CASE STUDY

HEADSTART 2019
WITH ADITYA BIRLA GRASIM
PULP AND FIBRE
Dear Participants

Congratulations on making it to the Case Study Round

of Headstart 2019. Headstart is one of India’s biggest
and most highly esteemed HR leadership competitions.
This year, the finest b-schools from the HR domain in
India have made a mark at the competition. The race for
Headstart 2019 has been fierce and challenging, to say
the least. Therefore, it is indeed admirable that you aced
the simulation rounds.

We welcome you into the Case Study Round. This is an

important phase for your team as it will decide which
teams stay on their leadership journey. We sincerely wish
you the best of luck and hope that you persist in your
excellent efforts.

Warm regards,
Team Young Talent
 PROBLEM
STATEMENT:
How can the Pulp and Fibre Business HR team adopt
digitalization as a tool to enhance last-mile employee
connect and overall employee engagement and
experience?

1. What would be the key pegs of HR digital strategy to

engage younger employees, global employees,
distributed teams across locations?
2. What would be the obstacles to implementing such
digital HR strategy? How can the business overcome
this?
3. How can the business enhance HR to connect with
employees in all geographies to drive engagement?
4. What digital technology should HR adopt to bring
agility & productivity in its own function and ensure
the delivery of superior experience of HR services to
all employees?
5. How can HR drive learning through digital platforms?

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 About Grasim-Pulp & Fibre Business

Grasim – Pulp & Fibre is India's pioneer in VSF (Viscose Staple

Fibre), a man-made, biodegradable fibre with characteristics akin
to cotton.
A versatile and easily blendable fibre, VSF is used in apparel,
home textiles, dress materials, knitted wear and non-woven
applications. Grasim offers the entire range of cellulose fibres
under the umbrella brand 'Birla Cellulose'.
Grasim's fibres can be used in their original form or can be
blended with all-natural and synthetic fibres for enhanced comfort,
feel and lustre.
Production of VSF was started in 1954 at Nagda, in Madhya
Pradesh. The business has grown steadily over six decades to
become the leading player globally with ~18% market share.

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 The business has a global footprint spanning across 7 fibre plants
in 4 countries with a capacity of 988 KTPA (kilo tons per annum)
and pulp operations at 5 plants in 3 countries with a capacity of
1019 KTPA.
The business has 4 VSF manufacturing plants in India (Nagda,
Harihar, Kharach and Vilayat) under Grasim Industries Ltd., 3
overseas plants - Thailand (TRC), Indonesia (IBR), and China
(BJFCL).
The fibre manufacturing is supported by 50%-55% backward
integration with the Dissolving Grade (DG) pulp manufacturing
facilities in India (Harihar), Canada (AV Cell, AV Nackawic) and
Sweden (Domsjo).
The balance pulp requirement is covered by a long term strategic
supply contract with a leading global pulp manufacturer. Another
pulp mill at Terrace Bay (Canada) produces paper grade pulp which
is sold in the market and can potentially be converted to DG grade
pulp to meet the growth in fibre capacity.

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 SWEDEN

CANADA
CHINA

INDIA THAILAND

INDONESIA

The business focus is shifting from being a traditional commodity player

to a customer-centric organization.
The launch of Liva brand highlights the business’s strategic intent and is
considered one of the most innovative experiments in ‘ingredient
branding’.
Liva has had extraordinary success in its first few years post launch and
is showing very high potential to be a spearhead for demand creation
both at end-consumer and with the value chain levels.
While the business’s “direct customers” are yarn- makers (spinners), the
business also engage with the entire downstream value chain up until
the brands,retail and even the “end consumers” of textiles and apparels
to create a Pull for viscose fibre.
Such a changing business landscape needs a definitive step towards
transforming the business into a B2B2C (business to business to
consumer / customer) model with more business value being created
through ‘Pull’ rather than the earlier model of ‘Push’ marketing.
With Liva, the business has the potential to be the first major global
brand and the first real ingredient brand from the Aditya Birla Group. .
Like any new-age company the Pulp & Fibre business also needs to be
digitally ready to face challenges in this VUCA (volatile, uncertain,
complex, ambiguous) world. With changing business dynamics, the
team must think of innovative initiatives and platforms to create an
engaging work environment for its employees.

