In the IT industry, there is a huge demand for talent, which is fairly niche, complex and hard to come by. At Intel India itself, over 80 percent of the 7,000 employees are engaged in pure R&D programs, and they make contributions in critical areas such as Big Data, Internet of Things and wearables. 

So come this year, we, at Intel, will continue to focus our energies on building on our already huge talent base, and alongside also encourage and enable the new talent that is coming in to be integrated with the demanding and fast-paced Intel culture. 

Additions to the talent base

Going into 2016, we want to increase our employee base in India; and to get the right talent, we are going to put a lot more focus into our talent mapping and our understanding of the external ecosystem. Our focus is on further leveraging market intelligence in our sourcing model, and strengthening our internal processes to capture and manage demand.

Diversity is another important area on our agenda and we would want to take it to the next level this year. Our Home to Office (H2O) program was very successful in 2015, wherein we brought women, who had taken career breaks, back to work, and we want to build on this going in 2016.  

Enhancing our employer value proposition, both internally and externally is also going to be very important. Building our academic relations with campuses is a key component of our strategy and we want to engage stronger and deeper with the higher education institutes from a research point on key subject areas such as Big Data, Analytics, sensors, security, etc. 

Building the existing talent-base

Enabling our talent to innovate and meet or beat our innovation and engineering milestones will be critical; as we operate in a very competitive technology industry.  To accelerate innovation in the organization, we have some key initiatives and we are planning to build on them:

• Intel Fellow in Residence: At Intel, the most senior level that a technologist can achieve is that of a ‘Senior Intel Fellow’. We have Intel Fellows mostly in the US, and we aspire to see an Intel Fellow in India as well. As part of the ‘Fellow in residence’ program, an Intel Fellow from the corporate works closely with technologists in India towards deepening their technical contributions. The Intel Fellow in Residence makes investments in terms of visits to India and working closely with the technical community. The endeavor is to enhance the visibility and competency of that community and overall technical leadership of the organization.
  
  
• Intel India Maker Lab: Launched in August 2015 at our campus in Bengaluru, Maker Lab is aimed at boosting product innovation and enhance maker capability for start-ups in India and our employees across Internet of Things, Mobile Devices and other compute-focused domains.  Employees are encouraged to use the Maker Lab facility to turn their ideas into innovative hardware products and solutions.
  
  

Building managerial capability

Other than focusing on our technical workforce that constitutes over 90 percent of our employee base, we are also aiming to build managerial capability in all managers and leaders by introducing a neuroscience-based training approach, known as LEAD (Leadership Expectations & Disciplines) Architecture. LEAD is a 9-month development journey that includes both immersive in-person and virtual supplemental learning events. The approach of neuroscience is to create a simple, scalable management/leadership curriculum based on common expectations and a consistent architecture that makes it memorable, coherent, intuitive and scalable, designed and delivered in partnership with Neuro Leadership Institute and Intel leaders. By investing in all our managers/leaders through this neuroscience approach, we intend to increase trust and encourage development, build a more inclusive environment; and improve business performance.