Best Companies to Work in India Study – New Approach, Different Perspectives

The Business Today -Indicus-People Strong Survey is out (February 7, 2010) and the top names sound familiar. Infosys ranks numero uno followed by Google. TCS, Microsoft also feature in the list. Noteworthy names missing are NetApps, Adobe, Cisco, Intel and HCL who were ranked highly in other studies last year.

twosome

With an all new methodology (Business Today reached out directly to over 8500 employees – current, former and prospects instead of organizations covering close to 1000 companies) it seemed like we might have some surprises. It did! A structured questionnaire covered the following six factors:

-          career and personal growth

-        prestige/company reputation

-           training/coaching/mentoring

-          Financial compensation and benefits

-          Good job content

-          Merit based performance evaluation

 Here are some of the key themes that I noted.

Career and personal growth ranked higher than compensation, often considered to be a tipping point. My take is that the recent economic slowdown may be the cause for this shift in mindset where stability and job security emerged stronger.

I believe companies which continued investing in employer branding and advertising during this slowdown got better mindshare. Therefore a better rank?

The study, while getting a makeover may have lost out on internal insight which only executives who have context can provide. For example, unique and creative best practices in human resources, planning, leadership and communication provide great ideas for other organizations to test and imbibe. I always look out for such case studies to not just share with students during classes but also to educate human resources and leadership teams at my organization on industry benchmarks.

Due to the downturn and rapid globalization, re-skilling and cross pollination of talent, wider spectrum of opportunities and leadership pool building were observed across most organizations.

Since the Fortune 100 best companies list feature other firms who have strong footprints in India, one can draw the conclusion that either the images of these companies may not be as strong in this geography or there are marked differences in the quality of employee relations across locations.

Strangely, Corporate Social Responsibility and opportunities for employee volunteering aren’t  mentioned as a factor for employee engagement even though research reports consistently point it out.

Also, the study does not seem to mention much on profit sharing and employee involvement in decision making. Two key factors that increases retention and engagement.

The cover story includes a helpful HR scorecard from Executive Board that takes a holistic view of the employee value proposition.

Overall, an interesting study and approach. Keen to know your views.

Citizens’ Distrust of Leaders – Implications for Organizations and Internal Communication

While the Tiger Woods controversy took the sporting and corporate worlds by storm, another incident in India shook the establishment and the trust in their politicians and leaders.

A well known politician was allegedly caught in a compromising situation within a state’s highest office bringing a new low to how leaders are perceived. Though we can argue that it may be a cultural issue in India to turn a blind eye to such transgressions it is believed leaders are gauged by their track record in their respective constituencies and not as much as what they do in their personal lives.

over the ages

Punam Keller in her outlook for 2010 (Brand Equity – January 6, 2010) talks of the world seeking ‘scandal free’ ambassadors and how we will see more average people playing that role.

So what is the relevance to organization and internal communication? A lot really.  Numerous research points to positive leadership behavior increasing organizational commitment and trust. So much so that employees’ intention to stay and productivity are impacted directly by how they perceive their leaders.

Be prepared to be scrutinized and treated as equals: According to a guidance prescribed for selecting government leaders in India there are three key attributes – ability, behavior and character needed for garnering respect.  With freely available information and the speed at which it travels, organizations need to understand that its leaders can no longer be exempt from public scrutiny. What they do at work and outside will always be questioned and monitored even if it has no direct relevance to the company’s business. Be it in their neighborhoods, supermarkets they frequent, clubs they visit and schools their children attend.

Organizations and leaders expected to exhibit consistent behavior: People expect leaders to exhibit consistent behavior and high morals or prepared to face trial.  Currently, the balance is skewed against employees with their behavior monitored on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. What they blog and how they treat their domestic help (see Infy example) and which stocks they trade in if they happen to work for certain financial firms. We also have examples from soccer where coaches prevent their players from interacting with their spouses or girlfriends during key games to cricket when the board disallows players from speaking to the press or writing for columns without permission.  However, we will soon see situations where employees and citizens examine closely and prevent leaders from taking their personalities outside office lightly. There is a need for leaders to align themselves more with the organization’s core values and their personal ethics.

