BUILDING HR COMPETENCIES IN RPG GROUP

LAYING FOUNDATION FOR A STRONG

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP
Dr. ARVIND N AGRAWAL and YOGESH PATGAONKAR
About the Authors
Dr. Arvind Agrawal is an IIT Kharagpur and IIM (A) alumnus,
majoring in Marketing and Human Resource Development. Since
1999, he is President Corporate Development and Group HR in
the RPG Group. His current responsibilities in RPG comprise HR,
TQM and Information Technology. The first 12 years of his
working life were spent in the HR function in
companies like Escorts and Modi Xerox. On
the professional front, Arvind has been active
in Management & HR forums in the country. In 1992, he was
awarded the National HRD Award.
Yogesh Patgaonkar, a product of Narsee Monjee Institute of
Management Studies currently Vice President - Group HR at RPG
Enterprises.

requent travelers to city of Bangalore

who also love food, cant escape MTR
near Lalbaugh. Set up in the most
unassuming environment, the place has
always been on the Top of the Foodies
List for decades. For the patrons, the name
is synonymous with high quality and
hygiene. To build a reputation like that
without spending a shilling on interiors
must have been a herculean task. If you
look into the history, the strategy adopted
was very simple For many years, the
entrance to the restaurant was through the
kitchen to enable the patrons to get satisfied
with the cleanliness in the kitchen before
actually eating the food.. Simple yet
profound .. if you are familiar with the
credibility of MTR, they got the formula
correct .. to build your credibility, first
start with your kitchen and not the dining
hall!

We, at RPG HR, in our journey to become

business partners took a somewhat similar
path about a decade back. It has been an
enriching experience to build this
partnership on the foundation of
credibility first a journey that gathered
momentum with first putting the kitchen
in order by starting with building HR
competencies and then continuing it as a
way of life.
Background:
The RPG Group is one of the leading
business conglomerates with diversified
interests. By the turn of the millennium,
RPG Group was a significant player in
sectors as diverse as Tyres, Power,
Infrastructure, Entertainment, Agriculture,
Technologies, Retail, Chemicals as well as
Life Sciences.
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The RPG Group has always believed in the

philosophy of nurturing leadership
pipeline through developing internal
talent. There is also a belief that at General
Management level, it is more about
Management than about domain and
high-caliber managers can move across
the domains and businesses. As per the
last survey as high as 80% of our
SBU Heads/CEOs have track record
of working with at least two of the RPG
Group businesses.
All this has posed a unique challenge to
Human Resources Function - to act as glue
to the diverse set of businesses and play
an active role to develop leadership
pipeline across the businesses. One of the
significant interventions is the constitution
of HR Business Review Board (HR-BRB)
comprising HR Heads of all companies
together with President HR who also is a
part of Management Board of RPG Group.
HR BRB is chaired by Group Chairman Mr.
Harsh Goenka himself and is held once
every quarter. This has proved to be a
simple yet effective way for the RPG HR
community to stay in touch. In one of these
HR BRBs it was decided that in order to
become a strong business partner, we must
work on building the HR competencies.
The starting point was the direction
provided by the Group Chairman to the
HR community to embark on the HR
competency development.
Process of Building HR competencies in
RPG
Exhibit 1 shows various steps involved in
implementation HR competency initiatives
at RPG Group. The details of each of the
steps are given below:
Alignment of HR Vision and Mandate to
RPG Vision and Values:
RPG Vision and Values form the
foundation of HR Competency Model
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The RPG Vision

We shall be a leading Indian Group with a focus
on market capitalisation through:
Alignment of HR Vision and mandate to RPG Vision
and Values

Define HR Competency Model in line with HR

Vision and mandate

Identification of key HR Roles and Design of RoleCompetency requirement matrix for each role

Identification of HR professionals to be assessed

against each role

Assessment of HR professionals as per the RoleCompetency requirement matrix and feedback

Development Action Plans (DAPs) and execution of

agreed DAPs by concerned HR professionals

Exhibit 1
Leadership in Profitability and Revenue
Growth in our chosen businesses
Being a Customer centric organisation
Being the most exciting workplace
The vision clearly spelt out the importance
of all stake-holders viz: Investors,
customers and employees.
RPG Core Values
1. Customer Sovereignty
2. People Orientation
3. Innovation and Entrepreneurship
4. Transparency and Integrity
5. Anticipation, Speed & Flexibility
6. Passion for Superior Performance
HR Vision and Mandate
The HR vision and the HR Mandate is
derived from the RPG Group Vision. The

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HR Mandate for the RPG Group lists down

the key deliverables for the HR Function
in the Group. These have been identified
based on the expectations from the HR
Function as defined by the Group
Chairman . Qualitative inputs were also
taken from CEOs and Managing Directors
of the Group Companies about their
expectations from HR.
HR Vision:
Creating an exciting workplace which
inspires superior people performance
With this vision, HR is mandated to create
an ethos that helps employees live the RPG
values and deliver the results as per the
vision.
HR Mandate:
Key deliverables of HR Mandate:
1. Build a High Performance Organization
2. Align HR interventions with Business
Objectives
3. Drive People Development & Growth
Opportunities
4. Champion RPG Values
5. Creating an Exciting Workplace
RPG HR Competency Model
A team of HR professionals drawn from
various businesses helped to finalise the
RPG HR Competency model and its
Critical components.

