Download - Kumudini Manda Summers Report SHRM
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Summer Internship Project Report
OnDesigning Employee Engagement Initiatives
Framework
Presented by
Kumudini Manda
MBA Core
NMIMS
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PREFACE
It is essential for an organization to sustain in the long run have an engaged workforce. An
engaged workforce takes an organization to great heights. Engaged employees contribute to
the bottom line. Employees feel engaged when they find personal meaning and motivation in
their work, receive positive interpersonal support, and operate in an efficient work
environment.
An employee when engaged emotionally, cognitively and physically helps creating a great
place to work. The engagement levels in the organization determine the enthusiasm of an
employee to come to the work every single day. The more engaged the employee is, more is
the likelihood of the organization to be a great place to work.
Engagement is linked to three essential forces in the organization - Attrition, Productivity &Profitability. That essentially is the reason that today, all efforts are being made to make the
employees feel that the organization cares for him and wants his success and growth.
This organisation is no different and thus wanted to understand ways of creating employee
delight for its employees. The 250 odd people strong company believed that the employee
satisfaction levels needed to be taken to the next level. Taking the employee satisfaction
survey as the base, the problem areas were identified.
The project on designing an employee engagement framework was essentially formulated to
address the gaps. Identifying employee engagement initiatives and having a control plan in
place for the same were the primary objectives of the project.
Employee delight and in turn a great place to work was thus essentially aimed at as an
outcome of this project.
Kumudini Manda
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity with much pleasure to thank all the people who have helped me
through the course of my journey towards producing this project report.
I sincerely thank my project guide at the company for her constant guidance, help and
motivation.
I also express my gratitude to the other members of the HR Team for their assistance at every
stage of my project.
I would also like to acknowledge help from the corporate HR team for providing a platform
for all the HR interns to carry out their projects with ease.
I would like to thank all the participating companies in the external benchmarking process to
study the best practices in employee engagement across organizations. It would not have been
possible without the support
I gratefully acknowledge support from my guide at college during my short stint at the
organization.
Lastly, the report completion would not have been possible without the encouragement and
support from my family and friends.
Mumbai Kumudini Manda
25th
June, 2011
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It is not enough for HR today to perform its routine tasks. The rising importance of employee
engagement across the spectrum of organizations has made them take notice and put it on
their priority list. Employee engagement has been found to have a three way effect on
Attrition, Productivity and Profitability of an organisation.
Thus it was nothing but imperative for this organization to take employee engagement to the
next level where in came my project. The objective of my project was to design an employee
engagement framework for the organization. This included identifying employee engagement
initiatives and keeping in place a control plan for its sustainability.
The desired engagement spheres in employees are the psychological state engagement,
behavioral state engagement and trait engagement. Simply put, an engaged employee is one
who is emotionally, physically and cognitively attached to the organization. This further
ensures the creation of a great place to work at.
Employee engagement though being compelling on the surface, meaning of the concept is
unclear. Hence my study involved firstly understanding the levers of employee engagement.
This was done with the help of journals and a primary survey of a random sample of people.
This made me appreciate the expectations of workforce today which was not restricted to
remuneration alone.
Once the parameters were identified, learning the best practices across the industries was the
next logical step. This was carried out with the help of telephonic and in person interviews
and administering online questionnaires. The findings were analyzed and the emerging trends
across organizations were plotted.
The current satisfaction levels of the employees were gauged by participating in the analysis
of the employee satisfaction survey carried out in December 2010. This exercise revealed the
top categories of dissatisfaction among the employees.
The feasibility of the recommendations was understood by interacting with the business
leaders and one-on-one interviews with them. The understanding of organization structure
and the business model led to the final list of recommendations which would suit the firm.
The major engagement themes that evolved at the end of the assignment are senior leadership
and HR connect, organisation culture, Learning and Development and career opportunitiesfor growth.
Transparent and regular organization updates and communication turned out to be a major
engaging factor.
Though remuneration is perceived to be a major engaging aspect, the study also revealed that
compensation is not a major engaging factor.
