Mr. Kevin Syvrud, VP, Human Resources at Synopsys, Inc. was in Armenia last week. Along with his other business tasks he conducted “Crucial Conversation” training class for Synopsys Armenia managers. Mr. Syvrud was really excited about the training because he is impacting managers to be more effective, to get better results. Synopsys Armenia PR Manager Gayane Markosyan caught up with him for a small talk.
– Is this your first visit to Armenia or have you visited Armenia before?
– I only visited Armenia for one day before, it was early February of last year, so just a quick story on that is we did a switch in Synopsys HR and I became responsible for Armenia because I had all the other countries, so I came and visited the team. Unfortunately my timing was not good, it was a day that people were off, it was I think an internal holiday, so I didn’t get to meet as many people as I would have liked.
– How many times in a year do you visit other locations?
– It’s a good question. Once or twice I travel to other regions. It is usually based on other business needs: am I delivering training, or is there a significant acquisition activity going on. So, it is usually tied to business needs and then some travel opportunities, or perhaps I have hired somebody new that’s of a senior level and I need to help them to get up to speed. In a year, I might visit twenty sites but I might do 5 or 6 sites in one trip.
– What three words come to your mind when you think of Synopsys Armenia site?
– Maturing, organized and integrated.
– How do you feel when visiting a site outside of US?
– Well, for me I feel probably as at home outside of US as I do inside, because I started my career at Synopsys Europe , so for me to be in Europe, I feel actually in some ways more home than actually…or as much as I do in the US.
– How did you build your career and how did you get to where you are now?
– Previous to Synopsys I was working in a small software company, and I was responsible for operations in Europe. I was more on the business side. Synopsys had an opportunity for Europe and they wanted somebody who could do HR but with a business aspect. So I came to this role from a business side to help HR rather than HR supporting business. So I kind of treat it as a business support function and I almost treat this function as business itself.
– What is your background?
– I have a finance degree, and I spent a number of years in international business dealing actually with software for hotels, that was my longest career before I joined Synopsys. So I have a little bit of systems background as well.
– I have never met a person who moved from business to HR. How did you decide to make that move? Is it because HR is close to your heart?
– Absolutely! When I was in business it was real clear to me you get good results if you have good people. So, leadership is critical. It sounds very, what we call “trite”, but it is very true. If you want good results you have to have good people in a good environment in a good organization. And then the results come. Yes, you need to have right economic cycle and good product but people are the core.
– I got a Synopsys Community Champion Award in 2008, and the headquarter team recorded us as winners, and ten people from ten said that people were the greatest thing about working at Synopsys.
– That does not surprise me. When we do employee surveys, even people who leave the company say one of the toughest things is the people they leave behind. We actually have a fair amount of re-hires, and a lot of people come back for the people.
– Many people want to become a manager, they dreaming about having employees to help them with some part of job. When they become a manager, they realize that it was much easier when they were on their own and were doing everything themselves. It is very hard in the beginning to smartly delegate the tasks, to motivate people to do their best, to follow the progress, to teach them, to expect things to be done the way they would do it, to justify their expectations, to appreciate them in a right way, etc. So as a VP of Synopsys HR, what is the biggest challenge you face?
– I think our biggest challenge in HR is helping managers understand their role. Especially in an engineering company our talent and our passion is technology and people who are good at their technical role can get promoted. If you get promoted into the role of a manager and you don’t have managing experience, you may be the best technologist but managing other technologists without the management skills can be a challenge. So we are helping managers to really be effective. I always say that if you have good managers and you have good organization and structure you almost don’t need HR. So thank god, things change once in a while, we’re hiring and growing, so I still have a job. But if Synopsys has good managers, the rest of the part of HR becomes much easier. There are always rules and compliance, things that we need to run, but our job is easier if our managers are skilled in doing their jobs.
– Is there any unique attribute that Armenian site has in comparison with other sites?
– Technical skills of the Armenian employees are quite high; there is a lot of talent in Armenia especially for relatively a smaller sized country. I think there is a passion for technology, which matches to Synopsys. Also because Armenia is a smaller country and even relatively remote from some point of view, there is exposure to the rest of the world, there are language skills; most people speak obviously English, Russian. Yes, it’s small, but it part of the big world, so, technology and global focus. And Armenia is connected to the rest of the world in a lot of interesting ways. Living in California we have a lot of Armenian people especially in Southern California, so I think a lot of Armenians really have friends and family in the rest of the world.
What I think Synopsys Armenia can do more of is to feel part of Synopsys worldwide and not to say, “Okay we are Synopsys Armenia” but to basically say, “We are Synopsys”, and to really learn and grow about what the whole company does, and therefore, with that understanding understand how their individual roles affect the whole company not just Synopsys Armenia. So, one thing to do is to become even more a part of Synopsys global family.
– Are there any challenges with the Armenian site?
– There are several challenges. I will be real clear on it. Transport to Armenia is a challenge, there are a number of direct flights, communication has gotten much better, but that was a challenge. Wages on the worldwide basis are relatively low, but some of infrastructure costs per person are relatively higher, so that’s still a challenge. Some of the laws and economics of Armenia are still developing, so we have to deal with the changes if there are changes in an employment law or a financial law; that is something that we have to keep our eye on. So Armenia has its opportunities but it also has certain challenges, but any geography has them.
– Just recently GES was conducted at Synopsys. Is it a common culture among such level business companies, or does Synopsys pay more attention to such things?
– A lot of companies do employee surveys. In fact, we are a member of this Information Technology Survey Group, so you have to be actually invited to it. It’s typically companies that are multinational, high-tech, over 5,000 people and a certain level of revenue. So we compare ourselves to them. The companies in the survey group have a total of over 600,000 employees we can compare to. And when we compare our results, because it’s standardized results, not all of it but most of it, our results are very similar but in a lot of cases slightly higher.
– Are there any criteria that are typical to Armenian site based on the results?
– I know that Armenians are very eager to learn new technologies, so that is actually one of our challenges, so I will highlight that challenge. Compensation is always a challenge here as well, so it’s one thing that we are looking at. But really I think our biggest challenge or opportunity is how to keep employee population understanding what Synopsys business is, business trends, what our customers are doing, where is our technology going. The opportunity we have here is that we have University Program here, so there is an opportunity for the learning, employees here are hungry to learn and grow into new technologies. Now in other areas we have more business groups, so there is more exposure to multiple product lines. Here our biggest population is SG (Solution group) – 60%, with SEG (Silicon Engineering Group) and a group of AMSG (Analog Mixed Signal Group) comprising the remaining 40% of the headcount of R&D. We don’t have any VG (Verification Group) here for example.
– What are the three things that make professionals choose Synopsys?
– I can answer that pretty well. To start out you always have to do a fair market offer, salary, bonuses, and benefits. But employees also come to Synopsys for the opportunity; we see that in employee survey. They also come for the quality of the company and the quality of the people in the company, and they do look for opportunities to learn and grow.
– Do you think that being a worldwide leader in the sphere and being a stable company affects employees’ decision?
– Absolutely! Synopsys is seen as very stable; in fact our motto being predictable success almost translates over the HR space as well. Synopsys is very predictable, in fact during the last significant economic downturn we were much more stable in or employee population than almost all of our competitors and customers. So there is the company view the employees are here to build our success, we want them to share the success.