The other good employers
Whirlpool does not care for the buzz of rankings, but here it is! “I am not sure if having a ‘buzz’ is such a good thing... I would rather have people discover the reality for themselves, than have their perception dashed to the ground,” says Arvind Uppal, Region Head for Asia Pacific (except Greater China), Whirlpool of India. So what if it lacks buzz? “We are a great place to work as we offer people a good environment for development,” says Sanjay Singh, Vice President (HR), Asia.
Salaries are another grouse. “I agree, we do not offer the bestin-class pay. But we do not want people whose only motivation is money... many of our ex-employees want to come back to our open and learning environment,” says Singh. Whirlpool says it has no problem finding the right talent—and will soon have a system to monitor performance online and help plan career trajectories.
. Promotion rate (%) 15.18
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 4.14
. Avg. training hours per employee 14.33
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 13.01
Source: Mercer, Company
—Shamni Pande 
Back in 1988, when Jindal Steel & Power (then Jindal Strips) launched its Raigarh steel plant, it hired the best talent available with a promise to provide them bestin-class facilities. Twenty years later, 49-year-old D.K. Saraogi, who joined as the first engineer at the unit, is still working with it.
“Whether it was O.P. Jindal or Naveen Jindal today, leadership has always treated employees as family,” he says. “I am not the only one to have rejected dozens of job offers.”
Quick promotions, big increments and training initiatives have also helped keep attrition low.
Vikrant Gujral, Vice Chairman & CEO, cites JSPL’s growth and diversification. “Growth opportunities here are higher than anywhere else,” says Gujral.
. Promotion rate (%) 30
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 1.36
. Avg. training hours per employee 40
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 21
Source: Mercer, Company
—Manu Kaushik
H.M. Bangur is an unusual managing director: not for him any pontification about his company’s social responsibility et al in bulging annual reports and supplements. He begins his pitch in the annual report by admitting candidly that he enjoys many perks not reported in the balance sheet.
Ah, ha, you say, another CEO giving himself a cushy deal! Then, Bangur lists the perks: hypertension and ulcers from high-stakes decision taking. Decisions to encourage managers to experiment without fear of failure—Bangur says a CEO’s job is to “see that failures do not stick to the managers”. Bangur, a chemical engineer from IIT Mumbai, says: “We have multiple aborted attempts before success is achieved...”
Executive Director M.K. Singhi is even more alarming: “Our people are authorised to waste resources.” He says Shree Cement once invested Rs 3 crore in a new process to generate power but it failed. “No one was blamed, but we... worked out a better solution,” says Singhi. “Failures are stepping stones… we demand failures also.”
Concurs P.K. Tripathy, Senior Vice President (Works): “We encourage people to experiment and try out things...”
. Promotion rate (%) N.A.
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 0.02
. Avg. training hours per employee 6.38
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 25
Source: Mercer, Company
—Somnath Dasgupta
Employees at the Bangalore headquarters of Infosys BPO are a serious-looking bunch these days: gone are the job offers from rivals as the BPO industry struggles to survive the meltdown. Gone are the parties as well. In their place: extra efforts to learn and execute.
Two things have caused the change. One, the management is talking more with the employees. Two, clients—most of them global biggies not isolated from the slowdown—have raised the bar of expectation. Today, whenever CEO & Managing Director, Amitabh Chaudhry, orders a cost cut, he ensures that the background is explained to employees.
K. Raghavendra, Vice President & Head (HR), says that attrition has ceased to be a challenge, but meeting client expectations is. So, the company is focussed on aligning the employees’ mindset with that of its global clients, helping them rediscover their own self-worth and value, and telling them that it “continues to care for them”.
. Promotion rate (%) 56
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 2.96
. Avg. training hours per employee 48.67
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%)14-15
Source: Mercer, Company
—K.R. Balasubramanyam
At Apollo Tyres’ office in gurgaon, there is a palpable sense of its ambition to be among the top tyre-makers in the world. “We hired nearly 100 young engineers as part of our Graduate Engineer Trainee programme (GET), and almost all have chosen to stay with us. We were expecting a very high attrition among these young people... we continue to be amazed at our success in retaining most of them,” says Tapan Mitra, Chief (HR).
There is a buzz around its ability to offer growth opportunities, following its acquisition of Dunlop in South Africa, offices in Europe and plans for a plant in Europe. Sunam Sarkar, Chief (Corporate Strategy and Marketing), says the management is open to ideas.
The open culture has its attractions. Take Devesh Dabas, who has moved around a lot, joining Apollo in 2004, then going to MRF to specialise in off-theroad tyres, which Apollo was yet to launch. At MRF, he missed the Apollo work culture. “When I heard that they were starting work on OTRs... I came back,” says Dabas, now a Manager at Apollo.
“We now involve our managers in our different plants with management responsibilities relating to HR as well,” says Mitra.
. Promotion rate (%) 13.55
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 0.81
. Avg. training hours per employee 7.56
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 18.95
Source: Mercer, Company
—Shamni Pande 
Mulki Vikram Alwa was just 20 years old and fresh out of college when he joined Coromandel Fertilisers as a Management Trainee. In the 30 years since then, he has had enough reasons to stick to his first job. “At a personal level, one is treated with respect and at a professional level, there is a lot of exposure that one can get here,” he says.
Alwa has not stayed in one function for more than three years. “I have worked across six functions and while... I could have grown faster in any other organisation, I would not have got this crossfunctional exposure anywhere else,” says Alwa.
