Hi All,
I have been given the responsibility of creating an employee engagement committee in my organization. The committee will have 4-5 representatives from business and HR. The committee will be responsible for creating employee engagement activities like parties, outings, and celebrating festivals. There will be a budget associated with the same. I would really appreciate if somebody could share with me their thoughts on the same or someone who has done something like this in their organization. This will help me in creating a framework as well as a policy around the same.
Regards,
Neel
From India, Delhi
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I have been given the responsibility of creating an employee engagement committee in my organization. The committee will have 4-5 representatives from business and HR. The committee will be responsible for creating employee engagement activities like parties, outings, and celebrating festivals. There will be a budget associated with the same. I would really appreciate if somebody could share with me their thoughts on the same or someone who has done something like this in their organization. This will help me in creating a framework as well as a policy around the same.
Regards,
Neel
From India, Delhi
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Hi Neel,
To add to Arul's thoughts, I feel that employee engagement also involves motivating the employees. You may want to implement initiatives to recognize their potential talent. They may excel at certain skills that you may want them to teach to others. Additionally, pairing more experienced employees as mentors for new joiners can boost the morale of both groups.
As you mentioned, picnics and parties can help people relax, but involving them in planning and coordination can also aid in developing their management skills. Consider dividing employees into logical groups and assigning responsibilities to organize stress-busting games on specific days.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.
Thanks.
From India, Madras
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37To add to Arul's thoughts, I feel that employee engagement also involves motivating the employees. You may want to implement initiatives to recognize their potential talent. They may excel at certain skills that you may want them to teach to others. Additionally, pairing more experienced employees as mentors for new joiners can boost the morale of both groups.
As you mentioned, picnics and parties can help people relax, but involving them in planning and coordination can also aid in developing their management skills. Consider dividing employees into logical groups and assigning responsibilities to organize stress-busting games on specific days.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.
Thanks.
From India, Madras
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Thanks, Arul and Radhika. I have taken note of your points. I still need a framework or guidelines on how to create an employee engagement committee or welfare committee. Is there anyone else who has a similar committee in their organization?
From India, Delhi
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From India, Delhi
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Glad to be of use, Neel.
In IT companies, typically, people are organized into Business Units, for which a budget is assigned for each fiscal year. There is a team that does the planning and coordination. This cross-functional team comprises the account's HR, a couple of senior leads, and many team members. This cross-functional team creates a calendar of activities for the entire year and publishes it at the beginning of the financial year.
Activities like mentoring happen throughout the month. A target number is decided that needs to be met by the HR person. Birthday bashes and fun hours can be conducted once a month on a particular day when all employees are available. Activities like picnics, fun hours, training sessions by employees, sessions by SMEs, etc., can be conducted once per month. This will ensure that there is a good spread of activities throughout the month and also that this initiative can be sustained throughout the year. One team can be made responsible per month, and the HR person can oversee the activities every month.
Please let me know if you need any other ideas. I used to lead the Associate Engagement initiative from the HR front for 3000 people. I would love to be of help to you.
From India, Madras
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In IT companies, typically, people are organized into Business Units, for which a budget is assigned for each fiscal year. There is a team that does the planning and coordination. This cross-functional team comprises the account's HR, a couple of senior leads, and many team members. This cross-functional team creates a calendar of activities for the entire year and publishes it at the beginning of the financial year.
Activities like mentoring happen throughout the month. A target number is decided that needs to be met by the HR person. Birthday bashes and fun hours can be conducted once a month on a particular day when all employees are available. Activities like picnics, fun hours, training sessions by employees, sessions by SMEs, etc., can be conducted once per month. This will ensure that there is a good spread of activities throughout the month and also that this initiative can be sustained throughout the year. One team can be made responsible per month, and the HR person can oversee the activities every month.
Please let me know if you need any other ideas. I used to lead the Associate Engagement initiative from the HR front for 3000 people. I would love to be of help to you.
From India, Madras
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Hi Neel,
If you want to go by the prevalent practices of companies to establish an Employment Engagement Committee, certainly the guidance given by Radhika should suffice. That's what most modern companies do in the area you are looking into.
Yet, I invite your attention to some grave failures of Employee Engagement that came to light post the 2008-09 depression - caused by the failure of Lehman Brothers and others - which were in turn caused by disengaged employees!
Even the recall of millions of vehicles by quality-conscious Toyota is an indication of what bad results employee disengagement could bring to business, even in reputed, well-established companies!
Whether at Lehman Brother or at Toyota, these 21st-century employees certainly knew of the failure of their products, services, or their companies much before anyone else, but they were not feeling sufficiently engaged/involved in safeguarding the company.
We realize more and more that existing practices of Employee Engagement are not sufficient and they are no guarantee to safeguard business today!
What is worse, the business is so complex that we can't leave it to a few at the top management to safeguard Organizations!
If you have powers to include whatever is needed for Employee Engagement, you may find these following reflections useful.
My Reflections for Employee Engagement of Futuristic Organizations:
1. Every business starts as a result of the intense involvement of a few. A business by definition is the end result of the involvement of an individual or a group of people to realize his/her/their dreams. And, as business grows and inducts more people in, it is crucial to keep everyone aligned to the original purpose of business, so all are engaged in taking the business to desired goals.
2. With business tasks divided/fragmented between separate managers and teams like HR, Admin, Material Management, and other divisions, there is a risk of missing the common goals by its constituent elements... the lower-level employees as well as top-level managers!
