INSTITUTE OF HOTEL MANAGEMENT, AURANGABAD

Corporate culture of Aditya Birla Group

Anurag Bisht (H-17019) Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirement for BA (Hons.) in Hotel Management

THE UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD, UNITED KINGDOM

December 2011

Corporate Culture
List of content Introduction What is Corporate Culture Companies Corporate Culture

Customer Service Aditya Birla Group

Customer Complaint Handling Conclusion Bibliography

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Introduction What Is Corporate Culture Corporate culture is a term used to describe the collective beliefs, value systems, and processes that provide a company with its own unique flavor and attitude. Businesses of all sizes posses some type of corporate culture, in that every company has a set of values and goals that help to define what the business is all about. Here are some examples of elements that go into creating and defining a corporate culture. At the foundation of any company culture are the standards that govern the operation of the business. These standards are usually expressed in terms of the policies and procedures that define how the company will operate. This will include how different departments or functions relate to one another in the production process, the line of communication established between management and departmental employees, and rules governing acceptable conduct of everyone who is part of the company. This basic organizational culture makes it possible to develop other layers of corporate culture based on these foundational factors. (anon) Corporate culture is one of those nebulous terms that conjures up a variety of images. Some of them may be positive: a welcoming environment where people feel secure in their jobs, where independent thinking and work-life balance are encouraged. And some may be not so positive: excessive work hours or unexpected changes in job description. While no standard definition of corporate culture exists, the term typically refers to the overall philosophy and environment of a workplace: can you wear jeans or is a business suit the norm? Does a company focus on innovation or do they try to do what they already know? What would happen if you showed up 15 minutes late or told your direct supervisor that you disagreed with his/her ideas? The answers to these questions and others constitute the unique style and policies of a company. According to Steiner, corporate culture has been influenced in a dramatic way by these changes. What used to be a "paternalistic" type culturewhere an employee would start work right out of graduate school, stay for 30 years, and be "taken care of" by a company, is no longer the norm. "What we see is more of a shift towards an entrepreneurial-like atmosphere," he says. "People are encouraged to take more business risks, because ultimately this is where the rewards are to be found. In the past, employees have tended to get too complacent and comfortable in their positions at the expense of innovation." Most information about a company's culture can be gained by talking to people, and networking with recruiters and members of industry associations, Habucky says. An important question to ask that is particularly relevant in science is whether a given job will be intellectually challenging and stimulating and will present opportunities for growth. "Your career is a commodity and you need to develop a 'business plan' to make it flourish," she

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advises. "The plan needs to include short- and long-term goals that incorporate continual learning and the diversification of your skill set." (iencemag.org/career_magazine) About The Company
Aditya Birla Group

The Aditya Birla Group is ranked No. 4 in the world and No.1 in Asia Pacific in the Top Companies for Leaders study (2011), conducted by Aon Hewitt. (www.adityabirla.com) The Aditya Birla Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Mumbai, India. It operates in 33 countries with more than 133,000 employees worldwide The group has diversified business interests and is dominant player in all the sectors in which it operates such as viscose staple fibre, metals, cement, viscose filament yarn, branded apparel, carbon black, chemicals, fertilisers, insulators, financial services, telecom, BPO and IT services. The Aditya Birla group is a US$ 35 billion conglomerate which gets 60 % of its revenues from outside India. The Aditya Birla Group has been adjudged the best employer in India and among the top 20 in Asia by the Hewitt-Economic Times and Wall Street Journal Study 2007. The origins of the group lie in the conglomerate once held by one of India's foremost industrialists Mr. Ghanshyam Das Birla.

History
Aditya Birla is organized into various subsidiaries that operate across different sectors. Among these are viscose staple fibre, non-ferrous metals, cement, viscose filament yarn, branded apparel, carbon black, chemicals, Retail (under the 'More' brand of supermarkets), fertilizers, chemicals, insulators, financial services, telecom, BPO and IT services. The Group consists of four main companies, which operate in various industry sectors through subsidiaries, joint ventures, etc. These are Hindalco, Grasim, Aditya Birla Nuvo, Idea cellular and UltraTech Cement. The Group operates in 33 countries Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Laos, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, UAE, UK, USA and Vietnam. (www.careers.poornata.com) The Group's cement business was earlier under both Grasim Industries and UltraTech Cement. The two entities are now merged into UltraTech cement to form India's largest cement company. UltraTech cement was originally the cement business of L&T which was acquired by Aditya Birla Group in 2004.

