IEMR

Human Resource
Management
HR initiatives by Whirlpool of India Ltd.

By: Group-11
Aditya Eranki-03
Anand Parmar-06
Piyush Kant-33
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Acknowledgement

We express our sincerest regards to Ms. Pooja Bisht, Sr. Executive –

Admin & HR, Whirlpool of India Ltd., for the valuable inputs, able
guidance, encouragement, whole-hearted cooperation during the
assignment. We deeply express our sincere thanks to our Prof.
Narendra Nath Akhouri for providing support, encouraging and
allowing us to present the report.

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HR REPORT- WHIRLPOOL OF INDIA

INTRODUCTION: Whirlpool, right from its inception in 1911 as first commercial
manufacturer of motorized washers to the current market position of being world's number
one manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, has always set industry
milestones and benchmarks. The parent company is headquartered at Benton Harbour,
Michigan, USA with a global presence in over 170 countries and manufacturing operation in
13 countries with 11 major brand names such as Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Roper, Estate,
Bauknecht, Laden and Ignis. The company boasts of resources and capabilities beyond
achievable feat of any other in the industry.

Whirlpool initiated its international expansion in 1958 by entering Brazil. However, it

emerged as truly global leader in the1980's. This encouraging trend brought the company to
India in the late 1980s. It forayed into the market under a joint venture with TVS group and
established the first Whirlpool manufacturing facility in Pondicherry.

Soon Whirlpool acquired Kelvinator India Limited in 1995 and marked an entry into Indian
refrigerator market as well. The same year also saw acquisition of major share in TVS joint
venture and later in 1996, Kelvinator and TVS acquisitions were merged to create Indian
home appliance leader of the future, Whirlpool India. This expanded the company's
portfolio in the Indian subcontinent to washing machines, refrigerator, microwave ovens
and air conditioners.

Today, Whirlpool is the most recognized brand in home appliances in India and holds a
market share of over 25%. The company owns three state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities
at Faridabad, Pondicherry and Pune. Each of these manufacturing set-ups features an
infrastructure that is witness of Whirlpool's commitment to consumer interests and
advanced technology.

In the year ending in March '09, the annual turnover of the company for its Indian
enterprise was Rs.1, 719 Crores.

The company's brand and image speaks of its commitment to the homemaker from every
aspect of its functioning. It has derived its functioning principles out of an undaunted
partnership with the homemakers and thus a slogan of “You and whirlpool, the world's best
homemaker” dots its promotional campaigns. The products are engineered to suit the
requirements of ‘smart, confident and in-control' homemaker who knows what she wants.
The product range is designed in a way that it employs unique technology and offers
consumer relevant solutions.

VISION AND MISSION: The pervasive vision, “Every Home, everywhere, with pride, passion
and performance”, rests on the pillars of innovation, operational excellence, customer-
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centric approach and diversified talent. These are embedded within Whirlpool’s business
goals, strategy, processes and work culture. 

Be it Whirlpool’s products that are the result of innovation and operational excellence to
meet every need of Whirlpool’s consumers or the people behind these products that come
from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, everything the company do features a distinct
Whirlpool way

CORE COMPETENCIES:

Innovation: Unique and compelling solutions valued by Whirlpool’s customers and aligned

to Whirlpool’s brands create competitive advantage and differentiated shareholder value.

Operational Excellence (OPEX): A methodology for solving problems & continuous

improvement of products & processes through pursuit, acquisition, and utilization of
knowledge using critical thought and planned experimentation helps the company achieve
operational excellence.

Customer Excellence: Excelling the customer expectation from the company, its brands,
products and services are a three-step process.

The three steps are:

 Know a customer

 Be a customer

 Serve a customer

Knowing a customer helps the company know who Whirlpool’s customers are, how to treat
them, how the company add value, and what the drivers of brand loyalty are. This
information is gathered from the customer's data base history. This way the company are
better able to customize products for them and recommend the right product to solve
problems. Being a customer is important to share customer knowledge and insights, drive
actions based on customer insights, be passionate about Whirlpool’s brands and customer
loyalty and provide a positive voice for Whirlpool’s brands. The company shows empathy for
customers and seeks to resolve their problems by creating consistent customer touch-
points, with Whirlpool’s endeavour always being to provide unique solutions for the
customer.

