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How To Increase Retention With Workplace Aura

One of the most important aspects of employee retention is providing a comfortable work environment and culture. The employees should feel safe and comfortable in their workplace. No one wants to walk into a room and feel uncomfortable every day. This can be accomplished by making the workplace personal and welcoming. It is important that the office is well-lit and properly ventilated. Designing a comfortable work environment is about aesthetics; careful attention to its design can boost the employee happiness. The office culture should match the industry.

Entrepreneurs recommend that the employees should be offered skill enhancement training. The changes in employment laws, latest technologies and new selling techniques are some of the reasons to keep the permanent employees in the loop. Seminars and classes provide training to the employees about the updated techniques. Computerized training, DVDs, books, articles, audiotapes and pamphlets also help in acquiring the desired knowledge. Reviews or evaluations help in assessing the employee performance and their enthusiasm towards the goals set by the company.

A lot about the employees can be known only by listening to them. They may have interesting ideas or business plans that can be implemented which will make them feel like they are also a part of the entire business process. Anyone can spare a few minutes from their busy schedules to find out what is going on with the employees professional and personal lives. Recognizing the accomplishments of the employees is most important. Awarding a prize or praising employees for their performance is one of the most effective ways to make them feel appreciated, which will make them want to stay in the company for a longer time.

Offering a competitive salary package helps in keeping the employees happy and satisfied. The salaries are based on employee skill, experience, work seniority and demand. However, high salary is not always the only deciding factor about employees seeking employment elsewhere. There are other benefits that they often look for like health insurance, life insurance or a retirement-savings plan and these are essential in retaining employees.

Constructive fun like innovative workshops, quiz/other contests and party games in an inclusive environment removes pressure from a hierarchal workplace. Everyone is able to decompress, have fun, share their stories, and work together while becoming closer as a unit. Most of the skills that are needed in the employees cannot be effectively retained and implemented without repetition and practice. Retaining employees is as important as maintaining the bottom line or increasing scope of influence because workforce represents the essence of a business regardless of the specific niche, or industry.

Hence do take good care of your Most Important M (men).

Success And Productivity Are Closely Related

An organization’s culture is determined by its beliefs and comprises of everything it does. It not only affects the way in which the organization is managed but also the manner in which it processes the products and provides services to the customers. Work culture is continuously subject to change and is very fragile. When the culture of an organization is spoken of, the behaviour patterns of the employees and their standards that bind it together are usually referred. Actions speak louder than words and the behaviour patterns of employees are most strongly influenced by the leaders of the organization.

Productivity is closely related to the culture of an organization and the habits of the employees. There are more than 7 billion people on Earth, so there is no chance that a single model can suit everyone but there are methods that work for the majority of people. In the past, women would spend a lot of time in the kitchen trying to make dinner. They had to do everything manually while today a number of tools are used such as mixer, blender and dishwasher. These electrical appliances have decreased the time for cooking while the productivity has increased. This is a life hack which implies that it is better to benefit from the progress made and utilize the right tools to master the performance.

Productivity is the technique of getting the company’s products and services to the customer with the best quality and at the lowest possible cost. It involves customer needs and labour relations. Good management plays an important role in productivity which leads to the success of a company. If the management is to transform the work climate into an ever-lasting culture for success, it should focus on the various areas of improvement such as decision-making structure, organizational clarity, Human Resource development and relationship of the Management to culture.

The goals and plans of the organization should be perceived by the members in order to achieve success. The main purpose of the structure is to initiate decision making and facilitate the ideas into reality. Corporate culture emerges from the top and hence the top management’s responsibility is to recruit, train and teach managers well so that they, in turn, provide role models for the employees who are in their charge. The manner, in which these managers behave, the way they lead and think, sets a climate and eventually a culture for success.

If the combination of capital, values, beliefs, creativity, and human resource management of an organization is not success oriented, then the outcome will be a failure. The quality of products and quality service influence a company’s cultural values. The production practices and products reflect the creativeness and innovation. A successful company always treats its people with dignity and respect. Successful companies follow the basic values and beliefs. Providing top quality products or services virtually affects every function of these companies and they hold this belief that it is essential to achieve excellence. They are responsive to the customer needs and guidelines are established that provide regular feedback and coaching by the supervisors. These companies have frequent open communications and a feeling of informality. They emphasize on a go-with-the-flow attitude.

