She
has been involved in the re-engineering of all HR processes, post the HP and
Agilent Technologies split. She has successfully taken care of various HR
acquisitions, which have happened and are happening in Agilent Technologies,
since the last five years.
What is Agilent’s policy of recruiting new employees?
Agilent in India has four business lines and infrastructure functions
comprising of HR, finance, IT and workplace services. For a business to be able
to hire people, there is a need to have a business justification. The majority
of our hiring would be technical graduates, since Agilent is a high-tech
company.
Due
to the US slowdown, quite a lot of Indians are returning back home. Do you think
they have ample opportunities in India?
India is still seen as a higher value-added knowledge economy. So, while the
Indian software professionals may have had to return home, many of the US
companies are increasing their offshore operations in India for economic
advantage.
What steps is Agilent taking to face the US slowdown?
This has not yet impacted our businesses. However, because of the fact that
the magnitude of the economic slowdown cannot be predicted with any certainty,
our businesses are taking a look at cost structure without losing employees.
E.g. every employee in Agilent worldwide has taken a 10 percent salary cut.
What is the reaction of employees?
There is complete consensus in the belief that it is much better that we all
take a 10 percent salary cut rather than have 10 percent of our colleagues lose
their jobs, as is happening in a number of other companies.
How is the company planning to train its manpower to meet the future
challenges?
Every employee has a development plan in place, which ties both the current
and future business objectives, with an employee’s short-term and long-term
goals. Whatever assistance Agilent needs to provide, in this respect, is
provided either through training, mentoring, shadowing, stretch goals or
reading.
What are the other strategies to cope with the present scenario?
Agilent’s businesses are concentrating on providing value-added services to
its customers, focusing on getting new customers, examining whether acquisitions
can get us a more complete product portfolio and continuing R&D investment
at 12 percent of the total revenue.
What are the future plans of Agilent?
A. Agilent is aiming for a 30-40 percent growth and make ourselves
increasingly easy to do business with.