HCL Technologies forms Global Centres of Excellence to create jobs and emphasize social responsibility
Published 11:58 am Friday, January 27, 2012
HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider that has a Collaborative Engineering Hub in Redmond, has underlined its position as a socially responsible business by announcing a series of initiatives around building Global Centres of Excellence (GCoE) with the aim of creating 10,000 jobs in United States and Europe in the next five years.
In the context of a rapidly changing world, the expectation from businesses is evolving to balance pursuits of profit with social and individual imperatives in order to create a sustainable growth model. HCL, through its work around sustainability and individual empowerment premised on its “Employees First, Customer Second” philosophy, has created many successful working models in this direction.
It is now taking those efforts to the next level by positively impacting communities through local job creation and development of an ecosystem to support and encourage innovation. This initiative inverts some fundamental operational assumptions of the industry HCL operates in by changing the prevalent dynamics around cost, skill base and innovation.
“As our unique employees-first culture has continued to grow and evolve, we’ve seen more and more HCL employees expressing the desire to see a truly socially responsible business model,” said Vineet Nayar, vice chairman and chief executive officer. “Clearly, the need of the hour is growth and employment and we believe that this initiative will create unique business value for HCL while generating sustainable employment in local economies for years to come. It will need significant collaboration of all stakeholders, however we do believe that it can be done and we are committed to backing this program with all our resources and best intent.”
Based on this belief, HCL has embarked on a series of initiatives led by its investments in building GCoEs, running dedicated recruitment and training programs for college graduates and providing platforms for developing IT skill pool in local communities through collaboration with anchor customers and universities.
In the months ahead, HCL will work with 12 universities to offer a six-month elective course — as well as workshops on technology and management — and encourage innovation through contests such as the HCL-M-Prize, created in association with Prof. Gary Hamel’s MIX.
HCL’s technology partners will also join hands in this initiative to provide training in upcoming technologies so that the talent deficit in these areas gets addressed. The company is working closely with government agencies to enlist their support in developing these ecosystems.
A pilot program started on these lines across five HCL centers in U.S. and Europe — Seattle and Cary, N. C. in the United States, Helsinki in Finland, Krakow in Poland and Dublin in Ireland — has already shown early signs of success.