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Chapter 1: Introduction and Research Methodology
Employee Engagement
A major challenge for HR today is how to engage and ultimately retain employees
particularly amid an economic downturn. It is no longer sufficient to carry out daily routine
processes for the functioning of the organization. HR management today involves many of
the subjective and ambiguous concepts like employee engagement. The purists might even
frown at the scope and the vagueness of the topic like engagement.
Employee engagement is a desirable condition, has an organizational purpose, and connotes
involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort, and energy, so it has both
attitudinal and behavioral components.
A number of popular views of engagement suggest that engaged employees not only
contribute more but also are more loyal and therefore less likely to voluntarily leave theorganization.
An amalgamation of commitment, loyalty, productivity and ownership is also perceived to
be a way of measuring engagement.
The categories ofjob satisfaction, organizational commitment, psychological empowerment
and job involvement form another school of thought. Resource availability, opportunity for
development and clarity of expectations is the Gallup way of looking at employee
satisfaction facets.
Engagement is above and beyond simple satisfaction with the employment, arrangement orbasic loyalty to the employercharacteristics that most companies have measured for many
years.
Engagement, in contrast, is about passion and commitmentthe willingness to invest
oneself and expend ones discretionary effort to help the employer succeed.
Satisfaction when assessed as feelings of energy, enthusiasm and positive affective states
becomes a facet of engagement. Organization commitment is an important facet of the state
of engagement as it is positive attachment to the larger organizational and measured as a
willingness to exert energy in support of the organization, to feel proud as an organization
member and have personal identification with the organization. Job involvement is looked at
as an facet of psychological state of involvement. A feeling of empowerment connotes theinclination to action another state of engagement.
In a world that is changing in terms of the global nature of work and the aging of workforce,
having engaged employees may be a key to competitive advantage.
The companies that get the state and behavioral employee engagement will have
accomplished something that other competitors would find difficult to imitate. It is very easy
to change the price and product, it is another thing to create an engaged workforce.
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The assignment dealt with the following objectives:
Identifying factors involved in building a Great Place to work culturewith the help
of primary and secondary research findings
Benchmarking various organizations for their employee engagement initiatives
prepare a questionnaire and do a market survey Understanding the Employee satisfaction survey voices and bucketing the main
concern areasby participating in analysis discussions
Interaction with the leaders to understand the business model and feasibility
Analysis and Recommendationsdocument final report
Figure 2: Understanding the Business Model
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Project Plan
The project involved the following steps:
Project Objectives Agreed Measures Agreed Date
Status
Identify Factors involved in
Employee Engagement
Primary research
findings 22/04/11 Done
Benchmarking various
organizations for their
employee engagement
initiatives along with the
attrition data
Questionnaire and the
benchmark report 04/06/11
Done
Understanding the ESS
voices
Participation in
discussions04/06/11
Done
Interaction with the leaders
to understand the business
model
Feasibility Report
27/05/11
Done
Analysis and
Recommendations Final report04/06/11
Done
Table 1: Project Plan
Assumption
The employee engagement initiatives identified and implemented could help the organization
three fold aspects of controlling Attrition and increasing Productivity and Profitability.
Limitation
There is no clear cut formula for increasing employee engagement, it itself being an
ambiguous feature. The number of engagement initiatives that could be introduced is
limitless. And establishing a direct correlation of the organization growth in terms of low
attrition and high productivity and profitability is tough and highly subjective.
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Chapter 2: Employee Engagement Parameters
A Great Place to Work can be ensured by engaging the employees emotionally, cognitively
and physically. Cognitive engagement refers to employees beliefs about the company, its
leaders and the workplace culture. The emotional aspect is how employees feel about the
company, the leaders and their colleagues. The behavioral factor is the value-added componentreflected in the amount of effort employees put into their work.
Ensuring a great place to work at is increasingly becoming important for companies all over
because of the reasons of happier employees leading to better work productivity in turn leading
to customer satisfaction. This in turn makes more and more profits certain for the institution.
Retention of the employees and attracting best talent become the gradual result of putting into
practice the engagement activities.
