HR transformation floods Mother Dairy

With determination and pride we will continue to serve our farmers, rural India and our consumers. Our values reflect who we are and what we firmly believe in.

Thus reads the mission statement of the 38-year-old Mother Dairy, a company owned by the National Dairy Development Board and set up under the Operation Flood Programme.

Much before management guru C.K. Prahalad spoke of the Bottom of the Pyramid, Mother Dairy had begun its journey on the path made famous by him.

Its products now include milk, ice creams, fruits and vegetables and edible oil. The profile of people that Mother Dairy attracts has also evolved, with some conscious efforts on the part of its leadership, and the HR team led by Chief People Officer Dr Saugata Mitra.

Over the last four years, a structured people transformation agenda has been followed, recounts Dr Mitra.

Flood of talent

When he joined the company in 2007, Dr Mitra was one of the few people in the company who had considerable experience in MNCs, having worked with Union Carbide, Sony and Sharp. Among those who have come on board since are S. Nagarajan, Managing Director, who joined in May 2010 from Philips India. Also moving in from Philips India was Nikhil Vinay Madgavkar, the current CFO. Amitava Mukherjee, Business Head of the Milk Division, joined in April 2011, from Britannia.

They have become part of the 200-member senior management team, supported by 800 in the middle management and 1,500 in junior management. The remaining 1,500 comprise workers. Of the total of 4,000 people, close to 600 are spread out in the villages, the source of produce and residence of key stakeholders of the company — farmers.

Dr Mitra's HR mandate has been two-fold: the all-important procurement HR, and the future-driven transformational HR.

He explains, “What we look for in people all across the organisation is an appreciation of business for social good. They need to understand the language of this business.”

For procurement, the skill sets and the competencies required are only learnt in the villages. So here, hiring is not through head hunters but school headmasters, local NGOs, army officials (for those looking for resettlement) and the like. The villages also serve as a training ground for fresh talent coming in from B-schools, agriculture and engineering colleges.

His resolution for 2012 is to move from ‘transaction HR' to ‘transformation HR'. That involves the leadership pipeline. And that explains why the company has been visiting B-school campuses as a practice for four years now.

Investing in the future

The headcount is increasing by about 10 per cent each year, and among those have been 50 recruited on campus last year from B-schools, and half that number from engineering and agriculture institutes. This year's campus recruitments are underway, says Dr Mitra.

Dairy technology graduates from the National Dairy Research Institute (Karnal) and graduates from the Gujarat Agricultural University have been sought out.

The B-school campuses visited include IRMA, XIM (Bhubaneswar), IIM (Rohtak), MDI (Gurgaon), FMS (Delhi) and Symbiosis (Pune). Currently, the starting pay on offer is Rs 7 lakh per annum on average. But people are still coming on board — and more importantly, staying on. The rigor of the selection processes plays a key role here. So does the career map for those coming in.

The batch that came in four years ago from campus comprised seven people. Three of them are Deputy Managers and an equal number are Managers today. The growth map is for an inducted Management Trainee to grow from Assistant Manager at the end of the first year to Manager (heading a department) in not more than five years.

“On campuses, the relatively lower compensation we offer has not been an issue till date. In our presentation we say that we are not the best paymasters. We also say that if we have to pay more, it will be at the cost of the farmer. The kind of people we want to hire appreciate the purpose of our business beyond top lines and bottom lines,” explains Dr Mitra.

What the company looks for in people are these virtues: understanding and imbibing values of the company, sharing the spirit of serving the nation, and understanding the economics of the business. The emphasis on academic performance is not as much as it is on value systems.

“We find that those from middle-class families come in with value systems that are relatively stronger; the same is the case with people from service class backgrounds,” adds Mitra.

Once in, they are put through an elaborate induction process. This involves an eight to 15-day stay in the remote villages where the produce comes from. And days here start at anytime after 3 am.

The procurement experience and interaction with farmers holds them in good stead for the journey ahead. The induction also helps slot inductees into roles, explains Dr Mitra.

Blending energy and experience

There are several employees who have served the company for 35 years. On average, the tenure of current staff is around 16 years. All of a sudden, some of them had bosses who were much younger, often from the new recruits on campus.

The system entails that the new recruit for the leadership role undergoes training under experienced staffers for a period of time, after which the staff who train him or her will be managed by the person trained.

It may seem impractical, but it's been accomplished with the sales function. Manufacturing is up next.

“It took us some time and there were initial hiccups, but it's been accepted now. The staff also realised that we were not affecting their career growth or compensation. The new recruits also performed well,” says Dr Mitra.

What has also helped is that the company made the transition from a distribution-led organisation to one driven by sales. So the old hands who may not have had exposure to the sales function with its current demands, have no qualms in welcoming a younger set of bosses to run the function, he adds.

The reporting structure does not reflect in the compensation, though. Those with higher experience typically draw a higher package than their much younger bosses.

Attrition is at 3.5 per cent, claims Dr Mitra. With the work force getting younger and the company expanding in terms of people, product portfolio and geographic spread, he admits that the ‘average tenure of employees' statistic is likely to come down.

But that is what it will be — a statistic. By itself, it will not truly reflect the people story at Mother Dairy.

> gokul.k@thehindu.co.in

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