How Can HR Effectively Classify Employees for a Pan-India Communication Program?

Hi,

What are the various ways in which HR can classify employees? This query is specifically with reference to developing a communication program for an FMCG company's employees. The company has a workforce of over 15,000, and its geographical scope is pan-India. The program will include tools that are broad-based (covering all employees, e.g., newsletter, emailer, intranet, etc.) as well as targeted (covering specific categories of employees). Are there known methods of classification beyond the common ones like hierarchy, function, location, etc.? I would appreciate details, examples, references, as well as suggestions and ideas.

Regards,
Rahul

Hi Rahul,

Generally, we classify employees based on hierarchy and other functional aspects. The general classification would include categorizing employees by grading them based on their duties, salary, present designation, etc. Since you work in an FMCG company, you must have an employee grading system. For example, Grade-1 could be a sales executive with one year of experience, a salary of 6000, and a designation of sales executive/executive, working in the marketing function. This is a standard way of grading employees.

S.K

Hi Rahul,

My experience of segmentation was borne from watching what our marketing colleagues did and applying that to employees.

The jobs people do are very important, but in my experience what's even more interesting, especially in relation to communication and employee benefits, is to understand individual motivation and attitudes towards work, which tend to be driven by lifestage and influenced by whether the worker has children, is the sole/primary earner, etc.

A segmentation I did for a retailer was used in Bangalore and seemed to work well. It was found that there were five broad attitude segments of people working within their workforce: 25 percent work-life balancers; 25 percent want it all; 18 percent pleasure seekers; 16 percent live to work, and 16 percent work to live. By understanding the drivers and needs of each segment, the organization can tailor the employment proposition to improve retention and sharpen communication.

This is usually done by adding a battery of questions to a normal staff survey and then analyzed.

Happy to share more if you are interested.