Companies need to give the three Cs of engagements to employees. They being
Connection
Contribution
Credibility
The employee needs in terms of the following should be capacitated:-
Basic needs: Clarity of work, materials and equipment
Management Support: Encouragement, caring, supervision, recognition, person-job-fit
Teamwork: Best friend, co-workers, commitment to quality, clarity of organizational
purpose, value for ones opinion
Growth: Opportunity to learn, tangible progress
Figure 3: Framework for understanding the elements of Employee Engagement
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The laundry list of best engagement practices that an organization can take up for its people
is:
Safe, Healthy And Happy Workplace
Open Book Management Style
Performance Linked Bonuses 360-Degree Performance Management Feedback System
Fair Evaluation System For Employees
Knowledge Sharing
Highlight Performers
Open House Discussions And Feedback Mechanisms
Reward Ceremonies
Delight Employees With The Unexpected
It is also to be borne in mind that there is no one size fits all type of initiatives that can be
implemented in organizations. It therefore becomes an organizations responsibility to
encompass all kind of employees namely
a) Mature workers
b) Baby boomers
c) Generation X
d) Generation Y
Primary Research
In order to understand the parameters for a great place to work a primary research wasconducted asking 2 simple questions, one being open ended in order to receive unconstrained
responses. On the basis of 40 respondents views, a list of parameters was formulated.
Secondary Research
Motley of papers and articles [as mentioned in the References section] were studied along
with some online portals in order to understand the levers of employee engagement. Some
organizations engagement policies were further referred to for the parameters formulation.
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Figure 4: Snapshot of Primary Research Questionnaire
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Employee Engagement Parameters
The primary and the secondary research led to the following key parameters of employee
engagement. These parameters were found to be relevant to the organization and in sync with
the companys parameters of engagement.
Companys Leadership (strategy, policy,processes)
Management of Change
Communication
Manager
Growth & Development (L&D, rotational development opportunities, empowerment)
Transparent Performance Management
Recognition and Rewards
Compensation and Benefits
Work Life Balance
Recruitment & On boarding experience
Culture (work environment, policies, ergonomics, team members, inclusive environment)
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Chapter 3: External Benchmarking
In order to understand the best practices in terms of employee engagement across industries,
external benchmarking was done. The objective of this study was to understand and evaluate
the current position of engagement in the organization and discover areas and means of
improvement.
It was established that there were companies with good practices across sectors and thus a
mix of best in class companies and the companies in the same league were interviewed.
A total of 30 companies were approached out of which 21 responded. The best practices of
these companies were captured through in person and telephonic interviews and online
survey tools.
The questionnaire had 15 questions which were based on the parameters of employee
engagement that were identified through primary and secondary research.
The questionnaire asked questions in the areas of
1. Fun at work initiatives
2. Infrastructure provided in terms of sports, canteen, recreation facilities etc
3. Cross functional team meets in terms of Committees, Technical clubs and
competitions
4. HR connect
5. Exit Interview Procedure
6. Communication Channels in the organisation
7. Work Life Balance8. Hipot engagement
9. Mentorship Program
10.Compensation and Benefits
11.Rewards and Recognition
12.Promotion Process
13.Trainings
14.Managers Behaviour
15.Change Management
These questions were asked to the HR managers of the companies. A questionnaire wasprepared as shown in the snapshot and administered in the following ways
1. Online
2. Telephonic Interviews
3. In person interviews
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Challenges
The major challenge in doing this study was getting contact details of the person in an
organization. Once the contact person was identified, getting an appointment was an equally
herculean task.
Many a times, data was not shared because of either confidentiality issues or not being theright point to contact. The whole process of benchmarking inadvertently stretched over the
time initially allotted for the benchmarking. This caused an overall delay in the initially
planned schedule.
Figure 5: Snapshot of the External Benchmarking Questionnaire
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Profiles of the Benchmarked Organizations
The companies that were benchmarked were a mix of IT services, Manufacturing, Financial
services and Banking companies.
Some of the companies that were chosen to be interviewed were the competitors in the
manufacturing sector. A set of companies were those who were known to have the best ofpractices in terms of employee engagement practices. A few other companies were those who
might not be in the same space and need not have the best of practices but were highly known
and respected companies across.
