is now focusing on how well people can adapt and learn. “If a tech’s main aim is to get rid of jobs, it’s not being used right,” Balasubramanian says. “Gen AI is making more chances. It boosts productivity and leads to better results for customers, but it also needs more skilled workers to handle these new ways of using it.”
Building for the future
The company’s strategy to grow in different places shows they think things through. Instead of spreading their resources too thin, Hexaware picked a few cities to focus on. This helps them build strong ties with communities and grow. It fits with their aim to make things personal – something Balasubramanian compares to a part in “Minority Report,” where tech responds to each person.
But there are still problems with getting people to use new tech. While things like AI chatbots could make work easier, people often take time to start using them. “It’s also hard to make these technologies work for more people,” Balasubramanian says. “As we hire more workers, we need more people to use these technologies.”
Yet Hexaware’s vision stays clear: a balanced approach that uses technology while keeping the human touch in HR. As Balasubramanian says, “We don’t live in the past—we’re looking ahead to where we want to be 35 years from now.”