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Messages - Badshah Mamun

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1861
Employee Retention / After Effects of a Poor Employee Retention
« on: April 25, 2012, 05:44:50 PM »

Employees are the major assets of any organization. An organization can’t survive if the individuals are not focussed and serious about their work. The success and failure of any organization depend on the hard work put by the employees to achieve the targets of the organization. It is a common observation that employees who spend a good amount of time in the organization tend to know more about it and thus contribute effectively. They develop a sense of loyalty towards their workplace and strive hard to live up to the expectations of the management.

There are several reasons as to why an employee decides to move on. Monetary dissatisfaction, a negative environment at the workplace, dirty politics, complicated hierarchies, lack of challenging work, poor supervision being the major ones.

In the current scenario almost all the leading organizations are facing the problem of employee retention. Management somehow fails to stop the high potential employees and thus face the negative consequences. It becomes really difficult for the organization to retain the employees who decide to quit for a better opportunity.

Let us go through some of the after effects of poor employee retention:


    Every organization invests its time and money in training a new joinee to bring him at par with the existing employees.
The organization is at a complete loss when the employees quit all of a sudden. Hiring needs to be done all over again and still there is no surety whether the new joinee would be apt for the profile or not? One wrong person hired and the output of the entire team and eventually the organization goes for a toss.

    Employees who spend a considerable amount of time in any organization know it in and out and thus can perform better.
They are well familiar with the company policies and adjustment is never a problem. Employees who come and go find it very difficult to settle down in a new environment and are thus always in a state of dilemma. They are not able to perform up to their potential and eventually the work and the organization suffers.

    Individuals who have the habit of changing jobs frequently never get attached to any particular organization.
They just treat the organization as a mere source of earning money. They are never serious about their work and fail to accomplish the tasks within the desired time frame. It hardly matters to them whether the organization is performing well or not? In cases of poor retention policies, employees are just not bothered about the reputation of their office and avoid taking initiative to do something new. The employees who are there for a long time in the organization are trustworthy and the management can rely on them anytime.

    When individuals leave any organization, they are more likely to join the competitors.
Sometimes they tend to take confidential data along with them to create an impression in their new organization. This way the plans of the organization get leaked even before implementation and they fail to do anything great. Employees must not share any information with an external party in any manner what so ever.

    An organization can’t perform well if the employees speak negative about it.
It is essential to have a group of loyalists who play an important role in furthering the brand image of the company.

    Employees working with an organization for a long time never badmouth it and are somewhat emotionally attached to it.
People leaving in a short span always speak ill about their previous organizations. The loyalty factor is almost zero and no one is ready to take ownership of work.

The HR department must take the initiative to discuss the several issues disturbing an employee and try to sort it out as soon as possible. An organization must work hard towards retaining those who really are important for the organization.

1862
Knowledge Management / Knowledge Management - A Step Forward
« on: April 25, 2012, 05:15:16 PM »
           
   
Introduction


It has been extensively identified that knowledge is an important aspect for an economy to develop. We are seeing a lot of transformation rapidly happening in our society. Every day we are seeing that we are becoming more and more dependent on knowledge. If this is the case with our societies, the scenario is not much different for organizations. Nowadays, if top management is asked to underline a single resource which is most critical for their organization to achieve and sustain competitive advantage, most of them will be selecting - “Knowledge”. With such an importance to knowledge, managing it has become a serious concern for organizations. An organization which can built excellent process to manage knowledge, certainly will have a competitive edge over its competitors.

Agreeing on the existing concentration by organizations and the character of extreme competition, a critical activity taken up by them is knowledge management.

Knowledge Activities


Knowledge management (KM) cannot be achieved with a single definite activity. It involves an assortment of activities. These are usually referred to be knowledge activities. The utilization of the knowledge activities at the resources connected to knowledge which is limited and assisted through an extensive choice of aspects will result in KM.

Research studies do indicate a number of knowledge activities which are important. Some of them are as below:

    Knowledge Acquisition

    Knowledge Utilization

    Knowledge Selection

    Knowledge Transfer

    Knowledge Creation

    Knowledge Internalization

Research studies indicate that knowledge transfer deserves the most careful attention among these activities so that the organizations can manage knowledge successfully.

Knowledge Transfer


The conveying of knowledge from one member to another member of organization involves knowledge transfer. Though this is a simplified definition, knowledge transfer itself is a complex process. First of it has to be noted that the knowledge conveyed is correct and also it should reach the proper member of the organization. In addition, the timing and form of the knowledge which is conveyed should also be accurate. Above all these aspects, the expense of this conveyance should be within acceptable limit. When all these are achieved, the knowledge transfer can be termed as successful. So as to garner profits of knowledge management, it is critical that knowledge transfer has to be done successfully.