The companies that participated in the external benchmarking process were:-
Figure 6: External Benchmarking companies at a glance
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The list of companies that participated:
Sl No Company Description
1 John Deere Leading farm machinery
manufacturing company
2 KPIT Cummins Leading technology solutions
partner for globalManufacturing corporations
with special focus
onAutomotive,Energy &
Utilities,Industrial
Equipments
andSemiconductorindustries
3 SunGard One of the worlds leading
software and technology
services companies
4 Aon Hewitt Leading HR consultants
5 Marico Indias leading Consumer
Products & Services Group,
in the global beauty and
wellness space
6 Wipro Consumer Care
Limited
One of the top 10 FMCG
companies for soaps, baby
care products and lighting
products
7 Kinetic Engineering Pioneering group in
automobiles in India8 Tata Capital One-stop financial services
provider
9 Tata Telecommunication Global provider of a new
world of communications
10 Mahindra Satyam BPO Leading BPO services
company
11 Mc Donalds World's leading food service
retailer
12 Microsoft Leading IT products and
services company
13 Atlas Copco Industrial group withworld-leading positions
in compressors,
construction and mining
equipment, power tools
and assembly systems
14 Google Leading IT products and
services company
15 Eaton Global technology leader in
diversified power
managementsolutions
http://www.kpitcummins.com/automotive/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/automotive/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/energy/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/energy/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/energy/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/industrial/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/industrial/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/industrial/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/semicon/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/semicon/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/semicon/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/semicon/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/industrial/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/industrial/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/energy/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/energy/expertisehttp://www.kpitcummins.com/automotive/expertise -
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16 Mahindra Forging One of the top 3 forging
companies in India
17 Vodafone Leading communication
solutions company
18 V.I.P. Leading luggage company
19 Omnitech IT solutions multinational
company
20 HP Leading technology company
Table 2: List of participating companies in the survey
External Benchmarking Analysis
The responses from the companies were captured in the categories mentioned above.
Once the categorised data was gathered, the trends in the organisations were plotted.This was done by means of frequency count of the best practices across organisations to
understand the leading trend in every category of employee engagement.
Some of the various trends across organisations in different categories are plotted below.
1. Fun At Work
Celebration of
ocassions
Team outings
every quarter
Gift hampers for
new joinees
Dedicated
Womens day
Walk Marathon/
sports
committee
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
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2. Cross functional team activities
3. Facilities
4. HR Connect
0
2
46
8
10
12
0123456789
0
1
2
3
4
56
7
8
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5. Communication Channels
The top trends that emerged across various categories of employee engagement appeared asbelow.
Figure 7: Top Trends in the market for Employee Engagement Initiatives
02468
1012
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
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Chapter 4: ESS Analysis and Internal Benchmarking
ESS Analysis
The employee satisfaction survey that was conducted in the month of December of 2010.The
responses to the open ended question on How to make a Great Place to Work saw a fair
number of resentments from the employees.
The responses were analyzed and categorized into top priority buckets with the help of Pareto
and KJ analysis. The top pain categories that were revealed are mentioned below
Top 5 from Employee voice Pareto
More focus on technology
Clear and regular Communication on policies
Market comparable salary and benefits
Better match between role and incumbent More flexibility in schedule
Top 5 from KJ analysis
Various channels for self development and career growth
Effective implementation of performance management system with due weightage to
various objectives
Optimum efficiency targets and focus on technology
Regular and transparent communication
Market comparable compensation and benefits
Internal Benchmarking
As the external benchmarking was being carried out, there was also an exercise of internal
benchmarking that took place.
Major tendencies that evolved across entities are as shown below in the figure. It was
observed that the initiatives across organizations were in line with the external benchmarking
analysis and trends. There were many similarities between the internal and external
benchmarking findings that were discovered. This showed that there are many things that the
organization as a whole was doing right, but at the entity level it was time to adopt the best
practices across organizations and its own entities.
Though many initiatives were quite common across organizations, there were some practices
which though not a popular choice stood out in the external benchmarking study conducted.
Some of these initiatives though striking were very simple to implement and it was chosen to
not overlook them. The out of the box initiatives are also listed below, some of which were
chosen to be implemented in the context of the subject organization.
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Figure 8: Internal Benchmarking Analysis
Figure 9: Out of the box employee engagement initiatives
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Chapter 5: Understanding the business model
Interaction with Business Leaders
Understanding the business model was important for proposing any sort of employee
engagement framework. Only if a fitment could be found between the organization culture
and the proposals that were recommended, the framework would be an accomplishment.
