It’s springtime at Bombay House. In a group where you simply stayed put where you were for decades, there’s a new energy that’s driving change. It comes from the people. Executive director R Gopalakrishnan, will tell you it’s a question of biology, a powerful instrument of change.

He’s talking about the colossal human resource restructuring exercise that the Rs 35,000 crore Tata group is on the threshold of. While the Tata group has been bringing about corporate changes — changing structures by hiving, selling off, and exiting businesses — it’s now trying to invigorate its people. And create a new chemistry in the Tata workplace. Walk into the HR department in the building and everyone confronts you with a presentation. Hear group company employees, and they’re all discussing work levels. Even chairman Ratan Tata is now being referred to as the Chief Personnel Officer.

Image and labels apart, there are deeper changes within the group that started earlier but are now crystallising. What came through in a staccato fashion some time ago, with Ratan Tata announcing that he would relinquish his executive powers when he turned 65 — or when the board lowered the retirement age from 75 to 70 years — has now taken a formal structure that’s aimed at making the Tata group a more attractive employer.

In concrete terms, that means a group focus as against the earlier company focus: empowering younger people, cross-company mobility within the group, new HR policies aimed at creating a benchstrength of managerial talent and career pathing, restructuring of the HR function itself and finally the unmentionable — exiting non-performers at whatever level they are.

A new executive VP, human resources — Satish Pradhan, who was formerly with ICI Plc — will in a few months be brought in to implement all these changes. Pradhan, who will report to Gopalakrishnan, will have three vice-presidents under him. While Alex Emmanuel who’s moved from Tata Liebert will handle management development for the group, ex-Castrol HR manager Allen Sequeira has joined the group to take charge of Tata Administrative Service (TAS) and group resourcing. The third VP is yet to be finalised.

The new HR team will put in place the work levels across the group, performance management systems, potential assessment systems and a new group-wide compensation structure. While the chairman and the GEO members will be involved in the succession planning of the larger companies, the GEO will focus on all the CEO and senior-level positions of companies. The new policies are being tested in three companies — Tata Sons, Tata Chemicals and Indian Hotels.

The test of the new structure will be in implementing across the 80 companies with varying businesses, different HR policies, compensation structures and maturity profiles. Gopalakrishnan says that the same methods used by multinational corporations that implement such structures across geographies can be used here too. The first few difficulties are being faced already. Says Bernard Martyris, senior vice president, HR at the Taj group, who’s overseeing the pilot in his company: "It’s more difficult to implement it in our services business where job definitions are not as clear." If you compare two employees in two factories, they are unlikely to have very different competencies. Whereas between a manager in a large hotel in a large city and a small one, the competencies are vastly different.

The biggest change in the recent past, according to insiders, is the feeling of being part of a group. The setting up of the group executive office last year, comprising three executive directors — R Gopalakrishnan, Kishore Chaukar and Ishaat Hussain — was the most visible move in that direction. "Now the group HR focus aims to identify and develop leaders within the group," explains Emmanuel.

The chairman had earlier spoken of the possibility of someone in their early 40s or early 50s heading the group and his attempt to "induct new managerial blood into Tata". While the chairman’s succession is still a matter of suspense, there are evidences of the new managerial pool. In typical Tataesque conservatism, you’re forbidden from calling them stars. But these are the people to watch out for, shall we say.

Whether it’s N Srinath, CEO of Tata Internet, or Rajiv Dubey, general manager of the passenger car division at Telco, or Jamshed Daboo, they’re in turn spawning a younger set of people working with them. "My entire sales and marketing and spares team is under 30," says Dubey. Adds Srinath, who at 38 is the oldest in his company: "When you’re given responsibility early, you’re more open to working with younger people." Youth is a relative word, of course. In the Net economy, being CEO before you’re 30 is in, but right now, within the Tata group, it’s being in your forties. And there are enough examples of people who’ve hit CEO level in the smaller companies or at least the second-level by now.

Earlier, TAS recruits were the only pool of managers used as a group resource; henceforth any names thrown up by the performance management and potential assessment systems to be put in place could be called in at the group level. This orientation has its origins in many a career born to blush unseen in individual companies and their move to industry outside, because of which there’s been a shortage of senior management talent at the group level. Says Martyris: "When we hired new people, we would earlier talk of the brand Taj; now we tell them they can be a Tata manager."

While information about vacancies would earlier travel around in an arbitrary manner, now they will be formally available on the group’s website. "Companies are also realising the benefits of not holding on to their talent," explains Jamshed Daboo, COO of the leisure division of Taj Hotels. Hence the renewed focus on mobility within the group. Currently, the majority of senior people being moved around the group are from the TAS cadre, but this is an area which will see a lot of action.

A group-wide compensation study has been done; and surveys of compensation in industry have also been commissioned. The new structure that will evolve from that is meant to facilitate mobility within the group. It will have a base remuneration for a work level; then the three components of market-based, segment-based and performance-based pay will be added on to it. Companies have to come out with a migration plan to the new structure so as to harmonise pay within two or three years.

The timeframe — "at our own pace" — is something everyone will emphasise on. The key is to get the message across the 80 companies and 10,000 managers. And there clearly isn’t any precedent to such a large exercise in Indian industry.