Employee Engagement as a tool for Talent Management

Prof. Jayashree Sadri and Prof. Sorab Sadri

Employees are considered to be the source of strength and competitive advantage for an organization. Successful organizations realize employee retention and talent management are integral to sustaining their leadership and growth in the market place.

How to retain talent?.

In India, despite salary increases averaging more than 15% annually in some industries, annual turnover rates among young professionals are in an average to 15% to 30% and go as high as 50%.

The explosive combination of ballooning salaries and rising attrition signals a tight market for talent that could constrain India’s growth in the future.

Many factors that affect turnover rates are beyond an employer’s control. But of the factors that an employer can control, four emerged as most important: namely:

1. Performance management practices2. Professional development practices3. Quality of supervision4. Company’s brand name

In turn, these four factors drive two key employee attitudes – an employee’s satisfaction with , and pride in the organization.

When satisfaction and pride are at high levels, employees are likely to stay.

The best companies drive employee satisfaction and pride by providing management support, training and professional opportunities early on.

Employers should target high-potential employees extremely early in their tenure and create accelerated development plans for them.

Employee development plans alone are insufficient. Young, high potential employees demand active management support.

No matter what the environment, employees care about nonmonetary rewards – pride, satisfaction, the support of the management team.

Any company interested in accessing the labor force needs to pay attention to these factors.

To counterfeit attrition, most companies usually turn to increasing the compensation for employees to retain them and become the best paymasters.

Even the big paymasters fail to understand that higher salaries can only “delay” the attrition.

Attrition and talent management- another perspective

Employees seek opportunities that allow them to use and develop their skills and together with their educational knowledge, yearn for converting them into competencies.

Leaving employees want more meaning in their work . They often indicate that they want to use their qualities and skills in challenging teamwork led by capable leaders

Main reasons for attrition !!!

The Mentor plays a very vital role of handholding in the initial stage of an enterprise.

He is the guardian angel to whom an employee can turn to when in distress.

The Mentor provides business guidance and shares his/her experience and skills with the employee.

The Mentor and the Mentee have to mutually agree on the time the Mentor will spend with the Mentee.

Mentoring for Talent Management

1. Management policies2. Job role3. Compensation4. Boss5. Career growth6. Working conditions7. Work timings8. Communication

Exit interview responses

Key employee retention is critical to the long term health and success of business. In such a situation “workforce engagement” or “employee engagement” is the new mantra to cut down attrition or retain talent in the organization.

Businesses with highly engaged workforces enjoy a tremendous advantage over their competitors.

To prosper in this new world, high priority must be given to increased productivity, through enlightened and effective people management.

Smart companies are proactively addressing this crisis by changing their own job environment and doing more to engage their employees.

An engaged employee is one who is willing and able to contribute to company success.

Put another way, engagement is the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, beyond the required minimum to get the job done, in the form of extra time, brainpower or energy.

Employee engagement:

Employee engagement is the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards their organization and its values.

An engaged employee is aware of business context and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization.

The organization must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two way relationship between the employer and the employee.

Employee engagement is a barometer that determines the association of a person with the organization.

The two-way relationship

In these days of intensive focus on customer satisfaction, Employee Engagement programs and offering are designed as a key element on their journey to “Customer Service through Operational Excellence”.

Employee engagement and customer service

As engagement rises, we see two important outcomes:

1. a decline in the likelihood of leaving the company.

2. a stronger orientation around meeting customer needs.

Results of Employee Engagement

1. Committed employees perform better.2. Corporate culture characterized

teamwork, pleasant working conditions.

3. Considerate treatment of employees.4. Growth opportunities.5. Skill enhancement and abundant

training opportunities.6. Flexible working opportunities.

Key drivers of employee engagement.

Besides all these, a considerable shift in leaders’ and managers’ approach to employees is required.

Leadership and management practices appear to be critical to a psychologically healthy workplace and directly lead to measurable and meaningful outcomes in terms of retention, satisfaction, perceptions of stress/workload and employee engagement.

Leadership succession Training/development(leadership) Employee engagement Succession planning Compensation competitiveness Performance management Controlling attrition Ageing workforce issues Workforce planning Career development Work-Life Balance

Top talent management priorities over the next three to five years

Having a ‘fully engaged’ employee is a win-win situation. Those employees stay longer and contribute in a more meaningful way.

A highly engaged workforce will be a healthy sign for the organizations at micro level and for the country at macro level.

Conclusion

Work-Life Balance

After Industrial Revolution people started working in factories.

