S Ramadoss
Sr Vice President & CHRO
Titan Industries Limited
Prof Dr Debashish Sengupta
School of Business, Alliance University
CII : 8 th April 2011

1. What is Employee Engagement
2. Satisfaction Vs Employee Engagement
3. Drivers of Employee Engagement
4. Building blocks of Employee Engagement
5. Barriers / Solutions
6. Some Best Practices
 Indian Hotels
 Tata Consultancy Services
 Google
 Bharti Airtel
 Titan

• Can be defined as the level of commitment and involvement as employee has towards his / her organisation and its values.
• It is also the degree to which an employee is emotionally bonded to his / her organisation and passionate about his / her work.
• Is the energy, passion, “fire in the belly”, Employees have for their Organisation (speak positively about the Organisation, go beyond what is expected of them).
– Is both emotional and rational factors

Engaged Employees
• Psychologically committed to the company
• Consistent levels of high performance
• Innovative and drive for efficiency
• Passionate, high energy and enthusiastic
• Never run out of things to do
• Loyal to company, workgroup and role
• Broaden what they do and build on it
• Positive constructive criticism
Satisfied Employees
• Limited emotional connect with the company
• Display inconsistent productivity and performance levels
• Not always solution driven
• Lesser degree of pride and loyalty to the company
• Limited sense of achievement; may not seek opportunities to improve quality of deliverables

36% 49%
Engaged
These employees are loyal and psychologically committed to the organization. They are more productive, more likely to stay with their company for more than a year, less likely to have accidents on the job, and less likely to steal.
Not Engaged
These employees may be productive, but they are not psychologically connected to their company. They are more likely to miss workdays and more likely to leave.
Copyright © 1992-1999 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.
15%
Actively Disengaged
These employees are physically present but psychologically absent. They are unhappy with their work situation and insist on sharing this unhappiness with their colleagues.
Copyright © 2007 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.
5

Drivers of Employee Engagement ..
..examples
• Right employees in right jobs
• Confidence in Organisation’s future
• Challenging work, with adequate resources
• Exceptional leadership
• Motivation, reward and recognition
• Opportunities for development, and growth
• A clear vision and direction
• Opportunities to advance career
• A collaborative work environment

Building blocks… towards engagement
• Build high levels of trust
• Treat your employees well
• Deliver on promises
• Envision –by leadership
• Provide opportunity for growth
• Design meaningful jobs
• Create a safe and healthy workplace
• Collaborate and involve people , empower them
• Encourage informal networking
• Finally communicate..communicate..

Some of Barriers to Employee Engagement a) Work-life balance :
Myth 1 : Work-life imbalances is only at managerial level
Myth 2 : Work-life imbalances increase with the income-levels of an Employee
Myth 3 : Work-life imbalances are higher in developed economy b) Changing Complexities of Social Life due to Technology c) Diversity issues - Especially Female Employees d) Working Conditions
Long Hours of Work
Positive culture / supportive supervisor
Flexible working hours / Work week
Flexi leave options
Family’s Day Out

- Leads to high level of Orgnisational performance
- Leads to a positive work culture (18% more proactive)
- Leads to higher profitability (12% more profit)
- Leads to Higher Earnings Per Share (EPS) (growth rate 2 to 6 times higher)
- Leads to Higher productivity
- Leads to Higher Customer engagement (12% higher)
- Leads to less likely to leave the orgnisation (- 31%)
- Leads to less likely to be involved in an accident in the Job ( - 62%)
- Lead to less prone to absenteeism (-27% )
- Leads to less likely to be a source of inventory shrinkage ( - 51%)
Source : Gallup survey

Some practices in Employee engagement….
Case 1 – Taj Hotels – Engagement to Enchantment
• STARS (Special Thanks and Recognition System) recognition aimed at delivering consistent acts of excellence
• TABE (TAJ, Annual Business Excellence awards) – presented to outstanding innovation , service , business etc
• Buddy system – For all new joinees till acquaintance
• TAJ BUZZ - Intranet for communication , interaction m Online surveys, Knowledge Management
• Talent Management – EL TAJ – assess leadership competences , and provide individual development
• Bravo Billboards – displaying exemplerary acts of individuals with photos at prominent locations
• GM hotline – for direct talk with GM, on grievances, suggestions, issues …

Some practices in Employee engagement….
Case 2 – Tata Consultancy Services
• Performance Based culture , and robust career facilitation architecture – pay for performance and promote for potential
• Robust L&D process focusing on role based training
• Nurturing Talent – Individual development plans for HI pots, and also grooming talent from within instead of external hiring
• Multi Channel communication – Dialogue sessions , coffee with HR , Town Hall meetings , Dashboards ..

