Submitted to: Dr.

Naval Lawande
Topic: Culture at Bharti Airtel Ltd.

By: Akhil (A53)

Abhinandan (A34)
Abhinav (A5)
Shashank (A11)
Shardul (A33)
 Culture at Bharti Airtel Ltd.
Introduction
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company has operations in 16
countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks
amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the
company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed
line services, high speed home broadband, DTH, enterprise services including national &
international long-distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G,
4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 413 million customers
across its operations at the end of March 2018.
Founder
Airtel was founded by Sunil Bharti Mittal, who is an Indian entrepreneur, billionaire
and philanthropist. He is also the chairman and founder of the Bharti Enterprises. He is the
recipient of Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour. He is the Chairman of
the International Chamber of Commerce. He was born in a Punjabi family. He did is schooling
from Wynberg Allen School in Mussoorie and Scindia School in Gwalior. Later he did his
graduation from Panjab University, Chandigarh.
Vision
The vision of Airtel is to enrich the lives of its customers. It associates its success with the
success of its customers. Airtel doesn’t believe in short term success. It believes in having
customers whom it can cherish for life. And that’s what it reflected in its AGM report of 2016-
17.
“Our vision is to enrich the lives of our customers. Our obsession is to win customers for life
by providing an exceptional experience.”
Ideology
Airtel aim to work towards its vision, driven by its values of AIR- Alive, Inclusive &
Respectful. This is the ideology to which Airtel lives by. Airtel says that it is always alive to
the needs of its customers. It believes that with energy, passion and can-do attitude it can help
its customers realise their dreams. Airtel is for everyone- it works with them, adapting,
anticipating and delivering solutions to enrich their lives. Airtel believes in living
indistinguishable lives from its clients, having the same delights and similar torments.
Culture
The people working in it mainly drive the culture at Airtel. It’s because Airtel considers its
employees as the main driving force behind its growth. Airtel creates an ethical organisational
culture. And it does so by seeing its employees and everyone working in or for the organisation
as an eminent part of them. It respects them and that respect gets reflected on their performance
and their unseizing passion to work for the growth of the company. Airtel encourages teamwork
and lauds the very spirit of it in its employees. It tries to inculcate this spirit by assigning tasks
in teams because it believes that alone, one can think, but, together, we can prosper. Also, Airtel
believes in building collaborative partnership.
Airtel is one company which values the passion and zeal in the people. So, believes in giving
sufficient amount of autonomy to those who constantly thrive to do better for the individual as
well as the collective good of the company. The relationship it encourages is of give and take.
It believes in accepting the good and rewarding the extraordinary. Airtel also, believes in
accumulating assets. First, it hires those who can fit into its unique culture. It attracts the best
of the talents and finally retains the best. The retaining culture is strong with Airtel. Also, Airtel
doesn’t discriminate between people. It believes in giving equal opportunities to the deserving
ones. Viewing everyone through the common lens is one trait that makes Airtel the brand it is.

Questionnaire & Analysis

The answers to these questions have been taken from glassdoor.com & indeed.com based on
reviews given by current Airtel employees. Latest reviews were considered to keep the data as
accurate as possible.

Questionnaire No:
No of years with the organization:
Designation:

Circle One Number for Each Statement.

1. Communication between departments is very open.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
2. You feel motivated and excited before going to work every day.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
3. You feel that the company is the right place for you to grow in your career.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
4. Top & middle management seeks input from employees on major decisions.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
5. Most projects designed to make things better in this organization have been successful.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
6. Most people in this organization are encouraged to make suggestions for improvement.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
7. Employee problems and complaints are effectively handled.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
8. It’s a company where you would refer your friends and relatives.
Strongly Agree Tend to Agree Hard to Decide Tend to Disagree Strongly Disagree
Analysis of Question 1 -
Airtel, being a large organization has a number of
departments, units, teams, stores in spread across different
locations around the world. One of the major reasons for
Airtel’s success in all these years is the coordination and
understanding that is present amongst it’s different units. The
communication between the departments enhances the
working culture of the company and helps the management
to take effective decisions. This has helped in reducing
bureaucracy and red tapism in Airtel.