Whirlpool has won many accolades in varied arenas across the world on the basis of its
excellent products and this has been wholly due the superior company policies. As the
entire business of the company rests on its customer in a very competitive market, it is

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essential for the company to have a very motivated human resource, and a HR function that
is proactive and helps achieve the company its strategic goals.

Year after year, and in country after country, the company has won awards for innovative
HR policies and has won accolades for the same.

Commitment To Employees Recognized

 Named one of the “Top 20 Global Companies for Leaders” by FORTUNE magazine
for focus on developing leaders within the company
 Named one of the top 50 companies for African-American MBAs to work by Black
MBA magazine
 Named one of "The Best Companies to Work For" in Brazil by Guia Exame/Voce
S.A. for the 12th consecutive year
 Named one of the “50 Best Employers in Canada” by the Globe & Mail Report on
Business Magazine
 Named one of the “Best Companies to Work for in Mexico
 Named one of “25 Noteworthy Companies for Diversity” by Diversity Inc
magazine for our excellent community philanthropy, employee-resource groups
and measurement of diversity success
 Received a score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate
Equality Index for six consecutive years (2004-2009) 
 2009: Hewitt ‘Best Employers in India’ 2009 Study

In the following sections we try to develop an insight into the HR policies that drive the
company’s growth engines.

HR initiatives inside the organisation

People Processes and Systems To ensure a robust performance driven work culture the
company has various people processes and systems that help it retain and grow its
employees. Committed, smart, passionate, innovative, challengers-these are a few
features unique to the people in Whirlpool. Their various processes and systems are
there to ensure that these people are recognized and given an opportunity to grow.

Talent Management Systems Whirlpool aims at the holistic development of its

employees. The ‘Talent Pool' process provides a robust framework for individuals'
potential development. Talent Pool is a comprehensive process that is used to assess an
individual based on his / her potential and performance. A Nine Box Matrix serves as a
tool which helps in assessing every employee depending upon his/her performance and
potential is placed in one of the boxes of the nine box matrix. This matrix helps evaluate
the employee's current position and helps in planning his progress. The Talent Pool
process is critical in succession planning and career planning. The talent pool process
uses the leadership model to assess employees.

For retaining the talent present in the organization and for doing the succession

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planning the Talent Management System is in place. The system is called as a 9-Box
System, which consists of 9 boxes in which individual employees are placed in one of the
boxes according to their performance and promotability. The employees who fall in Box
1, 2 and 3 are identified as the Key Players and are supposed to be game changers. A
Leadership Profile sheet is filled in for individual by the managers where the assessment
of an individual is done on the various Leadership attributes, practices and performance.
Thus, their movement to other roles, in how much time will they be ready to move (<1
year,<2years etc) are decided. A focused action plan is prepared for succession planning
of the employees. They are given trainings accordingly and are gauged on the various
parameters before moving to new role.

Retention Plans for each key player is made with the drivers being:

1. Higher responsibilities

2. International assignments

3. Monetary.

This way the whole talent pool is created and managed by the HR department.

Performance Management Systems: The performance management process is intended

to facilitate the establishment of individual objectives annually with the intention that
they will be updated and reviewed at least semi-annually or on an as needed basis - the
PMP is a "live" document. These individual objectives need to directly support the
achievement of the next level (manager) objectives, and align within each group (no
gaps or overlap). An effective performance management process requires clear
SMARTER objectives with Alignment and Stretch and Team and Individual Extraordinary
Effort and Results yielding extraordinary performance and results. The performance
management system enables greater differentiation of performance, higher rewards for
exceptional and Robust performance dialogue. Whirlpool follows a 180 degree
evaluation system for doing the performance evaluation of its employees. It has a
midyear review system where one-to-one discussions happen between the immediate
supervisor and the employee. At the start of every year employees fill their Performance
management Process (PMP) form which has two parts in it.

 One part consists of the objectives which are to be achieved in the current year,
along with the results which is filled at the time of mid review.
 The second part consists of Performance Development Planning (PDP), which
insists upon what are the developmental plans of the employee for the year.

The objectives flow down to individual from the supervisor which in turn comes from
larger organizational objectives.

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At the end of year the overall performance of an employee is measured after which
performance ratings are given. The ratings are given on a scale of 1 to 5 where

• Level 1 stands for Extraordinary Results

• Level 2 stands for Very Strong Results
• Level 3 stands for Strong Results
• Level 4 stands for Results Need to be Improved
• Level 5 stands for Unacceptable Results.

