Engage Employees by 3C Way

Lack of engagement at work place leads to high employee turnover. The challenge is how to engage employees. Employee engagement has three dimensions Mind, Soul and Body. Employee shall primarily feel passionate about doing well in core responsibility (The job for which hiring is done), the work shall stimulate mind, challenge it constantly and shall keep it engaged. It is at the core of employee engagement. The second most important aspect of employee engagement is organisation’s ability to bind employee by providing experiences that evoke positive emotions towards the organisation. A timely word of appreciation from co-employees in the hierarchy and also from peers, personalized engagement events, ability to treat employee as an individual and not just as an employee, expanding connect with employee family and making them part of employee journey are some of the ways organisations evoke positive emotions. Finally, Organisation shall take care of basic requirements such as work space, amenities and ensure availability of tools needed to perform on the job. Research says that companies which give high importance to employee satisfaction ends up having higher efficient, passionate workforce and positive environment. This results in better financial performance for the company as a whole.

In all the three dimensions of employees engagement it is important to make the employee realize that organisation cares, it is interested in enhancing employee capability and is committed to make employee grow. In other words, organisation commits about employee care, competency and career.      

• Care: Generally, workplace is not a very lovely place. It is challenging, competitive, demanding and aggressive. In such environment employee often lose their way and confidence. While there is always a defined method to reprimand when thing go wrong in every organization but opposite is not true. Appreciation and recognition either do not come for good work or they come too late. Everyone likes to get recognized for the effort they do. Small gestures of appreciation go a long way in building a strong foundation of trust and loyalty. When employees see that the company genuinely cares about them and their well-being, they tend to be more motivated and loyal to give back to the organization. It would be unfair to say organization do not appreciate or recognize, but timing is crucial. Apart from appreciation and recognition, there are other methods by which organization reflects its care for the employee such as enabling policies, medical and life insurance cover for employee and family, housing facilities, transportation, financial support in need etc. 
• Competence: It is in interest of employee as well as organization to upskill. It is frightening to notice the rate at which conventional skills are getting obsolete. In this age of short attention span, cosmopolitan lifestyle and multidimensional interest an individual peruses; the challenge is how to upgrade and upskill employee. The question is how and when? The prevailing competitive environment and geographically expanded organization, does not leave much room for conventional way of delivering training to upskill employees i.e. Class room. Blended training is the new norm, which is combination of virtual/online training, reading/listening to books and class room training. Paucity of time is also bring down the size of knowledge delivered at a given point of time. The age of bit size learning is dawning upon us.          
• Career: Career growth is direct outcome of delivering on the current job role as per the expectation of management and also showing the promise that you are ready to undertake higher responsibility. Feedback is key here. In conventional approach, you get feedback from managers on a half yearly or yearly basis. But often this is too late to take corrective actions. New age employees are in tearing hurry to leave a mark and move ahead in their life. The age of life long association with organization and perusing of single career is over. Many leading organization have already done away with annual appraisals and replaced it with feedback sessions at shorter intervals. Technological advancement can play a vital role in making instant feedback loop seamless and meaningful to stakeholders involved in process.

The challenges mentioned above are not insurmountable, in this age of mobile app technology a meaningful and user friendly tool can be developed. And that is exactly what we have done. We have collaborated with a tech startup firm called Cadvil. We worked with their development team and come up with a mobile application that addresses some of the challenges mentioned above. The outcome is SPOT mobile app. The following are the key features of SPOT app, needless to mention here the app works on both android and IOS platforms seamlessly.

AGG capability: Where AGG stands for Appreciate, Greet and Gather. SPOT is a platform that provides convenience to Appreciate senior, peer and subordinate. One can appreciate for good work, support, help extended on personal or official front etc. etc. At the same time platform has scroll based home screen that displays greeting cards for employees on their Birthdays, Work Anniversary, welcome to new employee and event announcements. While employee indulges in these positive behavior he/she continues to gather redeemable points for merchandise or other goodies.    

Bit Size Learning: This app comes with means to deliver bit size learning with a knowledge check mechanism in place. This utility is highly useful to disseminate knowledge, process and compliance based training bytes. Employee can verify their understanding and knowledge by attempting test questions. 

365 Day feedback: One of the key feature of the SPOT app is its ability to allow managers to share their feedback to their subordinates anytime anywhere 365 days in a year. It unshackles organization from loop of annual appraisal. The system is capable to also run a year end comprehensive review, if needed. Instant feedback can go a long way in immediate and effective course correction for every employee.   

360 Degree Profile: SPOT app has enough and more provision to get itself converted to a app based mini HRMS system. Organization can capture extensive data points about employee’s per and post joining information. It can track employee growth and performance trend in a nice and easy to comprehend charts. It is like having horoscope of each and every employee at your disposal. Such extensive details about employee is critical in taking data based decision about employees.