Stability in Volatility
Q. With the evolving nature of work, we see a growing demand of 'hot skills' in the industry. What rewards strategies have you adopted to cater to these growing demands?
A. In an environment that requires large scale teamwork, all members of the team contribute to the overall output and each member is dependent on the others for their own output. Excessive differentiation in terms of rewards can potentially have a negative impact and needs to be managed carefully. The key is being sure of what you identify as a 'hot skill' in your context. Having said that, in the face of growing requirements of some specific skills and telecom competing with other sectors, we would consider some tweaking of our rewards strategy going forward.
Q. The advent of new age industries like e-Commerce organizations has created a stiff competition for different talent profiles. How has your hiring strategy evolved to keep pace with this change?
A. A robust talent management process ensures that we are developing our talent at all levels with a special focus on top talent, allowing us to have a healthy pipeline of successors available in various roles. We have tweaked our talent management strategy to deal with increased competition in the talent market. At the entry level, we have ensured that our employee value proposition (Rewards, Development, Well-being and Career) allows us to attract top talent from the best institutes through our Young Leaders Program. We have maintained competitiveness not through just compensation but through our overall value proposition and have ensured business requirements are being met.
Q. In an industry with varying levels of outsourcing, do you put a lens on productivity? If yes, how do you measure it and how does this productivity matrix impact your compensation strategies?
A. There is a keen focus we have on productivity, especially in the three largest functions of networks, sales and service delivery. Telecom is a capex-intensive business and it is important to ensure that we get the necessary return on investment. Network expansion plans, sales targets and service metrics influence our manpower requirements and these requirements are established basis productivity norms. The Aditya Birla Group, as a whole, has institutionalized an extensive Strategic workforce Planning process and we are at the forefront in terms of ensuring successful implementation and deriving maximum output from the process. Implementing Strategic Workforce Planning ensures that business drivers are translated into manpower requirements down to the lowest level. We are now in the process of building systems to integrate these outputs into all our HR processes including our compensation strategy.
Q. Do you think benefits have seen a resurgence recently? Also, what kind of measures are you taking beyond compensation to increase engagement?
A. Our Employee Value Proposition (EVP), which is the EVP of the Aditya Birla Group as a whole, is based on four pillars - Rewards and Recognition, Career, Training and Development and Well-being. We have a bouquet of benefits that fall into these areas, all contributing to increased engagement levels. We have a rewards and recognition framework that includes recognition for individual and team excellence, innovation and living our values. It also includes spot recognition and long service rewards. This is an automated, online system. We have a long-term incentive plan in place enabling wealth creation basis business results. Around career dimension, we have an automated process for employees to help build their careers at Idea by enabling career conversations and longterm career planning. Around well-being, we have a variety of work-life balance interventions and special interest groups of employees formed. A recent initiative was Stepathlon - devices were given to certain sets of employees, including women, to track their daily physical activity and compete with others, encouraging physical activity and well-being. We are going beyond just compensation through Total Rewards which is the Aditya Birla Group's rewards philosophy.
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