There is a Bell- Curve system which is in place in the organization which insists upon
employees working consistently upon improvising performance. Discussions for the
same happen between various Departmental Heads, Plant Head and HR Head. With the
whole process in place the performance ratings are revealed to employees.

For employees having rating as Level 4 there are various improvement plans like focused
performance plan which is put in place to help them to improve their performance.

Internal Job Posting

Internal Job Posting, a process by which all the employees are informed about the
various vacancies available in the organization helps in increasing transparency in the
process of recruitment and provides the employees with multi functional opportunities.
This process helps in promoting a positive culture where the employees working with
the organization are given an opportunity to grow. The objective of having a process of
Internal Job Posting is to create a clear and transparent process for vertical or horizontal
movement to the advertised Position, to create the growth path for employees and to
promote the right candidate to the advertised position in the Organization.

Managerial Skills Survey

Managerial Skill survey is survey taken on an annual basis where the employees give a
feedback for their immediate supervisor.

All the employees get a link on the portal to fill the survey. Once the employees fill the
feedback, individual reports are generated and sent to the supervisor along with the HR
Lead. Thereby areas of development are identified and thus plan of action is included in
the PMP of the individual. The discussions for the same happen with his supervisor and
finally implementation of the developmental plan takes place. Thus, this gives every
individual a platform to voice their views for their managers. This also builds in more
responsibility towards the team in a manager as they are also under review by the team.

Employee Engagement

Whirlpool as an organisation insists too much upon employee engagement. Employees

are empowered to take decisions related to work. They are made to feel an important

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part of organisation. To have employee engagement Whirlpool has lot of initiatives like
rewards and recognitions. Rewards given are like Sports Reward, cheers award,
employee of the quarter, Pinnacle award, smart squad award and long service award.

Hierarchy

Chief Executive Officer

Vice President

Senior Director

Director

General Manager

Senior Manager

Manager

Deputy Manager

Senior Executive

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Training and Development

The Training process of the company focuses towards the development of its people. It
conducts both in-house and external trainings for its employees.

The training needs of employees are identified by three ways;

a) Through PDP sheet (filled by employees)

b) Through inputs by Supervisor.

c) Through Talent Management System for High Potential Players.

The process of training need identification is done at the start of every year. Most of the
training programs are conducted in the third and fourth quarter as it is the lean period
for production.

Whirlpool Learning Academy (WLA) supports lot of information for the employees which
can be accessed online. Whirlpool has now introduced online training programmes for
its employees it is called as Whirlpool Virtual University.

Employee Motivation

Employee Engagement Survey: The HR department of Whirlpool of India Ltd. Conducts

an employee engagement survey in the month of October. The basic areas of focus in
this survey are mentioned below:

 Strategy: In this area the HR personnel monitors the working strategy of an

employee like how is he coping up with other employees and with his work as
well?
 Leadership: With the help of this survey the HR Personnel looks out for the
leadership attributes in the employee within his associated teammates and his
department.
 Social Responsibilities: They are also being taken as a key area for accessing the
employee.
 Multitasking: This is a unique technique of HR deptt in whirlpool of India Ltd.
They assign 2-3 tasks to an employee if the employee is performing
outstandingly.

After considering all these aspects in the survey the employees are being distributed in
small chunks of about 6-10 people for a group discussion in their respective
departments.

And finally the reports are being assessed by the HR Deptt. And necessary measures are
being taken in order to improve the efficiency of the weak employee.

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Leave Policy

The leave policy which the HR deptt has drafted for the employees of the organization is
described below:

 No. of Working Days in week: 5

 Average Working Hours in a week are 40.
 Break up of No. of leaves in an year are:
 30 Earned Leaves
 10 Sick Leaves
 10 National Holidays

Whirlpool Values:

Diversity, Respect, Team Spirit, Ethical Conduct.

Attrition Rate

The attrition rate of the industry has been almost constant from past 3 years i.e. 2008 –
2010 which is around 19% however the rate has significantly decreased in whirlpool of
India Ltd from 2007 onwards. In 2007 it was 17% which decreased to 14% in 2008 and
came down to 13% in 2009. The HR policies are a major cause for this decrease in the
attrition rate of the company. However it is still practicing a lot of new techniques in
order to reduce it further.

360 Degree Feedback

 The company follows the approach of 360 degree feedback mechanism which
helps in bringing out the true belongingness of an employee towards the
organization, management & peers.
 It helps the organization to improve its policies and make them more effective in
order to increase the productivity.

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