Puddles versus Potholes

August Rains in New York

August Rains in Mumbai

New Age, New Roles

Source: Business Line

Some balloons fly...

What tells you about the state of engagement of employees in any organization? Surveys, data-crunching or scientific research methods? I am sure that these methods have their own validity but many times it is purely your encounter with an organization's human assets, which is enough to tell you about the true state of engagement.

Recently we were on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. While our way back to Bangalore, we stopped over at a highway Mc Donald’s. After stuffing ourselves with usual Mc delights, we prepared to leave. My 5 year old son was given two balloons by one of the restaurant crew members. Sweet gesture, I thought. My son as expected was delighted and came-out of the store with a big smile on his face. It was very windy day and the evening was rolling into dusk. The sky was overcast and rain was expected anytime (Bangalore is anyways known for its evening splashes). We were hurrying into our car to be able to get back home before it is too dark. In the meantime, my son in his attempt to play tossed up one of the balloons and swish... it went flying far away. In his enthusiasm he wanted to run behind the balloon which could have been dangerous on a highway. In my attempt to curb his enthusiasm, the second balloon also gone with the wind. Arnab was inconsolable. He had lost his valuable possessions and desperately wanted them back. We had to somehow put him in the car and as I was preparing to drive-away amidst Arnab's loud protests, someone knocked on our car window. We looked at the guy, he was one of the Mc Donald's crew members. He must have seen Arnab's balloonistrionics and understanding the mood of the child, had come running with three balloons (the third one perhaps to more than cover of the 5 year old's loss). I rolled down the windows and profusely thanked the crew member. Arnab was delighted. It is another story what he did with those 3 balloons inside the car, later on :-)

Reflecting upon that incident later, I thought what could be a better measure of employee engagement Here is an employee who goes beyond his normal stated duties and responsibilities voluntarily, just to bring a smile back on a young consumer's face. I am sure Arnab is ‘engaged’ for life to Mc D and I guess I am too.

What is common between Anna & Starbucks?

Further to my July 30 post 'Eyes on Star-bucks', the Starbucks strike at Chile has ended. In July, the nearly 200-member strong union in Chile launched Starbucks' first strike at company-owned stores, seeking pay that keeps up with inflation, a $100 monthly lunch stipend, as well as other benefits.

Although the strike ended with the company willing to welcome back the unionized partners, the larger issue that this low profile strike stirred has not been lost on many. Experts feel that Starbucks strike in Chilie is a symptom of a larger people movement in that region. Not only starbucks, some other companies have also seen such conflicts. but to read these strikes as organization-specific and only IR-related case would be a huge error. Rosa Luxemburg describes - 'workplace struggles as part of a fabric of broader political struggle against the state and its imperialist wars. She points out how essential it is to see the overlapping between political and economic struggles, to see how struggles for unionization emerge in the context of broader political upheavals. She also points out to the dynamic relationship between economic and political struggle and how they enrich one another.' (source: blackorchids collective)

This is why Anna's movement in India perhaps has a huge significance. More than anything else, the mass-support to Anna's movement is a representative of the angst of people against the corrupt system. The movement also marks yet another major show of real people power and spontaneous support rather than orchestrated show of strength that most of the political parties have been doing in India.

Nations and organizations cannot remain blind to such movements, whether in Chile or India. Engagement of people in any systems can only happen on real and equal terms and by initiating concrete steps towards building both rational and emotional connect with the enterprise.

Total Rewards for Total Engagement

Companies are increasingly realizing the need for engaging their 'soft' assets, however they also realize that soft strategies (mostly rhetoric) won’t help in achieving the same. I have always maintained engagement is driven from the top but implemented by the line managers. The HR acts only as a custodian and facilitator. However engagement is a line function. Managers have to be made accountable for engaging their people.


