In a first of its kind learning and talent development initiative, PepsiCo India has entered into a ‘career joint venture’ with Hindustan Unilever (HUL), allowing select employees to gain work experience at the JV firm for 2-4 months.
PepsiCo India is keen to enter into more such career JVs with other non-competing companies to boost the potential of its employees.
A career JV works like a two-way exchange of select, usually high potential, talent. So far, one employee from the soft drinks major has completed her stint at HUL. As part of the career JV programme, Apeksha Jain in PepsiCo India’s HR team got placed with the FMCG giant for a project on assessing effectiveness of their current learning curriculum, and propose capability building road map across functions. Jain has completed the project and is back at PepsiCo.
“It’s been an experience of a lifetime working with two power houses at the same time,” Jain, senior HR manager, PepsiCo India, told TOI. “I went to gain critical learning experience outside PepsiCo and the work experience was very fruitful. HUL and PepsiCo are analogous organisations and thus I adjusted well within the new culture. I took home best practices on several aspects, including training of sales staff,” said Jain. PepsiCo India said it will welcome HUL employees to work with the soft drinks major as well.
In addition, PepsiCo India also has an externship programme with NourishCo — a 50:50 JV with the Tata Global Beverages (TGB) — for its top talent. Over the last two years, three of its employees gained critical learning experiences at NourishCo.
Avishek Roy, L&D head at PepsiCo, has taken on an externship under which 50% of his role is that of an HR head for NourishCo and the other 50% is that of an HR business partner for the franchise business at PepsiCo. Similarly, Meghna Nanda, who was a NourishCo employee, had her externship stint of about a year on a project on Kurkure at PepsiCo, where she is now a full time employee. V A K S Raman, on the other hand, is on secondment to NourishCo and has been looking after their logistics/supply chain function for the last three years.
A spokesperson from TGB said the company constantly looks for ways to develop employees and enhance their learning & development. “We have mobilised talent between TGB and NourishCo since we believe this helps cross pollinate learnings & leverage synergies,” said the TGB spokesperson.
An HUL spokesperson said the company occasionally sends its employees to work on short- term assignments with other organisations to gain exposure to new skills and also transfer some of the learnings and insights.