Some practices in Employee engagement….
Case 3 – Google - Topped in Great Places 2010
• Casual culture , serious purpose – Colorful ambience , designer furniture's … office
• Promote Ideas from everywhere
• A license to pursue their dreams – 20% time earmarked for doing whatever they want
• Share as much as you can – communication channels
• Back to school – Pursue higher education
• Two way dialogue with employees – TGIF (Thank God Its
Friday)

Some practices in Employee engagement….
Case 4 – Bharti Airtel
• Study while at work
• Developing and implementing role competency matrix
• Managing Employee life cycles
• Standardising Hygiene factors across all role holders
• Employee connect through CSR – SMT time being auctioned for employees and proceedings go to CSR
• STEP – Small Team Engagement programs , a Team approach , through challenging targets
• Joy@workplace – structuring and circulating all activities touching each employee

Titan Industries is a healthy, wealthy, sharing and caring , clean and green Corporate entity that is the envy of Indian Companies
-- Bhaskar Bhat
Managing Director
2011 : 94% employees have identified
Titan as a
“Great Place to Work
”
To create an environment of Engaged Employees who are committed to achieving Business Objectives and make Titan an Employer of Choice
CARE AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL
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• Manifests itself in our recruitment process
– Blue collar workers : from schools and colleges , and role transition and Induction into the system
– Candidates are taught about values and culture which has transited from benevolent paternalistic to promising professionalism
– The fall outs – becoming lean , yet people and performance oriented , stretching people to take on additional responsibilities (post VRS , during lock out periods ..)

• Manifests itself in our recruitment and training process
– Campus Recruitment , high emphasis on performance culture – thro evaluation based on
13 Tata Leadership Practices (Both in MT/GET rec processes)
– Training and development focused on building capability for future and not just current (Ex
Innovation , TOC , People Leadership

Engagement - The consolidation phase
• Online PMS system
– Cuts across all levels (blue collar , supervisory and managerial, and senior management)
– High Focus on Innovation
– Strong Engagement of Managers in the assessment and feedback process, which builds strong expectations both ways
– Performance differentiation – through Variable pay (PLP)
– Constant revisiting of PMS/PLP process each year to make it contemporary , often finding ways to raise the bar
– We always believe past records are always meant to be broken – a fact proven by consistent high growth over the past two decades of existence

Engagement - The consolidation phase
• Driving performance culture through Employee involvement
– Participation in SGA, CFT’s
– Cross functional teams of strategic importance
Many examples of engagement – raises the bar in terms of setting long term goals and imbibitions , constantly challenging the status Quo
Ex : Teams working on Mission Impossible (who made a significant turn around for the organization) Future Shock :
Crafted the Long term plans for the company , literally quadrupling our profits and turn over !
All these manifest in our constant quest to drive high performance
– Charge of the young brigade , the constant challenging and questioning attitude of the young talent keeps organization on its toes

Engagement - The consolidation phase
• Managing Talent – The TM program
– The critical talent defined as Corporate and
Functional Resources , are moved across to next higher levels , often challenged with new , unknown territories
– Providing challenging opportunities – Example of
Talent pool members taking up large projects such as Eyewear, Gold Plus , Independent responsibility of business units (Ex TTPL)

Engagement - The consolidation phase
• Reward and recognizing , communication
– Various reward and recognition programs
(Moment of Fame , Outstanding Titanian and
Dream Teams , Execution Excellence , Employee of
Quarter …)
– Variety of communication mechanisms – Open
Houses , NEWS BOX, Retale , Glitter Buzz, MD online , U.speak etc
– People friendly pol

Engagement - The consolidation phase
• Senior Management team personally driving projects and assignments of cross functional importance (Ex Innovation, Affirmative action,
CSR and so on)
• Peer pressure – drives significant improvements in performance across all levels, especially Senior management levels

• Employee friendly policies –
– Scholarship for meritorious employees children,
– Highly subsidized education loan for employee children,
– Extension of insurance benefits,
– Revised people friendly travel policy,
– Subsidized canteen facility across the company, various rewards & recognition programs like OT/DT, MOF...
• Bringing employees together - Titan Integration
Meet

• To realize the 3 billion dollar dream
• Roll out The next wave of Talent Management
• Reshaping the organizations structure – based on work level and providing higher growth roles for individuals
• Constant benchmarking and revisiting all our processes each year !

What makes Titan’s employee engaged !
• Great Love and pride for the Organisation
• Openness, Trust and Respect
• Fiercely Loyal
• Passionately committed
• Highly Flexible
• Willing to do new things, and constantly innovate
• Highly empowered
• Non-hierarchical
• Great Respect for our visionary leaders
• Sense of joy & happiness; fun at work place
Young, Energetic, Enthusiastic and highly Informal
Organisation

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