Being Well Ensures Being Successful: A Workplace Initiative

Maintaining a positive vibe and enthusiastic ambience at workplace is the key for successful business proceedings. Many times it is seen that the physical and mental illness of the staffs affects the growth of the company. The most common cause that damages a firm’s proceedings is non attendance. This is mainly caused by physical weakness, mood disorder, depression or some other illness resulting in drop in performance meter of the employee and degrading of moral at the workplace.

Now, what begs the question is how exactly well being of employee effect the company’s prosperity. It is statistically approved through different office surveys that the employees working under poor conditions and provisions are more susceptible to non attendance and lack of aspiration while in case of well-conditioned employees this disorder is quite low. The former situation likely to deteriorate the turnover of the company while the latter situation will no way degrade the turnover but may also improve the stakes for the firm.

With the business boom happening all over the globe, more and more offices are coming into play meaning more workforce environments are being formed. Under these situations, it is of utmost importance to keep the physical and mental condition of the employees afresh. If the employees are deprived in either of the conditions the drive for accomplishment for the company will slow down. For this very reason, today’s firms are always encouraging their work place employees to keep themselves fit and fine which will ultimately beneficial for creating positive vibe for the firm and in its path of progress. The organizations nowadays are providing their staffs with health check gadgets for their fitness regime, exercise and spa outings, recreational activities and other stuff for the employees’ well being.

Some of the methods for employee well-being initiative are discussed below

It is important to lookout for employee’s fitness regime

The company can keep track of employees’ fitness through mobile apps and also pass awareness messages and alerts to them during slack.

Keep the employees busy in extracurricular activities

By arranging periodical recreational activities like sports and others in the veil of competition will ignite workplace rivalry and keep them tracked on fitness regime.

3. Encourage healthy living among the staff

Companies are aware today that the health care costs are increasing day by day and healthy employees will bring in higher efficiency and hence healthy production. It is imperative to take proper care in order to maintain wellness of the employees. The following steps could be taken to encourage good health among the staff:

Blood tests can be regularly organised by the companies for the employees.
A doctor can be called upon to talk on issues related to health care.
Yoga classes/camps can be conducted.

It is important to give employees a vitality boost every now and then

The firm needs to do all to keep the moral high in the work place to spread the business further. Occasional remodelling of the work place will light up the employees’ moods and inspire them to work more efficiently; let’s face it everyone wants something new in the daily grind.

The all purpose office will realise dream

The people nowadays are fitness aware but restrict themselves to equipment exercise like gymming, swimming, aerobics, cycling etc. The offices providing these facilities along with recreation centres and nutritional yet good meals as amenities will definitely get cent percent dedication and efforts from their employees, catapulting the firm to the next level.

How To Protect One’s Brand On The Social Media

The social media is the trending and the most liked mass communication platform of today’s world. Almost anybody and everybody linked to the internet is part of some of the social media sites. From people to companies and from institutes to governments everyone is on the social networking for either spreading awareness or promoting brand or any other purpose. But like everything, social media also has its own set of perils. Social media is also a platform for deliberate cyber crimes that could tarnish ones brand identity and set up fraud accounts for financial benefits.

But for this, one should not restrain from promoting one’s brand because that will harm the progress of the business. To avoid such predicament the firm should take steps to protect the welfare of its brand. Some such steps are discussed below.

The firm should devise a sound social media policy

By implementing a social media policy the firm will have a clear method of operation on the social media platform that will ensure protection of brand form malicious attacks and campaigns. Social media policy is a set of rule and regulations of the firm that all the works must abide by. This can be defined as a summed up form of different notions like mission and vision of the firm, social responsibility of the firm, security and industrial protocols of the firm, brand practises and guidelines and lastly, the firm laws.

The firm should educate its employees accordingly

The social media policy of a firm will be able to protect the brand only when the employees are knowledgeable about it. The taskforce must be made aware of the brand’s social media policy, its pros and cons and risk management schemes.

The password should be a difficult one

The easiest way to compromise one’s social account is by protecting it by a very predictable run on the mill password. Password is the primary wall of defence for social media account and it must be made almost inexpendable, if not completely. The ways to secure a password are to make it complex by lengthening it while incorporating special characters and alphanumeric. Two factor login, where one has to pass through two gateways like password and Captcha/OTP, or centralized password managers can also be used to secure the social account.

The firm must have a social activity monitoring system

The monitoring system will serve for both looking out for fraudulent activities and keeping track of promotion of brand and traffic inflow in the account. The monitoring system will also facilitate customer reporting and post approval systems in order to keep vigilance on brand defamation and impersonation.

