Members
Members
Marico’s business purpose, philosophy and vision are personified by its people. Our talent, culture and capability building approach is articulated under the umbrella of ‘GROW’ – Grow the business, Refresh the culture, Organise for future, Win with talent.
Our people roadmap is focused around developing future-ready capabilities, building a digital-first Marico, enabling critical and differentiated talent in the new categories and channels, strengthening capabilities in a high-performing sales team, winning talent through a compelling employee value proposition, and reconstructing our ways of working and people policies to stay ahead of the curve in the context of changing realities.
Saugata Gupta
Managing Director &
Chief Executive Officer
Engagement
Consistent high engagement score of 93% across the year
Talent management
Recognition
Inclusion and diversity
Hiring
We believe membership is superior to employee-ship and hence consciously, all Mariconians are called ‘members’. In 2021, a critical aspect of our strategy was to create a work environment that is supportive of holistic well-being of our members and our extended workforce in sales and factories, along with providing them with infrastructure to enable ownership of their performance and growth.
We are committed to our Inclusion and Diversity vision of creating the Marico of tomorrow “together” with focus on building a more socially represented organisation with enhanced ‘gender’, ‘differently abled’ and ‘thought’ diversity. Towards this, we are adopting enhanced and inclusive policies and infrastructural support for our members and extended workforce.
Commitment to protect jobs and compensation of our members
Focused actions on people safety and holistic support on health and wellbeing
Empower members through agile people policies and processes
The people priorities were brought alive through a focused set of actions crafted basis the virtual ways of working in the last year.
Worked closely with the local authorities to pioneer safety standards in our offices and distributor depots on social distancing, safe working gear, thermal screening, sanitisation and member training on safety modules
Enabled expert-led awareness sessions, on-call support through tie-up with certified doctors and COVID-19 Helpdesk to assist members on process related queries.
Tied-up with one of India’s leading healthcare apps for remote consultation by a physician and a nutritionist
Organised yoga, fitness sessions and physical challenges through the year
Ensured active reach-out, training and communication on the Member Assistance Program (MAP) counselling services for members and their immediate family
Trained our line managers to become Wellness Coaches to identify signs of stress among team members and encourage them to reach out for professional help when needed
Declared an additional holiday in July 2020 to enable members take a break for rest and self-care
Regular member feedback and inputs through the monthly Marico Engagement and Culture dipstick survey
Focused action to enhance member experience based on survey, leading to high engagement across the year
2,000+ ideas from members through Marico Changemakers
Focused involvement in re-inventing business operating model, optimising costs and innovative workplace practices
Mandatory time-off for at least 10 days in a year
No deduction of Sick Leave from Privilege Leave Balance
‘Special’ leaves for special occasions like birthdays/ anniversaries of members and family
‘Community Impact’ leaves to enable members to contribute towards social work
‘Leave Sharing’ to create an inclusive ecosystem for our members to support each other
Providing our extended members certain wellness benefits such as health insurance coverage and emergency monetary assistance
We welcome members from diverse backgrounds who enrich the organisation with their educational competencies, diverse abilities, cumulative experience and manifold perceptions.
To drive our Inclusion & Diversity agenda forward, we continue to align the larger ecosystem through enabling infrastructure and policies to ensure diverse talent funnelling across levels. We actively engage with our members to listen to them and identify their diverse needs through Culture & Engagement Survey, focused group discussions with the specific diversity ‘cohorts’, one-on-one interactions with representative groups and organisation-wide workshops to craft targeted interventions.
We continuously enhance the Inclusion Quotient of our members through sensitisation by regularly engaging on diversity related topics to help them proactively prevent potential discrimination or harassment.
Every year, we celebrate Marico Inclusion Month in December – this year, our theme was #inclusionstartswithI
We launched a dedicated I&D webpage to position Marico as an Equal Opportunity organisation
We launched a host of policy enablers to create a conducive work environment for all members at Marico. These include:
Bouquet of reimbursement benefits for ‘new parents’ including offers around transport, physical, and mental wellness
’Same Sex’ partner benefit for all policies of Marico
Fully paid adoption leave similar to maternity/ paternity benefits
Post maternity flexi work options
Specific need-based mediclaim policy for differently abled members
Audit of all policies and guidelines to continually enhance gender neutrality
We are making continuous efforts to provide the right infrastructure for specific needs of members of all backgrounds. We have created inclusive infrastructure in Corporate and R&D offices and we are scaling up similar facilities across factory/sales office locations.
Gender neutral infrastructure including washrooms
Infrastructural facilities for the differently-abled/p>
’Nursing’ rooms for feeding mothers
A vital piece of our inclusion strategy has been ensuring that our talent management processes enable the advancement and retention of members from all backgrounds.
To ensure a diverse talent pipeline, we have launched multiple initiatives:
Identify and hire second career women (women on career breaks) as consultants
Identify and hire differently abled candidates through specialist recruitment partners
Identify and hire from diverse profile backgrounds of education, industry, overall experience, nationality, employment models
Women leaders are coached and groomed as part of our flagship ‘Lead with Impact’ leadership development programme
‘Women at Work’ programme to educate participants on accelerating career journey
Inclusion metrics are laid out, tracked and quarterly reported to the CEO/Executive Committees
Marico’s POSH policy is gender neutral. Grievance reporting and redressal is facilitated through Code of Conduct and Internal Committee
As we foray into an increasingly digital world, it is imperative to simplify and digitalise our touchpoints across member life cycle to enable a uniform and enhanced experience.
Created a standardised goal library where members can select their goals at the beginning of the year, providing clarity on how individual performance contributes to organisational goals.
Introduced a virtual 360-degree stakeholder feedback programme to facilitate line managers’ conversation with members on feedback and growth.
