Motilal Oswal Financial Services: Knowledge Driven Firms
Motilal Oswal Financial Services has evolved from a broking firm to a group of seven diversified financial companies. The group, founded by Motilal Oswal and Raamdeo Agrawal in 1987 as a small sub-broking unit, is today a multi-faceted band of financial services present in over 500 cities. Company CEO, Motilal Oswal, talks to BW Businessworld ‘s Prerna Lamba about the group’s meritocratic work environment
On employee-oriented values
Motilal Oswal Financial Services offers a holistic and fun work environment with numerous opportunities for personal and professional growth. Programmes in developing areas and a dynamic engagement calendar keep employees motivated and proud of the workplace. The company’s culture promotes knowledge, exposure and opportunities that an employee looks for in any organisation. As an organisation and as a group, we have meet this requirement very well, with being ‘Knowledge-driven’ as a first competency. We really drive this very well in the organisation.
On people practices
As part of strong people practices the company has built a strong learning culture by tracking training man-days of employees, along with a strong Rest and Recuperation (R&R) culture, a robust People Management System (PMS) focusing on Key Responsibility Areas’ (KRA) and behavioural competencies that are developed across the board. We have a dedicated programme for development of leaders and high potential employees across the organisation and simultaneously an engagement team that ensures ongoing engagement, activities, and that celebrations are conducted around the year to keep employees engaged. The company is also known for its best practice, ‘Knowledge Tree’, where leaders from different organisations visit the company and share their insights and experience with the associates. This is an inspirational initiative taken where employees not only get a chance to listen to such leaders, but also to speak to them and get inputs from them.
On the people philosophy
The company has been following a simple people philosophy from the beginning – to have people with the right attitude, people who are open to continuous learning, keen to contribute, and always ready to take the opportunities available. The company believes that every employee wants to contribute and make a difference to the organisation and as an organisation, it believes in giving them this opportunity. Also as an organisation, we accept failure but don’t comprise on integrity. This has allowed people to continuously excel in their roles and strive for excellence at all times. Integrity and excellence should never be compromised at the cost of achieving results. Over the years we have groomed our talent and senior leaders within the organisation. As an organisation this has been one of the critical success factors in ours being a great place to work in.
On opportunities for growth
Our company is a ‘people company’ where we grow our people internally, instead of hiring at senior levels. We have success stories like a trainee becoming a CEO, a coder becoming IT Head and a trainer becoming the HR Head. We are proud of our culture and people development philosophy. Also being a group of seven companies, the internal opportunity that an employee has to rotate and gain exposure in other business verticals is high. These opportunities have helped the firm groom well-rounded employees and leaders.
