DIGICORP HR POLICIES

Welcome to Digicorp

Introduction

You are now part of an extraordinary culture we are building. A culture which cherishes personal relationships, happy personal life and empowered individuals.

Digicorp may look like an ordinary IT service company from outside but it’s different inside. At least we like to believe so!

This document will familiarize you with our values, philosophy and a few things we follow and respect. We hate technical jargon and euphemisms so it is written in a very simple and transparent language. Take time to read it and grasp as much as you can.

If you do not understand any part of it, please feel free to contact any of the Digicorpian sitting next to you (make sure he/she is not wearing headphones! then you can’t disturb)

Some notes and assumptions:

This document is written keeping in mind a new hire, so if you are an existing Digicorpian reading it…please skip reading sections which are not applicable to you!
The document has few links which will take you to the external websites from where we have taken the reference. We would encourage you to read those articles also along with this document.
This is a live document, we will let you know if there are any changes.

Company History & Work

Digicorp was founded in 2004 in Ahmedabad – a city with more than 600 years of history. It was co-founded by a bunch of computer engineers turned entrepreneurs, Mr. Abhisek Desai, Mr. Kuntal Shah, Mr. Nachiket Patel and Mr. Sanket Patel.

This video will give you an idea about Digicorp’s story.

Digicorp Core Values

Digicorp works with certain values, values it has derived out of experience and maturity. Before joining us it is very necessary to understand our core values. These are not just sentences on notice boards or on a website for the sake of it, these core values are the reason we exist today.

Only if you believe in the values, will you be able to fit in “our culture” which is nothing but our values in action. So here are the core values which shape Digicorp.

Great service is the only mantra

There will always be a serious demand for quality software companies in the world and we know there aren’t many. We would like to become one and remain one forever. Giving great service to our clients in every phase of the project is our mantra to become best from good!

Relationship can only be open and honest

Life is far simpler if we keep relationships open and honest. Digicorp is our life and we would like to keep it simple. Keeping things straightforward with each other and with clients helps us focus on doing real work i.e. build quality software and our clients love us for that.

Teach and Learn Twice

Have you ever tried explaining something new which you learned today to your friend or colleague? Try it!. While doing that you will realize, you do not know that “new thing” completely yet. Yes when you teach someone you always learn more than that person. To remain competitive forever we have to teach each other and our clients.

Change is the only constant

Technologies change, Requirements change, Designs change, People change, We change! All we do all the time is change ourselves and adapt to a new environment. Software Development being one of the most dynamic industries out there, we have to remember this more than anyone.

Growth and Learning is life

Right from our birth we start learning and we do it till the end. It essentially covers up our whole life. We grow and learn or we learn and grow. We can not separate the two. At Digicorp, we remind ourselves of this eternal truth every day. We learn about new industries, new people, new problems, new solutions almost everyday while building software for clients. We consider ourselves lucky to be in this industry.

Our Software Development Philosophy

It is very necessary to understand our software development philosophy before you join Digicorp.

We call that philosophy “Getting Real”!

It is based on the book written by 37Signals.com founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

The book is all about how to build a successful web application. Guidelines described in the book are so simple, they are hard to believe. But we have tried some of them and they work beautifully. And it is applicable not just for developing web applications but more or less for any kind of software application.

We will take some liberty to write excerpts from the introductory chapter here.

What is Getting Real?

Want to build a successful web app? Then it’s time to Get Real. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).
Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.
Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.
Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

We recommend reading the whole book online before you start doing anything at Digicorp.

https://basecamp.com/gettingreal

As a service company we do have some restrictions in applying this philosophy in all the projects but we do follow it as far as we can.

Once you understand what is “Getting Real”, it will be very easy for you to make a decision as a developer, designer, QA or a team leader in Digicorp. We promise it will change your life forever.

On Joining

A newly joined Digicorpian has to submit the following documents:

Relieving letter (NA if no prior experience)
Experience letter (NA if no prior experience)
Copy of last three month’s salary slip
Two recent passport size photographs
HDFC Bank account details (If owned & available)
1. Name, Address and contact numbers of the bank
2. Account Number
3. Account opening date
Copy of address proof (e.g. Passport, Driving license, Electricity/Telephone Bill, PAN card, Election Card etc.)

What a newly joined Digicorpian needs to know?

