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This is my diary....what I make sense of, around me. You'll find short prose on contemporary topics that interest me. What can you expect - Best adjectives? …. hmm occasionally, tossed around flowery verbs ?…. Nope, haiku-like super-brevity? … I try to. Thanks for dropping by & hope to see you again

December 2, 2008

The people fevicol factor in Organizations

Pidilite, the manufacturers of adhesive brand Fevicol brand have captured their brand USP through very imaginative & interesting advertisements on TV.

Whether it is the fisherman catching fishes with a few drops of fevicol, be it the overloaded bus with people clinging to it on a rickety ride or the guy hanging to his lady on a precipice, have very creatively rendered the brand's proposition - its ability to bind on any surface & in any condition.

Is there any such ‘X’ formula that Organizations can replicate to create stickiness with its employees? I have heard a lot of lip smacking verbose that Companies often dole of when they talk of their employee relations, however to the contrary the reality may be.

On their part, It may be a necessity borne out of the usual PR (public relations) demands and the business posturing required in the marketplace .

Last week I was speaking to someone I knew who after putting in 6 months of work in a consulting firm had left in a huff recently without a job alternative on hand. He attributed his exit to the style of leadership in the organization and lack of transparency and empowerment given to him on the job.

 He said that the mails from his boss started to get nasty and a feeling crept in him that he was not being valued at job. All this when he felt that Business was looking up after signing a couple of new clients!

From our talk I could gather that his engagement process with his employer had soured quickly and the relations got strained to break point quite abruptly.

Talking of effective employee engagement, Hewitt Associates define engagement as comprising 3 measurable behaviors on the part of employees.
1. Stay - people stay with the company despite tempting offers elsewhere, the extreme opposite is what happened in this case, people move on despite no job on hand.
2. Say - people say and advocate good things about the company. Employees also like to have their say on job, when that get stifled engagement breaks.
3. Serve - they exert a lot of discretionary effort which may not be part of their job description. This is particularly true of small organizations when one person dons many hats.

So in essence is effective employee engagement the invisible glue that binds people to organization? the secret sauce of successful HR departments?

Engagement in its entirety could mean a lot of things, developing and communicating effective career progression, transparent performance appraisal & feedback, Performance linked incentive programme with buy in etc.

Business Guru and a leading current genre influential thinker, Howard Gardner, has examined this aspect in his book “changing minds” where he says work place behavior is influenced by factors like role models (that turn out good or bad), & responsible (or otherwise) Co-workers.

But at its core it remains a heightened emotional and ntellectual connection with a job and the Organization sustaining it.

2 comments:

HARISH'S BLOG said...

If one enjoys the job he is doing and is getting the right kind of motivation and support from the company,then FEVICOL could be applied between the employee and the company.

Anonymous said...

Hi Vasant,

good one and completely realistic.

Keep writing the good stuff like this.

Regards.
Anurag.

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