Antonym of Engagement

What would you do if your employees did not meet their targets? Well! motivate them and inspire them so that they can improve their performance. May be even train them, enable them and facilitate better resources.

Most of the times though, employees falling short of targets are subjected to coercion, veiled threats about loss of job and many times even ridiculed in front of other colleagues. 

What works and what doesn't is open to argument, however there are no two words that you have to drive performance in the organization. Incompetence cannot be tolerated and hurts the business results, customers, eventually other performing employees and ultimately the entire organization. 

But how far would you go to punish the employees who fall short of their targets? Company has all rights to ask them to improve their performance, put them in QIPs and even then if they do not improve the company may ask them to leave. The whole idea is engage the 'majority' so as to elicit voluntary contributions and performance. But it still does not stop the company from treating the others going-out through their gates decently!

However a Chinese company does not think so! It has come-out with a bizarre punishment for its errant sales personnel who failed to meet their targets. Dozens of employees from a food company in southwest China's Sichuan Province ran along the wintry streets of Chengdu in only shorts and T-shirts on Monday because they failed to meet their company's annual sales quotas.

Source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn

According to the company's rules, male employees had to run only in their shorts, while female workers had more freedom to choose what they would wear as they ran along the streets as a "punishment" for not meeting their sales requirements. Men had to run 10 kilometers, and women had to run five kilometers.

The employees who took the punishment had to face the piercing stares of the passers-by that they found most difficult to handle. Talk of putting gun on the head, the company perhaps stopped just short of that! 

However the company can still claim to have not touched the bizarre levels of punishments in the Roman era, the "death in the arena" punishment meted out to the prisoners in the Roman Colosseum. The Seesaw is seen by modern children as a plaything. The Romans had a far more strange application for this seemingly innocent school yard addition. Two condemned prisoners were strapped to either end of the seesaw, and were encouraged to begin the simple game of going up and then down. Once they got a rhythm going, however, the cages of the Colosseum opened, and out came the wild beasts. To a roar of excitement from the crowds, the two prisoners would begin their galloping up and down much faster - as a lion or a bull would be waiting on the descent, waiting to rip the poor prisoner to pieces. This resulted in a frantic attempt to touch the ground and get back in the air as quickly as possible. Eventually, however, the prisoners would tire, or slip up, and that's when the lion would pounce. Perhaps it was just a foot, or a leg, but the giant cat would grab onto the prisoner and pull. The resistance of bone meant very little - it would pull until something was disjointed and the imminent food could be pulled right off.

The Chinese firm must be thinking what engagement are you guys talking about, we will strip our employees if they do not meet their targets! Dunces!!! they should be thankful, we did not let the dogs out on them...