Mr.George Thomas has done B.Sc in Physics from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala and PGDPM (Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management) from Rourkela Institute of Management Studies. He started his career with Jhaveri Polymers Ltd, Silvassa as Manager -HR & Admin and worked with Sembcorp Logistics India Pvt Ltd, Kolkata as Regional Head –HR & Admin. He also worked with Al Faraa Construction and Industrial Group as Head – HR& Admin in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. He is currently working with M/s.MSP Steel and Power Ltd as Vice President – HR & Admin. Mr.George is having more than 23 yrs of working experience in HR and out of 23 years, he is working as CHRO for the last 12 years.
Mr.George is an active Executive Committee member of CII Eastern Region HR & IR Subcommittee. He is the Asst. Secretary of NHRD Eastern Chapter and an active member of ISTD Kolkata Chapter.
The Awards which he received in the HR function are:
- Genius HR Excellence Award for Innovative Talent Management & Succession Planning in 2012
- Genius HR Excellence Award for Innovative retention Strategy in 2013
- Genius HR Excellence Award for Innovation in Recruitment in 2014
- Genius HR Excellence Award for Innovative Talent Management & Succession Planning in 2015
- Genius HR Excellence Award for CHRO of the year 2017
- Kolkata Best Employer Brand Award 2017.
He received the Genius HR Excellence award for HR Leader of the year 2015. He also received the Genius HR Excellence award for CHRO Leader of the year 2017. Mr.George has been instrumental in setting up the HR& Admin Department in MSP Group and contributed to the growth of MSP Group from a Rs.600 crore company in the FY 06-07 to Rs.3000 crores company in FY 16-17. His expertise in HR Strategies, PMS, Talent Management, Employee Retention, Competency Mapping and assessment stands out, while also touching his personal space.
How important is performance management in today’s high flux organization?
It is very important to measure the performance of the employees in each area from the individual or the department level of the organization because it is aligned with the organization’s vision and mission. So if a company has a certain target like we have to achieve a target maybe by 2020 then everybody would have their own targets whether in the marketing, production, HR, so everybody would have to be aligned with it so that it can be done through the performance management system.
How extensively are employees in your organization involved in activities such as strategy-development, target setting, planning and setting accountability measures?
We have got committees like for any policy decision making we have got a plant core committee. There are key people of the organization where manufacturing units are involved, so when we are making a policy based on the organizational needs we discuss it with the core committee and take their views and draft a policy. Then again that draft will be sent to them, they will go through it, put their opinions and again we will discuss it and then we finalize the policy. So here what we are getting is, we are taking the support of the stakeholders because they are involved in the process of making the policy. So this is how we ensure the participation of our employees.
As a leader, do you engage employees in regular discussions about employee progress?
Yes, we do measure their performance. We have got monthly review meetings of every department which are based on KRAs for the particular divisions. So in the meetings we discuss and we have minutes of the meetings and then accordingly again the minutes will be reviewed in the next month and then the action is taken. So that is again the IMS format we are following for the action plan. The aims of the action plan are mentioned, that is, who will be responsible for it, who will be assisting things and what will be the target date of completion. The minutes are also considered accordingly.
How often do you hear people leave due to a bad boss or their performance not valued properly?
That is very less in our organization that people are leaving because of the bosses. That happens in a plant in some cases and in some departments if the HOD is not very professional and the engineers are facing problems because they are professional, basically they face the problem of getting connected with the HODs. So that is very less here, but we conduct exit interview and based on that we take action to control and get the feedback whether the reason for leaving is due to a bad boss, salary, career growth, etc.
What are your future plans with regard to Performance Management?
For Performance Management, we are going with the Balance Score Card implementation. We will be using different HR software and we will convert it to individual KRAs and KPIs of every person. Now the company has got its certain own KRAs and KPIs, now that will be divided into separate marketing KRA and KPI, HR KRA and KPI and all other departments, then we will have a workshop with the employees and then we will make individual KRAs. So once that is done we will measure it as per the Performance Management system, we will have reviews, online quarterly reviews with the software, then we will take the average of every quarter. Not on yearly basis, we have been doing quarterly performance appraisal of the employees. Then in future, we may go for monthly review systems.
Have special management bodies or units been created to develop and implement Performance Management initiatives?
Yeah, we have different core committees then we have work plan core committee, we have teams for each area they are working on according to which we have core committee meetings, planned core committee meetings. Each department has their own roles to achieve their targets according to which they perform.