All classroom learnings adapted to virtual and digital learning format
Leveraged newer channels of learning with platforms like Edcast, Coursera, Simplilearn
Artificial Intelligence enabled BLINK learning platform upgraded with a digital learning Bot named as Coach Eddy
Focused on enhancing skills around Leading in Virtual Teams, Agile Working, Resilience and Crisis Management, Creating High Performance Teams, Inner Engineering in the context of the pandemic
Completely digitalised hiring process and facilitated a seamless orientation thereafter; leveraging AI enabled technology to enhance sourcing and selection effectiveness.
Promoted use of chatbots along with internal social-connect platform to create a digitally connected workplace
CEO’s personal digital assistant is a chatbot developed to engage talent within the organisation and communicate with the new members; Amber led to 6% increase in engagement of new members over the last year
Provides ‘anytime anywhere’ access to policies, benefits and resolves queries
Providing laptops and dongles to the workforce
Adopting MS Teams to enable seamless audio-video communication
Virtual leadership connects via townhall and facetime
Virtual recognition and Marico awards
Internal social media platform (Yammer)
In building our capability for the future we are focused on four core pillars: Digital, Leadership, Functional, and Differentiated capabilities to enable growth in new portfolios.
To build and scale up digital first brands; we are investing significantly in our digital transformation programme – ‘Chrysalis 2024’. Over 20 experiments are underway, mentored by the digital council comprising cross-functional team of leaders, SMEs from similar industries and academicians from leading universities.
Our flagship ‘Lead with Impact’ series were adapted to leverage new innovative learning tools like gamified connects, self-placed gamified learning modules, virtual connects using accelerated learning techniques and live dashboards to drive engagement.
We are strengthening our frontline team capabilities through:
Sales University focuses on upskilling sales talent to build agility
Learning programmes for Sales team using online and gamification platforms
Social learning through the Toastmasters club
To ensure success in new growth avenues, we are continuously identifying and building critical differentiated capabilities across R&D, Marketing,Sales and Supply Chain
We are focused on leveraging diverse sources of talent to meet our business objectives in a highly competitive talent marketplace.
To build a diverse thought leadership, we are casting our net wider and launching targeted programmes
Sales Lateral Leadership Program: To leverage experience of candidates, we went for a lateral hire, recruiting a sales partner with rich experience in the Indian armed forces
Graduate Leadership Program: To seed diversity of thought at an entry level, we commenced the Graduate Leadership Program in 2020, to hire graduate trainees from premier undergraduate institutes. The year saw seven recruitments, with a gender diversity of 71%
Alternate Hiring: We partnered with Gig platforms to leverage the burgeoning Gig economy to hire for unique capabilities at speed
Talent Referred By Mariconians (TAREEF): Vacancies at the mid and junior management levels have been actively filled through referrals; members are rewarded on successful referral
Homecoming: We have a strong alumni network and a revamped re-hire policy with a focus on welcoming back our previous family members
Campus talent: We are among the Most Desirable FMCG/Beverage Company amongst the top premier B-Schools of India and have several programmes to hire talent straight from the campus.
-IGNITE: One of the most prestigious and intensive training programmes in the industry for young talents from B-schools; 94% of IGNITE 2021 Batch secured Pre-Placement Offer (PPO)
-Summer Training at Marico’s Pace (STAMP): Interns work closely with the leadership team on high-impact live projects; we opened the programme to engineering students from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
The core objective behind adopting a sound occupational health and safety practice is underpinned by the organisation’s overall vision to create shared value for all stakeholders impacted by its existence.
By minimising health and safety risks, optimising operational efficiency and performance and most importantly capacitating the workforce to safeguard their lives from occupational hazards, Marico is progressing steadily on its roadmap of building resilience and leading with agility.
We scrupulously investigate every incident, learn from it and implement these learnings.
For 4 years in a row
In line with the latest directives of the Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD), the Emergency Control Centre at Perundurai facility was upgraded in FY21. The upgradation included the installation of a Public Address System (PAS), self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and provision of advanced fire-protection suits. This has set a benchmark for the other facilities to follow the same procedure. Through the mock drills and trainings undertaken as part of the ECC upgradation, the effectiveness of the emergency management system has been significantly improved.
Training plays an important role in building robust safety, health & environment management systems. The training competency matrix developed at Marico maps every role to the required training. We ensure 100% of the workforce, including business associates are adequately trained for the job intended.
Manhours spent on safety trainings for 592 members and 1,083 extended workforce in India in FY21
To ensure that no worker commences duties in the plant premises without a role-specific training, we installed Safety Training Kiosks with modules in English and vernacular languages, including Hindi. These have been installed in Perundurai facility in FY21 to capacitate contractual factory personnel on safety and workplace hazards. The contractual employees are allowed to pursue their functional responsibilities only after they receive a ‘safety pass’ from these kiosks.
As on March 31, 2021, 400 contractual members in the Perundurai facility have been trained using these kiosks. The overall accident rates have shown a sharp decline for the overall facility, indicating a positive impact in workers’ abilities to demonstrate safe workplace behaviour.
Kiosks are loaded with job specific training modules.
New contractual worker enters factory
Get trained at safety training kiosk
Examination
Issued training passport card
We diligently focus on both internal and external audits of our manufacturing sites. All our sites are ISO 14001:2015 and OHSAS 18001:2007 certified. We have already upgraded our factory at Guwahati to ISO 45001 standard and the remaining facilities will be upgraded with this standard in the near future. A holistic and tech-enabled system has been developed for conducting cross functional internal audits. The audit findings are analysed during the monthly plant SHE management meetings and corporate review sessions, leading to measurable corrective and planning actions.
For Guwahati factory in FY21; others to follow soon
© 2021 Marico. 