BOTTOM'S-UP - MARICO'S REVERSE MENTORING INITIATIVE
At Marico, our core value proposition is to provide challenging, enriching and fulfilling opportunities that maximise our people's potential. We believe that our ability to deliver on this proposition by providing early responsibility, fast paced learning & growth and an entrepreneurial, and flexible work culture make us one of the great places to work.
We call our people 'members', and invite them to a wholesome membership where they have the opportunity to determine and participate in Marico's growth story. Our members are our pride. Our sustainable growth story rests on an empowering work culture that encourages them to take complete ownership, and make a difference to the entire business ecosystem.
BOTTOM'S-UP - MARICO'S REVERSE MENTORING INITIATIVE
Marico has three generations of members, with Gen X and millennials comprising more than 40% of Marico's workforce. It is important for these two generations to appreciate each other for a cohesive work culture. Towards this, Marico has launched a new reverse mentoring initiative called 'Bottom's Up'.
The goal of the 'Bottom's-Up' program is to groom our younger population to be leaders of tomorrow with strong leadership skills and cross functional exposure. At the same time, it is aimed at making our senior leaders more digitally savvy, and helping them understand the preferences and working styles of the millennials better.
As one of the early adopters of this concept, Marico has leveraged Reverse Mentoring to create an environment that not only benefits the organisation, but also helps the mentors and the mentees through:
'Bottoms-Up' invigorates the organisation to be younger in ways and mature in style, thus creating a win-win opportunity
It has been received very well by all the mentors and the mentees. The entire top leadership team at Marico has been through the 'Bottom's-Up' program, and has derived immense learning from their interactions with the young mentors.
The program has now been extended to the next level of leaders within the organisation.
The youth are game changers with their new ideas, fresh perspectives, high aspirations, and risk taking appetite. We, at Marico, have endeavoured to harness this edge through our Young Board.
The Young Board comprises young home grown leaders from different functions and geographies. The Board is entrusted with responsibilities to spot new business opportunities, identify potential pitfalls and work on select high-impact organisation building initiatives. The first Young Board was set up in 2015 and the Board members change every year.
Since inception, each Young Board, has contributed to building Marico's business and the institution by-
An initiative to bridge the gap between the experienced and the millennials
The launch of the Saffola Masala Oats Dispenser, Saffola Fit Foodie's association with Holachef, the formation of the Growth Hacking team and creating the Hangout Zone in Marico's Corporate Office are the highlights of the work done by the Young Boards.
The platform has enriched our young leaders. It has facilitated in building a broader business perspective, and necessitating them to look at things from a holistic and organisational perspective, rather than from an individual or functional perspective.
INNOVATION JAM
The concept of Innovation Jam stems from the assumption that an idea can come from anywhere and any member can possess an idea that can transform the organisation for the better. This year, Marico launched an Innovation Jam to crowdsource ideas from members to make Marico an awesome workplace. The objective was to hear from members on their breakthrough and innovative ideas that will make Marico a workplace for the future. It covered four main themes:
WORKPLACE @ FACEBOOK
Our internal culture and diagnostic studies suggested the need for more direct, participative, inclusive, and interactive communication in the organisation. We learnt from our members, more than 40% of whom are millennials, that members prefer instant, short, visually appealing and interactive communication. Hence, it was important to go beyond the conventional ways of communication, and select a channel of communication that was empowering, inclusive and easy to use. This led us to select Workplace by Facebook as one of our key internal communication channels.
With its strategy built on 4 pillars of Organisation Communication, Collaboration, Leadership Connect and Emotional Capital, the platform has very quickly become a common communication platform for 'One Marico'. The multiple features replicating the original social media platform, have helped Mariconians share, collaborate and bond with each other within and across functions and geographies like never before.
Regular updates on team members, organisation news and announcements, celebration of personal milestones, along with posts on "Humans of Marico" created a sense of belongingness and pride amongst the members. Leaders can now connect with the members with a single click of a button. With features like hosting events, and soliciting feedback through polls and messenger, Workplace has given us a tremendous platform to make Marico an even better place to work.