In the existing phase where technologies are rapidly developing to share information, organizations are giving more emphasize to knowledge transfer. In addition to this, it must be noted that the created knowledge will help to attain improved performance for an organization when the transfer process takes place. There is no use in keeping the knowledge at the originating location. It has to be passed to the location where it can be exploited to the advantage of organization. Such an exploitation generates value for the organization, which in turn, bring to it the required competitive advantage. So, it is essential that an organization has to put firm foundation for the process targeted at achieving knowledge transfer.

1863
         
Introduction

Organizations indulge nowadays in alliances, collaborations and partnerships. All this require transfer of knowledge, especially, knowledge related to strategies, technologies and best practices to improve the network cooperation. Research studies attempt to obtain inferences from these transfer processes so as to understand more about the characteristics of knowledge transfer.

Barriers to Knowledge Transfer


To understand more about knowledge transfer, it is essential to know about the barriers to transferring best practices in an organization. There is a need to develop a model for the process in which knowledge is transferred, and the obstacles in the different stages of the process can be studied. The critical hurdles to knowledge transfer are as below:

    Receiver of the knowledge has shortage of absorptive capacity

    Characteristics of the knowledge being handed over

    Rapport between informers and receivers

   
Characteristics of Knowledge Transfer


The speed with which the transfer of knowledge takes place is also important since it has to reach the recipient at the correct time and within acceptable cost. Knowledge received late and at an extra cost will not bring any benefit to the organization. It seems that the speed of the knowledge transfer will depend on the tacit nature of the knowledge. The tacit nature of the knowledge is fundamentally dependant upon two factors:

    First of all, the knowledge has to be codifiable.
    Secondly, it should be teachable.

If these are possible, the transfer of knowledge will take place speedily.

It is also seen that the communication and the frequency of discussions between knowledge source and recipient are important factors of knowledge transfer. In addition, the type of knowledge transferred is also significant. The knowledge can be related to business, project or technology. The recipient has to be capable enough in the respective field to have the knowledge successfully imparted.

Knowledge Stickiness


Consider an instance of building a new system. Knowledge transfer can be visualised as consisting of a source which can be a system user and a receiver who is the system builder. The difficulty faced in the process of knowledge transfer is called knowledge stickiness. A methodical and concentrated inspection of the aspects which result in stickiness while systems are built, will be useful to handle the issues that come up as a result of shortage of needed knowledge transfer among the user and the builder. The level of stickiness during the knowledge transfer process depends on the following factors:

    The character of knowledge
    The features of sources and receivers
    The character of the association grown between sources and receivers

While knowledge transfer is taking place, the above three aspects, scheme together for triggering stickiness. It is important to handle stickiness carefully to enhance the process of knowledge transfer.

1864

Organizations have come to realize that in today’s constantly changing business scenario, the most valuable resource that needs to be leveraged is human resource. This means not just attracting the crème-de-la-crème and retaining them but keeping them motivated and committed to achieving the organization goals.

Though Employee Engagement (EE) as a business buzzword has generated research and steam since the new economy service industries like IT (Information Technology) and ITES (IT enables services) have taken off, the origins of engagement are as old as mankind itself.

We shall try and decode and define employee engagement as used and implemented by organizations today by looking at the very origins of engagement practices.

Origin of Employee Engagement


History records that about 2300 years ago, Alexander (356 BC – 323 BC) was able to march ahead and conquer unknown lands by battling for years across continents, miles away from home, because he had an engaged army that was willing to abide by its commander.
   

Alexander is known to have achieved the engaged workforce by ensuring that he spent face time with his men, listening and addressing grievance, ensuring on time payment of salary, dressing like the rest of his army and most importantly by leading from front.

More recently, in World War II, Americans funded a lot of money for researching the behaviour of its soldiers to be able to predict their battle readiness.

History is dotted with examples of leaders who have led their men by building a psychological commitment between their men and their ideology to achieve greatness. In this psychological contract lies the roots of today’s Employee Engagement theories propounded by organizations.

Definition of Employee Engagement


An engaged workforce produces better business results, does not hop jobs and more importantly is an ambassador of the organization at all points of time. This engagement is achieved when people consider their organization respects their work, their work contributes to the organization goals and more importantly their personal aspirations of growth, rewards and pay are met.

The Hay Group defines enagaged performance as “a result that is achieved by stimulating employees’ enthusiasm for their work and directing it toward organization success. This result can only be achieved when employers offer an implicit contract to their employees that elicits specific positive behaviours aligned with organization’s goals...”

