My People. My Strength.

The performance of a manager can never exceed the collective performance of the team he/she supports. Many managers tend to pay attention to the high performers who continue to achieve results. Such leadership style often leads to having disjointed engagements among unhappy employees, which eventually starts impacting the overall productivity of the team. Most people who leave the company would do so as they don’t feel appreciated by their supervisors.

A Qualtrics study shows that happy employees are 5x more likely to stay with the company. Another Gallup study shows that 85% of the global workforce doesn’t feel they are actively engaged in their workplace. Hence to improve the collective performance of the team we serve, as a manager, we must always continue to nurture the workplace relationships and figure out creative ways to keep our employees happy and engaged.

Since I moved into my current role two years back, one of my weekly goals has been to allocate a few hours engaging in candid conversations with our skip-level employees. My team is scattered across 38 countries worldwide. I instituted an open-text policy where the employees can reach out to me anytime via direct SMS. Over time the ice started to thaw, and it became apparent that many frontline people felt that their direct supervisors were not spending adequate time coaching them to be successful in their career. We come from a diverse set of cultural upbringings. Unlike US corporate culture, there are places where it is customary for employees to stand-up when their supervisors call, as a sign of respect. While discussing with their supervisors, I also realized that there is a misalignment in their perception of the situation, as the supervisors seemed genuinely committed to make their staff successful in their workplace.

These incoherent feedbacks encouraged me to start thinking differently in order to bring the people I serve closer to each other. A Gallup study shows that 57% of employees in the US suffer from high work-related stress, which naturally impedes their ability to be happy at work. Hence, in order to increase both employee satisfaction and internal engagements, we formally launched a “People & Culture Transformation” task force. We identified 9 programs geared towards improving the overall work experience for our people worldwide. Each of the programs was being led by volunteers from our front-line teams. These leaders were then empowered to drive an inside-out culture shift focusing on #PeopleFirst. The 9 programs are highlighted below,

1. Internalization Focuses on increasing the sense of belongingness among the employees. We made it easy for the people to collaborate with each other and remain connected to their respective leadership chain. We highlighted the importance of engaging with Employee Networking groups, both inside and outside of the company.
2. Shoshin Mentoring Shoshin is a word borrowed from Zen Buddhism, meaning "beginner's mind. Shoshin capitalizes on our collective leadership maturity. This mentoring program allowed our people to select mentors outside of their immediate supervisory chain. Simultaneously, it enabled our global managers to invest quality time engaging with a diverse set of individuals outside of their own team. 
3. Rewards & Recognition For a corporate citizen, a pat on the back for doing a good job means more than what money can buy. We added to it a small burst of cash rewards in recognition to major accomplishments. Instead of waiting till the year-end review to distribute monetary incentives, our managers now reward their people throughout the year.
4. Skills Pivot Corporate training programs often consist of generic content. They do not necessarily conform to the career aspirations of the frontline employees. Hence, we created a parallel training program with over 2000 hours of content, 97% of which was hand-picked from social networking workshops, i.e. LinkedIn, YouTube etc. Our employees, in collaboration with their supervisors and the Shoshin mentors, selected the training paths that suited their respective career aspirations.
5. Immersion Day The idea of this hackathon-like, day-long event came from one of the TDP college recruits. A few years back, I had the unique opportunity to meet her during a “shark-tank” event. Under her guidance, we created a platform for our employees to present their ideas that are geared towards solving a few real-life customer problems. 
6. MyHealth 85% of the managers think that remote teams will now become the new norm (Find Stack). This summer, to encourage living a healthier lifestyle, we launched a comprehensive health awareness program called “Fit4Summer”. In just 3 months, we recorded over 47 million steps worldwide. 
7. Diversity & Inclusion Study shows that a diverse team is 2x more productive than a non-diverse team. We drove networking engagements focusing on people of color, female leadership development etc., while promoting the importance of “male allyship” across the organization. As a result, we were able to position many skilled female staff in critical roles with high leadership visibility.
8. Career Coaching A Randstad study shows that 58% of employees are likely to quit work due to negative office politics. Today we are developing a 1x1 Coaching Culture engagement model that provides self-guided engagement workflow to both supervisors and employees. I will elaborate more on this later in another note.
9. External Visibility Often our employees get utterly engrossed in completing their daily chores. They neither have the time nor the strength to look beyond their immediate responsibility. We continuously promote our people to network outside of their comfort zone. We encourage them to be active in social media and inspire them to network with their peer groups.

As we launched these 9 programs, each team was tasked to define a set of KPIs to measure progress. A leader’s desire to transform the culture often fails to provide a sustaining impact in the lives of his/her people. Hence, having a clear goal enables the leader to ensure that these initiatives are truly benefiting the frontline employees.

Almost 24 months later, I am both grateful and proud to say that our employee NPS reflects the continued focus on People and Culture Transformation, as evidenced by the soaring numbers across the 4 Culture Pillars, i.e., #ServeCustomerFirst, #ActBoldly, #MoveFaster, and #WinAsOne.