Kumudini Manda Summers Report SHRM

7/28/2019 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].

Kumudini Manda Summers Report SHRM

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