K. J. SOMAIYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES & RESEARCH, MUMBAI
Indian Mobile Gaming Industry Case Study Submitted to : Prof. Shailja Karve Submitted by: Pulkit Bansal (PG-B, 104) Lokesh Biyani (PG-B, 106)
CASE STUDY y
Theme:
HRM problems in new em erging Indian Mobile Gaming Industry y
Sub Theme: Problem 1: Managing different Time Zone imbalances Problem 2: Improving Appraisal System
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Objective:
To improve the operational effeiciency of a new office setup in Hyderabad. y
Prior Practices: Less attention was given to communication of Appraisal process to employees. Also, working was not done in different shifts.
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Approach/Methods:
We interviewed the Senior HR Generalist of the Company and then discussed the potential potential problems given in the ca se. Also, the industry and company overview was taken with the help of secondary data available. y
Results/Insights:
Employee engagement and employee feedback are powerful tool to reduce attrition attrition rate. Also, there is a need to minimize the time zone imbalances between countries. y
Implications to Community/Industry: Community/Industry: The solution solution applies to all the industries where employees face challanges in understanding understanding the appraisal system. Also, it implies to all those companies who cordinate with partners or clients across the globe.
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Value
to the Theme: NA
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Keywords: Mobile Mobile Gaming In dustry, Time Shifts, Appraisal System, IT tools
Industry Overview The fast growing Indian mobile gaming market has become the most sought after destination for global mobile game developers and distributors. Massive untapped mobile subscriber base along with increasing penetration of mobile games have infused unmatchable growth in the industry, which comfortably bucked post recessionary effects and brought revolutionary shifts in mobile value added services dynamics. According to a study, the industry will sustain its skyrocketing growth performance in coming years also with projected CAGR of 74.3% by 2013. The opportunities for mobile gaming companies are enormous in India, which is bestowed with large untapped consumer base and increasing affordability. Even today, of 100 mobile subscribers, only 2 are the addressable mobile gamers. This, when compared with the figures of Japan, the US, South Korea, and the UK shows a clear gap in mobile gamers penetration and illustrate illustrate a vast grow th opportunities opportunities for mark et players.
Company Overview:- Arts Electronic Inc. ( AE) Arts Electronic Inc. is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. AE develops, publishes, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets and the Internet. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982, the company is a pioneer pioneer of the early games industry. AE Mobile, a division of AE, is the largest independent mobile game developer a nd publisher publisher in the world. They have offices in Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Tokyo, Hyderabad, Honolulu, Bucharest and São Paulo.
Studio Overview:- AE Hyderabad AE Mobile has one of its studios in Hyderabad, India. AE Hyderabad has several departments like Development Finance, Human Resource, Production, Quality Assurance, Engineering, Game Studio, Pogo, CTG, Flight which support worldwide operation operation s. AE Hyderabad has employee strength of around 700 employees and Quality Assurance (QA) department having 400 employees forms the major chunk of the work force. QA is the systematic monitoring monitoring and evaluation of the various various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process. QA checks for the quality of the mobile Applications/ Games and report related bugs for different different mobile vendors based on different operat ing systems. Manual testing is the most preferred method of checking the quality of the Mobile games. Manual testing is the process of manually testing Mobile games for defects. It requires a tester to play the role of an end user, and use most of all features of the application to ensure correct behavior. To ensure completeness of testing, the tester often follows a written test plan that leads them through a set of important test cases. For this profile the
preferred skill set required are good spoken and written communication skills, Ability to work on different web based tools to submit games to different channels and Ability towork on mobiles to check proper functionality of the game. For such kind of profile, college freshers with good and average technical skills were the most suitable candidates. AE Hyderabad became operational in December 2007 and needed workforce which it was able to get in midst of Global recession. The purpose of setting up studio in India was to outsource low technical jobs and reduce operational cost. As the QA tester profile required least technical skills, experience and responsibilities so the pay scale of a fresher tester was least in comparison to freshers joining joining any other department which required more technical skills w ith in AE. In fact the pay scale was even less in comparison to the compensation offered by major Indian IT companies like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro etc. Initially AE was able to attract fresh college graduates due to global recession, less less availability of j obs and it was able to lever age on the job profile profile which was to play games and test them.
Problem 1: Managing different Time Zone imbalances After one year of operation AE Hyderabad became the major hub of Mobile QA testing within AE and there was increase in the workforce of AE Hyderabad QA department where as QA workforce in other other worldwide studios studios was reduced. reduced.
So now AE Hyderabad Hyderabad was
assigned work from across the globe, such as Asia Pacific, European, European, and North American. As these regions operates at different time zone in comparison to India, so there was need to have proper coordination with with these studios irrespective irrespective of the time difference. Also more testers were recruited for the future projects but there were space and infrastructure constraints. constraints. Also number number of computers was also also less. The general practice in industry is that workforce is divided in shifts and allocated different working hours and geographical region. Working in shifts helps in proper distribution and coordination of human resources and assets such as computers. Also, it helps in sharing of technical assets and office space. Also the team working in a shift gets responsible for a region, so this increases their accountability for the projects for the assigned region. But, the problem with working in shifts is that employees are not keen to work in early morning or late night shifts due to c onveyance and change in life style problems.
