People come first at TCL

Year of people | Fun@work | Theatre | Community involvement

People come first at Tata Chemicals. In the recent past, the company has grown from strength to strength, and across geographies and cultures. TCL is now also present in the US, UK, Europe and Africa. New businesses have been developed both in India and overseas. None of this would have been possible without the team effort put in by our people.

The Year of People initiatives encourage people to spend less time at our workstations, and more time walking around and interacting with others:

Bol TCL Bol is a programme where Fridays are meant for talking. No internal e-mails are to be sent or read on Fridays. Employees should only respond to external mails. The time saved can be used to meet people in the office.

Friday Talkies is an initiative where outstation travelling is discouraged on the 1st and 4th Friday of every month. Meetings, seminars, training workshops should not be slotted on these days. This enables people to have more time for friends and families on weekends.

Home Shanti Home is a programme where the company discourages staff from working late. Lights will be switched off by 6.30 pm on weekdays. Working late will require the approval of senior heads of the offices.

	Oorja is an annual cultural festival. A theme is chosen and inter-location competitions are held for teams (employees and family members) to present their concepts in the form of skits, stage shows, etc.
	Manthan is the quarterly internal communication magazine of TCL that covers events and happenings. Employees or their family members can contribute articles, poems etc.
	Tata world website is open to all Tata group employees. They can contribute articles, participate in literary competitions, share their experiences and learning, and make friends across the Tata group.
	Fun committees are in place in Mumbai and Noida offices to conduct regular events like quiz competitions, New Year party, birthday parties etc.
	Sports events are held around the year and at different locations.

Oorja: The use of theatre
TCL uses participatory theatre as an innovative internal communication tool. The idea behind theatre is to go beyond regular channels of communication (intranet, newsletter, etc) to find a more interactive and intensive methodology of communication. Theatre has never been used before to achieve a company's internal communication objectives. But TCL believes that thinking, feeling and action modality of theatre are necessary to influence mindsets and beliefs, and thus help implement organisation-wide change.

Theatre has the potential to:

	Boost healthy competitive spirit amongst employees
	Create a platform for recognition
	Create a fun environment
	Break the monotony of the daily routine
	Generate a creative thought process, leading to efficient and productive activities
	Build a flexible and forward looking mindset
	Help in sharpening or honing of skills
	Facilitate better understanding of peers and seniors leading to transparency within the employees
	Ensure free flow of ideas
	Bring freshness in one's approach towards work

At TCL, this platform was branded Oorja. Theatre is being used as an effective tool to successfully communicate themes such as innovation, globalisation, values and cultural pillars, and safety, health and environment within the organisation. This year we hope to institutionalise our credo ‘Human Touch of Chemistry’ in the hearts and minds of our employees, through the Oorja platform.

Ever year about 7000 members inclusive of employees and their families get involved in the Oorja process. It was introduced as a quarterly event for employees and planned as an exciting and participative programme that creates a platform to bring out the latent talents of the employees and builds a culture of learning and development, leading to growth. It corroborates one of TCL’s cultural pillars of collaborative responsiveness and encourages teamwork. Mega Oorja has being positioned as the annual theatre based event cutting across work levels and across geographies, and also includes the families of the employees.

Community involvement and volunteerism
Tata Chemicals actively encourages its employees to engage with the community, wherever they are located. Voluntary hour efforts are recognised by the head of community development and the managing director.

Rural development: TCSRD is involved in various activities and is always in need of volunteers. TCSRD also keeps a track of these voluntary hours. Employees can get their volunteer cards from the local TCSRD office.

Community involvement activities: In keeping with our credo, the ‘Human Touch of Chemistry’, TCL has always demonstrated its commitment towards improving the quality of life of communities around us. Our employees and their families at the plant locations have supported TCSRD in various community initiatives by contributing as volunteers.

HOPE is a community involvement and volunteering program at TCL, which aims at taking employee volunteering forward at our various corporate and regional offices. Its objective is to give the employees working in these offices an opportunity to work towards giving back something to the community. 

Initiated by a group of keen and enthusiastic employee volunteers, HOPE acts as a platform where employees utilise their time, skill and energy to improve the quality of life of the needy. To guide the team in this endeavour, the Society for Service to Voluntary Agencies (SOSVA) has been assisting the volunteers, to streamline the functioning of HOPE.

In its first year, HOPE selected the theme of Swasth Aangan (cleanliness and hygiene), a successful initiative at our plant locations, as the focus area. The aim is to inform and enlighten young children about various aspects related to sanitation, health and environment.  

SOSVA has helped HOPE to identify and select an established NGO that works with children and whose requirement and ideology matched ours. After in-depth interactions, site visits, introspection and discussions, HOPE has selected the Janvi Charitable Trust as its NGO partner.