At latest count, 39 per cent of the management staff has been with the company for more than 15 years.
Managing Director, V. Ravichandran, who has been with the parent Murugappa Group for 23 years, says: “We tell people to see Coromandel as the Infosys of the fertiliser industry.” Arun Leslie George, Senior Vice President & HR Head, says: “Gallup India’s ratio of engaged to disengaged employees for us is 7.83:1 compared with the national average of 3.38:1 and Gallup Global average of 3.46:1.”
. Promotion rate (%) 17
. HR cost as a % of total revenues* 1.25
. Avg. training hours per employee 5
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%)14.5
*Since this is a low margin business, the company feels it may be better to look at HR cost as a per cent of profit before tax, which is around 12.5 per cent
Source: Mercer, Company
—E. Kumar Sharma 
It’s a minor irritant for Ritesh Sachdev, Associate Director in charge of Transaction Services, Tenant Strategies & Solutions at Cushman & Wakefield. “There’s a rule that entitles only senior managers and above to laptops, while managers who work on deals worth Rs 4-5 crore are not entitled to a company laptop— the concern being that critical client data can be taken out,” says Sachdev. The senior management is considering his argument for a change. Sanjay Verma, Executive MD (South Asia, Australia & New Zealand), is even more candid. “We have shortcomings. For instance, we will never pay top dollar to our employees,” he asserts. He says retaining employees just with high salaries is a short-lived advantage.
“Most people who leave are those who have spent anywhere between zero and three years with us—and possibly are not assimilated into the company’s culture,” observes Divyajit Singh Snehi, National Head (HR).
That then, will prove to be Cushman and Wakefield’s biggest challenge—to ensure the new hires imbibe the company’s culture even as it climbs the steep cliff of high growth.
. Promotion rate (%) 44.51
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 1.19
. Avg. training hours per employee 11.34
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 38
Source: Mercer, Company
—Tejeesh N.S. Behl
Ramesh Gawde, 46, a blue collar worker at the Rs 800-crore Godrej Industries, the Godrej Group flagship, has spent 21 years in the company. He started as a worker in the Vikhroli soap plant and moved across functions.
What is it that he likes about this place? “Godrej is a trusted name with good people leading the way on the top,” he says. “I have got lots of encouragement from my seniors to move forward in my job here.” Gawde has learnt computer operations on the job and is now posted at the time office handling administrative operations.
“I have developed my skills and learnt a lot like the production cycle of a plant, basic computers,” says Gawde proudly, and you understand why Godrej Industries is here. Mathew Eipe, Executive Director & President (Chemicals), says: “We have very good HR practices, both for blue-collar as well as white-collar employees, and we manage our people well.”
The average number of working years of an employee is 15 years. Eipe himself joined the company as a Management Trainee in 1977. The company now also has a programme called ACE (Accelerated Career Education) programme wherein it recruits graduates and then trains them.
According to Praful Bhat, Head (HR), the open and fair culture rests on four pillars. “We listen to each one of them, we provide everyone the training they need to move forward, there is a reward and recognition programme,” he says.
. Promotion rate (%) 20
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 0.08
. Avg. training hours per employee 43.57
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 13
Source: Mercer, Company
—Anusha Subramanian
When we visited The Hyatt Regency Delhi for this write-up, the hotel appeared to be humming along at its efficient best. Little did we know that its GM, Timothy Bruce, was enjoying his Christmas vacation, far away from the property giving instant credence to the adage “the best manager is the one who is redundant”.
The ability of the Hyatt to operate like clockwork without Bruce is testimony to both the employees it hires, and to its efficient HR practice. “People are our principal asset and key to our success. One is on show all the time and cannot afford to be caught off-guard,” observes Brig. (retd) Prakash T. Ghogale, Director (HR), Hyatt Regency Delhi. But, while the average career tenure here is over eight years, the attrition rate, at 34 per cent, is quite high. Ghogale says this is because new hotels have come up in the NCR. The flip side: faster promotions with 111 last year and 96 already this year. Take Puneet Baijal, Director (Food & Beverage), who has stuck on for five years. “Each time I thought of leaving—thinking that I had reached a saturation point— I was given an additional responsibility and moved up,” he says.
Ghogale admits that tackling employee burnout is the primary challenge. “As employers, we recognise the need for a work-life balance. Each employee gets six off-days in a month, as opposed to the regular four,” he says. And we all know that happy employees make for happy guests. Not to mention ringing cash registers.
. Promotion rate (%) 29.49
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 0.44
. Avg. training hours per employee 16.95
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) 12.33
Source: Mercer, Company
—Tejeesh N.S. Behl
What makes ambitious, young talent give up global banks for low-profile home-grown employers? “A meatier role,” says Vinesh Menon, Deputy CEO, Bajaj Capital. Menon himself hopped across from ABN AMRO a little over a year ago to Bajaj Capital. Like him, many have come from multinational banks. Why? “When the family hired me, they said: We set up the company; now you run it for us,” Menon recalls.
Running the distribution business isn’t easy, says Anil Chopra, CEO. Adds HR Head Sunaina Mattoo: “Other than attracting and retaining, my biggest HR challenge is to make new hires productive in no time.” Employees say the culture is entrepreneurial and encourages employees to innovate. Seems it is breaking the mould of family-owned businesses.
. Promotion rate (%) N.A.
. HR cost as a % of total revenues 30
. Avg. training hours per employee 40
. Avg. increments for the last 3 years (%) N.A.
Source: Mercer, Company
—Puja Mehra
