Leadership Development

Two Leadership programmes – LEAD with Impact for Managers and LEAD with Impact Partner Series have been launched to nurture Marico’s future leaders. Designed to run over a period of six to nine months, these programmes will help young managers and team leaders acquire necessary business acumen and leadership skills. Action learning projects are also an important part of the programmes, giving participants the opportunity to deploy their classroom learning in real-work scenarios and help reinforce those learnings.

Building leadership early: Our Campus approach

Disruptive and entrepreneurial thinking is key at Marico. This reflects both in the way we interact with students on campus and in our campus  hiring.

Key interactions on campus

Over The Wall

Our flagship campus engagement programme is unique and innovative where students are encouraged to ‘think innovatively’ and ‘challenge the status quo’. In line with the Marico Talent Value Proposition, students work on live business challenges, and have a unique opportunity to get their ideas heard and implemented, and become a part of Marico’s growth story.

The top 3 teams get the opportunity to work with one organisation associated with the Marico Innovation Foundation. The teams present their solutions to Mr. Harsh Mariwala in the Grand Finale of Over The Wall.

Marico’s JAM Sessions

A new and unique programme where senior management from the marketing function visit Premier B-schools and conduct Just a Minute (JAM) sessions with students. This has helped students know how key brands build their brand value proposition and recall within consumers.

Operations Bootcamp

This campus connect initiative which aims to help students get a first-hand understanding of the business and a glimpse of the Marico culture by getting to interact with the Marico leadership. This initiative includes knowledge sharing sessions, interactions with senior leaders in the supply chain function, a virtual tour of Marico’s Perundurai factory. Through the Marico lens, the students get a real world exposure to how the operations and supply chain function works in a FMCG setup.

Campus hiring process

STAMP

• The summer internship programme at Marico is one of the most intensive and enriching experiences that one can have as a student. STAMP comprises of a number of interesting elements which make it a memorable experience for everyone. Each summer trainee gets a project that is critical to the Company, which also ensures the organisation’s commitment to and involvement in the programme.
• Even before the actual internship begins, the summer trainees get to spend two days with the field sales force to understand how the sales system works.
• Marico supports all the summer trainees by giving them complete autonomy and access to all possible resources. Every summer trainee is given multiple opportunities to interact with people across verticals and build a deeper understanding of the business. STAMP provides the summer trainees with a Challenging, Enriching and Fulfilling experience and equips them to truly Make a Difference!

Ignite

• Our Management Trainee Programme is aimed at inspiring the management trainees to push the limits, drive their way forward and create their own success  stories.
• The management trainees undergo stints in their respective functions. They are not just solving any other problem, but real life, strategic business issues affecting Marico and its stakeholders daily. What differentiates Marico is its approach where the management trainees are groomed and prepared for every possible opportunity in future.
• The organisation places immense trust in their abilities and provides them with early responsibility and empowerment.
• Ignite carries out Marico’s vision of putting the trainees through a journey which not only assesses them, but also enhances their skills and readies them for any challenge. Ignite aims to fuel passion, dreams and creativity in them.

Creating an agile and cost-effective organisation structure

To drive agility in our structure, we have created Big Bet teams. These three teams – Modern Trade, E-commerce and New Country Development – are the critical growth drivers for our strategic business plan. The identified teams will be responsible for achieving disruptive and differentiated additional growth in comparison to a normal 3-year CAGR on certain defined parameters.

Creating self-sufficient business units

In order to drive focused, sustainable and higher order profitable growth, the Marketing function was reorganised to build transformational capabilities. As identified in our Strategic Business Plan, in addition to our base business and core brands, we have introduced three new engines of growth - Foods, Skincare, and Male Grooming. These verticals will focus on our agenda to drive premiumisation and digital capabilities.

Empower Members to drive critical business agendas

To boost innovation and accelerate growth, we introduced  our first-ever Managers Young Board consisting of nine 'Next -Gen Disruptors' across different functions globally. The Young Board Members are expected to collaborate as a team, bring in fresh perspectives and play the role of institutional leaders shaping the future of Marico. Each Board is constituted for a year, and is mentored by the top management team members and the MD & CEO. The first three Young Boards have successfully identified and operationalised new business ideas and actions to strengthen Marico’s culture.

Create a Workplace for the Future

Millennials comprise 63% of our global workforce. To provide a balanced and enriching workplace experience, we have introduced a few automated, simple and efficient HR processes. All of Marico’s talent management processes have  been migrated to a single integrated platform, Membrain, offering uniform experience across geographies.

We have taken long strides in engagement with our members by introducing ‘My Voice’, a chatbot which interacts with our field sales force across all depots. Their feedback and comments have helped us take appropriate actions by providing relevant inputs to the team leaders.

Get Plugged In

Our new onboarding programme for welcoming new members into the Marico fold is entirely digital, with e-modules and process documents especially created and embedded on iLearn, our online learning platform that can be accessed by anyone, anytime and anywhere. This provides an enriching experience to any new member.

Sharpen Hiring Process

To achieve our Strategic Business Plan, we hire talent using a customised Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) assessment across all levels. A new assessment tool is being used for hiring field sales force members, which has resulted in sharper hiring through improved selection quality and reduced hiring time. The new assessment tool has reduced HR and senior level intervention by 20% and 10%, respectively.

Diversity & Inclusion at Marico

Marico is committed to

• Creating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive workplace with zero tolerance to any form of discrimination/harassment
• Ensuring there is no bias and all members have equal access to information and opportunity
• Accepting and appreciating diverse points of view/new ideas/unpopular opinions leading to enhanced creativity, innovation and high performance
• Maintaining corporate etiquette and professional demeanour on all occasions while exercising freedom of expressions and thoughts

Steps taken for Diversity & Inclusion

• Launch of Marico Diversity & Inclusion guidelines
• Diversity sensitization workshop for leadership team
• Creation of grievance redressal mechanisms and channels

Strengthening Culture of Performance, Collaboration  and Innovation

Once a year, through a week‑long celebration 'Values Week', we encourage our members to recognise their colleagues, team members and business leaders by exchanging and sharing anecdotes on how they have lived by these values.

Our easy to use recognition platform, ‘Maricognize’ saw the highest ever engagement from members over the  past five years with  more than 1,500 members getting instantly recognised for exemplary work. Recognition was also given through a chatbot, enabling faster and easier access.

To encourage a collaborative work environment, our Performance Management System is designed to enable outcome‑based, shared goals among different functional teams. We have also standardised our performance metrics across functions, enabling uniformity of goals and building camaraderie across teams.

Member Wellness at Marico