"We have different procedures to recruit different kind of employees"

Anuradha Acharya, CEO, Ocimum Biosolutions

While a good education can be a starting point for an employee, we believe that there are many more variables that we have to consider before we recruit the right employee for Ocimum Biosolutions.

Ocimum has always been an equal opportunity employer and by following fair principles, we have a good diversity amongst employees creating an environment of innovation and creativity, which helps us in delivering better products to our customers.

Since a company is made with all kinds of employees, we have different procedures to recruit different types of employees. For young technical personnel, we make them go through a rigorous analytical and technical test as well as interviews, for others it might be just an analytical test followed by several rounds of interviews. We believe that in order for us to build a better company, we need to spend time in trying to recruit the right people. While this is a time-consuming process, we have been able to attract and retain the right kind of employees that help create the right environment for a world class company building products and services for the research community.

Training program

We also have a six-month training program for technical freshers as the field of bioinformatics and LIMS is fairly new and complex for most people. These programmer trainees go through a rigorous training program that allows them to understand the complex bioinformatics domain and also get used to the ISO and SDLC processes. It allows them to become Ocimum ready and start contributing as soon as their training program is over. This program is for a small group of trainees who also go through a selection criteria and are paid a stipend during these six months soon after which they join the
mainstream team.

Culture

Ocimum's culture is to celebrate, learn and also work hard. Since our main aim is to have happy customers, we believe that happy customers can happen if we have happy employees. We offer a 24/5 live support for our customers worldwide. We offer several benefits like ESOPS, medical, dinner and snacks.

Our philosophy is that each employee plays an integral role in fulfilling our commitment to deliver total solutions to our customers. Employees and their abilities comprise our fundamental resource.

Our values reflect our philosophy: To provide quality service to our customers; to get the job well done, whether it is a client or internal project; to provide a pleasant, stimulating work environment for all employees; and to cultivate each employee's professional growth and advancement within the company.

At Ocimum Biosolutions, we value our talented team and our compensation package reflects this. Our benefits are designed to be flexible in nature and far-reaching in scope.

Ocimum Biosolutions lays great emphasis on maintenance and improvement of the work environment and the overall well being of its employees. Apart from sick leaves, the benefit package at Ocimum Biosolutions includes a group Mediclaim policy, where the company pays 100 percent of the premiums for each employee. All employees may participate in this policy.

Effective on the date of hire, all employees of Ocimum Biosolutions are eligible to 12 paid days off per year. Paid time off increases with length of service. For marriage, an employee is allotted five paid days off. The company's flexible working solutions can include unpaid time off, at the discretion of the management.

Ocimum Biosolutions offers all its employees two weeks' paid vacation annually. Ocimum also has a comprehensive maternity and paternity and other family related leaves.

Employees own a piece of the company through stock options available to all, based on their length of service. An ESOP trust with employees as volunteers manages these stock options.

All employees at Ocimum Biosolutions are encouraged to improve their performance and skills through training. Apart from promoting on-the-job learning, the company sponsors for job-related external training based on the employees' performance, previous experience, and education.

All employees are encouraged to take up higher education to evolve themselves. In order to balance their work and education, all employees can avail five days paid time off annually for examinations. Ocimum also has a program called Tradition which empowers employees to participate in both external and internal training programs.

Pay hikes for all employees are based on performance reviews conducted every six months. These performance reviews also accelerate growth in shorter time spans.

All employees receive a monetary incentive for referring others to work at Ocimum. Associates provide résumés to our recruiters and are eligible to receive a bonus once the referred employee completes six months of service. This program is popularly known as Introcentive.

All employees receive monthly food subsidies and people working on weekends or evening are provided snacks, lunch or dinner.

We believe that it is the overall working conditions, growth prospects and the innovative environment at Ocimum that helps us in retaining the best employees.

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