Reliance has always put its people
first, especially this year that has been
fraught with uncertainties brought
about by COVID-19. Reliance undertook
several initiatives to ensure the physical
and mental well-being of its employees
during the year. The employees valued
the support offered to them and RIL’s
attrition number for the year reduced
by less than half compared to the
previous year.
Prioritising Employee
Well-being
Reliance shifted to an agile working
mode during COVID-19. Except for
critical assets facing roles and front-line
workers, workforce transited to work
from home on account of safety. To
keep them connected and motivated,
the Company engaged with the
employees regularly, albeit virtually.
Other initiatives included:
- Virtual onboarding of majority of new
joiners to ensure social distancing
and avoid travel
- Employees earning below `30,000
per month were paid salaries in
two tranches during the month
during lockdown
- Individual business units conducted
Fun Fridays to connect and
engage with employees
- Major events including Townhalls,
Leader Connects, People Manager
Connects, Reliance Family Connects,
Drishti Art and Essay Competition
(organised by Reliance Foundation
to bring together the children of its
employees) Long Service Awards,
Reward & Recognition Ceremonies,
Sessions on Effective Listening and
Building Habits and celebrations
such as Independence Day, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Mothers’ Day,
Family Day and Republic Day were
conducted virtually and went a long
way in showing empathy and care
Ensuring Health and Safety
The Company spread awareness,
formed COVID-19 task forces
and control rooms, ensured
symptom checks and rapid tests
and set up isolation and treatment
facilities for employees.
More than 3,50,000 employees and
service partners undertook COVID-19
Symptom Checker Survey daily.
Aggressive RT PCR and Antigen
Testing for our workforce entering
the premises helps to mitigate any
spread in the workplace. Antibody
tests are also conducted to identify
workforce at less risk to work from
office. Prophylactic medicines were
provided to 43,000+ frontline and
supply chain staff. The Company has
now rolled out a vaccination drive for its
eligible employees.
Periodic checks on employees’
morale reflected employees’
trust on management. 96% of the
respondents said they have faith in
the leadership to tide over the crisis,
94% had a favourable response on
‘employee safety measures’ and 92%
employees felt they are well connected
with their teams.
Robust Governance and
Code of Conduct
All employees must abide by the
Reliance Code of Conduct with an aim
to ensure the Company, its operations
and its people act ethically and with
transparency at all times.
Decisions pertaining to employee Code
of Conduct are overseen by the Board
through an Ethics and Compliance Task
Force comprising an Executive Director,
a General Counsel, Group Controller
and Group Company Secretary who
guide and monitor the implementation
of ethical business practices. The task
force reviews complaints and incidents
on a quarterly basis and reports them to
the Audit Committee.
ISO 37001:2016 standard has been
incorporated to effectively prevent,
identify and respond to bribery risks.
A new e-learning module on Anti-
Bribery Management System – ABMS,
has been introduced as a mandatory
training for all new joinees as well as
for existing employees. This course
aims to equip the employees with the required understanding and knowledge
to effectively prevent, identify and
respond to bribery risks. It also
encourages employees to speak up and
raise genuine concerns related to any
actual or suspected unethical conduct
or breach of law.
The Safety and Operational
Management System matches the global standards of Occupational
Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) and Competency
Assurance System (CAS) to ensure
safe and reliable operations. All of RIL’s
plants have implemented certified
OHS management systems as per the
ISO standards.
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Attracting and
retaining talent
- Reliance is committed to investing
in people and helping them grow.
It attracts the best talent and helps
them carve rewarding careers
through continuous learning and
development and growth-linked
opportunities.
- A performance-based transparent
remuneration policy encourages
employees to work towards common
goals. All eligible employees
receive performance appraisals on
regular basis.
- Its values, led by the 3Ps – Purpose,
Passion and Perseverance – bind
the Reliance family together and
contributed significantly to minimise
turmoil during the pandemic
- Reliance has a conscious
hiring process that
encourages a progressive and
inclusive work culture.
- Reliance hired talent from some
of the leading institutions such as
IIMs, XLRI, ISB, IITs, NITs, BITS and
ICAI through the year.
1,400+
Differently abled talent
works in the Reliance Group
Connecting, engaging and
growing together
- Reliance moved to remote
onboarding, virtual projects,
gamification, online learning
modules and virtual assessments for
offers during COVID.
- Reliance Family Day which
commemorates the birth anniversary
of Founder Chairman, Shri Dhirubhai
Ambani, saw more than 50,000
employees with their families
come together to celebrate the
occasion virtually.
