Article: Top 25 Best Workplaces in Asia: Fun City

Life @ Work

Top 25 Best Workplaces in Asia: Fun City

Fun City ties back its core values at every stage of an employee lifecycle, enabling employees to live its values
Top 25 Best Workplaces in Asia: Fun City
 

Rank: 17

 

Number of employees: 602, Headquarters: UAE, CEO: Micky Jagtiani

 

Fun City’s vision is to ‘put a smile on everyone’s face’, starting with the employees. This also constitutes a core of the company’s employee values and every employee strives to exhibit it as individuals and as a team. It also serves as a guideline for behaviours.

The company believes in selecting the right individuals, while laying a strong emphasis on developing managers and managing rewards. Leaders and managers have a responsibility to actively support the growth and development of staff. They are also responsible to organize work so that employees see the purpose and meaning in their roles and communicate key information efficiently. The company also aims to work inclusively so that san atmosphere of common “sense of purpose” and commitment is achieved.

The core competency needed for any Fun City employee, also called a Fun Citizen, is to have a high degree of creative enthusiasm, service excellence, a smiling face, and adaptability. The recruiting framework, SPARK, which stands for Spontaneity, Passion, Attention, Result and Kindness is an innovative and fun-filled way of attracting talent. The recruitment process that the company uses is an “audition process”, where the candidates have to sit through a company and job presentation, group introduction, series of role plays, interactive group sessions, and personal interview. Each stage is designed in a manner that evaluates the candidates on each of the competencies.

The company initiated Impact Planning Sessions with employees and discussed plans around skill upgradation. It teamed up with Institute of Leadership Management and upgraded its career development programs through a structured talent assessment and development program. Aditi Sharma, Head of Human Resources and Training, says “As a philosophy, we give our employees a stipulated amount of time to pursue projects they’re especially passionate about and which would have the potential to add value to the company.” Fun City also designed mechanisms to ensure employees’ suggestions and ideas were captured, discussed, recognized and the chosen ideas were implemented with due credits given to the employee.

The company also has a three-month buddy program that aims to help new hires get comfortable, understand their role and begin contributing to the organization quickly. The buddies assigned to new employees are called “Fun Buds.” They have completed at least one year with Fun City, have general awareness about the country and their job, and generally good listeners and willing to lend a helping hand. Fun Buds also are trained on coaching, organization policies and workplace rules. After the three-month period, new hires have a chance to evaluate their Fun Buds. The program has helped Fun City increase productivity as well as cut attrition.

Silvio Liedtke, COO of Landmark Leisure, says, “Fun City’s working culture is the artery that connects the company and its employees. At Fun City, we are committed to foster a culture of work-life balance and provide them a space where they feel a sense of belongingness.” Recognition is an integral part of Fun City and it believes in the “Whale Done” philosophy. Apart from these, Fun Citizens are rewarded in various ways such as Employee of the month and Year, Team leader and Store of the year.

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Topics: Life @ Work, #AsiasBestWorkplaces2015, #BestPractices

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