Tata Group’s designer jewellery arm - Tanishq - is all set to take the lead ahead of its parent company and watch major Titan Industries Ltd, in moving to a performance-linked salary structure across its 600 people workforce.

The programme, which has so far been rolled out among the frontline staff at the company boutiques, is expected to spread across the middle management and the manufacturing facility within this year. Also the company is set to show the door to an experience-linked career growth model to offer a competency-linked career growth path for its good employees.

Performance linked wage model has so far been prevalent in the IT sector and has not yet been implemented on a large-scale by manufacturing players. This initiative therefore will make Tanishq one of the few corporates (for whom a bulk of its employees belong to the manufacturing sector) adopt this model.

Interestingly, the Tata Group is also currently rolling out a work-level programme, which will see the company now putting in place a standardised structure across all its business to guage competency of individuals and also facilitate more lateral movements within the Group itself.

Also Tanishq, which was made a SBU as part of the overall restructuring of Titan has been given the go ahead to take certain important decisions which are crucial for its profitability, independent of Titan or in some cases preceed the parent company.

Speaking to The Financial Express, Tanishq COO (jewellery), Mr Jacob Kurian said the emphasis on going forward would be on meritocracy and would not be restricted only to white collar jobs but will include the blue collar workers as well.

‘‘The SBU structure has also enabled Tanishq to take a step towards doing whatever it needs to keep the business profitable, and given the turnaround story the jewellery business has seen, there is no longer any need to hide behind Titan’s skirt so to speak,’’ Mr Kurian said. The company is also looking at maintaining a lean structure and a process of reassigning/rightsizing the employee base will also be built into the system.

Interestingly, this initiative will be one to look out for especially when it is rolled out into the manufacturing set up, an area that is so far not given to performance-linked differentiation. ‘‘Conventionally, factories believe in a sense of anonymity where all workers are treated equally. But we believe in making a beginning by starting to differentiate between the good and the bad and rewarding them suitably.,’’ he added.