Textile business
The Aditya Birla Group is the world's largest player in the Viscose Staple Fiber industry. It operates out of India, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and China. It owns the Birla Cellulose brand.
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Apart from viscose staple fiber, the group also owns acrylic fiber businesses in Egypt and Thailand, viscose filament yarn businesses and spinning mills at several locations all over India and South East Asia. The group has pulp and plantation interests in Canada and has recently invested in plantations in Laos. The Aditya Birla group is also a major player in the branded garments market in India.

Telecom Services
Idea Cellular is now owned by Aditya Birla Group. Idea Cellular started off as a joint venture with the group, AT&T and the Tata Group. However the stakes of the remaining partners was eventually acquired by the group. After an Initial Public Offering on the Indian Stock Markets, Idea Cellular now accounts for a third of the group's market capitalization. The company is headquartered in Mumbai and has pan-India operations.

Aditya Birlas Corporate Culture

Over the last few years, the Aditya Birla Group has been building critical infrastructure on the human resource front to realise its leadership aspirations in the global business arena. Gyanodaya, our management learning institute; Aditya Disha, our intranet; Aditya Birla awards, our salutation to our committed achievers - are all milestones of this purposeful journey. And very recently, a new and significant initiative has been launched across the group wherein we have more sharply defined our values framework. The values of any organisation define its character and personality. Values guide, shape and influence our behaviour and actions. The external world perceives and responds to an organisation based on the way that it goes about conducting its business. The world of business today is going through a crisis of trust, where the credibility of business leaders and the legitimacy of business organisations are subjected to questioning. This scrutiny from the government, media, analysts, investors and action groups, is becoming more stringent everyday. In such an environment of skepticism and cynicism our actions alone can inspire confidence. Once again, people are searching for the soul of the corporation, its values. In the Aditya Birla Group we are becoming more heterogeneous as we globalise. Also, 30 per cent of our people have been with the group for less than five years and 48 per cent are below the age of 38 years. With every acquisition, we add a significant number of new colleagues with diverse backgrounds, and experience and most importantly, with different expectations from us. While these developments are exciting, I firmly believe that we need a stronger organisational glue to hold us together, apart from the time-tested bonds of our legacy, heritage, a shared set of systems, processes and best practices, an activist corporate centre, our logo and our name. (www.adityabirla.com) People contribute when they relate to an organisation and they relate, when they understand the organisation. And people understand an organisation through its values, by experiencing the culture that the values create and by using the systems and processes that the values define. In large organisations, such shared understanding cannot be created through the

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leadership of individuals alone, it requires leadership of principles, of beliefs, of conviction these together constitute what we call the "values". The articulation of a common set of values, I believe, enables organisations to pull in a common direction, gives employees something they can easily identify with, helps them to find common cause with each other and creates a common sense of purpose. It also takes the assimilation of new employees and cultures easier and faster in periods of rapid growth. With these objectives, and also a view of the future in mind, I had articulated and proposed a set of values for the group about six years ago. However in this period, we as an organisation have confronted many moments of truth and one thing became very clear to me. We needed a values framework for the group as the foundation for our future, which must have wide ownership, deeper understanding across, larger application, stronger implementation and most critically, be backed by the active personal sponsorship and role modeling of us all. An exercise for identifying values is never easy. One has scores of values and values-related practices to choose from. An emotional attachment with the past and multiple views of the future complicate the task. Nonetheless, supported by a presentation by corporate HR, all our directors and business heads worked through a common session to take a view and we agreed on the five of: "integrity, commitment, passion, seamlessness and speed".