Manage personal image and morals: We are all well aware of how the Satyam episode eroded trust. So also the Phaneesh Murthy case. I foresee leaders leveraging the services of ‘internal’ image consultants to reinvent themselves not just to understand themselves but to articulate their images better. Personal image audits will come of age. While Tiger Woods and his escapades were splashed in all forms of media, it also throws up interesting challenges for corporate leaders to manage their images.

Those who followed the episode must have noticed that Accenture reviewed their contract and pulled out Tiger from their advertising based on personal behavior or “the moral clause”.

Social media usage among leaders will increase: With the growing importance and power of social media and ‘collective wisdom’ leaders will have no choice to either embrace this new media or perish.  Today, with employees living beyond the firewalls how adept a leader is in understanding what employees discuss will be the measure of their success. Leaders who are yet to get on to the social media world will need to quickly upgrade their skills or be lost in the chatter.

Role modeling revisited: Wikipedia defines a role model as “any person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others”. In an interesting study among school students in India, 30% of children polled said for them their parents were their role models, and 13% said teachers – so almost half of the students felt that parents and teachers were their role models. Where were the politicians, celebrities and leaders? None of them received over 6% in votes.

Leaders will need to make a concerted effort to revisit the meaning of ‘role modeling’ and be inspirational through their actions.

Agree with me? Do you have other ideas and recommendations for leaders to be respected? Share them here.

Internal Communication Trend Spotting For 2010

In 2009, as the world coped with one of its worst economic downturns it also created opportunities for internal communicators to revisit their practice and come out stronger. Internal communicators were called to craft some of their toughest messages in organizations which reduced workforces and froze pay. They also had the ‘not-so-envious’ task of communicating with those who stayed behind but were skeptical of the organization’s intentions.

That said, from my personal experience in this field in India I believe the following themes emerged and will continue into the following year.

does it fit?

1. Internal communication as everyone’s responsibility: Leaders, human resources professionals and team leads often faced with communicating ‘tough’ news to their teams have begun to understand the importance of ownership and consistency. Unstructured interactions such as face to face conversations were popular since it allowed ‘human touch’ and created an open communication climate. The internal communicator played a strategic advisory role with messaging, content, planning, timing, frequency and structure.

2. The need for speed: With company information reaching the external world much before leaders could share internally, it became imperative for internal communicators to champion pace of communication. Cases such as the Satyam scandal and layoffs in the IT industry needed close hand-holding and quick decision making to avoid grapevine from creating havoc.

3. Understanding cultural nuances becomes more prominent: With multinationals expanding their centers in India and other Asian countries through outsourcing contracts, a skew among employees distribution will create an imbalance in the engagement index that any organization measures. Therefore internal communicators are expected to understand cultural sensitivities better to influence the overall engagement impact.

4. Internal communicators as ‘internal brand’ consultants: The scale and scope of what internal communicators can influence is constantly increasing. I am aware of cases where project teams invite internal communicators to come in as a consultant and recommend suitable communication interventions to build leadership credibility, team cohesiveness, collaboration and engagement. I foresee this expectation to increase over the years.

5. Champion of cyber and social media guidelines: In 2009, social media took center stage and a large percentage of employees are not only on popular social media and networking sites but use official time to do so. In the best interest of their organization, it is now even more necessary for internal communicators  to understand cyber laws, internet guidelines and social media rules. For example, companies who have a presence on say, Facebook – need to know how to respond to concerns raised by discerning stakeholders who visit their site. Similarly, employees who blog need to be educated on the do’s and don’ts of building an online presence.

6. Focus on consistent and structured communication: With information overload spiking and attention spans decreasing the challenge will be to ensure employees participate in information creation, receive and assimilate information easily and share messages peer-to-peer. This can only be when internal communication follows a prescribed structure with enhanced channels, clear line of sight and improved content.

7. Usability as an important skill: Internal communicators will be expected to learn and play a critical function of not just intranet management but also to evaluate content from a usability perspective and provide recommendations.

 8. Internal ‘image’ building for leadership: With increased scrutiny of leadership behavior both internally and outside the organization, it will become imperative for leaders to revisit how their images impact the ‘internal brand’. Internal communicators can see themselves building ‘internal’ images for leaders to ensure credibility and trust remain balanced. With the recent fall of Tiger Woods from grace, the aspect of ‘moral’ behavior will gain attention.

