Ambuja Cements Ltd (ACL), the country’s second largest cement producer in which Swiss giant Holcim holds a 46% stake, is implementing a slew of measures to retain talent in the organisation. The company has appointed McKinsey & Company to reorganise the structure to create leaders within the organisation.

Talking to FE, AL Kapur, MD of the company said, “My biggest challenge is manpower and talent. We are making huge investments in training and development of our employees. We are reorganising the entire structure and the first exercise has been started at Ambujanagar (Gujarat) under the project named ‘People’s Power’. We are using the services of McKinsey as our consultants,” he adds.

The concept of ‘People’s Power’ will be extended to the company’s Bhatapara (Chhattisgarh) and Nalagarh (HP) plants, and then the others too.

To deal with the manpower requirement, ACL had hired 150 graduate and diploma engineers last year and 150 in the current year, and plans to continue this for the next five years.

ACL will require manpower as it is all set to add six million tonne capacity to its current 20 million tonne by 2009 with a total cost of Rs 3,500 crore. The company is also targeting to reach 35 million tonne per annum capacity in the next five years. The cement industry, which is already reeling under the pressure of high input costs, is concerned about holding on their talents as new capacities are coming up along with new players entering the industry.

“Talent crunch is going to be a big problem going ahead, which is why we are investing lot of money in training people,” Kapur revealed.

Ambuja has so far sent about 40-50 employees for the senior leadership training programme at IMD Zurich, says Kapur.

ACL shares on Thursday were up 2.10% to close at Rs 90.15 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, it was also reported that senior managers of ACC Ltd, in which Holcim has a major stake, are being offered shares of the Swiss cement major as part of the remuneration package. The move is to increase the alignment between Holcim and ACC Ltd. However, there is no such move at ACL, so far.