BWPeopleExclusive: A Detailed Case Study On SUGAR's SUGARY POLICY Journey
The management at SUGAR Cosmetics believes that policies are real communication tool for an organization, irrespective of what the leadership speaks. Their policies are the ones that communicate the loudest with their talent. The ability to design policies that are reflective of their ethos and ambitions are critical design elements.
For them, a two-pronged approach to policies design has been the most effective:
a. Inside out approach
b. Outside in approach
They embrace co-working immensely owing to the fact that it gives us a lot of social opportunities, networking prospects and general human interaction. This helps them enable a good working environment across teams, states Vineeta Singh, CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics.
Policy inclusions/framework
The People & Culture team at SUGAR Cosmetics is constantly working on leveraging data to enable communication and add value to the workforce. They have been using data analytics and predictive analysis to understand the needs of the workforce better. With the help of integrated products, they are focused on eliminating the use of multiple apps to reduce human intervention and enhance employee experience. Singh adds, “we use a communication platform that allows people to easily create and manage multiple groups for the seamless sharing of ideas among the team.”
Additionally, “we have set up a project management platform where team members can share timelines and resources. Through this platform, individuals can request projects and teams can accept them, and then mutually agree on a timeline.”
When you encourage your talent, it helps them see how their contribution is adding to the bottom line and organizational goals. They tend to perform better and find value in their work, which helps boost talent engagement. By doing so, talents feel more connected to the organization and each other. This zeal can spill over into everyday tasks, inspiring teams to make the "discretionary effort" that makes a massive difference to performance.
Leadership Lens
SUGAR’s of looking at leadership is that each leader to possess their own personal vision statement that is aligned to the larger Organizational Vision Statement. The brand envisions is that every leader in the organization should be able to articulate the company’s vision and align talent accordingly. This will help the brand create a more robust team and help follow the company’s vision by making discretionary effort
For this - Interdependence is going to become extremely important. At no given point, not a single team member is running up the mountain alone. Everyone needs to get there as a team and so our narrative has always been and will continue to be the fact that how do you carry your team irrespective of how fast you run. Singh further adds, “we have always believed that necessarily, the fastest runner does not become the best leader. When we look at cohesiveness by every leader, we are actually seeing the same across our organization.
We also think the ability to drive conflicting discussions is important. We expect people should have enough emotional maturity and resilience to have a direct conversation.”
Direct conversations lead to constructive conversations, which is the need of the hour by every organization. Hence, putting these tenets in place helps the organization solve conflicting discussions across;
Organizations are bending backwards to really care for their workforce. At SUGAR Cosmetics, they try to make employees feel comfortable. Their aim is to launch a program that addresses a 360-degree approach to an individual's overall well-being. This includes not just emotional well-being, but also other aspects of a person's health that may be overlooked.
Its pretty evident that the brand is heavily investing in building Leaders of the future through rigorous engagement and development process. Their ambition is that all their People Managers will view themselves as and act like a ‘Coach’ to their team. In service of this ambition, they have commenced our capability development initiatives that are changing the narrative of managing people.
“All our employees, largely comprising women, have an opportunity to network and grow personally and professionally within the organization and outside. We are always encouraged to voice their opinions and thoughts because we know how much value it holds. We have always felt strongly about creating something for women and by women,” states Singh.
Extremely proud of the fact that our power workforce comprises over 70% women. Additionally, women employees hold a majority of the top management roles in the company. AT SUGAR they hire employees on the basis of their merit since we believe that their work speaks for themselves. The qualities of a person and what we contribute to the team matter far more than their gender
They ensure to create a positive environment because we understand how conducive it is to work in (one). Also, work-life balance is given a priority so that everyone can manage the multiple roles we play and feel supported while doing so. These steps are not just limited to women in the company, but everyone who needs support.
Way Forward (policies in pipeline, etc.)
At SUGAR they are pivoting towards how their consumers want to experience the brands and they have made relevant shifts top by creating an ‘arrow structure’. Arrow structure simply helps in achieving the end result by defining measurable metrics and measures of success for each profile by doing backward integration.
“When we talk to our talent, we want to ask them in terms of the contribution to the values, their contribution to their colleagues, the contribution the team, the contribution to the well-being of the people around them. As we grow, if we keep rewarding people for just achieving that number, and not really focus on the process the talent has adopted to get to that number, then it will put us or any other organization in a bad situation. Fundamental belief from here on is to create a sustainable organization and if we are to create a sustainable organization, we want our people to think that everybody is going be a part of the journey.”
Lastly, the brand believes in the idea of keeping the engagement going on at all times.
