Research & Insights

Insight 1 Source- www.mercer.com/insideemployeesminds

The New Rules of Engagement

Mercer shows in their research that employees in India are less satisfied with their jobs and are also not as committed to their employers, as compared to 2004-2006. Therefore, 50% of them consider leaving their existing jobs. Also, adding that the remaining 20% who wish to stay back are least engaged with their organization. The report also indicates that though organizations are aware that engagement is essential, they find it difficult to choose the right engagement methods. Below is a graph showing employees who consider leaving their employer (age wise)-

Graph source- www.mercer.com/insideemployeesminds

Also the report indicates that the satisfaction with benefits from the organization is declining from 73% in 2004 to 67% in 2011.

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Insight 2Source- http://www.itsmyascent.com/web/itsmyascent/hr-zone/-/asset_publisher/4htH/content/importance-ofemployee-engagement/ Importance of Employee Engagement Employee engagement has been one of the most vexing issues for organisations. Event managers and training program peddlers are back in action again rolling out master classes in managing engagement and retention. The employee engagement fever is once again epidemic in corporate circuits. The most recent coverage in the media about Google losing a good number of people to its rival, Facebook and others is making people sit up and ask if this is the fate of Google, where do other companies stand. There are many consulting firms doing brisk business advising what companies can do to intensify engagement. These firms are at least fully engaged! The fundamental question, however, remains. Is engagement a goal in itself or it is a capability for organisational effectiveness? Many HR leaders seem to believe engagement as an end goal to pursue. In reality, when employee engagement is pursued in isolation, without examining what it does to help organisation to deliver results, it becomes a wasted effort. The challenge, therefore, for organisations and its leaders is to ask which of the engagement drivers support organisational results and which of the drivers do not. Engagement drivers that organisations implement come in different sizes and shapes. Some organisations believe supplementing coffee and tea with lime juice and sugar cane juice will do the magic. Some others believe that yoga classes and a state of the art gym will do the trick. Sabbaticals and higher studies are everywhere to "temporarily disengage" with the hope towards long term engagement. None of these initiatives and investments is useless. They do deliver smiley faces across the organisation. The issue is what next. How do we make sure smiley faces lead to measurable organisational results? It is an irony but a real one at that every year we can come across organisations that topped the list of employer of choice' but delivered poor results. It is important for HR leaders to recognise two key view points: Employee engagement is a means to an end- the end goal being organisational effectiveness; Not all engagement drivers are necessarily the drivers for organisational results. In fact, some of the engagement drivers, when overdone, can actually become counter-productive Here are few examples of what is fairly well known in the HR circles: A very employee friendly software company introduced flexi time and abolished timesheets. This was regarded as a key work-life balance initiative and as a result expected to boost employee engagement. Over time, employee satisfaction increased and attrition came down. But soon enough this initiative degenerated into a discipline issue and customer complaints shot up. Very soon, this organisation started to lose its customer base and revenues. A medium sized organisation introduced a very liberal employee referral program since their consultant told them that a good measure of "employee advocacy" is employee referral. The whole program was meant to engage employees' and it probably over delivered.' In six months' time, the delivery managers started to complain the quality of hires was not as good and the reputation of the company as a "dream company to get in" soon became a history. Delivery hiccups followed impacting revenues and margins. Another multi-national company experiencing a low level of engagement and high level of attrition decided to install an aggressive retention bonus plan. The enthusiastic HR leader made a case for covering 50% of the employees under the new program and hoped this to be the secret sauce for engagement. It backfired and did not do any do any good to retaining the top talent. Doing more of the retention plan even as the crisis deepened did not help a tad! The moral of the story is very simple. Engagement drivers need to be chosen carefully. The acid test for doing this is to run each of the intended drivers against the criteria for organisational effectiveness.

The author is executive vice president and chief people officer with Symphony Services Corporation. Image- http://www.thesocialworkplace.com/wp-content/uploads/employee-engagement2.jpg Insight 3Source- http://www.itsmyascent.com/web/itsmyascent/career-advice//asset_publisher/W3x7/content/34-per-cent-employees-are-fully-engaged/ Low Engagement in India. The 5th Global Employee Engagement Survey, 2010' by BlessingWhite & HR Anexi states that aligning employees' values, goals and aspirations with those of the company is the best method for achieving sustainable improvements in employee engagement that will help the organization reach its stated goals.

The survey reveals that just over a third (34 per cent) of employees in India are fully engaged and 13 per cent are actually disengaged; Honeymooners & hamsters, crash & burn and almost engaged employees constitute upto 53 per cent of employees in India; Engagement by gender reveals a large disparity between men and women: men count eight per cent more "fully engaged" and six per cent less "disengaged" than the female population.

(Put this as a box on the side) The survey presents an overview of the different levels of employee engagement ranging from engaged, almost engaged, honeymooner & hamsters, crash & burners, to disengaged. It says that engaged' employees are at the apex' they find great satisfaction in their work. The almost engaged' employees are those reasonably satisfied with their current job. The honeymooners' are new to the organization. Disillusioned and potentially exhausted are the crash & burn' employees. The disengaged' employees are those who didn't start out as bad apples, but they have become the most disconnected to organizational priorities. Image- http://www.itsmyascent.com/web/itsmyascent/hr-zone/-/asset_publisher/4htH/content/fromdisengagement-to-departure

Insight 4 Sourcehttp://marketing.bersin.com/rs/bersin/images/060812_MB_RecognitionBenchmarking_SSG_Final.pdf Turning Thank You into Performance (keep the same thing from the site)