HR as Transformation partner in Maruti Suzuki

This case has clearly depicted the changes that Maruti Suzuki adopted
during the time when Maruti Suzuki was itself undergoing change. From
Maruti Udyog Limited(MUL) to Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. (MSIL) the time
when government disinvested and SMC acquired its 54.2 per cent stake in
MUL and thus MSIL a subsidiary of Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC), Japan
was born. Because of this whole top management underwent a
transformation, due to this Japanese employee were put in charge of
strategy and Indian employee in charge of execution. But with the
changes in the automobile industry new market players were evolving and
to keep up with that Maruti had to devise new strategy not only with
respect to operations, but also with regards to the HR aspects also and
during this phase in the year 2003-08, the time when HR was all about
recruiting and promotion and less to do with people during this time
Siddiqui was appointed, and he was given a huge task to develop HR as a
function that was professional and people friendly and focus on
developing employee who could face upcoming challenges. And they were
doing it very successfully with the first step by offering employees the
option of VRS to the employee and also bringing in several training
initiative such as Chunauti, were undertaken and aimed at instilling pride
in being an MSIL employee, self development programme, outbound
training session was conducted. An Employee Relation Development
Committee was set up to bring both union and management onto the
same platform. With all this activities there was increase in the credibility
of the HR when in the survey all the department rated HR 4on a scale of
5. And also because of this HR has become part of many decision making
strategies, they also formed a Human Resource Initiative Development
Committee (HRIDC) a forum for Divisional Heads to meet at least once in a
month for the new joinee HR formulated some plans for them so that they
dont feel out of place, the new employee was taken around in the first
half and then a cake cutting ceremony takes place with the top level
manager, HR also created a flat structure with only three levels of
responsibilities: the director, the divisional head and departmental head,
with this there was openness and sharing but greater sense of
involvement, Performance management system was introduced to bring
about shift in the organisation where employee were appraised on the
basis of performance rather than the time spent by them. They also made
a provision for low and medium performer to improve and move ahead

Despite all this there were certain challenges faced by the company,
which was generally related to the culture many of the employee were not
happy that Japanese people are in a strategic role whereas Indian Middle
and low level management felt that they are more aware about the Indian
market and are better suited than their Japanese counterpart, and also
some manager stated discomfort with some aspect of the rules, MSIL
started facing major problem of attrition due to compensation package
issue.