JK Cement pursues HR transformation with Saksham

Project Saksham is about revisiting and re-defining the strategic imperatives for the organisation for the next five years.

Clarity on desired outcomes, well-defined objectives, a well-charted path and a strategic plan are the essentials that lay the foundation for any sustainable and growth-oriented business. With that, it is also important for businesses to reflect on the old ways and re-design new ways to stay on track with the changing times. To align itself with these objectives, cement major JK Cement has launched Project Saksham in a bid to re-invent itself and stay ahead in time.

Project Saksham was launched as part of the company’s progressive journey towards building a future-ready organisation. Followed by Project Nirmaan, a Business Process Reengineering Project (BPR) that touches upon all business processes (marketing, logistics, finance, manufacturing and procurement), Saksham focusses on the development of people resources to lead the processes designed under Project Nirmaan.

“While project Nirmaan is an exercise to improve upon processes, defining standard procedures across the organisation or functions, project Saksham is about revisiting and re-defining the strategic imperatives for the organisation for the next five years,” says VDV Singh, head, HR, JK Cement.

He explains that under the initiative, the organisation is trying to revisit the strategic decisions for the next five years, starting with an organisational restructuring beginning at the top.

Singh adds, “Effectiveness comes from structured processes and not just strategic changes and process automation alone.” JK Cement is geared up for massive transformation as it revisits its policies and processes, aiming at not just an HR makeover but a holistic change that has a direct business impact.

Looking at a well-rounded transformational approach, under Project Saksham, the company is revitalising organisation structure, articulating HR strategy and structure, redesigning HR processes and policies and finally integrating the processes on an advanced technology platform. “With focused outcomes in mind, we are revisiting, rewriting and automating our processes under project Saksham,” Singh shares.

A change of this scale requires meticulous planning and clear objectives. Singh shares that the programme aims to enhance and accelerate the decision-making processes. Instilling more accountability and ensuring clarity on delegation of authority are among the expected outcomes of the initiative. Above all, the objective is to align HR requirements to business requirements and vice versa.
 
Operating for more than four decades now, JK Cement is also rapidly strengthening its succession pipeline, seeing it as the need of the hour. Its diversity figures have also gone up rapidly in the last five years as the company now has more females even at its plants across locations.
 
Singh shares that the company believes in a performance driven culture and hence ensures that its performance evaluation is objective, moral, ethical and free of all bias. It is how organisations can nurture trust among employees. Moreover, with many more changes and process makeovers in the plan, the transformation journey at JK Cement is an ongoing one and Singh shares that soon they will come up with more new developments as project Saksham progresses.