Rank 3: Home Away From Home Approach

Company Name: Mahindra Accelo - India

Industry: Manufacturing & Production

India HQ: Mumbai

Employee Strength: 291

Mahindra Accelo has a range of platforms that encourage employees to share their voice on matters relating to the organisation, collaborate for work and have the power to choose, involving employees on matters that directly impact them. Retired employees are also engaged as mentors for new or junior staff. A learning environment for employees is built around the 3E approach of Education, Experience and Exposure using Shadow Board, Kaizen culture, career conversations and grooming employees in multiple skill-sets. 

There are separate councils on promotion, compensation and performance with cross-functional participation. Rewards and Recognition programs acknowledge great performers, employees living up to the organisational values, and great ideas.

Ensuring Best Practices

The company has a program called ‘Family holiday at Club Mahindra’, wherein the company sponsors an employee and family for a vacation anywhere in India. This facility is available to employees across levels at Mahindra Accelo. Emphasis is that employees and their families should enjoy the holiday benefit from the company and the employee should avail of leave and spend time with family, thus there is no carry forward of unutilised holiday home stay.

Mahindra Accelo wants its employees to be proud of their workplace and treat it like their own. It believes that this should start with the junior employees. Thus was born the ‘Maze ghar mazi factory’ best practice. Each plant operations executive adopts a 500 sq feet area in the plant. The employees treat this as their own space and work on Kaizens and improvements, in partnership with others to showcase that area as a place of pride. This practice of My factory is my house has contributed significantly to the increase in the number of Kaizens.

The company also has an annual Accelo Innovation Competition, where teams showcase their innovations in an innovation mela. Teams are specifically encouraged and rewarded for suggesting innovations in another domain or function.  The essence is that often one becomes myopic in one function but can have interesting ideas related to another function. 

For The Employees

“All employees irrespective of designation, qualification or gender are treated equally and everyone is given a chance to be heard. Even during the pandemic, the company’s first priority was to ensure the safety and well-being of its employees. There were no lay-offs or pay cuts during the lockdown,” comments one of the company employees.