Few companies in India are moving towards taking concrete steps in doing that as well. The compensation of managers is gradually shifting towards ‘total rewards’ not only in concept but also in practice. Have a look at some of the quotes from today’s Economic Times news (Cos Tag Exec Pay to nurturing skills):

1. Wipro: 20% variable pay of GMs linked to attrition from last year.

2. IGATE-PATNI: 50% of variable pay linked to people management, delegation of duties, goal-setting since 3 years.

3. LG: 105 variable pay of managers linked to attrition.

4. Godrej: 5-10% variable-pay dependent on team performance and development assessment.

5. Sutra: Out of 10% variable pay, 3% on sub-ordinate targets.

6. MTS: 30%-40% variable pay linked to talent development and mentoring skills and 10% to employee engagement.

7. Mumbai-base engineering company has 12% variable pay this year on a ‘nurturing’ parameter.

‘People do not leave their companies, they leave their supervisors’. This famous quote is so true even in the present context. Organization are waking-up to that and putting the onus of engaging their people on their managers. Accountability shall only add more concrete and strength to the same.

Welcome steps but still baby steps for Indian industry. Miles to go…however now the course seems to be correct at least for few. Hope others shall soon fall in line.

Tuning into Engagement

'Infosys has launched yet another HR platform to reach out to its employees, a radio station exclusively for company employees. InfyRadio, currently running as a pilot experiment in Bangalore, will be launched on other Infy campuses in the next three months.



On his last day at work on Friday, Mr N R Narayana Murthy's interview was aired on InfyRadio. According to sources in the company, Mr Murthy spoke of his personal life and is said to have ‘requested' for retro Hindi film songs.


HR sources at Infosys said “it was important for the management to use innovative means of communication that employees relate to as well as enjoy.” Infy Radio was born as a result of this need for communication and employee engagement.

Ms Nandita Gurjar, Executive Vice-President and Global Head of HR, Infosys, said that employees just need to download an application on their iPod and other handheld devices and listen to music on demand.


This radio service will run for six hours a day, five days a week and will be a combination of music (Hindi/English), RJ Talk, Infy-related communication, leadership interviews, song requests as well as interactive contests. The plan is to involve employees and some celebrity guests in the running of this station, said HR sources.

The company has a special Web site for the radio station, where employees can request songs, participate in contests, download the InfyRadio jingle as well as provide feedback about the shows.'

(Source: Business Line, Aug. 20, 2011)

Membership Cards

These days any retail outlet that you visit, is eager to dole-out a 'membership-card'. That membership card shall accumulate points when you shop and shall mean some rewards and so on... Knowing very well that in this era of competition and fickle consumer-loyalty, these cards are a way to 'engage' with the customer and ensure repeat footfalls, I have also been gladly taking these cards as they were offering it to me free of cost and there was no harm in accumulating some points, if I decided to shop in that store the next time around.

However one of the hyper-marts that I visited not so long back offered me a similar membership card but wanted to charge me Rs. 200/- for the same. I politely refused and asked the salesperson, that if they are so eager to make me a member-customer, why they should expect me to pay for the same. The sales guy made an unsuccessful attempt to explain it to me that this is only one time payment and then I stand to gain etc. etc. but I did not budge and I am safely assuming many others (customers) did not budge either. For during my recent visit to the same mart (sans the membership card) another sales guy offered me the same card but this time the payment that I was supposed to make was half of what they had asked me the first time around. This time too I politely tuned down the request.

So What?

I read lessons in engagement from these experiences:

1. Engagement cannot happen on conditional terms (especially those that are unilaterally laid-down like asking to pay for the membership card). It has to happen more on equal terms.


2. Engagement onus lies first on the organization but choice (to engage or not) lies with both organization as well as the stakeholder (that can be customer, could be an employee).


3. Token engagements or symbolic engagements are contributory but cannot be guarantee of engagement alone. (Remember I re-visited the hyper-mart even without a membership card). Engagement has to build on solid 'offerings' and not only on symbolic chanting.