 9. Partnering with marketing and branding: There will be increased alignment with marketing, branding and public relations, if companies haven’t already. Those with the internal communication department within the human resources function will need to delink their association and partner more with the marketing and public relation departments to have their ears to the ground.

10. Measuring efficacy of communication: Measurement of communication witnessed renewed focus with the slowdown as organizations took steps to build rigor into processes. I believe measurement in internal communication will range from audits to engagement matrixes, from balanced score cards to leadership credibility indexes. There will be a concerted effort to gauge even how grapevine impacts organizational communication. The function is also gaining a lot more interest from academic circles and the student community.

From my interactions with senior academicians and deans of institutes (I recently partnered with an institute to revise their communication course syllabus and make it more relevant to the roles played by communicators) there are expectations to broaden the scope of career opportunities in internal communications. Also to conduct more current research on this topic.

Interested in your thoughts…do share them here.

Best Employer Submission Insight and Your Employees’ Commitment

I recently partnered with an internal team to submit content for a ‘best places’ entry. This blog post is to share ideas on distilling your organization’s interesting internal ideas and to engage employees along the way.

Most of us may be familiar with the following tag lines which organizations aim to place in their communication.

‘Employer of Choice’. ‘Best Place to Work In’. ‘Talent Attractor’. ‘Ranked among Best Employers’.

In India, company transport vehicles carry stickers and large banners across the sides to proudly display their latest wins at some of the leading employer awards.

Growl

Entering a ‘best places to work’ list has its known advantages including usage in different channels such as recruitment, company presentations, websites, annual reports and sales pitches. In a competitive world as companies clamor to get on the ‘A’ list of best employers and showcase themselves as excellent places to be in, it is important to step back and understand how to leverage your best content and practices. I recently came across Glassdoor and their employee’s choice awards, where employees decide the best and worst places to work. Interesting concept.

From what I understand most of these entries have a three pronged approach – a first level audit, a detailed report on initiatives and an employee survey. The report and survey are the most important with the latter directly handled by the administering agency to avoid bias.

Most questionnaires that shape the report ask for insights on the employee life cycle, the company’s people practices, culture, work environment and milestones. Each question requires strong supporting collateral which improves the chances of listing.

I have listed some of my personal insights after working on a similar exercise.

a)       Look for differentiators: Dig deep into your company’s values and history for unique features and qualities. Be is the way your company treats new hires to the special benefits employees get for high performance. Each organization is steeped in its own values and it makes sense to call them out across the document.

b)       Be consistent: revisit facts and figures after reviewing your press released information. While the numbers may have changed internally due to varied company factors, it is important to be consistent with publically available data. Also key messages that reflect in the company’s literature will be the best fit for this document.

c)       Include your internal communicator in the core team: Your internal communicator will be privy to most information required for completing the questionnaire – usually shared via the company’s portal or the newsletter. It helps to have a member of the internal communicator in the core team driving submission. Our team included the policies, HR and marketing leads as well.

d)       Tap tacit knowledge: To enhance the quality of your answers seek information and collateral from long tenured employees. It will be a boon to include them in the review process as well.

e)       Promote the submission internally: I attended a leadership meeting and surprisingly one of the grouses was that we never featured in any of the ‘best practices’ entries! Share an update with the team early; get their buy-in and commitment to contribute content and resources to be successful. Usually the recruitment team is the key stakeholder considering how much a ranking means to their efforts in getting the best hires. My recommendation is to also run an internal promotion which invites employees to share their best moments and what they think are the company’s unique differentiators. I am aware of an organization that created a video contest involving its employees. You may want to create an e-card with the company’s people practices which can be leveraged an external marketing avenue.

f)         Presentation matters: While content is one key component, how you present improves your case. Be it a web page or an interactive CD the approach, consistency and design plays an important role in the submission’s success.

Surprisingly, even though I was close to the content and submission, my knowledge of all the company’s initiatives was limited only to a few sections.  I am sure sharing these insights with your employees broadly can have a profound positive impact. My recommendation is to leverage this content as a campaign across the year highlighting key company practices and milestones to build awareness and commitment. It can also be converted into a docket as a read-through on your intranet and during your induction process.

