ACT Builds Up Talent Pool For Growth

ATRIA CONVERGENCE TECHNOLOGIES (ACT Fibernet), with 7,500 employees, is among India’s largest optic fibre-focused, wired broadband service provider with 2.14 million subscribers. Unlike Reliance Jio (8.33 million) and Bharti Airtel (6.12 million), which have fixed broadband subscribers nationally, ACT Fibernet offers services largely in south India, focusing on Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Delhi, with speeds ranging from 50 mbps to 1 gbps. It recently expanded to Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

ACT Fibernet is keeping employees connected and engaged through various means. One example is the social collaboration platform, Workplaces by Facebook, which makes it possible for the company to pass on any message to employees, no matter where they are.

To manage and retain talent, it has a Talent Review Planning Process where the leadership team (comprising 30-35 people) spends seven days to go through the entire talent pool in the organisation. “A lot of effort goes into understanding the talent capability and the potential of the team,” says Shefali Mohapatra, chief people officer, ACT Fibernet. The thinking is that the enterprise’s focus should shift from the present to the future.

The other area ACT Fibernet has focused on is building a talent pool within the enterprise. Employees undergo 7.5 days of learning and development, which involves training them on gap areas. This helps build skills that they will need to navigate the future and is critical to their growth. The whole idea is to grow people from within the talent pool for larger roles in future. That has led to higher retention of people within the company.

ACT Fibernet believes employees will climb mountains if they find purpose in what they do. Internal communication is very important and provides employees the opportunity to connect with senior management. Future-proofing also means developing the ability to adapt to changes. Hence, innovation is a big focus area. IDEAFEST, a platform for employees across functions to test out ideas and promote innovation, encourages them to develop their ideas on product innovation, process innovation and service innovation. The platform is open to all employees.

Another area that gets attention is performance. It involves goal-setting at the beginning of the fiscal followed by a mid-year review and an annual review. For this, each group of employees sets goals and achievements.

ACT Fibernet also works on sustainability in partnership with ESG experts. Among the key focus areas in ESG are e-waste disposal and minimal usage of cable.