Change the game: PepsiCo may allow staff to operate from anywhere in India

Beverage and snack giant PepsiCo is implementing a 'location-free' strategy, offering employees a chance to operate from anywhere in the country, in a bid to retain talent, The Economic Times reported.

The move comes after more than a dozen senior to mid-level employees have exited the company over the past six months. The firm is also offering some employees an opportunity to handle global functions without having to move out of India.

Read: PepsiCo India Beverages head Vipul Prakash resigns

Even though these employees will be part of their respective functional groups in India, they won’t report to the India leadership. These employees will report to their sector/global heads who may be based in Dubai, New York or other cluster headquarters.

For instance, the global campus lead based in India, now reports to New York. Similarly, India based HR Sector Compensation-Benefit Head reports to Dubai, while the Digital Head reports to New York.

The move will allow local talent to take more global roles.

“Local talent has consistently taken more global roles and responsibilities from time to time, including new emerging areas of digital and other shared services. These roles are — in a lot of cases — becoming location-free with the advancements of technology,” company Vice President-HR Suchitra Rajendra told the paper.

The arrangement may help the company retain talent that do not want to move away from their locations.

“This is to take advantage of technology and to help retain talent and take care of the career aspiration of those who may not necessarily want to move location. These roles will not be for customer-facing functions such as manufacturing and sales, but for functions such as human resources, R&D, IT and finance,” a company spokesperson told the paper.

About 10 percent of the positions at its Gurugram-based head office will be location-free.