Employee Engagement project report

Project Report on Employee Engagement

For a deep inclination into the management concept, practical training is an important task. Theoretical knowledge without practical knowledge is of a little value.

Theoretical knowledge gives us the fundamental concepts of management and practical training teaches us those tact’s and skills, which are successfully employed to capture today’s competitive market. Theoretical lectures must be correlated with practical training to make learning process more effective and to provide a platform to judge and apply theoretical knowledge to practical situation. Practical training thus plays an important role in developing and sharpening one’s skills in the field of business management and administration. I prepared this report for my own three years course in PGDMA.

The topic of my report is “PROCESS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AT RELIGARE TECHNOLOGIES”. This report reveals around the processes adopted in the organization and its influence on the employee commitment.

Acknowledgement

As I write this acknowledgement, I must clarify that this is not just a formal acknowledgement but also a sincere note of thanks and regards from my side I feel a deep sense of gratitude and affection for those who were associated with the project and without whose cooperation and guidance this research could not have been conducted properly. I have learnt number of virtues for business and for life Ms Ritika Sharma without guidance and encouragement: this research could not have been completed successfully. Last but not the least I declare this effort of mine to those persons who are light of my life my father, My Mother, Friends who have been behind every successful Endeavour in my life.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Human resource executives in India continue to struggle with talent management issues, particularly retention. The quest to find the best way to retain employees has taken HR pundits through concept such as employee review, employee satisfaction and employee delights. The latest idea is “Employee Engagement”, a concept that holds, that, it is the degree to which an employee is emotionally bonded to his organization and passionate about his work that really matters

Engagement is about motivating employees to do their best. An engaged employee gives his company his hundred percent. The quality of output and competitive advantage of a company depends upon the quality of its people.

It has been proved that there is an intrinsic link between employee engagement customer loyalty and profitability.

When employees are effectively and positively engaged with their organization they form an emotional connection with their company. This impact their attitude towards the company’ client and thereby improves customer satisfaction and service level.

Most organization realizes today that a satisfied employee is not necessarily the best employee in terms of loyalty and productivity. It is only an engaged employee who is intellectually and emotionally bound with the organization, feels passionately about its goals and is committed towards its values who can be termed thus. He goes the extra miles beyond the basic job responsibility and is associated with the action that drives business.
Moreover in times of diminishing loyalty, employee engagement is a powerful retention strategy. The fact that it has a strong impact on the bottom-line adds to its significance.

A successful employee engagement helps create a community at the workplace and not just work force. As organize action globalize and become more dependent on technology in a virtue working environment, there is a greater need to connect and engage with employees to provide them with an organizational identity. Especially in Indian culture this becomes more relevant given the community feeling which organization provide in our society.

There are a lot of HR things they are called fads. Those are bandwagons upon which we hope perhaps it’s time to evaluate whether employee engagement is a fad or a new knowledge domain for which HR executives can help make their companies a better place to work.

To study the impact of existing employee engagement strategy of the organization on the employees perception. To know the current level of employee engagement.

How employee engagement acts as a retention tool for Religare Technologies Ltd? What are the constituent elements of employee engagement?
How are employees engagement related to work is perceived?
To what extent is engagement related to emotional experiences and wellbeing, and why? How does engagement influence outcome variables?

Objectives of the Study

To study the impact of employee engagement practices in retaining employees. Examine the effect of engagement on individual outcomes.
To determine the level of engagement of the respondents, regarding their job. To study the various factors which influence employee engagement from HR perspective? To give suggestions to the corporate to acknowledge and enhance their Employees Engagement.

Chapter -2 Theretical Perspective

An organization’s productivity is measured not in terms of employee satisfaction but in term of employee engagement. Employees are said to be engaged when they show a positive attitude towards the organization and express a commitment to remain with the organization. It is the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards the organization and its values. An engaged employee is aware of the business context and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization.

Engagement at work was conceptualized by kahn (1990) as the harnessing of organizational members selves to their work roles. In engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances.

