Article: Hindalco's Easy Communication Initiative

Employee Relations

Hindalco's Easy Communication Initiative

Hindalco's holistic approach at the workplace is what keeps this company ticking
Hindalco's Easy Communication Initiative
 

We focus a lot on multi-skilling and skill development of employees to ensure that workmen and employees get regular training to perform better

 

The Aditya Birla Group has always adopted a holistic approach when it comes to its employees. As a group, we conduct a num-ber of initiatives to bring about inclusion and develop leadership in our employees. Over the years, there have been a few areas that have helped us develop and maintain healthy employee relations. Some of the initiatives at Hindalco are:

Skilling

We focus a lot on skill development and multi-skilling of employees to ensure that workmen and employees get regular training to perform better. This also helps in making people versatile and flexible in moving and changing roles to other func-tions and jobs. Even our factories have Recognition and benefits which motivate people shift towards multi-skilling. We believe that in order to build a strong industry base, employees who can perform in more than one job, make for a win-win situation for both the employees and the company. The older rigid practice of having an inflexible workforce does not help either the company nor the employee. Our Long Term Settlements with Unions are exam-ples of multi-skilling and flexibility in operations.

Quality Circles

To promote quality consciousness, bring about cus-tomer orientation, we encourage Training and dia-logues that leads to excellence in quality. We focus on better learning and training programs on Safety, Good Work Practices, and doing the right thing the first time around. It is only with consistent focus on these things that a company can continuously benchmark with its peers globally. However, one cannot stop at only a good recruitment practice without the daily working practices being efficient as well. Quality and Cost Effectiveness is the key to sustenance in our industry.

Management training & grievance redressal

We give special attention to the training of our Managers, especially in the areas of dealing with workmen, handling of grievances and bringing about engagement activities of the workforce. While it is good to have work groups for giving directions for work, most of the issues and workplace problems can be best handled with people themselves. We encourage people to form teams, analyse the situations and provide suitable solutions to the problems at hand. This practice of forming teams for productive discussions has helped our workmen to hone their skills in problem solving as well. We also have a number of workmen teams participate at the State level and National level skill and quality contests.

We also do a number of programs for workmen on both Technical and Soft Skills apart from man-agement programs for Managers. While Technical Skilling is necessary for continuous up-gradation, Soft Skills are even more important as they develop a conducive work culture. Soft skills define how workmen get along, how they work with teams, take care of their health, family budgeting and all other aspects of Personality and Individual Devel-opment. Training our workmen on such issues has had a positive and a favourable effect on just on the individuals, but also on the organization as well.

In most of our plants, we are specifically con-ducting programs for Union leaders as well. Often, the workers who are elected by the workers and become representatives are ill-equipped to handle the role with maturity due to their inexperience at times. To help them, we employ external training institutes and expert trainers to brief them about labour relations and train them in understanding labour and economic issues of the workers. There is great focus on developing leadership abilities and assessing situations. Communication is also an area of focus as they act as a link with the manage-ment. These trainings also makes them aware of their rights and responsibilities and help them take the workmen together for their common goals.

Communication

Focus on communication on an everyday basis is a great need. While workmen have leaders to talk to them, there also needs to be a forum in place where the workmen can find out about the developments of the company and their respective division. We therefore have monthly and quarterly meetings, where the overall performance of the factory and the company is shared with employees. This con-tinuous dialogue helps develop a healthy under-standing not just with the managers but also with the employees. It also gives the workmen a wider view of the company they are associated with. We also do a number of engagement activities with the employees and also with their families.

As told by Vineet Kaul, CPO, Hindalco

 

 

 

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Topics: Employee Relations, #IndustrialRelations, #NationinLabour

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