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 Workforce realities of P&F
The workforce is distributed across 8 countries & largely in remote
locations. Most of the manufacturing plants – both fibre and pulp,
are in very remote areas, especially fibre plants in China and
Indonesia and pulp plants in Canada. This has implications on the
employee attraction / retention and engagement. The aspirations
of the new generation of employees is very different from their
predecessors and for many the lifestyle they seek cannot be found
in remote locations. Thereby, making attracting high quality talent
a challenge. In cases where the talent is onboarded, retaining that
talent proves challenging – again due to the lack of aspirational
value of working and living in a remote location.

Fibre Plant (Management)

Country Plant name Plant Capacity Head Age >40 Age<40
(per day) count years years

India SFD Nagda 540 TPD 448 41% 59%

India BC Kharach 388 TPD 280 59% 41%
India Harihar 260 TPD 159 45% 55%
India GCD Vilayat 450 TPD 371 71% 29%
Indonesia IBR 578 TPD 69 13% 87%
Thailand TRC 390 TPD 62 18% 82%
China BJFCL 240 TPD 25 12% 88%
Note: TPD = Tons per Day, ADMT = Air Dried Metric Ton

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 Pulp Plant (Management)
Country Plant name Plant Capacity Head Age >40 Age<40
(per day) count years years
India Harihar 207 ADMT 143 49% 51%
Canada AV Nackawic 540 ADMT 109 32% 68%
Canada AV Cell 365 ADMT 60 25% 75%
Canada AV Terrace Bay 1000 ADMT 96 40% 60%
Sweden Domsjo 660 ADMT 103 27% 73%

Country Plant name Plant Capacity Head % >40 %<40

(per day) count years years
India Fibre HO & N.A 65 58% 42%
Pulp HO
India MBDD N.A 157 54% 46%

India R&D N.A 109 69% 31%

Millennials comprise almost 45% of the workforce (born after 1981)

Age Bracket India Overseas

20 to 30 yrs 328 38
30 to 40 yrs 620 97
40 to 50 yrs 420 176
50 to 60 yrs 358 166
>60 yrs 6 47
Total 1732 524

The multi generation diverse workforce co-exist in a collaborative

environment. In many scenarios, we have observed that younger
employees are leading larger teams across the business.
There are multifold challenges in engaging not just teams based in
remote plants but also small and geographically dispersed Sales &
Marketing teams. Whether those teams are located in Turkey,
Thailand, New York, or China.

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 Educational Qualification India Overseas
High School Diploma 3 49
Diploma / apprentice / associate 82 108
Undergraduate Degree 21 21
Bachelors 387 142
Bachelors Professional 628 115
Master 220 29
Mater Professional 336 39
Doctoral Degree 35 3
Others 20 18
Total 1732 524

Specialist roles are emerging and becoming more critical. Knowledge

transfer in this business scenario is a challenge with the ageing
workforce. This problem is further exacerbated when individuals to
whom the knowledge is transferred cannot be retained within the
company.
The advent of technology in communication is changing the overall
social dynamic of our business, and we aim to early adopt the best in
class technology solutions for our people.
Evolving business models and market pressure inevitably lead to a high
stress work environment. Which in and of itself can further alienate and
disengage the workforce.
We hope to change the employee expectations from the leadership
team – right from being approachable to an open door communication
and acceptance of a bottom up culture.
A bigger objective as Human Resource Professionals lies in
understanding the evolving employee aspirations like empowerment in
decision making to improve quality of work, need for seamlessness,
career opportunities, and flexibility to manage work life balance,
especially in teams with low engagement scores.

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 All the best at
the case study
round!

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To stay updated on Headstart 2019, follow our social media handles:
abglp abglp abglp_official_page Aditya Birla Group Leadership Programs