Workforce Rationalization for a Renewable Energy Major
P.P. Ramanujan, 30th March, 2016
The Client
The client is a leading player based out of Tamilnadu, providing support for OEMs in renewable energy sector with pan India presence and has been operating in ASEAN, African and parts of European markets.
Business Challenges
The client has grown aggressively by innovating in technology, acquired patents, added on to their technical capabilities and their top line has grown steadily over the last fifteen years. However there are a lot of challenges faced with regard to workforce productivity in the recent past which has been hitting hard on client satisfaction and bottom line. The client has also anticipated an impending risk of retraction of business contracts at certain work locations owing to perennial response time and service quality issues faced.
Root Cause Analysis
Antharicshaa signed up with the client to analyse the root cause of the challenges faced and recommend appropriate strategy to address these issues. Our consultants carefully studied the business model, revenue and operational model of each site.
Deeper analysis of problematic sites indicated significant gaps which were adversely impacting business productivity and consequently the bottom line. When people data of these sites were probed further, certain patterns emerged.
The operational procedures and productivity metrics laid down by the OEMs were quite different for each set of sites. However the client did not have a scientific resource planning strategy that aligns to the operational model and cost-economics of each site. Resource allocation and compensation fixation for technicians were done on an adhoc basis. The performance metrics for technicians were common for all the sites regardless of their nature and size. There was no proper role and organization hierarchy defined for different types of sites.
Further, it was noticed that some of the veteran technicians who were deployed as site in-charges to stabilize the operations of certain sites which were at nascent stages had eventually settled into a comfort zone. Their salary cost was disproportionate to the revenue from these sites.
Moreover these site in-charges were quite strong footed in the sites and had complete control of the people dynamics of these sites.
In precise, lack of strong HR leadership and unavailability of Top Management’s time to draw out proper people strategy had given room for a compromised working style and formation of informal power centres in certain locations which were challenging the productivity and hitting hard on the bottom line.
Recommendations
A three pronged strategy was recommended to combat the challenges faced by the client, as follows:
Implementation Support
The HR Manager was coached by our Principal and IR consultants to hold meetings with the technicians for facilitating change management and retrenchment compensation processes.
Advisory on performance and productivity metrics for each site was also provided to the Management and HR for efficiently monitoring the productivity of the sites. Expert advisory on pro-active HR Engagement and periodical amendment of HR policies were also provided to the management and the HR Manager.
Learning
- Many developing organizations focus aggressively on ramping up their business capabilities during their initial days and HR strategy is hardly given any priority
- Absence of strong HR leadership with strategic focus and unavailability of top management’s time to work on people strategy results in serious people issues in the organization
- Many times such issues go unnoticed until they adversely impact business productivity and resolution of such issues consumes enormous time, effort and resources
- Pro-active human capital management is never too early or a luxury for any business. It is rather an essential part of the business roadmap right from the beginning