Analysis of Question no 2 -
Airtel being the telecom giant and having the largest
consumer base in the telecom sector, working for Airtel is
being a challenge and demanding. Working environment is
good but the amount of work is also high. The competition
faced by the company is massive because of the Onset of Jio
which has resulted in the decline in profits. Inspite of this,
Airtel has managed to keep it’s employees motivated and
happy. Employees in every department have up the
performance at work to achieve the targets .This also gives
employees the opportunity to perform better and enhance
their core skills.
Analysis of Question 3-
Most of the employees felt that Airtel is the right place for
them to grow their career. This is because it’s one of the
largest Telecom companies in India and till recently
controlled the maximum market share in the sector. The
employees believe that they will be able catch up with their
competitors Reliance Jio and take back their top position in
the market. Company trains and promotes its employees to
gain more technical knowledge and increases their
efficiency. Telecom industry has provided them a large
market which requires diverse roles and brings in huge profit
revenue since Airtel has the second most market share after
Reliance Jio.
Analysis of Question 4 -
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications
company with operations in 16 countries across Asia and
Africa. Top management define the strategies for the future and
the middle management assist in implementing those strategies
for the betterment of the company. Major decisions of the
company are taken with utter planning and views of the
employee are taken into consideration. Employee view point is
important as they are the assets of the company but then the
final call remains with the senior management . Senior
management makes sure that the productive working culture of
the company is maintained and the hierarchy is followed in
implementing the major decisions
Analysis of Question 5 –
The force, which drives Airtel to achieve their targets, is their
“Employee Engagement” program, which shows the level of
commitment and involvement towards the organisation and
its values. Employee Engagement has become a critical
element for the organization performance with that they
understand the business scenario and take decisions, which
are apt for the team. Whenever it is felt that a change is
required, it is implemented successfully and swiftly.
Analysis of Question 6 -
In Airtel Ltd., people from all the departments are encouraged
to make suggestions and work for the improvement of the
firm. The success of the firm is also the result of the collective
effort of the all the employees and their commitment. Lot of
feedback sessions and the meetings with the team leader
happens, so that the suggestions could be looked into
efficiently. In addition, the seniors take the suggestions from
juniors in all the departments and that is the part of culture in
Airtel.
Analysis of Question 7 -
Employees were asked whether Airtel handled their grievances
and they agreed that organization listens to their queries. Role
of Human Resources can be praised, as they are majorly
involved with the employees. Feedback received was in favour
of the organization. Flexible job timings and a good
compensation structure has helped them get a favourable
review from it’s employees. Health benefits along with other
monetary benefits also helped in increasing employee
happiness.
Analysis of Question 8 -
From the analysis of the question, we take can see that
employees would be glad to refer their friends and peers to
Airtel. Most of the employees do felt that they would refer as
they feel the company provides good work culture and benefits
along with a diverse work role in terms of technical knowledge.
Employees felt a good connect with the work environment as
they are provided many facilities, which are apart from
monetary benefits such as self-assessment tools, talent
development program. Perceptual mapping shows how much
an employee prefers a certain telecom company and analysing
the underlying attributes which are in accordance with their preferences.

Challenges
Challenges faced by organization and recommendations to help managers deal with the
challenges
 Creating a Talent pool- Bharti Airtel faces high turnover of employees. In October
2017 itself, Airtel employees reduced by 1805 employees and its employees stood at
17657, which posed as a great challenge for the management on how to retain good
talent with organization and not just to retain the good employees but also create a talent
pool of good employees within the organization. Therefore, to overcome this problem
company opt for the method of ‘recharging the workplace’. In this method, Airtel can
go for a young leadership program in which they visit various business schools, identify
young talent, and train them in various functional roles. Objective of the program is to
create a talent pool for achieving major goals and it helps in identifying potential leaders
who can become future senior managers and provide them framework for career
planning.

 Dynamic environment- Sector in which Bharti Airtel operates in is very competitive.

The biggest challenges, which they face, are coping with the technology and
competitors challenge. It is up to the employees to decide how decisions have to be
taken in such an environment. Hence, it is crucial for all managers and employees to be
trained. To overcome this problem, The company can go for ‘employees true brand
ambassadors’ program where company creates high performance culture and creates
an ecosystem where employees develop their capabilities and skills by enabling them
to work in cross functional departments which will help them to know allow them to
take decision in dynamic environment .

 Capturing domain knowledge with multiple sources for employees- As the telecom
sector has one of the most dynamic environment, it is important for the employees to
have exposure in cross functional domains of sales, finance, marketing, networking.
Therefore, Airtel has to train its employees in cross-functional exposures such as in
sales, marketing, customer service and network, which is the core of the business. In
addition, they focus on the CSR to ensure an exposure on life realities as well.
Therefore, Airtel has to give its employees to choose across various geographies,
functions and business, which will, helps employees to gain knowledge about other
functions.
  Employee culture- As Airtel is expanding its operations in different countries and
expanding into various other business like of payment banks, we can interpret that there
is a rigid cross-functional movements within the organization, which delays in decision-
making. In order to solve this problem company can go for ‘Employee engagement
program’ where employees are given appreciation, leadership opportunity, and
feedback sessions, etc. Once company introduce employee engagement company can
give better customer service. Company employee attrition will also reduce, and
productivity of employees will improve.

Conclusion & Recommendations

We can conclude this research by saying that Airtel has an employee friendly culture. It values
all suggestions and ensures that employees stay motivated by paying a good compensation and
other monetary as well as non-monetary benefits. Employees have faith that their top position
in the sector will soon return.
 We recommend creating a talent pool so that it can identify future senior managers to
fill their senior positions and to tackle the growing attrition in the company.
 We also recommend having a Learning & Development programme, which will enable
all employees to improve their existing skill & learn new ones. This should be done to
meet the growing needs of the dynamic industry they are working in.
 The employees have also mentioned that huge salary deduction are taking place which
is one of the few reasons that is causing employee dissatisfaction.

References:
 https://www.indeed.co.in/cmp/Bharti-Airtel-Limited/reviews
 www.airtel.in
 https://inform.tmforum.org/digital-transformation-and-maturity/2018/01/bharti-
airtels-harmeen-mehta-facing-indias-unique-challenges/
 https://www.viewshub.com/company/Bharti_Airtel
 https://www.peoplematters.in/site/interstitial
 https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Reviews/Bharti-Airtel-Reviews-E38320.htm