Fostering
an inclusive, agile, and
high-performance culture

Health and
medical support

Ensuring health and well-being of our teams has continued to be our key priority. Given the categories we operate in, our business was classified an essential service. We had to keep our manufacturing facilities operational to ensure that our products reach our consumers and markets on time.

Apart from expanding the existing hospitalisation and medical policies for all Godrejites, we introduced additional measures for partners in our extended networks in India, for example:

•  Introduced COVID-19 medical insurance and life insurance to our extended workforce, including salesmen on distributor rolls, CFAs, and drivers and computer operators.
•  Covered home quarantine expenses, which are not a part of regular hospitalisation policies, for team members in frontline roles in Manufacturing, R&D, and Sales.
•  Introduced safety measures around commuting to work.
•  Partnered with Apollo, a healthcare service provider, for a 24×7 doctor-on-call service in India, and with Fab Hotels for hotel quarantine facilities in India.

We realised early on that while our central and local teams were doing their best to help our people, given the magnitude of the crisis, especially during the second wave of the pandemic in India, our collective reach and empathy as a company could make a significant difference. Therefore, we set up platforms to leverage our shared network at Godrej.

•  A COVID-19 support helpdesk leveraged internal resources and the Godrej networks to help.
•  A COVID-19 support group on Workplace by Facebook, our internal social media platform, and Microsoft Teams amplified requests for help and shared resources related to COVID-19 support.

•  Godrejites volunteered their time to help with essential medicines and supplies (including the availability of oxygen and plasma), hospital beds, and other support.

Mental
wellness

Ensuring the well-being of our team members continues to be our key priority. In line with this objective, we have partnered with Inner Hour, a mental health platform, to create an Employee Assistance Programme that offers confidential mental wellness services. Through this service, our team members can avail personalised plans with multiple resources such as self-help, short daily courses, articles, activities, and access to trained therapists.

We have extended the services of Inner Hour to the dependents of Godrejites, including parents, partners, siblings, and children. We are encouraging open conversations around the importance of mental health by organising webinars with senior therapists and leaders on self-care strategies, strengthening relationships, social media, and mental health, among other themes.

Striking a balance while
working from home

We are deeply committed to ensuring that our team members continue to bring their ‘whole selves’ to work, even when working from home. Enabling and equipping them to navigate the challenges of working from home has been the key objective. We launched a series of initiatives to support them, including regulating work hours, respecting weekends and holidays, Meeting-free Thursdays (rescheduling any meetings planned in the first half of the day for better focus and deep-thinking work), ‘A day to myself’ (a mandatory day off once a month to recharge and reset), and importantly, leadership role modelling for all these goals.

Occupational health
and safety

We continue to focus on inculcating a culture of safety and health and creating an incident-free organisation. We are committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment for the well-being of all our employees and stakeholders. In addition to this, our focus is on investing in world-class safety infrastructure and implementing the best safety systems. Throughout the year, we organised various safety campaigns across all our operations, with our employees across levels actively participating in them.

Fiscal year 2021-22 started with a safety cascade, where we launched a series of cardinal rules around safety and shared our vision and commitment for the year. More than 500 employees across our India and SAARC business pledged for safety improvement. This was followed by the launch of our behaviour-based safety (BBS) programme at one of our factories in Malanpur.

Safety initiatves organised
by our Africa team

Leading safety indicators across our offices

Our safety performance was also recognised by various renowned national agencies, and we won 10 external recognitions. Godrej aer’s Guwahati plant received the prestigious National Safety Award by the Government of India, and the Godrej Maraimalai Nagar unit in Chennai received the ‘Bronze’ award at the CII EHS Excellence Award 2021.

Strengthening business outcomes

Use of drones for stack inspection

The need

In an industrial chimney, smoke stack thickness inspection is critical to identify the health and predict any future breakdown of the equipment. However, it’s a tedious and risky operation as it requires the setting up of temporary scaffolding up to a height of 35 meters to reach the chimney. There is also the need to shut down operations for 2-3 days and supervise the process continuously. In addition, it’s difficult to hire trained workers to perform this job and there’s always a risk of mishap.

The solution

We knew that the use of technology could help us in resolving this need safely. Therefore, after exploring several options, we were able to find a vendor that provided drones for this inspection. Using these drones, we’ve been able to eliminate high risks while continuing to collect more accurate data. As the time for inspection reduced significantly and the physical presence of any person was not required, we didn’t need to shut down operations while we carried out the inspection.

