India's best companies to work for 2015: Forbes Marshall offers its employees 'flexitime'

WHAT THEY DO: Manufacturing & production
HEADCOUNT: 1417;

GENDER DIVERSITY (F/M): 1:6.05

RANK 2014: NA

PUNE: Naushad Forbes does a quick flashback to over 25 years ago, a few years after he had started working at Forbes Marshall in the mid-80s. "I realised that coming in at 7.30 am every day didn't work for me. I'd rather come in by 9 am and work till later in the evening. This is when we brought in the concept of flexitime, which even today, is unheard of in the manufacturing sector," says Forbes, director, Forbes Marshall. The philosophy behind this was simple: "We believe in managing our people the way we would like to be managed," he says.

Its newest initiative too ties in neatly with this philosophy. "Two years ago we rolled out a 'Fun at Work' team. The feedback we got after that was that people were having fun at work, and they had enough time to engage in their personal lives as well (because of f lexitime and two day weekends), however, they didn't end up paying too much attention to their health," says Bobby Kuriakose, director- HR. To address that, they have introduced a new team that focuses on Wellness. Common areas in the office have placards highlighting healthy habits along up regular updates on the intranet. The company has tied up with an organisation that does periodic health check-ups for its employees and their families across all their facilities, and organised two marathons last year to well, get its people moving.

Over the last few years, the average age of the organisation has dropped to about 30. At the same time, a large portion of the workforce are second and even third generation employees, and many people who've joined as interns, two decades earlier have stayed. What gives? Uma Tiwari Dayal, who joined the company as a trainee and has just completed 26 years there, says, "The atmosphere is very encouraging for growth irrespective of gender. You have the freedom to make mistakes and grow."

Forbes says that one key reason why people have stayed on is that there is no one telling them what to do. "They have a huge amount of freedom and space to figure out what to do," he says. Unlike typical evaluations, the company has values as a key competency on its annual appraisal along with technical and behavioural factors.

Diversity is something the company has actively pursued. At 22%, it has among the highest proportion of women employees, especially for a manufacturing company, but Forbes feels that this can be bettered. The company was among the first to recruit interns from Kashmir a few years ago and it tries to ensure adequate geographic and community representation across all its business units and teams.

Best Companies to Work for 2015: Full list


There is an all women group called 'Apna Adda' which provides a platform for the women to get together and discuss all kinds of issues, whether related to their professional or personal lives. Forbes says that the reasons for actively pursuing diversity are partly selfish too. "We believe very strongly that if we recruit from a population 1.2 billion instead of 100 million, we will find better people for the role. We want to recruit the best people for the role regardless of religion, gender or what part of the country they come from."

Chetan Supekar, who joined through the steam engineering course the company offers about 5 years ago says that the open lines of communication and ability to take on new projects in new areas gives you a lot more confidence, resulting in more innovation and productivity.