The second related construct to engagement in organizational behavior is the notion of flow advanced by Csikszentmihalyi (1975). He defines ‘Flow’ as the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement. Flow is the state in which there is little distinction between the self and environment. When individuals are in flow state little conscious control is necessary for their actions. Employee engagement is thus the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards their organization and its value. The organization must work to develop and nurture engagement which requires a two way relationship between employer and employee. Thus, employee engagement is a barometer that determines the association of a person with the organization.

Engagement is closely associated with the existing construction of “Job Involvement”, Brown (1996); Job Involvement is defined as the degree to which the job situation is central to the person and his/her identity. Kanungo (1982) maintained that job involvement is thought to depend on need saliency and the potential of a job to satisfy these needs. Thus job involvement results from a cognitive judgment about the need satisfying

abilities of the job. Jobs in this view are tied to one’s self image. Furthermore engagement entails the active use of emotions. Finally engagement may be thought of as an antecedent to job involvement in that individuals who experience deep engagement in their roles should come to identify with their jobs. When Khan talked about employee engagement he gave importance to all three aspects, physical, cognitive and emotional. Whereas, in job satisfaction importance has been more given to cognitive side.

According to the study of Watson Wyatt, the profit chain establishes relationship between profitability, customer loyalty and employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity.

The links in the chain (Which should be regarded as propositions) are as follows; profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer’s satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the services provided to customers. Satisfied, loyal and productive employee creates value. Employee satisfaction in turn results primarily from high quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers.

HR practioners believe that the engagement challenge has a lot to do with how employee feels about the work experience and how he/she is treated in the organization. It has a lot to do with emotions which are fundamentally related to drive bottom line success in a company. Employee engagement represents an alignment of maximum job satisfaction with maximum job contribution. By plotting a given population against these two axes, five distinct employee segments are identified-fully engaged, almost engaged, honeymooners & hamsters, crash & burn and disengaged. According to BW-HR global survey 34% of the employees in India are fully engaged and 13% disengaged. As many as 29% are almost engaged.

Focus On Employee Engagement

Engagement by Industry – With the exception of government sector which has relatively low engagement level some high tech industries (pharmacy,
biotech) score low whereas some service focused industries( retail, consumer products) score high.

Engagement by level – Studies show that people higher up in the organization experience higher engagement. However there is a drop in engagement past the vice president level.

Engagement by gender- the survey reveals a larger disparity between men and women. Men count 8% more fully engaged and 6% less disengaged than women.

Taking global figures into account, it can be said that Indian workers are among the most focused and satisfied in the world.

Categories of Employees

There are three different types of employees. They are engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged.

Engaged: engaged employees are builders. They want to know the desired expectations for their role so that they can meet and exceed them. They are naturally curious about their company and their place in it. They perform at consistently high levels. They want to use their talents and strengths at
work every day. They work with passion and they drive innovation and move their organization forward

NOT ENGAGED – Not engaged employees tend to concentrate in task s rather than the goals and outcomes they are expected to accomplish. They want to be told to do just so that they can do it and say they have finished. They focus on accomplishing tasks vs. achieving an outcome. Employees who are not engaged tend to feel that their contribution is being overlooked and their potential is not being tapped. They often feel this way because they don’t have productive relationship with their managers or with their co workers.

ACTIVELY DISENGAGED- The actively disengaged employee are the cave dwellers. They are consistently against “virtually everything”. They are not just unhappy at work they are busy acting out their unhappiness. They show seeds of negativity at opportunity. Everyday actively disengaged workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish. The problem and tensions that are fostered by actively disengaged workers can cause great damage to an organization’s functioning

The five work related roles that exist in any company are:

Job holder Role- Employee come to work and do the job that is listed in their job description. Team member roleEmployee goes above and beyond to help members of their team work towards common goals. Entrepreneur role-Employees come up with new ideas and processes and try to get those ideas implemented. Career role -Employees do things to enhance their career in the organization: they learn them adept new skills and more. Organization member role-Employees do things that promote and help the company even if it’s not part of their job or their team’s duties.