Building a culture of agility,
ownership, and experimentation

Our unique multi-local
operating model

Our international growth has been through acquisitions. Unlike traditional multi-nationals, we have a multi-local operating model centred on value-based partnering and operational autonomy at the local level. This helps sustain the agile, entrepreneurial spirit that made these companies successful while providing the benefits of strong processes and scale brought by Godrej.

Striking a balance between our global identity and the ability to appreciate the local flavour and respond to changing consumer needs is our competitive advantage.

Cluster-function
ways of working

In line with our operating model, we are building strong collaborations across geographical clusters and function teams through shared accountability and clearly defined ways of working.

Introducing a hybrid
work approach

Over the last couple of years, there have been significant shifts underway in the way we work. Many of our team members spent the better part of their time working remotely and reimagining how we run our businesses and collaborate with our teams. As we initiate a return to more full-time work at offices, we have the opportunity to create new ways of hybrid working to make Godrej a more inclusive and agile place to work at.

Going forward, we do not believe there will be a one-size-fits-all approach to how we work because there are some teams and types of work that require people to be together in a physical space, while some other types of work require people to come together at specific moments. Working remotely can offer several benefits, including the flexibility for people to invest more time in their ‘whole selves’ and improving productivity by allowing them to work in a more focused way. At the same time, there are collaborations and conversations that require in-person interactions for a greater impact.

We are rethinking flexibility around the nature of work by:

•  Redefining our current work arrangement models to be more flexible and outcome-focused
•  Making our people processes and policies more agile to support these changing work models
•  Introducing new ways of working, including how we collaborate and conduct meetings, to make hybrid work models more effective

As a part of these efforts, we intend to introduce new initiatives around flexibility, starting with a hybrid work approach.

Fostering a diverse and
inclusive GCPL

As a global conglomerate, delighting over a billion consumers, becoming inclusive is not just in our DNA and the right thing to do but it also makes an excellent business sense. We take pride in being an equal opportunity employer. We recognise merits and encourage diversity.

We respect human rights of every individual. We do not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, political opinion, nationality, race, colour, social origin and status, indigenous status, disability, age, or any other personal characteristic or status. We do not tolerate disrespectful or inappropriate behaviours, harassments, intimidation or unfair treatment, or retaliation of any kind.

Diversity and
Inclusion Council

Our Diversity and Inclusion Council, comprising business leaders and senior team members, anchors and drives conversations around different dimensions of diversity.

Diversity champions
in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is a key geographic cluster for us. Given the diversity in gender, nationality, race, and educational background, we see tremendous opportunity in leveraging synergies. We are extremely focused on building a diverse talent pool, enabling local, ethnic hiring for all open positions across roles and designations.

Building senior
leader sponsorship

‘Towards Inclusive Leadership’ is an exclusive programme we hosted for some of our most senior team members (for example: CEOs, CHROs, CXOs). Through this, we aimed to make them more mindful of the power that resides with them as change agents and inspire them to find ways of using that power to further diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their teams and serve as better allies to women, persons with disabilities LGBTQIA+ and other dimensions of diversity.

The programme had two core elements: (1) Diversity perspectives from the corporate world and (2) A deeper empathy journey. Hosted across 6 months, we have had a mix of conversations and sharing sessions with DEI experts and practitioners. This has served as an incredible learning experience for our leaders, who are now building on their reflections from this journey and translating it into bold bets in their businesses.

Employee resource group for
women in sales

‘Manch’, our first women-only employee resource group in India, is built on peer-to-peer networking and senior leadership support. Through this group, we are building trusted professional and personal relationships to share ideas and learn and co-create tangible solutions to challenges faced by women in sales. The team focused on two big areas this year: building awareness around menstrual wellness and networking.

Menstrual wellness for women in field sales roles

We believe in fostering a culture of trust, respect, and acceptance. Through our conversations regarding different needs of men and women, we identified the need for women to be able to take time off from travel or work during menstruation. This need was more pronounced for women in field roles, where the exertion of outdoor work, coupled with limited or no access to clean and hygienic washrooms, causes extreme discomfort.

To support our women team members, we have introduced the following concepts:

•  Encouraging women to make use of our Unlimited Sick Leave Policy, whenever required
•  Availing ‘work from home’ options in field sales roles
•  Improving the existing infrastructure like the availability of clean washrooms at our major distributor points.

Our Sales Leadership Team also hosted sensitisation workshops on menstruation-linked challenges faced by women in field sales roles.

