Tveni Foods Case Study

Register to read the introduction… Ltd., a multinational confectionary company, having its branches in more than 50 countries and marketing its products in about 135 countries, established one of its production units in 1988 at Mathura near Delhi. It had a workforce of nearly 320 employees and sales turnover was more than Rs. 150 crores. Being a confectionary unit, hygiene was given the upper most priority to the extent that no one was allowed to enter the production area without taking bath and wearing sterilized clothes provided by the company. The entire process was automatic and required only food specialists and labor. In order to match the required standards, emphasis was given on training and welfare of employees on regular basis. Facilities like transportation were also provided since delay by ten minutes could cause production losses at the time of shift changes. Over a period of time due to start and workers' redundancy, it was observed that problems like lethargy, absenteeism, violation of work practices were increasing. Absenteeism rate went up to 18 percent. Employees visited canteen for drinking water and started gossiping during working hours. Buses did not arrive on time due to which production suffered. Operators came late and left shop floor early without waiting for relievers. Employees were found hovering in administration building without any reason. It was also found that employees were violating personal hygiene standards. Malpractices were also reported with attendance process and records. These activities were having a negative impact on managerial effectiveness and performance of the unit. The management tried to take number of initiatives to overcome these problems. However, these initiatives seemed ad hoc solutions and did not serve the purpose in the long run. In 1996, Alok Trivedi joined the company as Head of the Department H.R. While facing these problems, he realized that the causes of these problems were deep rooted and required a proactive approach. He started with an approach called Employee Relation Audit, developed by him, where everything was to be monitored, regulated and reported on regular intervals. He along with his team prepared an action plan (Appendix 1) and corrective measures were taken accordingly. Facilities of drinking water were arranged at 3 to 4 places in the production area which stopped employees from going to canteen for this purpose. Action was taken against the late arrivals of the buses. A proper time study was done and they were given ten minutes margin so that they could report on time. Operators were frequently questioned and stringent vigilance was kept for amenities. Regular counseling was also arranged. A grievance register was also kept and effective grievance redressal was undertaken. Groups were formed called 'Pragati' groups for solving work related problems. Employees were frequently checked for ensuring their strict adherence to personal hygiene standards. For ensuring timely processing and printing of attendance records, training was given to al! line officers and production of records was made …show more content…
Initially, the branch was performing well and was able to build their image in the local market. As the industry was dynamic in nature, there were frequent opportunities bubbling in the market. In order to capitalize the outside opportunities, one sales manager left the organization in January 2003. As the sales manager was a real performer, he was able to convince all the good performers at XYZ Moon Life Insurance to join the new company. As a result of this, the organizational structure got disturbed and the development officers, who were earlier reporting to the SM had started reporting directly to the branch manager. Now, nepotism crept in and the branch manager began reallocating good agents to his favorite development officers. The sales team of another sales manager became weak (low performer). Seeing the low performance of the sales manager and his development officers, the company decided to terminate their services. As the employees' turnover rate of the organization was more than the industry rate, the company had to continuously recruit sales agents as well as development officers to sustain itself in a highly competitive environment. The internal competition among development officers resulted into problems like, high employee turnover and dissatisfaction. Hence the branch was not able to perform as per the benchmarks set by the company. Its performance was not even comparable to that of other branches of the same