3. See what the dean of [Harvard Business School](http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2010/05/harper1.html) has said:
Managers have lost legitimacy over the past decade in the face of a widespread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society's trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role...
4. This widespread institutional breakdown results from the managers and the managed, together, not relating themselves to the long-term interests of the Company. That is because, for too long, we have believed that any integrated reality (say, a business) can be broken down into their constituent parts, and by managing isolated parts well, the integrity of the whole will be enhanced! In the complex world today, this assumption is proving false! [Take a look at this quote below and the article about Peter Senge's Theory of Management from which the quote is borrowed](http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=188):
The defining characteristic of a system is that it cannot be understood as a function of its isolated components. First, the behavior of the system doesn't depend on what each part is doing but on how each part is interacting with the rest ... Second, to understand a system, we need to understand how it fits into the larger system of which it is a part ... Third, and most important, what we call the parts need not be taken as primary. In fact, how we define the parts is fundamentally a matter of perspective and purpose, not intrinsic in the nature of the 'real thing' we are looking at.
That is, an ideal and hence the most useful approach to promote Employee Engagement in 21st Century Business Contexts is not in what activities the Company does for its employees, but what the company does to enable and qualitatively enhance their ability to interact with the rest of the organization!
That will require that we think of workers and Managers as an integrated part of the system, and that employees have more than physical labor to contribute to business. And, to think in such systems perspective, we need to break some assumptions on which business operates today, as indicated in the article cited above:
- "I am my position"
- "The enemy is out there"
- "The illusion of taking charge"
- "The fixation on events"
- "The parable of the boiled frog"
- "The delusion of learning from experience" (1990, pp. 17 - 26)
To expand on these assumptions, this is not the right place.
But, those who are heading HR and Operations that relate to the human side of business will do well to imbibe this systems thinking and organizational learning process so there will be true, visionary engagement by Managers and the managed in any organization, ensuring the safety and growth of the organization, and the welfare of the nation.
From India, Bangalore
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)
If you want to go by the prevalent practices of companies to establish an Employment Engagement Committee, certainly the guidance given by Radhika should suffice. That's what most modern companies do in the area you are looking into.
Yet, I invite your attention to some grave failures of Employee Engagement that came to light post the 2008-09 depression - caused by the failure of Lehman Brothers and others - which were in turn caused by disengaged employees!
Even the recall of millions of vehicles by quality-conscious Toyota is an indication of what bad results employee disengagement could bring to business, even in reputed, well-established companies!
Whether at Lehman Brother or at Toyota, these 21st-century employees certainly knew of the failure of their products, services, or their companies much before anyone else, but they were not feeling sufficiently engaged/involved in safeguarding the company.
We realize more and more that existing practices of Employee Engagement are not sufficient and they are no guarantee to safeguard business today!
What is worse, the business is so complex that we can't leave it to a few at the top management to safeguard Organizations!
If you have powers to include whatever is needed for Employee Engagement, you may find these following reflections useful.
My Reflections for Employee Engagement of Futuristic Organizations:
1. Every business starts as a result of the intense involvement of a few. A business by definition is the end result of the involvement of an individual or a group of people to realize his/her/their dreams. And, as business grows and inducts more people in, it is crucial to keep everyone aligned to the original purpose of business, so all are engaged in taking the business to desired goals.
2. With business tasks divided/fragmented between separate managers and teams like HR, Admin, Material Management, and other divisions, there is a risk of missing the common goals by its constituent elements... the lower-level employees as well as top-level managers!
3. See what the dean of [Harvard Business School](http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2010/05/harper1.html) has said:
Managers have lost legitimacy over the past decade in the face of a widespread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society's trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role...
4. This widespread institutional breakdown results from the managers and the managed, together, not relating themselves to the long-term interests of the Company. That is because, for too long, we have believed that any integrated reality (say, a business) can be broken down into their constituent parts, and by managing isolated parts well, the integrity of the whole will be enhanced! In the complex world today, this assumption is proving false! [Take a look at this quote below and the article about Peter Senge's Theory of Management from which the quote is borrowed](http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=188):
The defining characteristic of a system is that it cannot be understood as a function of its isolated components. First, the behavior of the system doesn't depend on what each part is doing but on how each part is interacting with the rest ... Second, to understand a system, we need to understand how it fits into the larger system of which it is a part ... Third, and most important, what we call the parts need not be taken as primary. In fact, how we define the parts is fundamentally a matter of perspective and purpose, not intrinsic in the nature of the 'real thing' we are looking at.
That is, an ideal and hence the most useful approach to promote Employee Engagement in 21st Century Business Contexts is not in what activities the Company does for its employees, but what the company does to enable and qualitatively enhance their ability to interact with the rest of the organization!
That will require that we think of workers and Managers as an integrated part of the system, and that employees have more than physical labor to contribute to business. And, to think in such systems perspective, we need to break some assumptions on which business operates today, as indicated in the article cited above:
- "I am my position"
- "The enemy is out there"
- "The illusion of taking charge"
- "The fixation on events"
- "The parable of the boiled frog"
- "The delusion of learning from experience" (1990, pp. 17 - 26)
To expand on these assumptions, this is not the right place.
But, those who are heading HR and Operations that relate to the human side of business will do well to imbibe this systems thinking and organizational learning process so there will be true, visionary engagement by Managers and the managed in any organization, ensuring the safety and growth of the organization, and the welfare of the nation.
From India, Bangalore
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Employee-engage ment.prn_190.pd f
Employee Engagement Study.doc
Employee engagement.ppt