Metro’s inclusive hiring in Hyderabad setting benchmark

The company is planning to replicate the model in 20 stores across India

07.06.2018
Hyderabad: Business-to-business wholesaler, Metro Cash & Carry India, which caters to traders, hotels, restaurants, caterers, offices and institutions is taking initiatives towards inclusive hiring, ensuring diversity.

The company has 28 differently abled (deaf and dumb) people across its Hyderabad stores and is making efforts to increase this number in the city, as well as across India.

Metro Cash & Carry India, director & head-Human Resources, Udaiy Khanna, told Telangana Today, “This initiative began through a partnership with two local NGOs-Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI) and Youth4Jobs, has seen fruitful outcome. We have piloted hiring differently abled persons in our Hyderabad stores located in Kukatpally and Shamshabad, first time in the country. These people work in the replenishment sections of the stores, which are non-technical jobs. They converse using sign language. We have imparted training to them with the help of the NGOs.”

“We have taken measures to sensitise the management, supervisors and the entire team working with them in respective stores, through customised workshops. Though initial weeks had been challenging but gradually the differently abled employees had been able to get on to their roles. There is a healthy mutual acceptance both from the employees and the rest of the team. Going forward, we will be building stores that are disabled-friendly as we look to hire more people, to give them equal job opportunity,” he added.

Telangana and Andhra Pradesh teams have come forward voluntarily to encourage such hiring in their stores. The company is carefully documenting all the learning from the pilot hiring it has made in these places. The pilot project has proved that these individuals are productive and there are no issues relating to attrition and discipline with the different abled employees. Several of them have already won performance awards.

He informed, the company is retaining the same performance appraisal norms for these individuals competing with others on every parameter, as they have already demonstrated that they can challenge anyone, and they don’t need any different treatment.

When asked if the company is replicating this hiring model in other stores across the country, Khanna said, “We are keen to expand our initiative. We should be able to replicate this in at least 15-20 stores across India. We will also be offering training and apprenticeship opportunities for different abled. We will be in a position to hire at least 100 differently abled persons in Telangana and AP (Vijayawada) stores in the next six months.”

Metro Cash & Carry is the wholesale division of Metro, a wholesale and food retail based in Germany. Metro Cash & Carry generated sales of about €30 billion in the financial year 2016-2017 and operates in 25 countries over 750 wholesale markets with about 1,08,000 employees worldwide.

Metro Cash & Carry entered India in 2003, and operates 25 wholesale distribution centres under the brand Metro Wholesale, including six in Bengaluru, four in Hyderabad, two each in Mumbai and Delhi, and one each in Kolkata, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Zirakpur, Amritsar, Vijayawada, Ahmedabad, Surat, Indore, Lucknow and Meerut.