ILEARN
Marico has always believed and also instilled this belief in all its members that "each member is responsible for his or her own development". To empower our members and provide them access to learning anytime, anywhere, we launched iLearn- our e-learning offering. iLearn has behavioural and functional content, and is accessible to all members worldwide.
TECHNOLOGY THINK TANK
The T3 team, as it is called, visited Innovation Labs of different companies, participated in workshops on Digital and Internet of things, got inputs from thought leaders to be inspired to come with great ideas.
It all started with the idea of bringing together the young, tech savvy minds of different functions to leverage new and emerging technologies and propose game changing business, and productivity improvement ideas. Their mandate was to pitch an idea which would excite and persuade the leadership team to fund it for further development. The Technology Think Tank, or the T3 team as it is called, visited Innovation Labs of different companies, participated in workshops on Digital and got inputs from thought leaders in order to be inspired to create great ideas. The team researched and brainstormed on various ideas, and finally proposed two powerful ideas which are currently being tested. This provided an exciting learning experience to the T3 team, who have generated many potential business ideas for Marico's future.
PARENTAL POLICIES
Marico Member Experience is an endeavour aimed at creating meaningful and enriching member experiences. Aptly named ME@ Marico, the focus behind creating these experiences is the ME-mbers. This year, as an effort to enhance the Member Experience, we upgraded our parental benefits. We extended our maternity leave with full pay to 26 weeks. This leave can be supplemented with Privilege leave, Flexiworking hours and Leave without pay option, till the child becomes one year old. In addition to this, we now provide a Wellness package for mothers. They can use this package to enrol in various classes during and after pregnancy, attend counselling sessions, buy reading material, etc., which will help them maintain a healthy lifestyle and support them in good parenting. We continue to extend financial support for day care facilities. The paternal benefits for the male members have been upgraded too. They now get 15 continuous calendar days of paternity leave, and also the Wellness package to support them as new fathers.
The 'Hangout Zone' at Marico's Corporate office is, just as the name suggests, a place to hang out. This idea was proposed and implemented by Marico's Young Board to provide a place to members to take a break and have some fun at work.
Perched on the 8th floor, this space offers a cosy indoor setup with state-of-the-art audio-visual devices, a library, and a coffee shop experience all rolled into one. The outdoors of this space provide for a gardenseating arrangement with coffee tables, football tables, etc., all lending to the aura of a young-paced and ecologically friendly zone within the walls of the office
MARICO MENTOR PROGRAM
The Marico Mentors Program provides an opportunity to our members to live a life of purpose and make a difference. Many of our members have already activated their purpose through this pla form. The program is anchored by Marico Innovation Foundation and was created in 2014 to enable Marico members to contribute their professional skills and experiences towards creating sustainable impact for innovative social enterprises.
The program engages with members on pre-identified challenges of the innovative social enterprise. The deep rooted engagements are function specific. Members have the opportunity to mentor and guide the social enterprise in solving some of their critical business challenges affecting their scale and impact. On an average the project duration ranges from 5-8 months depending on the intensity of the intervention. The project concludes when the challenge is resolved and the organisation is ready to scale up. The Marico Mentorship Program is a platform through which we deliver on our Talent Value Proposition, which is to continuously challenge, enrich & fulfil our members' aspirations and maximise their potential. This program yet again epitomises Marico's pride- the distinctive people culture- as it provides wholesome membership by participating in an innovation's growth story
"After intense deliberations and field visits with the founders to study IsolarLite's nascent distribution model, I am excited about creating an implementable and economical distribution model for them from scratch that will help them in their journey to Scale up!"
Kunal Bhardwaj, Marketing, Marico
"Little did I know that my efforts to put a structured procurement process in place for buying Kits for Educate girls would lead to 6,000 more educated girls in India. What is Business as usual for us is rocket science for them! At the same time, another exciting project with Atomberg will give me opportunity to learn a lot about the consumer durables industry by working under guidance of Industry experts like Mr. Sudhir Trehan. I am loving it!"
Nirlay Sheth, Procurement, Marico