The firm must stop hashtag hijackers beforehand

Hashtags are campaigning part of a brand identity and hijackers use them to defame a brand’s name by circulating ill rumours. The firm could prevent such happenings by promoting all possible hashtags from the very start of any campaigning with a neutral yet positive vibe.

Well when all said and done, a social media contingency plan must be placed at heart’s space at all times, because it is better to prevent such happenings than to cure them. After all, a brand’s identity is its main asset.

Workforce diversity — Still a long way to go!!

Diversity was never in more limelight than it is today. This is so because lagging behind in incorporating diversity is not considered just the unwillingness to spend money, but it denotes that the management doesn’t want to march to the tune.

Yes, the organization gets the image of “slow-to-change.” There is a direct impact of this on the company image and employee engagement.

In light of this, more and more companies are reviewing their diversity programs and making necessary changes to rebuild and revive the same. Those who have never taken it seriously in the past are also working on it seriously.

Experts say that diversity ROI is difficult to calculate if you look at it from the perspective of tangible benefit. However, there are innumerable intangible benefits in the long run.

All this ultimately helps in building the corporate image and establishing the company as a serious player in the field of workforce diversity.

The definition of diversity has changed

Before we have a dip test of a few leading companies of global stature, let’s understand how diversity today is different from the past?

It is no longer restricted to creating a workspace inclusive of gender, race, and sexual orientation. Rather, it has extended up to including talents with different problem-solving skills as well.

Companies with a future-thinking perspective understand the dangers of ignoring diversity. Hence, they constantly review their retention and hiring practices.

Even the standard operating norms also get changed from time to time to include and accommodate the changing diversity scenario.

Does it mean ‘all is well’ everywhere? Well, looking at a few cases that hit the news headlines recently, it doesn’t seem so. There have been many cases where big companies were found ignoring the basic diversity norms.

Case #1: Google and Facebook

Well, one of the biggest name today is “Google!” According to the annual diversity report published by the company, the tech giant is far behind as far as diversity is concerned.

The company is largely dominated by male employees (white). Asians contribute almost 30 percent, and African Americans are about two percent.

Facebook also shares the similar trends. The diversity report published last year revealed that the half of the workforce is white and hardly two percent are African American.

Though both giants officially assured that concrete steps will be taken to increase diversity, the real impact can be seen after looking at the subsequent reports.

Since there will be pressure to release the data publically, we can assume that something better will emerge in the coming years.

The trends have been similar for decades. Hence, it will take some time to change the situation. It will be possible only if companies put sincere and honest efforts to correct the disparity.

SOME LOCAL FLAVOUR-

Case #2: Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and Pepsico India

Indian companies are realizing the importance of workforce diversity more today as compared to the old days. Bajaj Allianz runs all-women branch which focuses on female employees to make them insurance experts. However, there is still a long way to go as far as implementing diversity up to the fullest extent.

Pepsico India has almost one-fourth women employees and even at the higher management levels the company has sufficient representation of Women.

As far as other diversities are concerned, they are not much significant in India. For example, racial diversity doesn’t exist at all and diversity based on the sexual orientation is still a taboo in the Indian society.

Hence, the studies conducted in our country are predominantly focused on the gender diversity. In companies like Pepsico India, the corporate policy looks women with a unique perspective and approach. The HR feels that the significant representation of women helps in healthier, well-balanced teams and better decisions.

Research projects conducted by top-rated organizations such as McKinsey point out that companies that strive for gender diversity are more likely to have better returns than the national industry medians as compared to those who don’t bother about gender diversity at all.

Bajaj Allianz HR feels that gender diversity gives an opportunity to tap the vast talent pool of women. The company calls it a ‘win-win’ situation for all.

It is a fact that companies are looking for a change in their perspective and making sincere and honest efforts as well.

Conclusion

It is needless to say that in spite of so many claims and commitments by corporate houses about maintaining workforce diversity in their respective organizations, still there is a long way to go.

If we see such a pity situation in the biggest companies in the world, it is difficult to imagine the same in small and medium level companies.

With the focus on diversity worldwide, companies are altering their hiring and retention policies accordingly. Experts feel that it is more of an attitude issue than policy.

Even if you make stringent norms about it, the situation will not change unless there is a change in the mindset of the people.

Hopefully, the situation will change eventually, and we will see more dynamic and diverse workforce everywhere.