Up the ladder of success...to read the article, click on : http://www.expresspharmaonline.com/20090630/pharmalife01.shtml
( this is coverage on our Learn and Earn Program in Economic Times)
Lupin Pharma
and Dr Reddy's to match research needs with aspirations of class 12 pass outs
Today, of the 4,000-odd people registered with OSDD, a little over half are students, engaged in activities from advocacy to lab work. "It has been a big discovery for us," says OSDD project director Zakir Thomas. "We thought we [at OSDD] were dealing with sophisticated problems that required input from sophisticated sources, like established institutes," he says. "But the students really surprised us."
They did not just come from the metros. Having worked closely with scores of youngsters, Thomas has some advice for pharma companies. "If you are looking for new, innovative solutions, reach out to students, especially those in rural India," he says. "There's a huge talent base out there."
For pharma giants Lupin Pharmaceuticals and Dr Reddy's Laboratories, this merely confirms what they already know. Both companies run work-cum-education programmes for fresh-out-of-school youngsters from rural and smalltown India. Essentially, class XII graduates join the company as interns; alongside, they also study for a BSc degree in industrial drug sciences, offered by the companies through tie-ups with universities. The students attend classes over the weekend, while working at regular jobs in the companies' plants through the week.
COMPANY CLOSES A TALENT GAP...
Divakar Kaza, president (HR) at Lupin, says his company's Learnand-Earn programme is a two-way street. It gives youngsters from economically-depressed families the chance to study further and skill themselves - and take home a stipend of Rs 7,000 per month. It helps Lupin close a crucial talent gap: finding capable people to take care of some basic, but key, tasks.
"The BSc and MSc graduates who join us prefer to become researchers or move to high-end lab work," says Kaza. "We find it difficult to source people as lab assistants, backroom staff and/or teams to carry out quality control. These are less glamorous, but crucial, jobs that keep the plant working smoothly."
Ganesh Nikam, director of Biojobz, a bio-pharma staffing company , says that many pharma companies are struggling with this talent gap. "The BSc and MSc graduates who come in at the entry-level think of themselves as scientists, who would rather work from the comfort of the lab and do production," he says. "They feel regulatory tasks like quality control are beneath them."
Vijay Kothiwale, vice-president (works) at Lupin, says: "Finding people and making them employable is a challenge. With the Learners [the youngsters enrolled with Learn-and-Earn], we can train them up and create our own talent base, and also be sure of a high calibre of employees." Farooq M Shaikh, deputy general manager (HR) at Lupin's Tarapur plant, adds that in some cases the youngsters, with minimal training, handle certain divisions on their own, like the solvent recovery unit. "About 70% of our Learners function as back-up staff. When someone is absent, they step in," Shaikh adds. In their first two years, the Learners are rotated through every department .
Eventually, says Kothiwale, this kind of captive talent brings stability to the organisation. In the last six months, Lupin has recruited more than 300 youngsters for its plants in Tarapur, Goa and Indore; next year, it plans to extend this programme to plants its Mandideep (near Bhopal) and Aurangabad. A few months ago, the company organised its first recruitment drive for Learn-and-Earn, and invited applicants to walk-in interviews at a central location - Sholapur town for the Tarapur plant; Kolhapur for Goa.
...AND STUDENTS CHART A CAREER
Lupin believes in spreading the net wide. "There is talent in every corner of the country," says Kaza. "If we limit ourselves to metros, we will lose out on good people." One criterion for selection, however, is that the candidate should live within a 500-km radius of the plant, and never be more than a six-hour journey from home. That way, the youngsters will feel close enough to their families, and be persuaded to return to work when they go on leave.
Jobs are harder to come by in the hinterland, which is why Lupin's recruitment team has to sift through 10-15 times the number of applicants per position. For the 108 jobs in Tarapur, the team screened over 3,000 applications. Youngsters who live in the catchment areas of these plants are mostly children of poor farmers, factory workers and labourers who can only dream of a career, given their financial situation.
Like brothers Sanjay and Ashok Kholya, who moved to Tarapur from Uttarakhand two years ago when a strike shut down their father's factory. Last year, they scored in the high eighties in their Class XII finals. "Between our father losing his job and our mother sick with diabetes, there was no way we could have continued with our studies," says Sanjay, 18. So when they heard about Learnand-Earn, they jumped at the chance. Today, Sanjay works in the quality assurance department, while Ashok helps with research on new drugs.
Every month, they take home almost Rs 12,000 between them. At the end of three years, they will not only have a permanent position at Lupin, but also a BSc degree. "We see ourselves building a talent pipeline for all pharma companies with this initiative," says Kaza. "If, after being trained, some youngsters want to join another company, that's ok."