4. Engagement is not a 'transactional' process. Transactional approach kills engagement.

Contextual Communication

Recently in a column E. Balaji, MD & CEO, Ma Foi Randstad said that "I am convinced that businesses need to act like organised ‘engagement exchanges' that promote, mentor and align employees' engagement with other internal and external stakeholders. Employers will have to host the conversations, networking activities and collaborations between employees and external stakeholders."

That brings to the point, once again, the importance of communication and networking in engaging employees. Having said that, the importance of communicating the right message at the right time is even more important. Yesterday, out of the many commercials that I am forced to see on the television, two stayed in the mind for different reasons. The one was of Toshiba laptops which had Sachin Tendulkar sprinting across a 'digitized pitch' amassing more & more runs and of course glory. A commentary in the background further eulogized the 'performance' of Sachin and drawing the same parallel to Toshiba's product performance. The other one was that of Birla Sun Life Insurance which featured Yuvraj Singh. The ad made him say in hindi which when translated meant that '...until the time one is performing, scoring runs, everything seems to be alright and everything follows you. but one day, when the runs dry-up, then things change overnight and you do not seem to be in-demand anymore.'

Going by India's miserable performance in England in the on-going test series, the first ad is definitely ill-timed. The audience (cricket-crazy fanatics) is generally furious over India's test debacle and losing the number one test position so meekly. At such a juncture, Toshiba's ad is sure to add salt to the seething fresh wounds of the fans. The communication is ill-timed and is a sure disaster for the brand. On the other hand, Birla's ad is sure to generate some sympathy and empathy for the protagonist and shall gel very well with the element of ‘uncertainty’ and 'risk-coverage' highlighted in the advertisement. The latter ad-communication is much more appealing and engaging.

The same is true when communicating with employees. organization must wisely choose the messgae and the timing keeping in mind the context. I call it 'contextual communication'. The importance of judging the context before choosing the message and time of delivery is key. Otherwise no matter how well the message has been crafted, it shall fail to achieve what it set-out for in the first place; worst it shall boomerang.

Freedom unlimited...

As we near our independence day, I wonder how freedom has been interpreted in our country. Most of that interpretation has followed a faulty school of thought. Freedom has been largely interpreted as a liberty to engage in anything, which is fine but for the fact that one very significant point has been missed in this entire euphoria of freedom. That has been simply, that my liberty or freedom should not encroach upon the liberty of someone else. In most civilized societies one’s liberty ceases to exist when that person encroaches upon the liberty of others but not in our nation, sadly. Hence anyone digs-up the road or puts-up a wire to the nearest electricity pole, organizes dharna, protest, bandh, holding the larger public to ransom; there are others who think it is fine to engage in deciding the liberty of others and also curbing the same and hence issue moral directions, warnings or diktats.


Many of our organizations are also not free from such ‘free-wheeling’ . After all organizations are mini-representations of societies. But such interpretations of freedom can only cause more and more disenchantment and disengagement. Respecting the liberty of the other person is the only way to secure liberty of oneself. Nations, organizations, managers, leaders cannot fail to appreciate this larger truth.

Anyways, Happy Independence Day, in advance…

Business Media Comments...

Keeping employees engaged, involved

Anjali Prayag

August 12, 2011:

Mr N. R. Narayana Murthy, Founder of Infosys, once quipped that one of his worst fears was that the young employee who ‘walked out of his campus at 5 p.m. one day would not turn up the next day.'


CEOs and HR managers agree that keeping employees engaged is the only way to keep them away from the company's exit doors.

In their book Employee Engagement, academician Debashish Sengupta and HR practitioner S. Ramadoss have demystified, defined, illustratedand strengthened the case for Employee Engagement (EE). Although the introduction to the topic runs into almost three chapters, with exhaustive notes on the definition of EE, the reader gets the benefit from the fifth chapter onwards. The book turns interesting and quite insightful as it gives instances of employee engagement practices at both Indian and foreign companies.

Interesting analogy

Stressing the importance of the employer-employee relationship, the authors make an interesting analogy between a married couple and employee-employer partnership. They write, “Somewhere drawing the line, an employer-employee coming together is also like a marriage with the employer being the husband, because of the traditional perception of being the provider. Much like a marriage is solemnised, when both the parties feel a commonality they can share, an employer and the employee also choose each other based on the possibility of sharing such a stake.”

