HR in Pantaloon Retail Limited | Analysis

This project starts with the history of Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited which is biggest player in the retail industry and got diversified into many sectors. After that discussed about the HR policies and practices which are followed by Pantaloons in appointing the employees such as Service Rules, Promotion Policy and Rules, Wage Structure, Employee Motivation and Welfare Schemes, Health and Safety Rules, Training and Development. After completion of HR policies and Practices then discussed about the type of job and the applicant who is getting recruited depending upon the level of the company that is junior, middle, senior. Pantaloons use some Training Methodologies for training their employees.

Company Profile:-

Pantaloon Retail Limited is India’s largest retailing company which operates multiple retail formats in both Lifestyle and value segments. The headquarters of Pantaloon Retail Limited is in Mumbai and operates all around India and has over 30,000 employees working for over 1000 stores across 73 cities in India. Pantaloon Retail Limited includes a chain of fashion outlets such as Pantaloons, Big Bazaar and Brand Factory. The company also operates its products online by the web portal named futurebazaar.com.

Values of Pantaloons:-

The Success story of Pantaloons had built on a number of core company values that have remained almost unchanged. These values are:

Indianness: confidence in their business structure.

Leadership: To be a leader, both in thought and business.

Respect & Humility: To respect every individual and be humble in conduct.

Introspection: leading to purposeful thinking.

Openness: to be open and receptive to new ideas, knowledge and information.

Valuing and Nurturing Relationships: to build long term relationships.

Simplicity & Positivity: Simplicity and positivity in our thought, business and action.

Adaptability: to be flexible and adaptable, to meet challenges.

Flow: to respect and understand the universal laws of nature.

HR Policies and Rules:-

Promotion Policy & Rules:

Promotion Policy and rules are applied to employees depending upon on their ability of performing work, managing their skills and the level of experience.

Wage Structure:

Every Job has awarded different wages depending upon the position of the employee and the responsibility levels which the employees take over. This enables the company to:

Provide competitive salaries for each job taking into account market rates.

Reward everyone according to their contribution.

The Salary allocated ranges depends upon the employees position type for employees performing the standard duties of their jobs. Set up maximum and minimum levels within those ranges to account for variations in experience and skill levels. The pay defers from Store Administered employee to Head Office Administered employee. The payment of the employees is directly by the manager or it is deposited into the savings account which the employee holds. The Company reserves the right to suspend pay where an employee fails to notify about absence from work.

Employee motivation & welfare schemes:

Reward Policies

Pantaloon believes in sharing its progress and profitability and reward accordingly. They offer a range of benefits which are service-related, so they build up as service of an employee increases. Each element of the benefits package is reviewed regularly to ensure it remains competitive and maintains pantaloon as a leading employer. Some of them are:

To extend a discount facility to employees of Future Group.

Healthcare Offers

Pantaloons offer following healthcare options to all monthly paid employees and their partners:

Private health insurance

Gratuity Scheme

Free medical treatment for the employee, spouse and the dependent family members.

Female employees can have Maternity leave – 84 days maximum on completion of 160 days.

Travel & Expenses

Travel is an integral part of work for many people. Pantaloons offers travel options and expenses so employees can travel in a secure and comfortable manner.

Social Activities

Pantaloons provides the employees the scheme named “Seekho” which enables them to develop their skill sets and opt for any educational courses so that they can increase their productivity which adds additional value for the company development in future. Every employee of the pantaloon contributes small amount of money from their salary each month voluntarily to the pantaloon foundation which they can use for any emergency needs.

Lifestyle Options

Pantaloon provides following options and benefits:

Flexible working

Employees can avail advance of 7 days of all purpose leave during the probation period which will be adjusted in the employees leave balance.

Leave accumulation will be permissible up to 90 days period.

Only 15 days will be carried forward to the next fiscal year.

Corporate helpline – A 24-hour confidential support service which help employees to manage stress, personal, traumatic or financial issues which are affecting their attendance or performance at work.