You will be issued an appointment letter in a period of 21 days to your joining.
You will be provided a salary account with HDFC bank in case you do not have one. Once done, your monthly salary will directly be credited to your bank account on the 10th day of every month.
You will be given a username and password for accessing Backbone (our internal HRMS) by the HR personnel. Kindly complete your profile.
An e-salary slip will be sent by email from the account department between 10th to 15th day of every month

Probation Period

Normally the probation period for any Digicorpian is 3 months. Upon satisfactory completion of the probation cum training period, you will be a full-time employee of the company. However, the period of probation can be extended at the discretion of the management and you will continue to be on probation until you receive the confirmation from management.

Working at Digicorp

Timing:

Our office timings are from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

We work 5 days a week, Mon-Fri.

We just expect you to give an average 40 hours of throughput every week.

“Throughput is what you can achieve in the given amount of time.”

So it does not include your lunch time, tea time, mobile time, social networking time, news time, trading time, TT time or any other recreation time.

Lunch:

Having lunch together with the team is a very important part of our culture, the same as FogCreek Software, a company we admire very much at Digicorp. We have a decent lunch area called ‘Cheeni Kum’ and we would be really happy to see you with your team members during the lunch time. Eat whenever you feel hungry!

Basecamp:

Digicorp uses Basecamp as its primary project management tool. Basecamp is a leading web-based project management and collaboration tool created by 37Signals, another company which we truly admire.

It is advisable to use it for communication with team members and clients.

We also use Trello as a project management tool.

Passive Communication:

We are big fans of passive communication at Digicorp.

“It is a type of communication where you do not require an instant reply from a person. For e.g. emails, basecamp etc.”

If you think carefully, 99% of the time you don’t need an immediate answer to the question you are having but still we disturb the person sitting next to us instantaneously. It severely affects the productivity of that person.

As per Paul Graham of Y Combinator

“You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they’re unable to work on hard problems at all.”

So please avoid it as much as possible.

This practice will also help you and others avoid working late or working on weekends to get things done, which we don’t encourage.

“Digicorp” is an official “Mobile Silent Zone” for the same reason as explained above. So please turn your phone on silent mode whenever you are inside the office or work area. Also try not to attend personal phone calls at your workplace, unless important.

We also believe that Music at work is a distraction. Studies have shown that reading comprehension and memorization both suffer when music is playing, and we are here to create a great software product. Let’s not fool ourselves, music affects the quality of our work as our brain can’t multitask. Let’s be sincere about our work and let’s not play music while we are working.

Holidays and Leaves:

Apart from having all weekends off you are entitled to the following per year.

10 Public Holidays plus a floating Friday and an overnight picnic
12 Casual Leaves
6 Medical/Privileged leaves

We want you to have a work-life balance. We strongly believe programming and designing are more of an art than a science and artists need rest. So, enjoy the weekends, leaves, public holidays and come back rejuvenated.

Public Holiday List for the Year 2024

15th January 2024	Uttarayan	Kite Festival
26th January 2024	Republic Day	National Holiday
25th March 2024	Dhuleti	Holi Second Day
7th June 2024	Floating Friday	Long Weekend
26th July 2024	D’retreat	Digicorp Trip
15th August 2024	Independence Day	National Holiday
19th August 2024	Rakshabandhan	Rakhi Festival
26th August 2024	Janmashtami	Krishna Janam
2nd October 2024	Gandhi Jayanti	Gandhiji’s Birthday
1st November 2024	Diwali	Diwali Holiday
4th November 2024	Diwali New Year	Diwali Holiday
5th November 2024	Diwali Holidays	Diwali Holiday

Rule of casual leaves:

You are entitled for 12 casual leaves in a year.

Implementation of Casual leaves:

There is no limitation on the number of leaves that can be consumed in a month, which means you can consume all your 12 casual leaves in a stretch, provided they are well approved in advance by the leader.
Casual leaves and Medical leaves can be combined as well.
These leaves are reimbursable, the balance leaves will be reimbursed at the end of the year which normally happens in January/February every year.
These leaves will be computed as per the pro-rata ratio in case of your joining and exit dates. It comes to approximately 1 leave per month, so if anyone joins in the first half of any month for example, if he/she joins in 1st week of January, then he will be entitled to 9 leaves of that year, considering the first three months as probation period. Same rule will be applied while you resign with a thumb rule here that no leaves/privileges will be allowed in the notice period. Which means all the computation of the casual leaves / medical leaves will be done taking into consideration your resignation date.

