Ridhima Goswami, HPCL

Thought:

When was the last time you uttered, “I do not have time.” Or “I wish I had some more time” or, “I wish I had some “ME TIME”. I bet, even before opening this document, many of you would have also thought “Do I have the time to read this?”

You watch cricket matches on television. But if you are invited to play the game, your answer is “Who has the time for it”. (Although in college times, you aspired to become the next Sachin Tendulkar)

You spend three hours watching a Bollywood movie. But when your kids ask you to act thief, your answer is “Who has the time for all this?” (But in a flash of memory, you remember school farewell title – Mr. Amitabh Bachchan of Batch 2001)

Fact is that at some point of your life, you LIKED cricket, you LIKED acting, you LIKED cooking… you liked something. And you still LIKE it. And you would still want to pursue that… If only you had Time!

Time is something, that we all want, and none of us get enough of it.

Next day you come to office and try to ignore your heart’s longing to play that one match or act on stage as main lead or try some experimental cooking at leisure. You try to forget the above conversations you had with yourself and now tell yourself “let me get busy with the real work”. So you finally dip those feelings in the small cup of tea on your office desk, and sip it with an ahhh! and transform yourself into a busy professional.

Such is the morning state of mind of most of the employees in most of the organisations, across the globe.

What are we doing about it as Business Leaders or as HR professionals? As a true professional, I would not want to start my week with these feelings hidden in my subconscious. Neither, would I want my colleagues and my organization, as a collective, to function with an ignored self. In my opinion, any work environment that requires employees to ignore their inner selves, is a dysfunctional work environment. It breeds disengagement.

The buzzword, “Employee Engagement” is as an important factor that leads to better workplace performance, enhanced levels of innovation and lower attrition1. However, the prerequisites for engaging an employee are still the age-old concepts of employee motivation and job satisfaction. An employee who feels motivated to work, and is satisfied with the work he does, is an engaged employee.

Organisations tend to adopt “extrinsic motivation” techniques of offering rewards, hefty packages, or incentives. This dilutes the creation of “intrinsic motivation” within the employee. Intrinsic motivation cannot be drilled into someone, yet, there could be different sources of it. According to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of Business Psychology and the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, “The more people focus on their salaries, the less they will focus on satisfying their intellectual curiosity, learning new skills, or having fun, and those are the very things that make people perform best.” 2

Individuals differ in respect to their personal characteristics as abilities, attitudes, perceptions. As a consequence, managers need not just acknowledge these differences but learn how to use these differences for the benefit of the organizations and overall organizational behaviour. We need to focus not only on individual learning and motivation but also on interpersonal relations including work in groups, teams, communication processes, conflicts, power and influences within organization. Additional focus is required on positive individual and organizational behavior.

The factor of relationship between an organization and its employees is called Employee Engagement. An “engaged employee” is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about his/her work and so takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.

If we look at the various surveys and questionnaires used to measure employee engagement levels, there are some recurring themes. As per researchers, employees need the following to be engaged:

• clear goals and expectations

• opportunities for growth and development

• fair and consistent rewards, recognition, appreciation

• meaningful feedback on a regular basis

• a sense that they and their work matter to their manager and the organization

• a work environment, where they look forward to work

While, the set of first three items are more or less covered by the HR processes of Performance Management, Career Progression & Development Process and Reward and Recognition Schemes. However, organisations still struggle to develop robust process for ensuring a satisfying level of the next set of employee needs. It is, nowadays, a big challenge for the leadership to leave no stone unturned to create a work environment where employees look forward to going to work. More so, when organisations have the majority of Millennials in the workspace. It is a common misbelief Millennials feel engaged at a workplace which provides state-of-the-art infrastructure, high-end technology, and the latest gadgets. The reality is that millennials primarily seek opportunities which help them grow and develop into well-rounded professionals.

In fact, be it Millennials, or the Loyalists generation, every individual would feel motivated to work at a place that provides an opportunity for learning as well as having fun. If one asks the Loyalist of a company, “If we officially give you some time off, would you like to bat on behalf of the office cricket team?” I’m sure the answer would be “yes”, at least for the person who used to be a big-time Sunil Gavaskar fan. If one asks a Millennial, “Would you like to volunteer to organize a series of ‘learning new skills’ workshops within the company?” I’m sure the answer would be “O yes!”

Do you wonder why the answer would be a ‘yes’? It is so because such activities excite them. It ignites a spark of doing something that they like(d). It is this spark that an employee longs for. It is this excitement that en employee looks forward to when motivating himself to come to office.

Imagine a situation when your workplace is not just the place where you work, but it’s a place where you are also able to do those things that you left long back. Things you aren’t able to do even at home on weekends. Things like practising your hobbies, learning new skills, working with different teams on projects unrelated to work, meeting new people, reading new books, travelling to new places etc. It is a place where you can showcase you inner talents and interests – you can rediscover your inner self.