Learning employee engagement lessons driving in India.
Normally I don’t like the word drivers paired with employee engagement because it implies that we can drive engagement rather than invite engagement. But I have been thinking about the lessons from watching drivers in India navigage their way.
I have only been in India for 3 days and just in Delhi and Agra. We still have Udaipur, Mumbai, Pune, and Goa to visit. What has stood out for me is driving through the streets and roads of India. I want to be cautious of generalizations but I have learned a few lessons about employee engagement as I watch the movement of traffic. As you read these statements, think about how they apply to work.
Employee engagement 7 drivers:
- Be assertive not aggressive in declaring where you want to go.
- There is more room on the road for people than we sometimes think.
- Keep a watchful eye for everyone around you.
- Create new lanes where it makes more sense to have 5 lanes than 3.
- Use your horn to alert others and let them know where you are.
- Don’t just look ahead, look beside you and look behind you.
- You probably have more space than you think so keep moving ahead.
David Zinger is an employee engagement expert spending 3 weeks in India and working at learning new lessons in employee engagement.
From my point of view there are other drivers for the employees’ engagement meanwhile we have to differentiate between the engagement of the new joiners and the established employees as the following:
Engagement for the new joiners:
We have to make sure that we are doing the proper orientation and the new joiner is familiar with the organization circumstances as normally the new joiners have the following:
• A desire to go back to where they had worked. Because they had a circle of friends and people that had hung out with them for lunch or drinks after work. Social connection.
• Lack of local connection
• Trailing spouses and trailing children
• people leave early is not knowing how to get the job done
• Discomfort or fear of failure. Particularly as you start to have the stumbling blocks of not knowing how.
• Solely on poor fit to the job or to the company. As we’ve seen companies ratchet up the efforts to attract people
• Companies ratchet up the efforts to attract people, often they are overselling opportunities or mis-selling the culture of the company to try and attract talent.
Engagement for the established employees:
To maintain or increase the engagement for the established employees we have to consider the followings considerations to maintain a high engagement rate and reducing the turnover as the sometimes the established employees having the following:
• Lacks of perceived opportunity- some of the established employees haven’t a perceived opportunity.
• a very good working conditions as the poor working conditions is one of the driver for increasing the turnover
• Individual differences. What I mean by individual differences is that sometimes there are changes in our own personal lives that lead us to decide that we have to leave
Very well said Nabil.
Pretty amazing to see how you make the connect between the “order in chaos” on India’s streets, and employee engagement! Yes, while a lot of things can improve on our roads and safety is still a prime concern, I agree that a little bit of assertiveness, proactiveness, sharing of space and understanding of the constraints we work under, makes a huge difference to the overall situation – and I can totally see how similar behaviour can impact performance and engagement in office too! Cheers!
And you my friend are one of the great drivers that I had a chance to witness. You demonstrated engaged driving!
I proud i am indian coz taj is in india. that is so happens. thanks for a good picture of taj.
Corporate AV vendor