Lessons from Launching and Reviewing an Internal Leadership Blog

After over a year, the leadership blog (internal corporate blog) aimed at employees is gaining momentum at my organization. I wanted to share insights on how we began, progress we made and personal learning. In case you are planning to champion a blog in your organization (training, business, engagement, CSR among others), I hope these insights give you information you can use.

The blog (hosted on the company intranet) was initially created as a channel for the CEO to post messages and interact with employees. The company went through organizational changes and to suit the inclusive style of the new leader the blog was expanded to allow a pool of writers to contribute. The leadership team took turns to pen their thoughts on how they perceived the company through their own eyes.

Arch

The ‘leader’ blog was an attempt to capitalize on ‘personality’ within organization, open a new channel of communication and provide an opportunity to “be real” and allow interactions. We expected to measure the impact of this exercise through direct comments from readers, fruitful conversations, ‘good will’ and increased engagement.

The posts range from the leaders’ business interactions to the team’s charter, from a personal account of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks to the company’s employee volunteering initiatives. The leadership was provided access to manage the blog in a DIY (do it yourself) model with  e-mail communication templates  to use after the posts went live.

The blog gets promoted in a roll-up newsletter, in Town Hall sessions and team meetings. The blog was measured by the readership, the feedback posted and the quality of the conversations. When I created a business case for blogging internally, I leveraged this interesting blogging success formula from Inside the Cubicle: “Personal voice + Accessibility + Relevant and timely information = Employee Engagement.”

In my role as the internal communications consultant I sow ideas on blog topics and relevant themes. Also my responsibility is to review the blog draft for consistency, language, redundancy, accuracy, company verbiage and opportunity to recognize employees. That apart, I look for avenues to build a conversation, address people concerns, manage the tone of voice, add context to the current environment, link to other company updates and help improve the human connection. I believe that the personal ‘touch’ occurs only when it is penned by the leader and not ‘ghost’ written.

Overcoming resistance to blogging: Often leaders shy away from blogging because they think it may ‘give away’ their true self. It was a struggle initially to get leaders to understand the benefits of blogging not just to be seen as friendly and approachable but also to be known as personalities or mentors people could look up to. Often I hear the comment that employees know me already, why do I need to blog?

Verbiage and small things that matter: In a post the leader drafted a message on a recent ‘offsite’ where the team ‘had fun’. I had to step back and understand the context. Finally we edited it to make it read more appropriate ‘also had fun’. Though I would have preferred to use the phrase ‘team huddle’ instead of ‘offsite’, we let it be since we wanted to be direct and honest in our communication. During a recession, having an offsite when all funds are scrutinized can be perceived differently by your employees.

Your readers are discerning: One leader had begun his post mentioning ‘I am a facilitator of our induction program’ while he was in fact ‘one of the facilitators’. To readers, the leader would have come across as pompous though he did not mean it that way.

Demonstrate that blogging is easy: Most leaders want to know how the blogs notes evolve. I usually share work in progress drafts and inputs which I provide to enhance the notes. This aids other leaders to begin thinking in a certain direction on how to pen their own posts. I reference external blogs that are well written to stimulate their thinking as well.

Promote the blog often: I highlight the importance of the blog and employee engagement during workshops and team meetings. I try to find visible spots for the blog in the company newsletter and on the intranet. It is a widely recognized channel for interaction today in the organization.

Taking feedback seriously: As soon as we discovered a theme emerging from the comments posted, a discussion between the leadership and the internal communication team led to a concrete action plan. The feedback providers were intimated and the progress shared proactively.

In the long run, we are hoping to reduce e-mail communication and have the blog as a preferred mode of communication.

Have other ideas from your experience on leveraging an internal corporate blog? Interested to hear from you.

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PS: I am proud to announce that Intraskope completed 150 posts since I began blogging in 2006. The blog statistics report 297 comments and over 27500 page views. I would like to thank all my readers for your feedback and encouragement.

Internal Communicators as the Company’s Historians

About 8 years ago my supervisor at a previous employer handed me a list stating my roles and responsibilities as an internal communication professional. In that, I recollect was a line which read ‘the company’s historian’. Then, as a junior member of a growing communications team it only meant ‘collating and updating’ company news. The focus was so much on getting the basics right that it never dawned on me how powerful that specific responsibility was. Today as I look back I can relate quite easily to the expectations. Knowledge farming, retention and reinforcement should be high on any internal communicator’s radar.

sun, sea and sand

In a recent case, I helped an organization put together a timeline and a video on completing 10 years of operations in India. Interestingly, nothing previously existed in terms of a formal history timeline till the time we got down to creating one. Though the experience was phenomenal the process of putting the content together was harder  since most of the information was anecdotal and in peoples’ inboxes.