Lanphear defines EE as “the bond employees have with their organization” Lanphear further espouses that “when employees really care about the business, they are more likely to go the extra mile.”

The definitions, as seen, focus on employer as well as the employee. Today’s millennial workforce is more informed, connected, willing to work given learning opportunities. Personal growth, opportunities to learn and explore is becoming a primary driver. Equity more then pay is a driving force. Catering to the changing needs to foster engaged employees is the need of the hour.

In conclusion, understanding employee engagement drivers, measuring and enhancing engagement offers promise of better business performance by ambassadors of the organization who work like entrepreneurs and help sustain organization growth through innovation and lower employee turnover.

1865
Employee Engagement / Process of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 05:00:56 PM »

This is the hardcore fact that the future business performance and revenues and profitability of an organisation no longer depends upon traditional capital management and investment and portfolio management. But the success of any organisation in this constantly changing world of work depends upon human capital management. The companies who understood this fact long before are the most successful and highly productive organisations of the currents times. Those who have just realised it are still struggling to establish a reputation in the industry.

Since the mantra of success of any organisation is the higher involvement, engagement and dedication of employees towards their jobs and their continuous performance to attain more, it is necessary to keep their spirits high, motivate them to perform their best always and generate a breed of satisfied and dedicated employees. Employee Engagement is not a onetime process that can quickly bring results; rather it is an ending process that will go on till the existence of an organisation.
   

As it is an established fact that there is a clear link between organisational performance and employee engagement, every organisation seeking sustenance and growth in the ever changing world of work quickly respond to the needs of employees along with designing and implementing a customised process to increase the levels of employee engagement. The following are a few basic steps in this process based on the best industry practices.

Employee Engagement Process

    Prepare and Design:
The first step in the process is about discovering the specific requirements of your organisation and deciding the priorities. After that a customised design of carrying the whole process can be designed. It is recommended to seek advice of expert management consultant in order to increase the chances of getting it done right at the first attempt.

    Employee Engagement Survey:
Design the questions of the employee engagement survey and deploy it with the help of an appropriate media. It can be either in printed form or set online depending upon the comfort level of the employees and your questionnaire evaluation process.

    Result Analysis:
It is the most important step in the entire process. It is time when reports are to be analysed to find out what exactly motivates employees to perform their best and what actually disengages them and finally compels them to leave the organisation. The results and information can then be delivered through presentations.

    Action Planning:
‘How to turn the results of the survey in to an action’ is a challenging question that organisations need to deal with the utmost care. Coaching of line managers as well as HR professionals is very important in order to tell them how to take appropriate actions to engage employees. They should also be told about do’s and don’ts so that they can successfully implement the changes.

    Action Follow-up:
Action follow up is necessary in order to find out if the action has been taken in the right direction or not and if it is producing the desired results.

With this, communication and project management processes are the backbone of the entire employee engagement process. Communication involves plan follow-up, providing timely information and involvement of each level of organisational hierarchy. The project management process includes careful planning, watchful resource management, vigilant budget control and monitoring the actions.


1866
Employee Engagement / Benefits of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:58:17 PM »

History records how Alexander was able to march on and conquer hitherto unknown lands due his valour and his motivated troops. However, the same history also records, how dissent amongst his troops towards the latter part of his career, cut short his ambitions of supremacy in Asia.

Alexander started hiring more outsiders, laying off his tired troops and more significantly punishing open feedback by his men. His actions, at the latter part his conquest, were in stark contrast to his initial techniques which had been successful in fostering a sense of belonging among his men. This led to dissent and ultimately dealt a huge blow to Alexander’s aspirations.

In today’s business context, let us look at the cost of a disengaged workforce to better understand the significance of employee engagement.
   
Cost of Disengaged Workforce


The findings of the Gallup Study of 2008 show that while the engaged employees believe they can contribute to company’s growth, the disengaged employee believes otherwise, i.e. his job does not contribute to the organization. This belief of the disengaged employee creates a negative spiral that affects his work, co-workers, customers, productivity, and eventually both happiness of employee and company performance. Some effects are illustrated below:

    Effect on Work -
The disengaged employee tries to evade work, struggles to meet deadlines and is reluctant to accept additional responsibility.

    Effect on Co-Workers -
The negativity of a disengaged employee, demonstrated either through raves and rants or complete withdrawal from participation, affects the team morale. After all who has not heard of the proverb - one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.

