IT CultureSeries: Office Bakwas

The Indian IT HR department: one part employee champion, one part management enforcement arm, one part event committee that organises a Diwali decoration competition nobody asked for, and one part person who sends "please keep this conversation confidential" before telling you something you already knew. A complete field guide.

By Bench Babu  |  May 20, 2026  |  Office Culture Series, Part 3

BENGALURU — Her name is Priya and she has "People & Culture" in her job title and "HR Business Partner" in her email signature and "Employee Experience Champion" on her LinkedIn and she will be the one to call you into a room in September and tell you that your role has been "made redundant due to organisational restructuring" and hand you a letter that she did not write but has reviewed and that she will explain to you while maintaining eye contact and a tone of genuine regret that is also, professionally, completely appropriate for someone who has had this conversation twenty-seven times this quarter.

But before that: she organises the onboarding. She sends the welcome kit. She does the culture induction session where she tells you about the company values — Integrity, Innovation, Collaboration, Excellence — which are also the values of every other company in Bengaluru, because there are only four words available for company values and everyone has already chosen them. She runs the "town hall" where the CEO talks for forty minutes about a strong pipeline and exciting quarters ahead. She monitors the anonymous survey results where 68% of employees say they feel "not heard." She presents these results to leadership. Leadership says "great insights." Nothing changes. She sends another survey in six months.

"Our people are our greatest asset."— The company's HR Policy document, page 1, paragraph 1. Page 47 of the same document outlines the termination process. Both statements are sincere. They are also in the same document. This document is called the Employee Handbook.

The HR also manages the Performance Improvement Plan. The PIP is a 90-day document that officially exists to help underperforming employees improve. In practice it is a legally documented off-ramp designed to create a paper trail before termination. Everyone in Indian IT knows this. The employee on the PIP knows this. The HR knows the employee knows this. The manager knows everyone knows this. They all proceed with the 90-day process anyway because the HR has explained that "we have to follow the process" and the process must be followed and the process will conclude in the way it was always going to conclude and this will have taken 90 days and one unnecessary performance improvement plan.

Priya also organises Zumba Fridays. They are optional. They are on a Friday at 5 PM. They are optional in the way that things that are noted by management are optional. Attendance has been 89% for three consecutive quarters. The Zumba instructor is very good. Nobody mentions this context. The Zumba Fridays are in the annual report under "Employee Wellbeing Initiatives." They are preceded in the same paragraph by the PIP statistics. This is called balance.

HR BakwasPeople And CulturePIP Is An Off-RampCompany Values Copy PasteZumba Friday OptionalPriya Will Call You
Disclaimer: Satire. Priya is a composite of documented HR experiences from Glassdoor India, Blind, and r/developersIndia. The four company values are real and identical across approximately 4,000 Indian IT companies. — Ed.