Employee engagement is the corner stone of any collaboration – Part 2
Our first blog covered employee/manager relationship. Being a multipart series blog, in this Part 2 we shall delve into Think tank groups & Discussion forums. In a regular work environment, organizations have a formal and in some cases informal group meetings. Mostly these are chaired by their business heads, project leads or department heads. These form a vital aspect for the functioning of the teams. The employees share their thoughts, views, new ideas etc. The invisible thread here is the sense of relativity. This is a result of meeting them in person and getting their opinions.
The invisible thread is too stretched in a remote work model. It’s important for the employees to feel engaged. The question that might arise, is, why do we need one more discussion forum or think tank group. In common, most of these groups discuss about problems like printer issues, pantry issues or project related issues. These issues are to be dealt with. A right think tank or discussion forum helps employees. It gives them a chance to present, discuss and comment on any of the tactical, operational or strategic content. For example, forming a discussion forum to discuss “Betterment of employee engagement during CoviD”. This shall make them to give suggestions, ideas apart from their regular work. The benefit of this are
- Builds the Brand and connection to the brand
- Builds the engagement within the teams and organisation
- Communication – Brings in value of employees
- A platform to understand current vision, challenges and plans
In a remote working model,the organisations should have tools, to enable the same. A collaboration platform like REMO shall help the organisation to achieve the 3 major goals in employee engagement.
- Communicate – It keeps your employee to communicate easily and voice their opinions, views, ideas etc. This helps organisation to get to know their team, employees better.
- Collaborate – As the employees communicates, you engage with them which builds a positive culture.
- Converge – Convergence helps to get employees committed. Organisations can recognize their effort and congraluate them using appreciation forum or widgets.
This becomes one of the aspect to build and manage the culture of the organisation. As mentioned in our earlier blog, related to Remote Work Framework, culture is one of the main pillars. In a remote work model, to manage culture better, organisation have to be looking into the 5 key elements
- Brand Recognition
- Relativity
- Trust
- Transparency
- Inclusiveness
The activities for managing culture of an organisations in an online environment are as follows.
- Constant and active engagement with employees by getting their feedbacks, opinions.
- Have regular discussion forums, employee opinion and satisfaction surveys.
- Publish monthly & fortnightly updates on the corporate news, goals and progress
- Thinks tank groups and blogs by business heads, management team. These helps to have an open forum discussion. This elevates the employee engagement.
- Gamification of the employee engagement scenarios.
As employees speak, organisations should make them strive to spearhead the goals. In our next series, we shall look into line of sight & ask for help. Also, we would see an update on the WIP remote work framework. Do share your thoughts on the remote work model and employee engagement in this scenario.