    Effect on Customers -
Every employee, whether an organization likes it or not, becomes its ambassador. And a disengaged employee either by actively de-selling the organization, or by complete apathy towards their work, product, process, organization help create disengaged customers.

    Effects on Productivity -
Disengaged employees seldom push themselves to meet organizational goals let alone contribute to innovative practices at workplace. Since, they do not believe that their work contributes to the organization; they evade completing tasks thereby affecting team productivity.

    Effect on Company Performance -
In the corporate world, time is money and organizations must innovate to stay relevant. A disengaged workforce by virtue of delayed completion of tasks and inability to improvise and innovate cost the company dollars which ultimately affects bottom line. This has been validated by a Gallup Study whose research showed that costs of disengaged workforce in the United States was upwards of $300bn annually.

    Effect on Personal Life of Employee -
A disengaged employee is seldom able to shake off the lethargy and perform in the current organization or land a job of preference. This leads to pent up frustration which may ultimately affect his personal and family life.

Benefits of an Engaged Workforce


An engaged workforce form an emotional connect with the organization that helps them

    Go the Extra Mile to Achieve Individual and Company Success

    Innovate at Workplace

    Attract customers and employees

    Become Evangelists of the company, its product and processes

    Infuse energy and positivity at workplace.


1867
Employee Engagement / Elements of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:56:24 PM »
The term employee engagement has been defined by various researchers. A commonly agreed upon definition would be physical, psychological or emotional involvement of the employee while at work.

Four things are important when we talk about employee engagement; commitment, motivation, loyalty and trust. Their level determines the quality of engagement of an employee. Each one is briefly discussed in the coming paragraphs.

    Commitment:
Commitment means the degree to which individuals associate themselves with the job, the responsibilities and the organisational objectives. Engaged employees are those who are fascinated by their work and committed to face every challenge to attain their goals. They are dependable and highly productive and therefore, are accountable for what they do.

    Motivation:
Up till recently it was believed that the biggest motivation is achievement. The reverse is also true, which means achievement results in more motivation. If employees put in their 100 percent efforts to take their organisation to the next level, this attained status motivates them more than anything. Proper rewards and recognitions can further motivate them to achieve more and more for their organisation. Motivation and achievement go hand in hand and act as the burning fuels for the success of any organisation.
   

    Loyalty:
Employees who are actively engaged in their work show more loyalty towards the organisation. The best part is that they need less focus and attention of managers to perform their task as they themselves feel accountable for their job responsibilities and results attained. However, it doesn’t take much time for actively engaged employees to turn into disengaged employees if the organisation doesn’t have a well established reward system. Recognition is a basic necessity of individuals to remain steered up towards their job.

    Trust:
High levels of employee engagement can be fostered only when trust prevails in the organisation from both the sides. As they share strong emotional bond with the organisation, the latter should also show trust in their abilities. Employees must be given autonomy to perform their tasks their way. They should not be restricted to a specific rules and regulations and therefore, should be motivated to experiment to perform their task in a different and innovative manner.


Employee Engagement Elements

All these elements play a vital role in determining the fate of an organisation. Besides this, two-way communication to discuss challenges, potential consequences, vision and values and organisation’s future should be established. In fact, communication is the backbone of any organisation without which it can’t survive for long. Having an open conversation with employees can solve the problems that they are facing in executing their job.

Apart from this, organisational culture, a well established and duly followed reward system including compensation, benefits, stock exchange options and recognition and personal growth and satisfaction of employees are also important factors in improving the levels of employee engagement.

1868
Employee Engagement / Dimensions of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:55:28 PM »


The only thing that makes highly productive organisations stand apart from rest of the companies is the quality of the employees and the level of their commitment towards their work. The vice versa, the trust that an organisation shows in their employees and efforts that it makes to keep them focussed, motivated and satisfied, also is one of the many variables that distinguish between highly reputed workplaces and those that are not up to the mark.

Organisations cannot achieve their goals just by defining their mission statement nor can they foster a high performing work culture until they take substantial steps. They need people to get the jobs done and that too with excellence. For fulfilling all their goals, organisations require actively engaged employees. Employee engagement happens only in those organisations which treat their people as their biggest assets and take care of their basic necessities and other psychological needs. Workplaces that meet all these conditions of employee engagement grow much faster and sustain much longer that those who fail to meet them.
   

There are different dimensions of employee engagement that make productive organisations stand apart from the rest and determine their destiny. Things like what employees get in exchange for the efforts they put to perform the delegated tasks, if employees are able to perform their best, if they are treated as an important asset or just a means to perform the job and how they can grow if they stick to their organisation are of great importance. Actually these are emotional elements revealing the basic employee needs. They would like to contribute only when their efforts are recognised and awarded. Not only this, all they can also drive them to be more efficient while delivering their jobs.