Health & safety rules:

Pantaloon is committed to ensure the health, safety and well being of all its employees, customers and others who visit or work in their premises.

Company’s Policy on Health and Safety includes:

The Health & Safety Committee

The Committee member’s advice on health & safety policy who monitors employees effectiveness and reviews the key performance and take measures on a quarterly basis.

The Store/Site Manager

The Store/Site Manager is responsible for ensuring with Fire, Health & Safety Officer that Company Health & Safety Policy is implemented. This includes:

Suitable Induction and Legislative Update training for Fire, Health & Safety.

The prevention, investigation and the reporting of accidents.

The completion of ongoing Risk Assessments and maintenance of known hazard information.

Property, Development and Facilities Management

They are responsible for the provision of working areas, equipment and materials that are safe and don’t pose any risk to health.

Training and development:

Personal Development

Learning & career development

Pantaloons are committed to develop its employees into skilled, customer-focused, enthusiastic and motivated employees. They provides the employees the scheme named “Seekho” which enables them to develop their skill sets and opt for any educational courses so that they can increase their productivity which adds additional value for the company development in future. An employee is equally responsible for learning and development. Training is given as and when required e.g. the implementation of new systems.

Review of performance

Line managers review performance continually in order to assess how a particular employee is doing. It helps employee in assessing themselves and look for further development.

Highlights of Equal Opportunities Policy are:

Promote a working environment free from discrimination, harassment and victimization on the basis of:

Gender, sexual orientation.

Marital status

Race, color, nationality.

Working Hours

Religion or Political views.

Age and Disability.

Identification of Jobs and their Analysis:

Pantaloons as above mentioned it has around 30,000 employees who are working under different roles depending upon their qualifications. This means there is diversity in the Company distribution of work load as per the qualifications of the persons applying in. There are three levels of Jobs in any company viz. Entry Level, Middle Level, Senior Level. These levels have their own Job description, Job Specification and the Recruitment and Selection procedure etc These are briefly discussed below:-

Entry Level:

The entry level jobs at Pantaloons for example the Stock and Inventory staff and others.

Job description:

The Applicant for the Stock and Inventory the employees are responsible for shipping of inventory and supplying the inventory from the internal locations to the other departments. This means he pulls all the items from the storage, physically move them.

Job Specification:

Strong Organizational Skills.

Multi Tasking ability.

Basic computer knowledge.

Strong Communication Skills.

Must be soft spoken and must have a smiling face while treating the customer.

Able to work under pressure.

Detailed recruitment and staffing:

For recruitment in this level a mass number of people are required.

The company goes with advertisements and newspaper for walk in interviews.

The company chooses reference and consultancies for the recruitment of the employees as one strategy.

There are interviews conducted by departmental managers , store managers, HR heads and the team leaders respectively

After all this process done if the person gets through all the interview rounds then he is given his place in the team or the job part for which he/she is fit for.

Middle Level:

The middle level job is of a Store Manager who is supposed to be responsible for both the functioning of the firm in maintaining the store and the management of the entry level people.

Job Description:

Minimum 3-5 years of experience in maintaining stores and performing the operational requirements.

Monitoring the entire store and planning about the future services and training the new employees in their work.

Must provide extremely high customer service and must make sure that the employees working under him must also provide same level customer satisfaction.

The candidate is expected to develop functional understanding of business as well as understand the way information about the workplace and scheduling the processes.

Good understanding of concepts such a Market basket analysis, Regression analysis etc.

Job Specification:

Graduate (preferable in retail management) with strong Maths background.

Business Systems Analyst Skills.

An experience of minimum 3-5 years is required.

Advanced Computer knowledge.

Effective verbal and written communication skills.

Project management skills and strong leadership skills.

Ability to manage multitasks in very fast pace environment.

Broad knowledge on retail business.

Strong analytical skills.

Must be able to make seasonal strategy of a product.

