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.
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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
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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...