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BUSINESS: MODERN FOODS
Counselling To Help Transition
To help employees
prepare for the change, they were given training and counselling to help
them understand and cope with the transition. More importantly, all senior-level
managers were counselled separately on the consequences of not adhering
to rules. This meant that the managers were not only made responsible
for themselves but also for their subordinates. The bottom line now is
loud and clear-like any other professionally-run company Modern is performance-driven
and employees will be rewarded accordingly.
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Public Ills, Private
Remedies
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 OVERTIME:
With increase in productivity, monthly wage bill has come down from
Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh.
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 ABSENTEEISM:
Late-comers or those missing during office hours have to give
explanation or take a pay cut.
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 BUREAUCRACY:
Decision making decentralised. Leave applications now need four
signatures instead of 13.
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 MISUSE:
Office vehicles are no longer available for personal work and peons
need not fetch boss's tiffin.
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 OVERSTAFFING:
With staff over three times the optimum number a voluntary retirement
scheme is imminent.
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 ACCOUNTABILITY:
Against job overlaps and diffuse responsibilities now there is role
clarity throughout.
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While rules have been reinforced, the 14-member
integration team from HLL is leading by example. They come to the office
on time, eat in the modest canteen, go out of the premises to smoke and
often personally walk across to give files rather than sending them through
peons. This has had a trickle down effect. The office canteen, once largely
unused, is cleaner and serves better meals at no additional cost. Smoking
in the office has stopped. Peons no longer push files. All this has also
meant fewer hands doing the same job in less time.
A major initiative is on across all locations
to make employees computer literate. The new management has hired computer
professionals from NIIT to train their employees in basic data entry.
Employees were asked to take the training on off days or after-office
hours. The response has been tremendous-all manufacturing units have at
least 4-5 computer literate staff; at the headquarters there are 30. Now,
each unit generates its daily production and sales figures. Workers' productivity
and overtime wages are being closely monitored. Most workers report on
time, take fewer rests and loiter less at the paan-bidi shops.
With efficiency setting in, quite a few employees
have no work. While the productivity standard is 14-15 workers per shift
in an assembly line, some of MFL plants in north India have as many as
50 workers per shift. "We do not have work. Computers will make us
jobless," complains a MFL employee. There is obviously no easy solution.
To be viable, MFL will have to turn efficient. And to become efficient
it will need to cut flab. So far, its pact with the Government has prohibited
HLL from sacking even a single employee. Retrenchment is unlikely in the
future too. "Without VRS Modern will not be viable," says Kapur
bluntly.
Workers seem to understand HLL's problems. Says
A.D. Nagpal, general secretary, All India Bakeries Workers Federation:
"I do not want anybody to go out of a job. But we do not want to
have unviable units. We are ready to discuss each unit so that all become
viable. But the management should take us into confidence." It is
this acceptance that reflects the transition at MFL.
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