Rohit Pandit, 21, sees Learn-and-Earn as his shot at becoming a microbiologist. Pandit's mother has asthma, his aunt and uncle have high blood pressure and diabetes. So, while he spends his days at Tarapur culturing bacteria, Pandit dreams of finding alternative cures. His colleague, Aarti Dadmani, 19, sees her Lupin stint as an escape. Her parents wanted her to marry and pulled her out of college. "I wanted to study further, and make a career for myself," she says. "But my parents have no source of income. Now, besides studying, I also send money home."
EMPOWERING YOUNGSTERS
At Dr Reddy's, the self-managed team (SMT) is a multi-skilled entity of mainly high-school graduates which, with some handholding by a group of mentors, runs the plant with minimal supervision. The youngsters, aged 17-19 years, take their own decisions - whether about plant operations, or how they would like to juggle work and classes.
"The idea is to increase efficiency in manufacturing by reducing the number of layers [of hierarchy in the organisation," says Atul Dhavle, senior director, HR. "Your success in the marketplace depends on how swiftly you respond to the customer. Having a lean organisation helps reduce delivery time." It also helped cut the workforce by a third - from 120 to 40 - and reduce overheads in the company's plant at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The company first started an SMT in the Yanam plant (near Pondicherry) in 2002, and later at Baddi. Both have been setting new productivity records. Dhavle says a good production target is 240 people producing 100 million tablets a month. ( This appeared in The Hindu Business Line in 2011)
( this is coverage on our Learn and Earn Program in Economic Times)
Today, of the 4,000-odd people registered with OSDD, a little over half are students, engaged in activities from advocacy to lab work. "It has been a big discovery for us," says OSDD project director Zakir Thomas. "We thought we [at OSDD] were dealing with sophisticated problems that required input from sophisticated sources, like established institutes," he says. "But the students really surprised us."
They did not just come from the metros. Having worked closely with scores of youngsters, Thomas has some advice for pharma companies. "If you are looking for new, innovative solutions, reach out to students, especially those in rural India," he says. "There's a huge talent base out there."
For pharma giants Lupin Pharmaceuticals and Dr Reddy's Laboratories, this merely confirms what they already know. Both companies run work-cum-education programmes for fresh-out-of-school youngsters from rural and smalltown India. Essentially, class XII graduates join the company as interns; alongside, they also study for a BSc degree in industrial drug sciences, offered by the companies through tie-ups with universities. The students attend classes over the weekend, while working at regular jobs in the companies' plants through the week.
COMPANY CLOSES A TALENT GAP...
Divakar Kaza, president (HR) at Lupin, says his company's Learnand-Earn programme is a two-way street. It gives youngsters from economically-depressed families the chance to study further and skill themselves - and take home a stipend of Rs 7,000 per month. It helps Lupin close a crucial talent gap: finding capable people to take care of some basic, but key, tasks.
"The BSc and MSc graduates who join us prefer to become researchers or move to high-end lab work," says Kaza. "We find it difficult to source people as lab assistants, backroom staff and/or teams to carry out quality control. These are less glamorous, but crucial, jobs that keep the plant working smoothly."
Ganesh Nikam, director of Biojobz, a bio-pharma staffing company , says that many pharma companies are struggling with this talent gap. "The BSc and MSc graduates who come in at the entry-level think of themselves as scientists, who would rather work from the comfort of the lab and do production," he says. "They feel regulatory tasks like quality control are beneath them."
Vijay Kothiwale, vice-president (works) at Lupin, says: "Finding people and making them employable is a challenge. With the Learners [the youngsters enrolled with Learn-and-Earn], we can train them up and create our own talent base, and also be sure of a high calibre of employees." Farooq M Shaikh, deputy general manager (HR) at Lupin's Tarapur plant, adds that in some cases the youngsters, with minimal training, handle certain divisions on their own, like the solvent recovery unit. "About 70% of our Learners function as back-up staff. When someone is absent, they step in," Shaikh adds. In their first two years, the Learners are rotated through every department .
Eventually, says Kothiwale, this kind of captive talent brings stability to the organisation. In the last six months, Lupin has recruited more than 300 youngsters for its plants in Tarapur, Goa and Indore; next year, it plans to extend this programme to plants its Mandideep (near Bhopal) and Aurangabad. A few months ago, the company organised its first recruitment drive for Learn-and-Earn, and invited applicants to walk-in interviews at a central location - Sholapur town for the Tarapur plant; Kolhapur for Goa.
