Hindustan Soaps Limited produces 3 soaps – Janata (for lower middle-class), Lux (for middle-class) and Supreme Lux (for upper middle-class and rich). The company enjoys 50% market share for all 3 categories of soap, with a clear-cut market leadership in the domestic market.
The company has got a strong workforce of 4,000 employees, working on automated plants with good system-support. With traditional culture and organization structure, each employee possesses super-specialization in his/her job. This has brought up average productivity to 85% (which is highest in the industry).
Of late, the company has started facing competition from new entrants in the market (of which, three are foreign companies). These competitor companies are slim with limited workforce. It has been found that 20% of the company’s workforce is extra, due to the concept of super-specialization, causing non-mobility of the employees. It has also been observed that employee transfers, promotion to different newer jobs and acceptance of new job prescriptions are difficult. Too much of super-specialization has also hampered the general awareness of the employees. It has created serious amount of monotony for them.
Thirty percent of the company’s employees are going to retire in the next 2 years. This retirement may be used for overall ‘wage cost reduction’, by avoiding fresh recruitment.
The company is seriously thinking of making its employees versatile, aggressive, innovative and receptive. New processes and products, fast decision-making, flatness of the organization etc. are the need of the hour. Therefore, an employee is now to be exposed to more than one area of activity and skill, so that better use of resources would be possible.
Q.
Discuss the pros and cons of multi-skilling of employees (in the light of overall resource leverage).
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