In July, Lifestyle International Pvt. Ltd received the enviable distinction of being recognised as amongst the top 10 Best Companies to work for in India In an exclusive interview, Venkatramana B, President — Group HR, Landmark Group India walks IMAGES Retail through the the organisation’s award-winning practices relating to human talent retention.
The Great Place to Work 2015 India’s Best Companies to Work For is one of the most comprehensive surveys conducted on workplace culture in India. With more than 700 companies participating, 180,000 employees surveyed from over 20 industries it is also India’s largest such survey.
Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd, which comprises Lifestyle, Max and Home Centre, was recognised as the 10th Best Company to Work For in India based on the Trust Index scores and Culture Audit that was conducted by the Great Place to Work Institute. This survey is conducted keeping two aspects in mind – what the employees say and what the organisation does. Some of the key parameters that have been taken into account during the judging process were credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. We were also benchmarked against other companies on our processes such as hiring, developing, inspiring, speaking, caring, celebrating and so on.
Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd has fared very well in all these areas and the scores have been better or in-line with the scores of the Top 50 companies in India. However, we believe that there is a scope for improvement every year and we will concentrate on bettering our overall audit scores by improving our present processes, innovating and finding new ways to ensure that our people are happy to work with us, trust the organisation and believe in the company’s culture and values, retail is typically an industry with high attrition. This is compounded at the front end where the job is physically intensive and the pay is not very high. In such a situation, we are glad to note that our attrition levels have been about half the industry standards.
We believe the key to keep our employees motivated and loyal is to be fair, transparent, open and respectful in all our interactions with them. Our policies, processes and programs are formulated with the goal to inspire, engage and retain employees and ensure they are happy to work with the organisation.
For example, in the case of our front end staff, right from the time they join the organisation, we ensure that they can easily adjust to the new environment, are provided with a clear development plan, are introduced to our values and the way we work and can easily reach us in case they need support.
We have an onboarding program called Get Connected, where employees are able to give their feedback and raise any concerns through a survey conducted at specific intervals from their date of joining. This has helped us in reducing the level of attrition at stores by working on any concerns and providing employees the support system to get adjusted to the organisation.
Then, we have the Max Career Passport program and The Lifestyle LIFE program. These programs have been devised so that employees at the front end see a clear career growth path within the organisation. This has helped us retain many employees as they know that there is potential for growth within the organisation and their careers can flourish within the organisation.
We also have the LEAP (Landmark Education Assistance Program) for our frontline employees. LEAP is the education support program for our front line who want to pursue higher studies. With this program, not only do employees get better education, it also enables them to grow their careers. This year, we are working with AIMA in providing employees with a Diploma in Retail Management that we will consider as a graduation within Lifestyle. This will remove the glass ceiling that some employees face in growing their careers as they would now be considered for promotions and higher roles that need a degree.
We provide employees with innovative training and development programs, which help in their holistic growth. We’ve used methods like the quiz methodology with Max Master Minds and Lifestyle Ka Genius quiz competitions that have enabled frontline staff to learn through a fun environment. At Max, we have used the gamification method, to help employees understand concepts like the cardless loyalty program. Another interesting methodology is theatre or ‘Play in a Day’. This has been used with great success across Lifestyle, Max and Home Centre. To make Standard Operating Procedures easier to understand, Max has the Max Mantra initiative, where these procedures are explained on a daily basis through videos, assessments, quizzes and crosswords.
We also believe in healthy competition and rewarding our front-line staff for good work. At Max, Productivity Tracker is a tool to identify and track performance of every store employee based on the defined parameters, on daily basis. This has created a healthy competition between store employees as the Rewards & Recognition is linked to actual performance.
In addition to such practices, we also have policies that are employee friendly, such as providing our staff members with a Group Term Life Insurance
that has a sum insured of three times their CTC. This is provided after the completion of a year of service and is above their regular insurance. Policies like this have helped us become an employer of choice for them.
Lastly, we strongly believe that even at the front end, employees will stay with an organisation if they feel respected and believe in the organisation’s culture and values. Hence, we celebrate campaigns like the ‘I Love Landmark Group’ campaign and the ‘Values campaign’ so that employees understand what we believe in as an organisation and how we work with values. We also have a strong grievance redressal program for these employees in the form of ‘Here to Help’ so that they know that the organisation is always on their side when they need support and is always listening to them.
We believe that an amalgamation of all these policies and programs have helped us retain and engage our front line staff.
