Employee Engagement-Perspectives of Silly HR

Disclaimer:

The below viewpoints need to be taken as the viewpoints of Silly HR and no way connected to what I had been through in the last 3 months at TISS (they taught me more than enough HR jargons to pass off as a HR professional ;) ). Not a single penny/paisa would be given to anyone who would like to sue me for my views :P

Well to start with, let’s see how a typical employee engagement program is done in companies

Say if the employee strength in our silly HR’s Company is 1000 and HR strength be 50 among them. Now the HRs as usual as elsewhere in the world introduced a survey to get to know the whether the employees like to go for Mid-day marathon run during summers in Chennai or go for a trek to Tora-Bora caves in Afghanistan. Now 25 people responded in the survey out of which 20 (Incidentally these 20 belong to the HR department) are interested in going for Summer Marathon Run in Chennai( God save them) ..when the results are presented to Business leaders for implementation they typically look like this

Now for the Top management, when they look at the results it appears that 80% of employees are interested in going for a summer Marathon to Chennai ( Are all the employee gone crazy or planning for a mass suicides ????) and even when the company spends considerable amount of time and money on the event , the end results would be counterproductive (with the employees end up wondering whether the top management had gone crazy or what )

So what can be the solution for this ,

First and foremost the HR department should get the trust of the employees , in the sense employees should perceive HR as someone who not only make big talk but also do

And how can this be achieved???

Starting with something small : Instead of going for a full-fledged employee engagement activities involving huge amounts and time in terms of banners, planning etc.. Start with something small which would not take much time from employees and which can get a maximum participation and fun at the same time like impromptu JAM sessions at coffee machine meetings, giving a wacky title to the manager etc. We should first understand clearly what is the objective behind conducting the employee engagement activities? Is it make the employees more connected to the organization or is it just as a stress buster. So the activities which ever are conducted should be clear of the reason behind them..

For now I am feeling hungry and cannot think of more except for the food in our Dining Hall (why don’t they try to surprise and prepare good food for a change L ), so guys (also Girls ) feel free to give wings to your thoughts and write your suggestions in the comments