Unleashing the power of people through employee engagement: The CDF model

Tuesday, 8 April 2014 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

What does an organisation do when it comes to the end of the line? When every possible avenue has been explored, cutting down processes and pruning costs only to find that even more needs to be done. Dr. Dan Seevaratnam, CEO of Watawala Plantations PLC (a Sunshine Enterprise), in association with CARE International has come up with a unique, out-of-the-box thinking, which he says would be an effective way to increase productivity and add to the bottom line of the plantation industry, while meeting the natural aspiration of the workers. He considers this newly established Community Development Forums (CDFs), as the answer to the problem, especially in a scenario where Ceylon Tea is losing its global competitiveness, due to outpricing itself in the market place. Speaking at the recently held Business Excellence Summit at the BMICH, he said: “While the global consumer is demanding better quality at a lower cost, Sri Lankan plantation workers are becoming more educated, demanding more autonomy, more participation and willingness to take on more responsibility. Therefore, self-managed teams, worker engagement and empowerment of our workers seem to be the logical way forward.” Seevaratnam says that more proactive companies in the sector have successfully met aspirations of their plantation workforce with the introduction of initiatives such as quality circles; continuous improvement teams and Kaizen teams etc. Watawala too has successfully tried out many such participatory initiatives, but their CDF initiative is expected to be the most successful of them all. CDF concentrates mainly on empowering the worker and demonstrates how an empowered workforce benefits business. “The majority of workers reside on the plantations, and their livelihood is intricately intertwined with their work-life. Therefore what we have done is created ‘mini-parliaments’ that facilitate dialogue between workers, management and the broader community.” He said that establishing the CDFs has given Watawala Plantations greater productivity, resulting in a 10-20% increase in yields reduction of 16 management hours per week otherwise spent on mediating disputes as well as improved employee perception of economic well-being. The CDF system allows space for open sharing and debate. One CDF is set up on each participating estate, giving workers the opportunity to address challenges around working conditions alongside Estate Managers. The CEO says that this has greatly improved their contribution towards a more sustainable plantation. The CDFs, which have been designed by the workers, local community and stakeholders, to benefit workers their communities and plantation companies, have opened up new channels of communication across the plantation region, serving as a forum where collective decisions about community development priorities and working conditions are negotiated in a transparent manner. “With the long term sustainability of one of Sri Lanka’s most important industries accounting for 19% of the nation’s foreign exchange and providing direct employment to a workforce of over 310,000 at risk, it was important to find a mechanism to solve the problem. Although global issues also have an impact on the tea industry, the internal challenges tea plantations are faced with, are manageable and the CDF system goes a long way towards achieving this. CDFs provide a means to identify improvements in community development. They take on the task of establishing links with local government entities, facilitating access to national identity cards, birth or marriage certificates or pension entitlements. By getting access to services which they are entitled, they also improve their well-being,” says Seevaratnam. He says that one way to measure the cumulative value of benefits through worker empowerment is through a social return on investment (SROI) analysis, which will monetise the outcomes of a project, estimating return on investment (ROI) for every unit of currency invested compared to what would have occurred without the investment. An independent SROI analysis conducted by Watawala Plantations found that for every rupee invested in worker empowerment programming, there was a marked ROI to workers, to the tea industry and the community as a whole, with an impressive overall social ROI of 42%. It has been reported that; Engaged organisations grew profits as much as three times faster than their competitors. Highly engaged organisations have the potential to reduce turnover by 87% and improve performance by 20%.