Dimensions of Employee Engagement



What Do I Get:
Employee engagement to an extent depends upon what people get in exchange for performing the job. This includes basic compensation, benefits, organisational culture and working environment. These are basic elements that motivate them to join the organisation and perform the given task with complete dedication.

What Do I Give:
As it is a two way process, setting clear expectations plays an important role. This helps employees to understand what exactly they are expected to give the organisation. This includes defining their job responsibilities that they need to fulfil and tasks that they need to perform. The human resource team and immediate supervisors or managers need to tell them clearly what they are expected to do. It creates more meaningful relationships among seniors and subordinates and workgroups.

Do I Belong to the Organisation:
Social association is the most basic requirement for anyone. Even employees would like to stay with the organisation that treats them as their integral part and not just the means to get the job done. ‘My opinions Count’ gives them satisfaction and motivates them to put their best to meet organisational goals.

How Can I Grow:
Continuous growth including promotions, salary hikes and rewards and recognition are most essential tools to retain employees in the organisation. New challenges and opportunities to learn keep them motivated towards their work life and encourage them to give their best even during crisis.

1869
Employee Engagement / Phases of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:54:03 PM »

Employee engagement is a concept that has begun to grab the attention of the corporate world for past few years. When put simply higher levels of employee engagement mean higher profitability of the organisation.

Employee engagement is critical. Highly productive organisations have understood this fact a long ago where mediocre and low performing organisations have just started taking it seriously. It makes sense to engage employees and make them find a meaning in what they do.

Those employees who do not understand what they contribute towards the success of their organisation will not stick to it for long. They would rather consider leaving in a few months or years as and when they are offered a high-paying job.

Employee engagement is a long term process and goes through various phases describing the level of the engagement, involvement, attachment and belongingness between employee and employer. These phases of employee engagement make a continuous cycle that each organisation aiming to achieve increased profitability must undertake.
   
Phases of Employee Engagement


    Attract


    The first phase of the employee engagement cycle is attracting the best talent from the industry. This phase involves creating a positive impression about the work culture and employee career as a potential employer. It is all about carefully creating an authentic, genuine and crafted image as an employer. This is although an indirect yet the first impression that attracts a big pool of candidates to apply for the job vacancies in an organisation. The first phase is the most important phase of the employee engagement cycle.

    Another aspect spreading the reputation of an organisation is its employees. They are not only the employees but also are regarded as internal customers. Their job and career satisfaction speaks about their workplace. Therefore, they should not be taken for granted. Besides attracting the talent from the outside, it is important to keep the existing employees attracted towards the organisation.

    Acquire


    The acquire image involves more than one thing. It includes (1) the way the potential candidates are interacted while advertising a position; (2) keeping the promises that were made while hiring them and (3) providing the new joiners a right kind of work culture.

    When an organisation advertises a position, interested candidates apply. The way their applications are created, the reaction of the organisation and the manner in which they are approached speak a lot about the image and work culture of an organisation.

    Hiring the best talent not only serves the purpose. During their honeymoon or initial period with the organisation, the company must try to keep all the promises that were made during the selection process.

    Besides this, they should feel happy and satisfied when their expectations are tested against the reality. Providing the right kind of culture also plays an important role in keeping them engaged.

    The whole idea is to prepare them to perform their best by giving them challenging tasks right from the beginning. It’s like developing a habit or culture right from the time they decide to work with the organisation.

    Advance

    Continuous moving the talent is the last but an unending phase. It not only involves promoting the employees to a higher designation along with salary increments but also growing them in other tangible and intangible ways. Job rotation can help them grow in experience, responsibility and belongingness but only when it is done right. Advancing the employees in every aspect, be it monetary or non-monetary, is the key to retain people and develop their overall personality.

These above are the main phases of an employee engagement cycle where preparation is done much before an employee joins the organisation. As mentioned earlier, it is not only about attracting, acquiring and retaining the best talent but also deals in advancing their experience and personality.

1870
Employee Engagement / Characteristics of Engaged Workforce
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:52:48 PM »

The level of employee engagement can be measured by the willingness and ability of employees to contribute to the success of their organisation. It is their discretionary effort which is an essential element for the good health and well being of a company.

A highly engaged workforce shows the high level of engagement in their work and is always keen to take up new challenges in order to bring a positive change or establish a highly conducive work environment. Various studies have shown that higher level of employee engagement is directly linked to high satisfaction among them, productivity and profitability of organisation and satisfied and loyal customers.

