a) DST Worldwide Services is a Wholly-owned subsidiary of DST Systems, Inc., (Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, DST is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: DST)). DST Worldwide Services offers wide range of information technology, business process outsourcing and consulting services to its customers and currently has 1800 plus associates strategically spread across US, India and Thailand. DST Worldwide Services is governed by DST Systems policies and security standards and is also equipped with leading Industry certifications such as SSAE 16, ISO 27001 CMMI, HIPAA and Transfer Agent.
For more information on DST Worldwide Services please visit: www.dstworldwideservices.com.
b) The people strategy of DSTWS, India approaches Associate delight from three perspectives:
A. Policies and Practices
B. Approachability
C. Aspiration enabling coupled with organizational goals.
In everyday terms, we believe that policies and practices serve two important stakeholders, the associates and through them, the customers. So to strengthen this very important component of Associate delight, DSTWS, India adopted multiple initiatives, a few of them being.
PCMM: being a young organization, we realized that we needed a benchmark to go with and so PCMM Level 3 it was, starting the journey in 2009, we were successfully assessed by QAI at PCMM Level 3 in Aug, 2011. We made sure that this journey wasn’t just compliance, it was growth. Automated facilitation (all round performance, mentoring, growth opportunities), new processes (Competencydevelopment) and personal attention (personalmeetings) – all of these three weren’t just strengthened but then reinforced through the tenets of the assessment and have been kept strong ever since.
Empowerment: We truly believed that policies which don’t have the associates’ backing are bound to be revisited, so a committee covering a cross section of associates was formed which looks at and approves all non confidential polices of DSTWS, India. Again, the buy-in has been extraordinary.
Then came approachability, the advantage the firm had was that in both its divisions, all the managers were approachable to the associates and they interestingly continue to do so. The great positive of that has been that attrition is one of the lowest in the Industry (both in IT and BPO) and we’ve got a large population of our associate group which has spent more than 5 years in DSTWS, India.
Finally, continuous efforts are being made to map Aspirations of associates, these largely get divided as 2 major requirements (excluding compensation which is an ongoing effort):
a. Building capability – and this is where the associates have benefitted greatly, from our exception certification program (internal and external) and the mentoring initiatives, we’ve not just said it but we’ve demonstrated that we encourage and reward those who take the initiative to build competency. The (Skill & Knowledge, Performance, Experience and Certification) SPEC program identified by DSTWS, India actually makes sure that those who contribute to building or developing skills standout in the organization. Monetary and non-monetary incentivization is done.
b. Providing opportunities – having had the opportunity to do good technology and BPO work, the first preference for new opportunities both local and overseas by design is for those within the organization, a very strong hand over program has enabled smooth meeting of aspirations of associates and organizational needs.