Www.tata.in PDF Tata Review Apr 13 Tata Motors

8/10/2019 Www.tata.in PDF Tata Review Apr 13 Tata Motors

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How does the HR agenda unfold

at Tata Motors and what are its

priorities?

ata Motors has aspirations or a uture that will

be more global and more competitive, where

customer expectations will be quite different

rom what we have seen all these years. It is a

uture where our employee demographics will

be much altered rom what it is now. Our HR

agenda is a product o all this.

In late 2010 we articulated a five-year

human capital strategy or our company. It is

not an HR unction strategy but a human capital

strategy, and it has been co-created and co-owned by the leadership.

Tere are near- and long-term agendas.

Te past 12 months have not been a particularly

As a part of its vision for

transformation, Tata Motors

has articulated a human capital

strategy that sets a ve-year

road map for the company’s

HR agenda. Speaking

with Sangeeta Menon, the

company’s chief human

resources ofcer, Prabir Jha,

looks back at the company’sHR journey thus far and spells

out the challenges of the future.

‘Employees are our capital

and our job is to grow that’


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COVER STORY

April 2013 n Tata Review 11

easy period or the company. So, how we manage

costs, productivity and talent is going to be the

near-term HR challenge. Te long-term agenda

will be different, given the context o the new

culture that we have envisioned.

We have reramed the vision and mission

or ata Motors and defined the kind o culture

we need to create given the new challenges.

Building that culture is easier said than done

because it means that all HR sub-systems must

be reoriented to be in line with the new culture.

Culture reinvention along the ‘Aces’ path

(accountability, customer, excellence and speed)is going to be an HR priority and it will have a

huge change management component.

Another ocus area is managing talent

and leadership. A company’s success eventually

depends on talent across all levels, with the

right skills, the right engagement and the right

kind o diversity.

How is the human ‘capital’ approach

different from the traditional human

resources approach?Employees are our capital and our job is to grow

that capital. Te term human capital signifies

that it is not just the HR unction’s job to manage

this resource, but it is the leadership’s job as

well. For very long people in many companies

have erroneously believed that human asset

management is part o the HR unction’s agenda.

But the truth is that while human capital strategy

is enabled and acilitated by the HR unction, it

is actually owned by leadership and management

across levels.

HR is no doubt the unctional expert, but

the deployment ultimately lies in the hands o

line managers. Te so-called gap between line

managers and HR must end. One cannot be a

great line manager unless one is a great people

manager. Tat’s why the shif rom an HR

unction strategy to a human capital strategy.

How are you managing this change in

approach and attitude?ata Motors is going through a comprehensive

organisational transormation. It started with the

new vision and mission document, which allows

people to see a clear link between what they are

doing and what the company aims to achieve.

Within that mission is an inclusive vision that

gives everyone meaning in their work, beyond

obvious reasons such as increments or job

security. A lot o our HR processes and systems

are being revisited towards this end. Buildingpositive recognition or our Aces culture rests on

our belie in positive psychology.

Our ‘Pact’ (perormance and coaching

tool) initiative is anchored in the philosophy

that managers must move away rom thinking o

themselves as bosses to thinking o themselves

as coaches. We have workshops and simulations

to make sure that line managers start embracing

this approach.

Te new individualised compensation policy

puts a lot o responsibility in the hands o line

managers. A significant part o our perormance

measurement, talent management and assessment

criteria today are about using hardwired HR

processes to support what is really a sof cultural

transition. Finally, we have built high-level

branding around various HR interventions to

ensure excitement, passion and ownership.

Halfway into the transformation

journey, how satisfied are you withthe way it has progressed?

I am very happy with the journey. Our new

HR policies are benchmarked with the best in

About Tata Motors Tata Motors is the world’s fourth-largest bus

and truck manufacturer and India’s largest

automobile company. It has manufacturing sites

in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The company’s portfolio extends from heavy

commercial vehicles to sub-tonne carriers,

buses, SUVs and passenger cars.

Consolidated revenues of `1,656.55 billion in the

nancial year 2011-12.

Number of employees: 55,000 plus.



COVER STORY

12 Tata Review n April 201312

the world. We have brought in unprecedented

‘outside in’ thinking to HR in ata Motors. We

have revamped our compensation philosophy

so people can see their rewards linked to

company perormance. Historically, a variety o

practices were deployed at various ata Motors

locations; we are now creating a single ata

Motors way. We have harmonised and upscaled

HR in the company.

Trough all this, we are trying to create a

more contemporary organisation that appeals to

employees rom any country, culture or

industry; a world-class destination or best-in-class talent. When we look back to when we

started the change programme, we see what a

long way we have come. I would give us 8 out o

10 on the scorecard.

What role does learning and

development (L&D) play in talent

management at Tata Motors?

We have some path-breaking branded initiatives

in the L&D space. For example, Ieach is an

innovative practice o getting line managersto take ownership when it comes to sharing

their knowledge and experience. Tis ensures

tacit knowledge transer, breaks silos, develops

leadership, reduces cost o third-party training

and earns reward points or people sharing their

knowledge with colleagues.