In general we find that most employees have a sense of fairness and even if their employer treats them poorly most will show up to work and do the job role. But having employees show up at work simply doing their jobs gets an employer nowhere in terms of long term competitiveness.

If all your employee show up and only do their jobs, then you are not building organizational strength and long term competitiveness through people because anyone can hire those same employees and duplicate what you are doing.

It is the synergy that comes from people working together and gathering creative ideas that leads to long term organizational wealth creation. That synergy and above and beyond behavior is evidence of employee engagement.

KNOWLEDGE-Stakeholders must be aware of what is happening, what the change or engagement effort is, and what they will see happening across the organization, to and by whom, over what they will see happening across the organization, to and by whom, over what time period. This is the “launch” part of engagement programs, and is also where much of the effort is focused often to the detriment of the subsequent stages.

ATTITUDE-Once the stakeholders have internalized the knowledge, they need to form an attitude about what they know generally this means that they must
see tangible positive evidence that the organization is serious about and committed to the programme. Evidence of behavior change emerges in key leaders, managers and employees as for example, process begin to evolve and changes are made.

BEHAVIOR-Once stakeholders have internalized the information and formed an attitude about the change and what it means to them, it is essential that they are given the tools, guidance and support needed to change their behaviors and must be visibly intolerant of behaviors that do not align with achieving the objectives behind the overall engagement efforts

Employee engagement can be defined as an employee putting forth extra discretionary efforts, as well as the likelihood of the employee being loyal and remaining with the organization over the long haul. Research shows that engaged employees perform better, put in extra efforts to help get the job done, shows a strong level of commitment to the organization, and are motivated and are optimistic about their work goals. Employers with engaged employees tend to experience low employee turnover and more impressive business outcomes.

Employee engagement is more than just the current HR buzzword it is essential. In order for organizations to meet and surpass organizational objectives, employee must be engaged. Research has proven that wholly engaged employees’ exhibit.Higher Self Motivation

Lower Absenteeism

Current studies show that the organizations are focusing on the meaning of employee engagement and how to make employees more engaged. Employees feel engaged when they find personal meaning and motivation in their work, receive positive interpersonal support, and operate in an efficient work environment. When brought engagement to the forefront and why is everyone interested in it. Most likely, the tight economy has focused attention on maximizing employee output and making the most of organizational resources. When organizations focus attention their people they are making investment in their most important resources, you can cut all the cost you want, but if you neglect your people, cutting cost would not make much of difference. Engagement is all about getting employees to “give it their all.” Some of the most successful organizations are known for their unique work environments in which employees are motivated to do their very best. These great places to work have been recognized in such list as Fortune’s 100 best Companies to work for.

The concept of engagement is a natural evolution of past research on high involvement, empowerment, job motivation, organizational commitment and trust. All of these research streams focus on the perceptions and attitudes of employees about the work environment. In some ways there are variations on the same fundamental issue. What predicts employees giving their all? Obviously, all organizations want their employees to be engaged in their work.

Tools for Employee Engagement

Several standardized tools exist for assessing employee engagement and providing feedback for making changes. These tools tend to have several common goals and characteristics. Create a simple and focused index of workplace engagement- Many organizations are using very short simple and easy to use measure that focus on the fundamentals of a great workplace, instead of conducting broad culture/climate surveys with 100 or more questions, organizations are opting for a focused approach that measures fundamental qualities of the workplace that likely will be important 10 years from now (e.g. feedback. trust, cooperation). Allow for benchmarking – Most organizations want to know how they compare to other organizations using a standard measure of engagement allow organizations to see how they compare to other companies along a simple set of fundamental work qualities. Direct Action – Engagement measure tend to be very actionable. This means that the organization can alter practices or policies to affect employees’ responses to every item measure.

Show relationship to company performance: – Without a link to company performance or other critical outcomes, measure of engagement have a little value. The whole idea behind engagement is that it leads to enhanced performance. The link to performance outcomes is a necessary underlying assumption of all engagement measures.

