Bridging the Differences on Cross-border Deals in Japan
Unlocking the Secrets of a Best Employer
Godrej Consumer Products Limited
Q. Is there anything else that you have done that has helped in building your external brand for recruiting talent?
Vivek Gambhir: Our entire approach to recruiting has been quite different. We changed the interview process completely. While the Loud Program is one part of it, before we implemented the Loud Program, we went to campuses and we said to forget cover letters. Instead, tell us about yourself in whatever way you feel like - for instance, sing a song, write a poem or even send us a video! We want to know them as a person. What we said was that we did not want the standard group discussions or CGPAs. Once, we put people into teams and told them that they were creating bandanas for the Mumbai marathon and asked them to work on it. We provided them with the resources, asked them to design it, price it and market it. For half an hour we watched how they worked as a team. This process helped as we saw potential candidates in action. We did many things differently in our approach to campus visits, such as dressing in casual attire for campus visit and interacting a lot more with students. We ensured that our summer programs were extremely top notch, so when people went back, they became our biggest brand ambassadors.
Nisaba Godrej: To add, we decided to move away from the race of interviewing candidates in half an hour and continued to recruit throughout the summer. We said that those few summer months will be strong and focused for us to explore the potential of the people. This has changed the kind of people we are bringing in completely, because the onboarding fit and transition into cultures is much smoother. We gave Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs). Today, all our recruitments happen through PPOs.
Vivek Gambhir: Also, the key to our external branding is that we understand the basic nuance of someone who will do well at Godrej. Things like humility, passion, hunger to learn, self-awareness all these are very important qualities along with academic scores. I think we developed a much more nuanced way of understanding 'fit' and then trying to map what we were good at, our strengths, with what the individual had to bring.
Q. What is the way ahead for GCPL? How do you intend to stay ahead of the curve and maintain your position as an employer of choice?
Vivek Gambhir: If we look at the various phases of progression, a lot of our focus three to four years ago was on good team management. However, the focus in the last couple of years has shifted to talent development. We want people to be goodcoaches and mentors. I think the next big phase in our journey is what I call 'inspired leadership'. Going a step beyond developing and coaching people, we really focus on how to energize and motivate people and understand the intangible aspects of what drives people. That's the big journey we will take.
There are a couple of reasons behind this. To begin with, customer experience is becoming veryimportant and it will be a differentiating factor in the years to come. In a world where consumer experience becomes very important, the way in which our people experience the culture will also need to fundamentally alter to meet the dynamic change. This means that we need a far higher degree of collaboration than ever before. Take for example the fact that four or five years ago the senior management team could define the strategy and people would then be asked to execute it. In this world of social media and technology, the world is becoming so dynamic that strategies have to be created on the fly. There is an increasing onus on people to take more responsibility to drive the business forward. Thirdly, taking a closer look at the millennia generation, while money is important for them, the purpose and the mission of the organization as to what we do, why we do and how that improves people's lives has become far more important than ever before. Godrej's rich legacy and values prove to be a huge advantage here. But when we start thinking about the broader purpose of why we do certain things, it requires a totally different approach to leadership. It is not just about succession plans and career plans or development plans. While those are a part of the course, leadership will have to take a leap and really go after the intangible aspects of energizing and motivating individuals. That is the next big journey we continue to take. A correlation of this is how we engage our employees how we use social media and a rewards system that will need change in a very different manner. While a lot of it has been financial rewards-based, I think the way the Godrej Group thinks about rewards and recognition will undergo a fundamental transformation over the next three to five years.
|