- The Reliance MyVoice portal offers a
channel to take forward Shri Mukesh
D. Ambani’s call
‘to create a place for the employees
of Reliance to share their views,
ideas, and inspirations with one
another in their own voice’. The Reliance MyVoice portal had total
impressions of 1.4 lakh as of March
31, 2021. More than 23,000 users
participated in over 3,000 energising
conversations on the platform.
- R-world, an intranet single sign-on
platform, which was launched in
2021, has raked up 65,000 visitors
and over 4,00,000 visits within three
months of its launch.
- The Company hosted a set of videos
on Resilience, Virtual Collaboration,
Leading Self and Managing
Stress, among others, to help
employees and others cope with
the pandemic. The series garnered
14,000 views internally and 13,000
views externally.
- The Career Acceleration Programme
saw 7,000+ participants competing in
the last two years. Sapphire Coaching
Programme, First Line Young
Engineers at Reliance (FLYER), Stepup
Programme, Speed Mentoring,
Vision Boarding and Talent Reviews
were other programmes that
continued to groom talent.
- The Employee Experience Platform,
a dedicated digital ecosystem for
employee feedback, used advanced
analytics to systemically generate
insights that help leaders understand
employee aspirations as they design
a future-fit organisation.
Continuous learning
Reliance fosters a culture of
continuous learning and personal
development for career growth. The
Company’s development trainings
ensured continued upskilling and
reskilling so that talent could stay
relevant through the pandemic.
- More than 87,000 employees
accessed digital learning content via
LinkedIn. Over 19,000 employees
upskilled themselves through
Coursera and more than 50,000
employees accessed in-house
learning platforms. The employees
of the Hydrocarbon unit alone
availed more than 3.5 lakh hours of
digital learning.
- Organisational capabilities for
the future are being built through initiatives like Spectrum and Learning
Challenge that focus on innovative
self-learning modules, skill-based
sessions and live leadership talks,
and are open for all employees to
participate, learn and upskill.
- FY 2020-21 was focused on
upskilling the Company’s oil and
gas employees on capabilities
such as incident investigation
and data science and enhancing
digital literacy in HR, audit, risk and
governance teams.
- The IT organisation was trained on
cutting-edge technologies such as
Angular, MongoDB and NodeJS.
The Petrochemical teams undertook
customer-centric sales trainings
to cater to changing customer
preferences and channels.
- COVID awareness training was made
available to all on-field employees
across security, RBML retail outlets
and asset-facing employees at
manufacturing sites.
Going beyond for its people
- Reliance has developed a maternity
support programme with elements
such as specific learning sessions,
Employee Resource Group (ERG) for
new parents, 182 days of maternity
leave followed by six months of half
day leave policy for new mothers,
84 days’ leave policy for adoptive
parents and commissioning
mothers respectively and five
days of Paternity Leave. Reliance
undertakes pro-active measures
including 24*7 toll free helpline for
women, child-care facility and selfdefense
workshops.
- In Reliance Group, 236 women
availed maternity leave, of which 156
resumed duties in the same financial
year and 3,251 men availed paternity
leave, of which 3,019 resumed duties
in the same financial year.
- For the differently abled, Reliance
has rolled out the ‘Saksham
programme’ to provide them with
employment opportunities at the
Reliance Retail stores. Additionally,
Reliance has assigned them
designated parking spots.
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Fostering innovation
At Reliance, innovation is
fuelled by the hunger to sustain
growth and improvements on
a continuous and consistent
basis. The Company nurtures an
environment that encourages its
people to think out of the box and
share ideas and solutions to help
the Company innovate and grow.
Some of these initiatives include:
- Jio LEAP provides people at
Reliance access to global thought
and innovation leaders. Since
inception, 50 Jio LEAP events
have been organised, including
with 3 Nobel Laureates, 2
Olympians and 19 CEOs. In its
digital avatar, Jio LEAP clips have
garnered almost 85,000 views.
- Mission Kurukshetra’ is an
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
powered digital platform where
employees collaborate and
submit innovative ideas to grow
the Company. It was launched in
2014 and is now a treasure trove
of almost 33,600 ideas that have
the potential to create significant
value for the organisation.
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Diversity and Inclusion
Reliance believes in promoting a
progressive and inclusive work
culture that encourages everyone
to grow. Its 5E framework
fosters an inclusive workplace
and stands for:
- Educate: Sensitise and
develop capabilities to foster an
inclusive environment
- Encourage: Visibly increase
support of internal and
external stakeholders
- Enable: Support
through infrastructure,
practices and policies
- Experience: Provide an inclusive
experience to all employees; be
allies and ambassadors
- Effectiveness: Create, measure,
monitor, report and benchmark Company-wide diversity initiatives
continue to sensitise employees on
ways to strengthen the Company’s
inclusive culture. Several up-skilling
initiatives have been incorporated
as part of these engagements
to nurture women talent and
leadership. These include Jagriti
and Pragati, professional and
personal development programmes
such as Flying Lesson and R-Aadya
and a unique story sharing platform
‘Her Story’. Programmes such
as ‘We Women Leader’ aim to
develop managerial skills among
women employees.