After the initial analysis of external benchmarking, it was essential to appreciate the deep
nuances of the business model prevalent. This could have been possible by discussing the
proposed initiatives with the business leaders on an individual basis.
One on one with leaders on common set of questions were set up in which a fair
understanding of the constraints and challenges faced in terms of efforts, time and money
were understood.
The leaders were queried on the following list of questions in order to assess the feasibility of
the initiatives proposed.
Questionnaire for the Business Leaders
1. What defines employee engagement for you?
2. What are the average working hours of the team? What is the time (man hours) that
can be devoted for engagement activities
i) By you for
a. Trainings
b. Fun at work
c. Cross functional knowledge sharing
d. One to one interactions for communicating organisation policy, values ,
vision, career growth opportunities
e. Innovation in work
ii) By your team for
a. Trainings
b. Fun at work
c. Cross functional knowledge sharing
d. Assignments over the agreed commitments
e. Innovation in work
3. Which day and time do you think is suitable and what time?
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4. Does Practices Team plus Delivery Team for every function make sense in the
organization?
5. How to inculcate the culture of Allowed to commit mistakes?
6. How do we make the managers accountable for attrition in the team?
7. How to implement Technical club/best practices club ?
8. How is it possible to implement a half day for Innovation per week for every
employee?
Leadership Interaction
Figure 11: Snapshot of leadership interaction compilation
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Among other things, the common constraints that emerged out of the interaction with the
leadership are:
1. Budget Constraints
2. Billing Model
3. Lean Model4. Harmonisation
A lean model where it could not maintain bench strength of employees and serving its own
internal entities could not carry on with a high profit margin. This poses a budgetary
constraint on the organization in terms of any kind of out of routine initiatives.
The billing model, wherein an employee was billable for every hour of the work put in thus
restrained employees to take out time for anything else apart from work in hand. This
overworks the employees because of no bench strength and hence dissatisfies the employees
about the too much emphasis laid on the billing model. The lack of emphasis on the
innovation and stress on the billing model all the time deterred the employee motivation.Harmonisation of practices across entities also was another challenge the leadership saw
because of the basic differences in the way the other manufacturing entities and the research
and technology wing functioned.
Figure 12: Analysis Model with ESS analysis, External Benchmarking and Leadership inputs
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Chapter 6: Recommendations
Immediate Effect Practices
List of employee engagement initiatives that were immediately implementable are shown
below. These were the initiatives which were given thumbs up from the HR team after
understanding its suitability to the existing model. These initiatives were unanimously
thought to bring about a change in the employee morale and considered immediately
operational.
Figure 13: Employee Engagement Initiatives that were approved of and readily implemented
HR Dashboard
Policy Guru
The HealthierEgo/Yoga Class
Skip Level Meeting
HR BusinessPartnership
Exit Interview Analysis
Spot Award
Ideate to Celebrate
Paanch Tantra
Chill Wednesday
HR mail id
HR One on One withevery employee
Carte Blanche/LetsTalk/Committee Stalls
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The initiatives covered parameters of employee engagement and were zeroed upon after
analyzing its fitment in the organization.
Practices in the pipeline
Employee engagement initiatives that needed further leadership intervention and discussionfor implementation. The following are the list of initiatives which have been approved by the
HR team and have been found suitable to implement in the context. However, these
initiatives needed further probing and plan for implementation with the help of business
leadership inputs.
Figure 14: Employee Engagement Initiatives that were approved of and needed further
leadership discussion
CommonCommunication
Thread
Technical/BestPractices Club
InhouseManagerial
Trainings
Hipot Career Path
Publish Team'sWork Schedule
Spend a day/hourwith leadership
Numerical PMS
MentorshipProgram
Individual
Contributor Path
ManagersAppraisal
Training
Manager-Work LifeBalance
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List of Initiatives
Inititative Description
Reports
HR Dashboard
A monthly online HR newslettercovering following aspects:-
Scope of work of the HR Team,
Roles and responsibilities of each
HR person. Regular update on
ontrack,recruits,diversity,skill track,
performance,onboarding feedback
Skip Level Meeting Report
HR to be a part of every skip level
meeting.MOM,Feedback and action
points of skip level meetings to be
shared with leadership
team/employees every quarter.
