I work for a leading BPO in Sri Lanka. There are many departments like finance, insurance, legal and accounting sectors. There are around 800 staff. Our firm provides services for international clients from here.
As a leading BPO in Sri Lanka, it is not easy being on the top always. The company faces both internal and external issues. The competition is very high and I has to retain its best employees to achieve the goal.
The department I work for has 85 employees and 6 Managers. On a monthly basis, it has come to light that the firm has started recruiting new people as the old employees have started resigning. Is we look at the reasons for the resignation, majority are because of less engagement within the firm or not been appreciated.
Employees who work hard and their productivity is very high, still they are in the same position for many years. There was an employee who has been there for 13 years, worked very hard and brought a lot of profit for the company. However, she was promoted as a Team Leader just in her 11th year and that was it. No recognition, no appreciation or not even a good promotion. Two years down the line, she had to hand over her resignation which was a major shock to the firm. Few months after she left, the organization started feeling the pressure from the top Management as the sales dropped to significant extents. Deficit increased. Although new employees were brought in, it was not going to be like the well experienced ones as it could take a lot of time to bring them to the required competency. The major reason for many employees like her to leave were not praised for the good work or lack of recognition what they do.
It’s not always about the work and driving sales, but also about getting all the employees engaged in what the company does. It’s not the matter of what the activity could be, big or small get everyone in. The HR recently introduced a FUN FRIDAY activity where they have some sort of activity just for an hour where the whole department will have to participate. They are divided into groups and activities like, general knowledge quiz, singing competitions, best drama and many more were brought in. After few good Fridays, the company realised that people enjoyed their work and the productive levels of many employees increased.
Teamwork is another important factor that is lacking in our organization. Mainly because are people are rewarded for individual performance and achievements. Whereas there should be a parameter where team engagement and or people who supports the team will also be considered for rewards and recognition. When this is in place, people learn to share their knowledge and skills with others and will support the team whenever needed, as stated in the previous blog posts. Unity will prevail within the team and target achievements will be more realistic.
Many of our colleagues who work here, have so many skills and ways of improving the process or even changing them. Since, they are not encouraged or motivated with some sort of recognition program, their skills and talents that may be helpful to the firm are limited. Therefore, to bring the best skills out, some monetary valued system should be introduced. It should be given out to them with their monthly salary. When this happens, new are ideas will be out and innovation will take place. Employees needs to be cross trained so when a need a need arises with the other teams, staff from one team could pool in and help the rest without having the need to hire more staff.
Best resources of any organization is always its human resources, the attainment of an workplace with high capacity employees are the key to success & the way to set competitive advantage in the global scenario. Also organization with engaged employees always try to find innovative ways to address to problems and to increase productivity. Therefor Employee Engagement is arguably the most critical metric for organizations in the 21st Century (Singh,2016).
ReplyDeleteThank you Oshantha, when initiating or implementing new changes, the organisation has saved a lot of time as their engagement improvement initiatives were at higher level (Scottish Executive Social Research, 2007).
DeleteHi Shakir, thank you for sharing your personal experience! Adding to your thoughts, Armstrong (2009) points out that creating a learning culture is an important aspect in nurturing employee engagement. Discretionary learning instead of obligatory (often unproductive) training programs should be encouraged – this process takes place when employees are truly interested in acquiring the skills and knowledge that are needed to support the organization’s mission.
ReplyDeleteThen you Nadeeranga, just to add more to it, training are of different kinds, on the job training, classroom training, computer based and group training (Lee et al., 2010).
DeleteWonderful article, thanks for sharing
ReplyDeleteEmployee engagement plays an important role in the motivation of employees. With virtual employee engagement activities, we can engage our remote employees in team building activities and games. These activities also boost morale of the remote team employees.
Amazing Post! If you're the HR or manager of any organization, get inspired with 50+ unique Online employee engagement activities for remote employees. Implement these proven activities now and improve the bonding between an organization and its remote workforce.
ReplyDeleteIndoor Team Building Activities for employees are a incredible way to bring your teams together. Some of the most exciting team-building exercises are listed here. These activities have been devised specifically to increase employee morale.
ReplyDelete