Creating the company’s history ensured there would always be something employees could refer, have a sense of culture, work ethics, progress and accomplishments. It also opened up numerous avenues for employees and managers to reflect and imbibe the fabric of the organization. Now the timeline and video are a part of the company’s induction, their team meetings, reference for press releases, social media sites and large forums.

So why is this a role of an internal communicator? In our role (and this is my understanding) – we are expected to connect the organization, enable managers and leaders to communicate effectively and provide opportunities and forums to recognize employees. Connecting the organization includes engaging the workforce by rallying around a common theme and direction, creating artifacts and repositories that enable better conversations and capturing moments that define the organization’s DNA.

So how can one go about playing this role?

Here are a few learning from the role I got to play as a ‘historian’.

a)       Have the end outcome in mind: Understand how the final result will look like. We had a timeline that got hosted on the intranet along with a video that we played for engaging local offices

b)       Keep your ears on the ground: I discovered a few sources and ‘servers’ where content was saved in the past. By asking employees I navigated to primary areas for information. One employee sent me a home video that they created that captured how the team kept fit by doing push-ups during overnight project releases!

c)       Tap your ‘history champions’: Social media research identifies two key groups – ‘collectors’ and ‘connectors’ who drive change across organizations and in the social media world. Do we know who they are in the organization?

d)       Google your company: I came across some interesting snippets from the press which we converted into a press timeline for a history module

e)       Make it accessible: Convert the ‘history’ modules into usable models such as flash files and pdfs.

f)         Be open for feedback: After we created the timeline, we opened it up for employees to comment and share their inputs. Quite like how the company evolved, the timeline also had the same effect.

Also, you may want to check out the History Factory. I received an invite via Linkedin from Warren Levy who shared this interesting website. In his words “history and heritage are more powerful communication tools than most organizations realize.”

Are You ‘Tunnel Visioning’ Your Employees?

With internal communicators struggling today to reduce information overload and help employees ‘get what they need’ there is a contrarian view at play! That of making information ‘self discovery’ a joy for your staff.

This thought was further cemented when I read an argument by a leading educationist fighting against the spread of ‘coaching institutes’ in India that make Indian students ‘brain dead’ (November 9, 2009 – Business World). Professor Yash Pal is of the opinion that we make the learning process simple enough for students to ‘meander’ through the syllabus rather than learn by rote.

From a distance

In India, professional course admissions (medicine, business management and engineering) are sought after by students resulting in mushrooming ‘coaching’ institutes that promise to ‘get you in’. I find the same mind-set when I teach MBA and media students. Even if I provide themes or ‘keywords’ hoping that students will explore further either by reading more or ‘Googling’, most often they are keen to focus on the ‘content’ taught in class so as to score higher marks in their examinations! Instead, I always believe that what you ‘learn by exploring’ is what takes you further in life – over and above your grades.

Applying that thought to internal communications I truly believe we can avoid ‘tunnel visioning’ our employees by enabling them to make suitable decisions based on ‘discovered’ information. Rather than force feed what they need to read and see.

In our quest to provide suitably crafted messages that resonate with what we expect of our employees and to get them ‘up to speed’ on what the organization stands for, we are probably obstructing our employees from growing as individuals. As internal communicators I see an opportunity to allow more interaction (face-to-face meetings considered by research to be by far the most effective form), connecting leaders with people, sharing ‘real-life’ examples of those who live the core values and allowing employees to truly discover how the company operates by experiencing it.

From induction programs to alumni forums we may often be placing information in front of employees although it might be ‘intrusive’ and ‘in their way’. Rather employees expect to be treated like adults who prefer to ‘find out’ for themselves and thereby trust what they get.