HR Business Monthly
Meeting and Report
HR to be a part of business team
meetings at least once a month. A
report to be made on the basis of
the observations. To be shared with
team manager.
Exit Interview Analysis
Analysis report of exit interviews to
be sent to managers every month. It
can be used to sensitise them on
their responsibility of the employee
and to understand the trends inattrition.
HR Roles and Duties Manual
Manual of all HR Roles and Duties
to be prepared for the HR team
Presentations
Skip Level Meeting Schedule
Publish the schedule of skip level
meetings every quarter
Meeting Charter
Publish the ideal number of
meetings that an employee is
supposed to have in terms of team
and 1-0-1 meetings for his
information.Fire Sight Chat To coordinate meetings of the
employees with the visitors. Publish
a charter of the speeches by email
for all employees.
Spot Awards Post the details/winners of Spot
Awards every month to all
employees by either mail or HR
Dashboard.
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Ideate to Celebrate This initiative looks to reward ideas
from employees every month on a
particular theme. The idea that is
implemented and results in
saving/improving of the processes
is rewarded. Employees pour intheir Suggestions at the online link
provided in the mailer every month.
Paanch Tantra Celebration Tenure Award for completing 5
years and a Mailer to be sent with
the details of the awardees. The
first award function would
honouring about 34 employees.
Employees can get 3 family
members with him for dinner.
Chill Wednesday This is a fortnightly event where
there would be one minute team
games and videos shown. Rewards
would be in terms of point system
which is redeemable at the end of a
quarter. The time allocation to the
event to be discussed with
leadership
HR mail id A dedicated email id for HR for all
kinds of communication from andto the HR team.
Meetings
HR Team Meeting Meeting of HR Team to review
project status every Monday.
7-7-7 Initiative to have an 1-0-1 with HR
for new joinees on their 7th day,7th
week and 7th month
Skip Level Meetings Facilitate/Monitor skip level
meetings happening for all the
employees and also have a report
created for the same.HR - Business Monthly
Meeting
In this initiative any member of HR
team is to be present in the monthly
meetings of the teams and also have
a report created for the same.
Employee Morale
Focus Group with HR Head A focus group of 30 people is to
meet HR Head every month.
One on one with HR In this initiative, One on one of
every employee with HR team is to
take place every quarter. Every HRteam member is to meet 3
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employees per week for a quarter.
Bday Collage Display Printout of collage of the month endbirthdays celebration is to be put on
the communication notice board
Carte Blanche/Lets Talk A mailer regarding the Creative
Corner(Carte Blanche)Board and
the Ads Board(Lets Talk) is to be
sent every month reminding
employees to contribute.
Suggestion Box A mailer is to be sent every month
about the suggestion box being
present in the library and pour in
suggestions.Birthday Celebration every
month
Birthday celebration of employees
in that particular month on the last
working day of that month. The
employees are given gifts, cards
and there is cake cutting.
Spot Award
The HR is to communicate the spot
awards winners to all the
employees.
Pre Exit Interview HR has to meet the resignee
candidate on the day of initiation of
his resignationHasya Kavita/Stand up
Comedy Competition
Competition for best stand up
comedian on July 1, World Joke
Day. Points/Awards to be decided.
Friendship Day Celebration Celebrate Friendship day at office
by asking employees to make their
own friendship bands from the
material provided to them by us.
The material could be thread,
buttons, rubber bands etc. Also ask
employees to write in messages fortheir friends and the best message
wins. 8th Aug
Parents Day Celebration Contact employees to write in
messages, cards for their parents in
advance and display it onparents
day (July 22). Also ask employees
to impromptu write messages,
poems for their parents on the board
in the canteen. The best message
gets an award in points/vouchers.
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Investment Session An investment session to be held
for employees every quarter which
informs them about the various
options of investments that can be
done.
Technical Day + Family Day A day in the month of December tobe dedicated to technical paper
presentation, quizzes, cultural
events etc. in the day and a family
get together in the night at one of
the hotels.
