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Summer Internship Project Report On Designing Employee Engagement Initiatives Framework

Presented by Kumudini Manda MBA Core NMIMS

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

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 25th June, 2011 Kumudini Manda

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 opportunities for 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.

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 the organization. An amalgamation of commitment, loyalty, productivity and ownership is also perceived to be a way of measuring engagement. The categories of job 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 or basic loyalty to the employercharacteristics that most companies have measured for many years. Engagement, in contrast, is about passion and commitment the 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 the inclination 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.

Purpose of the Project


It was essential to keep a highly motivated workforce throughout the organizations operations. With the wide variety and scope of work in its plate it and the growing number of assignments and workforce, the HR department sought to recognize ways of keeping its employees going throughout. The recent employee satisfaction survey had also thrown light on some aspects of discontent which needed to be addressed. The purpose of my study was to understand the problem areas and propose an implementable model for improving the employee engagement. The philosophy of lean model of the organization in terms of workforce and resources was a baton to be borne in mind. It was an entity that has other entities as its customers and stands at the helm of no profit no loss proposition. The billing model of the organization was another typicality where every the firm was paid on the number of hours put in. The organization was a mix of manufacturing and an IT industry. These constraints were to be worked around in order to identify effective employee engagement initiatives for the organization.

Methodology Followed
The project involved designing an employee engagement framework. The parameters were zeroed on after the market survey and the internal employee voices. Once engagement data was gathered, the next logical step was to examine the relationship between the engagement measures and business results. The scope of the project included identifying a sustainable model for the employee engagement initiatives for the establishment.

Secondary Research Primary Research

Benchmarking
In Person Interviews Telephonic Interviews

ESS Feedback categorization

Parameters

Internal Analysis

Figure 1: Methodology Followed

The assignment dealt with the following objectives: Identifying factors involved in building a Great Place to work culture with 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 areas by participating in analysis discussions Interaction with the leaders to understand the business model and feasibility Analysis and Recommendations document final report

Figure 2: Understanding the Business Model


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Project Plan
The project involved the following steps:

Project Objectives

Agreed Measures Primary research findings Questionnaire and the benchmark report

Agreed Date Status

Identify Factors involved in Employee Engagement Benchmarking various organizations for their employee engagement initiatives along with the attrition data Understanding the ESS voices Interaction with the leaders to understand the business model Analysis and Recommendations Table 1: Project Plan

22/04/11

Done Done

04/06/11

Participation in discussions Feasibility Report

04/06/11 27/05/11 04/06/11

Done Done Done

Final report

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.

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 component reflected 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

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) b) c) d) Mature workers Baby boomers Generation X Generation Y

Primary Research
In order to understand the parameters for a great place to work a primary research was conducted 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 Balance 8. 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 was prepared 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 the right 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 of practices 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 1 John Deere 2 KPIT Cummins

3 4 5

SunGard Aon Hewitt Marico

Description Leading farm machinery manufacturing company Leading technology solutions partner for global Manufacturing corporations with special focus on Automotive, Energy & Utilities, Industrial Equipments and Semiconductor industries One of the worlds leading software and technology services companies Leading HR consultants Indias leading Consumer Products & Services Group, in the global beauty and wellness space One of the top 10 FMCG companies for soaps, baby care products and lighting products Pioneering group in automobiles in India One-stop financial services provider Global provider of a new world of communications Leading BPO services company World's leading food service retailer Leading IT products and services company Industrial group with world - leading positions in compressors, construction and mining equipment, power tools and assembly systems Leading IT products and services company Global technology leader in diversified power management solutions

Wipro Consumer Care Limited Kinetic Engineering Tata Capital Tata Telecommunication Mahindra Satyam BPO Mc Donalds Microsoft Atlas Copco

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

Google Eaton

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16 17 18 19

Mahindra Forging Vodafone V.I.P. Omnitech

One of the top 3 forging companies in India Leading communication solutions company Leading luggage company

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

6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Celebration of ocassions Team outings Gift hampers for every quarter new joinees Dedicated Womens day Walk Marathon/ sports committee

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2. Cross functional team activities


12 10 8 6 4 2 0

3. Facilities

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

4. HR Connect
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

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5. Communication Channels

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

The top trends that emerged across various categories of employee engagement appeared as below.

