GSK Sri Lanka Supply Chain Director awarded inaugural People Leaders’ Award

Wednesday, 13 August 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The inaugural ‘People Leaders’ Award 2014’ for Supply Chain was awarded to Rajeeve Goonetileke, Supply Chain Director of GlaxoSmithKline, Sri Lanka; one of the foremost research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies in the world. He received this award at the recently concluded annual zNational Human Resources Conference (NHRC) organised by the Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), Sri Lanka. Considered to be the largest Human Resource event in South Asia, NHRC is organised annually by IPM to create the ideal platform for all HR enthusiasts, to share new industry trends and new HR practices. Under their patronage, winners of the ‘People Leaders’ Awards’ were chosen from the industry in collaboration with other professional bodies such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICASL), the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and the Institute of Supply and Materials Management (ISMM).

The nominees were judged based on five key attributes of people management, namely: developing people, supporting people performance, building organisational capability, mobilising individual commitment and display of personal character. They were also evaluated on how well they performed as ‘people leaders’ under these five attributes. With a BSc in Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Rajeeve started off his career with large national and multi-national corporate conglomerates. He read for his Masters in Industrial Engineering at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and joined GlaxoSmithKline in 2007. Under his stewardship GlaxoSmithKline’s local manufacturing operation was significantly increased and gained recognition as a high performer within the GSK network. Being awarded the GSK Global PerformanceAward 2013 – Talent and Culture and Indian Sub-continent Business Excellence Award for Employee Engagement, testifies for the outstanding contribution he made in the area of people development. Commenting on his career philosophy, Rajeeve expressed, “My philosophy with respect to my career is to first deliver, and then growth will follow – this has paid me rich dividends in the last 21 years of my career. What I believe is that when it comes to leading a team, as an individual I am nothing, but with an engaged team ‘we’ can be ‘something’ and maybe ‘outstanding’. This drives me to engage every individual possible to our team journey and get them to give their best contribution. In this sense both my team and I can vouch that our journey has been a very rewarding experience.” Making the necessary leadership changes, challenging the status quo and sharing a common vision with his team has ensured the high performance of the manufacturing plants in Mount Lavinia and Dehiwala as high performers among global plants. GSK has been recognised as one of the Great Places to Work for in Sri Lanka, consecutively in years 2013 and 2014. Rajeeve’s personal commitment and engagementwith the team has inspired the teams he works with and will continue to do so in the future.