Constant re-skilling of existing employees can help fight talent shortage says Chief People Officer Mahindra&Mahindra

In an exclusive interview with BW People Rajeshwar Tripathi Chief People Officer Mahindra&Mahindra talks about what puts the company in the Top 10 best places to work for, Mahindra's expansion plans in 2020 and the best ways to find talent shortage. 

What policies of Mahindra and Mahindra have put it in top 10 best places to work for?

 We have two major themes around which our policies are designed to create a great Employee Value Proposition for our employees and provide them with benefits that they value. At the core is our belief in people, manifested in empowerment. We also believe that people love to work with Company with purpose and where they can derive meaning out of work.

Under Work-Life integration theme, we have host of policies related to flexi-hours, work from home, compensatory off, sabbatical policy, part-time employment, and many more aimed at relevant employee segments. For our women employees, we provide host of maternity related benefits and reimbursements in addition to the above.

Under employee Well-Being theme, we focus on physical, emotional and psychological well-being of the employee through our offerings like ‘Way to Wellness’ and MHappy which is a platform for seeking counselling for professionals for self and family.

What is the employee attrition in M&M Ltd and what are the expansion plans in terms of hiring for 2020?

It has been our constant endeavor to provide to the people a meaningful career, abundant learning opportunities and a great workplace. This we believe is fundamental to employee retention. Our endeavor has been finding the right talent for the right roles. With increasing focus on productivity and digitization, our priority is to continue to remain ahead of the curve by focusing on right hire. To stay competitive dynamic workforce planning is a requirement, hence we do not predict long term future requirements. 

How much is the ease of interaction with your employees? Are there any employee engagement activities that you indulge in?

At Mahindra, we have defined an inhouse engagement model called M-CARES which stands for Career, Alignment, Recognition, Empowerment and Strive which is conducted across the Group to capture employee perception and obtain insights on the improvement areas.

Every year, we organize our Annual communication sessions which are attended by the senior leadership. In turn, each leader organizes a drill down session for their respective businesses. In this forum, the employees can understand organization priorities and ask any question to the management. Moreover, there are frequent Net Chat and Coffee sessions organized with leaders at an organizational level.

In your opinion, what are the best ways to fight talent shortage? How important is reskilling for Mahindra and Mahindra?

The war for global talent requires a paradigm shift in an organization’s workforce strategies and hence we have adopted selected ways to ensure we keep building a strong competitive advantage.

1.    Reskilling of existing employees with new age skills triggered by digitization, automation and new-age business models.

2.    Using strategic choices of build, hire and share talent for acquiring the relevant capabilities besides leveraging alliances. 

3.    Facilitating career rotations and providing choices through Internal Job Postings.

What are the tools you use to sharpen the skills of your workforce?

There is renewed rigor in Capability Building in all businesses of Mahindra AFS. We focus on three key aspects of Employee Development – Education, Experience and Exposure. We have invested in smart technologies that serve as intuitive interfaces for employees as well as help in improving people processes and productivity. 

We have Programs like Emerging Leaders Program that is targeted at building mid-level talent pipeline that would be ready to take leadership roles in future. Our academies aim at developing technical and leadership capabilities in the employees. Apart from these, we have Future Leaders Program and Women Leaders Program that develop the Leadership and Women for leadership roles in the organization. We have a wide array of Capability Building Programs for our employees both in terms of classroom sessions and virtual learning to provide learning on-the-go.