When John Keells Holdings (JKH) and Richard Pieris and Company took over Maskeliya Plantations PLC from Forbes and Walker tea brokers in a joint estate management venture called RPK Management Services (RPK), the plantation company was running at a loss.

It lost over Rs33 million in 1994, and Rs23 million in the 15 months to 31 March 1996. The industry had, in the meantime, leapfrogged from a Rs497 million loss in 1995 to a Rs1.1 billion profit in 1996. The number of outstanding labour tribunal cases filed against Maskeliya Plantations had reportedly climbed to 320, and the estate worker unions held 30 consecutive days of strike action.

In 1996, on his first day of work as the new Director Operations of RPK, Dan Seevaratnam was plunged head-first into hot water.

“Corporate management couldn’t even enter plantations because the workers were so hostile,” Seevaratnam says. “They slashed your tires, smashed up the estate board, cut the water lines…” he trails off.

Two years later, as the financial year ended March 31, 1998, Maskeliya Plantations reported Rs380 million net profit and 1,774kg yield-per-hectare – both numbers the highest on record since 1989 to date.

[pullquote]“Whichever company, whatever resources we had or didn’t have, the underlying factor [for my success] has always been people.”[/pullquote]

In 2000 Seevaratnam went on to Namunukula Plantations PLC (another subsidiary of JKH) leaving behind a highly successful company and a transformed population of workers. He is today revered in the plantations industry not simply for the turnaround of three of the five companies he headed, but for revolutionizing the way the industry sees its employees, and for engaging their “hearts and minds”.

When the sterling and rupee plantation companies of the tea industry’s heyday were taken over by the government in 1975, Sri Lanka had already established itself as the global tea giant. A fifth of the world’s tea consumers wanted ‘Ceylon Tea’, and a third of Sri Lanka’s national GDP came from the tea industry. But after nationalization, mismanagement set in and the industry started sustaining serious losses. By the late ‘80s, India and China were catching up on production and Sri Lanka’s tea industry was sustaining consecutive annual losses of Rs1.4 billion or more. When the industry was reprivatized in 1992, Sri Lanka’s minimum wage was just over Rs6,000 but plantations were paying workers just over Rs60 a day – the rough equivalent of Rs1,500 a month.

Seevaratnam had three goals to achieve when he arrived at Maskeliya.

First, he was to improve the company’s Colombo Tea Auction (CTA) ranking based on tea prices. Maskeliya, he claims, had the best fields for upcountry tea, but fetched low prices at the auction due to low quality of the end product. To improve product quality at the company, Seevaratnam devised his second goal: bringing about a value-creating ethos. The result would be value-based management of activities, every step of the way, right through the fabric of the hierarchy from pluckers to chief executives.

But to create value consciousness throughout the company, there was a vital component that was missing: employees needed to feel part and parcel of the company’s value chain. This was not likely to happen in an industry where staff would report to work and do the minimum required for their day’s wages. In a situation where employees took strike action for as long as a month, the obstacle seemed insurmountable. Thus Seevaratnam’s third and most important goal as well as his area of greatest strength was laid out before him: creating and growing employee engagement.

“Whichever company, whatever resources we had or didn’t have, the underlying factor [for my success] has always been people.”

His theory is simple: the cause for value addition or value destruction is, in any industry, people. Treat people right, and they will add value.

Seevaratnam’s understanding of the importance of happy people to profitable business came from his experience at Unilever as a fresh-from-secondary-school Production Trainee. If there were no accidents in the soap production room which the 21-year-old supervised, he was felicitated at the end of the month. His performance at the company was linked to clear achievable goals, and the simple things that a bachelor couldn’t handle on his own, like crockery and groceries, the company took care of for him.

Goal orientating and incentivizing were not in the methodology of estate management when Seevaratnam switched careers to become an assistant superintendent for the sterling Ceylon Tea Plantations Company in 1971.

“I joined planting at a time when employees were still being called ‘coolie’ so there was no hearts or minds,” he says. “It was ‘do as you are told’, and they were only just better than slaves.”

From the time Seevaratnam was first given authority on the plantations, he took small steps – felicitating the best plucker, gifting a set of plates to a newly married couple – to recognize and incentivize the plantation workers. His co-workers laughed at him. The first tea planters of Sri Lanka were ex-soldiers of the British Army. Theirs was a command and control approach to estate management which Sri Lankans who later took on the profession emulated.

On plantation estates, assistant superintendents or assistant managers are known as “SD,” short for “Sinna Dorai,” which translates from Tamil to “Young Master”. Most planters begin their professional career here, and with time and experience gained with a seasoned veteran, become “PD” or “Periya Dorai,” which means “Head Master”.

Seevaratnam first became a periya dorai five years after the sterling and rupee plantation companies were nationalized under the Janatha Estates Development Board (JEDB) and he was appointed superintendent at the Kandapola Estate in 1980. In 1987 he was appointed to the four-estate Waltrim Group with four sinna dorai, approximately 1,200 workers and an extended community of 5,000 people under his supervision. It was at these posts that he started making a name for himself.