Very aptly, instances of companies calling their employees by different terms have been mentioned, indicating that the ‘relationship' is not just of the provider and the provided: Walmart calls its employees ‘associates', Starbucks Coffee as ‘partners' and the co-founder of MindTree Consulting is the ‘gardener'. “This automatically necessitated greater involvement and participation of employees, not only in work, but in policy formulation, decision-making and strategy design,” say the authors, pointing out various ways of keeping the employee engaged, in the work environment.

The later chapters draw out some of the best practices in employee engagement from the corporate realm, something that's useful for the budding HR practitioner. An in-depth case study of Taj Group's engagement initiatives helps the reader understand how the hospitality group recovered after the dastardly attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai in 2008. Similarly, watch and jewellery giant, Titan, has used employee engagement as the cornerstone to manage challenges, say the authors. Titan had to manage aspirations of two sets of completely different kinds of employees: one from the manufacturing pool and the other from its retail pool. Employees at the plant were encouraged to form a forum to represent the various needs and aspirations, which led to the formation of an internal union. For customer-facing employees, training and development are the supportive and engaging programmes. Other examples in the book give a peek into how companies are keeping their employees engaged: Underlying Google's free and casual culture is a serious purpose to ideate and create, say the authors. An interesting CSR programme at Bharti Airtel has become one of the most effective tools of employee engagement. “The company started a programme in which an employee could bid for the senior management's time via an online auction, the proceeds of which would be used for CSR initiatives.”

Challenges

However, according to the Towers Perrin Global Workforce Survey of 2006, that indicates the level of employee engagement in India, compared to other countries, the statistics aren't favourable.

In India, only seven per cent were highly engaged, 37 per cent moderately engaged and more than half the employees surveyed (56 per cent) were disengaged.

However, by 2008, as another survey indicated, nearly 34 per cent were ‘fully engaged' and 13 per cent were disengaged. Around 29 per cent of the workers were ‘almost engaged'. The challenges, clearly, are for companies to have their task cut out for themselves: not only to ensure higher levels of engagement, but to also ensure that there is a consistent level of engagement across all levels of the organisation.

Fourth chapter onwards, the authors have brought out an informative edition that is sufficiently illustrated with live examples on employee engagement. However, one feels that the first fifty pages could have been less scholastic and academic. (Source Business Line)

London Bridge Is Falling Down...

Engagement is not appeasement. The recent loots in U.K. are a testimony to the fall-outs of a so-called welfare state, which has been for years breeding lazy bones at the cost of hard-earned tax-payer's money. This over-zealous strategy of many European nations to engage its citizens through appeasement has boomeranged. Such moves meant free food, clothes, parties etc. for many. Now these louts are on rampage because they see all these freebies receding. And the hardworking taxpayer, who has shared the burden of these insolent liabilities for all these years, have to bear the brunt.

In India there have been plenty of such appeasement moves that have ranged from government-mandated schemes like NREGA etc. to politically-mandated ones like free rice, free ration, free television etc. So much so that businesses in some states have complained shortage of labour because nobody wants to work. And why would they, if they are getting everything for free. In the process what are we breeding? A generation of indolents who are addicted to free-living; nonproductive and corrupt.
Organizations should draw lessons from such instances and not fall in the trap of becoming appeasing- institutions for their employees. I repeat engagement is not appeasement. Unfortunately many of our organizations have committed this mistake. Some organizations have done this in the past in the name of so-called ‘welfare’ and look what we have today. Except few institutions, most of these institutions have become jumbo-liability for the country (Air India tops this list by nautical miles). Not to talk of the endless miseries that an average taxpayer (the ‘common-man’) has whenever he has to deal with most of these institutions. Some other institutions have done this in the name of retention. Actually in 2008, the Hewitt salary survey pointed-out that ‘the pressure to retain talent has bred mediocrity’. The finding clearly showed that the salary differential between the top performers and the mediocre had shrunk, indicating that hikes have been less strategic and have not always gone to the ‘right’ people. The result – talent-shortage, high attrition and low engagement.

