What Businesses overlook mostly..

I remember the time ,when India was just opening up to the world in 1990s and how a company made a fantastic performance through employee engagement.

How technologically advanced we become , management techniques we learn , whether we work from home ,this time-less principle makes a big differene in performance. Rather its more relevant for the creativity we need , complexity we need to address to get super business results.

Much has been written on this subject and talked about.And such contributions from various leaders and experts are so rich. I will put my own persepctive about what does employee engagement really do. I will share three approaches how such enagement can be brought in simple steps.

How does an environment looks like where employees get engaged in deeper level ?

I completely agree with an expert who once told me that ,stepping in a company for 10 minutes and talking to people he can sense the level of engagement.It is true.You enter in a company and the receptionist is attentive or not its not difficult to understand.Ok.. we may say it was not a great day for the receptionist and then go ahead to meet the executive , his boss.Its really not difficult.And if you are actively involved in dealing with the company , in no time one can understand.

I recall one incidence of the company I began my career. ( LNJ Group). The company had massive textile manufacturing over seven locations and decided to go global with India opening up.I was sent to one operation for a short visit. When I reached early morning by a train , the security people asked me to wait as the guest house was not open yet. I noticed another gentleman is waiting too and walking briskly outside.He asked me softly , where from I am coming , what do I do etc.After a while I noticed the people in security is moving here and there and escorted the gentleman inside. Later I came to know he was the chairman of the company. A man with no arrogance , letting security do his job created a big impact in my mind.

It was not that the company was the best paid comparing to others in the same industry of textile manufacturing.Still majority of the people never thought of leaving. What is the reason I still do remember and tried to emulate in my 30 years of global journey and do still ? The format of engagement has changed , however principles and approaches remain the same.

The picture still I hold about the group I mentioned is that starting from security personnel to the Chairman all looked quite happy people , the discussions were transparent , scope of learning was seamless and huge. There were people from various states and quite a few female employees ( unheard of that point of time).Every state in India is like a different country actually with so many distinct languages , food , the way they look at life.There was no proper HR system except some time keepers , no one talked about leadership jargons , no formal workshops with consultants.

Impact of engagement on Performance ?

A recent survey in India says that 85% of the employees are not happy.A study shows 47% of adults in USA do not focus enough in work due to various issues.

Imagine a company employs 5000 people and each employee contributes 10% more than they are expected. They arrive office happily 20 minutes before , leaves after half an hour. They are curious what they can do more. They respect each other , like each other. They share the company’s vission passionately to the world. Gets united in customer centric actions. With such enagagement what comes to our mind about performance improvement ? Be it market expansion, EBIDTA improvement , quality , attrition rates. Does such company need to worry about competition or sustainability ?

The decision of going global for LNJ group was no doubt a tough call that point of time.Quality awareness and inetrnational standards were not much understood by the industry.People did not understand international culture , mindsets well.Logistics , transportation and infrastructure of the country was complex.Setting up communication through trunk call , telex was not convenient at all.The company brought huge focus on quality and central leadership took a responsibility to address every market feedbacks.Relationship building was organic and effective with customers , vendors, financial institutions. In a year’s time the company received the best exporters award , achieved super financial results , expansion was round the corner.

The three time-less principles and approaches of engagement :

1. Communicating the vision of excellence. Let each memeber across levels know whats the short term plan and broad visions of the vision.Probably one to one session or in small group conversation.Active questions ,Coaching converstaion can do wonder on such communication.
2. Nurturing a culture of respect regardless ranks of people, cultural background ,gender.Delegating work and when some sincere mistake happens supporting wholeheartedly without criticism is the best way to create culture of respect and performance.Not only that ,it creates example for other members and gets them motivated or get rid of fear of failures.Other way is about considering the aspirations of individuals and coaching on work related persoal struggles.
3. Taking right people on the bus. If the people are already on the bus and they need to be improved , coach. If inspite of taking enough effort no improvement , may be take a hard call.

Core leadership and the colleagues both must take shared responsibility for creating a good culture.Its true if the central leadership is tyrannical or have a certain leadership trait , its next to impossible to create work culture. But then such companies , I have seen in front of my eyes how they got busted. I am talking about decent core leadership and who are hungry to grow.

What gets overlooked often :

One of the fundamental crisis is that business pressure is such , we miss about employee enagement.It happens like we care but do not care enough.It doesn’t matter what leadership role we play.

The LNJ group was fortunate or they did systematically to create a thriving work environmnet , I cannot comment.

Then the fact is that a large chunk of comapnies struggle to create a right work environmnet.Companies blame market conditions , complain about people , we talk about technology obsoletion except about how are our people truly engaging.

And the result is that the employees come to work thinking they are just pay loader , partcipate in company’s growth actions sub optimally, become negative or at times resist.Its not that people love to do that but then thats what happens.

Another fatal mistake is that the central leadership’s traditional expectation from HR department.Many big conglomerates I have worked , my personal observation is that the roles of HR is skewed towards wage adminstartion , general welfare , settlement of trade union disputes or liasioning with Govt authorities , man power optimisation.Very few cases I have seen where HR is doing its best to support making company business facing. Very few companies do really get involved in training , coaching people to make a truly engaged work environment.A strong HR leader has a great role in supporting central leadership of business in terms of creating that conducive engagement.

Summary

Depending on the degree of these three steps I could apply , my successes varied and sometime I have no hestitaion to say that I failed.Being aware of common mistakes and bridging the gap undoubtedly creates a much desired work environmnet or culture.

The Employee Engagement is non negotiable to me for its magnificent contribution to performance.

If you are wanting to know more about employee engagement please feel free to connect.