CMS Info Systems' secret of success lies in its employees

CATEGORY: Excellence in Productive Employment Creation (Large Companies)

In September, a CMS Info Systems employee travelling in a company truck with Rs 44 lakh in cash was stranded when floods hit Jammu and Kashmir. The cash manager also lost contact with the company's control room. Five days later, he called back saying that when he realised the truck couldn't be saved, he took the cash in a bag and escaped to a nearby village where he stayed with an acquaintance. The employee said that he couldn't charge his mobile phone or get a message out because there was no electricity in the village and that he would soon return to work - with all the cash he had.

Given the chaos and the fragile law and order situation due to the floods, the money could have easily disappeared, stolen or simply become unaccounted for. This could have hurt the company's reputation. But the motivated employee ensured that never happened. According to CMS CEO Rajiv Kaul, pride, passion and performance of its employees - the three Ps - is what makes the company so productive and successful. To reward acts of dedication to work and honesty, the company has also instituted the CMS Lion-Heart Medal of Honour award.

CMS is India's largest and the world's fifth-largest cash management company. It employs people, trucks and technology to move cash to and from 55,000 of the country's estimated 165,000 ATMs. It has 15,230 employees as on March 2014, up 7.14 per cent from the year ago figure of 14,215. Of the total manpower, 98 per cent work on the field while the remaining are branch managers and senior management.

To manage its employees and ensure that the demanding nature of the job doesn't get the better of them, CMS uses decentralised people management. It also tries to help solve problems locally, and not let them become major headaches for the board later, says Kaul.

Kaul cites a third-party survey, where 89 per cent of CMS employees said that their work had a 'special meaning' for them and was not just a job. He says compensation and career advancement of all employees are well taken care of. In fact, in 2009 and 2010, just after the global financial meltdown, CMS employees received one of the best annual increments ever. The reason was simple. People want good rewards if the company does well, but they expect even more if the economy is doing badly, says Kaul. These efforts are paying off. The company reported profit after tax per employee of Rs 1 lakh in 2013/14, a sharp 69 per cent increase from 2012/13.