"WHAT DO EMPLOYEES LOOK FOR IN AN ORGANISATION”

I ran a survey on “WHAT DO EMPLOYEES LOOK FOR IN AN ORGANISATION” on the blog and I would first like to thank each of you for taking time out and participating in it. The final results are:

1.       A great team to work with - 84%

2.       A nice compensation package - 16%

3.       A big brand (products, services, image) - 0%

4.       A great office (location, interiors, facilities -  0%

I must admit that the results didn’t surprise me too much, while I would have expected that working for a big brand was something that employees look for, but apparently not.

Coming in at 84%, “A great team to work with” quite simply overshadows other needs satisfied by the employer.  It is worth taking a deeper look into what it means to be part of a “Great team”. 

A team obviously includes everyone that an employee closely works with and an employee’s expectations from the team are:

Ø  Other Team members:  Warm, Sensitive, Hardworking and Helpful

Ø  Managers: Sincere, Fair, Fearless, Tough, Helpful, Trusting, Attentive to Details, Motivating, Respects rules but willing to break them for good reasons, lead by examples, take the whole team along

Ø  HR:  Willing to listen, responsive, attentive, Pleasure to talk to, and ready to resolve issues

Ø  Processes:  Ensuring Goal clarity and Role clarity, regular and frequent review of work, ensuring encouragement at every small step of the way.  Recognition, rewards & reprimand in a timely, useful and friendly manner. 

Ø  Leadership & Policies:  Involved in general good of all, truthful, sincere, helpful, friendly, fair, willing to review and rewrite as often as needed for good reasons. Setting lofty goals and laying the roadmap to reach the goals.

In conclusion, the need to create a Great team must become the single biggest agenda of every leader, manager and the supportive framework of processes and policies

listen...

Its been a while since I last wrote and I can now see why I find it difficult to discipline my 3 year old :-)
AceNgage recently celebrated its 3rd birthday and one of the biggest lessons I learnt was to keep my eyes and ears open to what Customers say as that will always keep me in sync with what they want. It goes back to what my Dad always said about how to talk less and listen more, no matter how hard I found that.
One of the biggest challenges that most of us face today is that we just dont listen enough. My colleagues in the past have even managed to blame this as a 'cultural' issue. The excuse was that people who interrupt and dont listen ,do so because they know what the speaker is getting at and dont need to listen to the rest of what he has to say !!
I recently saw a Bollywood flick where the heroine loses her eyesight in a road accident, while I will refrain from commenting on the movie, I cant help imagine how difficult it must be for someone to manage his/her day to day life without being able to see. But they manage, and they manage because they listen a lot better.
Employees are giving us signals all the time verbal and non verbal , and if we as Managers paid attention to what they were saying wouldnt be a lot more effective ?
You could stretch the idea to your personal life too, with our family , friends and pets ....

Better Feedback, Better Decisions

Most of you would have read about how US president Obama managed to get the US health reforms bill passed. Definitely a feather in his cap as it will benefit millions of Americans across the society. The most important part is that he is reported to have taken the opinion of the citizen while drafting the bill. Now how cool is that ??!!

Now why can’t we in our own little spaces do exactly that? Why do we try and solve problems without involving people who are facing it?

So in a typical BPO set up when the Ops guys complains about the quality of hires, instead of finding why this happens and addressing the root cause most organisations get the Ops person involved in recruitment. (so at least he will stop complaining since now they have made him ,partner in crime) But the bigger question is if the Ops person is busy doing recruitment who is taking care of Ops?

My ex colleague returned my call after 4 hours today and explained that she was in a day long meeting on building retention strategies. My obvious question (since I am very passionate about the subject) was “Do you know why people are leaving?” and she said “No”. So what were they doing? , deciding on a compensation structure for new recruits to get them to stay for longer. “Will it work?””  “No one knows”. “Shouldn’t you be instead focussing your energies on understanding why people are leaving before building action plans?” No answer.

The fundamental solution to solving any problem is to gather more feedback, the more feedback you have, the better decisions you will be able to take.

What do we want from our jobs ?

A couple of weekends back I was having drinks with a few of my friends from the HR world at TGIF ( I passed by it this evening and it was closed , due to the tragic incident that took place at Carlton Towers earlier this week) and the conversation led to a discussion around what do employees expect from their jobs ?

We debated a bit and Money was the most popular answer (not unanimously though). I urged the group to think beyond money and they came up with several responses. Let me try and list the most accepted ones out (not in any particular order) :
Career aspirations
Most employees take up a job in hope that they can build a career in the company, perform well and grow within the company.
A Good Manager
Employees like to have a manager whom they can look up to, someone they can learn from, someone who is fair, who recognises them and someone who will stand by them.
Work life Balance
Employees like to be able to have a “Personal” life too
A “Positive” Company
A company that is progressive in the way it thinks. A company that believes that its employees are among the most valuable resources. A company that focuses on developing its employees and a company that invests in Employee Engagement. Overall a company who does everything that it can to ensure that the employees are Happy and look forward to coming to work the next morning

By now I had them scribbled out on a napkin, and when we looked back at the list it seemed so simple.
I asked my dear friends if they did everything they could, to make sure that employees at their respective workplaces met these objectives. Since we were at a restaurant and not in a Board room, they were honest to admit that they didn’t.

One of them was bold enough to ask what she should do to fix it. This time however the answer was unanimous. “Ask the employees”