The model below illustrates a few characteristics of an engaged workforce that play an essential role in the success of any organisation.
   
Characteristics of an Engaged Workforce

Mutual Trust:
Trust is the base of any organisation. Letting people do their work without telling them how to perform it is one of the best ways to engage staff. Employees welcome each other’s opinions and find out a wide variety of ways to accomplish a particular task. A highly engaged workforce doesn’t need directions at each step. They can perform their jobs with mutual help and trust.

Job and Career Satisfaction:
Job satisfaction is one of the main characteristics of an engaged workforce. The individual who is satisfied with their career and the way their career graph is raising prefers to stick to the organisation for a very long period of time. Switching the organisations frequently is not a characteristic of satisfied employee.

Credible Leadership:
As mentioned earlier, an engaged workforce doesn’t need directions for performing a specific job from time to time. Employees know how to do it in the best possible manner. They not only exhibit credible leadership qualities in routine tasks but also come up with innovative ways to deal with crisis or emergencies.

Focused and Keen to Take up Challenges:
An engaged workforce is entirely focused and knows what to do and when. They are always keen to take up new challenges in order to solve the existing problems in the organisation as well as acquire new skills. Not only this, they are always keen to learn new things and widening their horizon.

Better Performance:
Employee engagement is directly related to better performance. Employee performance is the only way to measure the engagement, involvement and dedication of employees towards their jobs. If all these factors cannot be interlinked, there is no meaning of anything. It can be said that the workforce is not engaged or actively disengaged.

Problem Solving Attitude:
Engaged workforce not only delivers its job responsibilities but also keeps a problem solving attitude always. A highly engaged employee displays a sense of belongingness towards the organisation and makes every effort to solve the problems that pose a hindrance in the organisation’s way of success.

The above mentioned are the essential characteristics of an engaged workforce. However, mutual respect, commitment, enthusiasm, optimism and discretionary efforts to serve customers better are add-on characteristics that an engaged employee generally exhibits.

1871
Employee Engagement / 3 C’s of Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:50:49 PM »

A major percentage of employees find their work boring. Ask HR managers about employee engagement and they have only one answer: it is the biggest challenge that we are facing today.

Days of huge increase in wages or salaries even in highly productive organisations have gone. It is unable to retain employees within the organisation for long. Due to this, the HR managers had to come up with other motivators such as offsite parties and picnics, cricket or football matches on anniversaries and birthdays, cultural festivals, painting and quiz competitions, crèches for the children of employees, Friday bashes, movie tickets and discount shopping coupons and many more.

Google, the most famous and successful technology firm provide free, healthy and well prepared food to their employees. The company appoints well qualified and experienced chefs so that their employees can relish awesome food at work. This is one of the strategies to make employees feel happy at work; however, it alone can’t retain employees for long. There have to be something else that can motivate people to being involved enthusiastically in their work. They must have an emotional attachment with their job and company.
   

Beyond all the above mentioned popular techniques, there are other things that play an important role in enhancing the engagement levels of employees. The proposed 3 C’s of employee engagement are career, competence and care.


The 3 C’s of Employee Engagement


Career:
When individuals join an organisation, they expect to build a career with it. If the top management and immediate managers spend dedicated time in carving out the careers of its employees, they will feel that they belong to the organisation. They feel engaged when they receive support from the management in growing their careers.

An organisation can provide its employees with opportunities to grow professionally through job rotations, indulging them in significant tasks, challenging assignments and promotions. They should also be given a specific level of authority and autonomy to take their decisions on their own. The organisations prepare an entirely new breed of employees if they genuinely invest in developing the careers of their people.

Competence:
Competence is all about the ability to grow. Regular workshops and training sessions must be held in order to help employees acquire a higher level of skills and competencies. The focus should be on developing for marketable skills. Most employees after spending a few months look for competence-boosting opportunities with the organisation so that they can grow and move to the next level of their careers. While the career focuses on the actual growth in terms of designation, wages and perks and authority, competence is the ability to grow utilizing the opportunities.

Care: Sitting at the topmost, care is regarded the finest art of the managers by which they can make employees feel an indispensable part of their organisation. The managers need to be empathetic and sensitive towards people and understand their personal problems. Showing small day-to-day caring gestures towards employees make them feel that they belong to the organisation and organisation belongs to them.

1872
Employee Engagement / Key Players in enhancing Employee Engagement
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:49:04 PM »

Most companies think that it is their performance management system and appraisal and reward strategies that enhance the levels of employee engagement. True but partially!