...AND STUDENTS CHART A CAREER
Lupin believes in spreading the net wide. "There is talent in every corner of the country," says Kaza. "If we limit ourselves to metros, we will lose out on good people." One criterion for selection, however, is that the candidate should live within a 500-km radius of the plant, and never be more than a six-hour journey from home. That way, the youngsters will feel close enough to their families, and be persuaded to return to work when they go on leave.
Jobs are harder to come by in the hinterland, which is why Lupin's recruitment team has to sift through 10-15 times the number of applicants per position. For the 108 jobs in Tarapur, the team screened over 3,000 applications. Youngsters who live in the catchment areas of these plants are mostly children of poor farmers, factory workers and labourers who can only dream of a career, given their financial situation.
Like brothers Sanjay and Ashok Kholya, who moved to Tarapur from Uttarakhand two years ago when a strike shut down their father's factory. Last year, they scored in the high eighties in their Class XII finals. "Between our father losing his job and our mother sick with diabetes, there was no way we could have continued with our studies," says Sanjay, 18. So when they heard about Learnand-Earn, they jumped at the chance. Today, Sanjay works in the quality assurance department, while Ashok helps with research on new drugs.
Every month, they take home almost Rs 12,000 between them. At the end of three years, they will not only have a permanent position at Lupin, but also a BSc degree. "We see ourselves building a talent pipeline for all pharma companies with this initiative," says Kaza. "If, after being trained, some youngsters want to join another company, that's ok."
Rohit Pandit, 21, sees Learn-and-Earn as his shot at becoming a microbiologist. Pandit's mother has asthma, his aunt and uncle have high blood pressure and diabetes. So, while he spends his days at Tarapur culturing bacteria, Pandit dreams of finding alternative cures. His colleague, Aarti Dadmani, 19, sees her Lupin stint as an escape. Her parents wanted her to marry and pulled her out of college. "I wanted to study further, and make a career for myself," she says. "But my parents have no source of income. Now, besides studying, I also send money home."
EMPOWERING YOUNGSTERS
At Dr Reddy's, the self-managed team (SMT) is a multi-skilled entity of mainly high-school graduates which, with some handholding by a group of mentors, runs the plant with minimal supervision. The youngsters, aged 17-19 years, take their own decisions - whether about plant operations, or how they would like to juggle work and classes.
"The idea is to increase efficiency in manufacturing by reducing the number of layers [of hierarchy in the organisation," says Atul Dhavle, senior director, HR. "Your success in the marketplace depends on how swiftly you respond to the customer. Having a lean organisation helps reduce delivery time." It also helped cut the workforce by a third - from 120 to 40 - and reduce overheads in the company's plant at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The company first started an SMT in the Yanam plant (near Pondicherry) in 2002, and later at Baddi. Both have been setting new productivity records. Dhavle says a good production target is 240 people producing 100 million tablets a month. ( This appeared in The Hindu Business Line in 2011)
A prescription for sustained learning
Candidates enrolled in the company’s Learn and Earn programme at Tarapur (Maharashtra)
Mr Divakar Kaza
An employee enrolled in a PhD programme at a lab session at Lupin Research Park in Pune.
Whether it is youngsters fresh out of school or employees in positions across the organisation, Lupin is ensuring that all its personnel have the chance to keep growing on the job.
Sitting in the over Rs 5,700-crore Lupin Ltd's office in Mumbai's sprawling Bandra Kurla Complex, Human Resources President Divakar Kaza's thoughts have been elsewhere ever since a new initiative was rolled out in September last year. He has also been travelling, often to locations where the company's factories are, because they have housed some ‘special' employees for a year now. On a salary ranging from Rs 7,000 to Rs 9,000 are class twelve pass-outs enrolled in a ‘Learn and Earn' programme, which gives them the option to pursue a degree alongside over three years.
Lupin's new project is yet another case of marrying for mutual benefit the aspirations and needs of a set of youngsters with the company's manpower needs. People@Work has profiled companies such as Hardcastle Restaurants (McDonald's India – West and South) which has forged tie-ups with institutions such as Symbiosis and has made part-timing a way of work to encourage employees to study alongside.
Lupin seems to have taken the envelope a bit further, and to be fair, the nature of its workforce needs allows it to do so.
Fresh out of school
Between April and June is a busy time for the HR team at Lupin. That's the time when the company scouts around for science graduates to hire. That's also the time when students passing out from school are hoping to land their dream courses. For those who have to wait a while but with dreams no less, Lupin reaches out in September each year, with the lure of a job, and an education — 250 youngsters, 50 of them girls, came on board last year, while 400 have joined this year. The course is a customised BSc in Drug Sciences from YCMOU (Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University) that is held on weekends. Inductees, with at least 50 per cent in the science stream in class twelve and aged between 17 and 18 years, represent the first samples of what is an earnest HR exercise being undertaken at Lupin.
