Context:

An Oil & Gas company approached totus consulting to help address some of the challenges it was facing with the performance management process. Central to the problem faced by the organization was its inability to identify, differentiate and retain top talent in a meaningful way and also uphold the credibility of the performance management system in the eyes of the employees. Most importantly, the organization was not able to leverage the performance management system to bring about performance orientation.

Design:

totus consulting designed a comprehensive strategy to address the problem. We first thoroughly analyzed the effectiveness of the performance management system by looking at the various aspects of its implementation. We also examined aspects of reward, development and communication.

We then started our field work by understanding the leaders’ perception and expectation from the performance management system.

We had detailed discussions with the employees to understand their perception of the system through structured interviews and discussions. We then undertook a comprehensive benchmarking exercise to understand some of the current trends and practices in the market. Based on all these insights, we came up with a solution that was contextually appropriate for the organization and helped obtain executive approval for its implementation.

Impact:

The fact that we paid as much attention to the process as we did to the solution helped ensure buy-in. By paying close attention to the business needs, we ensured our solution was not just smart but also contextually appropriate.

Context:

The CEO of one of India’s leading international banks, a part of a fortune 500 global giant approached totus to help him mobilise his team and rally them around the new business strategy that had been evolved for the bank. Given that he and some of his management team members had moved into the roles recently, there was a need to build collaboration within the team and get them to commit to the new strategy.

Design:

While the sponsor’s expectation was a workshop to achieve the objective, totus was of the view that for any such change and future oriented workshop to succeed, significant amount of preparatory work had to happen, much before the workshop.

The Principal Consultants of totus worked with the leadership team over a six week period to jointly evolve the agenda and image of the preferred future The summary data and the proposed design was shared with the team and their agreement was obtained. The preparatory work also included a leadership team 360 degree survey.

Impact:

With preparation of such a robust nature, participants came to the workshop with a high level of ownership for both the design and the outcomes. This led to the team enthusiastically sharing the CEO’s future strategy.

Context:

India’s largest organised Jewellery retailer approached totus consulting for a comprehensive training solution. The organisation had at that time 60 stores spread across the country and had plans to add many more. Most of the stores were on a franchisee basis. The Organisation faced the problem that it was not able to provide a uniform and consistent service experience to its customers across all the stores.

It was also unviable for the organisation to bring the frontline employees to a central location for training. The organisation wanted a simple and scalable training solution.

Design:

Our solution consisted of the following elements:

Roles and Capabilities definition - We defined in detail the roles and capabilities of employees at the retail stores and organised these roles in a hierarchy. We had arrived at 4 capability levels within the store.

Universal needs – We had segregated the functional needs into 4 broad groups. In all we had identified 14 modules. Each module consisted of one or more lessons.

Curriculum Development – We evolved a standard lesson plan template which we used to document each lesson plan. It was done through extensive discussions with internal subject matter experts. The lessons were approved by a panel set up for this purpose. All the lessons were documented in the form of a comprehensive manual. In all we developed 35 lesson units across the 14 modules.

Delivery - To make delivery easy and sustainable we ensured that most of the modules could be delivered on the job, at the workplace and one to one with minimal infrastructure. We also ensured that each lesson took no more than a few hours to deliver given that retail employees could not be pulled out of their jobs for too long.

Trainer Development Programme – We ran a series of trainer development programmes to train the coaches in delivery.

Certification – We established certain mechanisms by which we ensured that employees were periodically certified upon completion of classroom inputs and on the job practice.

Impact

The franchisees who had a huge problem in attracting and retaining people found the programme of great value, since they could now quickly train their employees to be effective.

The organisation was able to achieve a fair amount of standardization because employees now had a basic level of knowledge across stores.

Context:

The HR head of one of India’s leading private sector insurance companies realised that with significant growth plans on the anvil, he needed to revisit his HR blue print and strategy for the future.

Design:

totus started by determining the nature of information that would be required to come up with a meaningful blueprint. Based on this, the preparatory work was launched. This included interactions with other large organisations, discussions with internal business leaders and evaluation of the current situation. The preparatory effort culminated in a workshop that was attended by both HR managers and business leaders of the organisation. Using the insights available the team was able to arrive at a meaningful set of actions.

Impact:

The blueprint has given the HR head a fairly good basis to chart out his future action which includes structural changes, strategic changes and definition of areas where investments in skill enhancement would be needed.

Context:

The offshore development center of a global technology major managed by one of India’s leading IT Services companies, approached totus with a request to support their re-missioning exercise. The offshore development center was guided by a mission document, which had been crafted a few years ago. Given the changing business context in the industry, there was a need to create a new mission document that would guide the organization through the next leap of growth.

Design:

Given the culture, the leaders were keen on evolving the mission in ‘as inclusive a manner’ as possible. Using some of the principles of appreciative enquiry we designed an interview protocol which was used to discover the success of the past, the dream of the future and the wishes the employees had. To support the remissioning event, teams also engaged in a significant amount of preparatory work in terms of data collection, analysis and so on.

Impact:

With a community of over fifty participants, the remissioning event was characterised by high energy and enthusiasm. While there was an animated debate, the mission that was finally evolved was completely owned by all present. The mission was highly appreciated by all stakeholders and seen as most appropriate for the future.