Rules for Medical/privileged Leaves:

These leaves are given to support you in the shortcomings or your travel plan.
These leaves will be allowed upon approval by the leaders.

Implementation of Medical/Privileged leaves

These leaves if not consumed then they will be lapsed.
These leaves, if required, can be clubbed with any holiday and/or casual leaves.
These leaves are not reimbursable.

Example

These leaves can be used for any personal or family medical emergency.
Be it your wedding or your close relatives’, Marriage Leaves enable you to attend and have a good time with your friends and relatives.
These leaves will be computed as per the pro-rata ratio in case of your joining and exit dates. It comes to 1 leave per two months, so if anyone joins in the first half of any quarter for example, if he/she joins in the 1st week of January, then he will be entitled to 4.5 leaves of that year. Same rule will be applied while you resign with a thumb rule here that no leaves/privileges will be allowed in the notice period. Which means all the computation of the casual leaves / EBL leaves will be done taking into consideration your resignation date.

How to apply?

At Digicorp, we ask everyone to submit the “Request for Leave” application at least one week prior to the desired date of leave and the process is also simple.

Sign into Backbone
Apply Leave
Check your leave status

Maternity leave Benefit:

We are here for you to be moms! You are entitled to 90 days paid leave as expecting mothers.

Rule of Maternity leaves:

You should have completed at least 2 years at Digicorp to avail the Maternity leaves.
Maternity leave can be availed in full (90 days) after the delivery also. Only thing is that you cannot take more than 45 days’ leave before the expected date of delivery.
You can’t club Maternity leaves with any other leaves.

Implementation of Maternity leaves:

You will not be eligible for any other benefits during maternity leaves.
Also, all the other benefits will be applied as per the pro-rata ratio including the casual and medical leaves for that particular year.
The payment will be made as a regular monthly salary.

Appraisals

We really appreciate the fact and would like to thank each and every Digicorpian for spending precious time of their lives with us.

We appraise each and every digicorpian on a yearly basis, giving them credit for their achievements and setting targets for the forthcoming year. This generally happens in the month of January every year, which means that the appraisals will be applied in that month’s salary. Rest assured, there is no eligibility criterion for the same, other than a neat 3 months tenure at Digicorp to the appraisal month.

Let me explain the process (“Karma 2.0”), we follow appraisals.

## How we arrive at final Increment Figure

There are different components that we consider for arriving at the final increment figure.

1. Basic Increment

This component is intended to partially compensate for normal inflation.

This is applicable for everyone falling under Grade A or B or C based on their working months during last year.

The formula of this component is very simple:

X = Count of months with Digicorp during last 12 months

Y = 5% of monthly salary

BI = X * Y / 12

This component covers part of the increment amount irrespective of the grades i.e. this is given to all the Digicorpian’s having Assessment Rating A, B or C.

2. Fixed Loyalty

This component is intended to justify the loyalty of a Digicorpian. It is a fixed amount per month defined by management and may change year-after-year. It is applicable to everyone who has already completed more than 12 months at Digicorp. This factor is not related to the salary size of a team member.

This component covers part of the increment amount irrespective of the grades i.e. This is given to all the Digicorpians having Assessment Rating A, B or C.

3. Percentage Loyalty

This component is intended to justify the varying size of the impact of loyal Digicorpian. It is applicable to everyone who has already completed more than 12 months at Digicorp. This factor is related to the salary size of a team member.

This component covers part of the increment amount irrespective of the grades i.e. This is given to all the Digicorpians having Assessment Rating A, B or C.

**Note**: Above three components combined make a substantial part of the increment amount.

4. Regular Increment

This component is intended for all good performers achieving Grade A or B. It is not applicable to average and below average performers. It has a direct relation with the person’s current salary and review months.

5. Performance Increment

This component is intended for all excellent performers achieving Grade A only. This component is constant, having a direct relation with current salary and not review months.

**Note**: Above two components are dependent on Grades and almost covers the remaining part of the increment amount.

6. Management Component

As you may have noticed, all the above components are formula-based and affect everyone based on certain criteria.

We also have the “Management Component” in order to fill the visible gap in the outcome for any of the team members, if any.

This component is in addition to the above five formula-based components and will affect the automated outcome by allowing adjustments to all, who are either over-graded or under-graded.