LGBTQIA+ inclusion

Our well-defined Equal Opportunity Policy and a Gender-neutral Anti-harassment Policy protect the rights of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex team members. We have extended medical benefits, such as hospitalisation cover, to domestic partners of Godrejites. We offer a choice to any team member to choose a spouse/domestic partner as a dependent. This also covers same-sex dependents, AIDS patients, and fertility treatments. Our Adoption Policy, too, is designed with a gender-neutral primary caregiver in mind. We have a Gender Affirmation Policy to support team members who wish to undergo gender transition. Godrejites can claim reimbursements towards non-cosmetic surgeries and hormone replacement therapy.

We are reviewing amenities and infrastructure facilities for our LGBTQIA+ team members. As the first step, we have set up 2 gender-neutral washrooms at our headquarters, Godrej One, in Mumbai. The Godrej Group was also one of two Indian companies to win ‘gold’ in India’s first LGBT+ work quality index by British LGBT+ advocacy group Stonewall, India’s LGBT+ rights Keshav Suri Foundation, and LGBT+ inclusion consultancy Pride Circle. On December 13, 2018, we launched a ‘Manifesto for Trans Inclusion in the Indian Workplace’. Through this programme, we aimed to highlight the position and circumstances of trans people in the Indian society and the steps corporate India can take to improve them.

Enabling
bespoke learning

As we stepped into the second year of the pandemic and with reimagined ways of working and learning, our philosophy of continuous learning has become more robust. This year, we merged our e-learning solutions with in-house training programmes, enabling a blended learning approach that benefited several of our key employee groups.

E-learning

To upskill our team members in functional and behavioural capabilities, we partnered with best-in-class online learning platforms, such as Udemy, Coursera, and EdX, and leveraged our Learning Management System to drive learning. We covered nearly 50% of our people through various learning initiatives centred around knowledge gained through adoption of these platforms.

With a vast library of well-structured courses across various domains, Udemy was a popular learning platform. Nearly 1,000 unique learners signed up for several courses related to both functional and behavioural areas. We also introduced courses for our blended learning initiatives.

We leveraged Coursera and EdX to improve the capabilities of middle and senior management team members, who actively signed up for courses offered by some of the best institutes globally. High-quality content along with regular assessments ensured that the learning retention was high. As a result, several of our team members honed critical capabilities in areas such as digital marketing, project management, and strategic thinking.

Harvard Business
School Online

We continued our partnership with Harvard Business School Online, which offers access to Harvard’s world-class case study content on areas such as strategy, innovation, leadership, negotiation, business analytics, and entrepreneurship. The programme is highly engaging and allows participants to think from the lens of a business leader.

My Learning Space

The platform houses 500 courses on the Godrej Capability Factors. We organised several group-focused campaigns to promote online courses and witnessed more than 490 enrolments through the year. Functions like HR, logistics, manufacturing, procurement, sales, and sourcing had focused learning campaigns relevant to their areas of work. We used available data to identify areas of improvement and recommend courses.

SAP MIT
Digital Library

As a step towards offering best-in-class learning solutions coupled with a seamless user experience, we partnered with the SAP MIT Digital Library to offer curated employee learning resources on leadership and digital transformation. In total, 200 Godrejites across various functions, levels, and geographies had access to a range of learning resources related to formats such as articles, courses, videos, e-books, and audiobooks.

The courses on leadership are curated by the MIT Sloan Management Review. Learning resources on digital transformation have been designed by thought leaders, with a focus on digital as a mindset and business strategy, and cover new-age digital technologies such as big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Learning through
simulations

Venturing beyond traditional solutions for e-learning, we partnered with Knolskape to introduce learning through simulations. This is being used in conjunction with existing training programmes and learning interventions to build on key concepts in an engaging and meaningful manner. The gamification of learning brings us a step closer to realising the true potential of non-conventional modes of digital learning.

Role transition
programmes

Our transition programmes followed a blended learning approach, with learners completing a self-paced course, followed by group-based learning sessions. We hosted 2 transition programmes this year.

Discover

A 6-month blended learning programme for people transitioning to the role of General Manager, focused on building critical capabilities and equipping people with the necessary tools to help them in their new roles.

Evolve

We designed this programme to manage the transition of people to managerial roles, with a focus on building critical capabilities around the Godrej Capability Factors of Acting Strategically, Leading Teams, Influencing, and Emotional and Social Awareness.

Leading Teams for Impact

We designed and delivered this customised people management programme virtually, with a focus on key aspects of effective leadership. The sessions were run in 6 segments, with each focusing on a particular skill and leveraging a mix of technological platforms and brainstorming tools, interactive tools, and learner engagement platforms. It was hosted for people managers across different levels, covering nearly 70 managers, and customised to the scope and complexity of each level.

Negotiation
skills

Around 15 of our key supply chain team members, who negotiate deals for the company with our vendors and partners, participated in a 4-day workshop on negotiation skills training.

