Lemon Tree Hotels Limited
Established in 2002, Lemon Tree Hotels Limited set new standards for the hospitality industry through their distinct policies, one of which is employing people with disabilities. With challenges like attrition associated with any company in hospitality/service sector, the management realized that the growth of the business was only possible when employees were growing. And that’s why building a career for the employees became the core responsibility.
BusIness Challenge
Many factors impact attrition and all hotel companies whether big or small face this problem. Attrition happens at all levels from entry-level associates to leadership positions. It is also the management’s responsibility to think not only about the company’s progression but also that of its employees as business growth has to be aligned with people’s strength and progression. And there is a negative impact if a company runs without a proper focus on building careers for their own employees. To recover and re-establish, a lot had to be done with regard to time, energy, money & external support.
SolutIon
It was realized by the management that enhancing technical and soft skills of the employees, including differently-abled employees was the number one priority. High potential employees were chosen by the management to undergo trainings through a mechanism that was designed keeping in mind the core competencies that were needed for a particular position. Past performances and recommendations from the Unit Heads in consultation with Functional Heads were also included in this mechanism.
Some of the programs run by the company in order to build careers for employees were:
- HGM in the Making: Advanced Preparatory Leadership Program (HGM=Hotel General Manager)
- Skill-up Program or LEAP Program: Learn Engage Apply Perform Program
Poised to double its inventory to over 8000 owned and managed rooms by 2019, the company focused on its talent base, especially talent management.
Impact
By providing career building and progression opportunities, attrition has been curtailed significantly in the organization. The overall employee engagement score has gone up to 93%. Under the new initiatives, as of October 2016, career progression for 25 of employees with disabilities has been assured and they are currently working as shadow managers/executives/supervisors, and will soon move to that position with better perks and benefits with more responsibilities and accountabilities. Additionally, incentive plans for High Potential and Super High Achievers have been introduced. Today, Lemon Tree Hotels is uniquely identified in the hospitality industry for two things — for employing people with disabilities at workplace and for the career growth opportunities that they provide for their employees.
John Deere India Pvt. Ltd.
John Deere India Private Limited is a subsidiary of Deere & Company, USA in India. John Deere in India exports agricultural products to over 75 countries worldwide in North and South America, Europe, Middle East, South East Asia and Africa. With its growth in leaps and bounds during last recent years, the company has not only seen an exponential increase in production but also a rapid expansion in their manufacturing footprint and product portfolio.
Business Challenge
The company’s one-size-fits-all approach was increasingly falling short of meeting specific development needs. For example, the behavioral development needs for first-time managers in Technology Center was very different from first time supervisors in manufacturing units. Also, all this growth resulted in an increase in managerial base. This called for a specialized focus on developing managerial skills for current & future people managers. Due to the paucity of customized solutions & prevalence of the ‘number of training man days/hours metric’, employees started focusing only on attending trainings so long as they counted towards their training man days. This was starting to reflect through a metric called ‘Development’. It comprises of a series of questions related to an employee’s career, development needs & supervisor role in helping him achieve those, administered as a part of annual Employee Experience Survey.
Solution
John Deere zeroed upon the 70:20:10 or blended model of learning. In Deere’s context, it was assimilated as follows — 70% of an individual’s learning happens on the job, 20% happens through a Coach or a Mentor, and 10% happens through a classroom session. Simultaneously, the company also got on board a process called as Individual Development Plan (IDP). The process is complemented by an online tool where an employee can meticulously record, track, and monitor the resources, trainings, experiences he wants to develop for his current & future roles. This data is visible to the employee’s manager and to the company’s team. The IDP coupled with the blended model became a mantra for the businesses in the form of “Own your own Development”. In line with the same philosophy, the company no longer tracks training man days per employee as training metric. Meanwhile, the company made structural changes to its Learning & Development function to be more customers centric and fused different teams which were earlier catering to managers and non-managers into a single talent development function.
Impact and Metrics
From a business perspective, the L&D rejig has translated in more value for their resources since each solution is tailor-made for a specific business context, a specific leadership level & a specific team. From an organizational perspective, classroom sessions reduced by 30% since 2010 while meeting each development needs. This has resulted in a significant savings without compromising on employee development. The number of internal mentoring relationships moved to 355 in 2015 from 58 in 2012. Also, there have been company trained 40 Deere employees as Coaches in last three years, which has created internal experts whose experience is being actively sought and leveraged by a broader mass of Deere employees.
Results
John Deere saw an 8% increase in the dimension of Development in the 2016 Employee Experience Survey (this dimension comprises of a series of questions related to an employee’s career, development needs & supervisor role in helping him achieve). The Individual Development Plans have helped employees and managers to work on plans which are better suited to their business context and the employee aspirations. All these changes have put the employees in a driving seat when it comes to development while simultaneously cutting the unnecessary fat from our earlier approach.
Mindtree
With a belief that people can turn potential information into meaningful solutions — solutions that can simplify businesses, improve governments and aid the society in moving forward, Mindtree, which pioneers in creating customized solutions across the digital value chain, invested in its employees by providing clear-cut career paths for its employees.
Business Challenge
The business challenges for Mindtree included the following:
- Building an organizational structure that was in line with the business strategy and industry trends.
- Fulfilling expectations of the geographically distributed workforce.
- Maintaining a culture of performance and ensuring clarity in performance expectations that would enhance both people engagement and also reflect on client deliverables while having a positive impact on customer satisfaction scores.
- Keeping attrition at low levels.
- Improving internal placements and not relying only on external hiring.
- Improving focus on reskilling, cross-skilling and upskilling of the talent pool within the company.
Solution
An initiative ‘Empowering the company minds through role definitions and exploratory career paths’ was rolled out by Mindtree to provide clarity of roles and research on the career paths for the different levels of talent in the company, and empowering them to take a more active role in their careers within the organization. This initiative was aimed at making an impact on 3 internal systems & processes:
The specific outcomes targeted were:
- Phase 1 of the project targeted to impact goal-setting on the performance management system (PACE). With role definitions, the company created customized goal templates that aided in achieving 100% completion of goal-setting at the entry and middle level roles globally.
- Phase 2 of the project targeted to create customized role and skill packages.
- Phase 3 of the project targeted to assist the talent acquisition team to identify internal & external talent pool.
- Phase 4 of the project targeted to create a dictionary of roles to be published on ‘People Hub’, the company’s internal portal.
Impact
The platform has created a space for project-specific content which is put together and offered for assimilation and bridging knowledge gaps. It enables social learning and collaboration among peers and learners with similar learning journeys. The initiative impacted the business in a 2 specific ways:
The overall attrition percentage FY 2016 to 2017 has shown a 2% reduction subsequent to the project rollout. This impact was seen not just on the lower and middle level hiring but also in fulfillment of senior positions. Almost 52% of senior positions were filled through internal movements.