Cadbury Case Study

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PSL tests: These are set of aptitude and logical reasoning tests offered by Kenexa. Those who are shortlisted from the I-grasp program are put through these tests, to know their competencies.

Then, further shortlisted candidates are called in for interviews.

Cadbury in India:

Here the same above process is followed, with an extra element of Campus-recruitment.

Purple Star Program:-

This is the official recruitment process of Cadbury India. In this, students are recruited from top business schools in in India and provided one year of training under senior management executives in the company. The company values this program, because many significant people in the company have grown from this practice.

Succession Planning:-

There are three kinds of succession planning in Cadbury. The Succession Planning Process aims to identify successors over three time horizons viz. Immediate successors (3-6 months), To be readied successors, and Potential successors over the long term (up to 3 years).

HR Development:-

Some of the training practices followed in Cadbury are:

- Result focused

- Working better together

- Growing your people

- Passion for people

Result Focused:-

This is an initiative by Cadbury focuses upon making employees talented and strong, in order to be a financially strong firm. In this employees, are given training based on the goals that are obtained from “Managing for Value”. Employees strive hard to achieve these goals, so that they become part of invest side of the company. But this method did not have a long lasting effect, when Cadbury went ahead with acquisitions of other companies. Clearly the acquired company employees did not share the mission and goals.

Working Better Together:-

This framework is established primarily to take care of different acquisitions of Cadbury Company. Here, employees are trained in team management skills and encouraged to work collaboratively in teams rather than individually. Since, new employees are coming in with these acquisitions, Cadbury expected a rift between the current and the new employees. This is a method to gorge the rift. But, unexpectedly this is not successful everywhere. It is successful in India and Nigeria, whereas in Australia and U.K the framework got replaced. The replacement is due to ineffectiveness to cater to team building process.

Growing Our People:-

This is primarily followed in U.K and Australia branches. This strategy is a small training program for managers to teach them how to identify and manage potential talent and ensure equal participation of every resource. Managers were set to motivate the employee about the company succession and let them make decision in certain cases. This policy is a good one, but it doesn’t deal with the poor performing employee. Hence, if certain norms and guidelines are brought in regarding performance, it would help. An Employee development program has also been followed by Cadbury. This makes the employees of Cadbury very important in decision making.

Passion For people:-

Some say that this is the best HR policy of Cadbury. Before this policy came into existence, the stakeholders are the final decision makers. In times of conflict of interest between stakeholders and employees, the final say was with stakeholders. All this changed with this new policy, where in the employees are given the freedom of their work. Thus evaluating the people according to work performance after the policy has been implemented had given good results.

People are also guided according to the work performance reports.

HR Evaluation and Compensation:-

Treating the legal side effects rules in the company that are taken by the HR

Performance Management System:-

The company uses PMS to evaluate the employee’s performance. This is globally the same for every Cadbury branch. Pay was linked to the program, which assesses performance by measuring the amount of profit each business unit made after costs of generating the revenue were subtracted from the total. The individual appraisal was removed in the firm and was replaced with pay based on business results. Performance appraisal system is automated in recent years, by a software provided by Success Factors. This PMS is normal and similar to many organizations.

But, in the recent years, Cadbury has decided to do away with importance of appraisal system, when pay is considered. They believe that appraisal place a very less role in success of their products. So, since their profitability is not being affected by the employee’s performance, paying by performance according to Cadbury would only result in de-motivation. The company believes that individual performance appraisals did not create any value and in future all the paperwork will be reduced to a one-page summary.

Incentives and Benefits:-

Cadbury is trying to increase their brand name, as many competitors are trying to bring down the Cadbury’s brand name. They want to increase their profits and margins. Company wants to increase their units and offices throughout the world. They want to give employees best profits and advantages.

Cadbury is very much interested in giving bonus for their employees. Giving bonus will help their employees and the employees are also satisfied with company’s plan. Bonus will be in the form of cash. They have different types of bonus plans and every employee in the company are benefited with this system. By such plans, employees get motivated towards work and they can spend more time for company and also for their bonuses. As new employees are also getting bonuses before joining only, they also will have motivation and encouragement towards work.

Cadbury regularly benchmarks its levels of pay against other companies to ensure it is competitive.

The employees are given shares of the company at a much discounted price.

HR