On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Sandeep Kumar, Senior Manager Operations Pune and Operational Excellence Lead India at Rich Products Corporation which is a multinational food-products corporation.

With over 15 years of experience across world-class organizations ranging from manufacturing, FMCG & power division, Sandeep's experience as a production engineer has given him an in-depth look at driving a manufacturing plant, production management, quality engineering and process improvement.

In this far-ranging conversation, we discuss with Sandeep:

• The three most important leadership lessons 
• Post-pandemic effect on the manufacturing industry
• How to address and solve for workforce shortage following the pandemic
• How to reduce attrition in your manufacturing workforce
• HR challenges in the manufacturing industries: recruiting, attrition, engagement, productivity and innovation

Three most important leadership lessons

Building trust among employees, creating an unbiased approach toward everyone to provide them with equal opportunities, and supporting them to have a strong belief in themselves are the three most essential leadership lessons that Mr. Sandeep Kumar learned from his mentors and seniors.

Recruitment challenges in the pandemic period

As employees left organizations on a large scale, Sandeep says that caring for employees is one of the best ways of addressing employee attrition. According to him, supporting employees during such challenging times is the key to managing attrition. Therefore, they experienced zero attrition in their Pune plant, due to which they did not face any major recruitment challenges.

Ways of improving employee retention rate

Security and future prospects are the two main factors an organization needs to take care of to improve its employee retention rate. Setting clear roadmaps for employees, i.e., adopting transparency, is also a key for employee retention, according to Mr. Sandeep Kumar. Employers who manage to take end-to-end responsibilities of their employees like their future, family responsibilities, work-life balance, etc., tend to retain their employees easily even if the employees get a better opportunity in the market.

Ways of fostering an engaging work environment

Sandeep says they use a tool called Total Productive Management that makes every employee accountable for their daily deliveries. The design of this tool promotes diversification and inclusion in the organization. Therefore, this tool can be a gamechanger in the manufacturing sector. The culture they foster in their workplace is so engaging that the employees are ready to visit the factory even during the pandemic.

Leveraging the latest techniques and tools to attract the talent

On this front, Sandeep feels that during the onboarding process, they need to focus on giving the employees an exact picture of how working in their organization will feel like. Along with the latest recruiting techniques, their global team is also working on acquiring tools to make the recruiting process smoother for both the interviewer and candidates.

Lowering labor cost with engagement, productivity, and automation

According to Sandeep, automation can reduce the numbers and remove the risk that comes with manual operations. Sandeep feels that they need to think global and act local. As a result, they try to observe the concepts of the global market and analyze them to understand if they will fit into the context of local markets.


Follow Sandeep on LinkedIn