Published on August 26, 2024
In its commitment to fostering excellence, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) facilitated a series of learning sessions – AssessmentINSIGHTS 2024. This year, 11 sessions aimed to provide key learnings and insights to Assessors as they progress with the Business Excellence (BE) Assessments 2024. These sessions catered to both first-time and experienced Assessors, focusing on building awareness of key focus areas, processes, and criteria changes. The goal was to ensure that the Assessments remain Customised, Collaborative, and Celebrated for all stakeholders. These planned sessions helped the Assessors calibrate, deliberate, and evaluate the findings during the Assessments.
June 18, 2024: The first-time Team Leaders and Deputy Leaders session was facilitated by Subhrajit Basu, General Manager from TBExG and Sabharatnam Narayanan, Head of Retail Training from Titan. This session helped the leaders understand their pivotal role in the Assessment team and their key deliverables. Vital insights included the TBEM 2.0 criteria-related inputs and various factors influencing the Assessments. The main takeaways were the importance of being agile and flexible and using an appreciative enquiry approach. This session empowered leaders to effectively guide their teams and adapt to dynamic assessment environments.
June 20, 2024: Siddharth Bhatt, Deputy General Manager, Subhrajit and Clare Meek, European Lead Relationship Manager from TBExG, facilitated the financial analysts orientation. This session focused on the strategic importance of financial analysis in BE Assessments. It aimed to demystify financial analysis and included hypothesis-building exercises through case studies. Anindya Paul, Head of Business Finance at Tata Motors; Ratul Neogi, Head BE & Internal Audit at Trent; and Kabir Ahmed Shakir, CFO at Tata Communications, provided valuable industry insights and enhanced the analysts’ ability to conduct thorough financial evaluations, contributing to more accurate and insightful assessments.
June 25, 2024: Deepak Deshpande, Vice President, TBExG; Pearl D’souza McKenzie, Director PrePearl; and Sudipta Marjit, Group CHRO & BE Head at Tata AutoComp Systems, facilitated understanding Belbin Team roles orientation. Leaders and Assessors learned about the various Belbin Team roles through examples and sample reports and gathered insights on enhancing individual and team effectiveness. This session helped them recognise and leverage their strengths and those of their team members, fostering a more cohesive and productive assessment team.
June 27, 2024: The internal assessment champion orientation facilitated by Sayantan Roy, General Manager from TBExG and Kaushik Sarkar, General Manager Outsourcing, Mjunction Services, clarified the new roles and responsibilities for internal Assessors. It emphasised their role as the ‘go-to’ person for clarifying doubts the assessment team has and providing impactful feedback. This session equipped internal Assessors with the knowledge and skills to support their teams effectively, ensuring a smooth and efficient assessment process.
July 04, 2024: The Tata Innovation Excellence Framework in BE Assessments 2024 orientation facilitated by Devraj Chattaraj, General Manager from TBExG and Dr Piyush Mishra, General Manager and Technology Leader from Tata Group Digital introduced participants to the Tata Innovation Excellence Framework (TIEF). It highlighted the importance of innovation as a core value in TBEM and demonstrated how TIEF self-assessment can aid Assessors during and after assessments. It encouraged Assessors to integrate innovative thinking into their evaluations, enhancing the overall quality and relevance of the assessments.
July 09, 2024: First-time assessors orientation led by Sayantan, was designed for first-time Assessors, covering the Assessment process and priorities. It emphasised the critical role of Assessors and the value they bring in. The Buddy system was highlighted to support new assessors. Yogesh Deo, Senior VP & Delivery Head, TML, from Tata Technologies, shared his experience, accentuating the importance of a learning mindset. Namrata Basnet, Senior Manager and Vidya Raut, Assistant Manager from TBExG provided practical insights and provided a walkthrough of the assessment hub. The session aimed to build confidence and competence among new Assessors, ensuring they are well-prepared for their role.
July 16, 2024: Gautam Gondil, AVP from TBExG facilitated assessing sustainability - learnings from 2023 and plan ahead. This session provided Assessors with insights into the group’s focus on sustainability and critical changes in the TBEM criteria. Manjula S, General Manager, Tata Sons, Tata Sustainability Group, shared her perspectives on ESG governance and material sustainability issues across different industry verticals. This session equipped Assessors with the knowledge to evaluate sustainability efforts effectively, ensuring that assessments align with the latest sustainability standards and practices.