Every industry has its own set of unique characteristics and challenges. In Retail, especially on the front-line, we have to deal with very unique challenges. The front-line staff are at close to minimum ways and have to work long hours in monotonous environment. However, if a customer walks in even at the end of the day, our customer service representatives have to greet them with a smile. In addition to this, retail is a very nascent industry, and may not be the preferred choice for many of our front-line employees. These unique characteristics lend to unique HR systems and procedures that cater to these employees. This is different from a FMCG or banking Corporate where the sales would be done differently and these are sectors that are established industries.
Our HR systems and procedures have to adapt to the environments in which we work. Right from an employee in the corporate office to an employee at the store, we have to ensure that our policies and procedures are adapted in a way that is fair to the employee. We also have to ensure that employees understand these policies and procedures and again, have to use different methodologies depending on the environment to bring about awareness on our procedures.
We have introduced some new initiatives as well continued our older initiatives. For example, we have continued with programs such as Get Connected and our annual employee engagement survey People Pulse. These have always helped us get a pulse of the organisation and helped us innovate and bring in new practices into the organisation.
During the last year, on the team building front, one of the most important initiatives has been the outbound training programs. This program covered all the teams at the Corporate office and was devised in such a way that it encouraged individual as well as team skills and behaviors to be highlighted through the program. Teams were given tasks to complete in a specific amount of time and trainers assessed the teams on how they completed the given tasks and explained to them how certain actions or behaviors could improve the way the task was completed. We believe that such outbound training programs take employees outside their usual comfort zones in office and expose them to new ways of thinking and working, improving the overall camaraderie in the team.
Innovative and unique team building activities were also organized in the office. Max conducted an interesting engagement activity called Aislempix. Teams were provided with various Olympic-like tasks that had to be conducted in their own aisle. This activity was not only fun, but also increased team morale, camaraderie and understanding between team members.
This year, we also rebranded our Internal Job Posting program – Launchpad and have been regularly reinforcing the merits of the program by showcasing the number of people who’ve benefitted from the program, the different jobs available across the organisation and the varied career paths an individual can embark on within the organisation. In the year 2014 – 2015, we’ve had more than 300 internal job movements and over 70 inter-departmental movements through Launchpad. This has ensured that employees regularly have opportunities to grow as well as diversify their careers at Lifestyle.
Another important initiative that we have introduced this year has been talent segmentation. We are assessing and identifying high potentials in the organisations. Retail is a very competitive industry in terms of talent, and by identifying our high potentials we can provide them with a clear career path within the organisation and provide them the necessary training and development that will enable them to hold leadership positions in the future. By providing high potentials specific goals and individual development programs we strive to engage them, help them realise their career aspirations in our organisation and ultimately retain them. At Max, development centres were organised for managers and individual development plans were formalised which took into account Education, Exposure and Experience. Over 149 managers were covered through this program.
with the various programs, policies and processes that have been institutionalized at Lifestyle International, the attrition has come down from about 75% in 2011-12, to about 40.4% in 2014-15. This is much lower than the industry standard. At the same time, attrition in the senior management level has only been in single digits.
we have a program named Swabhimaan, which is an initiative to empower differently-abled people and promote inclusive growth. The program has been launched across all our stores and has seen an overwhelming response both from differently-abled employees and their colleagues.
The objective of Swabhimaan is to provide employment opportunities to people with disabilities (PwD) while providing a supportive environment for their overall development. We currently have over 200 employees with disabilities working with us.
We’ve identified roles at the stores where an employee with disability could work successfully and feel part of the team. This was important as we needed to create an environment where we could enable them to be successful and have a role that suits their skills and feel included as part of the team. Training is provided to the candidate to ensure that they have the technical proficiency to handle their work. A program has been developed where training is provided via dummy instructions ensuring that the person knows what to do from start to finish. The training is done at a pace where the candidates are comfortable and the program consists of classroom as well as on-the-job training modules.
An important aspect of hiring employees with disabilities, is not just training them, but creating an ecosystem where they can thrive and grow their careers. Hence, regular sensitization programs are conducted for the store team and more specifically the cashier team where most of the employees with disabilities are hired. The Business Managers and Store HR are oriented and trained on how to communicate with people with disabilities. These employees are also provided with FAQ placards to help customer interaction and queries.
We’ve seen immense value in the Swabhimaan program and would encourage other retailers and industries too, to hire people with disabilities. The overall morale of teams has been higher in stores where there are employees with disabilities. They have become inspirations for their colleagues. Customers too, have appreciated this initiative and given positive feedback about their interactions with these employees
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