Speaker 1: about employee engagement today, could you please tell us what is your perception of employee engagement?

Speaker 2: Yes, sure. So employee engagement, of course, we all know that an important integral part of an organization, but generally that my observation in the experience that I had from last 12 years is many of the organizations do not consider it as an, you know, important or integral part as such, okay? Employee engagement is concerned, moreover, about those activities that we conduct as far as the employee engagement is concerned. So you know, birthday celebration or get togethers or family days, which we do once in a year or something that is generally looked at as employee engagement. So if you are, you know, generally talk to the employees, also many of them do have this perception that these are the, you know, employee engagement, kind of a safe, but it is the purview of employee engagement, according to me, is not at all limited to those activities. So it's extremely important for, you know, HR fraternity to make people or the employee realize that employee engagement is concerned with everything and anything that they do in an organization, especially which is related to the performance, you know, their lifespan or their span of being a part of that organization, their employment relationship is also a part of employee engagement. Employee branding, of course, is also a part of employee engagement. So that is what I believe should be, you know, conveyed to the employees in a larger scale.

Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. And you know, I think the perception is also changing, like you said that it is no more about those evening parties, Friday evenings, or once in a year family meetings, and people are actually realizing that employee engagement has got a lot of business value as well. So, could you please tell us that how can we align employee engagement with our organizational goals?

Speaker 2: Yes, sure. So, again, whatever, you know, there are a number of, of course, ways and school of thought as far as the employee engagement and aligning it with the organizational goal is concerned. But I'm going to talk about the experience that I had in the last so many years that I have worked with different companies. So every company is looking at employee engagement from a different perspective. I have already said that, you know, many at times, I'm not saying that all the companies are not able to understand the importance of it. But many of the companies now are still not, you know, considering it as an important function as such, right? For example, when if we take an example of recruitment and selection, we have a certain department, we do a proper planning, we have a budget for recruitment and selection, we have to, you know, present the written on investment to the management as well. So this is considered to be an important function of an organization. So nowadays, as you correctly have said that people or the organizations have started realizing the importance of employee engagement. And that is the reason why employee engagement should also be considered as one of the most important functions that has to be properly planned, there has to be a proper budget for it. And apart from that, the employee should be, you know, told about employee engagement, how the company is giving an importance to employee engagement. And generally, we see that, you know, it is proven by scientific factors and research that the employees who are engaged with the organizations are generally the high performers, right. And one more observation that I have is, you know, when employees join an organization, their employee engagement level is very high, they are very highly engaged, okay. But slowly, silently, eventually, after two, three years or something, there is something happens and you know, they generally start unengaging and then disengaging themselves from the organization. So organization has to find out the reason why it is happening that way. Maybe employees are not able to meet the expectations of the organization, or maybe it is the other way around. Maybe the organization is not able to, the organization would have said something and they are not able to stand true to that. So that has to be evaluated while we're doing the workforce planning and while we're taking, doing the budgeting and all, all these factors should be considered as an important factor. And it has to be considered as a major function in an organization. And it has to be an integral part of the organizational goal. So we can't say that, you know, this is my organizational goal, and this is the employee engagement. And these are two different things. These are not two different things. That is what we should consider as far as the employee engagement is concerned. It has to be a part like whatever activities we do, probably, you know, the organizations may have a different approach to it. For example, if I talk about again, my experience, manufacturing industry, they look at employee engagement from the workforce management, or you know, the regular management of the organization as far as it's concerned, IT sector, if we look at them, they generally consider employee engagement as a, you know, part of their training and development as such. And if we have to talk about banking and NBFCs, then generally for them, performance management is closely related to employee engagement. So they give utmost importance to such activities. So this is how companies are, you know, supposed to understand what is the major factors or what is the major goal that they have in the organization, and how this employee engagement can be closely connected to those aspects of the company. That's what I would say.

