Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) by Prospective Employees

What is your Work-From-Home policy?

Pandemic has allowed us to leverage the talent pool across India (and in few cases, globally). Some of our employees plan to permanently work from home, as agreed at the time of hiring them. We are open to provide you that option. Please discuss this and clarify with your recruiter at the time of hiring itself.

For others, the time of writing this, office space is available & operational at Pune. We also have offices at Bangalore and Mumbai. Individuals and teams can plan to work from office based on their convenience. But everyone’s default mode is work from home. We are encouraging the entire project team (including outstation people) to operate from office for 2 days every quarter. The periodic physical presence helps build teamwork and comradery to be productive on the Teams calls.

In the longer term, just like rest of the industry, hybrid is the most likely scenario.

How are you managing Hybrid work?

As mentioned in the last response, we are promoting and facilitating periodic in-person interactions while majority of the work conducted online, working from home. Delivery teams are allocated budgets to plan for outstation people to travel to Pune for couple of days, once a quarter.

What tools you are using for WFH or Hybrid working?

We are extensively using the Modern Workplace tools from Microsoft. Apart from Teams, Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dynamics and Azure DevOps are the primary tools being used for collaboration.

By when do you plan to start full Work From Office?

Some of us will continue to work from home permanently. For others, there is no plan for full Work-From-Office in foreseeable future.

Do you mandate video calls or it’s OK to be on audio calls only?
All our interview discussions are 100% video calls. For subsequent work calls, being on video is encouraged, but not mandated. Usually, our people are on video calls during 1-on-1 interactions and when speaking in a group call.

This section is applicable to Employees on India payroll*

How many leaves do you provide?

Leaves:

• Casual Leaves: 6 per year (0.5 leave accrued at the end of every month)
• Medical Leaves: 6 per year (0.5 leave accrued at the end of every month)
• Privilege Leaves: 9 per year (0.75 leave accrued at the end of every month)
• Maternity Leaves: up to 26 weeks for first 2 child births (can starts 8 weeks before expected delivery date)
• Paternity Leaves: 5 days for first 2 child births (within 4 weeks after childbirth)
  Covid Vaccination Leaves: 1 day per vaccine including the 3rd booster dose
• Leave without pay: Max 30 continuous, max 90 in calendar year

Holidays:

• Weekly Offs: every Saturday and Sunday
• General Holidays: 10 per year (8 fixed and 2 floating/restricted)

After joining, how soon can I request vacation time?

All leaves expect leave without pay can be availabled as soon as the leave policy described above permits (means after the end of first month).

In general, leave without pay can be availed only after completing 1 full year of service. However exception can be made for specific cases, depending on the purpose and severity of the cause of leave.

Do you provide insurance benefits?

Yes.

Rs. 5 lakhs family floater (employee + spouse + 2 Kids)
2 Parents can be covered with annual contribution of Rs. 12,500 (coverage amount increases to Rs. 10 lakhs) for the family
Personal Accident Insurance Cover (covered for amount twice the annual salary)

Apart from salary, what other perks and benefits can I expect?

Leaves (paid time off)
Medical Insurance
Employee Provident Fund contribution by employer equivalent to employee’s contribution (up to 12% of basic)
Gratuity benefits as per applicable Indian Laws

Does the company do lay-offs?

We have not done any bulk lay-offs ever in our history.

In the very few performance-related or fitment-related involuntary separations, we provide sufficient notice and support to the employee to help him/her find alternate assignments.

What are the official work timings?

For employees and associates based at India, its flexible for 9 hours of work between 9 AM and 9 PM IST.

11 AM IST to 8 PM IST is the most common work timing for delivery teams. For support teams (like HR, Accounts, Infra etc.), 10 AM IST to 7 PM IST is more common.

What are the unofficial, but usual work timings?

At India, usual work timings are 11 AM to 8 PM IST. Depending on the specific project and customer location, some people are seen active till 10 PM IST. Very few geekies are seen awake and active much longer, out of their own choice.

Our employee’s and associate’s wellbeing are very important for us. There is a team continuously promoting “work-life harmony” and educating employees as well as managers on managing it proactively for themselves and their teams.

Do you expect employees to do overtime?

Not in the normal course of business.

Critical project situations, demanding stretch, are uncommon and infrequent (not more than once a quarter, lasting couple of days).

What is your work culture like?

