Issue 04

1. HR drives the business, what is your take on this? How does it influence your HR strategy?

In a developing market like India, every organization aspires to annually grow 1.5 -2 times the GDP growth. Moreover, the Start-ups want to chase explosive & disruptive growth. In this context, when you ask the CEOs about their top 3 considerations, invariably; you will hear them talk about having right people in the critical roles, building right capabilities for future and create appropriate work culture for winning over the consumers and employees. This is where HR comes in. Role of HR is to help the business become future ready and win in the marketplace they compete in. Through its classical HR levers – culture, capability and talent, HR partners the business in realizing the business ambition.

In Godrej, we work on a rolling 3 year business plan (Long Range Plan). HR strategy is then derived based on the long term business ambition imperatives, SWOT of the current situation, employee demographic analysis and thorough review of the People Scorecard. Through this, for each business, we identify 3-4 broad people focus areas and then detail out the HR initiatives / interventions that will be undertaken over next 36 months. In that sense, our HR agenda is more business outcome led rather than HR process led.

Such an approach helps business leaders understand the impact HR can make on their business agenda and sponsor it.

2. Do you think HR has succeeded in becoming a strategic partner for business? What could be the areas of improvement?

The organizations have come to realize that they need to win the battle of talent and culture – to eventually win in the market place. The Boards now periodically assess the talent readiness of the organization. Succession pipeline for critical leadership roles, designing business capabilities, organization health, diversity agenda and cultural strengths now get discussed more often than earlier at the top level. So, HR now has this great opportunity to step up and deliver on this ask.

However, it is important that while focusing on the strategy, HR does not neglect its employees and servicing them. HR roles of -employee champion and service provider are as critical as and more fundamental than being a strategic business partner. So as HR, if you make strategic presentations but do not respond employee queries on time, that is not done.

3. What is your recruitment and talent development strategy?

For us at Godrej Agrovet, recruitment and talent are most the important levers in helping businesses achieve their ambition. Every strong hire propels the business towards the target. The recruitment strategy is a combination of building long term leadership pipeline through sustained campus hiring and lateral hiring for select roles in the company. The hiring is rigorously done through cognitive & psychometric testing, certified interview assessors and using the Godrej Capability Factors as the framework for assessment.

The talent recruited is monitored for effective onboarding and accelerated peak performance. We review the effectiveness of our talent acquisition by analyzing the performance levels of new hires over 2 years as well as the early attrition (employees leaving within one year of joining). A comprehensive TA dashboard is published every quarter. The insights from this analysis are used to further strengthen the recruitment process.

Our talent development strategy is designed to meet both the organization needs as well as individual development priorities. From the organization perspective, based on the strategic talent review (we call it Total Talent Management), we identify the development plans for the high potential employees and for the successors to the critical roles. These development actions and readiness improvement is monitored closely jointly by the business leaders and HR. From an employee perspective, we encourage employees to own their development plans and improve their capability levels for current as well as future roles. The immediate manager plays the role of a facilitator in helping the employee development.

4. In a VUCA world, how do you cope with the disruptive forces? Be it Talent Retention, Engagement, and Development.

In Godrej, we hire talent through our brand and retain them through our culture. Our people philosophy is well thought through. Our people processes are designed to provide Godrejites an inspiring workplace.

Line managers are held accountable for people agenda in their teams. They carry the people matrix in their performance goals.

We regularly monitor employee engagement levels, implement actions arising out of the employee engagement feedback. And also communicate back to employees. That has helped Godrej Agrovet stay in the top quartile in the engagement scores.

In a pandemic year like this, we connected with employees even more. We held regular pulse surveys, sought employee views on dealing with the pandemic challenges. We created a dedicated webpage to recognize the ‘Corona Warriors’ for employees going beyond their call of duty. All business & functional leaders held bi-monthly town halls with all teams to communicate the business situation and decisions planned.

In the disruptive situations like these, we go back to our core Godrej Values, and ensure that we demonstrate them in letter and spirit.

(ecommerce) as well as a cash strapped economy.