Employees are Our Building Blocks
Human resources (HR) at Ambuja play a vital role in realising business objectives by leading organisational change, fostering innovation and effectively mobilising talent to sustain the organisation’s competitive edge. Our HR strategy is aimed at integrating processes to result in overall organisational effectiveness, which positively impacts business growth. HR aligned with our business strategy, clarifies the business direction, performance expectations, and actively feeds into the approach required to manage talent in order to achieve business goals.

Our strategy, systems, and processes are aimed towards making us an employer of choice with sustainable talent and concrete action plans to enhance employee engagement. The employee engagement survey administered this year saw 98% employee participation with an improvement in the engagement score. We also continued in our efforts to provide a congenial work environment, innovative recruitment and retention practices, and continuous learning opportunities to management and non-management staff for their future growth and development. The Workforce Development Initiative is designed to build the capability and competence of the workforce and to ensure safety, productivity, and quality. Under this initiative, training opportunities were provided to 70% of our workforce. The Company has always provided a congenial working atmosphere that is free from discrimination & harassment including sexual harassment. It has provided equal opportunities of employment to all without regard to their caste, religion, colour, marital status, and gender. The Company has also framed a policy on ‘Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace’. There were no cases reported during the year under review under the said Policy. These efforts have led to a significant increase in manpower productivity. Efforts have also been made to design progressive and empowering HR policies and other welfare measures.

Talent Management
We maintain our competitive edge by honing our talent and carving out leaders from the best talent. Talent management initiatives at Ambuja play a vital role in combination with other business processes in driving shareholder value through management, development, and retention of superior talent. This is what gives us our competitive advantage. Structured talent reviews across levels supported by individual development plans (IDPs) and cross-functional and cross-location assignments have helped develop wholesome leadership skills. All the


development efforts have shown good results with more and more senior positions being filled internally, while maintaining a healthy external talent intake. Thus succession planning has helped create a talent pipeline for key positions and a strong growth avenue for our developing leaders. The core values of the organisation also emphasise the need to develop and build leaders who will lead the organisation up the path of high performance. Keeping this in mind, the STEP (Sustainable Talent for Enhanced Performance) programme was institutionalised in 2012 along with other talent management initiatives. The prime objective of STEP is to develop a sustainable pool of leaders equipping them with essential leadership skills and competencies; and enhancing their coaching skill capacity to be internal coaches. The first batch of 96 managers who were part of the STEP journey has successfully completed the programme