Seevaratnam knew his science, and he knew his agriculture. He also had a simple motto which his father taught him from the Bible: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. He experimented with his crops, and he treated his people well. On account of the results achieved by Waltrim Group in his last two years there, in 1990 Seevaratnam was appointed JEDB Director for the Hatton region with 15 estates and 12,000 hectares of tea under his purview. His philosophy hadn’t changed, and he still served people in an industry that continued to laugh at him.

It wasn’t until after the 1992 re-privatization of the plantations industry, and he joined RPK in 1996 that Seevaratnam felt belonging. He reminisces a meeting with Ken Balendra (then the first Sri Lankan Chairman of John Keells Holdings) when he was handed a letter of appointment and told “Siva, do you know what the most important thing at John Keells is? It’s people. And number two? It’s people. And number three: it’s people.”

“Siva” was required by the Chairman to turn around 20 chaotic tea plantations under the Maskeliya Plantations banner.

The situation of workers on the estates was much worse at this time than when Seevaratnam first joined the industry. It required much deeper penetrating measures than merely felicitating the “best plucker” or ceramic dinner sets given away as incentive to perform better.

“Tea was bad, rubber was bad, everything was bad,” Seevaratnam explains. “I only had people.”

[pullquote]“I joined planting at a time when employees were still being called ‘coolie’ so there was no hearts or minds,” he says. “It was ‘do as you are told’, and they were only just better than slaves.”[/pullquote]

Seevaratnam managed to get himself a fleeting 15-minute meeting with Savumiamoorthy Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) of the time. If the CWC was committed to improving the lot of the “Indian Tamil” worker, and if this same worker was the “greatest asset” of the plantation companies, then why were the CWC and the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) at loggerheads with each other?

Seevaratnam wanted to set in motion something called “Partners In Progress”, a programme to change the relationship between the RPCs and the unions, and the relationship between the workers and estate management. He had been told he was ahead of his time, and wouldn’t get the union cooperation he needed, but Thondaman made the necessary phone calls and thanked him as he left the meeting with “I wish there were more planters like you”.

The first step of the process was to initiate discussion. Seevaratnam had the Darawela-Maskeliya Cricket Club – usually a space exclusively for planters, their family and their friends – opened up and invited
union representatives from the entire Hatton district for a full-day meeting. They and Maskeliya management (25 in all) sat together for meals and genuine discussion of the challenges faced by the two groups.

But more than formal discussion, Seevaratnam was interested in – and proactively encouraged – the establishing of personal relationships between union representatives and individual members of estate management. They talked and chatted and sipped tea, the unions and the RPCs together, while photographers walked around clicking and flashing. Then they had lunch.

“I had taken over a company that was making a thundering loss, there was no
way that I could have had a tamasha,” Seevaratnam explains.

They ate from plain lunch packets, but everyone ate together. They were one. Seevaratnam reiterated what he had told Thondaman, that there was no sense to the disagreement. And it seemed the unionists agreed.

The common cause of the estate worker was established, and it was agreed that union and RPC engagement should not be limited to grievance resolution, but progress towards community development. National Identity Cards for the descendants of migrant workers became priority alongside incremental interventions that contributed to a more palpable change of attitude on the plantations.

Estates began employing bilingual support staff at medical clinics to translate between Sinhala-speaking doctors and Tamil-speaking patients. A weekly “labour day” was established on each estate, when workers were allowed to bring their grievances before the management. Workers who were traditionally
expected to stand outside the office building and speak with officers through the window were now required to be given a seat inside. And they were to be called by name.

“See, we had a plucking policy, a pruning policy and a manufacturing policy, but nothing that applied to the management,” Seevaratnam points out.

So they drafted and swore to uphold the Planters Pledge which was shared with the unions and considered a serious offence if breached by managers.

[pullquote]“We had a plucking policy, a pruning policy and a manufacturing policy, but nothing that applied to the management”[/pullquote]

The Pledge contained twenty points including that workers were to be addressed by proper name, and that all slang and offensive language was to be removed from management vocabulary during conversation with workers. Workers were also to be given dignity, and offered a seat at any meeting, and their grievances heard at weekly “Labour Day” meetings.

The programme encouraged the kind of dialogue that went further than the worker simply refusing to pluck a particular field and the manager taking punitive action. It led to better understanding on the part of management, for instance that particular fields were infested with leeches and therefore exceptionally difficult to work in, and for more proactive solutions to be sought.

Partners In Progress became a buzzword on the estates as more and more changes took place and other plantation companies started emulating Maskeliya, hoping for the same success.

“We are always looking at the cost of input and what will be the output,” Seevaratnam explains, “but I look at the outcome.”

