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At Birla Carbon, our HR strategy is designed to ensure we engage our employees and offer opportunities to help build successful careers through a wide range of learning and development opportunities.
Attracting, developing, and retaining talented employees is a key priority for Birla Carbon. Our talent philosophy is woven into our HR strategy, forming a seamless connection with our overarching business strategy.
We are driven by a commitment to innovation and by an ambition to foster supportive workplaces that empower each employee to meet their full potential. Vital to achieving this is caring for our employees and catering to their needs. Our commitment to people extends beyond our workforce as well. Through strategic collaborations, we address pressing community challenges, aligning our actions with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). As a result, we help fortify resilience, both within our organization and throughout the communities we reach.
Talent Management
We believe that we achieve the best results when we are open to other perspectives and work together to make a difference. To maintain our
industry-leading position, we seek to engage and attract bright minds in the countries where we operate.
We aim to be an employer of choice in every geography we operate in. We place emphasis on targeted internal movement and continual engagement with our employees. Our progress as a company is driven by both the expertise of our seasoned carbon black professionals and the continual exchange of ideas with the next generation of engineers and scientists. For this purpose, we continue building partnerships with local colleges and universities in all the geographies that we operate in and invite interns to gain realistic work experience with us.
Our talent philosophy is intricately woven into our HR strategy, forming a seamless connection with our overarching business strategy. We have a robust talent management framework encompassing talent identification, segmentation, and development processes.
Birla Carbon Kaleidoscope
Across the corporate universe, businesses are talking about the value their branding brings to the market. Whether the benefits are tangible or intangible, everyone wants to tell their story. Birla Carbon is no different. We, too, want to share how we make a difference in the world. This story, though, is not about our discoveries or solutions; we believe the most compelling narrative comes from the voices of our people. We are committed to amplifying the firsthand experiences of the employees and colleagues who embody the values of the Aditya Birla Group and Birla Carbon. By celebrating our diverse workforce, we provide genuine insight into the organizational culture and growth opportunities that characterize careers at Birla Carbon.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plays a key role in our overall business and sustainability strategies. To be diverse in engaging
our employee groups, to be an equal opportunity business for our employees, and to be an inclusive company where every voice is heard, can be one of the key factors that make the difference in an organization’s growth story.
To witness the Birla Carbon Growth story, one needs to view it through a Kaleidoscope – the Birla Carbon Kaleidoscope – A Palette
of Infinite Possibilities.
Learning
From the plant floor to the sales floor, our passion for learning has no ceiling. We encourage our people to continue to learn throughout their careers by providing multiple opportunities and platforms to fit their needs, enabling them to meet career aspirations and perform successfully.
At Birla Carbon, our HR strategy is designed to ensure that every employee has access to a wide range of learning opportunities. The
Learning & Development Team builds employee knowledge and capabilities by facilitating planned learning inputs and learning on demand. We endeavour to align the learning interventions with the business’ strategic agenda, with a focus on organization capability building. Birla Carbon’s learning strategy is designed to empower employees to take ownership of their development plans.
The classroom learning opportunities are offered through Gyanodaya and Gyanodaya-West. To enhance our learning offerings, we introduced our in-house curated programs under Fuel for Future. Through Fuel for Future, we utilize the AI powered GVC (Gyanodaya Virtual Campus) platform to curate and share engaging content every week in the form of learning nuggets like Leader videos, articles, eLearnings etc. that enable employees deep dive on skills that align with the development and business needs. We leverage a variety of learning tools (e.g., quizzes, trivia, gamified modules) to elevate the employee learning experience. To make learning accessible to all employees, we also curated our learning platform to deliver learning channels in the local language.
Employee Engagement
Maintaining a motivated and inspired global workforce is instrumental to our success and learning how our employees feel is crucial for developing as an organization. We have a diverse workforce with a broad geographical spread, and we seek to engage all our people as we support them and their lifestyle. Every two years, we conduct an employee engagement survey, called the Vibes survey.
