Do you Engage Every Day?

Frito-Lay India's HR Program recognized for being top 6 Innovative practices in the industry
It’s not too long ago when we mentioned about our clean sweep at the Employer Branding Awards in January 2008. Our guys just can’t sit without making any stir in the industry. Dev Raj Sharma, our Operations HR head was complaining last time around as we could not showcase our Operations HR innovative practice called ‘Engage Every Day’ at Employer Branding Awards since there wasn’t any specific category for such an initiative.
This time however, he had his way and sent his registration for ‘Innovation in HR’ awards organized by DMA & Erehwon and undoubtedly became the only one among us to have reached the final stage after great amount of grueling and auditing by the Erehwon representative. In fact, this practice has already made its mark on the PI world and has won ‘Talent Sustainability’ Award by Indra Nooyi. To give a brief overview on the practice this is an initiative led by our plant HR teams which connects Frito-Lay India with all its stakeholder on an ongoing basis making it a way of life through a 3 way connect:
· Connecting with employees and their families on a personal level
· Connecting with the community through CSR initiatives & community leaders
· Proactive engagement with bureaucrats on community initiatives /CSR agenda

(photo: L to R Dev Raj Sharma – Vice President Operations HR, Suchitra Rajendra, EVP Staffing and OC, Sudharshan Banerjee, Managing Director India Market Business Advisory Board (Jury member) & Suweshi Sharma Agro HR Manger Frito-Lay India accepting the trophy).

A short AV can be viewed on you tube link -Engage Every Day

Our other two entries on ‘People Certification Process and Employee Communication program were also seen as Best Practices that other organizations can imbibe. To give a snapshot, People Process Certification is a unique self paced online learning tool designed to on-board and build capability on People Processes. It has this very interesting format based on Karate Belt System. Employee Communication initiative is an innovative design to reach out and engage existing employees, potential employees and impact external environment to build the employer brand.

The other two apart from us were – HCL on its program of Employee First – where the HR has many flexible programs of meeting the needs of the employee. And Carborundum Universal Ltd (part of the Murugappan group of South) for its innovative recruitment where workers were hired as supervisors in a new factory which was technology intensive.

DMA Erehwon had received 40 odd entries. Some of the other organizations that have participated are Royal Sundaram Alliance Insurance, Crompton Greaves Limited, NIIT Technologies Ltd, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), CavinKare Private Limited, IPCA Laboratories, HCL Technologies Ltd, Zensar Technologies, Indian Hotels Co Ltd, Aviva Life Insurance Company India Ltd., TATA Projects Limited, Coromandal Fertilizers Ltd, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, Satyam Computer Services Ltd, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Aricent Technologies (Holdings) Ltd and Wipro Technologies

Through an exhaustive round of debate and dialogue and shortlisting , 21 entries were first chosen of which further 12 entries (4 of which are from PepsiCo – 3 from Snacks and 1 from Beverage) were chosen for the third round which was the in-context audit. From these 6 finalists were given an opportunity to present their practices in front of the Jury and a live audience of about 150 delegates from various organizations across India.

Heartiest congratulations to our Beverage division to have won the 1st runners up trophy for their highly innovative and unique PepsiCo Values roll out initiative. Don’t miss how it was done, call up someone in HR PepsiCo and find out. We have a lot more to tell!