Detailed recruitment and staffing:

The company produces vacancies in the consultancies, news paper advertisement for walk in.

Now the company selects or shortlists the viable profiles and then starts the recruitment.

Now the interviews are conducted as per these persons one by one viz. department head, store manager, zonal manager, HR.

Senior Level:

The senior level job is of Operations Manager who is responsible for all marking targets for different groups and is responsible for the other high end activities in the organization.

Job Description:

Minimum 5+ years of experience in performing the operational requirements.

Interviewing the low level managers and make sure that all the employees understands the organization goals.

Must provide extremely high customer service and must make sure that the employees working under him must also provide same level customer satisfaction.

Must manage business operations activities and have to deliver the results according to the organizational strategy.

Good understanding of concepts such a Market basket analysis.

Job Specification:

Excellent communication is required.

Knowledge of business processes & their interdependencies.

Ability to give short-term solutions to business problem from a business continuity point of view.

Develop report and review on all the operations which are taking place under his control.

Ability to develop long term solutions for business problems with a view on repercussions on the whole business.

Leadership skills required.

An experience of minimum 5+ years is required

Detailed recruitment and staffing:

Same process is followed while giving ads in the news papers and consultancies.

The main interview is taken by the HR and then supervised by the directors and the BOD’s.

SELECTION PROCESS

Finalization of the Candidate: Once a candidate is finalized, he has to submit the following documents:

Last salary slip

Last appointment letter

REFERENCE CHECK: After the submission of slip and the appointment letter, the candidate has to give the names and contact details of two professional references from his current company/any of the previous companies where he has worked earlier.

A telephonic call is made to the persons and the following is checked:

Education background

Professional Background

Personal background

Interpersonal skills for the formalities.

OFFER LETTER: After checking all the references, if the candidates are found suitable, the offer letter is rollout to the candidate for joining.

Effective Training Methodologies:

Effective training methodology which a firm uses to adopt for the junior level executive is “Experiential action learning”. This method requires an instructor to be very skilled and knowledgeable about the process which the firm is following for its growth. Employees who are new to the organization are a part in the experiential action learning which may indeed help them to develop a better sense of knowledge which can improve the capabilities of the employee.

Effective training methodology which a firm uses to adopt for the middle level executive is “On-the-job training” which is a kind of Word-Driven Training, in this type of training, supervisors or mentors-who must be very skilled in the work being taught- instruct participants in a hands-on environment. Design time is usually minimal because on-the-job training is not a formal process

Effective training methodology which a firm uses to adopt for the senior level executives are “Problem-bases learning” in which participants focus on problems with the help of resource person, as required. Learners determine the pace of the training and its content. Training occurs in the sense that the group learns about the problem; at the same time, a solution is developed. The research indicated that people learning through problem-based training are more motivated.

Conclusion:

Pantaloon Retail (India) limited is not only an organization but it is an institute which provides its employees an opportunity for learning which helps in development of the company. They always look for the people who are high in knowledge which will help the organization success. Pantaloons always welcome change in fashion by thinking out of the box. Pantaloons has achieved success through its capability and competence to lead the change when compared to past. Pantaloons most innovative concepts are now considered as the base line in the retail industry. Pantaloon Retail (India) limited started of with manufacturing of garment later it expanded into the retailing market when compared to any other retail company. Pantaloon Retail (India) limited was the 1st to introduce the concept of the departmental store in retail sector for the entire family members through Pantaloons. Pantaloon Retail (India) also launched hypermarket in India as Big Bazaar, a large discount store and it also launched Food Bazaar. Today Pantaloon Retail (India) limited is diversified into so many fields and evolved as largest retail company in India.

The way we work is distinctly “Pantaloon”. The biggest advantage of pantaloons is the courage of dreaming of becoming diversified into many fields and turning the dream into reality which changes the lives of the consumer. Pantaloon is an invitation to join a place where there are no boundaries to what you can achieve. Means employee are given importance to be open in their thoughts and requested to give their opinions for the organizational success.