The Vibes survey provides valuable feedback for management, which helps us develop and execute action plans in specific areas that are tracked at local, regional, and global levels. We conducted our most recent Vibes survey in FY2025, with a 96% response rate. The survey
results indicate that we continue to achieve or outpace industry benchmarks for employee engagement, highlighting that employees are proud to work for Birla Carbon. They feel respected and find our leadership team approachable. The results have been distilled into action plans in each region and unit. We continue to work on these action plans and track our progress thereof over the next year.
Health and safety
At Birla Carbon, safety is non-negotiable. It is built into our policies, embraced across all levels of our organization, and guides every decision we make. We proactively identify risks and implement preventive measures to ensure the protection of our people and partners. Safety is not just a standard — it is a daily commitment that we uphold without compromise.
Embedding health and safety in our business starts with our leadership setting clear expectations for working safely, providing the necessary resources, incentivizing the right behaviors, and holding people accountable for their actions. Our vision is to realize zero safety-related incidents in the workplace because, for us, zero is the only acceptable number.
In 2024, the International Carbon Black Association (ICBA) awarded Gold Certificates of Recognition to 13 Birla Carbon sites for achieving outstanding safety performance, recognizing Birla Carbon as an industry leader in workplace safety. The sites included 11 manufacturing sites and two Research and Development (R&D) Centers. Birla Carbon achieved the highest award count among the six ICBA member companies. Our facilities that received this award include Marietta and Taloja Technical Centers, Camaçari, Cubatão, Egypt, Gummidipoondi, Hickok, Hungary, Italy, Jining, Renukoot, Spain, and Thailand.
Also in 2024, Birla Carbon Thailand (BCT) received the prestigious Golden Shield Award at the national level for being a ‘Disease free – Safe and Happy Workplace. The awards ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Public Health and was attended by various industry stakeholders. FEIQUE (Business Federation of the Spanish Chemical Industry) recognized Birla Carbon Spain for achieving a zero accidents rate in 2024 at our site in Santander. This is the second consecutive year our Santander location has earned this recognition. The award was presented by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations (CEOE) in Madrid
In 2024, Birla Carbon Spain (Santander) was also honored with the prestigious COASHIQ (Business Association for Safety, Hygiene, and the Environment in the Chemical Industry) Safety Management Award, which recognized our achievement of zero safety accidents. Santander has received this recognition for three consecutive years. We thank COASHIQ for this honor and all our team members for their commitment to excellence in safety management. We will continue striving to maintain and exceed these standards in the future, reaffirming our position as leaders in the chemical industry.
E-Permitting System
Work permitting is the last opportunity to identify risks and hazards by the personnel involved before beginning a task. Our e-permitting system for issuing work permits was born from an employee recommendation and is operationalized by our Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) team. The software enables employees to issue work permits in a way that will increase safety and efficiency and decrease risks, allowing users to quickly and easily incorporate key information, lessons learned from specific jobs or equipment, and equipment-specific requirements into each permit. The tool’s user-friendly interface further strengthens our permitting system and makes the overall process more efficient.
Birla Carbon Canada (Hamilton) was our first plant to implement the new process, with roll-out to our facilities in Brazil, India, Italy, and Egypt to follow in FY2026. Ensuring our work teams can identify and address the risks and hazards of each job is key to ensuring the safety of the individuals involved in the work.
Birla Carbon Celebrates HSE
Birla Carbon hosted our 2025 Global HSE Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. The event’s theme, “Lead the Change for
HSE Excellence,” brought together key HSE leaders from across all Birla Carbon locations, as well as members of the Senior
Management Team (SMT).
A special leadership panel, featuring senior executives, discussed the company’s 5-year SE vision and identified potential barriers to progress. The panel also outlined Birla arbon’s strategic shift from being a carbon black business to a leading global carbon-based enterprise, while emphasizing the crucial role HSE leaders and managers will play in this transformation.
