Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

: The Magic of Communication An organization can survive even the toughest of challenges if it is inwardly strong. This can be clearly observed in the HPCL case wherein the company came out of great pressures with flying colors. In 1995, Privatization of State-owned companies were the order of the day. The market was no longer state-controlled. Organizations like HPCL, with 49% of company sold to private investors, found that they needed to adapt to be in a position to compete with the private sector; changes which could get them closer to their customers. The Chairman and Managing Director of HPCL, Arun Balakrishnan, identified that such changes would require a shift from a public system mentality to a customercentric one. It was proposed that this could be achieved by having an internal communication makeover: eliminating the gap between the executives and other employees. Leaders of the organization recruited their employees in Vision Workshops, a part of Project ACE (Achieving Continuous Excellence), in 2003 which continued for over half a decade. These workshops encouraged the participants to discuss their view of what the companys Vision and Mission should be with their seniors and their peers. The reason behind the birth of this project was that if an employee is actively involved in creating a vision, it starts making sense to him and he begins to get hooked onto it, as opposed to being a passive receptor. Also, every employee was asked to talk about his personal aspiration, the fulfillment of which would ultimately get linked with that of the companys vision. The resulting Vision statements emerging from the workshops showed a striking pattern: the statements given by senior level, junior level, young recruits and unionized staff were greatly similar. This led to the emergence of a participative kind of management, a bottom-up approach, where even the bottom level employees knew what the strategy of the top management was. The vision formed by contributions from every level was implemented in the same manner: twenty cross-functional teams comprising non-marketing employees were sent into the field to study the market. This led to major transformations in the look and feel of the HP outlets: cleaner washrooms, a unified modern look across all outlets. These teams were the bearers of the idea of opening up smallerscale rural outlets (Hamara Pump). The belief of HPCLs management that there can be no replacement for interactive communication led to highly effective two-way internal communication. One on one communication was encouraged in order to reduce the sense of formality between the boss and an employee. This would in turn result in the boss being more nurturing. At times when one-on-one communication was not feasible in such a large organization, the management turned to digital technology to enable feedback from its employees. The companys intranet portal eCare is a platform for employees to voice their concerns or place a request. Two blogs are featured on the companys intranet where the employees and the Directors of the company could share ideas and discuss issues with and applications of the same. In order to give every employee a chance to voice his innovative ideas and to get them evaluated, a portal called Coin Your Idea was developed wherein the employee could propose new business practices for consideration. The idea could also lead to monetary rewards if it were to be taken up by the management.

The strength of a strong internal communication network of HPCL was tested in January 2009, the time when salaried officers of public sector companies went on a two-day long strike. Robust internal communication helped HPCL to stand apart from its peer companies: the plea of top management Lets not hold the country on ransom for our personal benefit to the employees was well heard. The friendship, trust and camaraderie slowly built by the new communication model adopted by HPCL finally showed immense results. It eventually helped the company, as a whole, to aim at being the top player in the Oil & Gas sector.

Varshaa Dhuwalia Roll No: 12PGDM119 Section B PGDM 12-14