Career mapping practices enhance retention at Birla Tyres

Citation

Rana, G. (2013), "Career mapping practices enhance retention at Birla Tyres", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 12 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2013.37212eaa.008

Career mapping practices enhance retention at Birla Tyres

Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 12, Issue 5

Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR

Company background

Birla Tyres is one of the leading tyre companies in the Asia Pacific Region. Its purpose is to deliver a positive and enduring impact on the world. Birla Tyres was established in 1991, as part of Kesoram Industries Limited, and today is India’s fifth largest tyre maker, with production facilities in the eastern state of Orissa.

The plant in Balasore, Orissa was set up using state-of-the-art machines with the latest technology from the world famous company, Pirelli of Italy, and has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tyres, including passenger car and light commercial radials as well as car, bus, truck and agricultural tyres. Recently Birla Tyres entered a £85 million greenfield tyre factory in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand at Laksar (Haridwar).

The company employs more than 20,000 people across various offices in India and abroad. They come from a diverse range of disciplines including engineers, planners, architects, economists, scientists, project managers, technicians and administrative staff. Birla Tyres has always been a leader in its industry and had been performing well over its competitors. In the mildest of all this, company executives knew that maintaining its position would take consistent vigilance.

Career development issue

Career development relates to the readiness for progression through a series of positions during an individual’s working life. Career issues emerge as a result of increasing stress on the organization to develop its human resources and grow expectations of individuals, regarding what they need to do, to facilitate career growth as they become more educated.

At Birla the most common HR challenges are managing talent, skills development and filling key positions in the organization by meticulously planning career paths of available resources, keeping in mind its employees’ aspirations, which are intelligently aligned with the organizational growth strategies. This industry competes largely on the basis of its people’s ability to provide excellent client service and therefore the ability of the company’s HR function to effectively acquire, develop and retain talent.

A focus on retention

The company is intensely focused on its people, emphasizing an open and independent culture for their development. However, after many years as leader in the industry the management is satisfied with its employees’ performance. To sustain its leadership position, Birla Tyres recognizes the need for talented professionals. It faces challenges from other technology companies, such as Apollo Tyres, MRF Ltd, JK Tyres, Modi Tyres Ltd, Ceat Tyres Ltd., etc., that are hunting from the shared talent pool of highly talented and innovative people. Birla requires people who can deliver efficiency to match the industry pace, but also people with creativity to add value to its mission.

It also faces challenges in retaining these highly motivated and talented employees, and the company is taking a strategic decision to revamp its career development practices to help create transparent career paths for professionals across their hierarchies. This is reflected through Birla Tyres’ mission statement:

At home and abroad, the company is looking to not only consolidate its leadership position in various segments through newer, high technology products but also through consistent organic and inorganic growth opportunities for their employees.

Apart from being a disciplined approach for creating jobs of choices, career development is of prime importance as it positively affects morale, commitment and loyalty of employees (Arnoid, 1997; Bozionelos, 1996). Today, the reality for most of employees is that they will change employers (and perhaps careers) several times during their work lives. Thus, the emphasis now is on providing employees with career development tools, such as the career mapping practices developed by Birla Tyres.

Career mapping practices

At Birla Tyres career development practices give employees the perspective they need to understand their career options, and what they can do to pursue the most attractive ones. And, to the extent that the person develops the skills he or she needs for a career move, it makes the person more mobile and more likely to achieve career success. In this company, career development is a joint responsibility of both the individuals and the organization. While the HR department shares this responsibility with individuals, including managers and employees, it, in turn, must undertake initiatives for career planning and preparing for future jobs through development programs and experience.

At Birla Tyres, the career mapping tool is highly relied upon as it is based on strong scientific grounding. Psychometric assessment (psychological qualities such as reasoning ability and personality factors) is helpful for career mapping by providing comprehensive data, such as information on knowledge, attitude, skills and habits of an individual. Individual core competencies are plotted against individual aspirations and the HR manager tries to build relevant opportunities into their career path. In addition, interviews and focus group discussions with individuals and immediate supervisors help in collating observations about colleagues, team members and organizations to create a holistic perspective of each employee.

Following is a summary of the major steps involved in the company’s career mapping model:

1. 1.

   SWOT analysis. For the individual, the career planning process means matching individual strengths and weaknesses with occupational opportunities and threats and this is conducted by in depth analysis of individual employees through the relevant manager.

2. 2.

   Goal setting. With the help of discussion with individual employees and their manager, realistic goals are set in order to gradually create opportunities and let each professional grow with the organization. The following points are considered before setting goals:

   • •

     Review of where we have been and where we are going.

   • •

     Setting goals: where do I want to be?

   • •

     Future skills and accomplishments.

3. 3.

   Developing career actions plans. To fill competency gaps, the manager provides mentoring assistance and subordinate career-related benefits through various action plans, such as identifying long and short range alternatives for careers, and providing training, mentoring, workshops and counseling to help improve career decisions.

Optimizing the workforce

This career planning model serves as a great tool for identifying employees’ development needs, and for their professional development and networking. It develops employees’ aspirations for career growth and improves job satisfaction and motivation, while identifying star performers for the company. As a global organization, Birla Tyres is able to generalize policies for career development activities, such as mentoring, coaching, training, promotional opportunities, on the job guidance and career counselling, and match its professionals’ competencies and experience to organizational goals, to build an optimized workforce.

A well-defined career grading system (step-by-step progression) mapped to skills and competencies, insures that individuals fit with the organization, and including employee aspirations also leads to long term associations with the company.

Geeta Rana, Alok Kumar Goel and Pooja GargGeeta Rana is an Assistant Professor and Research Coordinator at Roorkee Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. Alok Kumar Goel is based at CSIR-Human Resource Development Centre, Ghaziabad, India. Pooja Garg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, India.

About the authors

Dr Geeta Rana is an Assistant Professor and Research Coordinator at Roorkee Institute of Technology, Roorkee. She earned her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Roorkee). She is engaged in teaching, research and consultancy assignments and has several years of experience as faculty in management institutes. Her work has appeared in several major journals. Geeta Rana is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: geetaphd@rediffmail.com

Dr Alok Kumar Goel is working at the CSIR-Human Resource Development Centre, Ghaziabad (a premier R&D organization of the government of India). He pursued his PhD in the area of Knowledge Management and Human Capital Creation from IIT Roorkee. Dr Goel holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a Master’s degree in Management. He has a rich experience of more than 17 years in corporate HR. He has published seven papers in international journals and 17 papers in the proceedings of leading international conferences.

Dr Pooja Garg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, India. Dr Garg is a post graduate in Psychology (Organizational Behavior and Human Resources) and received her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Roorkee). Her areas of specialization are psychology, group dynamics, individual dynamics, work values systems, organizational justice and managerial effectiveness. She has more than eight years of experience in teaching. She is a past winner of the Best Research Paper Award, Emerald Literati, UK, and has published in international and national journals.