The Most Valuable Workplace, India’s Best Companies to Work – Fulcrum Digital
Under the leadership of the dynamic Rajesh Sinha, Fulcrum Digital is accelerating growth with well laid out strategies and motivated employee career development plans.
1) Key Employee Motivation Policies
At Fulcrum Digital, the employee welfare policy sets the foundation for employee happiness. This helps us foster positive company culture and enhance employee satisfaction. • Rewards & Recognition (R&R): We have a robust R&R policy focused on appreciating employees on various parameters, such as productivity, innovation, quality, and teamwork. • Internal Job Rotation: Instead of locking employees into a single job category with a specific career trajectory, we move employees through various positions within departments or teams. This is our way to motivate key employees, broaden their skill sets and, most importantly, hold onto them. Our policy is to adapt and adopt according to the company’s needs and individual interests. • Health & Wellness: We focus on employees’ overall well-being through awareness sessions, monetary/non-monetary benefits, frequent HR connect, on-staff counseling, and additional programs/initiatives. We also encourage employees’ mental well-being with sports and annual events, like Fulcrum Premier League (FPL) and Tandem (our annual cultural event). As additional benefits, we also provide COVID-19 insurance, reimbursements, allowances, and bonuses. Pre-COVID, we used to organize our annual event, Tandem globally. In 2021, we did a virtual event. Even the pandemic could not bring down our spirit. • Individual Career Development Plan (ICDP): ICDP is designed and implemented to facilitate career growth, helping employees align to the vision and strategies of the company. We have a well-defined L&D strategy for up-skilling & cross-skilling employees. • Appraisals – We believe that performance review is one of the best techniques for identifying improvement areas and taking conscious steps towards better performance.
2) How does the management ensure fair and equal treatment to its employees?
Fulcrum Digital is proud of its entrepreneurial culture. We run the company in a democratic philosophy that empowers each employee to climb the ladder fulfilling personal and organizational goals. We follow the EGG philosophy emphasizing Ethnicity, Gender, and Geographical diversity. Using this mantra, we have integrated American, European, Latin American, and Indian developers into one system under one platform to deliver better value to our customers. The equal employment opportunity is consistent with Fulcrum Digital’s commitment to enhancing diversity and inclusiveness. We are a much stronger team due to our diversity and ensure that we have policies and practices to promote inclusion. We are a right-sized organization with a mature delivery process, open culture, agile methodologies, and flexibility, along with a successful history of rapidly delivering tangible results. We have the right mix of systems, processes, and tools to integrate the global delivery model. With our internal pod structure, we have a new operational model that allows us to benchmark data better and provide a more targeted service to our clients. All our staff are mandated to add newer skills as a part of their KRAs, empowered to develop new skills, and participate in training courses for newer technology. We constantly focus on building a solid employee ecosystem that will stand the test of time. Everyone working here has a role to play in the company’s growth. We have a ‘Women in Tech’ forum with different perspectives and skillsets with diverse focus (dev, cybersecurity, ops, etc.) and a plethora of opportunities to excel. We have young leaders who tend to embrace change, which also means they typically have many ideas and are more optimistic about their objectives.
3) Suggest a few methods that ensure employee and management trust and admiration?
At Fulcrum Digital, trust and transparency are one of the organization’s core values, and it’s not just in words but effectively practiced. These are the defining principles for us, created through management’s credibility. Both customers and employees trust us and our culture to deliver what we promise. We have a strong sense of family and togetherness at Fulcrum Digital. As a global organization, we stay connected and have a deep passion for finding the right and most practical solutions together. • Our Global Town Hall meetings are a way for company management to meet and connect with the employees. • Let’s TALK is a candid conversation with our Chairman and employees. This forum gives employees a chance to showcase their other side of work and connect informally with our Chairman. • Each department has a dedicated HR Business Partner to understand everyone’s concerns relating to work, managerial concerns, career aspirations, and grievance handling as needed. • An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) aims to deal with any personal, relationship, family, and work concerns that may impact employees’ emotional well-being. • Tandem, our annual event, reflects on the yearly achievements and creates a robust strategy for the upcoming years. • We empower employees with career, growth, and learning opportunities so that they can better visualize their future with Fulcrum Digital.