When management is forced to base its decisions purely on a budget, he points out, it creates resentment between them and the employees. On the contrary, with engagement highlighted as the point of greatest concern, workers followed procedures and standards with a sense of personal responsibility and commitment. Seevaratnam’s theory is that the fact that when management gains, the company gains, and when the company gains its employee gains, must be translated from talk to practice.

The costs of setting up Partners In Progress were minimal, he says, and absolutely justified by the results. Funding for estate worker welfare is not hard to come by, Seevaratnam says. World Vision, IIDP and UNICEF and ADB have continued to support RPCs over the years, through grant and loan schemes structured specifically to support the plantation industry, and monitored by the Plantation Reform Project.

Maskeliya Plantations received at least Rs78 million in loans and grants under this project for the financial year ending March 31, 2000, and Watawala Plantations was pledged a sum of Rs142 million in aid for water sanitation and similar plantations by World Vision in 2015 alone. It is not funding, but taking such support from donors and distributing in the spirit in which it is given, Seevaratnam says, that is lacking in the industry.

“If I wanted harmonious industrial relations, that has a cost to it,” he says. “There is a huge cost, and a benefit. Don’t worry about these little things.”

Seevaratnam gave cognizance to the fact that a plucker who was born on the estate and whose parents were pluckers before her are much better skilled at the task than he with his learning and experience. His task, at the helm, was to bring out a sense of passion, dignity and loyalty in the worker and relate that back to the seemingly “menial” task of plucking tea.

“It’s not the fertilizer, and it’s not the computer,” that will improve performance, he says. “You have to change the hearts and the minds of the people… You don’t have to think much beyond what you would want in the situation. If workers are happy, the quality of work is much better.”

Seevaratnam left Maskeliya in 2000 having transformed the entire Nawalapitiya region into what is now one of the most coveted locations for tea plantations in Sri Lanka. He joined Namunukula Plantations, another RPK plantation, and brought about similar results within a year. In 2001 he joined Kahawatte Plantations, as Executive Deputy Chairman, where he applied the same attitude and practices, turning the company from the bottom of the CTA to number one, within seven years, by 2007. In 2008 Seevaratnam joined Watawala Plantations as its chief executive.

[pullquote]“We are always looking at the cost of input and what will be the output, but I look at the outcome.”[/pullquote]

Unlike his previous assignments, Watawala wasn’t suffering. The company was consistently ranked between number three and number one for prices fetched at CTA, and Seevaratnam was called in to establish the company as South Asia’s leader in the industry. Again, his strategy was simply to improve the state of the worker.

By 2011 Watawala Plantations PLC had made two significant people-related decisions: one, to refer to all field staff as ‘associates’, and two, to include more female employees in leadership positions such that by 2015, women would constitute 50% of the field supervisory positions at the company.

In 2013, Watawala Plantations made an all-time record gross profit of just over Rs1 billion, 165% growth from the year before, and a net profit of Rs727 million, while the Regional Plantation Companies combined recorded a loss of Rs908 million. The same year, Watawala swept the boards with awards for financial reporting, management and ethical practice. Seevaratnam won multiple awards for his leadership.

Then, in 2014, Seevaratnam retired from the plantations industry. He had a non-negotiable formula according to which he worked towards the turnaround of any organization which he headed: he turned the company around, groomed his successor, and within six to seven years, left.

“I train [my successor] to be a good leader,” he explains simply, “and unless I get out of the way, he can’t do what I have taught him to do.”

[pullquote]“I train [my successor] to be a good leader, and unless I get out of the way, he can’t do what I have taught him to do.”[/pullquote]

Roshan Rajadurai, Chairman of the Ceylon Planters Association and Managing Director of Kelani Valley Plantations PLC, is a testament to the calibre of leader Seevaratnam moulded. Rajadurai joined Seevaratnam as his first creeper at the JEDB Kandapola Estate in 1983. “Creepers” in the plantation industry are aspiring young planters who learn the tricks of the trade under a well-established master, often paying a high tuition for the tutelage. Following his training and a hiatus, Rajadurai returned to work with his mentor as the General Manager of Kahawatte Plantations, where Seevaratnam was appointed chief executive in 2001.

“He had the confidence to allow me total freedom and total control,” Rajadurai says. “For this reason, I was able to take independent decisions, and he backed me throughout. He is a very knowledgeable person, but he still gave me a lot of width and depth.”

In hindsight, Rajadurai finds that it is this free reign he was allowed even as an assistant superintendent at Kandapola in the 1980s that made him a capable leader himself. Twenty-five years to the date Rajadurai was assigned as his first creeper at Kandapola Estate, Seevaratnam handed over the title of chief executive of Kahawatte Plantations to Rajadurai. Seevaratnam currently serves the industry as a consultant to a number of plantation companies, and continues to champion the cause of the estate worker, not as a naïve philanthropic effort, but in recognition of the value that happy employees bring to any profit making venture.