Bridging the Differences on Cross-border Deals in Japan
Unlocking the Secrets of a Best Employer
Godrej Consumer Products Limited
Established in 2001, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) is the largest home-grown home care and personal care company in India. With a workforce of over 1,349 employees globally, the organization operates across four regions - Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Today, Godrej products touch the lives of over 600 million consumers every day.
GCPL has been adjudged a Best Employer for three consecutive cycles. This indicates that in addition to strong roots, GCPL is fundamentally doing things right to ensure that their HR and business are aligned. In our inaugural issue, we bring you secrets to effective talent management in an interview with
Nisaba Godrej, Executive Director and Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Godrej Consumer Products Limited.
Q. In your opinion, what is consistently contributing to making GCPL a Best Employer year-on-year?
Vivek Gambhir: What has enabled us to continue to make progress in this journey is the proposition we offer to maintain a distinctive edge. There are three elements to this great careers, great rewards and a great work environment.
Godrej has been very entrepreneurial in the approach
towards great careers. A lot of people who have joined us have seen that they can progress much quicker with us than perhaps other companies. People have been given opportunities to stretch themselves and have been given a lot of responsibility at a fairly young stage in their career. There is a level of impatience seen in the millennial generation; however, the fact that people are progressing well in their careers has been a huge positive. This has allowed us to see many people progress quickly. For those who have started at a young level, they have seen the successes people can make. At GCPL, we have backed career progression with a lot of emphasis on careers and talent development individual career development plans, career planning dialogues, etc. This has led to a fairly high
level of satisfaction among the employees as they see us take their careers more seriously.
The second element, great rewards, is pillared by a very transparent Economic Value-Added (EVA) linked performance remuneration model. The beauty of the model is that it is one simple metric and it aligns performance at both the individual level and company level. So in a year where people do really well, there is no limit to the amount that someone can actually make. At the same time, there is complete visibility and clarity throughout the year in terms of what the EVA index for the company can be in that particular year. In that sense, performance variation plays an important role in the way we look at compensation. To compliment this, we have really upped the ante as far as intangible rewards are concerned. Whether we look at celebration or recognition, we have invested significantly; a lot of our emphasis is on really trying to create the intangible aspects of rewards as well. This has been a change we have made in terms of how our rewards model works.
The third element is ensuring a great work environment. One of the distinctive features we have had in Godrej is the strong value system. We nurture an environment where there are high levels of collaboration. The kind of entrepreneurism we see has been another distinctive feature we have had, which is a consequence of people in stretched roles. While GCPL has a very entrepreneurial culture, it makes the work environment pleasant and far more fun in some ways, while also ensuring that the expected performance standards are tough. So the bar gets raised for performance delivery, but from what a lot of people keep telling us, this is amongst the best work environments they have ever seen in any company.
These are the three big reasons why I feel like GCPL has continued to make strides in terms of sharpening value proposition. We are trying to do things the 'Godrej way' instead of imitating a multinational company. We are learning a lot from other companies, but ultimately the approach to the workplace has been around the 'Godrej way', which is fairly unique.
Q. What is the role that the Godrej Group's rich legacy and heritage has played in contributing to making it a Best Employer? Were there any cutting-edge practices that were being followed in the Godrej Group long before they became the norm at the other workplaces?
Nisaba Godrej: I would say that it is more about the Godrej legacy and value system that has been built over the past 100 years. It takes a lot of time to build this kind of legacy and heritage. But more than cutting-edge practices, the EVA process we have been following for almost 10 years now has been a key contributor to making GCPL a Best Employer. From a people's standpoint, the values contribute largely to why people feel more engaged with GCPL and with the Godrej Group. We assume that everyone has integrity and respect for other people. The feedback we get from our team is that the values are very deeply embedded. If we talk to people and ask them what keeps them really engaged,
a lot of them will not talk about EVA, but they will tell you stories of when GCPL has been with them in a difficult moment and how other people in the organization have treated them like family. I would say that is what the Godrej legacy is, and is built over 100 years. While it is very easy to pull apart, it takes a lot of time and commitment to those values to build them up.
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