Customer Service

Aditya Birla Minacs is a subsidiary of Aditya Birla Nuvo. With 28 years of experience in serving many Fortune 500 companies, Minacs provides end-toend business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT outsourcing (ITO) solutions in five core areas of capability: :: :: :: :: ::
Customer relationship management Minacs marketing solutions Knowledge and process outsourcing Finance and accounting outsourcing IT solutions and services

Aditya Birla Minacs offers global corporations in the banking, financial services and insurance; telecom, infrastructure, media and entertainment; and manufacturing industries a comprehensive and seamless suite of IT and IT-enabled services. Aditya Birla Minacs has acquired UK-based Compass BPO Ltd. to strengthen its finance and accounting (F&A) capabilities. Compass has been ranked among the top 15 upcoming F&A players by Gartner. (Aditya-Birla-Group)

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Minacs has about 10,000 seats and more than 14,500 employees at locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. These facilities span Canada, Germany, Hungary, India, the Philippines, the UK and the US, and provide services in over 40 languages. The operational integration of Minacs and Minacs IT Services (formerly PSI Data Systems) was envisaged in 2008 to leverage each other's capabilities and to unlock synergies. As an operationally integrated BPO-ITO organisation, Minacs is now well positioned for accelerated success in the global outsourcing industry through its multinational footprint, its capabilities in multiple industry verticals, its culturally diverse and knowledgeable workforce, and its ability to deliver best-in-class solutions. Today, Aditya Birla Group is among India's top 10 BPO companies. It adheres to the highest standards of quality, data security, and confidentiality of client information and is certified to the COPC-2000, ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 27001 standards.

Customer Complaint Handling

What Is Customer Complaint

A consumer complaint or customer complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction on a consumers behalf to a responsible party (Landon, 1980). It can also be described in a positive sense as a report from a consumer providing documentation about a problem with a product or service. In fact, some modern business consultants urge businesses to view customer complaints as a gift.

Management finds out about customer dissatisfaction through two mechanisms: Voice and Exit. Voice represents complaints the voice of the customer. Exit occurs when the customer stops buying or using the services. All of us have exited at one time or another, for example, if youve changed your doctor, telephone carrier, or plumber due to poor service. Service providers employ all sorts of strategies to avoid customer turnover. Smart organizations know that it is not enough to have the lowest price or the best technology there always seems to be a competitor who can do it better or cheaper. There are no guarantees, but one of the best customer retention strategies is to provide superior customer service. And that means listening to your customers.

How to Take a Complaint

The company aims to be customer focused.Which means to say that they claim to be customer focused...but they need to become more customer focused.

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Although listening and responding is necessary, its not good enough. Too often, a response is reactionary and you can easily find yourself reacting over and over again to the same complaint (sometimes this is called firefighting). We need to listen and PROACT. That means listening to the voice of the customer and making process improvements based on that feedback so that the same complaints dont recur. A complaint is any measure of dissatisfaction with your product or service, even if its unfair, untrue, or painful to hear! Complaints may be about:

Service Content, Delivery or Quality Personnel Requests Communication

Response Time Documentation Billing Follow Up

How customer Complaint can be taken

Focus on the Customer If you cant immediately solve the problem, respond to the customer and identify an owner who will be responsible for final resolution. Complete the communications loop with customer. If youve referred the complaint to others, make sure theres closure. If youve left the customer hanging without a response, youve become part of the problem. Focus on the Complaint Collect all complaints from all external customers and categorize them in a way that allows you to analyze data to see trends, patterns, concentrations, tendencies, etc. Focus on Process Improvement Use the database of complaints to define processes that are important from the customers perspective and to improve the most critical ones. Based on analysis of the database, make appropriate investments to prevent issues that result in customer complaints. Look for permanent improvements to response time, cycle time, internal processes related to the complaints, and complaint frequency. (www.ncdhhs.gov)

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Bibliography (n.d.). Retrieved 12 tuesday, 2011, from iencemag.org/career_magazine: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_05_08/scien ce.opms.r0900071 (n.d.). Retrieved 12 tuesday, 2011, from www.adityabirla.com: http://www.adityabirla.com/ (n.d.). Retrieved 12 Tuesday, 2011, from www.careers.poornata.com: http://www.careers.poornata.com/careers.htm?site=adityabirla.com/careers/current-positions.asp (n.d.). Retrieved 12 Tuesday, 2011, from www.adityabirla.com: http://www.adityabirla.com/the_group/corp_hr_cell.htm (n.d.). Retrieved 12 Tuesday, 2011, from Aditya-Birla-Group: http://www.mouthshut.com/productreviews/Aditya-Birla-Group-reviews-925004531 (n.d.). Retrieved 12 Tuesday, 2011, from www.ncdhhs.gov: http://www.ncdhhs.gov/excel/article_complaints.pdf anon. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 21, 2011, from www.sergaygroup.com: http://www.sergaygroup.com/Smart-Talk/What-is-Corporate-Culture.html

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