July 30, 2024: Understanding customer mega trends, led by Adrian Terron, Vice President and Head of Corporate Brand and Marketing Strategy, Tata Sons; and Punit Mittal, Head of Customer Centricity, Tata Sons, focused on seven customer mega trends, such as experiencing a product before purchase, hyper-personalised customer experiences, and sustainable products. Tanya Rego, Deputy General Manager from TBExG guided the participants in assessing TBEM Category 3 - Customers in both B2C and B2B sectors. This session helped the Assessors understand the evolving customer expectations and trends, enabling them to provide more relevant and forward-looking assessments.
August 01, 2024: Deepak facilitated the assessing intrapreneurship session. The Assessors learned and explored various examples of intrapreneurship from the Tata group. Breakout rooms allowed participants to deliberate on TBEM 2.0 Bluebook questions about fostering intrapreneurship. This session provided Assessors with the tools to identify and evaluate intrapreneurial initiatives within organisations, promoting innovation and internal entrepreneurship.
August 06, 2024: Leveraging AI/ML in Assessments 2024, facilitated by Namrata and Vidya aimed to enhance the NERD quality in individual assessments using an advanced AI model, which is built into the assessment hub. They demonstrated how AI/ML can improve grammar, spell check, tone, and brevity in comment writing using HermeSports examples. This session empowered Assessors to leverage AI/ML technologies to produce more precise and impactful feedback to the assessee companies.
August 09, 2024: Deepak conducted the final session – assessing efforts on human rights, on August 9, 2024, fostering an interactive discussion on human rights. It covered the ecosystem, business responsibilities, and various types of violations within companies and supply chains. The session elaborated on the causes of human rights violations, the role of leadership, HR due diligence, accountability, remediation, and cross-category linkages in TBEM 2.0. This session provided Assessors with a comprehensive understanding of human rights issues, enabling them to conduct thorough and responsible assessments.
Overall impact
The AssessmentINSIGHTS 2024 series of 11 orientations engaged and shared several key insights with Leaders, Assessors, and Process Consultants from various Tata companies for over two months. Opportunities for appreciation and improvement were collated after each session to continuously enhance and provide the best insights to the Assessors’ community. The sessions received an impressive average NPS of 91, indicating high relevance and value to the Assessors.
A total of 350 unique participants from 50+ Tata companies attended the AssessmentINSIGHTS 2024 sessions, gaining valuable knowledge, experience, and key insights. The sessions not only enhanced their understanding of various topics in assessments but also equipped them with practical tools and strategies to implement in their respective roles.
This article highlights the key aspects of the AssessmentINSIGHTS sessions and their impact, showcasing TBExG’s commitment towards continuous learning and improvement in BE Assessments. For more information, please write to Madhu Chaithanya (mchaithanya@tata.com).
Participants Speak
In my opinion, the examples were brilliantly showcased by the facilitators. Adding new TL boosts the confidence and faith we have in the Assessment process. Thank you, TBExG, for this opportunity.
Overall commendable inputs and case studies on financial analysis. Good to hear from the Team Leader’s point out of view.
Thanks for making the sessions available on the EDGE portal. As I am in a different time zone, it helps me attend sessions through the EDGE portal. Good inputs provided on the various Belbin team roles.
Appreciate the learnings on the less known topic Tata Innovation Excellence Framework. The insights gave a very good perspective of TIEF as well as pointed out the areas to address and formulate lines of enquiry.
Good insights. Thanks for clarifying our role - Internal Assessment Champion in detail. Appreciate the support.
It was an insightful session guiding all first-time Assessors about the approach and the expectations the assessment team has from the Assessors. Very good developments were made on the Assessment Hub. NERD enhancement is really good and very helpful to the Assessors.
Thank you for sharing several insights on sustainability, materiality and various reports that can be leveraged during the assessments.
Excellence at its best. Very good session on Mega Trends.
Very informative session. Group discussion on intrapreneurship towards the end helped to cement the understanding we got during the session.
I must appreciate the efforts TBExG has put into the development of the Assessment Hub by incorporating AI/ML to assist the Assessors. New capabilities were very well explained.
New area of focus - assessing efforts on human rights. Though we know the subject, it will be interesting to see how the companies are managing this category in their organisations.