Mastering finance for
business decisions

To further build their financial acumen and P&L understanding, 14 mid-managerial sales leaders participated in a 3-month learning journey that comprised online modules, case studies, and a 1-day in-person workshop.

Building
brand mastery

Approximately 110 team members from our marketing and allied teams all across the globe participated in virtual training workshops of several hours to further craft their understanding on building brands and creating a lasting legacy.

Accelerate

Focused on building crucial capabilities for data-based decision-making and leading teams of sales managers, Accelerate is a blended learning journey that is anchored internally and comprises online simulations, virtual workshops, and projects. About 33 managers participated in Accelerate this year.

Train
the trainer

Thirty of our quality control team members were trained in skills of content design and facilitation for use in quality control-related workshops across various plant locations in the country.

Building
women leaders

Accel is a specially crafted 9-month development opportunity for women leaders across Godrej Industries. It is designed to sharpen their ability to deliver value across all the Godrej Capability Factors through a journey of holistic development: a mix of masterclasses and one-on-one coaching with industry-leading faculty, mentoring by Godrej Leadership Forum members, and self-paced online learning content. It allowed the participants to deeply understand the capabilities required for the next leadership level and learn to action the change through capstone projects. It was a significant opportunity for them to build strong networks with peers across the Group.

Strengthening business outcomes

Enabling a culture of self-paced learning

The need

As we stepped into the second year of the pandemic, ways of working and learning were reconceptualised. It became crucial to strengthen our philosophy of continuous learning. There was a transition from working from home to a hybrid mode of working, which put a strain on employees’ bandwidth to learn, in turn forcing us to redirect our conventional learning campaigns to become more learner-friendly.

The solution

Our goal was to ensure that a majority of people in the organisation—across levels and functions—benefited from learning initiatives. We planned to drive this goal with specific e-learning campaigns and tools.

A holistic learning needs approach was adopted through the following four levers:

1. Functional

Courses specific to each function were evaluated and campaigns were launched by the Head of each function to highlight the importance of functional training. Some of these campaigns were as follows:

•  Learning marathon: An e-learning competition among the 4 manufacturing clusters across months, with recognition given to the winners
•  R&D learning hub: A 2-month long e-learning campaign with specific courses given to R&D employees according to their learning needs
•  Other functional learning campaigns: e-learning courses from various platforms were assigned to employees from Supply chain, Sales, and HR functions

2. Behavioural

The need of honing behavioural skills around the work environment prompted us to launch the following campaigns:

•  GCF campaign: A 3-month long campaign to provide 6 MOOC courses on the Godrej Capability Factors
•  Simulation modules: With a focus on building skills such as leading teams, influencing etc., participants of our virtual workshops were provided simulation licences that bolstered learning

3. Technical

We recognised the importance of enhancing on our employees’ technical skills, and so we launched:
Learning Spotlight: We highlighted specific learning areas each week (MS Excel, MS PowerPoint) and selected the best available technical course across all MOOC platforms. At the end of each course, learners also earned credits.

4. Topical

The shift in working was a cue to introduce courses that made living in the new normal easier:

•  Remote working: Courses related to working from home and the skills needed to manage remote work and team management.
•  Mental health and well-being: A month-long campaign releasing courses that emphasised wellness, mental health, and promoted a healthy work culture.

Through these learning courses, our team members learned several skills which were applicable in their daily life as well as work areas and, as a result, they were able to find a good balance between work and training.

Leveraging digital
to engage meaningfully

Authentic conversations

Our senior leadership team engages through different platforms, including town halls and one-on-one conversations. We made a shift and continued to move from static point in-time conversations and surveys to a culture of continuous listening, with an aim to understand the pulse of our company in real-time for taking immediate action. These conversations have been extremely crucial in the context of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.

We continue to leverage Amber, a chat bot, to interact with team members across geographies. Currently, 1,800 people are being reached out to via Amber. Through this platform, we capture people’s experiences at a defined frequency based on their tenure in the company. The feedback has helped us take both faster individual actions and make organisation-level changes based on emerging themes.

Leadership connects

COVID-19 lockdowns encouraged our leadership teams to reimagine new ways to connect. As lockdowns eased, our leadership teams gradually resumed market visits and spent time with our Sales and Manufacturing teams. Our on-ground teams, including our suppliers and partners, have been our true heroes throughout the pandemic, serving our consumers and communities through some of the toughest lockdowns.

Leveraging technology
to connect

Our business heads regularly engage through town halls at our offices and one-on-one conversations. However, this year, due to the global lockdowns, we had to completely relook at how we connect.

