Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition
What happens when you have a room full of HR pro’s from the industry? Well, sparks fly, literally but in the minds! Human Resource, one of the most crucial parts of any organisation today has evolved and how! A team of experienced human resource professionals came together on the 29th august at VYK, NASSCOM office, a revival of the NASSCOM HR Best Practices. Mr. Aadesh Goyal, Chairman, PeopleStrong HR services, graced the occasion, with his thought provoking address to the members present.
Known for his meticulous business ethics, Aadesh, from the very beginning of the session, had the participants engrossed in the discussion.A two-way discussion ensued, which had innovative contributions by the fraternity. With a strong hold into the HR industry, Aadesh started by discussing the basics, which essentially helped in breaking down the ‘myths’, and giving a new shape and direction to what works, and how as a HR professional you need to mould and create customized solutions for your organisation, in accordance with industry standards. A heady mix of “theory” in the form of an engrossing power point presentation and “practical experiences” which discussed in detail how various companies across the board approach the problem and the various successfully implemented solutions. Some of the key words discussed in the forum which created the ground for the talk were:Employee engagement, Compensation, Right Staffing, Attrition, Quality, Layered process, Deferred compensation, Line managers. The key words, though initially scattered across the table, were intelligently put together by Aadesh.
What would you say if someone told you, “A 1% decrease in compensation in software business would increase profit by 0.6 percentage points”?
Well, Aadesh did just the same, and the participants consented!
The questions at this stage that came up were:
- How do we create a nice compensation environment?
Even if as an organisation, we are not the best pay masters, still what is that we provide, which would be a major factor in attracting and retaining employees? See what impacts special events have on attrition!A one liner by Aadesh, powerful enough to have people thinking in the common direction. With a discussion over the same, newer ideas on Employee Engagement came to light!
- What delivers consistent quality?
‘Quality’, a highly debatable topic was very subtly handled by Aadesh.With a simple example of “if you are a packaged drinking water manufacturing company, how do you maintain quality?” Well, answers by the participants threw light on the importance of the topic and various innovative solutions came to the fore. Examples of organizations like HCL, were put across, which boast of such high HR practices, that allow them to make sense of Employee Engagement in the real sense. With attrition being the basis of the discussion, quality again lead to addressing the issue with a highly effective and efficient methodology of keeping a check on quality, while addressing attrition!
“Look at the kind of different attrition engagement techniques for different types of employees” remarked Aadesh.
The common voice consented to the same! Effectively addressing your attrition concerns, controlling costs, Aadesh put forth the suggestion of employing different engagement techniques for the various set of employees.
“I would not put my best engagement techniques, to the bottom most performers in the team, instead utilize the same for the top 20-25 percent of best performers”
The role of line managers?Research shows, in a normal BPO set up a team lead spends 80 percent of his time in preparing reports on his system, fro his boss and the boss’s bosses. If the team lead does not spend his maximum available time with the team on floor in action, well he is not being effectively utilized. Thus the suggestion of having line managers creating and following proper dashboards, which suggest to the senior management, the quality, attrition and various other factors about the base level employees. A line manager is the best person, who knows his subordinates, hence he should have a major responsibility in catching attrition young and in time, thus allowing the management to take effective measures. The same was put together by Aadesh in a structured three (3) layered process.
Deferred compensation, does it work?YES! Remarked Aadesh. Its just a matter of mindsets. The same action that you consider as stopping someone’s basic salary, can be more structured in a structured salary break up (ex: incentive based) and told to the employee before joining. Aadesh sees the same as an effective tool in addressing attrition concerns, by the organisation.
Shape up or ship out!Though as an organisation, none would like to enter the hire and fire mode, but measures have to be taken to effectively address the attrition concerns! Training and development was discussed in this part of the session! Shape up or ship out the bottom performers, remarked Aadesh. With an interesting case study which brought about a great deal of change in increasing the effectiveness of the human resources, Aadesh captured the brains of one and all present. An eye opener for some of the non IT professionals and others who did not belong to the mainstream HR. The session concluded with a quick point put forth by Pankaj Bansal, the CEO and Founder PeopleStrong which pointed out the still hanging gaps in the HR industry!
Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/01/higher-employee-engagement-today-does-not-necessarily-reduce-attrition/
