Employee Engagement

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

There is lot of misconception that employee activity is employee engagement in reality that is just one part of it. In actual Employee Engagement starts when an employee is called for face to face interaction at the time of interview. I have seen lot of post on LinkedIn, where people have shared their opinion that there interview experience was not good and others who read it make a picture about the work culture of the discussed organization in subconscious mind. I have myself been to many interviews which were not planned and whole day was wasted waiting for the turn. There is one more finding which I will share that in a manufacturing sector the employees at the plant level are more engaged among themselves in comparison to employee at the corporate level. As in plant all actions do take place and it demands more coordination among various departments among themselves so employees are closely knitted and informal bonding is more stringer than in corporate. I remember when I was a Plant HR Head our engagement score was 91 percentile in Gallup as compared to the corporate score of around 60 percentile. As per findings and study in most of the organization more than 50% of employee is not engaged with the organization. In the previous write up I shared my experience about the organization tenured in business but who have not invested in the HR except for time office and salary processing; there focus is on loyalty rather than engagement. In today’s dynamic business world the need is of engagement employee not loyal employee, if loyalty is a benchmark then have dog as a pet at home in organization only engagement is in the best interest of employee as well as employer and also the business.

So the engagement starts from hiring itself

?  Recruitment -- Its hiring the right fit for the job is very important as cost of bad recruitment is too high for any organization. What basically we as HR professional generally focus at the time of recruitment especially in technical profile is relevant qualification and experience in which we try to focus on headhunting from our market competitors or from similar industry background.

The other areas which we focus upon are Cultural fitment that what kind of organization the job aspirant have been associated previously and what are the aspirations and how that matches with our organization and what are the reason for which new opportunity is being explored. The compensation is very important factor to keep in mind as internal compensation or pay parity need to match, otherwise that can create an atmosphere of disengagement in the existing employee’s.  I have been a strong advocate that pay roll processing in any organization must be outsourced and should not be handled by internal HR or Finance team as there is scope of compensation package leakage and comparison of salary starts in the employees and that creates disengagement.

The last and very important thing which needs to be kept in mind is providing a Realistic Job purview to candidate being interviewed. It is very important as this plays a significant part is getting the right kind of engaged candidate through the interview process. This should be clearly spelt with full clarity with no scope of ambiguity like expected job requirements, organization expectations,  challenging nature of job,  peer or client pressure situation required to be handled, if in case job is monotonous that should be clearly explained, scopes of individual growth etc. So that the aspirant can take a objective decision based on real facts that if he or she ready is actually ready to take up the assignment or for or not. One important thing which needs to be kept in mind that no false commitment, if in case made at the time of interview will

lead to disengagement at the later stage.

?  Smooth on-boarding and Strong Induction process this is very important in every organization that new incumbents should get an overview of the business process, the role of each department in the process. A brief history from where the organization started and its journey till date. What is market share visa vis competitors?, what are products? The organization structure and the department structure should be explained. What are the HR policies and employees code and conducts that will govern the employee’s association with the organization. A site visit or office visit or a plant visit, depends what kind of business the organization is into. A general introduction wills all the employees and information must be percolated in the team that a new incumbent has joined in this department, at this position and will report to concerned manager. The HR need to insure that all the arrangement are in place like the sitting arrangement, official email id, any other account which need to be opened like bank account / PF forms/ HRMS user ID which will be required for smooth functioning.

? Employee Reward & Recognition or Incentive Schemes also do play a very important role in the engagement, provided they are fair and the deserving employee are rewarded otherwise they can lead to disengagement. There should be clear policy defining the benchmarks against which the employee will be evaluated. All employees should feel that they are given fair chance and there should not be feeling of nepotism or favoritism in employee that will lead to disengagement. The idea of reward and recognition is to keep the morale and motivation level of the employees high so that they may strive to excellence.

? Regular feedback session to the employees: - Now a days there are review and skip level meeting quarterly aligned with PMS system which provide the employee a forum for performance discussion providing a platform to discuss what kind of challenges are being faced in the job and in which area performance deviation were observed and what is the scope of improvement. Regular performance feedback help in engagement as employee gets clear idea of what is expected desired performance standard which need to be achieve. This also helps in understanding the individual employee career aspiration and development needs.

? Providing open forum for communication for the employees: - There are many forums or intervention used to provide an open communication forum to all employees in the organization like open house, in house magazine, suggestion scheme, town hall etc. Where an employee in an organization gathering can come up with their suggestion, ideas and also discuss any other which are relevant. Some group activities are planned on certain day in a week where all employees can participate and there is a creation of informal team bonding among the employees in form of activities planned in those sessions. Annual family day, monthly birthday bashes, annual sports day etc can be other kind of activities where informal bonding among the team in the organization can be strengthened.

?  Open and transparent work culture is very important for any organization and that is only achievable if there are clear defined policies which govern all employees and are transparent and universally applicable in both letter and spirit throughout the organization.

Best Regards,

Anoop Singh Rana

Senior HR Professional & Capacity Building Expert,

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