Is Employee Engagement in Indian workplaces pathetic?

Over the last several years of interacting with several individuals working at various corporates in India, I have often felt that almost all employees were highly disengaged. They were simply checking in and checking out everyday, doing what was required to not get into trouble and collecting their paychecks at the end of the month. Once in a while they would stretch their hand a little bit and do something that gives them a promotion/a big bonus and/or some significant recognition.

Today, I saw an article in the Corporate Dossier (supplement of the Economic Times), where Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup has given an interview. Jim minces no words in saying that the Indian workplace is so low on energy, that if it were a stock, he would short it.

While I clearly don't like the situation we are in, I would whole-heartedly agree with Jim on his observation about Indian work-places. It's not that every company in other parts of the world has a highly engaged workplace - but this argument cannot be the reason why companies and their leaders don't push the envelope around employee engagement. Frankly if something important needs to be fixed, it doesn't matter if other fix it or not.

Is there a really simple way to find out if employees who work for you are really engaged? Ask yourself if the employees who work for you would relate, respond and interact with you in the same manner if your title was suddenly taken away and you were just an individual. If the answer is "No", then your people are clearly in the check-in/check-out mode and will only do what is necessary to keep them out of trouble. On the other hand, if the answer is "Yes" or "To some extent" or even "Maybe a few of them would", then you are on the right track as a manager & leader. Individuals may work for a company, but for them a large part of the company is their manager, whose every action will impact them positively or negatively.

Corporate India - It's time to make our workplaces a better place for individuals to spend a large part of their time in.

Recognition Education Works

We recently decided to undertake an experiment with one of our clients to measure the direct impact of Recognition education on the usage of the Recognition program we had implemented in the company. The primary driver behind the experiment was to improve the usage of the Recognition components - specifically the Pure Recognition (Thank You Cards), Spot Awards (worth Rs.500) and a nomination based Award (both individual and team based).

We had divided the organization into 10 logical groups (based on Business units, departments), identified the usage of these Recognition components over the previous 4 month period. We then scheduled Recognition Education sessions for people managers in each of these 10 groups over a 4 week period. The session was a short 60 minute high impact presentation "Real Leadership using Real Recognition" and focused on sensitizing managers why Recognition is critical for the employees they manage and what is the RoI they would get for the effort in Recognizing their employees. We then measured the Recognition activities within each group for a period of 8 weeks post the 60 minute Recognition Education session. The % monthly increase range in usage in each of the 10 groups was the following:

1) Nomination Based Awards: 5-25%
2) Spot Awards: 24-44%
3) Thank You Cards: 30-75%

Clearly the % increases were significant (of course some of the numbers are very high because of the really poor usage within the groups earlier). The data point that was most impactful to me was the % increase in Thank You Cards being given. The education had helped people managers understand that giving someone a "Thank You" Card without any monetary value attached or a tangible gift associated, could still be very meaningful if done in the right manner with the right intent. The company is now on its path towards creating a strong Recognition culture - the key would be to sustain the momentum created and ensure that the usage levels stay where they are currently.