CHRO pain points on employee engagement

Employee engagement is a key measure to assess the culture and well-being of a company. Most organizations have a variety of interventions designed to engage, motivate and retain employees.  These interventions often include annual activities such as outings, R&R programs and celebration of important personal and professional milestones and festivals. In order to measure the engagement level of the employee, companies have used a variety of tools including sentiment analysis, pulse surveys, engagement surveys, opinion polls, feedback from one-on-one communication with managers and even town halls.

In the new world of work, employers are realizing the need to go beyond traditional and time-tested exercises since they are faced with new business challenges that include catering to a diverse intergenerational workforce, engaging with not just current but prospective employees, and identifying ways of nurturing career paths of individual employees. Avijit Bhattacharya, CHRO, TATA Capital says, “Diversity of the employees, in terms of the economic strata, age, gender and even geographic location need to understood and factored into different engagement models today”. 

As part of this feature on employee engagement, we asked leading CHROs across various sectors as to what were some of their top employee engagement challenge areas.  A majority of them noted that there are challenges which are also simultaneously opportunity areas also. 

Below are a few common themes that they alluded to:

One of the fundamental challenges that organizations face today is the challenge of delivering a consistent employee experience for all employees. The problem is acute among companies that have diversified businesses and a large employee base.  Makarand Khatavkar, Group Head – Human Resources, Kotak Mahindra Bank says “It can be difficult to connect instantaneously, at a single-go with a large employee base, and to ensure a uniform experience for all employees.” In the banking context, he notes that “almost a third of branch banking employees are regularly out on field visits, and visit the branch once a day for a team huddle.”  Speaking about the problem of communication in the healthcare sector, Jacob Jacob, Chief People Officer, Apollo Hospitals notes that only a limited percentage of associates have access to computers and that this is a huge challenge. “More importantly”, he adds “ensuring that the right communication reaches the associates through the quickest means possible is an issue.”

While the problem of the scale has always been a huge challenge that engagement models needs to account for, it has been further compounded by the fact that employees have come to expect that organizations they work for, treat them as customers first. “That means providing value for them, so that they can provide value for external customers,” says Jacob. “Given the context, we need to focus on creating a 360-degree positive employee experience” says Nina Nair, VP and Head – HRD (India & LatAm), 24/7 Inc. That means working on individual career plans, an engaging and fun-filled work culture, and providing the right opportunities.

The shelf life of engagement exercises is another critical challenge that employers are faced with. Deepak Jain, Vice President – Human Resources, Mankind Pharma asks, “The question is “How do you keep engaging employees in the era of technology disruption?” One has to design “new solutions on an ongoing basis for sustained engagement,” he points out.  This calls for dedicated focus on the part of the HR team to identify new formats and initiatives. Echoing the same point, Jacob notes that “the challenge is to create channels and programs to cater to a multigenerational and global or mobile workforce”

Companies are already offering a variety of tools to their employees. IBM, for example, provides its employees with a suite of about 80 applications. These ‘HR services on-the-go’ are an array of services including mobile-enabled learning courses, “Appreciation-Coaching-Evaluation’ (IBM’s feedback model) app, and even mobile tools to assist outbound travelers. At Kotak Mahindra, engagement tools include peer-peer recognition platform – iApplaud and GIFT work program for managers focused on developing and building managerial capability.  At AMD, internal networking tools include AMD CONNECT – a platform used to post blogs, and profiles or stories of employees sharing their experience at work. The trends of companies turning to multiple tools based on both, external and internal is likely to continue.

Another area that HR leaders see both as a challenge and opportunity area is identifying engagement initiatives mapped to the needs of the company. Most HR leaders would like to focus on these areas in the future. Dilpreet Singh, Vice President & Head HR - IBM- India & South Asia said that one of the key focus areas would be on ‘one-to one’ career discussions. The goal is to appreciate but also share opportunity areas with employees since it is a key driver of employee engagement. “How do we keep pace on this constructive feedback? - that will be the focus area in the next year” he says. In AMD, the focus is on boosting employee morale via internal communications. Dr. Kiranmai Dutt Pendyala notes that “Comments of appreciation from leadership team members makes a difference to an employee’s morale”. S. Viswanathan, Chief People Officer, NIIT Technologies, states that one of the top focus areas in his company context is to “create engagement opportunities and models to connect with the staff working at their client site”, since these employees may often work in environments that are outside the control of the company.

HR leaders also are conscious of the challenges that companies will have to face in the future. In the context of the rapid digitization and automation, Nina Nair notes that “Individuals have to take their skills up a notch by being tech-savvy, digitally dexterous, culturally sensitive, excellent communicators and be aware of the global developments”. Speaking about the direction that IBM is taking to actively engage employees in skilling, Dilpreet Singh notes that the company is “aggressively adding key skills and domain experience by leveraging its expertise in cognition to its core process and internal systems”. In a world where the ubiquity of social and professional networks has blurred personal and professional space, Dr. Kiranmai points out that “companies will have to learn to navigate new real-time tools. And they inherently carry the risk of impinging on the personal space of employees”

Even as the number of HR technology tools continues to increase with a promise of tackling employee engagement issues, the success or failure of employee engagement exercises will largely depend on the culture of the company, the alignment of these initiatives with the vision and mission of the company. HR leaders interviewed in the story also noted the crucial role of the leadership in building a relationship of trust with employees, which alone can give voice to individuals to further contribute to making the company a happy and engaging place to work. 

Even as the number of HR technology tools continues to increase with a promise of tackling employee engagement issues, the success or failure of employee engagement exercises will largely depend on the culture of the company, the alignment of these initiatives with the vision and mission of the company. HR leaders interviewed in the story also noted the crucial role of the leadership in building a relationship of trust with employees, which alone can give voice to individuals to further contribute to making the company a happy and engaging place to work.