Organizations can continue to appease their employees but remember ‘a London’ can happen someday in such institutions as well. Reward productivity, reward efforts and results, reward creativity but do not breed apathetic sloths and mediocre.

Boarding Capital

Recently the SHRM - Globeforce survey 2011 pointed out that most of the companies know about their engagement practices during exit-interviews. Isn't that too late? I am not ruling-out the effectiveness of exit-interviews. But for a company to know the true state of its engagement best only when an employee leaves the company is pretty much the same as letting an opportunity go-by. That brings to the point when a company should start engaging its employees.

In my opinion the most crucial part of en employee stay in any organization is the induction period. Most of the perceptions about the company, its people, its culture, its practices etc. are drawn at this time and consequently majority of the decisions regarding how long an employee decides to stay in the organization is consciously or sub-consciously taken during on-boarding stage. In other words maximum engagement or disengagement happens during this stage. After this whatever the employee experiences is contributory to that state. In short if you fail to engage an employee during the on-boarding stage, then you have missed the bus and rest of the time you are trying to catch the same... You may if ‘sprint’ well but in all likelihood you will miss. And remember, if you keep missing buses, you are less-likely to reach the destination.

Personal Fund!

BL Kashyap, well-known construction company, has been accused by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) of evading provident fund payments to employees for five years till 2010-11. The EPFO has slapped dues and fines worth Rs 593 crore on B L Kashyap, which denies the charges.

The case highlights a gigantic flaw in the present system of forced savings adopted by the government. Rules say that all workers will get 12% of their basic pay deducted at source and deposited to a provident fund account. Employers will make a matching contribution. The same rules apply to organised sector employees and to contract workers.

The latter would also include seasonal workers, construction crews and security personnel. The existing PF rules benefit organised workers who work in the same sector for a long time, transfer their accounts from job to job and manage to claim their savings after years of work. It is of little help to India's vast labour force of construction crews, security guards, fish processing women and contract workers who are shuffled between employers and construction sites frequently.

The existing PF system hurts them in two ways. First, it forces a deduction from their salaries; second, they never get to claim these forced savings as they move from job to job because the procedural requirement is beyond them. As a consequence, the number of unclaimed accounts - and funds - keeps piling up at the EPFO. This must stop.

There has to be a savings scheme that is the sole preserve of the worker, which stays constant even as she moves from job to job. Surprisingly, such a scheme, called the New Pension System (NPS) does exist, but it is poorly marketed and publicised. The government should make the NPS the preferred vehicle for receiving and deploying the forced savings of contract workers.

It must also allow voluntary migration of existing PF account holders to the NPS. Once workers get a permanent account for long-term savings that they can access at will, they will be more particular about PF deductions and episodes like the B L Kashyap case would become rare.(Source Economic Times)

Engagement is a culture issue.

People often ask me - 'What kind of engagement activites can we organize? We were thinking of having some friday afternoon activities like tug-of-war, singing comeptition etc. etc.' My standard answer to then is 'Are you talking of entertainment or engagement?'

Often people do not seem to understand me as they may taken great pains to design that event. They are so consumed in that process that many times they miss the big-picture. Engagement is a strategy and not an event. So as not to say that such events cannot fit in the engagement-map. But to treat them as engagement per-say is huge mistake. This is why engagement remains as merely some events or activities in a company. Momentary cosmetic interventions cannot define engagement. Engagement is a culture issue. Culture is the incubator of engagement. And if the engagement strategy has not been weaved on the foundation of strong and breathing organizational culture, such initiatives would soon loose steam.

