Web Excl: Nasscom to exhort IT employees to do social work too

Software body Nasscom is readying itself to cajole the sector's estimated 2.2 million IT employees to work voluntarily in their spare time and on weekends for socially uplifting tasks; become 'green warriors' and take the message of creating a clean and green environment beyond the workplace; and become examples of ethical and best practices in the industry.

Towards the first end, Nasscom is launching a website in July wherein any IT employee can login, search and identify the social cause s/he wants to work on, and a non-government organisation (NGO) close to his/her location, and volunteer time for the cause.

"We are tying up the backend of this database and it should be up by July. So far, we have partnered with 75 NGOs in 13 states. The database is such that we can also give reports about the volunteers to their respective companies. It may create goodwill since the companies treat it as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) tasks," says Aruna Ramanathan, vice-president, Nasscom Foundation (NF)."There are many IT employees who want to work in schools or teach in villages when they have time. This is our way of linking up with NGOs and using the employees' energies for other socially-contributing tasks too," says Nasscom President, Som Mittal (also a trustee of NF).

As for IT employees becoming 'green warriors', Mittal said the body has laid out a three-point agenda: Make the IT industry adopt green technologies and practices; help other industries become greener using IT; and transform the IT-BPO sector’s employees into green crusaders.

For instance, companies now have "green" campuses - green buildings, use energy-efficient data centres and power-efficient PCs, and have good e-waste management policies. IT will have a play in implementing smart grids, smart meters that could help monitor electricity consumption in real time, in intelligent transport systems. Solutions that firms can market under the green IT category include cloud computing, video-conferencing, Web-conferencing, motion and heat detection sensors.

On the third front - ethics and best practices - "this is a work in progress," says Mittal. In February, Nasscom had announced the setting up of a Corporate Governance and Ethics Committee (as an answer to the Satyam scandal), headed by N R Narayana Murthy. The committee, inter alia, will focus on building awareness and advocacy; sharing best practices on corporate governance; sharpening and emphasising the existing code of ethics, values and corporate code of conduct for industry and redrafting some of the elements, based on the changes required; creating a ‘model set of financial information disclosures’; developing and creating awareness about the best practices to be followed by the Board, audit committees and independent directors of organisations; and creating awareness across various levels of management and encourage the formulation and strengthening of a whistle-blower policy.

The IT industry has warmed up to these moves. "Nasscom being a nodal agency is able to channelise its power to reach out the right kind of NGOs which would have been otherwise difficult to find out in the individual level. While there is no dearth of people in the IT industry who are in the various stages of their career and getting motivated to contribute for the cause of the society, finding the right NGO was a great challenge for them. This is going to be solved because of the Nasscom initiatives," says Pratik Kumar, executive vice president, HR, Wipro Limited.

Raja Shanmugam, CEO of MindTree Foundation, concurs: "This move by Nasscom would definitely help. Many people look for opportunities to contribute back to the society, but many of them are not sure how and where to start. Being driven by Nasscom, this will not only give visibility to such people, but this will give them the confidence in dealing with these organisations (NGOs) as Nasscom definitely will do a certain level of background check before short-listing the NGOs."

Most IT firms including Infosys, Wipro and MindTree have taken steps to encourage their employees to work with NGOs on voluntary basis, as a part of their CSR initiatives. IT major Infosys said they had earlier come out with a scheme after interaction with various NGOs as per which employees who are interested to work with the NGOs were encouraged to do so for a temporary period.

Wipro had taken its own initiatives as per which the company encourages its employees to take sabbatical and work with the Azim Premji Foundation. The company has also launched its own initiative called 'Wipro Cares', and encourages the employees to volunteer and spearhead various programmes being undertaken as a part of Wipro Cares in areas of education, community and social development. "Their (our employees') involvement is not just in terms of money and time, but these employees spearhead many of the campaigns launched as a part of the programme," says Pratik Kumar.

In August last year, MindTree had launched its own not-for-profit organisation MindTree Foundation with an aim of encouraging its employees in channelising their energy and concentration in social service activities, on voluntary basis. MindTree Foundation Raja Shanmugam says while many 'MindTree Minds' (employees) are already indulged in various social activities, "we are now trying to broadbase the programme by increasing the level of participation from our employees. We are also providing them with the platform and guidance to step out and involve themselves in volunteering activities."

Unites, the union for IT/ITeS workers, however, says the timing of such move by Nasscom is not appropriate as the IT sector is busy laying off thousands of people as a cost cutting measures citing global meltdown. "It's a good approach, but IT companies should not use this as a tool to keep their bench (unutilised human resources) engaged, by paying them a paltry sum. Secondly, NGO work is also not that simple and it has lot of challenges. You can't take fish out of water and put them in ocean without proper counselling," said Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of Unites. He said the doors of their respective employers should always be open to welcome them back whenever they feel frustrated with their NGO assignments.

Ramanathan counters: "This is a purely voluntary task. Besides, the trigger for this move was a dip-stick survey we conducted late last year wherein scores of IT employees asked for such a facility. One should not read too much into the timing of the launch."