Prevention Of Sexual Harassment
The Company has zero tolerance for sexual harassment at workplace and has adopted a Policy on prevention, prohibition and redressal of sexual harassment at workplace in line with the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the Rules thereunder for prevention and redressal of complaints of sexual harassment at workplace. The Company is committed to providing equal opportunities without regard to their race, caste, sex, religion, colour, nationality, disability, etc. All women associates (permanent, temporary, contractual and trainees) as well as any women visiting the Company's office premises or women service providers are covered under this Policy. All employees are treated with dignity with a view to maintain a work environment free of sexual harassment whether physical, verbal or psychological.
During the Fiscal 2017, the Company had received four complaints on sexual harassments, which have been substantiated and appropriate actions were taken. The Company organized 137 workshops and awareness program against sexual harassment. There were no complaints pending for more than 90 days during the year.
Similar initiatives on Prevention of Sexual Harassment are in place across the Tata Motors Group of companies.
Safety & Health – Performance & Initiatives
The Company is committed to provide a safe and healthy working environment for its employees and associates to ensure a high degree of safety norms. The Company continously strives to perform beyond compliance whilst positively influencing its value chain members to improve their safety standards. There is an increased focus on areas like training and awareness, safety observations, audits etc. to drive a positive safety culture.
The Company's India operation, whilst achieved improved performance with Total Recordable Case Frequency Rate (TRCFR) being 1.84 against the target of 1.96 for the Fiscal 2017, the overall Safety Performance improved but recorded four fatalities during the year, of which three were road related.
Manufacturing Plants across the country are certified to ISO 14001 – Environment Management Systems and OHSAS 18001 – Occupational Health & Safety Management System, along-with Warehouses Safety Infrastructure upgraded and certification of OHSAS 18001 for a warehouse was also accomplished during Fiscal 2017. All the Company's Manufacturing Plants across India are certified to ISO 50001 – Energy Management System too. The Company has undertaken several initiatives for resource conservation such as re-cycling of treated effluents back to process, energy, material recovery and co-processing from hazardous wastes through cradle to grave waste management principles and rainwater harvesting. Manufacturing plants also generate in-house renewable power and source off-site green power where available. Except Sanand, all the Company's sites are certified for GreenCo.
The Company places equal emphasis on safety processes, behavioral safety and strive to create a positive safety culture towards achieving the ultimate goal of 'zero injury'. Safety is a primary focus area in daily management and safety parameters are part of the scorecard for Senior Leaders. In same lieu 'SAFE20 - 20 minutes for Safety,' the company's initiative on engagement in Safety. Sessions on Road Safety were conducted at 9 offices across India engaging tunes of 1,000+ employees along with mentoring of Flexi Work Force under "MY BUDDY" program by Permanent Blue Collar Work force / Group leaders.
In line with Safety and Health Policy, to enhance safety standards of its business partners, Company engaged its upstream and downstream supply chain in the safety journey. The objective of such engagement is to raise the safety standards at Suppliers and Dealer workshops. In addition to existing 16 safety standards, new standards / guidelines like Cell Phone Policy, CCTV Policy, Lone Working Standard, Industrial Hygiene Standard, Engineering Standards, Vehicle Usage & Replacement Guidelines were developed and rolled out to raise the level of safety.
The Company continued Campaign 'i-drive safe' – an initiative on building a safe driving culture amongst its employee and associates and have trained them in defensive driving. In excess of 19,103 employees and associates till date have been trained under this campaign, initiated few years ago. 'My Road My Discipline' a Road Safety Week campaign during January 11 to 17 included Road Safety Celebrations conducted in all location including all plants, offices, dealerships, warehouses, vendors and social awareness messages were aired on FM on road safety in Indian 8 cities.
'senSHEtize'– A Company's initiative on Women's Safety Awareness: 950 women employees were trained with focus on Women's Safety and Self-defense in 14 session across offices & plants.
Jagruti – Safety Awareness Building Campaign for Workshop Managers is a year-long campaign focused on building awareness on safety and understanding of the Company's expectations on Dealers Workshop Safety. This programme is in collaboration with the Company, Castrol and training partner ICECD. Jagruti Safety Awareness campaign was initiated done for channel partners-PV & CV dealers covering around 1,800 workshop pan-India.
In health area, the Company under the 'Health Plus because you matter!' initiative engaged employees on various subject of health. Health & well-being of aging workforce remains a prime concern. Various health programs across all locations with emphasis on contract employees- eye checkup of drivers, stress management, mailers, etc. have been conducted under this initiative.
For Food Safety, Pune Plant was accredited with HACCP Certification (ISO 22001) and rest of the plants shall be implementing in a phased manner.
In accordance with the Company's stand on protecting the planet, the Company took a number of initiatives to reduce its Green House Gases footprint by 3% over Fiscal 2016. Similarly, in the Company's quest to go on renewable energy the Company used 75 million units of renewable electricity in its operations, which is close to 17% of its requirement. On the Company's journey to ZWTL (Zero Waste To Landfill), it reduced hazardous waste to landfill / incineration by approx. 30% over Fiscal 2016.
On Sustainability, supply chain sustainability was one of the major initiatives undertaken. 50 suppliers have been trained and assessed to sustainability expectations. Handholding of those suppliers is being done to improve the sustainability performance.
Circular economy, natural capital evaluation of key dependencies, design for environment, biodiversity assessment, life cycle assessment of products, climate adaptation study were some of the other initiatives the Company has taken in sustaining its business and planet.