Speaker 1: Shraddha, you mentioned a very pertinent point is how high performers are generally people who are highly engaged. And since you have worked for so long, could you tell us what are the strategies that we can apply in order to increase employee engagement?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So again, based on my experience, there are again, different strategies that we can apply. But majorly, when we say employee engagement, again, that should not be just, you know, available on paper or draft, okay? I believe that organizations should look at their workforce, their employees, from a caring perspective. So that's the most important factor or most important strategy, care for people, right? Again, the second thing that I would like to talk about is here, when we talk about the strategies of employee engagement, generally, you know, a certain culture is portrayed by the company. Many at times, if you look at, you know, from a company from the outside perspective, then you will see that, okay, this is the culture of the organization. But when you start working with the organization, then you will realize that, okay, the culture is not, you know, perceived in the same manner by the employees as well. So that should not be the case. Whatever the organization wants to achieve as a culture, or whatever the organization wants to portray as a culture, that should be integrated. And that should be made, you know, employees should be made aware about that. And that's how they should be, you know, using this. So the culture should not be portrayed, it should be actually inculcated amongst the employees is the first important point, according to me. Second, when we talk about employee engagement, of course, we have to conduct different surveys, right? So when we conducting survey, you know, many times it happens that this is my experience again that whenever, you know, it comes to the survey, many times employees are not taking it seriously. They are like, okay, in which way this is not going to happen. So that should not be the approach that the organization has. First of all, you should have one survey, maybe in a year, or you can have two surveys in a year. Because, you know, if you have multiple surveys, again, that becomes, you know, you know, hectic activity or employees are busy with their performance. And generally, if they have to again and again do the survey, then they find it, they lose interest in it, they are not very serious about it. So we should restrict it to one or two surveys. And once we are done with those surveys, employee engagement surveys, then the outcome should be evaluated seriously. Of course, you know, being an organization, we cannot cater to each and every employee and their needs, right? That I understand. But at least majorly, when you see a larger workforce is, you know, concerned about a certain thing that should be taken seriously. And there has to be some action plan, which is related to that particular aspect. And that also should be transparently conveyed to the employees that, okay, this is the result of the employee engagement survey. And this is how we are actually, you know, addressing this particular issue or concern. So if we do that, again, the employees start getting confidence, right? One more thing, as I said, is care about employees. So I'm going to give you a very small example here. I was working with an ITS company. And in my span, I have seen there were two CEOs, the first CEO left and the other one has joined. Okay. So generally, when we have these trainings, we keep on asking employees that, okay, how do you feel about, you know, a certain person or what is your opinion about the CEOs and all, right? So in general discussions, I have realized that the employees are not liking the current CEO much. And they're saying that, you know, he is not so capable, or, you know, they already made a judgment about him in a span of one month itself. Okay. So I was very curious to, you know, of course, this was not a part of my direct engagement. But yes, I was very curious to know that exactly why do they feel so, like, why do they have so much of liking and admiration for the other CEO? And this one is not considered to be a good one. So in that case, what did I do is I have tried to evaluate their credentials. So I've seen the credentials. And to my surprise, I could see that the credential of the second CEO was much better than the other one. So of course, there has to be some other reason, right? So when I have actually started interacting with that person later, and, you know, when we were having outside, you know, in the premises, when we used to have these training processes and all. So during that time, I have seen that CEO coming to the campus, coming to that premises and getting to his work and all. So there I realized that, you know, this person, the second person is not at all concerned with anybody. Like he used to, you know, just enter, park his car, go and do his biometric and go directly to his cabin. And whenever he used to, you know, get somebody, somebody wishes him good morning or something, he used to just ignore them and go ahead. Okay. So, you know, then I realized that probably this is the reason the earlier CEO was, you know, he's a very talkative person and he was very good with connection with people. So right from the security guard, when he used to enter, he used to talk to him, he used to ask him about, you know, he was knowing people with their personal names, first names, and he used to ask them about their personal life as well, ki tumhara beta kaise kar raha hai, 10th mein tha, result aaya kya, all these things, right? And then again, biometric also used to talk to that person, whoever comes across, he used to ask them, okay, how is it going, tumhara yeh project tha, uska kya hua, so all these things were there, right? So, you know, this is what I'm talking about. Ultimately, we do employee engagement for employees. So what is their perception about it? So that connection has to be there. And that connection starts from the leadership level. It starts from the top, topmost level of the organization. So this is what I feel, the top level management should be concerned and caring about the employees in the organization. Of course, it's not possible for you to know the names, everybody's name, first name or something. But yes, you should at least know that these are the people who are working in our organization and what are their concerns. So that could be, of course, achieved by doing different activities like a coffee with CEO, and you know, a buddy system. So these are the different activities, of course, we conduct. So that also helps a lot in employee engagement. So that is another strategy. And recently, I have also realized that, you know, during this pandemic, of course, there is one company who has stopped giving travel allowances to their employees, okay? So what did they do is they announced that since you know, it's a pandemic and majorly everybody's working from home and remote distance, so we're not going to give you any travel allowances as such. So the employees have heard about it, and they said, okay, this is fine, like, you know, we are going to lose on something. But the next mail that they receive from the HR, okay, this is how they look at the way they have engaged it. So the next email that they receive is we are not going to give you travel allowance. That's the truth. But at the same time, we're going to start giving you internet allowances, because you're working from home. So you know, this is how you simple things that you do as an HR fraternity, or maybe as an organization, which has a lot of impact on the employees, and then they were coming to me and telling me, okay, ma'am, do you know that this has happened in our organization? So this is how you know, you can engage and again, one more recent example that I would like to share is a 360 degree approach to employee engagement. So we have heard about 360 degree approach to performance management, of course, that's a very common fact. But as far as this employee engagement is concerned, what we have done with one organization is, of course, we've conducted that regular survey, authentic survey, which we do employee engagement survey. Apart from that, we have made all the employees spend some time with their bosses, and purely discuss maybe 10-15 minutes and purely discuss about employee engagement as a whole in the organization, as well as employee engagement pertaining to that individual employee. And the same activity has been done for their team leaders or team management as such the people who are working under those employees, and of course, with their colleagues and peers as well. So this has also worked very well. Because of that, what has happened, you know, we have been able to get a 360 view of exactly what people feel about employee engagement in a certain organization. And when we plan the strategy for employee engagement, then it becomes easy because then we have an overall view of it. So this is also one of the, you know, strategies that I would like to talk about, or I have spoken about. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Shraddha. I mean, your strategies were very, very insightful. And you rightly said that in order to keep your employees engaged, you have to genuinely care for them. And I'm sure I'd be able to use some of these strategies in my career journey. Excellent. Pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.