Organizational Culture of BHEL

Before I tell you about the organization culture of BHEL, we need to understand what is Organization culture, and even before that what is culture.

James A F Stoner

As per James Stoner 'Culture is the complex mix of assumptions, behaviour, stories, myths, metaphors, and other ideas that fit together to define what it means to be a member of a particular society'. In other words, culture is what that distinguishes one society from the other.

Now what is Organizational Culture? As per Stoner, 'organizational culture is the set of important understanding, attitudes and beliefs shared by organizational members'. In simple terms "how things are done around here". Organizational culture defines how people interact in an organization, basic assumptions they make, how juniors are treated by seniors and vice-versa. It may also include how people behave with the women working in the organization and how customers are treated. And all of these points have a serious impact on the performance of the company.

Now lets talk about the Culture at BHEL.

One thing that every employee in BHEL knows, and the very first thing that every new employee learns is that "Customer is our God, he is our Bread and Butter". This may come as a surprise to many as BHEL being a PSU people might think that employees in BHEL may not have respect for customer. But the reality is that, BHEL keeps customer in very high regards, much more than its competitors like GE and Siemens. If you enter a BHEL office, you will find that in every floor the following quote of Gandhi is hung.
 

 "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so."

Being customer-oriented is both strength and weakness for BHEL- Strength because BHEL is able to retain many of its customer, and weakness because many customers take advantage of such policies.

Now talking about employee-to-employee interaction in BHEL, one has to say that it is very friendly. Professional and personal life are never mixed. Even after having a dispute in a meeting, the concerned person will share a laugh over coffee or will car pool back home. Even in the inter-departmental interaction, as BHEL personnel don't consider themselves as a production managers or a procurement managers or a design engineers but as a BHEL employee. 

BHEL promotes a healthy senior-junior relationship. Every new employee is assigned a Mentor who is senior official, generally from the similar background but not from the same department as the employee. A new employee can share his or her problem with the mentor and can even form a close personal bond with him.

Even otherwise, seniors take lot of care of youngsters reporting to them both professionally and personally.

However, to explain the whole culture of a company one needs to be part of that company for really really long time, and i don't think i will do BHEL justice by trying to explain it all in a single post.

Culture is not incorporated or changed overnight. It evolves from the legacy left behind by each employee over the years. To change the culture of the company one needs to understand the exixting  culture and the reason behind it. Many companies are known for their culture, which might be strict or casual. But culture is the thing that defines those companies.