Career management and Development

Cactus is a relatively new organization, and is currently in its growth phase. With its increasing
business verticals, new roles and positions keep opening up for the organization. As such, HR at
Cactus keeps an eye out for long term employees (who have been with the organization for more
than 5 years), and helps them grow in their careers.

For example, an employee who joined Cactus as an Associate Editor, was promoted to the role of
Asst. Managing Editor after completion of three years. To ensure the employee’s competency
and skills, Cactus provides training and development programs for such employees as they move
into management/supervisory roles. Prior to such role changes, tests such as DISC assessment
are conducted to ensure the employee has the cognitive ability to undertake such responsibility.

After two years, the same employee was offered a role change in the Translation team as a
Quality Manager. This was due to stagnation in the current role, and to keep the employee
motivated and associated with Cactus for the long term.

Responsibility of Managers

Line managers and supervisors are trained to look after the career development of their
subordinates. For example, the Sr. Managing Editor is tasked with providing the employees
feedback and advice to keep them motivated.

Given the fact that the Delivery team (Editorial team) has relatively low growth, continous skill
training programs are conducted to give them the option of taking up additional/alternative roles
in the company.
For example, Mr. Anselmo Martyes, who joined Cactus as an Associate Editor, moved into the
Skill & Knowledge management team after he was certified as a BELS editor. This program was
partly paid for by Cactus, subject to a clause at Mr. Anselmo stayed with Cactus for another 3
years.

Women’s Prospects in Career Development

Cactus, with 55% women employees, provides a pro-women working environment. At Cactus,
women have been promoted to roles such as Asst. Vice President of the Delivery team. For
example, Mrs. Yasmin C, who also joined Cactus as an AE, has been working with Cactus for
the past 10 years. In the course of this period, she has been promoted 4 times, moving from
Associate Editor, to Managing Editor, to Sr. Managing Editor, and finally to AVP of Delivery.
The above exhibits are from HR policies in 2014.
Compensation @Cactus Communications

Whatever be the drive for any person to work for any specific job profile throughout the course;
compensation has a significant effect on their behaviour, it may be momentous for some
employees but it does has an effect. At the end of day, everyone seeks for a fair recognition (in
terms of either direct or indirect compensation). It must value their work and position in the
company and this seems possible if the components of compensation are systematic.

Cactus Global understands the complication of compensation system and acts accordingly.
During our interview with the HR personnel, it seemed very obvious from his words that to him
compensation is not just about salary. He revealed that employees in his company expect many
benefits/incentives like sabbatical leave, medical insurance, bonus, stock options, recreational
leave, free meals etc., which sometimes turn to be costly for them. While setting up the
compensation package for any employee, they consider following components:

Direct compensation components

Salary and wages – Traditionally this was considered to be the only component of components
but Cactus Global since its inception in 2002 follows fixed and variable pay scale. For an
Associate editor, basic pay is Rs.5,00,000 and rest is variable which comprise maximum of
Rs.75,000 each quarter; given the employee achieves target of 95% or more.

S.No Target achieved Compensation

1 95% Rs. 75,000

2 90-95% Rs. 65,000

3 75-90% Rs. 50,000

4 50-75% Rs. 30,000

5 <50% Not eligible

So, a person at the post of Associate editor can earn a maximum of Rs.8,00,000 per annum. The
compensation for freelancers is quite different from this. They are paid on ad-hoc basis. They are
paid on the basis of assignments/ projects they complete in allotted time frame. There is no such
basis or fixed pay, they earn as per the time devote to this. Although there is no shortage of
projects but the company is not preferred in the market to work as freelancer, as it quality editing
requires time and they didn’t get compensated accordingly.

Incentive Pay – other than variable pay, there is no other bonuses paid to the employees,
although stock options are given but only to the employees at senior management level or to
those employees who have completed their five years of service in the company. This option is
again capped to 35% of sum percentage of the variable pay earned by a particular employee in
the financial year.

Merit pay – Each year in the month pf October (annual function of the company), they reward
one employee from each department as the best performer of the year and he/she is compensated
both directly and indirectly. In addition to some high end coupons, financial appraisals are also
given.

There is neither any provision of deferred pay nor overtime pay in the company. Although
advance payment is done on special request. This is limited to advance payment of basic pay of
an employee; maximum of two months.

Indirect Compensation

Protection program – Cactus Global insures each employee of its under Videocon group health
insurance. Each employee is granted to take medical incentive maximum of Rs. 4,00,000 per
year. In addition to this they are incentivized to get free diagnostic services any time round the
year from “Health Springs” hospital in Mumbai. There is no provision for life insurances but are
eligible for pension under EPF (employees’ provident fund).
For disabled persons, there is no any written provision in the company by-laws but at present
they incentivize their employees (with some sort of disability) with travel allowances for all days
they worked from the company’s office; it was on ad-hoc basis.

Pay without work - Cactus Global doesn’t incentivize their employees with any vacation or
holiday leave, no provision for leave and travel allowances. Company has 18 days as paid leave
but the company closes all its work for only 4 days a year (26th January, 1st May, 15th August and
2nd October). Rest of the 14 days some or the other employees are called for work and they are
paid accordingly (base pay and travel allowance for the number of days they worked). Other than
these 18 days, employees are eligible for sick leave (21 days per year) and one month of
sabbatical leave after every three years of work. These paid leaves can be carried to next year
(maximum to one year) while the sick leaves can be encashed at the end of the each financial
year.
Services and Pre-requisites – Cactus Global is very much concerned about the recreational
activities in the company. They induction program itself starts with games intended to make
employees work in group and act creatively. Each of its office has specific recreational rooms
with facilities like pool table, carom, table tennis table, foosball table etc. in addition to these,
company often organizes get together parties for employees and their families. It provides free
breakfast to each employee every day. Employees here have open and free access to its cafeteria,
which has a quite good range of eateries (milk, juice, cereal, fruits, ice-cream etc.) available
round the clock.

Cactus Global with its own kind of work, work force and compensation system is a market
leader with “enago” as the only competitor with par on some terms like fields in which they
provide services but lacks much behind in annual turnover, number of employees and CEO
score. It is leading the market also because of its compensation system. Although it clears all its
compensation policies at the time of joining as per industrial policies and regulations but still
keeps an open frame for exceptional cases and entertains its employees’ personal issues at HR
level. Even we found this during our interview with one of the employees that employees of this
company are very satisfied, they have a workforce who have joined the organisation leaving
organizations like Amazon and others. But at the same, they agreed that the compensation for
freelancers is not lucrative and the company should do something concrete in this regard owing
to the work they demand from them. They also feel this important because the field in which
Cactus Global deals (editing) can prosper with more freelancers.

Company Leadership CEO score Employees Revenue

Cactus Global Anurag Goel 64/100 600 $8 M

,:enago Sharad Mittal 50/100 220 $2.5 M

(Source: https://www.owler.com/company/cactuscommunications )
(Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/cactusglobal.com?competitors=enago.com )