Appraisal Process AE has an annual appraisal process in in which review of the employee performance o f the last year is done and proper feedback is given. According to the rating given by the supervisor and the number of years of work experience, employees are given salary hike and promotion. promotion. For annual appraisal process process AE m akes use of several internal A E IT tools such as AE game plan, Hades, Time Sheet. As appraisal is an annual process supervisors supervisors make use of
these tools extensively to keep a track of an employee performance apart from their own personal observation. These tools have a significant role in appraisal process as supervisor may tend to forget activities that have been carried put in the past year. These tools and their functionality functionality are mentioned below
AE game plan It is the primary tool for the appraisal process. Initially in the beginning beginning of the annual year, employees are supposed to set their target and goals in AE game plan for the coming year and their plan of action to achieve their goals. AE game plan has features were employee can update their status of their goals such as Complete, Incomplete, and On track. AE game plan also provides feature where employee can raise request for feedback from other supervisor of other departments with whom employee has worked. Usually employee set their objectives in the month of April and and they have to make sure their goals are in sync with organization and teams objective. Through AE game plan any employee can see any other employee goals and objectives including CEOs. In the next year during end of February employee are asked to mention their achievement and how they contributed to the organization and final status of their goals and objectives. Once employee has written down achievements then they get locked and are forwarded to supervisor for review. Keeping in mind the employees achievements, supervisor observation and with the help of reports generated from other tools supervisor supervisor gives ra ting to employee which are a s follows y
SAT- Significantly Above target
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AT- Above Target
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OT- On target
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BT- Below target
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SBT- Significantly below target
Then these ratings are forwarded to the manager and appraisal interview of employee happens with Manager and supervisor. In this meeting the salary hike, promotion if any and rating given to the employee are disclosed. If employee is not satisfied with any of the results then he/she has the chance to put his/her point forward which is then discussed with in the meeting. If the employee is able to justify that rating is not in sync with performance then revised rating and salary hike is given to employee else no changes are done in the result of appraisal system. This whole process takes around 2 months and the change in the salary happens in the month of June. Also during the review period employee can always monitor its current appraisal process process status in AE game plan . ades : H ades
- This tool keeps a track of number and types of games an employee has worked on
and number bugs faced in a particular mobile handset. This tools contains the complete information about about the assigned work to an employee.
me Ti me
Sheet : - This tool is to be used by employee daily. Employees are supposed to enter
their summary of daily activities in this tool and the time allocated to each activity.
Problem 2 : Im proving Appraisal System From the past two year the QA tester complained about about the inappropr inappropr iate rating given by the supervisors. Majority of the QA tester complained that they deserved at least AT (Above Target) rating or promotion instead of OT (On Target) rating which was given to majority of QA employee. So from year 2009 AE QA department experienced very high attrition rate close to 40-45%. In few cases employee left the organization just a few days before the salary appraisal was about to h appen. This was unusual as most employees always preferred to wait till salary appraisal before moving to other organization. This will help them to negotiate for higher salary in other organization. But in AE, QA testers didnt expect a significant salary hike and accepted job offers from other organizations. This showed that QA testers didnt find appraisal process reliable. There was requirement of immediate action to be taken to retain the QA tester workforce. During the exit interview of the QA tester who were leaving the organization, feedback process was conducted through which HRs came to know that Q A tester were unhappy with the appraisal system as the ratings were not up to the expectations.
So to check the
attrition rate management decided to dig into the issue. So the HRs conducted one to one sessions with the existing AE QA testers and asked their feedback about the appraisal process. As the more QA testers were interviewed management figured out some strange facts which are mentioned mentioned below y
Most of the AE QA testers were unaware of the kind of performance expected by organization at a specific rating 1.
OT (On Target):- Means continuously meeting target and some time exceeding expectations
2. AT ( Above Target):- Means always exceeding expectations 3. SAT ( Significantly a bove Target):- Means brought about some radical changes which improved the functioning of the organization . y
Most of the QA testers used to set their objectives in AE game plan without the guidance of supervisor so their goals were never aligned to organization goals. Also testers after setting their objectives in the beginning beginning never used to update the status of their objectives for rest of the period.
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QA tester never asked for the feedback from their supervisor after completion completion of any project. Nor they showed any interest in inquiring about what was expected from them to achieve excellence.
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QA tester never used to update their Time sheet so their supervisor was not able to keep a track of their daily activities.
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QA testers were not aware of the importance of Hades and Time Sheet in appraisal process. They all were under the impression that AE game plan is only required for appraisal process. So they never cared to update their completed games and mobile handsets handsets on these tools. As mentioned before AE has an annual appraisal process so during the time of appraisal supervisors use to generate the reports form Hades and time sheets and use to consider those reports while giving ratings.
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There was no quarterly or semi annually feedback given by supervisors to QA testers about their performance.
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There was no proper training being given by the IT support department for AE game plan.
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QA testers were not aware of unique feature of AE game plan- Additional Feedback form (AFP) Feedback from employees of other department.
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QA testers were not aware that if the ratings or salary hike are not up to expectations then they can always discuss the matter with the managers and if management is satisfied then new rating and salary hike will be given in few days. QA testers use to accept the ra ting and salary hike without raising their concerns
Contact Person: Anshu Sanwaria Senior
HR Generalis Email id - anshusanwaria@gmail anshusanwaria@gmail .com
