Developing human talent is the key for sustainable growth and competitive advantage…
Spanning a proud history of over half a century, Maliban Biscuits' unique taste continues to attract a growing following of both Sri Lankan and foreign patrons. Famed for its distinctive flavours, and aromas, Maliban is today a household name and has grown from its humble beginnings to become a formidable player in the food industry.
Maliban is a household name in Sri Lanka for quality food products, pioneer of biscuit industry and commands one of the biggest portions of biscuits and milk segment in Sri Lanka. It is a household name for over five decades thanks to the inspiration, values and high standards consistently maintained by its founder Chairman - the legendary entrepreneur, founder of Maliban biscuits the late Mr A.G. Hinni Appuhamy.
Owing to his visionary leadership Maliban is known as one of the most respected and trusted brand names in the country today. The array of prestigious national and international trophies it had received in recognition for dedication to quality and the high praises of consumers from toddlers to grandparents are testimonials of its success. We met with Mr Bandula Perera, Group General Manager - Hr/admin of the Maliban Group to talk about these achievements. Excerpts of the interview:
Q: Maliban is a household name. It has won the hearts of Sri Lankans and now keeps winning in the international markets. Its market share is on the rise. What are the reasons behind this success?
A: There are two main reasons. Those are employee contribution and quality raw materials. All departments of the MBM (Maliban Biscuit Manufactories) contributed immensely to maintain the quality and the taste of the product in order to delight the consumer. Now consumers strongly believe that Maliban produce the biscuits and milk from the best of raw material available and furthermore it's fascinate their taste buds. It paid rich dividends and they are now fully convinced that the House of Maliban would never compromise its high standards.
Q: It's no easy task to maintain quality in a competitive market where prices of quality raw materials and logistics costs going upwards, Do you say that the MBM continued to maintain quality just because of respecting the principles of its founding chairman?
A: Yes, that's what we did. It was difficult, but the Chairman, Mr. A.G. Ratnapala Samaraweera, the Board of Directors, the CEO and the senior management insisted that we must procure raw materials only from the globally reputed suppliers despite the increases of their prices. Our biscuits are made from the finest imported ingredients. Even our packaging process ensures the highest possible standards of quality, with processes imported from SIG of Switzerland and Auto wrappers of the UK. We stick to the instruction of our founder Chairman that the products leaving the gates of House of Maliban should be of utmost quality. In his own words this is how is described the importance of quality "don't send any biscuit out of my gate if that cannot consume by my son." Meaning he treated all the consumers as his children. Because parents always gives the best to their children. This is the cardinal rule that we obeyed over the profit and it is proven that the consumers have realized this truth. We never compromise the quality.
Winning awards for quality and taste has become a habit for Maliban biscuit manufacturers. Winning of globally recognised ITQI (international taste and quality institute) award for three of their main brands Maliban smart cracker, Maliban Gold Marie and Maliban chocolate cream are a classic example of how Maliban Biscuit has acclaimed the international standards for quality and taste. This is unique; because this is the first time that a Sri Lankan biscuit manufactures has won this world recognised prestigious award.
Q: You mentioned that the labour contribution was one of the ingredients of this success. What kind of role the human capital played in this achievement?
A: At the House of Mailban, we are like a big family though we draw salaries and wages for our services. Our employees, numbering around 1575, are highly motivated to deliver only the best products and to maintain quality come what may. Under any condition, whether we are performing well in the market or not, our work force from top to bottom is focused on one aspect: to render a quality service and maintain high standards of the product. I must also mention that sales and marketing personnel too continuously work very closely with the consumers and the trade, thus they contributed to this success.
Q: Could you be more specific and tell us of the overall HR (Human Resources) strategy. How do you link this strategy with the overall business strategy?
A: Our vision is to be the most successful and respected food company in Sri Lanka. We are in the process of achieving it. We are the market leader of superior quality biscuit products in Sri Lanka and we export too many other nations. We are now becoming a truly global company with distribution in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. So we may need to strategize it accordance with the situations. Therefore, all HR related activities, from recruitment to retirement of an employee are handled very transparently and professionally to meet requirements of the overall business strategies. Special attention is focused to build up internal talents. Only in the cases of absence of internal talent we acquire them from external market. Our focus is to develop each and every employee and to keep them motivated and to be competitive as an organization.
