Larsen and Toubro Case Study Essay Example for Free

Larsen and Toubro Case Study EssayOrganizational Development (OD) is a planned long boundary effort led and supported through the top direction to improve an organizations ability and to solve its own problems by continuously working(a) together and on managing the culture using behavioural skills. Thus, there are some certain aspects worth discussing about which are- OD is a planned effort. It requires a lot of effort, patience, and faith and is time consuming. Secondly, OD usually uses outsiders.These facilitators as they are called are process specialists and are requestd in depth in this process. The pioneers of OD in India were Larsen and Toubro India (LT). OD at LT started by calling in 2 eminent professors- Dr Udai Pareek and Dr TV Rao to study the assessment process at the company. The existing estimate system had many faults and needed to be corrected. The difficult task started by the professors interviewing some bosses and subordinates from different departments (using Diagnosis or Action Research) and they got a very fire feedback.Some of the aspects of the feedback were juniors wanted to know how well they were doing on the job, but werent told people wanted to know what the growth opportunities in the company were the appraisal make water was too lengthy some bosses had too many subordinates to appraise, etc. After getting the feedback from the employees the professors gave a report to the top management about the actual problem. The appraisal system had to serve not just one but many purposes namely it should help people understand their strengths and weaknesses, their own progress on the job, how they kindle perform better, and how they could grow in the company.So the appraisal process had to name and address the issues of appraisal, potential, counselling, career development and training all in one The top management after reviewing the report gave the go ahead and they did two main things which were the most important which we re bifurcating the Personnel department into personnel department and HRD department. This bifurcation was the get-go sign of morphological change. Secondly, a team of 6 senior managers was formed which would be responsible for implementing the changes required.The story continues when the 6 task force and the professors decided that the appraisal process had to involve the line managers personally, the performance goals must be set jointly by boss and junior and the appraisals must too involve feedback and counselling to people. Thus, they prepared a Performance Appraisal Manual by involving the departmental heads and other senior managers to analyze what kind of objectives could be set and then added such guidelines in the manual. To address the issue of feedback and counselling, the team identified around 29 senior line managers and some senior staff with a flair for public speaking.These selected people were perplex through a workshop on how to be good Givers and Receivers o f feedback and then later conducted the same workshop for other employees at HQ and regional offices. Thus, the first workshop was a Train the trainer workshop which was cascaded to the other employees. After putting in so much of effort now the management at LT wanted to know whether the process was working for them or not. So again the professors interviewed some seniors and juniors about how the appraisals were going on.This time different views came into the picture the goal saddle horse was seen as time consuming, appraisal was becoming a numbers game, and was tending to become ritualistic. The HRD department was asked to conduct a survey (Participant Action Research). The survey also threw new light about the new appraisal process. The bosses now did involve their juniors in the goal setting and there was healthy resolution of difficulties and there was a high degree of trust between the seniors and juniors which led to increased joint understanding about the job.After recei ving such a feedback, they again time-tested to simplify the appraisal form by adding the definitions of the attributes listed in the appraisal form. In addition, they held refresher courses in feedback skills for both givers and receivers of feedback. The facilitators felt that the appraisal system has beef upd when 80 to 85% of the appraisal forms were returned within six weeks of the target date. Also the HRD department started analyzing all the appraisal forms.The data from the analysis was used for listing high and base performers for a certain period for finalising departmental developmental plans and for preparing the list of department wise employees and the training courses they needed. The above mentioned process took LT 8 years to complete and stabilise themselves. Thus, I can conclude that OD is a long term process which requires a lot of patience, support from the top management and a visual modality to a bright future.