Here are some ideas I had which will help your employees get better at discovering your organization.

a)       In a large multi-national banking product company where I worked previously, we ran an ‘online treasure hunt’ and clubbed it with an ‘offline’ one as well to launch the intranet and also get employees to ‘know their organization’ better. The response was overwhelming.

b)       Leverage blogs and other social media tools to help make information accessible and less ‘intrusive’. Tag clouds and ‘hot topics’ can give employees an idea on what is getting discussed widely and therefore pay closer attention.

c)       Plan offline ‘socials’ that help employees figure out information from key stakeholders.

d)       Recognize employees who mine and share information – they form the backbone of any ‘discovery’ process in the organization.

e)       Remember to update information across the spectrum (induction to alumni) so that your employees are getting consistent chunks to bite off

f)       At a global interactive and consulting firm new joiners are allowed open access to the organization’s workspace and employees to ask questions about the values,  culture,  environment and functioning

Have other suggestions? Share them now.

Helping Employees ‘Get’ Your Message Through Effective Writing

I recently ran a writing workshop for a group of internal communication ‘power’ users and came away with a lot of interesting insights.

As an internal communication professional I get to vet messages hitting large groups of people everyday. These range from simple office updates to complex change management roll-outs. With the speed at which communication is expected to be churned out, many of these communicators hurriedly prepare drafts that fail to address the essence of what they want to convey. I therefore felt a need to educate communicators on ways to reduce rework, improve recall, build credibility, shorten turnaround time and increase readability.

Tap

The workshop shared context on best practices, trends, templates, tools, the ‘Twitter’ style of communicating, web writing techniques and hands-on exercises. As business consultants we are expected to communicate effectively using this widely accepted language though it isn’t our mother tongue in India. Research also indicates the benefits of effective writing in reducing ‘info-obesity’. On an average a professional worker receives close to 178 messages in a day and this is known to increase by 2% every month! By using plain language techniques we can reduce writing and reading time by 25% and 50% respectively.

I found participants eager to learn this critical skill that focuses on the reader’s expectation.

Here is a sample of the questions that were posed during the session.

a) How can we be sure employees are getting the message?

b) Do we consider cultural nuances when we write our messages?

c) E-mail writing and etiquette – what works for personal vs official communication?

d) How do we respond to someone who is ‘flame baiting’ on e-mail?

e) When do we not send an e-mailer?

Strangely, most never measured their communication nor were aware of ways to do so. Some weren’t aware of how to ‘touch’ employees via other forums apart from e-mail. Also the ‘mechanism of communication’ was barely understood by writers – i.e., the process, the steps to review and edit messages. Testing messages, such an important piece of creating communication is rarely used.

My goal is to increase the pool of ‘internal’ writers and excite them to participate in larger company-wide communication. In the long run, I believe it will result in better quality of communication and greater visibility for those employees as well.

Who wouldn’t want to communicate with people who write well?

Are you Embracing ‘Employee-Led’ CSR and Communication?

‘A small favor’ said the subject line. An e-mail winged in from a motivated employee calling interested individuals to chip in aid of the victims of the worst floods South India has seen in decades. The mail goes on to articulate the project, the effort, the expectation, the plan and people involved. Right down to the finer points of how ‘aerial surveys’ and ‘fund transfer’ can get done online on the website. What was interesting about this initiative was the passion and creativity which the mailer communicated. All within a span of a few days – the floods situation worsened in the last week or so.

I am sure most organizations would love to have something so well thought through and ‘employee-led’.

Beware

 The recent NASSCOM Foundation report ‘Catalyzing Change 2008-2009, Towards Inclusive Growth’ however points to a maturity model that highlights ‘engaging employees’ but does not call out ‘supporting employee-led initiatives’. Out of the 6 factors in the model only one relates to employees, the rest focus on funding, policies, interventions, and domain expertise and resource allocation.

Interestingly, out of the total of 42 large Indian companies who participated in the survey only half have a full fledged group or resources driving the agenda, only 26% have a structured CSR policy in place and 29% have a sustainable model for CSR.

For many companies, contributing to corporate social responsibility can pull them in many different avenues. What constitutes CSR and who owns it is still a grey area in organizations. One of my students raised this pertinent question – was it HR, the CEO, the Communications team, a dedicated group or external agencies who championed CSR? As far I know companies which truly believe and practice what they preach a dedicated resource or a group of individuals manage this very vital function in the organization. In some cases, a core team from various functions come together to jointly run the program. I have seen the latter run well only when it is ‘employee-led’ and ‘enabled’ by the business. Without a strong commitment from the leadership employees often see these initiatives as eyewash.

