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Walking the talk on human resources

June 30, 2009

C J Jassawala, the Chief Operating Officer of Thomson Press talks about the human resources initiatives taken by the company — “We are a part of a wheel and need to be cohesive to be able to move forward together,” writes Aakriti Agarwal.

C J Jassawala, COO, Thomson Press

Human Resource is a vital asset in any organisation. In the printing industry there are several concerns — high employee turnover, lack of skilled labour, process training, manpower management, and many other related issues. Paradoxically these concerns are not discussed and talked about in the industry. There may be a few companies who are following labour laws and helping employees carve their career path by constant counselling and consistent performance but the industry is largely in denial and does not address these issues.

We recently spoke with C J Jassawala, the Chief Operating Officer of Thomson Press about the initiatives taken by the company to curb the attrition rate and motivate employees to contribute to organisation’s upward graph. Jassawala says that the printing industry is fragmented and with innumerable small printers that have very few employees and thus ostensibly no human resource issues. In the printing industry, the owners themselves are the HR managers. But he maintains that human resource is an important aspect for organised printing companies with larger workforces. He says, “HR is normally a function of the operating people unless the organisation has a size that requires a dedicated HR department.”

Of Thomson, Jassawala says that they are a multi-locational organisation with approximately 1500 permanent and 1500 contract piece rated labour. With different locations and a large workforce, it is in Thomson’s interest to have a dedicated human resource department. He says that they follow all the statutory regulations and labour laws such as the minimum wages act, provident fund, and factory act.

Thomson is attempting to make cross-functional teams to increase cohesiveness and make the organisation process centred. In this effort, they are trying to break barriers between different functions and departments so as to enable employees to contribute to the entire process and see the big picture. Jassawala says, “We are a part of a wheel and need to be cohesive to be able to move forward together.”

The 2X initiative by Thomson implies that within three years the company would double its profits without any increase in investment in production facilities and workforce. Thomson is guided by the Kaizen institute and is led by consultants through this initiative. The 2X is guided by four main factors namely 5S, Kaizen, autonomous maintenance and autonomous teams. Jassawala says that out of 700 permanent employees in the Faridabad plant, at least 600 are contributing in building successful cross-functional teams. Any given problem is divided in several segments and is assessed by workmen and managers. This practice has started showing results with visible upward trend lines.

Training is a continuous process at the Thomson press. With an attrition rate of only 5 per cent among the workmen, Jassawala says that they follow a pragmatic approach with their employees. The Thomson School of Printing provides training for six months to the new workforce recruited in the company. After this, employees are trained on any new technology and innovation in the company. Thomson is ISO 14001:2004 certified for environment and OHS 18000 certified for health and safety of employees and visitors. In addition, they also got FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification recently, which adds to their green initiative. For the 2X initiative and adherence of quality parameters, the company has invested in training their employees, motivating and engaging them in these projects.

Jassawala says that such initiatives and changes made at the fundamental level are constructively increasing the work contribution by the employees, their engagement, skill sets and experience. He concludes by saying that, “Thomson press believes in reliability in quality, delivery and cost.”