India remains top priority in terms of investment: Cisco senior vice president Kelly Jones

Here are some edited excerpts from the interview.

How important is India as a talent market for the company? What are the areas you’re looking to focus on here?

For us at Cisco, India remains a top priority in terms of investment. When we think of the next few years and the things that we’re really focusing on, we’re doubling down on the culture side of our business here in India.

We’ve gone through some seismic shifts globally that we’re also seeing in the region here, that are focused on people renegotiating their relationship with work. So we want to ensure we stay grounded in our conscious culture. I also see us focusing very strongly on the well-being space, a trend that we’re seeing in a lot of places.

In a boundaryless world, it’s a little challenging sometimes for our employees to create those boundaries that allow themselves to have their life outside of work. People are working from home, but they’re actually working more. So we’re focusing on how we think about work and construct work in a way that is more meaningful and sustainable for the long run.

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What is the strategy for upskilling, given that the market is changing rapidly?
We continue to stay focused on attracting top technical talent. Our site here in India specifically is very heavily focused on the software side, and we’re looking to grow our business in that area too. So our ability to attract and retain top technical talent across the country is going to continue to be essential for us. We’re also being really specific in how we think about skills – not just within the company but how we’re looking at overall upskilling, and how we can ensure we give our engineers what they need to reskill for the future.

Cisco has been in the news recently for laying off employees. What comes next?
We are currently at about 15,000 employees here. India is a significant growth area for us, just based on the sheer volume of highly qualified technical talent.

Layoffs are a challenging time for any organisation. Our workforce rebalancing wasn’t based on financial data, but it reflected a change in our business – the move towards subscription and software, and the need to restructure a little bit of our portfolio of where the talent is.

because for me, it’s a little bit about looking at our talent through the lens of not just skills but skill adjacency. As we move ahead, we’d like to focus on the upskilling piece, sharpening our diversity and inclusion approach, sponsoring more employees for leadership, and setting up more resource groups.