TOTAL EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

“Men but not Gold make a nation great & strong “. Thus goes an old saying. This is not only true for nations but very much true for companies & business enterprises too.  Companies all over the world are trying to nurture and groom only asset which does not depreciate with time, but on the contrary appreciate…That is human capital.

Despite best systems, procedures, great leadership, dynamic promoters, highly trained staff, continuous improvement, TQM. TPM and all these high sounding jargons we find a stage when companies hit a plateau and fail to move forward.  

In these days of cost cutting, efficiency & performance driven business model slowly the “Humane Touch” is vanishing! From the days of “life time employment”, we have come via “contract based out sourced employment” to a situation where in the recent trend is “rental employment”!

Thus the challenge for the owner, manager et. al. to retain Total Employee Involvement becomes all the more tough and requires a very innovative approach !

We may study various theories of needs and conduct innumerable training sessions, in the end for every family the bread winner is God! For his family he is the HERO! For his children he is the SUPER MAN!

I learnt this when I was on a visit to Sundaram Fasteners Limited on a factory visit! Along with me, I had a group of 50 workmen from Maharashtra who were on a factory visit to Chennai. It was very easy to get a visit permit and we were taken around the factory. Whenever we went to any machine lathe / CNC or any work center we saw framed snaps of MD with the operator’s family… operator’s wife with loads of flowers, nicely pleated hair, children in bright dresses etc. When I asked the HR person he told me that on every birthday the workmen were allowed to bring their family to meet the MD who poses for the snaps.   

During the casual interaction complete family details get registered with the company. Thus a complete data base of the children, class, special interests, needs, education level, family bonding etc. gets ready with the HR team. Token gifts are given in memory of the visit to the family. Next year whole family looks forward to the visit with higher enthusiasm!

TVS group as a culture every day hand over some snacks to workmen, supervisors, staff, deputy managers, managers, up to the rank of D.G.M. The idea is as the children would be looking forward to the snacks the earning member of the family would go straight to home and not to any other unwanted place like liquor shops etc.!

We used to celebrate family days in one factory. There used to be evening tea and followed by awards for best attendance etc. But the Vice president who used to come for such meeting used to talk about Commodity Prices like Milk Powder, Cocoa Powder, Sugar etc. from a management presentation ! Half the crowd used to hoot him to stop the presentation!! Thus the purpose was lost!

About three years back, I was in Himachal Pradesh heading a manufacturing unit. As someone who can not bond over drinks, parties etc. I was finding it difficult to understand most of the staff and their social status. We did conduct various surveys inside the factory to gauge aspiration levels of supervisors, lady workers etc. But in the end I wanted to do something very different!

As the place where we used to live was barely 10 KM away from the factory one day we invited all the spouses of staff and their kids to factory. Staffs were told they can take their family in the conducted tour or take them individually. Photography inside the shop floor was not allowed but they could take snaps in the gardens !

After the factory visit there was a meeting in the conference room, followed by visual presentation high lighting the importance of a strong woman behind every weak man! Then questions and answer session and snacks!

By then the gifts were ready to be handed over at the gates when they were boarding the buses! A few  ladies came to meet me in my office to thank! They stated that they never knew their husband work in such a nice place and did very interesting jobs involving very sophisticated machinery! One lady told me that she felt as if she had come to her “Mahiike” ( Mother’s place) as she was returning with handful of gifts !!