In the October 5 edition of Business World, one consultant puts it aptly – ‘it has to be seen in a value framework that determines the way the organization works.’ Otherwise it is a ‘ritualistic undoing of guilt’!

As an internal communications professional I have driven and closely supported large scale CSR interventions and employee volunteering initiatives in the organizations I have worked for. Apart from the immense impact it has on employee engagement the sense of belonging and team spirit such programs create is enriching. Unfortunately, very often communication professionals are involved too little or too late in the overall scheme of things.

Like the example above, oganizations can tap and channelize energies on key initiatives that are close to employees’ hearts and have a relevance to the business and their existence.

With the changing new media environment where collaboration and equal involvement are key factors, partnering with your employees’ CSR beliefs is most conducive for a better world.

Grassroot’ Employee Engagement Way Forward For Organizations

Over the last few months I have observed closely as employees took ownership to drive various engagement initiatives across the organization I work in. Unlike other organizations where dedicated teams are assigned to create a fun place, employees here leverage their ‘collective wisdom’ to uplift the mood in the offices.

What started as a ‘community event’ to build connection and improve the ‘buzz’ in the office grew into a twice a month engagement calendar event focusing on the company’s key milestones. There are now more and more employees volunteering to chip in with events! Despite the slowdown and pressing demands, the focus has always been on creating a positive workplace.

Looking glass

Inspired by the team of enthusiastic individuals who championed the first event other employees stepped forward to do their bit. Not just the event, they also immersed themselves in communication, promotion and measurement! From sharing updates about the company’s strategy to articulating progress on initiatives. From highlighting values to recognizing high performers. A successful ‘shared responsibility’ model. When asked what drives them, the response is that they like the ‘culture’ and ‘want to contribute more’ to make it better.

So while most organizations rely on the human resources group or a ‘dedicated’ counsel for employee engagement or the cool sounding ‘Chief Fun Officer’ to own and drive engagement, I strongly believe a grass root approach works best. ‘Grass root’ engagement to me is a movement from within and from the ‘bottom-up’ rather than a high level view of what engagement should be.

In their white paper titled ‘Market Research: Voice of the Employee” Globoforce discusses how engagement can improve morale and remain a priority in good or bad times. Communication and recognition are highlighted as essential elements for success.

While surveys agree that engagement drive productivity and improve the bottom-line, it is the final lap of the equation that matters to employees. Employees seek on-the-ground tangible effort that is direct, transparent and visible.

Rather than see a top-down initiative to drive engagement employees usually ask:  

a)       How can I contribute to the effort?

b)      What more can I do to make a difference to the organization?

c)       Can I do something now to improve connection?

So how does this work and how can you as human resources or communicators play an active role?  Here are some thoughts.

Provide a framework: As the internal communicators, you can help define templates for running local connection programs. Basic planning sheets, budget trackers, communication formats, post connection feedback questionnaire, promotion outlines among others. Even communication documents to reduce turnaround time. Discuss and arrive at a formal process for content and design reviews so that you can avoid reinventing the wheel.

Lead by action: Participate in planning meetings and call out the role of internal communication for the success of connection programs. Such as review of communication, support for promotion and internal branding guidance. Work closely on a couple of connection programs to seek more opportunities to pitch in.

Empower: The organization must empower employee(s) to take decisions and thereby evolve their own guidelines for connection programs.  The event owners much be provided all support be it with budgets or with relevant tools and resources.

Recognize instantaneously: I found employees seek recognition and soon. It is the responsibility of local leadership to take action as soon as they see tangible results and effort on the part of employees to go over and beyond.

Communicate widely: We leverage our intranet to showcase the connection events and how employees have contributed. The weekly newsletter carries snippets which the entire organization can read at a glance. This is in itself a wonderful form of recognition.

Plan ahead: When employees see a long term plan they believe there is commitment from the organization to invest in engagement programs. Share the calendar in advance and seek ideas to improve the event formats and feedback mechanism.

Finally – let employees have fun! The most recent event had an interesting connection exercise called ‘Festival of Joy’ as well as a relevant ‘Know Your Colleague’ Contest. The participation it drew was testament of this excellent engagement model.