Secret Revealed: The 4-tier People Strategy that drives success at Varthana Finance
About The Company
Varthana Finance Private Limited is a fast-growing school finance company in India. It aims to understand and address the challenges that school leaders face and help them realize their full potential.
- Employee Strength 800+ India – based Employees
- IndustryFinancial Services & Insurance
- Indian HQ Bengaluru
- Journey with Great Place To Work India
“Our partnership with Great Place to Work has benefited us by allowing us to measure and improve employee engagement. It has enabled us to benchmark against industry best practices, which has helped us enhance our processes. Additionally, it has strengthened our employer branding and enabled us to attract like-minded talent within the organization.”
-Chandra Kumar CS, Chief Human Resources Officer and Head – Customer Experience, Varthana Finance
Secret Revealed: The 4-tier People Strategy that drives success at Varthana Finance
Varthana Finance Private Limited is one of the largest school finance institutes, and it has successfully built its dominance through a culture-driven people strategy. Being a Mid-sized organization, it has proudly and humbly offered support to over 11,000 schools across 15 states, encompassing over 180 districts, making a transformative impact on the lives of 5.5 million students since its inception in 2013. Through the provision of 40,000+ loans so far, it is empowering education at a massive scale.
To achieve its ambitious goals of improving access to quality education for millions of children, Varthana recognizes that its people are the assets driving the mission. Varthana started its journey with Great Place To Work® India in 2019 and has been a part of numerous prestigious recognitions, including India’s Best Companies To Work For, Best Workplaces™ in Asia, India’s Best Workplaces™ in BFSI, India’s Best Workplaces™ for Millennials, India’s Best Workplaces™ Building a Culture of Innovation by All, to name a few. These recognitions are a solid testament to its consistent efforts in building and sustaining a High-Trust, High-Performance Culture For All™.
Key Highlights:
- Ranked #5 in India’s Great Mid-size Workplaces 2024
- Ranked #18 in Best Workplaces™ in Asia 2024
- Great Place To Work Certified™ since 2019
The Building Blocks of Varthana: A 4-Tier Culture Building Framework
Varthana’s comprehensive 4-tier approach to culture building focuses on a clear organizational purpose, leadership by example, managerial capability development, and ensuring a fair and inclusive environment for employees. This model successfully drives business growth, enhancing both revenue and impact, people growth with satisfied internal customers, and community growth with an uncompromised commitment to the education sector.
Organizational Values and Purpose
Varthana’s purpose-driven people strategy starts at the organizational level, and cascades to all levels through internal and external interactions. Its steadfast commitment to supporting education shapes every decision, while its values guide behaviours to execute those decisions. Varthana is dedicated to doing the Right thing consistently, Unlocking the potential of all its stakeholders, Serving and supporting one another, and, most importantly, Having fun all through the process. This exemplifies how they RUSH into excellence with their values at the core.
Their Value Campaigns aren’t just a strategy- they are a movement. Varthana empowers and inspires every employee to make values-driven decisions. Leaders communicate each core value through powerful emails and videos, bringing them to life with real-time examples that show how to apply them in daily work. The campaign also recognizes Value Champions, a dynamic group of 35 volunteers from across functions and branches, each dedicated to championing these values. Guided directly by the leadership team, these champions are the backbone of Varthana’s culture, serving as in-house ambassadors and volunteering to play a pivotal role in inspiring peers to make value-based decisions.
Authentic Leadership
- Clearly defined objectives: Expectations are always communicated upfront.
- Leaders Walk the Talk: Leaders embody values in every action, and lead by example.
- Engaged communication: Conversations flow two-ways, and messages are repeated and reinforced at all levels.
- Appreciation and Recognition: Positive Reinforcement is leveraged to boost employee morale and productivity
- Reflective and Constructive Feedback: Mistakes are addressed with helpful and timely feedback to promote growth.
Leaders at Varthana demonstrate zero tolerance for ethical breaches. When ethical concerns arise, leaders act decisively, conducting thorough investigations to uphold ethical standards. The leaders serve as value ambassadors, propagating, explaining, and demonstrating the essence of each value through leadership connects, branch visits, town hall meets, and their Value Campaigns.
Managerial Capability Building
Leaders recognize that while they set the tone for company values, the true employee experience is shaped by the people managers. The third tier of the model is driven by the people managers, who play a pivotal role in defining the culture at a micro level, influencing team dynamics, enhancing employee engagement, and boosting productivity.