4) What compensation package and other indicators are used to ensure the career growth of its people that benefits the company.
In addition to various standard components, we include additional benefits in employee compensation packages to attract talent and remain competitive in our industry. Some of the perks include: • Learning & development – we provide upskilling & cross-skilling through various platforms, such as Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and LYNDA. • mCARE and COVID 19 insurance aid employees who need financial support to deal with family medical emergencies. • Industry best practices such as variable pay/pay for performance and performance-based rewards for employees are instituted within our organization. • We have introduced a Long-Term Incentive (LTI) related to individual performance and the pod leader’s performance, helping to monitor our performance and adjust as needed. This is one of the best practices to deploy within our internal pod structure and get better results.
5) What are the topmost industry tools and techniques provided that ensure the maximum profitability for the company through employee productivity?
As a pioneer in the digital transformation industry, we foster a culture of innovation. We have innovation labs where we constantly bring new ideas from the market and introduce them within our organization, and that is the gateway that leads us to constant maturity. Our lab is focused on co-innovation with clients and managing the innovation process to leverage next-generation technologies to power up innovative ideas in a safe and risk free environment from ideation to industrialization. We have the industry’s top tools in the best employees’ hands, and all our systems are integrated to help us avoid working in silos. FulcrumOne has become the flagship product within our company by serving the farthest reaching pain point across our customers – reducing the software product development lifecycle and allowing a shortened time to market with higher quality solutions. Learning plays a significant role in Fulcrum Digital core values. We ensure that our employees are trained and reskilled for their goals, personal growth, and professional development. Fulcrum Digital provides education through various platforms, UDEMY, LYNDA, LinkedIn learning, in-house training, online training, and certifications based on project requirements. Over the past year, we have witnessed more than 60% utilization of the total investment in Learning and Development and more than 90% utilization of Leadership Development Programs (LDPs). Our focus is on platform-based learning programs such as portal-based workshops, knowledge sharing, technical classroom sessions, skill mapped certification, reskilling and upskilling programs. With AI-based capabilities, we have globally introduced a dedicated training platform. This creates a clearly defined growth path for our employees, including individual training regimens for each employee depending on their career development plans.
6) How well are the employees and management aligned with the objectives and vision of the company?
Fulcrum Digital has been on the right path for continuous success. We work with a 50-50 vision with 50% of offerings aligned with our software as a service model. The remaining 50% offering goes into creating next generation business platforms that are highly customizable and include the latest technologies. As the current situation demands innovation, we always seek new strategies and techniques to gain and retain a leading edge. Despite the pandemic, we have successfully added new logos with 40% growth year over year. We have partnered with numerous clients throughout the journey, and our business relationships nurtured into friendships. With our internal POD model and digital native mindset, we aim to be a thought leader within the industries we operate. Our centralized pod structure has clearly defined our strategies for three to five years. We aim to provide targeted service to our clients and measure each pod’s results with well-defined parameters, such as LTI and KPIs. Whether it is hiring, training, or onboarding processes, we ensure that employees know the organization’s vision from day one: • Teamwork, Collaboration & Fun – Foster a reputation of reliability and dependability • Growth – Challenge yourself every day & unleash your potential • Quality – Perfection isn’t a goal, it’s our standard • Trust, Transparency & Risk – Uphold fair practices & build trust • Innovation & Continuous Learning – Master a mindset of adaptive growth As a global company, our efforts revolve around giving back to society through our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities, from promoting education to environmental protection. We have also adopted a village in Maharashtra, India, through the Fulcrum Foundation that ensures the well-being of the families residing in the village.
7) Reasons why the company is truly valuable to shape lives and take care of aspirations?