Most companies do not realize that human interaction is perhaps one of the most important elements in keeping the employees geared up to perform their best and enhance their competency levels. It is not only a basic need but the sole of an organisation that keeps it going.

Everyone who interacts with employees including top management, senior leaders, immediate supervisors and human resource team members play a vital role in shaping the mentality of an individual.

Though it is the fact that they need well designed policies and practices to support business functions and other programmes for enhancing the morale and improving the performance of an employee by enhancing their engagement level but the importance of human interaction cannot be denied. After all the process of employee engagement involves behaviour management.

It is no surprise that disengaged employees have an adverse effect on your standing in the business world. The world’s most admired companies have attained this status only by keeping their employees engaged by assigning them more challenging tasks according to their abilities. Employee development is high on their agenda.

But the question is who will find out why they’re not able to perform their best. What will keep them focussed towards their aims? How can you have the impact on their as well as business performance?

It is obvious that all this can be known through their interaction with their immediate superiors and the members of Human resource Department. Once the data is collected, the top management can support the entire process of employee engagement by deciding the priorities, making investments and designing and implementing various processes.

Key Players in Enhancing Employee Engagement


    Immediate Supervisors and Managers


    Lying on the bottom of the pyramid, immediate supervisors and managers play the most important role in enhancing the levels of employees. As they spend more time with them as compared to the HR people and senior leadership, they can easily determine their actions and find out what will keep them motivated.

    Although the directions come either from top management or HRD but they are the one who execute the process and determine the satisfaction level of their workforce. They can interact with the employees and fill scorecards with columns such as actions of employees, what motivates them and job satisfaction level. This is the initial as well the most important step in the entire process.

    Human Resource Department


    Human Resource Department works on the data collected by the managers and determine the trend among the employees. They identify the most common factors that decrease the engagement levels among employees and the most common opportunities that can enhance it. They study all the cases thoroughly to identify the loopholes in the system and bring it to the notice of top management.

    Senior Leadership or Top Management


    They review the entire report and the process designed by the HRD or a management consulting firm to enhance the employee engagement levels. They support the process by deciding the priorities and making investments.


1873
Employee Engagement / Employee Engagement Initiatives
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:47:17 PM »

The highly productive and the most reputed companies across the world have understood the fact that it was employee engagement that made them stand apart from all other companies. Different companies had taken different initiatives to enhance the level of engagement among employees towards their jobs and the organisation. Some offer custom-made incentives while some stick to provide extra facilities like crèche for kids, schools for children of employees, pick and drop, provision of food, movie tickets and many other things.

Each company has its own reasons to establish a specific type of reward-motivation programme depending upon their financial status, region in which they are operating and level which they function at and the backgrounds of the employees. In the year 201, an annual study conducted by the research arm of Kenexa, a leading global HR solution provider, revealed that Indian giants rank highest as compared to their peers in other countries when it comes to employee engagement and effective leadership.

When compared on the national level, India with 71 percent employee engagement ratio secured the topmost rank while Japan was at the lowest position with 38 percent ratio. This was a surprising fact as it is believed that Indian companies have miles to cover in order to achieve what global companies have done already. Factors that made India stand apart from rest of the countries were employee recognition, emphasis of improvement of quality, show of genuine responsibility of organisation towards employees and opportunities to grow.

The research conducted by Kenexa included India, US, UK, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Denmark, China, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Spain, Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico and Gulf countries. The most surprising fact is that the Indian companies took creative and unique initiatives to enhance the level of engagement and involvement of their employees.

According to a study conducted by Hewitt Associates in 2009, the software giant HCL Technologies was ranked as the best Indian employer in that year. The reasons being, creation of a positive work culture and its long term approach in the midst of challenging conditions. The other companies who made to the list of top employers were Hindustan Zinc, Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, Cisco Systems, ITC Welcome Group, Eureka Forbes, LG Electronics India, Domino’s Pizza India and Marriott Hotels India.

Infosys in year 2011 plans to have its own radio in establishing a healthy and quick interaction and communication amongst employees. The company also plans to host talk shows where top management would interact with the employees. Besides this, the company also has a social networking portal like Facebook. Named as Bubble, it helps employees connect to their colleagues, seniors, subordinates and top management. Infosys had also created Infosys Television.

Indian giants like Mahindra & Mahindra, Mercer, KPMG and Wipro offer democracy to choose their wages and perks depending upon their lifestyles. It is done to decrease as well as prevent dissatisfaction amongst employees. It has worked out very well and companies are successful in drawing and retaining the best talent. The trend began in these IT giants can now be seen in FMCG, banking and other industries.

