Ten Commandments for employee care

Engaged employees produce exceptional results. We need to have employee care in order o ensure their engagement at work. How can we make it happen? Today’s column deals with Ten Commandments for employee care.

Employee care for higher engagement

Employee engagement has become a buzz word in management circles, mainly due to its attractiveness as a tool in getting work done. What do we mean by employee engagement? Interestingly, it means different things to different people.

According to research by Macey and Schneider, the meaning of employee engagement is ambiguous among both academic researchers and among practitioners. It captures the essence of employees’ head, hands and heart involvement in work.

It refers to employee’s psychological state (e.g. one’s identification with the organisation), his/her disposition (e.g. one’s positive feeling towards the organisation) and performance (e.g. one’s level of discretionary effort). In brief, it captures affective (feeling), cognitive (thinking) and behavioural (acting) dimensions of an employee.

Clarity on commandments

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a commandment is an authoritative direction or instruction to do something. In the context of employee care, this direction may come from leaders of an organisation. Or, in a very broader sense it can be viewed as a set of guidelines to ensure employee engagement through proper employee care.

Ten Commandments for employee care

Having discussed the fundamentals, let’s look into the Ten Commandments for employee care, which s located in the Sri Lankan socio-cultural context. These are based on the work by Seijts and Crim, two researchers of organisational behaviour offer interesting insights through what they termed as “10 Cs for employee engagement”. Essentially, they deal with what corporate leaders should do in order to strengthen employee engagement. The key focus in each C can further be expanded into possible initiatives. Let’s discuss the details with local realities in mind.

One: Thou shalt CONNECT with employees

Leaders must show that they value employees. This can be done by maintaining open channels so that employees can approach their superiors to discuss matters in a mutually-beneficial manner. Disconnect leads to disengagement, with dire consequences.

There are global best practices in this connection. Sir Richard Branson in his Virgin group of companies has aptly demonstrated this connectivity. In the local scene, I can remember an HR director of a leading multinational having lunch with factory workers in the workers’ canteen was a breakthrough in their stagnant employee relations.

Two: Thou shalt provide a CAREER for employees

Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. They should show employees the way forward in terms of career advancements and options, in motivating them to perform in exceeding expectations. As one leading multinational claim, “we do not offer jobs, but careers, the careers that brand them for life”.

Providing a job is easy, and a career is difficult. As the Gallop consulting advocates, what is needed are stay, say and strive. Career planning has to be spearheaded by the respective employee, supported by the Human Resources.

Three: Thou shalt ensure CLARITY for employees

Leaders must communicate a clear vision. It should be shared and supported. This includes building awareness on vision, mission and strategic priorities among the employees, in ensuring that they are clear about why they are doing what they do.

It reminds me of the famous story of how President Kennedy went to NASA complex, during the peak of moon mission in late sixties. He saw a minor worker sweeping the floor, and had asked her what she was doing. Her response was stunning. “I am helping to send a man to the moon.” This is indeed a classic case of connecting to the organisation vision with clarity.

I remember conducting a session for a bunch of branch managers of a leading bank in Sri Lanka. I asked them whether they know their bank’s vision. Half of them could remember it with few key words. I asked again whether they had shared it with their branch team. Most of them said yes. I told them that would give them a challenge. I will be coming to one of their branches, randomly pick five people and ask them whether they know what the vision of the bank is. Their faces changed, and only one person had the guts to ask: “Ny the way, on what day are you exactly planning to come?”

Four: Thou shalt CONVEY expectations

Leaders should clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their functioning in the organisation. This involves ensuring proper conduct of the performance appraisals by training the managers as to how to give constructive feedback objectively. As the communication gurus advocate, what matters more is how you say than what you say.

The whole thing boils down to what we call “Para-verbal” communication. In short, words plus plus. Effective face-to-face communication involves, words, tonality and body language. I have seen Sri Lankan managers create avoidable issues simply because of the inappropriate tone of voice.

Five: Thou shalt CONGRATULATE employees

Leaders give recognition to others. Exceptional leaders do so a lot. Appreciating of good performance of employees by reward and recognition, in a timely fashion is something essential. Gone are the days of “employee of the year” or “employee of the quarter” or even “employee of the month”. What matters is giving due recognition to the “employee of the moment”.

I have seen there is a popular myth in Sri Lanka. Whenever someone does something exceptionally good, some managers tend to say, “That’s why they are paid for.” It is a flimsy excuse for not giving proper recognition where it is due.

Six: Thou shalt show how employees CONTRIBUTE to bottom-line

Leaders should make sure that employees know how their contribution matters. This can be done by introducing a transparent mechanism of objective setting and then connecting individual objectives to broad organisational objectives. Tested and proven mechanisms such as Balanced Scorecard can be handy in this respect.

Easily 50 per cent of Balanced Scorecard implementations have ended up becoming failures. The whole issue here is the absence of a transparent mechanism which creates controversies in the minds of their key stakeholders.

Seven: Thou shalt CONTROL employees where necessary

Leaders need to set the boundaries with the buy-in of the employees. This involves setting the boundaries of activities with proper systems in place with the involvement of employees, so that they are a part of the decision making process. Modern day control is more viewed as a way of ensuring consistency through conformance, as opposed to coercive courses of action.

Not having any control with perfect trust is one extreme. Having awfully tight controls is the other end of the continuum. What is required is a pragmatic approach in line with corporate priorities.

Eight: Thou shalt ensure employees COLLABORATE with each other

Great leaders are team builders. They create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration. By doing so, they ensure that teamwork is given due prominence with associated mechanisms such as team-based rewards to strengthen it.  Sri Lankan scenario with this respect is somewhat satisfactory. Working in collaboration needs boosting, with more emphasis on win-win and give-and-take.

Nine: Thou shat show CREDIBILITY though one’s words and deeds

Leaders should strive to maintain organisational reputation and demonstrate high ethical standards. They should demonstrate being ethical in decision making, so that employees will strengthen their admiration of the organisation. Credibility can be compared to a glass tumbler. Once it is cracked, it is irreparable.  Credible leaders are always assets to their respective organisations.

Ten: Thou shalt show CONFIDENCE in employees

Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high performance standards. It involves practicing “walking the talk” at all levels so that employees have better trust and confidence on their superiors. That has far reaching consequences, including better relationships and higher results.

The above 10 Commandments discussed above should be appropriately blended with organisational priorities, with sound HR practices in place. Once all 10 Commandments are taken seriously and obeyed the organisation is well geared to move forward in the path to progress.

Way forward

Peter Drucker stated the need to have a structured approach towards evaluating their performance. However is about the need to have a broader perspective towards work. Employee engagement should by no means confine the employees to the workplace, depriving them of their family and social obligations. In research literature, higher job security, increased social support and the existence of family friendly policies have been shown to reduce the incidence of work-family conflict.

Whilst striving for employee engagement, ensuring a proper balancing of other aspects needs careful consideration. Best wishes in advance for Sri Lankan managers who already have witnessed the 30-year-old war coming to an end.

(Dr. Ajantha Dharmasiri is a learner, teacher, trainer, researcher, writer and a thinker in the areas of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. He can be reached on [email protected].)