A US$ 30 billion conglomerate, Aditya Birla Group is engaged in several different businesses like cement, insulation, branded apparel, telecom, viscose staple fibre, life insurance, retail etc.
Madura Clothing Ltd (MCL), a part of Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd has been in the business of manufacturing branded apparel for premium brands namely Louis Philippe and Van Heusen. It has six factories spread in and around Bengaluru with nearly 5000 employees of which 90 percent are women. Coming from the neighbouring villages of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, large percentage of workforce would be 10th or 12th pass. Madura Clothing’s Vision is “To be a global benchmark for apparel industry in manufacturing and innovation providing competitive advantage to stake holders”. To achieve the Vision of becoming a global benchmark in the apparel industry, it is imperative that the employees stay connected not just with their job but experience an emotional bonding to the larger purpose of the organisation.
To facilitate an employee connect, Madura Clothing embarked on this journey of Engaging with its workforce in a focused manner and with a genuine belief that it would succeed!
Employee Engagement
MCL has a unique approach to employee engagement and all its activities are aligned to an Engagement philosophy.
MCL’s Employee Engagement philosophy is a three tier framework which focuses on engaging with employees at the Individual, Team and Organisation level. Each level had distinct parameters defined.
“To assess the current level of engagement, MCL conducted an Employee Satisfaction Survey (ESS). This was a change management initiative because it was a communication to employees that they are an important entity in building the culture of the organisation and their voices made a difference! MCL was moving towards creating a participative culture” explained Deepa Mahesh, Group Manager HR who is in-charge of Organisation Development and Young Talent Management.
The ESS Survey is conducted at both the levels of staff and operators covering 4000 people across the 4 factories. Administering the Employee Satisfaction Survey for was a mammoth task as each employee (who is semi literate) had to be explained the essence of the questions in detail to elicit their response.
Post the Survey, the results were analysed and action plans were taken up. An action planning committee was instituted to ensure the implementation of the action plans thus bringing about a closure to the process.
“Such a powerful upward communication channel will strengthen our culture of trust, openness and transparency and we would want to make it an annual process”, commented Lal Sudhakaran, Head of Manufacturing.
Communication Initiatives
Apart from ESS, MCL has identified a host of communication initiatives. “We are proud of the various avenues that we have defined to communicate with our employees – either in small groups or large groups or one to one,” shares Lal Sudhakaran. To name a few initiatives, we introduced “Express Yourself, a monthly event which provides employees an avenue to express their grievances to the Factory manager on a one to one basis. In addition to that there is another event called “Open house” on a monthly basis in which employees at all levels get an oppurtunity to interact with the Head of Manufacturing and share their opinions and grievances. The grievances that are shared in both the events are logged and acted upon. Another initiative is “Townhall” which is a bi annual meeting of the Head of Manufacturing with all employees of the factory to share the performance highlights of the previous 2 quarters, hear employee’s concerns/thoughts and distribute rewards which enhances motivation and engagement.
Annual Sports Meet
One of the action plans taken up post the ESS was “Introduce Sports initiatives” in the factories. The Central HR team planned a host of sports events through a period of 3 months culminating into an MCL Annual Sports meet in which the factories competed against each other to foster a culture of healthy competition. Such an event helped the employees express their talent and build team spirit .
The Value System
With a diverse work force which works for one common MCL Vision, the one thread that binds them is the thread of Aditya Birla Group values, namely PASSION, INTEGRITY, COMMITMENT, SEAMLESSNESS AND SPEED.
To inculcate this sense of unity and values, each work day for the employees begins with the Aditya Vandana prayer and a recital of the MCL Vision. To celebrate values, value awards are rewarded to employees who exhibit exemplary display of values. The values are so much ingrained in the employees that they created skits based on the values to display their involvement and pride with MCL.
The employees are trained and guided to deliver and perform better. With this enhanced performance they are recognised and appreciated. Value leaders are spotted among them and are instantly recognised and rewarded.
“This performance driven recognition and development gives the employees a high and they are motivated when they get appreciated and rewarded for their efforts. We also help them personally and professionally to make a career in the organisation which in-turn helps them be independent in the society and manage their families,” said Mohita Malhotra, Group Manager HR who is in-charge of Talent Management, Training and Employee Engagement.
Welfare initiatives
To bring about a personal bonding, it is important to take care of the welfare needs of employees. “We provide facilities like medical, primary education, dental care, crèches and health camps for the family, arrange micro finances since their needs may be more than their salaries,” said Lal Sudhakaran, Head of Manufacturing.
Wellness – physical, mental and spiritual wellness is the focus at MCL. While sports initiatives helped maintain physical wellness, MCL organises half day ART OF LIVING pranayam sessions for all employees thereby helping them to manage their mental and spiritual wellness.
Large Scale Interactive Process
While employees are aware of the MCL Vision, it’s important that they internalise how the Vision drives the strategy and the business of MCL and how each employee’s job contributed to the Vision. With this objective in mind, an intervention was designed.
Due to the spread of factories and the language barriers, the intervention had to be designed in a way that would engage employees and drive the message impactfully.
The methodology that was adopted was “LARGE SCALE INTERACTIVE PROCESS (LSIP)”. This methodology ensures driving of an objective to large groups of employees in a participative manner.
LSIP in its essence is based on few principles:
- It works on the principle of MAXMIX-cross functional cross hierarchical. Seated in round tables, the MAXMIX approach ensures every table is a microcosm of the entire organization and different perspectives are brought up during discussions.
- To maintain span of attention, the each session is not more than 10 minutes, no power point slides are used and speakers are asked to speak from heart
- After every session, the participants are provided time to discuss their understanding and ask questions to clarify the same.
- The entire event is based on adhering to stringent timelines by the presenter as well as the participants.
The event was named “SANGAMA” and its impeccable execution by the team brought in a lot of positivity among the employees. It was a huge step in the employee engagement journey at MCL.
“It is expected to positively impact attrition. This initiative is set to create a huge impact in the industry because of its pioneering work in the field of employee engagement at the individual, functional and organisational level. This we believe will help in engaging, motivating and retaining workforce,” concluded Lal.
Exposure to the Aditya Birla Group – Knowledge Integration Program Visits
Aditya Birla Group being rich in heritage , having business from metal to fibre , has variety of best practices worth emulating spread across domains and businesses. MCL encourages Knowledge Integration Program under which a maxmix group comprising of staff as well as operators are sent to various businesses to get this enriching experience. The groups have been sent to Units like UltraTech Arkonnam, Grasim Harihar, and Birla White Jodhpur etc. Operators describe the experience of flying from Bangalore to Jodhpur for the visit and getting a warm welcome from the group company as one of the most enthralling experience of their lives.
Engaging our workforce is a journey which has began and has been appreciated by one and all. MCL is all set to create new benchmarks on people management which will be driven by its committed and engaged workforce.
