"I took that boat called EBS with 600 people in a safe harbor, called NTT DATA, the group with the main shareholder being the Japanese state. Now we have 1,400 employees. The target is to reach 3,500 people, also with the help of the Japanese. In the first months of this year we hired 276 people and left only 62, so we have a good retention rate, taking into account the challenges of the sector in which we operate.
We had people from multinationals in Bucharest coming to us, even from giants like IBM, telling us that we are the only corporation in Romania run in an entrepreneurial spirit. It is very hard to keep a company with thousands of people who have thousands of dollars’ worth of wages if heavy times arise and the market goes downwards.
I have set out to build a brand with a human-oriented organizational culture, as the industry is struggling to attract people. There are very high risks, so we decided to join a strong group. And it is better for employees to know that you are not the main shareholder, but the Japanese state. Now the battle in IT is not necessarily on salaries, but on how much you are involved in social, academic, sport or cultural events. If we won’t have in Cluj events such as opera, theater, cultural festivals, these people will not be here anymore, but they will go elsewhere." says Metz. Over time, the company had to adapt its organizational culture to the market it operated. "We were perceived as a German company, because our business was mainly addressed to the automotive sector in that country, but we went from one specific to another when we were taken over by NTT DATA, that is from Bavarian sausages to sushi, we organized events with Japanese specific, Asian gourmet courses, so that employees could adapt to the new culture. Now we are not only working on the same projects with the Japanese, but we also have the same laptops because we insisted that we would benefit from the same infrastructure in Romania, "says the NTT DATA director in Cluj. EBS Romania was taken over by the Japanese concern NTT DATA, the company's name being changed last year. Starting with 2013, EBS is part of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation. NTT DATA is the leading IT services provider based in Tokyo and has subsidiaries in over 40 countries. The Japanese group has $ 100 billion in annual business and over 241,000 people.
Source: Ziua de Cluj