After nearly five months of negotiations with workers who struck work thrice during the period, Mr S.Y. Siddiqui, Managing Executive Officer- Administration (HR, Finance & IT) at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, is convinced that the root of the problem was Gen Y that ‘went in the wrong direction.'
Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of the 15th annual National HRD Network Conference at Bangalore, he explained the HR issues facing the company now and the way forward.
At Manesar, I see three complex variables that were at play. One is the political environment that disturbed the industrial growth. The second is the Gen Y which actually has high potential and high involvement which can lead to high productivity. But if it goes in the wrong direction, can cut the other way as it happened in our case.
The third is in our senior management. I think in terms of our culture building capability, we did have some gaps.
So, what are you doing now to bridge that gap?
What we are going to initiate next week is create a bottoms up approach in communication. All workers, all supervisors and all senior management team members are first dealt in groups and they will create an ownership by debate and dialogue. Of course, lot of the information will be fed by HR. But the decision making has to be done by the groups themselves.
I think it will be a six-eight month patient process and they will come back into the fold.
Was induction of casual workers among the main demands of the protesting employees?
Maruti pays very well, offers an excellent working condition, career growth and support. There was an uncertain period for four months, but workers made no demand like improving working conditions, or ‘give us bonus or give us more money'. The issue was they wanted a union with an external affiliation. The policy of the company is that we prefer to recognise an internal union and this was communicated to them. Because when you go for registration of the union, it is between the workmen and the Government and the company has nothing to do with it.
The workers were so young and in the wrong hands. They now realise that if they had the awareness that a strong internal employee union was going to serve their purpose, all this would not have happened. Therefore my first premise is that whichever company, whichever sector, we need to have a very clear thinking how we are going to handle Gen Y.
If we had handled them well, they could have been integrated well into the company. They also go out and meet people in a high risk zone like Gurgaon and Manesar area.
Was there some kind of communication failure with your workers that resulted in this trouble?
I'm sure those gaps were (also) there from our side. Now we are looking at multiple channels of communication. One is that I'll be directly meeting the 1,500 boys. Apart from this, we have created and circulated an email ID through which they can communicate with the top management any time they want.
Sometimes our Indian colleagues inside Maruti and outside it do tend to take communication casually. In case of Gen Y the more you communicate, the better it is because there is more clarity and involvement than Gen X.
Can you please clarify to us why the 30 employees resigned, given the speculation that they were paid off to quit the organisation.
We were very surprised at the negative speculation going on. But there's one simple perspective these speculators have missed. When we decided to take action against the 30 people because of the charges, we looked at the firmness principle in industrial relations. We feel the compromise model is a complete disaster. And we also did not want any external affiliation for the union. We prefer recognising an internal employee union which can understand business, which can understand the needs of the people can play a very constructive role.
The government proposal was that when we do the full and final case, these people who are opting to resign should get a VRS kind of plan that we offered in 2001 and 2003. This would be better than dismissing them from service or going through the court route. We also had to consider their young age and their future.
Therefore, we have taken into consideration their service for the last five years, calculated what is due to them in terms of gratuity, PF and earned leave and we have tried to compensate very fairly a person who prefers to resign rather than go through a domestic enquiry process. I think it's better than tagging them as dismissed employees or taking them to court.
Why are trade union problems surfacing now and that too in a vitiated environment?
Union issues have started to surface after a lull of roughly 10 years. This is because there is a volatile change in the business environment. The focus on being competitive has pushed corporates to cut corners on the workmen front. In Maruti, we see employees as assets, not a liability because the same pool that produces 3,600 cars a day, has given 200,000 productivity suggestions that have been implemented and helped save Rs 147 crore last fiscal.
Yes, there were gaps in the Manesar plant. We acknowledge and are looking at that. But at the same time, we know that the labour laws have to be rationalised to suit the current environment and the needs of the business now.