Information Revolution and 24 x 7 work in the wake of global competition and global production networks are increasingly blurring the distinction between home and work.

Modern technologies facilitated women to join the workforce in large proportion.

Rise of feminism apart, with dual earner families, nuclear families and single parents becoming virtually the norm especially in metros, concerns of WLB assumed urgency and new impetus from all quarters- governments, employers and individuals.

Introduction

Work provides meaning to life. It also provides livelihood. However, life is not just meant for work alone. Its purpose and functionalities are much wider in scope. People work for life but they do not live for work alone.

The relationship between work and life has acquired an important place in the modern society where people give equal importance to their work and life values.

The issue can be addressed at the macro level through legislation, at the national level by the government, by policy at the employer level and also through communication and facilitation by the immediate supervisors and making choices and decisions at individual level and creating common/shared/pooled services at the community level by civil society institutions.

The demographic shifts and increasing tendency for greater participation of women, who comprise almost half the workforce have resulted in a paradigm shift in redesign of workplace.

Government policies seek to protect the workers from overwork and abuse, ban women workers from night work in certain occupations, at least till recently, reduce the weights to be handled by women, provide maternity and paternity leave and other facilities for child and elder care.

More and more companies have started regarding themselves as a great place to work if they took care of some of the responsibilities of workers with family responsibilities and created family friendly policies and practices.

Ranking of best places to work and best HR practices is contingent also upon how sensitive the employers are towards work, life and family concerns.

Paying attention to WLB, most employers now realize, makes business sense and fundamental to overall competitiveness.

As a result,

WLBPs are those institutionalized structural and procedural arrangements as well as formal and informal practices that enable individuals to easily manage the conflicting worlds of work and family lives.

Some common statutory policies are maternity benefits, and discretionary policies are flexi-time, telecommuting and job sharing.

Employee assistance programs like counseling and stress management also fall under WLBPs.

All these can be classified under policies, benefits and services.

What are Work-Life Balance Practices?

Policies cover the formal and informal ways that employees’ work and leave schedules are handled, including part-time work, job sharing, flexi time and parental/family leave.

Benefits cover forms of compensation that protect against loss of earnings, payment of medical expenses and vacation or all of these.

Services include on-site or near-site childcare centers, counseling and eldercare programs

Policies, Benefits and Services

Toll of the person’s health both physiologically and psychologically leading to :Heart ailments, cardiovascular problems, sleep disorders, depression, irritability, insecurity, poor concentration and even nervous breakdowns.

Lack of concentration leading to low productivity, lesser quality of work, conflicts at workplace.

Disrupted family life.

Strained social life

Financial problems due to ill health, poor management of personal finance issues.

Implications of imbalance for Employees

Need to manage increased expectations of employees without compromising on business needs.

Face problems like : Absenteeism, less productivity, low quality of work, employee turnover, failure to attract and retain best talent.

Management time increasingly spent on :counseling, motivation, conflict management, etc.

More investment on additional resources.

Implications of imbalance for Employers

Time management through task prioritization and activity planning.

Negotiate and use facilities like : work-sharing, job rotation, delegation, flexi timing, telecommuting, work from home, childcare and eldercare assistance.

Indulging in some creative hobby, voluntary service which helps in de-stress.

Seeking information and help required from management from time to time.

What should be done?By Employees

Regular and direct communication with workers to make them understand business priorities and encourage them to be equally clear about their personal priorities.

Help employees in their pursuit of balancing personal commitments and organizational duties by providing them necessary support and resources as far as feasible.

Proper training/education on topics like Time Management, Stress Management, Health and Hygiene etc.

By Employers

Today, WLBPs have become an integral part of high commitment work systems and not merely a response to address increasing problems including stress, absenteeism and turnover which have emerged due to increased percentage of women in the workforce.

The trend shows growing recognition for the need to support not only those with visible family needs and responsibilities (working mothers) but all employees at different stages of life, who experience work-life stress regardless of their family status.

Today's scenario on WLBPs

Flexible work arrangements Stress management programs Part – time arrangements Work from home (telecommuting) Maternity/paternity leaves Life insurance coverage's Reimbursement of medical expenses Child care facilities Forced family vacation

Organizational interventions needed:

Organizations need to identify WLB as a major constituent of HR Policy. They have to clearly state their WLB philosophy, policy and practices.

Work –life and personal-life are two sides of the same coin. Striking a balance between work and life is critical for an employee to achieve his personal and professional goals.

At the same time its impact is very significant for the organizations since the employee’s attitude, loyalty to the organization and productivity are directly dependent on how well he balances his time between these two lives.

Conclusion

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