Major Insights for the day 11/03

What makes a "Best Employer"?

Being a "Best Employer" has many benifits. One of which and perhaps the most important is that you will have the best people willing to join your workforce. Further, your workforce will be keen to stay with you longer and be more commited during this while. The initial discussion focused around the Best Employer philosphy of Hewitt. The culture of a company has a far reaching impact on the well being of its employees and the growth of a company. While, the leadership of any organization plays a critical role in the development of a good culture, it is certainly not limited to just that. Culture os a function of how people behave / interact with each other. A good culture is characterised by ethical conduct, empowerment of employees, meritocracy VS seniority based policies, work flexibility, etc.

A good part of the discussion was focused on Emotional Engagement and its impact on peoples behaviour. Lot of fellow students shared their personal expierence from the past work expierence oh what impact did a good or bad culture have on their behaviour and outlook towrds the company. While most agreed that emotional enagegement with their peers, bosses and the company helped them go that extra mile for their companies. In most cases People did more that what they signed up for simply because they felt strongly for the association they had with their bosses and the company as a whole. Motivation came out to be another very important factor that impacted peoples behaviour at workplace. While everyoone agrees that motivation can really influence people, desire and ability to perform better, what is still a little ambigous is the sincierity behind such motivation. Is it a genuine feeling of wanting to do your job best or is a tool used by supervisors to get the work done. I believe that motivation is a mix of both and needs to be that way. However emotional engagement is something that cannot be made up artificially. It may done superficially for a short while but will eventually emerge soon.

Is physical proximity a barrier to emotional engagement. There were though to both support and attach the motion. My belief on this is that emotional engagement does not depend on physical proximity. There are umpteen examples out there of people working together but still not wanteing to see eye to eye. Of course pysical proximity is a good medium for emotional engagement but is not a decisive factor. Emotional engagement can be developed and nurtred over a period of time irrespective of physical proximity.

There was also a small discussion on some usual behaviours of emotinally engaged employees It syas that these employees - Say—speak positively about their organization; Stay—they tend to stay much longer in the organization despite better opportunities elsewhere; and, Strive—they put in extra time and effort to contribute to the organizations success.