Mailers
Promotions Mailer List of people who got Promotions
Chill Wednesday Motivating/Leadership Video/PPT
and games
Committee
Stalls/Presentation every
quarter/Charter Mailer
Charters/Presentations of all
committees every quarter is to be
done during lunch hours.
Policy Guru Policy Mailer- A mail on all the
policies on the theme of that month
The Healthier Ego A Mailer on health and wellness
having simple tips for healthier life.
Pehchan Kaun Guess your colleague. A mailer
with morphed/part of picture of an
employee is sent every month for
others to guess the employee.
Trainings
Points System Awards
Centralised system for awarding.
Points for every fun event, Chill
Wednesday, Parents Day,
Friendship Day, Pehchan Kaun etc
KT on Manager Training Understand the Training being
imparted to managers on
performance management,
delegation of work, using 360
degree feedback
Online Ideas Collection How to implement online
suggestion mechanism, Kaizen etcTable 3: List of Employee Engagement Initiatives
List of Deliverables
As a part of the recommendations and control plan for the recommendations on the basis of
the two month study, the list of charters prepared is
1. External Benchmarking Report
2. HR Charter
3. HR Communication Plan
4.
Leaders Charter5. Leaders Interview Compilation
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Figure 15: List of deliverables for Recommendations
Description of the Charters
1. External Benchmarking Report
This report contains the comparative analysis of engagement practices across organisations.The report compares the practices of 20 different organisations in 15 various categories as
mentioned in earlier section. It also looks at the trends in the organisation in terms of best
practices in different classes of engagement practices. This report was mainly used to
understand the best functions in the market and estimate the standing in terms of employee
engagement practices.
2. HR Charter
This charter contained the month wise plan for the HR team to follow. This calendar included
the list of initiatives and the timelines for every initiative. This charter which was in the form
of a calendar indicated on which day what initiative was to take place starting from June 2011to May 2012.
The charter was based on a theme every month, around which some of the initiatives were to
be floated. This charter indicated as to what initiative was to be dated for which day in the
month. The events were charted as shown in the snapshot below which let the HR team know
what event was to be conducted on which day of the month.
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Figure 16: Snapshot of the HR charter
3. HR Communication Plan
This charter contains the laundry list of initiatives that should be taking place on behalf of the
HR team. This document gives the details of what communication should be happening,
frequency of the communication that should be happening and to whom it should be
happening. The communication plan is like a communication bible which has the whole list
of all types of communication that should be taking place in terms of meetings,
announcements, reports or presentations. The plan also is indicative of who is the owner of
each initiative and by what channel it should occur.
Figure 17: Snapshot of the Team Communication Plan
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4. Leaders Charter
The list of engagement initiatives which was mentioned in yellow and were in pipeline were
initiatives which were found suitable in the context. But they required some more discussions
and probing from all the business leaders coming together. These initiatives required a
collective action and a formal action plan from the leaders in order to percolate it furtherdown the system.
This charter listed the initiatives which were to be talked out with the leadership team along
with place for estimated start and finish time, financial implications of the initiative and the
time that would be devoted to it.
The difference between the leaders charter and the HR charter is that the initiatives in Green
go into the HR charter and the initiatives in yellow entered the leaders charter for further
discussion.
Figure18: Snapshot of Leaders Charter
5. Leaders Interview Compilation
This document contains the compilation of the interactions with the leaders on the set of
questions that were mentioned in the earlier section. The leaders were asked questions on the
feasibility of the engagement practices that could be implementable. The interaction also
revealed the constraints and challenges the leaders and the employees faced in the working
conditions. This excel document also gives pointers on how some of the initiatives can be
tweaked to suit the model. The basic theme of challenges that appeared were
1. Budget 2. Billing Model 3. Lean Model 4. Harmonisation
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Future Scope
The engagement practices recommended above were initiatives that were found suitable at
the current context and suited the budget and the employee time constraints. These initiatives
were either in Green which was to be implemented immediately or in Yellow, which needed
some more discussion with the leadership team for the action plan. The future scope of this project includes initiatives and practices that were found suitable but
seemed a little difficult to implement at the current context because of budgetary constraints,
time available or the issue of harmonization across all entities of the organization. Some of
the initiatives that could be included in the organizations plan to be implemented at a later
date are:
Outbound Team activities
Promote environment friendly practices
Yearly Fitness/Education allowance
Annual medical checkups extended to family
Hobby clubs
Better Infrastructure facilities (recreation facility, ergonomics etc)
Inculcation of work Culture of allowed to make mistakes
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Annexure
A. External Benchmarking Questionnaire
1. What are the various employee engagement practices in the organisation? Any specific
initiatives based with category of employees based on age/ tenure with org/gender)?