39,000+
Women employees of Reliance
Group benefitted through several
up-skilling initiatives
1,800+
Women employees
benefitted through R-Aadya
All women ROs (petrol pumps) initiative
has been implemented across the
states of Rajasthan, Kerala, Jharkhand,
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Reliance Retail has deployed more
than 250 women as managers at
their stores. These stores stand out
in the industry on several parameters including safety, hygiene standards,
discipline and working conditions.
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Health, Safety and
Well-being
Reliance’s goal of zero injuries and
incidents remains the bedrock of
its health and safety approach.
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS)
risks have been minimised through
trainings and multiple line of controls.
The Company also achieved significant
reduction in the lost workday cases
and process safety incidents. Its HSE
performance continues to be in the top
quartile amongst its peers. Externally
Facilitated Gap Assessments (EFGAs)
are conducted routinely across all
manufacturing sites to identify gaps in
the Operating Management System
(OMS) and develop plans to bridge
them. All of RIL’s plants have robust
mechanisms for workers to engage in
the OHS management system.
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Spent on health, safety and
environment (HSE) initiatives
Employee well-being initiatives
at Reliance include:
- Reliance offers an Employee
Assistance Program (EAP) which
gives employees and family
members 24x7 access to a range
of online tools and services in the area of mental health and wellbeing.
Services include confidential
emotional support by counsellors
through tie-ups with a dedicated
service provider.
- In addition, through JioHealthHub,
employees also have access to the
best doctors empaneled on the app.
Tele-consultations provide access
to a wide variety of specialists for
every medical need
- Calendarised events like
everyday Yoga, weekly well-ness
expert connects and consistent
communication helped employees
to include these activities into their
routine and schedules. The activities
were spread across the five aspects
of R-Swasthya, the company’s holistic
wellness framework – physical,
mental, social, spiritual and financial.
- Mental and Emotional well-being
of the employees was in focus
through campaigns like Here For You,
Gratitude and Hope and 21 Days
of Yoga Festival.
The Company has undertaken
several measures with an aim to
ensure the safety of its people:
- A fully equipped and well-qualified
HSE and Process Safety organisation
at all locations
- Competency Assurance System
(CAS) for frontline staff that trains
employees on safety aspects
relevant to their roles
- Behaviour-based safety
programme designed to foster an
incident-free culture
- A Task Based Health Risk
Assessment (TBHRA) that uses
technology to map the health
risks of employees vis-à-vis
workplace hazards
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Labour Management and
Anti-Discrimination
Reliance follows the United Nations
Global Compact (UNGC) principles
on Human Rights, Labour Practices,
Environment and Anti-corruption.
The Company’s operational units
are materially compliant with local
and national laws and are aligned to its ethics and human rights charter
supported by a strong Code of Conduct
and policy framework. Reliance follows
the requirements of the Industrial
Disputes Act, India, 1947 for issuing
minimum notice period(s) related to
significant operational changes. It
also recognises employee unions and
associations. Almost 100% of nonsupervisory
permanent employees
across manufacturing locations are
covered under the collective bargaining
agreements. Reliance Ethics and
Compliance Task Force monitors
and manages the Company’s related
performance and comprises the
Reliance Group Head of HR, General
Counsel, Group Controller and Head of
Fraud Risk Management.
During the reporting period, there
were no known cases of child labour,
forced labour, involuntary labour,
sexual harassment and discriminatory
employment. There is no difference
in entry level remuneration between
men and women recruited for the same
cadre programme.
Focus Areas
- Reliance aspires to constantly upskill its employees to adopt emerging technologies, fuel
innovation and bring in greater efficiencies.
- The Company is committed to creating opportunities for its women employees and offer the
best working environment to attract and grow its women talent pool. It had set itself a target of
having 15% women workforce across businesses. At present, women employees form 16.9% of
the Company’s workforce at a Group level.
- Reliance aims to be a leader in the management of HSE, adhering to the global standards and
safety management systems. Currently, it is leveraging its expertise in data analytics to build a
platform to deliver simplified and interrelated safety processes for its employees.
- It is also embarking on a programme to build a healthcare system for its workforce that will be at
par with global standards. It continues to provide the best facilities to help its employees tackle
the ongoing COVID-19 onslaught with initiatives such as 24x7 emergency services, mental and
physical well-being programmes and R- Swasthya.