What does Vodafone do to foster a digital mindset in employees
Facts box:
Company Name: Vodafone India
Established: 1994
Total number of employees: Over 13,000
HQ: Mumbai, Maharashtra
For one of India’s largest telecom service provider, Vodafone’s employer brand proposition ‘Connecting everybody to live a better today and build a better tomorrow’ not only reflects in what the company does for its customers but also reflects in everything the company does for its employees — from attracting, developing, retaining the talent, to recognizing them alongside promoting their wellbeing.
With a periodic measurement of employee engagement through the annual Global Vodafone People Survey, the company gives employees an opportunity to listen to what people are saying about the organization, leadership, and managers. It gives Vodafone an opportunity to build and sustain on company’s strengths and at the same time also tells about the inhibitors to high engagement levels.
“The Vodafone Way”, a program designed to build awareness, internalize and operationalize Vodafone’s mission and value system charts out a consistent way of working for everyone at Vodafone and is part of all employees’ performance objectives. Talent and leadership development is one of Vodafone’s key pillars of business success. The company has tiered Leadership Development Programs, journeys that focus on individual assessment and development. The program ‘INSPIRE’ is designed to accelerate the progress of high-potential managers into senior leadership roles and offers a combination of learning programs, executive coaching and mentoring from senior Vodafone leaders over a period of 18 months. The company has also launched “BOLT Red” program, a customized development journey aimed to equip high potential mid-level women employees to transition into expanded roles.
Vodafone has a relentless focus on capability development and inculcating a digital way of thinking. The company has started leveraging technology to help employees adopt data analysis and design thinking to their everyday job.
Vodafone uses HireVue, an AI tool, to enhance the ease and efficiency of the acquisition process and for identifying the right skills and traits for the right role.
It also conducts Digital Workshops wherein employees design applications, the best of which are funded to be developed and deployed further. This enables employees to be digitally savvy and this helps them rethink how they do their work.
The introduction of digital hiring, focusing on diversity, tiered focused leadership development and working towards activating a digital mindset have been some of the bigger people strategies over the last year at Vodafone, which enables it to become competitive and future fit. Adoption of technology in HR through data science and AI and leveraging its objectivity has improved the recruitment process while the company’s attempts to foster a digital mindset have made the organization visibly more efficient.