VCTI
Bengalaru, India
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Editor’s Summary: VCTI, is a company that prioritizes its employees’ welfare and development, positioning itself as an “Employee First” organization. It provides opportunities for skill enhancement and training programs across all organizational levels, with a particular focus on supporting women in their workforce. Job rotation and mentorship programs are in place, enabling exposure to various aspects of the business. VCTI upholds its commitment to diversity by creating opportunities for people with disabilities. It measures employee satisfaction using formal 360 Reviews, skip-level meetings, and satisfaction surveys. The company supports a balanced work/life environment through flexible work-from-home policies, generous paid time off, and comp time policies. Additional perks include food services, discounts at hotels, and yoga/Zumba classes. Employees are recognized and empowered to propose and implement innovative ideas. VCTI prioritizes the well-being of its employees, offering extended health insurance and hosting regular health talks. VCTI provides a unique work environment for its employees to learn a broad range of skills and develop in their careers. |
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Intro: At VCTI, we often say that we are an “Employee First” company – and that is more than just an empty saying. We make business decisions with our employees’ health, well-being, and career advancement in mind. We also work with some of the largest multinational corporations in the world, giving our teams the opportunity to work on state-of-the-art technologies. |
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Impact statements
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Advancement Opportunities:
Because we work with the world’s largest multinational corporations, skill enhancement is critical for our team. VCTI sponsors skill enhancement training programs at every level of the organization – from entry-level to experienced engineers. Enrollment in training programs is driven both my management, who identifies employees that are good candidates for skill enhancement, and by the employees themselves. If they identify a skill they would like to master to help them in their work, the company will pay for the training.
We are particularly proud of our focus on developing the skills of women in our organization. The technology industry average for women working as engineers in technology companies is 24 percent. At VCTI, more than a third of our engineers are women. We recruit and retain them by providing these skill building opportunities.
Training Opportunities:
VCTI is unique in that we sell both technology products and services. We offer internal job rotation, allowing employees to work both within our product and services teams so they get access to and understand both offerings. We align job rotations with the employees’ interests and goals so they are exposed to parts of our business that will help them grow in their career aspirations. We pair this with mentoring programs to drive employee success.
Community service/charitable causes:
Building on our experience bringing in and empowering employees with special needs, we are building out a program that will place employees with disabilities – such as blindness – at customer sites. We are committed to offering opportunity to a diverse work force, and making this commitment part of our company culture.
Measuring satisfaction:
We regularly undertake skip-level meetings and employee satisfaction surveys, but the most powerful tool we use are formal 360 Reviews run by an outside firm. This has been very effective in raising issues, helping management to better understand the perspective of their teams, and empowering and motivating teams to understand that the organization values their contributions and takes their job satisfaction seriously.
Our physical space is designed to encourage social interaction, the ability to step away from work to recharge and connect with other team members, and to encourage a culture of fun and open communication. Our campus features a cafeteria, library and play area to encourage team bonding and downtime.
Work/Life:
We offer a generous and flexible work-from-home policy, have a generous comp time policy that we encourage employees to use for time off to recharge, and provide pick-up and drop-off service to and from the office.
VCTI offers generous PTO days per year, plus many Public Holidays.
In addition, we offer generous comp time. Many of our employees in India work on US time, on weekends, and during holidays. We encourage them to take comp time off to account for this work. If they are unable to take all the comp time they have earned, we will pay for the for the time, but we encourage them to take the time to recharge. Our corporate culture values time off as we believe it helps our teams to perform at a higher level.
Perks:
We offer food/meals/pantry service in the office, special discounts at premier five-star hotels, yoga and Zumba classes.
Fun:
We have a play area in the office with games – Carrom and Foosball – and also host an annual Sports Day for the office. In addition, we offer yoga and Zumba classes in the office.
How corporate vision is communicated:
Company goals are communicated regularly and explicitly with our employees – and team goals are aligned to overall company goals, so that every member of every team is clear on the corporate vision and can see that their work is directly related to helping the company to succeed. To help encourage this, the company has a quarterly company-wide meeting with the CEO and the rest of the executive team where company performance and corporate goals are openly shared and discussed.
Empowering employees:
The entire organization is encouraged to be open to new ways of doing things, and we regularly recognize employees for good decisions and creative solutions. In our most recent company-wide operations call, an employee suggested a new idea to our CEO and was tasked, on the call, with managing the implementation of their creative idea.
In addition to formal and informal peer mentoring programs, which empower our teams to develop plans for innovating the ways we do things, we have an executive management team open door policy that allows anyone to bring ideas to any member of the executive team – and people do take advantage of it. Employees at any level can bring an idea to management and are supported in implementing it. For example, an engineer working on our managed services offering recently brought to management the idea of using AI to automate part of the solution, which was adopted and changed the product roadmap.
VCTI has a number of mechanisms for recognizing employees – including quarterly rewards, Manager Awards, and Certificate of Achievement Awards. These are given out at company meetings and throughout the year during employee gatherings. They are also communicated via the company’s internal communications portal, “V-Connect”.
Ensuring well-being:
Employee wellness is a key priority for the company. As a result, we extend health insurance benefits to the extended families of employees – including aging parents. We hold monthly Health Talk sessions in the office, with various professionals speaking about physical and emotional health issues. And we encourage active lifestyles both through our annual Sports Day and regular Yoga and Zumba sessions in the office.
VCTI believes that our success begins with our employees’ health and wellness – as a result, all of our business decisions are made with employee impacts in mind.
During COVID, we undertook a number of initiatives to help employees cope, including:
- COVID Special Leaves, allowing people to take time to care for family members who had been diagnosed with COVID
- Advance salary support for employees needing to take care of family members affected by COVID
- Company-funded COVID health insurance that covered healthcare expenses for any COVID incident for any member of an employee’s family, including parents
- Special vaccine clinics arranged for our employees with a local hospital system so they and their families could get the vaccine when it was difficult to get an appointment
- Sponsoring education funds for children of employees who lost their lives due to COVID
| Closing company statements:
We sit in a unique position, especially in Bangalore where most of our engineering team is located. Our employees have the opportunity to work on Professional Services and/or Products. This provides an opportunity to learn a broad range of skills and undertake diverse work experiences that help them develop in their careers. We like to say, “VCTI gives you a springboard. How far would you like to go?” |
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