Mr. S Ramesh Shankar HR Head, ABB Ltd. India

Q. What kind of changes did your organization and your team in particular go through in the last one year period.

We looked at improving our processes and reviewing our structures. Had a deep dive on our structural costs as well. We continued to hire people in sales and research areas and reviewed non performers as per our performance management process. We looked at our fixed costs and rationalized our buildings and infrastructure. We also focused on employee engagement, trainings and launched a new rewards and recognition programme, which is innovative and employee driven.

Q. Any specific efforts that you would like to cite here for skill enhancement or retention during these times.

Our focus on training was given a special impetus. We ensured a minimum of 2 man-days of training for all employees. We continued our focus on employee engagement action plans and launched a new reward and recognition programme – Empower. Empower consists of a 4 level rewarding system, namely: Silver, Gold, Diamond & Platinum. Silver is the lower most recognition programme, wherein any employee is free to nominate another who he/she finds rewarding, the innovative part to it is that it does not require any approval; Gold is the employee of the month reward which again is nominated by the employees and a small committee is responsible to manage it. Diamond is a rewarding system at the divisional level whereas Platinum is a country level recognition programme.

Q. Continuous Improvement is vital in Industrial Automation (IA) as in any other industry. What kind of futuristic technologies that you are training your employees on.

Our focus has been in our core areas of business, which is power and automation. We also enhanced our training initiatives on SAP so as to leverage the maximum from SAP to increase productivity and reduce cost. Renewal energy such as wind & solar are few of the key areas for interest to ABB for the near future.

Q. Working on product development with multiple methodologies is a proven model at ABB. Can you explain the strategies which can prove to be beneficial in long run as well as for short-time needs.

Yes, we work on product development with multiple methodologies but with single focus on our customers. We have re-aligned last year more to enhance our customer focus in key segments.

Q. From your time-tested techniques, can you share certain best practices for successful outsourced product development

We work on cross functional and cross country basis by sharing knowledge and expertise in a seamless way with the only focus on being customer centric. One of the best practice of any OPD business is that R & D, design, quality control are few key aspects of a product lifecycle that are always levered by ABB themselves and routine jobs like assembling, testing, etc are entrusted to our service providers.