2. What kind of platform is provided for meeting of cross functional team members
(committees/ technical clubs/ competitions)?
3. What facilities does the organisation provide to employees in terms of:-
a. Recreational facilities(internal/external-club membership)-
b.
Infrastructurec. Sports facilities
d. Transport (free/subsidised/paid)
e. Canteen(free/subsidised/paid)
f. Other
4. What practices are followed for HR connect/engagement with employees? Does the
organisation have feedback mechanism on a regular basis? How is the loop closed with
the employee?
5. How does the organisation act on voices from the employees from exit interviews?
6. What are the communication channels in the organisation at
a. Org level (Senior Leadership)
b. Team level/ group level
c. 1-0-1 discussions
7. What are the various policies to ensure work life balance (sabbatical ,part time, work
from home, higher education, flexitime)? Are there any women specific policies?
8. What are the practices followed for high potential employee engagement?
9. Does the organisation have formal mentoring process? If yes, is it applicable for all
employees? How is the mentor-mentee mapping done?
10.How is the benchmarking done for Compensation & Benefits? What is the organisation
philosophy for placing the organisation in the band as compared to the competitorsis it
50th / 75th percentile or beyond?
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11.The employees are rewarded on a regular basis as below:- (Reward & Recognition
policy)
Award Category Monetary Frequency Eligibility
12.Is the promotion process guidelines documented? Is the same circulated to all employees?
13.What are the specified man hours per year for trainings for employees? How are the
needs for the trainings and learning identified?
14.What are the parameters to assess the Managers (on leadership skills)? How is it
facilitated by the organisation?
15.Tell us an incident of a major change in the organisation and how was it handled?
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B. Ideate to Celebrate Mailer
Ideate to Celebrate was one of the initiatives that was implemented during the course of the
two months of the project. The mailer of which is shown below.
Ideate to Celebrate
Wondering what was all this about?
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C. Hobby Class Mailer
This mailer looked at finding out the preferences of the organization for starting a Hobby
class in the premises of the office. It aimed at finding preferences of the employees in terms
of the class that could be introduced and the frequency of the same.
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D: Suggestion Box Mailer
Communication being a major gap found in the organization, this initiative of HR team aimed
at listening to the voices of the employees at a place accessible to all. And the same was
communicated them through a mailer shown below.
We are all ears to your voices.
BE HEARD!
Pour in your suggestions, We are listening!
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Bibliography
The Meaning of Employee Engagement - WILLIAM H. MACEY and BENJAMIN
SCHNEIDER
Driving Employee performance and retention through EngagementCorporate
Leadership Council
Great Place to Work parameters study
www.greatplacetowork.com
Importance of Employee Engagement
http://blog.allegiance.com/2010/08/the-importance-of-employee-engagement/
Employee Engagement notes
http://www.contentwriter.in/articles/hr/employee-engagement.htm
SHRM journal on Employee engagement and commitmentRobert J Vance
Leveraging employee engagement for competitive advantage- Nancy R. Lockwood
Online HR portal
www.citehr.com
http://www.greatplacetowork.com/http://blog.allegiance.com/2010/08/the-importance-of-employee-engagement/http://www.contentwriter.in/articles/hr/employee-engagement.htmhttp://www.contentwriter.in/articles/hr/employee-engagement.htmhttp://blog.allegiance.com/2010/08/the-importance-of-employee-engagement/http://www.greatplacetowork.com/ -
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Authors Profile
This project report was prepared by Kumudini Manda, second year FT-MBA core student at
Narsee Monjee institute of Management Sciences, Mumbai. In case of any clarifications
regarding this report, kindly mail to [email protected].