‘Grow Our Business’ we need to ‘Grow Our People’
Mahalakshmi who has been in the business for over has 20 years has her experience spanning HR leadership roles with conglomerates like Mondelez (erstwhile Cadburys), Bharti Airtel, BILT, and Ranbaxy .Prior to her current role, she has worked as a business consultant with Global Consulting majors like Hewitt, Arthur Andersen, and Ernst & Young. In an exclusive interview with BW People, she talks about her expeArience managing a Global MNC, changing consumer demands in the FMCG and top three policies implemented at Mondelez in the past year. Edited Excerpts from her interview:
How different is it to manage people in an Indian company vs Global MNC?
There are more commonalities than differences!
Inherently, people look for inspiration, for an ecosystem that provides them the opportunity to realize their potential and to grow. The rest is all about taking that inherent passion and making it work to deliver the business agenda.
So I wouldn’t generalize basis “Indian Company” or “MNC” but basis what is the organizations hunger to grow and what is the timeframe. That defines the “agenda “and the “pace”; and in my experience, people choose a vision and pace combination that best suits their personality style!
I have had the privilege of working with some progressive Indian Organizations where the focus on process, the scale and the impact of roles are as sharp as any large MNC and the culture as much performance driven as any. Equally, there are MNCs like Mondelēz International where even as we enter 70 years of our business in India – we retain the heart of an agile startup. Our culture encourages agility, pace, and empowerment – while continuing to have leaders that exemplify care through our core value of “leading with head and heart”. 40 per cent of our colleagues today are millennials and that has also significantly shaped who we are today!
Given the changing consumer demands in the FMCG sector, how is HR changing as a function to improve sales and productivity?
The FMCG sector has been at the centre of India’s growth story. Rising awareness, internet penetration, easier access and changing lifestyles and consumption choices have been the key growth drivers for the sector and success is clearly about getting both “share of mind” and then “share of wallet” – and indeed,“share of the shelf” is a key lever for that!
The corresponding talent strategy for sales, therefore, has involved
Defining the structure and staffing of new channels: especially modern trade and e-commerce while continuing to invest in penetration in traditional trade
Skilling up for new routes to market: Helping colleagues gain functional expertise to optimally sell through these new channels
Rethinking rural: Rural continues to have enough potential for further penetration and having the capacity and capability tap into that has been key
Rethinking incentives: to ensure that we have a segmented set of metrics to drive growth – while retaining the simplicity of design has fuelled deliveries too.
Leveraging joy !: And amidst all the sweat and sun of ensuring our products reach our consumers – ensuring that we co-opt all our people managers as we create delicious moments of joy for our colleagues has been a phenomenal journey
Equally, the changing consumer trend has put pressure on non-sales functions too: - pushing R&D and Innovation teams to rethink product portfolios, and leveraging technology for maximum impact.
HR teams are equally focused on working with the manufacturing and procurement functions to ensure the focus on productivity and best in class quality and bottom-line!
The key for HR, therefore, has been to anticipate the key business shifts, learn fast, and ensure we move our talent strategy across segments to impact and enable the business strategy.
Top 3 policies in the last 1 year implemented at Mondelez India?
As a company, we understand that to ‘Grow Our Business’ we need to ‘Grow Our People’. We continue to attract talent to our brands and keep colleagues engaged through our people strategy focused on Capacity, Capability, and Culture.
The last year saw us put the distorted focus on reinventing our commercial capabilities as well as ensuring we continue being a great place to work through a sustained focus on best in class policies relevant to the demographic of our colleagues in key functions.
Reverse Mentoring: over 40 per cent of Mondelez India is Millennials. Equally many of our products are targeted at that segment. With this in view, we launched Mentor-Up: a Reverse Mentoring Plan for some of our Country leadership members. Through this program, the leaders are paired with and mentored by younger colleagues on topics such as technology, social media, and current trends. The program design is thus based on what leaders desire to learn from the millennial mentees that will help unlock our growth, our culture or our impact - as a company. Equally the design involved preparing the young mentor so that age differences or hierarchy does not come in the way, and to help leaders put their learning hats on.
New Parents Policy: At Mondelez India, our New Parents Policy adopts a gender-agnostic & inclusive approach – whereby we enable all Primary Caregivers irrespective of gender to avail the 6 months of parental leave. In other words, if you are a male primary caregiver (eg. single male colleagues) – you are entitled to the same amount of leave as a new mother. Moreover, our policy celebrates the joy of becoming a parent by also covering biological, adoption & surrogacy. The policy goes beyond just mandatory maternity leave and recognizes the journey to become a ‘New Parent’ for both our male and female colleagues.
Grooming Young Leaders: At Mondelez India, our focus over the years has been on growing our talents. The focus has now shifted to creating approaches whereby colleagues get to chart their own career – and are given choices to pick from as they craft a career that works for their individual dreams and potential.
Growing Here Week: This is a unique MDLZ initiative – which gets the whole organization focused on their growth and signing up for learning modules, coffee sessions with leaders, learning from experiences of other markets and more!
Career Café: Enabling a setting where line managers get a refresher on career principles, typical pathways and how to best have powerful career conversations and equally colleagues get to understand diverse Career Paths, Principles, and insights into experiences & functional behavioral competencies required to Grow within Mondelez.
MIU: The organization has invested significantly in Mondelēz International University – our virtual learning platform – which provides our colleagues access to functional and leadership learnings through byte sized modules – that can be consumed – on the go/at the time the learner wants it – in the manner the colleague will imbibe it most.
Cool Communities & More: YAMMER and communities of practice form the new normal and you will find our colleagues discussing, sharing and learning. Yammer has communities like MDLZ Millennial Network; Women at MDLZ, MDLZ Digital – with colleagues passionately sharing and learning! We also have “Real Talk Circles“ that has colleagues discussing big priorities/ issues facing the business and co-creating solutions to those
With AI and Robotics replacing humans, how has the HR function changed?
Technology and innovation will continue to drive change with disruptive solutions – and I do see this as an opportunity! Pretty much like fire (red flower) in jungle book:: well reined it enables and let loose it creates havoc ! The key is perhaps in learning how to dance with technology and leverage it for optimal use.
Analytics, insights, predictive approaches are the norm and these go a long way in enabling decisions, adaptive learning and predictive planning. In many ways, they also enable connect: with teams, peers, and consumers who may be located in distant locations! So net-net – great tools to leverage as HR
How will hiring change in 2018? What are some of the skills HR heads will look at while hiring?
The ONE BIG capability we prioritise over any other in hiring and in reviewing the potential of our talent is LEARNING AGILITY. With the business environment is changing rapidly and this is at the heart of what we seek and what helps us stay successful !