As a niche player in digital transformation and machine learning, we possess an unmatched wealth of experience. Throughout our journey, we have collaborated with various clients, and our business relationships grew into friendships. Clients choose us because we deliver cost-effective solutions with rapid, low risk, fast, and easy deployment. Our baked-in agility allows us to evolve and provide increasing value to global clients. As a progressive company, we adapt and mature our practice, striving to become the leading digital transformation authority in the global marketplace. Our experience, employees, and enterprise drive our endless pursuit of innovation, propelling our company into emerging technologies and markets. Our culture manifests itself in being ethically reliable, honest, and inspiring trust by keeping our promises to customers, employees, and stakeholders. Profitably delivering services to customers and maintaining the best value is what we can do the best. Our primary focus revolves around providing great customer experience for our customers and our customers’ customers.
8) How threatened and secured do employees feel with the targets and objectives?
As an emerging organization, we continuously adapt and mature our practices towards digital transformation for our customers. We genuinely believe in our global delivery model, and our global footprint allows our employees to work in local time zones in parallel to our customers. We have seen significant growth year over year and expect to see more in the post-pandemic world as companies witness the value of digital transformation. We aspire to be a $100 million company by 2022 with 50% revenue from digital platforms and 50% through services. As the current volatile economy demands an innovative approach to developing products and services, we seek new strategies and techniques to gain and retain a leading edge. We have been on the right path for success in revenue goals with 40% growth year over year. We employ Key Responsibility Areas (KRAs) to ensure employees know their performance standards before joining the team. This serves as guidelines for the individual’s performance evaluations during their mid-year and end-of-year reviews adjusted according to employee role changes. With our newly formed, powerful, and centralized POD structure model, we aim to be a thought leader within the industries we operate and a market leader in at least two of our various digital platforms. Each POD operates independently to serve our client’s industry needs. Our future goals include acquiring a product/platform company to accelerate our offerings in 2022/23.
9) Innovative techniques and reward & recognition process in the company?
Fulcrum Digital always strives to foster a rewarding culture for our employees. In an era where artificial intelligence, automation, and machine learning are fast transforming manual operations, we focus on promising a sustainable future to new-age employees by moving away from role-based structures. By keeping a growth mindset at the heart of all decisions, we strategically step into the future of work and redesign our reward and recognition metrics to unlock future value. In addition to directly correlating employee engagement, rewards and recognition act as a catalyst for growth at our organization. From retention to increasing productivity, attracting new talent to business performance, the right strategy and appreciation improve employee experience and positively impact business success. In a world where employee expectations are constantly evolving, we continually push ourselves beyond the industry benchmarks to address compensation and benefits. We are committed to building positive, long-term relationships with employees to understand their needs and values. As part of this endeavor, the ‘Global Rewards & Recognition Program’ (R&R) has revamped various aspects like increased coverage, exclusivity, and objective recognition. SPOT Awards are introduced via PEER & Spot appreciation so that associates get better recognition for their contributions.
10) What is the feedback mechanism used by the company that sets goals and growth?
Fulcrum Digital has a robust feedback mechanism that helps us connect, align, and achieve our goals and helps to lead the organization towards growth. Shadow is an internal survey system that gauges the new-joinee onboarding experience. Responses to Shadow’s survey serve as critical insight in the path to making Fulcrum Digital a great place to work. We offer multiple avenues to ensure the well-being of our employees. As part of employee connect, we conduct internal and external employee surveys and the basis of the results. We set up meetings and discussions with the leadership team to plan the well-defined next steps to improve overall employee satisfaction. These discussions have been invaluable as “walk the talk” programs, employee appreciation week, career & succession plans, and employee engagement activities. All these inputs provide a significant base of first-hand information used by HR for policy review and updates. The Great Place to Work (GPTW) certification comes amid the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. This recognition establishes Fulcrum Digital as one of the organizations leading the way amid the pandemic, demonstrating care for their employees, their customers, and their communities during this difficult time. We have globally introduced a dedicated training platform with AI-based capabilities. This platform creates a clearly defined growth path for our employees, including individual training regimens for each employee depending on their individual career development plans. For our employees to perform their Key Responsibility Areas (KRAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), this training platform creates customized skills and career development plans to empower them to access, monitor, and mature their skills.