Te concept o ‘learning advisory councils’

[LACs] has been acknowledged as a world-

class practice. Trough LACs the business or

the unctions identiy their learning priorities,

which they own, review and reinorce. oday

the business leads the learning, unlike in the

past, when HR would drive the process. We have

switched to e-enabled learning to appeal to young,

tech-savvy employees o tomorrow; almost 90

percent o our learning programmes are online.

Te HR strategy has to respond to the

changing needs o not just employees but the

entire ecosystem. For instance, we have created

a small team rom our in-house group o HR

proessionals to work on the HR agenda oour dealerships, to look at the entire HR lie

cycle o the people who actually touch the

end customer. We adopted the ‘build, operate,

transer’ ramework and have just handed over

the responsibility to line operations, satisfied that

we have put the HR systems in place.

On the manuacturing side we have a

programme called ‘Autonova’, where we have

worked on six o the most mission-critical

issues o the manuacturing operations o our

commercial vehicles business, to build a world-

class standard o competence across levels

in these identified areas. Tese are just a ew

examples o how the HR unction’s partnership

with business is increasingly becoming strategic.

What do you see as the major HR

challenges for the automotive

industry today?

Tere are some obvious challenges such as the

availability o skills, be it a blue-collar operator

or an employee with niche skills. Tereore, the

war or the right talent will intensiy. Also, we

will have to compete as an industry to attract

talent. Te auto industry is not necessarily the

first choice o many potential employees; how

we position ourselves as a sector o choice is achallenge. Te old image o the auto sector as a

manuacturing business has to change; it must

promote itsel as a consumer sector at par with

new-age industries.

How is Tata Motors preparing itself to

become an employer of choice?

We have been working on this or some time

now and the efforts are beginning to pay off:

we were recently named in one survey as the

‘best company to work or’ in the auto and

manuacturing segment. Te challenge is how to

keep this alive.

Over the last ew years we have been

visible on the campuses with ‘Mindrover’, a

successul case-study contest or students across

Indian B-schools. We took this idea orward by

introducing a similar engagement with students

rom top engineering campuses this year,

where we invited them to provide solutions to

technical problems.We also engage with many o these campuses

through clearly differentiated internship

programmes, where we pair students with



COVER STORY

April 2013 n Tata Review 13

mentors or guides. Te eedback rom our

summer interns has been positive and 80 percent

o all our hiring is now through pre-placement

offers to such summer interns. Tis summer,

or the first time in ata Motors, we will start

internships or II engineers.

Diversity is another important agenda or

us. We want to see more women employees

at ata Motors. In act, our internal employee

reerral programme, ‘Friend ++’, earns an

employee a bonus over their reerral award i

they reer a woman. We have arguably the most

women-riendly policies in the sector, be it onmaternity, adoption or a sabbatical. All o these

initiatives add to the story o ata Motors being a

great employer.

Is attrition a concern for Tata

Motors? How do you retain talent?

Quantitatively, we have single-digit attrition,

which is good. Most o the attrition happens in

the first five years, when employees are keen to

switch jobs and try out new things. Once they

have completed five years, they settle in morecomortably and that’s where we need to engage

and retain them with different learning options,

a career architecture that allows them to move

across jobs, and leadership mentoring.

Younger employees are uncomortable

with hierarchies, so we need to create a flatter

organisation. Even our new offices are designed

to reflect this.

What is the Tata Motors experience

with leadership development?

Leadership development continues to be a

challenge because our aspirations are high. Te

next crop o leaders at ata Motors will have

to be qualitatively superior. So we concentrate

on offering different assignments, behavioural

training, taking people out o their comort

zone and so on. Te leadership development

project is going to be about identiying potential

leaders at every level, screening, some amount o

education support, and a great deal o coachingand mentoring. We are actively evaluating

360-degree eedback as a mandatory input,

starting with senior leadership.

As the Tata group becomes more

global, what sort of HR imperatives

are you having to cope with? How

difficult is it to deal with diversityand cultural differences?

HR can influence business decisions on whether

the company should enter a new geography, by

advising i the right kind o talent is available in

that market or within the company. Tis is in

addition to enabling all compliances to a variety

o local labour legislations. HR can also help by

training employees to work effectively in a new

cultural and business environment.

Most overseas moves ail not because

o hard issues, but ofen the sofer and ofentaken-or-granted ones. Indeed, no good merger

or acquisition exercise today happens without

active HR ownership rom the word go.

As part of a large group, there

must be plenty of opportunities to

compare HR practices with other

Tata companies. Which are the Tata

companies that impress most with

their HR approach?

Te chie HR officers (CHROs) o leading ata

companies meet every quarter to discuss HR

practices and issues. We can also pick up the

phone and talk to any ata company CHRO

when we eel the need.

We all learn rom one another. For

example, we can learn rom ata Consultancy

Services about how it utilises technology in

HR to manage scale, or discover why itan has

virtually no attrition, or learn rom ata Steel’s

great industrial relations legacy. Not everycompany will have every experience; smart

learning and sharing, I believe, is the way to go

about it.¨

For very long people in many companies

have erroneously believed that human assetmanagement is part of the HR function’s

agenda. But the truth is that ... it is actually

owned by leadership and management...

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