Q: Okay. If you could tell me what are the key initiatives in HR...
A: Absorbing potential talents from the market, training and development, career progression, welfare benefits, employee empowerment and also community relationship. Special attention is given to develop talent within. We continuously train our staff to keep them updated on the latest systems, methods and international trends in biscuit manufacturing. Apart from local training opportunities, we send our employees abroad for special training opportunities. There are many international training opportunities lined up in our training plan and just to give you an example, very recently we sent a team of 15 members consisting manual, staff, and executive and manager grades to India for further training. We help and assist them to develop the skills and talents they already have.
There are numerous career progression opportunities. There are senior managers who served this company more than 30 years and our strategy is to get the guidance and blessing of senior staff to develop energetic and young team to steer forwards. We always believe the right combination of experience and young talent gives the best sustainable results. We have provided many opportunities to our workers to facilitate the progress in their careers. The welfare benefits we have provided them are not usually found in many other places in the private sector and we have given individual consideration to everybody. That's why I told you we are like one big family. Everybody's opinion is heard and due recognition is given. Open communication and mutual respect is the key. It's actually the workers who have come up with proposals and suggestions to improve overall operation. Most of the time their opinions have helped the management to improve the business. Harnessing the collective strength is one of our company values.
Q: What you have meant by the term community relationship?
A: Maliban is closely in touch with the neighbouring community since we are well aware of our social and environment responsibilities. We have more concerns on environmental protection and we have guided and teach our employees through various programmes and create values for mutual respect and core values and special attention is given to protect the environment and the nature. This is endorsed by having awards such as ISO 9002 for quality management systems, ISO 22000 for food safety management systems and ISO 14000 for environment management system.
Q. How does Maliban contribute to the society as a Cooperate Social Responsible organization.
A. Well, for the last five decades, we have engaged in number of CSR programmes, which we have not highlighted or given publicity honoring our chairman's policy on donation. Under the theme of "Buddhi Prabodaya" we implement most of our CSR programmes. The main objective is to implement various programmes to enhance the knowledge and awareness. There are several other CSR programmes planned to be implemented in the near future from the House of Maliban. We, as a socially responsible organization have never sought advantages but only to serve society when it comes to CSR. Likewise, we continue our programmes and they achieve positive results.even our "Cattle release from slaughter houses programme" was very well commended by both local and international societies. Q. What will be the future development plans of HR in your company?
A. I am happy to say that we have already started the HR development plans, benchmarking the best local HR practices and about to reach our goals. Further we are benchmarking the international HR practices. The company has invested money to acquire knowledge on international HR trends and applications. Based on that, action plans have been developed and they are to be implemented soon. Company believes on training and development to upgrade the skill level and enhance the competencies of all levels in organization.
It's high time that the local companies focused on global trends in HR to be competitive globally. When it comes to global contest and we play on the global turf we cannot act alone. If all local companies benchmark global HR practices one day, we could be a proud nation. It is the secret behind countries who achieved sustainable development. Those countries and cases provide ample examples to the fact people factor played vital and major role.
Q. What does Maliban believe in Human Capital?
A. In simple terms men, money, material, machines are the key components of an organization. Human (man) factor is the fundamental difference and create that all important competitive advantage for any orgarnizetion, technology can be copied but the human talent cannot be copied. Thus investing on human capital will be the key in this regard.
Q: Anything you wish I had asked or to add for our readers?
A: Yes. We have come so far with unshakable effort and perseverance. With over fifty years of experience producing biscuits which relished the taste buds of Sri Lankans, the MBM is a legendary biscuit maker with an exciting new vision. We have the courage to shape a better future and our integrity in all dealings is amply discernible. Remembering our roots, and looking to the future, the MBM steps in to this new generation with the confidence gained from fifty years of giving Sri Lanka the very best in biscuits. Give the consumer, "superior taste with the best quality at an affordable price" was the vision of Founder Chairman A. G. Hinni Appuhamy. What differentiates Maliban from the others is our policy of using best quality ingredients and advanced processes with no compromises to ensure superiority in products that are delivered to the consumer. We are in a competitive market and we have challenges before us. However much the challenge, is we can assure one thing that we would not compromise the quality. Maintaining quality standards is the religion in the House of Maliban.