Human Resources

While the impact of the global economic crisis has been felt in varied degrees across all the geographies in which the Tata Steel Group (TSG) operates, keeping the employees cheerful and motivated in these trying times has remained the focus of the Human Resources department. The Group realises that its employees are the most valuable human capital and that they play a major role in building the competitive advantage of the Company’s business across the globe.

As the economic crisis hit the world, Tata Steel Europe (TSE) employees contributed to the ‘Weathering the Storm’ initiatives to reduce costs and increase value, in the second half of the financial year. The company, the employees and the trade unions demonstrated the strength of their relationships by working together in the difficult times. Despite the present economic crisis, TSE has been able to maintain its position as an employer of choice through the following initiatives:

• By demonstrating its commitment to health and safety.
• By maintaining a level of apprentice and graduate recruitment.
• By demonstrating the value of its culture of innovation and improvement by delivering value creation and cost reductions.
• By building and maintaining positive employee relations by agreeing to innovative partnership deals with employee representatives and trade unions to reduce employment costs and minimise redundancies.
• By taking the highest moral approach in its management of redundancies and their impact on the communities in which they occur.
• By working with governments and other agencies in support not only of its own workforce but those of its customers and manufacturing as a whole. This is done to support the industry and demonstrate its central role to society and the countries in which the Group operates in.

Recruitment

Through 2008-2009, the Tata Steel Group has continued to demonstrate that the recruitment of the best of talent and the engagement of its employees is an asset through both high and low demand cycles in the industry.

The Tata Steel Management Trainee Programme and the Corus Graduate Programme continue to attract and offer exciting career options to young engineers who are from amongst the best colleges of the country. The Group has continued the recruitment of apprentices, graduates and targeted external middle and senior management staff to meet the current need and prepare the bench strength for future operations.

Training & Development

The Group has continued to invest in and improve its managerial and technical capabilities through the internal development of its own employees across Europe, India and South East Asia.

To bridge functional skill gaps and to identify candidates for focussed learning in line with the current and future needs of Tata Steel, a scheme called ‘Directed Learning Initiatives’ was introduced in Tata Steel. The emphasis was to create a pool of experts in different technical areas. Apart from creating specialists, the policy also focusses on managerial learning which consists of modular programmes with tie-ups with various management institutes.

With a view to augment the technical capabilities of the employees, a pilot programme in line with the Technical Competency Assessment System was introduced in Tata Steel. Based on the results, the learnings from the programme will be introduced to the rest of the organisation.

The Performance Improvement Committee has continued to focus on improving both knowledge management and the adoption of best practices across the Tata Steel Group. This has benefitted TSE alongside the other operations of Tata Steel, NatSteel and Tata Steel Thailand.

During the year, a greater focus was assigned to the ‘On-the-Job Learning’ for executives. This is being offered through cross functional assignment/taskforce, role enhancement/enrichment and improvement Initiatives. The executives were also encouraged to undertake special projects arising from their work assignments which had focussed measures and deliverables.

Talent Management & Career Planning

As part of the global talent management initiatives, the year saw a greater movement of executives between Tata Steel India, Tata Steel Europe, NatSteel and Tata Steel Thailand to enable the cross pollination of ideas and practices and also provide executives with a global experience. The Management Trainee Programme has been re-designed to include special modules of six months each in the areas of TQM, engineering and projects, and safety. This will help the fresh graduate engineers prepare in a better way, for future assignments.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development across all levels continues to be the focus across the Tata Steel Group. The Executive Committee owns the development and succession plans for the top positions. With regards to the next level of officers, this is done by the respective talent review committees. During the year, the Company continued to support and send senior executives to world-class leadership development programmes at some of the world’s leading management development institutes.

A Global Leadership Development Programme was also initiated with the objective of shaping future Tata Steel Group leaders across the globe. This was done to convey to the would be leaders, what it means to be part of the Tata Group, to build a shared understanding of what needs to be done to be recognised as outstanding in the steel industry and to create an understanding of what inspiring leadership within the Group needs to be like.

Compensation Management & Better Synergy

It is a fundamental principal of the Tata Steel Group that all the employees across the globe are compensated fairly. Last year, like the previous years, compensation was based on market benchmarking to ensure that Tata Steel remains an attractive and competitive employer in the market place. Throughout the year, greater synergy was established between TSE, Tata Steel India and the South East Asian operations. This included secondment of employees across geographies. The Performance Improvement Committee has improved both the Knowledge Management and the Adoption of Best Practices Initiatives across the Tata Steel Group and this has benefitted TSE alongside the other operations of Tata Steel.