We continued to conduct virtual town halls to share our business performance on a quarterly basis and hosted online interactive sessions to answer questions and share feedback and ideas.

We also continued to host the Real Deal, our in-house talk show that encourages open conversations on important topics. Some of the topics that we covered this year were: mental wellness, dealing with grief during COVID-19, and working from home.

Watch the highlights of
a very special edition of
Godrej LOUD 2021

Watch the highlights of
a very special edition of
Godrej LOUD 2021

Innovative approach to
recruitment

We continue to build an engaging, inclusive employer brand on business school campuses. In line with reflections from the previous year, we recrafted Godrej LOUD (Live Out Ur Dream), our engagement platform, as a immersive experience around various touchpoints. The all-digital format allowed us to engage closely with 5,500 students from 16 business schools for over 40 days.

Through our conversations, we encouraged these young people to reflect on their personal purpose and values and the kind of change they can drive in our world. The conversations were driven by the belief that purposeful, determined young people can grow into the future leaders at Godrej.

Connecting with our
global teams

Workplace by Facebook is our in-house social media and engagement platform that helps us stay connected with our teams globally. This year, we had 56% active users and 12.6% engaged users.

Engaging with
our global teams
through town halls

Recognising and celebrating
high performance

The Godrej Way Awards

To recognise people for behaviours in line with our values—Trust, Be Bold, Show Respect, Own It, Be Humble, and Create Delight—we organise the Godrej Way Awards every quarter.

Superstar Awards

The most prestigious awards at GCPL, the Superstar Awards, recognise the excellence of our team members across all business functions.

Challenger Club Spot Recognition

To motivate our team members in India amidst a highly challenging environment, we selected the theme ‘unleash the challenger’ and defined five challenger behaviours, namely (1) Overcoming fear, (2) Possibility thinking, (3) Hyper agile execution, (4) Leading from the front, and (5) Thriving in beautiful constraints. This programme helped us set the tone for the year and ensure a clear sense of direction within teams. We also launched the Challenger Club Spot Recognition, as a part of this programme, to recognise employees displaying these challenger behaviours.

The Godrej Awards 2022

The Godrej Awards, organised across the Godrej Group, is dedicated to recognising outstanding performers. After 2 years of the pandemic, we brought back our in-person celebration and facilitated our winning team members at a special event at our headquarters Godrej One in Mumbai.

Volunteering,
the
socially
distanced way

For the second consecutive year, we conducted our annual Godrej Global Volunteering Week online. Our week-long initiative encouraged teams across Godrej to participate in small, sustainable living tasks that could be performed from anywhere and at any time.

Being among the
best
companies
to work for

We have been among the best companies to work for. We were recognised on Great Place to Work® Institute’s (India) Best Workplaces in Manufacturing (2022) for creating a high-trust, high-performance culture. Our Godrej Indonesia business was awarded the 2022 Indonesian Best Employer Brand Award by the Employer Branding Institute, World HRD Congress, for the third consecutive year.

Human rights in
the workplace

GCPL is committed to ensuring that human rights are core to our vision of helping build a more equitable, inclusive, and greener world. Our respect for and commitment to human rights is central to our values. We believe our primary human rights responsibilities are to our employees, the communities where we operate in, our suppliers and business partners, and customers and consumers. Our commitment to human rights are reflected in our Human Rights Policy; Sustainable Supply Chain Policy; Anti-sexual Harassment Policy; and Code of Conduct for Employees, Senior Managers, and Directors, all of which are available on our website. We adopted the Human Rights Policy in 2017, and have since then focused on the following aspects:

 
 
 
•  Ensuring that all new recruits certify that they understand and accept the GCPL Code of Conduct, which includes our human rights commitment.
•  Conducting a self-assessment across our plants and locations in India to ensure compliance with the Policy.
•  Conducting a self-assessment across our plants and location in our GAUM cluster covering 7 countries.
•  Our Sustainable Supply Chain Policy focuses on responsible conduct with all stakeholders and ensures employee health and safety, local community development, business integrity and ethics, and human rights. In India, we have conducted third-party audits comprising 135 suppliers thus far (accounting for around 72% of our procurement spends), and none of our suppliers were non-compliant. Please refer to the Making our supply chain best-in-class section.

Going forward, we aim to work on some of our salient human rights with the support of our stakeholders. In fiscal year 2022-23, we commit to:

1. Carrying out self-assessments to identify and resolve critical issues across our remaining clusters

2. Articulate our ambition to work on select salient aspects from stakeholders by 2030

3. Create an action plan to help us achieve the stated ambition