With more than 30,000 clients across 93 countries, it was important for Cactus Communications to employ a workforce that was truly global. “Our markets are such that we needed to localise and get natives from client countries to understand different perspectives and deliver services that lived up to client expectations,” says Anurag Goel, the company’s co-founder and CEO. Cactus Communications provides services such as academic editing, translation and research writing. The company has offices in five countries but its head office in Mumbai best reflects this global texture—as seven nationalities make up its workforce. The benefits are as easily tabulated. “The quality of solutions that come up during problem-solving sessions would not have been the same if we’d adopted a single-minded approach,” explains Goel.

When Ai Kanoh flew from Japan to Cactus for the first time in 2007: “almost ten people came to greet me and gave me their contact numbers for emergency”, she recalls. Kanoh is senior marketing manager (Japan) at Cactus, and has been working in its main office in Mumbai for the past five years.

Despite a Cactus office in Japan, Kanoh opted to work in Mumbai, to experience the diversity and open culture that she “wouldn’t find in Japan”. “Here, I not only feel like I’m being listened to and treated equally irrespective of my nationality or gender, but I also feel accepted and appreciated for the person I am,” she says.

She’s one of the 237 full-time employees at Cactus Communications, who belong to seven nationalities, and work in tandem with 500-odd freelancers from 40 countries around the globe (from Israel to New Zealand) and deal with several international clients every day. 

Managing such a diverse group of individuals is unlikely to be an easy task, and one usually ignored by corporates. Usually, the workforce is treated as a homogenous mix of people believed to have similar goals and working styles. As a result, innovative solutions that can often only emerge from contrasting viewpoints are lost to the organisation. 

Says Ai Kanoh, who flew from Japan to Cactus Communications' Mumbai office in 2007, "“Cactus doesn’t have any one culture, not even Indian. It’s international.”

But not at Cactus. Here, the approach towards diversity has evolved with the size of the workforce. During the early years of the company, the organisation was founder-driven with a small team of 25. The well-travelled Goel—he studied at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania, and then worked in Amsterdam for McKinsey & Co.—would personally mentor and train his people on cultural nuances. 

“But as we grew from 25 to 237, we got so busy with business that we forgot about diversity. That is when it started to hurt more than help,” he says. Since its inception in 2002, Cactus Communications has spread to six offices across five countries. Nobody really felt at home though. The International Cactizens or ICs (as non-Indian employees are called here) felt neglected—an outsider in an Indian company. And, Indian employees believed company policies were tilted towards the Japanese because a majority of Cactus’ clients were from Japan. 

“We were losing a lot of knowledge with our International Cactizens. Their average tenure in India had reduced to about a year,” says Susanne Gupta, associate vice president, HR. This diversity was imperative to Cactus because of its global base, and because clients felt reassured when they knew somebody from their country worked in the company, who could be an important communication bridge.  

In 2007, Goel and his team put diversity at the forefront of company initiatives. Posters and banners extolled their philosophy—“Seven nations. Seven religions. Many Professions. One common thread” to celebrate this focus. There were weekly quizzes on the company intranet to educate people about various cultures.

“A diverse workforce keeps the environment dynamic and exciting and we wanted to nurture that,” explains Gupta. 

Injecting diversity into the workforce cannot be a stand-alone activity. At Cactus, it’s backed by supporting policies and programmes. In the Mumbai office, for example, each international Cactizen is assigned an Indian “buddy” who helps them ease into the country— teaching them to take a bus or a local train, helping them set up their company apartments or taking them out to popular hang-outs in the city. To make this relationship non-work in essence, the company makes sure this buddy does not belong to the same team. 

“A diverse workforce keeps the environment dynamic and exciting and we wanted to nurture that."- Suzanne Gupta 

Both the holiday and cafeteria lists are multi-cultural too. The office pantry menu was fixed through a survey among all employees, and the company follows an open holiday policy. There are no fixed offs even for Diwali or Christmas. A Korean employee can opt to take his/her allotted leaves for the Korean New Year, an Indian on August 15, and anyone can choose to take a day off on his/her birthday. 

Communicating with team mates in such a diverse workplace has its own challenges though, confess employees at Cactus. Most of them don’t use their mother tongue to interact with each other. And the same business concepts are understood and perceived differently by different nationalities. But, it’s this discomfort that leads to the best ideas. “It may take longer to put your point forward but the trade-off is that about a hundred ideas bounce off in our brainstorming sessions,” says Igor Rodrigues, Cactus’ marketing manager. “It forces you to think out of the box as you deal with a variety of international clients.” This smartly-planned freedom has also led to key business benefits. Since the diversity initiatives were introduced, the average tenure of an IC in India has gone up from one to more than two-and-a-half years, according to Gupta. 

Beyond nationalities, Cactus has mixed a wide range of employee professions into its melting pot. As an academic editing company, it has key eligibility requirements—good written English skills, knowledge of your subject and the right mix of the company’s six cultural values (integrity, trust, innovation, excellence, communication and fun.) So, there are doctors, engineers, teachers, accountants and web designers working together in the same function, unlike say, only accountants working together in finance. Any Cactus team then is a great blend of different skills, mindsets and working styles which both balance out and complement each other—say, creativity and subjectivity from literature and art graduates meeting analytical viewpoints put forward by mathematicians and engineers. “Working with different kinds of employees teaches you to customise your communication, says CEO Goel. “You pick up ways to talk to different kinds of clients.”