here’s nothing more American than baseball. So when MindTree Ltd., an Indian
IT outsourcer, transferred a contingent of software engineers from Bangalore to
New Jersey to work with a new client, one of their first outings was to Yankee Stadium.
MindTree, a $191 million company with close to 8,000 employees
who do work for clients all over the world, is a firm believer in cross-cultural
training. That includes exposing Indian expats to how people work and play in the
countries where they’re stationed, says Anish Philip, people function associate director
at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Warren, New Jersey.
Indian-based MindTree represents the flip side of the expat
training that U.S. companies give their own employees before overseas assignments.
But the actual training itself it pretty similar.
About 500 of MindTree’s employees—the company calls them "minds"—are
stationed in the U.S. at any given time working as project managers, sales representatives
and account troubleshooters for clients such as Microsoft and eBay.
Before leaving for an assignment, MindTree puts its Indian
expats through cultural training sessions run by fellow employees who have already
lived and worked in the U.S., covering everything from the documentation they’ll
need to the proper way to speak to people.
Employees get even more training once they’ve relocated. When
MindTree signed a $6 million contract with CIT, a financial services conglomerate
based in Livingston, New Jersey, about a year ago, the company moved about two dozen
people from Bangalore to work on the account.
Upon their arrival, the Indian employees went through a daylong
training session with their CIT counterparts. Then it was off to that Yankees game
for some bonding time with CIT staff. In addition to giving Indians workers a clue
about what makes U.S. workers tick, socializing "created involvement and engagement
in the team from both sides," Philip says.
MindTree’s cultural training process goes both ways. MindTree
encourages prospective clients to come to India "so they can get a feel of what
the company is all about," Philip says.
Americans hired to work in MindTree’s U.S. offices go to India
for a couple weeks so they feel like part of the team there. "If they don’t have
the connection to how Bangalore looks," Philip says, "they wouldn’t be doing their
jobs as passionately."
Workforce Management Online, November 2008 -- Register Now!
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