An impressive 90% of employees affirm that Varthana excels in developing managers for leadership roles. Through the RISE@Varthana initiative, their talent management program, the organization takes pride in promoting 58% of its managers internally. To further strengthen managerial capabilities, Varthana offers a two-day offline Leadership Development Program, Leading with Impact, tailored to individual and team needs. This workshop incorporates team-based case studies customized to the nature of their work. To elevate skills to the next level, the Leading with Effectiveness program emphasizes coaching skills, data-driven decision-making, and emotional intelligence, equipping managers to handle complex interpersonal dynamics with empathy and understanding.
To personalize the development, Varthana conducts Coaching Review Discussions, one-on-one interventions with the manager, with a focus on enabling employees in decision-making, how to achieve their goals, and any support, and resources required. This inclusive platform allows employees to speak up on improvements, career aspirations, training needs, etc. which are documented and addressed. This also gives employees enough space to talk about their personal challenges, any issues they are facing, and their achievements in the following quarter. To further strengthen the professional capabilities, Varthana offers financial support for employees to pursue professional courses and degrees. The goal is simple: to embrace challenges and take on responsibilities that push boundaries, help #UnlockPotential while #HavingFun.
Fair Treatment For All
Providing a fair environment for all employees constitutes the fourth tier of its people strategy. The organization is committed to fairness in its approach and ensures transparency in communication through practices like non-hierarchal and open-door environment and regular town halls, where employees can directly raise questions and receive accurate, timely responses from leadership. This commitment is reflected in the fact that 92% of Varthana employees believe they are treated as full members regardless of their position.
Fairness extends to career growth opportunities as well. Varthana’s Promotion Policy features clearly defined guidelines and role pathways for every position. Promotions are solely based on an employee’s performance and potential, with no minimum tenure requirements. To further ensure transparency in performance management, the process incorporates four layers of validation: self-appraisal, manager’s rating, reviewer rating, and functional head review, eliminating any forced bell curve fitment. After the rating is communicated to the employees, employees are given a 2-day window to appeal their ratings, with HR and functional heads directly addressing concerns and closing the case within 10 working days. This meticulous process ensures fairness, as evidenced by 95% of employees being satisfied with their ratings and not feeling the need to appeal in any past year.
Additionally, fairness in compensation is ensured through internal equity mapping. Roles are evaluated against a skill and responsibility matrix, and corresponding levels are defined to maintain parity across the organization. These measures create a workplace where fairness is not just a policy but a lived experience for every employee.
The Journey of Excellence continues
A culture thus grown with such deep-rooted values and institutionalized corrective mechanisms, rewards Varthana with the best of talent wanting to stay at the organization. Its high-performance culture is well observed in its 94% top talent retention. As a fairly young organization, Varthana’s remarkable recognitions mark just the beginning of its journey. Through sustaining a high-trust culture and being recognized for it, Varthana has secured opportunities to partner with media outlets through articles in publications such as The Times of India, AsiaNet, The People Management, and The Economic Times. This journey is a true testament to leveraging culture as an enabler in shaping the future success of an organization.
In an insightful conversation with Chandra Kumar CS, Chief Human Resources Officer and Head of Customer Experience at Varthana Finance, he unveils the visionary long-term people strategy shaping the organization’s future: “We aim to leverage this cultural capital as a key driver of Varthana’s growth journey. Our focus is on harnessing this strong culture to enhance productivity, foster excellence, and deliver exceptional customer delight. To realize this vision, we are committed to developing world-class leaders and talent, firmly rooted in our 4-tier people strategy.”
Author – Shambhavi Agrawal, Consultant- Research & Insights, Great Place To Work® India
The Great Place To Work Experience
“We choose to partner with Great Place To Work because we get an unbiased, third-party evaluation that ensures transparency and objectivity. This partnership allows us to gain valuable, uncluttered feedback from our employees, which is instrumental in refining our practices and enhancing our workplace culture. Additionally, our people strategy is closely aligned with our core values, RUSH. The insights from the Great Place To Work Trust Index survey, captured in the 5-dimension framework, especially on the aspects of respect and fairness, strongly align with the culture we aim to cultivate. As we touch more lives, we shall continue to rely on Great Place To Work for trusted insights into workplace culture.”
-Chandra Kumar CS, Chief Human Resources Officer and Head – Customer Experience, Varthana Finance
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