According to Vineet Kaul, senior general manager, human resources, Philips India, the organisational structure was changed almost three years ago. "This involved the positioning of four additional directors on the board of the Indian subsidiary. The difference, of course, was that these directors also had additional charge of a few core businesses."

Out of the four directors, two constitute the managing director and the director of finance. The other two directors with independent business charge manage the Indian subsidiary's lighting and consumer electronics divisions respectively. While the lighting division includes the businesses of lamps, luminaries and automotive lighting, the consumer electronics divisionincludes management of the businesses related to colour TVs, black & white TVs and audio systems.

Further, the other independent business groups are each headed by a director/managing director. On a consolidated basis, Philips India now has a human resource head, in addition to a legal head, and one person responsible solely for finance and accounts. Other personnel who hold independent charge in the various business units help these consolidated heads.

"Thus the change basically included the formation of a core management team with resourcing and recruitment being handled at the corporate level," explains Kaul.

Despite the fact that resourcing and recruitment are common and managed by the central human resource wing, there is active involvement on the part of independent business managers. "The human resource department is just a facilitator with a lot of involvement from the various wings essentially with regard to approach, employee-employer relations and training per se,"he adds.

This is amplyevident when it comes to training. "As regards training, the subordinate-superior relationship does come into play with those employees with a greater calibre being preferred over the others in the initial phase," says Kaul.

The Philips India human resource department undertakes the task of identifying the faculty members who will benefit from training and the amount of resources to be spent in this effort. The training faculty is a mix of both internal and external, with the external faculty constituting almost 60 per cent of the total staff strength.

In addition to training in the country, Philips India takes advantage of its multinational status and also conducts international programmes. For example, last month, there was a training programme conducted on logistics.Expatriate assignments are also undertaken. Twenty-two of Philips India's representatives attended the recently held Asia Management Seminar.

"As of now almost 18 people have been posted abroad on assignments ranging from 2-3 years. On anexchange basis, people are here from Europe," says Kaul.

All in all, Philips India tries to ensure that at least five days of a year per employee are spent solely on training. "Out of this, we have outlined two days on technical training, while the rest of the days are spent on specific focussed areas," adds Kaul.

Essentially, the Management Development System cascades down from the higher echelons of the company. "If the top brass feels the need to lay a focus on human relations and to lay a greater emphasis on giving the organisation a human face, it is automatically transferred to the lower wings. This is what we hope to inculcate in our employees and we can see this succeeding," elaborates Kaul.