JLR, the Company's subsidiary continues to drive health and safety through Destination Zero – A Journey to Zero Harm. The Company's commitment is reflected in the JLR commitment 'Blueprint for Lasting Success' with the key statement being "Our most valuable asset is our people, nothing is more important than their safety and well-being. Our co-workers and families rely on this commitment. There can be no compromise". Activities to deploy this ambition, promote awareness with each one of at JLR, encouraged to understand and take responsibility for its own and fellow colleague's safety and well-being. Various Zero Harm programs, publications and events have contributed to improved performance in Fiscal 2017 and additionally each functional area has built their own plan of activities to lead improved safety and well-being within their own area of responsibility. Lost Time Case performance has continued an improving trend with an overall business improvement of around 6% Y-O-Y, against a backdrop of continued growth and increased volumes and headcount. A notable improvement was seen in manufacturing locations with over 20% improvement against last Fiscal performance. Many of the sites celebrated zero lost time accidents.
The business has gone through OHSAS 18001 – recertification in Fiscal 2017, with all the UK locations accredited to this standard through a series of external assessments. Further locations have now been added to the assessment portfolio. The business has also maintained the internal safety assessment process SHARP (Safety and Health Assessment Review Process) within its manufacturing locations and has now extended a version into non-manufacturing locations. JLR also continues to mature its approach to well-being activities with a number of targeted events over the past year and specific well-being focus and topics planned for the coming year.
TMSA sustained good performance in areas of Safety and Health during Fiscal 2017. In June 2016, TMSA successfully cleared audit inspection for Occupational Hygiene against the requirements of the OHSAS.
TDCV Korea achieved an improvement in Safety Index to 0.91 from 1.33 in Fiscal 2017.
TMTL, Thailand continued leadership commitment and engagement with focus in areas safety communication, risk assessment, improving capabilities of employees for emergency situations.
BUSINESS RESPONSIBILITY REPORT
Pursuant to Regulation 34(2)(f) of the SEBI Listing Regulations, the Business Responsibility Report (BRR) initiatives taken from an environmental, social and governance perspective, in the prescribed format is available as a separate section of the Annual Report and also hosted on the Company's website www.tatamotors.com.
FINANCE
During the year, the free cash flows for Tata Motors Group were Rs. (268) crores, post spend on capex, design and development of Rs. 30,467crores. Tata Motors Group's borrowing as at March 31, 2017, stood at Rs. 78,604 crores (as at March 31, 2016: Rs. 69,360 crores). Cash and bank balances and investments in mutual funds stood at Rs. 51,119 crores (as at March 31, 2016: Rs. 49,693 crores). The consolidated net automotive debt to equity ratio stood at 0.15 as at March 31, 2017, as compared to (0.01) as at March 31, 2016.
The cash flows from operations were positive Rs. 1,381 crores for standalone operations (including joint operations) of the Company. Spend on capex, design and development was Rs. 3,427 (net). The borrowings of the Company (including joint operations) as at March 31, 2017 stood at Rs. 19,574 crores (as at March 31, 2016: Rs. 16,473 crores). Cash and bank balances including mutual funds stood at Rs. 2,687 crores (as at March 31, 2016: Rs. 2,534 crores).
The Company, in February 2017 prepaid Rs. 300 crores of its Unsecured 8.60% NCD due in 2018. During the year the Company raised Rs. 2,700 crores of funds through Unsecured NCDs.
At JLR, post spend on capex, design and development of GB£3,065 million (Rs. 26,869 crores), the free cash flows were GB£295 million (Rs. 2,586 crores) for Fiscal 2017. The borrowings of JLR as at March 31, 2017, stood at GB£3,581 million (Rs. 28,977 crores) [previous year: GB£2,500 million (Rs. 23,863 crores)]. Cash and financial deposits stood at GB£5,487 million (Rs. 44,400 crores) [previous year: GB£4,651 million (Rs. 44,395 crores)]. Additionally, JLR has undrawn committed long term bank lines of GB£1,870 million (JLR data as per IFRS).During the Fiscal, JLR issued a €650 million bond maturing in 2024 paying an annual coupon of 2.200%. Subsequently, JLR issued a GB£300 million bond maturing in 2021 paying an annual coupon of 2.750%.
During the Fiscal, TMFL has neither raised any borrowings by way of unsecured, subordinated perpetual non-convertible debentures towards Tier 1 and Tier 2 Capital nor by way of an issue of unsecured, subordinated non-convertible debentures towards Tier 2 Capital.
Tata Motors Group has undertaken and will continue to implement suitable steps for raising long term resources to match fund requirements and to optimise its loan maturity profile.
During the year, the Company's rating for foreign currency borrowings was upgraded to "Ba1"/Stable by Moody's and to "BB+"/ Stable by Standard & Poor's. For borrowings in the local currency, the ratings was retained by CRISIL at "AA" with a change in outlook to Positive and by ICRA at "AA" with a change in outlook to Positive. The Non-Convertible Debentures and Long Term Bank facilities i.e. (Buyers Credit) rating by CARE was retained at "AA+". During the year, JLR's rating was upgraded by Moody's at "Ba1"/Positive and was upgraded by Standard & Poor's at "BB+". For TMFL, CRISIL has maintained its rating on long-term debt instruments and bank facilities to CRISIL "AA/A1+"/with a change in outlook to Positive for long term. ICRA has also maintained its rating at "AA/A1+" with a change in outlook to Positive for long term. CARE has given rating of "AA+" on long-term debt instruments with a Stable outlook.