While Lupin has plants in eight cities in India, the programme is underway in three of them — at Indore, Goa and Tarapur.
“This is not a cost play. They cost us as much as the BSc graduates we hire. We take care of their accommodation; we pay about Rs 35,000 per person for the three-year course. At the same time, this is not a CSR exercise. This is at that spot of overlap between our HR needs and the aspirations of youngsters,” says Kaza.
The salaries paid to these inductees starts at Rs 7,000 per month in year one and goes up to Rs 8,000 in year two and to Rs 9,000 in the third year. In comparison, BSc graduates hired by the company are paid Rs 1,000 more per month. These employees also get 10 days off before their exams, and spend five days a week getting trained in the plant and six hours in class on weekends.
“There was a lot of scepticism at the start — now it has become a mission. For the first year, we have written off the expense. In the second year, we know we'll get some returns. But the energy and motivation we see is very strong. People who enrolled in the previous year are becoming ambassadors and bringing in more aspiring youngsters. They come with zero baggage and are willing to learn,” says Kaza.
The intent is to have 1,200 people in the programme in its third year, across three batches. When they pass out, Lupin is guaranteeing them jobs. With the growth of the company and growing headcount, there is no dearth of jobs, beams the HR head. On the contrary, they will be a welcome addition to the Lupin family. But what are the chances of them leaving after getting their degrees?
“We are mentally prepared for the fact that there will be those who want to leave. My reading is that 10 to 15 per cent will leave. But they will be industry-ready by then,” says Kaza. In the first year, there have been virtually no drop-outs — just two or three of the 250 who joined have left to take up other options in the Navy or enrol in full-time courses, we are told.
Training thrust
Lupin employs 13,200 people who are scattered across eight countries. Except for a thousand abroad, the rest are in India. Of these, R&D accounts for 1,200; sales around 5,000; manufacturing 4,200; and the rest, about 1,800, are absorbed in admin and technical support.
Attrition in the company is at 15 per cent if one does not include ‘early stage attrition' which counts people leaving within 90 days. Overall, it would be around 20 per cent, says Kaza. Sales and manufacturing account for the maximum attrition and R&D the least.
But the thrust on training is across the board at Lupin.
Over the last couple of years, there have been a slew of tie-ups to incorporate formal education in partnership with institutes as part of training.
The R&D team has a number of aspiring PhDs — 12 of them began working towards their doctorates in 2009 while on their jobs. This was possible through a tie-up forged by Lupin with Pune University, BITS (Pilani) and Manipal University.
In February 2010, 50 graduates with qualifications such as MSc, B Pharm and B Tech, employed at Lupin, commenced a two-year MS in Pharmaceutical Operations and Management, which involves classes for 40 days during the year. This course, organised in association with BITS Pilani, will enable them to move up to the middle and senior management level with an understanding of concepts such as costing and management, explains Kaza.
He says, “Lupin pays Rs 1 lakh per head for the course, while they pay Rs 10,000. And there are no bonds. Another batch will start in June.”
Yet another set of 25 people have signed up for a three-year MBA in Pharmaceutical Management in association with the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, which involves total course time of 100 days. Again, all costs, save 10 per cent, is being funded by the company.
Fifty of the 600 Area Managers of the sales force, which brought in close to Rs 2,000 crore in domestic revenue last year, are enrolled in a one-year e-MBA in association with the SP Jain Management Institute.
“In sales, for every five to seven people, there is a manager or supervisor. For every 50 people who do the course, there are 550 more aspiring to do the same. There are 3,500 salesmen at the grass roots who know that when they become area managers, they can join the course,” explains Kaza.
Among the case studies being taught at IIM (A) are two cases from Lupin, one of them on Talent Management, says a proud Kaza.
The institute also engages the senior leadership of the company with in-house professors, in three- to four-week courses.
The thrust on education is seen as critical — the workforce has grown from 11,000 in 2010 to 13,200 currently, and plans are afoot to take this to 15,000 by the end of 2013.
Kaza surmises, “Unlike short bursts of training, we believe that education is a long-term investment.”
So far, the returns are showing. Among those enrolled in the PhD, MS, MBA and eMBA courses, the attrition is nil.
For the company's HR team, it's just what the doctor ordered.
This appeared in the Hindu Business Line on July 23, 2007.
<><><>This appeared in the CIO Decisions magazine in August 2007 <><><><>
This appeared in the Hindu Business Line on July 23, 2007.
<><><>This appeared in the CIO Decisions magazine in August 2007 <><><><>
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment