Our vision is to be the number one restaurant company in India and we believe we will be able to achieve that only if we are able to build a culture that enables our employees to unleash their full potential. In other words, we can become the best restaurant company for our consumers only if we provide a great workplace to our employees!” This is a unanimous vision shared by Niren Chaudhary, MD, Indian Subcontinent and Binoo Wadhwa, Director HR Indian Subcontinent, Yum Restaurants India Pvt. Ltd. Ranked #32 in the Great Place to Work® Institute’s Study, Yum Restaurants owns brands like KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc.
The food industry in India faces stiff competition from peers. But Yum Restaurant’s approach in building a brand which carves out a niche for itself has been extremely successful. Elaborates Chaudhary, “We want to ensure that our brands are differentiated in everything that we do and that there is a clear reason that will drive consumer preference. We need to ensure relevance by using our brands to cater to consumer needs. Hence, Pizza Hut is a place where you celebrate the everyday with people you love. KFC, on the other hand, is a place for unique and craveable, great tasting food and beverages at very affordable prices and Taco bell is a place that serves extremely affordable Mexican inspired food. We also need to ensure that the brands have a youthful personality.”
Yum Restaurants believes in a strong open culture policy and transparency in its dealing with employees making sure that they are accessible through various communication forums, and by acknowledging their ideas and suggestions. We bring to you excerpts of People Matters’ interview with Niren Chaudhary and Binoo Wadhwa

How are the Indian market conditions and employee expectations different now from when you entered the country more than a decade ago?
Niren Chaudhary: The macro-economic environment has totally transformed. India is a fast-growing young nation and has an insatiable appetite and aspiration to experience a higher quality of life across all spectrums. Value is the key gate opener to consumers. On the employee side, I observe a growing sense of self confidence and a fierce desire to become the “best in the world!” There is also an expectation from employees that corporates need to have more than a business agenda, both in terms of being socially responsible and to have a culture that drives learning, connection, contribution and fun.

What are the directives to run an employee-centric organization like yours?
Binoo Wadhwa: We want to grow with a big heart agenda. And we have four imperatives that help us achieve our goals. (a) Connect, where we have formal and informal channels to connect the entire workforce to the strategy and values of the organization and to celebrate success to help build ownership and engagement. (b) Contribute, by being passionate about giving back to the society. We have opened stores which are run by specially-abled youth. We have fine tuned all our processes to help them perform. Our on boarding is in sign language and our store supervisors are trained in sign language to communicate with them. Our intention is to have one such store in every city Yum is present. (c) Learn, as we believe in continuous learning and development of our employees by imparting not only functional but life skills. As an organization we have a strong bias towards growing from within. (d) Fun, as we believe in having fun in what we do and rewarding our employees for their performance. Regular reward and recognition programs such as Yumazing Fridays, RGM Convention, Champs Challenge, etc, are organized to recognize performance rendered of our restaurant teams.