Twenty seven business school students (B-School) have been recruited this year at Cadbury Kraft Foods. They are not just ordinary B-School graduates joining the company, but in fact management students who have been chosen to fast-track their careers.
Through a compulsory career development initiative for students, Cadbury Kraft Foods has almost doubled its intake of the students this year.
The iTaste programme held at Cadbury Kraft Foods attempts to create a management pool across multiple functions like human resources (HR), finance, research and development, supply, manufacturing, procurement and sales and marketing. "It is important for all organisations to be extremely structured and have an institutionalised way of getting future ready,” said Rajesh Ramanathan, executive director-HR (South Asia), Cadbury-Kraft Foods.
“What I mean by this is that as an organisation and as a function, you have to pause and say, since now we are this size of business, in five to seven years from now we will get to this size of business with this kind of complexity. To be able to get to that place you have to build the organization ahead of growth.”
Graduates from top B-Schools are divided into groups of four to five people each and work with a mentor to solve a business case study. The winners are sent to Singapore for a regional level competition with iTasters from other geographies. The top executives at the company commit time to the programme for direct interactions with students.
The programme ensures structured learning, self-development and cross functional experience. The growth chart for an iTaster begins with a business induction for the first three months. After further training, the first business role in the company beginning from the sixth month, is completed by the 30th month. This is followed by the second role from the 30th month till the 54th month.
Ramanathan explained iTaste that used to be called Purple Star-Cadbury Legacy three years back is about tasting and cooking a delicious career.
He added the team or the people who hired them had to be there long enough to feel their leadership pipeline.
“The risk of attrition is high, and that does not help, because you are investing in their skill-building and everything else and if you become a soft target to be poached then it is no point, but that's what happens with most organisations. But through our imitative, we have nearly 100 per cent retention,” he said.
The company began this initiative as they found it was always very expensive to keep buying from the market.
The iTaste programme for the entry level graduates leads the employees into the next leadership platform called the Next Generation Leadership. This platform is sponsored by the Asia Pacific board of management of the company, and also has a third party leadership development firm and internal coaches drawn from very successful leaders across Asia Pac businesses.