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Figure 7: Top Trends in the market for Employee Engagement Initiatives

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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. b. c. d. Trainings Fun at work Cross functional knowledge sharing One to one interactions for communicating organisation policy, values , vision, career growth opportunities e. Innovation in work ii) By your team for a. b. c. d. e. Trainings Fun at work Cross functional knowledge sharing Assignments over the agreed commitments 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. 2. 3. 4. Budget Constraints Billing Model Lean Model 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. HR Dashboard Policy Guru The Healthier Ego/Yoga Class Skip Level Meeting HR Business Partnership Exit Interview Analysis

Spot Award
Ideate to Celebrate Paanch Tantra Chill Wednesday HR mail id HR One on One with every employee Carte Blanche/Lets Talk/Committee Stalls Figure 13: Employee Engagement Initiatives that were approved of and readily implemented
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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 discussion for 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.

Common Communication Thread Technical/Best Practices Club Inhouse Managerial Trainings Hipot Career Path Publish Team's Work Schedule Spend a day/hour with leadership Numerical PMS Mentorship Program Individual Contributor Path Managers Appraisal Training Manager-Work Life Balance
Figure 14: Employee Engagement Initiatives that were approved of and needed further leadership discussion
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List of Initiatives
Inititative Reports Description A monthly online HR newsletter covering 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 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 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. 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 in attrition. Manual of all HR Roles and Duties to be prepared for the HR team Publish the schedule of skip level meetings every quarter 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. To coordinate meetings of the employees with the visitors. Publish a charter of the speeches by email for all employees. Post the details/winners of Spot Awards every month to all employees by either mail or HR Dashboard.

HR Dashboard

Skip Level Meeting Report

HR Business Monthly Meeting and Report

Exit Interview Analysis HR Roles and Duties Manual Presentations Skip Level Meeting Schedule

Meeting Charter Fire Sight Chat

Spot Awards

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Ideate to Celebrate

Paanch Tantra Celebration

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 in their Suggestions at the online link provided in the mailer every month. 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

HR mail id

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 A dedicated email id for HR for all kinds of communication from and to the HR team. Meeting of HR Team to review project status every Monday. Initiative to have an 1-0-1 with HR for new joinees on their 7th day,7th week and 7th month Facilitate/Monitor skip level meetings happening for all the employees and also have a report created for the same. 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. A focus group of 30 people is to meet HR Head every month. In this initiative, One on one of every employee with HR team is to take place every quarter. Every HR team member is to meet 3
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Meetings HR Team Meeting 7-7-7

Skip Level Meetings

HR - Business Monthly Meeting

Employee Morale Focus Group with HR Head One on one with HR

employees per week for a quarter.

Bday Collage Display

Carte Blanche/Lets Talk

Suggestion Box

Birthday Celebration every month

Spot Award Pre Exit Interview

Hasya Kavita/Stand up Comedy Competition Friendship Day Celebration

Parents Day Celebration

Printout of collage of the month end birthdays celebration is to be put on the communication notice board 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. A mailer is to be sent every month about the suggestion box being present in the library and pour in suggestions. 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. The HR is to communicate the spot awards winners to all the employees. HR has to meet the resignee candidate on the day of initiation of his resignation Competition for best stand up comedian on July 1, World Joke Day. Points/Awards to be decided. 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 for their friends and the best message wins. 8th Aug Contact employees to write in messages, cards for their parents in advance and display it on parents 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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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 to be 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 Charters/Presentations of all Stalls/Presentation every committees every quarter is to be quarter/Charter Mailer 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 Centralised system for awarding. Points for every fun event, Chill Wednesday, Parents Day, Points System Awards 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 etc Table 3: List of Employee Engagement Initiatives

Investment Session

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 Charter 5. 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 2011 to 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 further down 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. b. c. d. e. f. Recreational facilities(internal/external-club membership)Infrastructure Sports facilities Transport (free/subsidised/paid) Canteen(free/subsidised/paid) 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 competitors is 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 Engagement Corporate 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 commitment Robert J Vance Leveraging employee engagement for competitive advantage- Nancy R. Lockwood Online HR portal www.citehr.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 manda.kumudini@nmims.edu.

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