Greetings, I had missed out on sharing the entrepreneurial program that we implemented. This was purely designed to increase engagement. A third-party survey done a year before I had joined showed that the basic reason why employees were leaving was, "they were not given enough opportunity to excel." The entrepreneurial option was ranked highest!
Now here's what we went through. The Engagement Program was designed and intentionally kept extremely broad-lined, to make it inclusive. The eligibility for the program was kept open for anyone within the experience bar. This program aimed at offering the highest level of opportunities and increasing the employees' stake towards the growth of the organization. We had expected a huge response, as the pre-launch session discussions held through the teams went very well. The support was big. But everything took a turn when it was launched.
The program required the employees to start a business center in a new location without vertical support. They were required to open and operate it while building the support internally. Some remote assistance was offered. But everyone knew that arrangement would be difficult to scale up the center. This was planned to groom the leaders for Org-head roles. The cost was supposed to be managed through the remote support offered to the center. The responsibilities typically included Operations, HR, Finance, and infrastructure. A new batch of employees who were supposed to work in the center was required to be hired by this team. The admin support at that location was outsourced. Hence that too required a completely different line of monitoring. The operations team had a fixed "Line of business" to start from that center, but the workflow would undergo a change due to a different time zone.
This program further mentioned that one who achieves to establish the center would be on profit-sharing mode, which is a deferred benefit. Their progress would be audited every quarter. If they fail, they would rejoin their former roles. Now this created huge rejection. The employees saw this program creating instability in their roles. Till this point, they were all placed in different projects. Hence their bonuses were lined all up. Changing their roles, for something as entrepreneurial as this created no sense for them. Worst, just because the center would be small, no one saw a growth path there. They could not relate to the succession planning we had. We took repeated town halls and focus group meetings to clear this doubt. The main takeaway was the learning, i.e. "scratch-to-finish" in a new environment.
We asked employees who had taken similar responsibilities in other centers and countries to share their experience. But even such knowledge sharing was not enough to motivate. Finally, as the time drew nearer, we asked the manager to nominate and followed the normal IJP process.
The team that was sent did very well. In three years, they became the role models to many. But I will always remember the resistance we faced. Not to ignore the gossip later, which said it was "favoritism" on the roll. The blue-eyed employees were "hand-picked" and sent. So every decision was dismissed completely as "biased"!
I am sure the experience of such implementation would be different for others. Please share how you did it and what were your challenges?
Regards,