People and Management February 2019 | Page 38

FOCUS ENGAGING EMPLOYEES ‘HR 360 DEGREE KICK BOX’ Shubhankar Malakar CHRO – Telecom Network Solution Pvt Ld. I remember when I was working with a Super Brand Tile company, I had been told by Management to reduce the attrition rate of Area Managers and Regional Managers. I did everything possible to arrest the attrition but was not able to meet the management expectation. I pondered upon ‘what’s wrong’ day and night. It took me more than two years to understand that this was due to a lack of employee engagement from top to bottom. Understanding employees’ aspiration is a must. We can cultivate an employee engagement culture once we understand the 38 | Vol. 10 Issue 2 • FEBRUARY 2019, Delhi NCR need for employees. There are employees who are staying far away from family, so they would need activities which connect them to the family. Management could send Thank You letters to such employees’ parents, thanking them for putting their son/daughter in your organization and he/she is a true resource for achieving organizational goals. Likewise, there are employees whose hobby is singing. Surely we can engage him/her with creating a formal interdepartmental competition. There has to be two-way communication wherein we take feedback in a formal way, maybe on every fortnight, through teleconference/video with