Organizational

Behavior Case:

SEPTEMBER 3

RELIANCE
PRESENTED BY: Group 4

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Rock and Rap

Reliance Brands Limited (RBL) is part of the largest publicly-listed company in India,
Reliance Industries Group. Reliance Industries is ranked #1 Indian company by profit
and #305 based on sales revenue in Fortune Global 500 rankings (2018). RBL began
operations in October 2007 with a mandate to launch and build international and
domestic brands in the premium-to-luxury segment across apparel, footwear and
lifestyle businesses. Its current portfolio comprises of over 50 brand partnerships, some
of them being Armani Xchange, Brooks Brothers, Bottega Veneta, Coach, Diesel, Dune,
Emporio Armani, Ermenegildo Zegna, Giorgio Armani, Hamleys, Jimmy Choo, Kate
Spade, Michael Kors, Mothercare, Muji, Paul & Shark, Steve Madden, Superdry, Scotch
& Soda.

They believe in internal promotions. So they introduced “Rock and Rap”, which is a
method to evaluate employees on the basis of their work. The Rock and Rap is of six
months i.e. two quarters, in those two quarters employees have to be in top ten
percentile of the employees of that particular brand. For six months consistently
employees have to work at their best pace. After completing the programme if the
employee chooses rock he/she will be at the post of assistant store manager and if
he/she chooses rap, then opportunity to work in the backend of the company.

This is why initially the employees are very much passionate about the work but as the
timed passes, reality starts fading the color of enthusiasm. And the reality is they are
just recruiting staff with false hopes there are lots of terms and conditions applied to
this. Firstly even if an employee cleared rock and rap he has to be in the system for six
months more, so that they can understand the potential of that employee. Secondly, if
vacancy is not there employees have to wait for more than a year also.

Your relation with your boss matters a lot if you are in his/her good books it can change
your results, even if you are the top performer. Therefore initially people are very
enthusiastic and excited to work with international brands but after sometime the

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monotonous job results in more labor turnover. There was a guy who completed his
Rock and Rap in first two quarters with good numbers immediately after he joined, but
then also he didn’t got the post according to his potential ability. He waited for six more
months and worked on the same designation with the same energy but after an year he
lost his trust on the brand and changed his brand with the hope that the next brand
would accommodate him as assistant store manager. Then he worked as the ASM but
after two months he realized that he is getting same pay scale which he was getting g it
before. He talked to Human Resource several times, the manger and the director were
cooperative and helping him out. He had the authority and he was working for that
post but wasn’t getting paid off for the same. Then he was there for whole year to get
salary correction done but wasn’t able to. But even after this he worked for two and a
half years in the company to get what he deserves, after this he lost his calm and left
the job.
This create disturbance in customers also as they are somehow linked with that
employee because of his best services and the way he was in initial stage, it
demotivates staff as well as customers. If the company is not giving what they are
promising.

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