Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement – who’s responsibility?

#engagementstrategy #employeeengagement

It was Sunday evening, and I had a dear friend of mine Suresh who is a learned person in the HR Fraternity. While we were merrily sipping the steaming coffee, I could see a concern on his face. The coffee didn’t seem to have the effect it was supposed to create on his face. I could not resist myself and so asked: “What is troubling you …buddy?” I expressed that warmth that he was finding it difficult to get through the subtle sips of his coffee. It was then he reflected and expressed with a flavour of dejection, how a fun activity that he planned with a lot of soul in it, failed to attract the interest of his fellow colleagues of his company. “I planned a whole day for them,” he said. “I planned a full day at a beach, starting with a yoga session, followed by mouthwatering breakfast and then a couple of fun learning games, delicious lunch, a power nap to spill over into a friendly cricket match and to end the day with a soul stirring movie,” he concluded in one breath. “WOW!” I exclaimed. “That would have been wonderful!” I added. “Kya Khaakh wonderful!” he murmured disappointedly. “Barring a few, rest of them were just interested to remain in groups and spend the day taking selfies.” “What a waste of efforts!” he resigned.

He recollected from his gloom, but this triggered a chain of thoughts in me. My mind got showered with a lot of questions.

Is engagement solely organisation’s responsibility?

What about people who lack gratitude towards the company?

What to do about people who are indifferent?

What about people for whom their job is a secondary priority?

Is aligning towards the company’s goal only organisation’s responsibility?

Should not the employee, who earns his/her bread-n-butter, make an effort to proactively contribute?

Then I reflected on the purpose of engagement and realized, that this activity helps,

1.??????To create sense of ownership

2.??????To create a willing workforce

3.??????To align employees towards common goals and values

4.??????To build bridges between people who may not be getting along well

5.??????To enhance collaboration

6.??????To create internal harmony

7.??????To create a family culture

8.??????To establish a transition in paradigm from “win-win” to “winning together”

9.??????To help understand the attitudes and set right the perceptions

The list may go on, but in the world where ROI is a deciding factor for all the business decisions, it tempts me to think whether is it worth the effort in terms of time and investment?

Managing human resources to me is like tilling a garden. While we add manure and nurture the flowering plants, it is equally important to weed out the unwanted shrubs. If we don’t do this, it will truncate the growth of the useful plants and damage the overall outlook of the garden.

And therefore, I believe, even the employees are equally responsible to enhance the engagement index in an organization. When an organization executes activities for the employees, we find some participate enthusiastically and some just prefer to be indifferent. When such indifferent employees are confronted, either they shy off, or they boldly say what is troubling them or may come up with some unreasonable requirement. Most of the time, such employees have a not-so-convincing reason. They are not plugged in the organization’s growth process. They always prefer to be on the other side. The question is, would the time and investment be worth to turn them around? One may need to take a calculated call to put in efforts to enhance their engagement or to just weed them off before they infect others with the same attitude.

I therefore feel, it would be a good idea to evaluate employees based on their participation in organizational activities as well, apart from their functional goals. We need to look at an employee holistically, not just what business results the person gets, but also the climate he/she creates around.

I believe, employee should find reasons to engage with the company process, take the emotional risk to share the views with the right authorities and get resolved within, else how can the organization expect to succeed when there is a lot of hidden resistance. Imagine a few of the soldiers not engaged in the battalion? What kind of a price a country is likely to pay?

To conclude, let engagement be a movement of mutual interest. While the company does everything to set the culture and climate right, it is the responsibility of us – the employees to express our gratitude towards the company by making active contributions, participate willingly in organizational activities, explore the opportunities created by the organization to build a cohesive force, not get consumed by our petty differences, find a purpose in every job we do and contribute equally to make our company the best place to work.

While we expect our organization to win our hearts, let us put our heart into everything we do at the workplace.