One of my student who did her internship at Rambagh Palace Hotel at Jaipur (Taj Hotels) and spent good time in studying their engagement practices, gave me first-hand account of what she 'experienced'. Tata culture of ethics and care is so neatly inter-woven in the organization that a considerable degree of engagement happens at the time of induction itself. She told me that to every employee she spoke, even though some were very busy, not a single employee felt that he/she was in the wrong place. The hotel had a fabulous 90% engagement. Being an intern she never felt bullied by her senior colleagues. On the contrary everyone greeted her with the customary 'Khambagani' which means 'hello'. No wonder not too long back the hotel was rated as the best hotel in the world.

Engagement is a way of life; it is like the blood which transports the life-giving oxygen to every part of the organization keeping it live and thriving.

Space, not Place!

It's 9.30 am and there's near commotion at a building in Gurgaon that houses offshoring units of US firms. The parking is full - employees are being turned away - and there are long queues that snake their way to the elevators. The lifts themselves are packed to the gills. Inside an office, employees sit within sniffing distance of each other. Cubicles have made way for linear sitting, and the office does not look too different from a factory shop floor. Lavatories are few, and it isn't uncommon to spot a line outside them. The scene at the cafeteria is not much different from that at the parking lot or the lift. Welcome to just another day at a typical small or medium-sized IT outsourcing company…(Source: Economic Times - IT companies function in cramped offices to cut costs, Sobia Khan, Ravi Teja Sharma & Indu Nanda Kumar)

  

Office space appears to be under sever crunch especially in IT and ITES. The primary reasons attributed to such shortage of space are rising real-estate costs, shrinking margins and competitive pressures resulting high salaries.In short the companies are hard pressed on cash.    
The impact of such shrinking work spaces are negative on the employees that range from increased workplace stress, encroachment on privacy of an individual and poor work culture. 
With workplace design being stated as one of the top HR trends and challenges, such practices shall definitely be detrimental for the engagement of the workers. Research has shown that especially for Gen Y the workplace design plays a great role in their performance, creativity and retention.
So What?
Telecommuting or working from home options has to become more widespread across the industry and has to be promoted across employee groups. IBM does it wonderfully well. I personally know of a lady who works as a Project manager with IBM, has a five year old school-going daughter and still manages because of this work-from-home option extended to her by IBM. She has the flexibility of working from home or logging-on to the office and for most of the days in a week she manages to work from home.And all you know, she appears to be very highly engaged to her company.
However telecommuting has its own downsides if not managed properly for instance issues like data security, visibility of the telecommuting employee to the rest of the organization and ofcourse choosing the right kind of telecommuting plan for the employee (lbetween occassional, temporray and permanent telecommuting). However with due diligence such issues can be sorted-out.
Long and short of this is it is better to let people work from home rather then giving them mumbai local-type workstations. Telecommuting can ease of the load and balance people and space requirements both working from the office and out of the office. Not to say engagement shall be better as well.

Acid Test

There is every evidence of a slowdown in Indian Economy. The industrial output is down, sales have hit rock-bottom, rates are high, borrowing is suffering, growth forecast for year 2011-12 has been trimmed ... tough times ahead folks.

With the macro economic situation looking grim, the companies would have to dig their heels-deep and re-discover their core competencies. In such trying times 'people' become even more key to an organization's ability to do that better and keep doing it over and over again. The true test of engagement is now. No agency or a consultant would be required to judge the level of engagement in an organization, the response to this slowdown would itself tell.

Prophetic! Not so much... more commonsense.

Sun never sets...

Sun Microsystems, Inc. founded in 1982 at Silicon Valley sold computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services for over 2 decades before it was acquired by Oracle Corporation for US$7.4 billion, based on an agreement signed on April 20, 2009. The following month, Sun Microsystems, Inc. was merged with Oracle USA, Inc. to become Oracle America, Inc. The company in its originality does not exist in its original form anymore but its engagement practices are still worth mentioning. One may question the feasibility of doing so. Well such practices could be still a message for many companies.

Communication seemed to be at the heart of engagement at Sun Microsystems. The entire management team right from the CEO was actively involved in communicating with the employees appraising them with the strategic direction of the firm and how they matter in this big picture -