How does it feel to be a crucial part of your company’s ethos?
Puzzled?
Today, one of the contributing factors that helps measure the progress of a company is the people that work there. ‘The employees’ are the wheels that carry the organization from point A to Z. The happier this sector, the more the chances of the organization flourishing.
Let us consider a classic situation of the entire staff being uncooperative. New client, new pitch, new presentation to be made and your sales team declares they are backing out from the brainstorming session. Being the representative, you cannot let this opportunity slip. One wheel punctured, you try to balance upon the rest and move on.
You gather all the resources, take personal interest due to the urgency of the situation and take the pitch to the operations department for validation. They too decide to follow suit and refuse to have anything to do with the project. The art and design team reject the concept outright and your media team withholds divulging any contacts to promote the campaign. The work culture has no employee engagement and internal communications is close to being non-existent.
How can you ensure an end-to-end execution unless you have your entire force backing you 100%? Apart from the designated departments, every individual employee in the company is important. Being proactively involved in upholding the company’s positive image is a task that you need to facilitate right from the beginning. You need to have a work culture that is thriving, and employee engagement is always at its peak.
With multiple job opportunities available in the competitive market, the employee today has the upper hand in decision making. Companies seek employees who can be all- rounders – with dynamic personalities, ones who can aptly adopt a proactive approach, can juggle their personal and professional lives, and are well prepared to tackle crisis situations.
If the company agrees to undertake cross training in order to make you substantially independent, you too need to ensure that you render flexibility in timings as well as mindsets. Being an ardent contributor, living by the philosophy of being a constant innovator, asking and receiving feedback with regard, are valuable assets that a company seeks in an individual.
The role of the employee is to be competent and committed. It is extremely crucial for the company and the individual to be on the same wave length. After all, it is a give and take relationship that a company and a prospective employee share. From being an initiator to being accountable, the company looks for an individual from whom they can benefit, who can prove to be a value adding asset to the organization.
Sometimes it so happens that the company prospers via strategically marketing itself. Social media promotions today help in reaching out to a larger audience, and over a period of time the company gets reinvented as an impactful brand in itself. Renewed vision and new set of targets, not a hard seller but a popular entity in the market.
A culture that livens up the atmosphere at work and supports the employee to be a part of it, is the need of the hour. Be it through workshops and training or through every day work routine, attempting to create a healthy working environment will definitely go a long way. Amidst all the laughter and fun is when the employees voluntarily begin to take ownership of their work and strive to turn their efforts into success.
Consider for instance ‘Rewards and Recognition’ – any company that acknowledges and appreciates people at work for their contribution and dedication, portrays itself as a leader for the people. It seeks for an emotional involvement and encourages the employee to stay attached on a much personal level. It is simple to imbibe this system of rewards and recognition by having an employee engagement strategy in place.
With renewed zeal the pressure that an employee faces on the lower end also tends to increase. Working in accordance with unambiguous communication at the grass root level is the key. Companies that grow and take along their employees as well, are seen as pioneers in successful employee engagement and tend to have a lesser rate of attrition, not to forget the fact that the employees themselves become the brand ambassadors propagating loyalty.
If the growth of the organization becomes directly proportional to the progress of the employees’, the company will undoubtedly flourish in all aspects of business.
This post was first published on the SHRM India Blog featuring as an article authored by Never Grow Up