Flexible, Open, Learning, Enabling

These are the words most frequently used by our people to describe our work culture.

How is the work-life balance in your company?

Instead of work-life balance, we focus on helping employees create work-life harmony.

Balance indicates a 0-1 game in which if one aspect goes up, other aspect goes down in the same ratio. We attempt to maximize both and create a harmony between the two.

What are the avenues for social gatherings and celebrations in your company?

Currently, most gatherings and celebrations are virtual. But we have started meeting physically, in project teams every quarter.

Some of the virtual gatherings are:

• Monthly All Hands meetings
• Quarterly Townhalls (open house)
• Frequent Fun Fridays
• Training programs
• Team organized outings (physical)

What is your appraisal cycle?

Annual, every January.

What was the % increment in the last appraisal cycle?

It ranges between 3% to more than 50%. 7 to 22% is the most common range.

How do you promote employee growth within the organization?

Firstly, we feel very proud of our flexible and open culture that lays the right foundation for every employee to grow and flourish. We support this with our people processes that encourage growth:

• Identifying your strengths and playing by your strengths is a big driver in our project allocation process
• Periodic project rotation is used actively to help you grow in depth as well as width of your skill set
• Half yearly performance discussion are Assessments, not Appraisals. We keep the discussion future oriented. We don’t judge you. Instead, we assess the time that went by.
• We also provide active encouragement, time and learning resources for relevant Certifications
• Many, many employee engagement activities are organized and driven by employees with limited or no intervention from management.
• Last, but not the least, formally organized training sessions include a combination of nominations and volunteer participation.
  

  What are your training programs?

  Currently, formally organized training programs are focused on soft skills. KSS (knowledge sharing sessions) are employee-organized events.

We are also running a series of initiatives that we call Boost Initiatives. These include sessions and learning on Cloud Architecture, Project Processes and Change Management.

What are your future projects and skillset requirements?

We are committed to be the trusted partner of our customers in their cloud & digital transformation journey. Future projects and skillsets are expected to be around cloud technologies in general and Microsoft Azure Cloud in particular. We cover all aspects on digital transformation from infra to application development to data insights.

Is this a permanent position or contract?

Almost all our positions are permanent on-roll positions. If it’s a contract position, your recruiter will inform you about it.

Is this position for in-house project or C2H for a client?

We are an ISV and deploy our people on customer projects. If it’s one of the very few Contract-to-Hire positions, your recruiter will inform you about it.

What project I will work on? Client, Team Size, Skillset required etc.?

A large part of our hiring is to service our growth. Specific project allocation gets decided after you on-board. We encourage you to enquire from your recruiter if a specific project or client assignment has been identified for you.

Do you provide onsite opportunities?

Few of our employees have travelled to client location for short periods (1 to 3 months). We have also processed very few L1 and H1 visas.

However, we are predominantly an offshore service provider. If onsite opportunities are important of you, we are not the best employer to target.

Are you a product company or service company or staffing?

We are a Services company.

What is the size of your company?

At the time of writing this, Accion labs is ~ 5,000 people across more than 12 development centers around the globe.

Motifworks is the Microsoft Cloud Center of Excellence with ~ 180 people at India and ~ 30 people state-side,

What is your relationship with Accion Labs?

Motifworks is a 100% subsidiary of Accion Labs.

Did you achieve your business targets last year?

Yes.

I have seen some negative reviews about your company in social media!
Yes, we have also seen those. These are important pieces of information that provide us perspective on what and how people think about us. We learn of all types of inputs, praising or critical, and endeavor to keep improving ourselves.

What are your biggest challenges right now?

A large part of our work is at the bleeding edge of technology. Continuous learning and being able to keep pace with the rapidly evolving cloud technologies is a big focus. Our customers expect the latest and the greatest solutions from us.

Adapting the organizational dynamics, processes and practices to the post-pandemic scenario is also a big focus.

Continuing to attract and retain the best talent (optimal mix of technical finesse with the right attitude) is another big focus.

What are your future business plans?

Our future plans are mostly focussed on revenue growth and comunsurate growth in employee head count. We have been adjudged one of the fastest growing companies by Inc 5000 for last 4 continous years.

What is your company’s vision / mission?

We are not a product company with focus on a niche problem area. We align our vision to our customer’s vision.

Our mission is to be a trusted partner of our customers to create effective solutions to achieve their ambitious goals and beccome truely digital business.