RPG HR Competency Model has four

critical components :
A. Business Mastery
a. Commercial Skills
b. Management skills
c. Strategic Perspective
B. HR Mastery
a. Management Development Skills
b. Functional Expertise
C. Change & process Mastery
a. Conceptual Skills
b. Group Process Skills
c. Reasoning Ability
D. Personal Attributes (defined as traits
Must Have in HR professionals and
aligned to the RPG Core Values)
a. Customer Orientation
b. People Orientation & Meeting
Commitments
c. Innovation and Entrepreneurship
d. Transparency and Integrity
e. Anticipation, Speed & Flexibility
f. Passion for Superior Performance
Identification of key HR Roles and
Design of Role-Competency
requirement matrix for each role
This was one of the most important
steps in the diversified RPG Group. These
roles were defined to ensure that
all important HR functions across the
RPG Group are covered. Identification of
these roles also ensured a common
framework of competency assessment for
HR function.
Following were the 8 HR roles identified:
1. Head Learning & Development
2. Training Manager
3. Unit IR Head

Exhibit 2 : RPG HR Competency Model

4. IR Manager
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5. Sector HR Head

Please note that though the competencies

are common across all the HR roles, the
level of competencies required for each role
will
be different. The levels of
competencies are rated on a scale of 1 to 5
and are defined as follows:

6. Company HR Head
7. Unit HR Head
8. HRD Manager
Each of these roles was mapped against the
desired level of competencies as per RPG
HR Competency Framework and
measurement parameters were evolved to
define Role-Competency Requirement
Matrix for each of these roles. Please refer
Annexure I that represents the Matrix for
the Role of Head Learning &
Development. Matrix with desired level of
competencies was designed for each role.

1. Basic
2. Developing
3. Competent
4. Advanced
5. Expert
Assessment of HR professionals as per
the Role-Competency requirement
matrix and feedback

Annexure - I

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Around 84 HR professionals were

identified across RPG Group Companies
and structured Assessments were carried
out. Each participant was given feedback
based on the strengths and the areas of
improvement. At HR Functional level a
competency matrix based on Assessment
was derived. This gave a clear direction to
the efforts that needed to be taken at
Group Level.
Development Action Plans (DAPs) and
execution of agreed DAPs by concerned
HR professionals
Once the Assessments were completed,
each participant was given feedback to
draw a Development Action Plan (DAP).
In each DAP, the concerned professional,
his immediate supervisor and Head HR (in
case immediate supervisor was not Head
HR) were involved. Following were some
of the guidelines for DAP:
1. After taking the stock of all
competencies key competencies to be
identified for action based on the
following parameters:
a. Criticality for the job
b. Visibility-Impact-Ease factor (High
visibility and impact with relative ease
of implementation)
c. Choose not more than 2 competencies
for time-bound action planning
2. Ownership of DAP is primarily with the
Individual
3. Identify the root causes for impact on
performance. The root causes to be
identified as attitudinal, knowledge
related or system related
4. Generate options for the Development
Area identified based on resources
available
At RPG Group we created a DAP wizard
which helps participants for root-cause
analysis and presents repository of
resources available.

Key Learning points:

As we, at RPG Group, continue with our
journey to build HR Competencies, there
are some key enablers that we learnt on the
way:
Support from the TOP is absolutely
essential. In our case, Group Chairman
Mr Harsh Goenka not only provided
the initial direction but also reviewed
it in quarterly HR BRBs. Once the plan
was finalised, President HR personally
communicated to all company CEOs so
that everyone was on the same page.
Alignment with the RPG Group
Vision helped us to stay focused on
why we had undertaken this exercise
rather than working in a functional Silo.
Decision points during design phase
were always anchored around the
question Is this in line with our
vision?
Simple yet comprehensive process
design helped us to implement the
process. Before we initiated any action,
process design and implementation
plan was documented to the last detail.
This ensured absolute clarity during the
implementation and also helped
process efficiency
Supporting Environment is equally
critical for any such initiative. At RPG
Group, we always maintained a focus
on continuous learning and
professional development:
o Continuous Learning Senior HR
professionals in the Group are
always encouraged to go for better
learning options including higher
education. What helps is a
structured
training
and
development calendar published as
a part of RPG University initiative.
o Diverse Career Opportunities
Clearly identified HR competency
framework has helped us induct
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professionals from streams as

diverse as marketing, strategy and
technology into HR at senior levels.
HR professionals also have been
continuously encouraged not only
to take different assignment within
HR but also into Line Business
Function from time to time
This is a continuous journey and the
success lies in continuing the efforts and
integrating the learning as we go along.
As Frost famously said..

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,And miles to go
before I sleep ..
Sample Role-Competency
Requirement Matrix
The following Matrix was drawn for each
of the eight roles defined for HR and
desired level of competencies were
determined for each role. Thus the
benchmarking of HR professionals was
done as per these expectations for each role
rather than general benchmarking.

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