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An organisation is a collection of individuals who come together and work towards the realisation of a common objective. Larger the number of people working together, larger is the size of the organisation and vice-versa. However, for an organisation to flourish it is important for the employees to operate at their full potential, which unfortunately is not the case in most of the organisations.

Not all employees in the organisation work utilising their full potential. There may be many reasons responsible for the same. They may not associate with the goal of the company, they may have problem with their team, the boss or the subordinate or it may be a general problem of attitude. This fact necessitated the classification of the people into three categories – engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged.

Although there are other classifications also, but this one is based upon the level of commitment or engagement of employees. A brief description about the three is given below:

    Actively Disengaged:
This is the first category of people who are unhappy and they spread unhappiness in the organisation. They are the disease centres in the company and spread the negative word, provoking and convincing people to leave their jobs. However they are the ones who stay the longest and removing the perceived people competition is their thought of getting to the top or next level in the job.

    Engaged:
The second category of people are those who are can be identified with words like passion, alignment and innovation; which means that they are passionate, connected to the company and are innovative. They contribute new ideas and turn ideas into reality. These employees are positive in their outlook and they spread positivity. They are proactive; can anticipate the future market conditions are prepare well in advance.

    Not Engaged:
The third type of employees is the large majority present in organisations almost 50% in number. These do what is told only and they like only one instruction at a time. They put in time but not energy and passion. They may be either positive or negative in their outlook and opinion about the organisation. They are not proactive and fail to anticipate what might be required next or what the next step is? They wait for instruction from their superiors.

In a research conducted by Gallup, it was found out that 16% of the people working in organisations are actively disengaged, 28% are engaged and almost 56% are not engaged. Although these statistics cannot be generalised, but they hold true for majority of the cases and there may be deviation of 5% here and there for each category and not more.

The research therefore points out that people who are engaged are more efficient and deliver results optimally. They have a better understanding of the business, more client focussed and committed to make it big with the organisation they work for.

Within an organisation the percentage of people in these three brackets can help determine the health of the company. For example, greater percentage of actively disengaged employees connotes into even greater losses in productivity, erosion of employee morale and reduction in the bottom line.

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Employee Engagement / Employee Engagement Strategies
« on: April 25, 2012, 04:34:54 PM »
   

Various studies have shown that actively engaged employees are almost 50 percent more productive than their not-engaged or disengaged colleagues. The employee engagement cannot be improved only by designing and implementing effective human resource strategies but their involvement and quality of output produced by them also depends on their relationships with their colleagues, subordinates and seniors. It is a basic need of human beings to belong and to be belonged. Such collaborations can be a major contributor to the success of a company.

Until recently, solutions facilitating two-way communication including top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top were given much important but nothing has been done to foster the open communication and collaborations among employees. The way they interact with each other determines the health of any organisation. A perfect balance of respect, care and competitiveness should be prevailed in the organisation to keep them actively engaged in their jobs. Mutual support and healthy relationships contribute majorly to the organisation’s success.

Besides this, empowering employees by delegating them responsibilities and giving them autonomy to take decisions regarding their job on their own can also increase their productivity. It is worth going beyond the traditional management tools of connectivity to help employees remain motivated and dedicated to perform their tasks. To achieve this, the organisations can design effective employee engagement strategies on the basis of the model explained below.

Employee Engagement Strategies


    Unify the Experiences:
Conduct an employee engagement survey in order to find the factors responsible for engaging and disengaging employees. Unify the common experiences and problems and design employee engagement strategies accordingly. Sharing of feedback in written is one way of communicating the experiences and problems.

    Evolving Through Open Communication:
Open communication or face to face communication in the form of discussions can really help in bringing the various issues and identifying the main problems in the organisation. It is very essential to establish a proper communication where everyone can put their views and suggest a solution too. Most of the top organisations ask for suggestions and new ideas from their employees and then offer rewards on giving the best proposal.

    Providing Proper Communication Channels:
Some employees are comfortable with open face-to-face communication styles whereas there are some who want to give feedbacks and suggestions in written. Discovering the best channel of communication and establishing a proper route to share feedbacks and views plays a vital role.

    Enabling Conversation Fluidity:
Whichever way of communication you choose, ensure that it has required fluidity. There should not be any hindrance in the established method of communication. Not being able to provide feedback or share problems and experiences can lead to frustration and distress among employees. Therefore, ensure that there are no barriers to communication. This can also result in disengaging the engaged employees.

    Manage Communication:
Managing communication is the last but the most important step in the entire process. Managers should keep a check on the entire process in order to ensure that it is not adversely affecting the health of the organisation. They must make sure that it serves the desired purpose and is not being used negatively.


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