Implementation of Appraisals:

Increment will be added to the salary right from eligibility month.

Events

We firmly believe in the famous saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”; so we have events planned round the year.

Be it our annual trip, Meetups, Diwali Get Together, Dance Party, we enjoy all of these and have a fun-filled time.

We also have defined budgets for celebrating successful releases or an exceptional performance by the teams. As an incentive, the team is sponsored to go for a meal together.

Referral Policy

We always believe that our solutions work because of You (our people), who never get tired of learning and improving. And that’s why we are always looking for talented people, just like you to join and work with us.

So, if you have a friend, family member or ex-colleague who you think would fit right in with our culture and values, here’s how you can make that happen and get rewarded.

You may refer to individuals who fit the specifications given in job descriptions for vacant positions which Human Resources posts from time to time. In case the resume is already available in the data bank the referral process will be terminated at this stage.
Your role will be limited to the submission of the resume of the candidate. After this the regular process of shortlisting and interviews will be applied to the referrals also.
If the candidate referred by you clears all the rounds and is hired by Digicorp, then you get to receive 5000 INR as a Referral bonus.
To receive bonus however you must also remain employed with us, and not under notice period, at that particular time.

Note: Management, Executives and members of the HR department are ineligible for this benefit.

Resignation (The Melancholy days)

Well, we would certainly not like any of our Digicorp family members to leave us. But sometimes it is unavoidable due to various reasons. We wish you all the best for your future in case this happens and we would be glad to help you in making this a smooth transition.

But before that, since we’re on the subject of how to do something uncomfortable like resigning, we encourage you to read the following road map defined by one of the best entrepreneurs in the software world for resigning.

If things are going well at the company, and you’re learning and developing, you should stay three years–at least. There is no reason to jump ship if you’re learning and enjoying your time at a company.
If you’re not learning, enjoying yourself or developing, you probably shouldn’t stay in a company. On that, I think we all agree.
Ask your boss if you can take 10 minutes of her time to speak in private. If your boss is busy, ask their admin if you can get on the schedule and say that it is urgent.
Tell your boss everything truthfully. Tell them why you’re leaving, where you’re going and what you’ve loved about working at the company. If they ask, tell them what you think could be improved.
If you would rather stay at your company, but need to make more money, be straight with your boss and let them know you would like them to match, or come closer to a competing offer.
Don’t post correspondence of any private discussions with your boss on the Web. That’s not good for anyone–even though it’s highly entertaining for many.
Here is a basic script for a situation where you absolutely want to leave a job:
“Boss, this is hard for me to say, so I’m going to just come out and say it: I’m resigning today. Don’t worry, I will give you as much time as you need to transition–within reason. It’s not personal, but I really want to take on this challenge at company ABC. I understand if you don’t want me here in the office as a distraction to the rest of the team. Please let me know how I can help us all have a really smooth transition.”

Here is how you can resign

You can file a resignation via Backbone.
Typically notice period is of two months for Digicorpians; however for some key members it is 3 months. However, if you inform them about your resignation plan well in advance without taking a final call; then we can always plan and negotiate the notice period to be served as the case maybe.
We are sure you understand your responsibility before leaving Digicorp. You will have to finish your assigned work during the notice period and transfer the responsibilities to other team members. In unfortunate situations where you are not able to finish it in stipulated time, you may have to extend the notice period.
We would never like to do that but in case you fail to complete the notice period you may not be eligible for receiving any experience, relieving or any other official letters. In certain situations you may not be eligible for last month’s salary.
During the notice period no leaves will be allowed. If any such leave is taken, then the notice period will be extended accordingly or management may choose to deduct double the amount against such leaves.
In case if you are violating the bond, you’ll have to clear all your financial dues as otherwise we will not be able to proceed with the exit formalities.
After the successful completion of notice period, you will be provided with two copies of Relieving and Experience letters. You will have to sign and submit one copy of the relieving letter to HR personnel.
We do not close your bank account after you leave Digicorp so it will be up to you to close it or to continue with it.
An Exit Interview : It is not obligatory for any Digicorpian to attend the exit interview, but we would sincerely appreciate any inputs that you have and will assist us in continually improving and providing a better workplace.

Hope you enjoyed reading this document as much as we enjoyed creating it…Welcome to Digicorp!