Hi all,
I would like to get a feedback about this concept that we have developed at Tushky.com. Being an ardent entrepreneur, I don’t understand actions taken without considering ROI. I found employee engagement decisions taken at most of the corporates pretty revolting.
Thus, we designed Fungage – Its a new way to approach employee engagement. I am giving below my arguments and would like to get an honest feedback.
- Every corporate(& SMBs) has a budget for employee engagement, usually in the range of 8 lacs annually to some crores annually
- Most of the decisions taken are ad-hoc and based on populism and not on any data
- Outbounds or activities conducted are usually purely instinct driven and not based on data
- Most often the recluse employees are not considered due to the decision orientations, while they should be the first targets of all such employee engagement activities
- Thus, there is no hard ROI attached at this budget, what is achieved with this budget, KPIs etc are pretty soft
In view of all this, we designed Fungage – a data driven approach to employee engagement:
- Its based on a simple but powerful concept: Let the employees decide what they want to engage in
- Two surveys are conducted:
- Employee engagement survey – to benchmark the existing engagement level with an Index, using an industry standard survey
- Activity density Survey & feedback – to determine employee inclination for the kind of activities they will like to have. This will be granular to employee level.
- Feedbacks are taken after every activity
- Employees can choose to do activities individually or in groups from a menu of activities that can be done in office, in city or around the city
- HR can better judge the right activity for departments or for the whole office based on activity density survey and feedback
- Tushky (with HR) will design the schedule based on the data from the above schedule
- The outbounds are thus aligned as well
- Thus a tangible ROI is assigned to the engagement budget via engagement index which is measured every quarter
- Clear KPIs viz. improving engagement index, higher retention rates
The survey module of Fungage needs to be implemented as a subscription model to better control engagement; but it has been implemented on an event basis (without survey) as well. And the results have been amazing.
We have 10+ corporates of the likes of Schlumberger, Ackzonobel, HSBC who have used Fungage.
I am having a tough time to explain the merits of such a model to HRs. Is there something that I am missing or is there something I can do to improve conversions?
Would love to get a feedback, suggestions, improvements, leads.. anything!
The website for Fungage – Fungage – Corporate Inbound
Regards
Talvinder Singh
Tushky.com
Ganesh
Hello Talvinder
I appreciate your efforts to highlight what is best between Employee and Employer engagement. With my little experience, would like to draw your attention on the below comments which may help you understand why some of the HR’s are unable to buy your concept readly.
*Thumb rule is to first seperate your clients policy inclination, between P&L and Numbers( my definition in this context for Numbers is accuring Goodwill rather then just profits), because the engagement approach would differ.
*Exhaustive survey & analysis on employee engagement would come at an additional cost to a company apart from the engagement expense itself, which may putoff majority of companies initial before you could step in to help them, unless have lavish budgets.
*Giving too much choice on type of engagement will split employees into groups and an headache to Managment, rather suggest HR to have just 2 slabs of engagment, wherein higher KPI employees are offered premium engagement. This gives a reason within the companies game to motivate the lower KPI employees to pull a knot up( and the race doesnt end..) because of the hidden competition embeded between them. This could give oppourtinuity for the employer to send out a message that every employee is important to the company, but companies growth which is paramount depends on employees performance and they deserve recognition at every level, even in entertainment and company do care to motivate every employee irrespective of their performance.
* Question- Ask employer the main aim to have an employee engagement- is it beacuse of companies image as a employee friendly employer , to retain employees, to improve their P&L or Goodwill or just beacuse other competing companies are practising it.
Answer: Most probable answer from an employer would be- To achieve better P&L or Goodwill tops their priority then follows employee retainership and so on.
* Question -Ask an employee how he would like to utilise a company allocated engagement budget.
Answer- You will get numereus suggestions and demands, majority of the times the budget looks draf and every turned down employee suggestion will lead to a birth of disgrunted employee born. And if you give an option and say employees can avail thier share of budget in cash/ bonus, then I would be curious to see how many employees would still be left to avail engagement through entertainment, turning down cash incentives. Though cash/ bonus incentives may have conflict of companies policy, I have come across enough examples in western world where policies have been re-drafted to suit current conditions. Just yearly christmas parties and rest channel though incentives. This has a direct impact on retentions and turning a employee motivated all along.
My bottom line observation is- majority of the Employers and employees, both are cash strapped in current ecnomic conditions through out the world- a sensible engagement proposal is warranted which is directly proportionate to companies growth whether it is by cash or kind. I am hopefull if your emphasis is on companies interest first, then you can get a stepin. Once you are on board then convince the employees with your/HR choice of engagement which should not be that difficult unless you leave wider choices to employees.
Talvinder, I am from a practical world, where money matters, you have to excuse some or all my views if differs from yours.
Thanks for inviting to comment.