Titan has recently been ranked by the Great Place to Work institute as the best place to work in retail, number one in diversity and overall 15th best company to work for, in India (the number being Google). Sometimes you wonder do these surveys measure the true happiness and engagement of the employees. I am sure that highly credible organizations like Great place to Work have time-tested metrics for doing the same. However I decided to get a feel of the same first hand.
Today I had a meeting with the internal trainers of Titan industries. Most of the internal trainers are from the line functions who besides doing their line duties also have a passion for training. They come from both unionized and non-unionized workers. This is what some of them told me during their interaction:
Ms. Uttara (she belongs to Level E i.e. unionized worker) - 'There is not much of a differentiation between unionized and non-unionized workers. We are treated at par. When I joined Titan I was only 10th pass. Today my qualification is B.A., M.A. (Public Administration) and Masters in Psychology and Diploma in Yoga. Titan gave me all this opportunity for education including providing tutors. Then when I completed my degree, I got increments from the company as well.'
Mr. Raghunath: ‘I joined the company only five years back. I am a CAD/CAM specialist. I have past experience in training people and I have an interest of doing the same. When I told the L&D department of my interest, they inducted me as an internal trainer. Now I do my normal line duties also and I occasionally train people as well.’
Mr. Sainath: ‘Nobody permitted me to come to this meeting. My boss and my organization trust me that I shall discharge my duties and I have complete freedom in this company to decide my priorities.’
Ms. Shubha: ‘I joined Titan only one and half years back. When I joined I had a chance to meet the senior management of the company. Being fresh I hardly knew anyone in the company, but when I used to go to the canteen, strangers (senior employees) came to me on their own and asked me if I was comfortable, if needed ay help. I was so touched. It felt like a family. I know a new employee who was looking for a house was helped by a canteen staff to find a house.’
Titan recently had a program named as Mission Beyond where the employees were encouraged to ideate. The ideas that were selected for implementation, those employees were paid Rs. 25000/- for each implemented idea. They also had recently ‘Innovation Bazaar’ for encouraging idea submissions where not only the jury voted but the employees also voted for the best idea.
At Titan you can feel it; there is something infectious about the culture. Hope they do not spoil it by some new strange rules like visitors cannot take mobile inside factory premises. How inconsistent with Titan’s culture of freedom! Remember my earlier post ‘Rules of Rules’.
2 comments:
TITAN..(the children of Uranus and Gaea, who sought to rule heaven and were overthrown and supplanted by the family of Zeus.) a TATA Enterprise known as a champion in managing internal & external customers, but the question arises how many TATA enterprises follow the same!!! What about TCS BPO which still fails to manager the attrition level(22.5%). Is it the fault of the industry!! If certain philosophies are made to become champions then why doesn't it work for all, at least in the same family of TATA!!!
Dev,
Your question is valid. Tata group is still quiet homogeneous in terms of its culture compared to other indian corporate houses. But within Tata group those who have been able to sustain and implement the same have been stalwarts like Taj Hotels, Tata Steel, Titan, etc.
Intel has cultural ambassadors who spread Intel's culture of unfailing integrity and respecting diversity to various locations in the world. A large group like Tata needs such ambassadors. Remember Intel uses its strong base of internal trainers for this purpose. the double benefit of such intiative is that these instructors also get to know the market and business better alongside. That knowledge is brought to the employee development on a continuous basis.
Cheers,
Debashish
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