Case-1 Mahindra & Mahindra

In 1945, two enterprising brothers named J.C Mahindra and K.C Mahindra joined
forces with Ghulam Mohammed and started Mahindra & Mohammed as a steel
company in Mumbai. Two years later, India won its independence. Ghulam
Mohammed left the company to become Pakistans first finance Minister, and the
Mahindra Brothers ignited the companys enduring growth with their decision to
manufacture Willys jeeps in Mumbai. The companys new name? Mahindra &
Mahindra of course-this is how the M&M Web site talks about the beginning of the
company.
The company grew steadily getting listed on the Bombay stock exchange
(BSE) in 1956. Years of operating in the protected economy had made most Indian
companies complacent and M&M was no exception. By the 1990s, the
organization was plagued by a series of troubles. The plants were suffering from
manufacturing inefficiencies, poor productivity, long production cycle and sub-
optimal output. The reason: highly underproductive, militantly unionized and
bloated workforces. The company had over the years been rather lenient towards
running the plants and had frequently crumbled under the pressure of union
demands. The work culture was also reportedly very healthy and corruption was
widespread in various departments. After a few corrective measures which proved
ineffective, Anand Mahindras leadership saw M&M going through what was the
first Business Process Reconstructing (BPR) exercise in India. The group started
becoming more adept at handling the post-liberalized marketplace. Yet its
performance failed to pick up and stock price kept falling. The lowest price came
when M&M was dropped from the Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share Bellwether
Index. In 2002, Anand Mahindra collected 50 of top people to brainstorm the need
to transform and also the way to drive it. (Now that session has morphed into
annual retreat called the Blue chip.) They realized that financial discipline and
developing a global outlook is what would take them ahead, since 2002, a lot has
happened over the last nine years.

This company, having its roots in the utility vehicle and tractors, has today
diversified in the last 10 years into multiple businesses spanning finance, software,
infrastructure, hospitality and auto components.it has growth through a string of
domestic and international acquisitions: Punjab Tractors, Kinetic engineering,
Satyam computers, Reva Car company, two tractor companies in China, Three
forgoing units and a two wheeler designer unit in Europe and now Ssang Yong in
Korea. The group has onshore presence in 79 countries (China, the EU countries,
the USA, South Africa and Australia) besides exporting products to many more. Of
the 11, 3000 people working for the 11 businesses with 120 subsidiaries at
Mahindra, 5,000 are of foreign origin and 8,500 Indian Expats.
In 2008, there was an employee survey done to find out the values of Mahindra
which were a part of their DNA and in the survey they found that the long
entrenched core values of Integrity were still there but new ones such as
Dynamism had also crept its way in. They then undertook a research to find out
whether the same values resonated across the diverse people of the company. In
response to the changing profile of the company in terms of the businesses as well
as people, they felt the need for a corporate branding exercise under the name Rise
which would include a comprehensive set of values which would give the
company and its people distinct identity.
This is how M&M of today introduce itself on its corporate web site Mahindra
builds three things: products, services, and possibilities. Mahindra is many
companies bound together by one purpose: to enable people to RISE. We build
utility vehicles and schools. Our IT solutions help some of the worlds largest
companies to be more productive. We give farmers tools to help them prosper, and
we give farmers tools to help them prosper, and we give communities hope for a
better tomorrow. We want to lift skylines, and the human spirit. In everything we
do and in everything we are, we seek to inspire creativity and power change
Rise means three things for the Mahindra employees-first, to accept no limits
and challenge the status quo; second, to engage in alternate thinking to solve
problems through innovation; and third, to drive positive change to improve the
customers life and the community around them.
While most organization have a marketing corporate branding, at M & M the
stress is on how the employees imbibe the message. The stress is on getting the
internal audience aligned because the belief is that once the employee live the
brand promise, the external audience is bound to see the difference Mahindra
Group HR and aftermarket president and member of the group executive Board
Rajeev Dubey says, The Rise culture will have to permeate our communication,
performance and talent management rewards and recognition and work design.
 The HR team and the different businesses have worked out a calendar for the next
three years to reach this destination. The first year will concentrate on
communication to attune Mahindra employees to the change in attitude. The next
stage shall be a relock at the leadership competency framework and rework it
around the new Rise philosophy and then design HR policies to engender and then
enhance the philosophy propounded in Rise. So while the recruitment shall look
at the external audience to communicate, the Rise mantra looks for the newly
identified competencies when it brings people on board. The internal change shall
be facilated by people chosen from the middle management called risators.
HRs role as a strategic partner to business should ideally result in an
enhanced employee engagement. The company is busy putting in place an
instrument called the Employee as promoter (EAP) score. The EAP score shall ask
Mahindra employees how on a scale of 1-10. Subtracting the 1-5 scores of dont
recommend from the 9-10 scores of strongly recommend will tell how good an
EAP score the business has.
That is what we called HR linked business strategy. Times will tell whether
Mahindras HR strategy will work or not but then who can be sure about any
Strategy?

Questions
1. What connection do you see between Mahindras corporate strategy and HR
strategy?
2. What Values is Mahindras HR strategy aiming to include and
institutionalize?