Engagement Predicts Organizational Success

Many studies have shown that investment in people (i.e., HR –related practices have a reliable impact on the performance of organizations. The bureau of Labour conducted a comprehensive review more than 100 studies and found that people practices have significance relationship to improvements in productivity, satisfaction and financial performance. Research has shown that when engagement scores are high employees are more satisfied, less likely to leave the organization and more productive.

Each organization is different and there are many factors that affect bottom line outcomes; however engaged scores can serve as meaningful predictors of long term success. Some organizations use engagement scores as lead measures in their HR scorecards. When an organization can show the relationship between engagement scores and bottom-line outcomes, everyone pays attention to the engagement index. Establishing this critical link between people and performance helps HR professionals prove that people –related interventions are a worthwhile investment. Employees also need to cooperate to get the job done. Partnerships across departments and within the work groups ensure that employees stay informed and get the support they need to do their job.

Making Use of Engagement

Measurement of employee engagement can have many applications in the organization. Earlier, it is mentioned that engagement could serve as a general index of HR effectiveness in an HR scorecard. Also, engagement
measures serve as an easy way to benchmark the work climate against other organizations.

Need Analysis- The fundamental issues measured in engagement provide a quick index of what leaders and HR need to do to make things better. In addition, items in engagement surveys tend to be very actionable. This means that leaders or others in the organization can take action that will affect the score on a single item. Evaluation- Many learning and performance interventions are designed to impact some aspect of engagement. When an engagement measure is used as a pre-implementation baseline, the impact of the intervention can be gauged by measuring post- implementation changes in engagement.

Climate Survey – Some organizations like to use engagement measures as simple indexes of the workplace culture. While more extensive surveys are valuable, sometimes it’s easier to focus attention on a few simple and proven factors. Leaders or Department Feedback- Depending on the demographic information collected when the engagement measure is implemented, one can create breakout reports by understanding of how engagement in their groups differs from the rest of the organization. This information can be used to create development plans or plans for larger scale interventions.

Factors Leading to Employee Engagement

Studies have shown that there are some critical factors which lead to Employee engagement. Some of them identified are

Career Development- Opportunities for personal development Organizations with high levels of engagement provide employees with opportunities to develop their abilities, learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and realize their potential. When Companies plan for career paths of their employees and invest in them in this way their people invest in them. Career Development –Effective Management of Talent: Career development influences engagement for employees and retaining the most talented employees and providing opportunities for personal development.

Other Factors

Equal Opportunities and Fair Treatment-The employee engagement level would be high if their bosses (superiors) provide equal opportunities for growth and advancement to all the employees. Performance Appraisal:Fair evaluation of an employee’s performance is an important criterion for determining the level of employee engagement. The company which follows an appropriate performance appraisal technique (Which is transparent and not biased) will have high levels of employee engagement. Pay and Benefits:The Company should have a proper pay system so that the employees are motivated to work in the organization. In order to boost his engagement levels the employees should also be provided with certain benefits and compensations.

Health and Safety:Research indicates that the engagement levels are low if the employee does not feel secure while working. Therefore every organization should adopt appropriate methods and systems for the health and safety of their employees Job Satisfaction:Only a satisfied employee can become an engaged employee. Therefore it is very essential for an organization to see it that the job given to the employees matches his career goals which will make him enjoy his work and he would ultimately be satisfied with his job. Communication:The Company should follow the open door policy. There should be both upward and downward communication with the use of appropriate communication channels in the organization. If the employees is the given a say in the decision making and has the right to be heard by his boss then the engagement levels are likely to be high

Family Friendliness: A person’s family life influences his work life. When an employee realizes that the organization is considering his family’s benefits also, he will have an emotional attachment with the organization which leads to engagement.

Cooperation: If the Entire organization works together by helping each other i.e. all the employees as well as the supervisors co-ordinate well than the employee will be engaged.

How Employee Engagement Differs From Employee Satisfaction Both Employee Engagement and Employee satisfaction relate to meaningful outcomes. However, satisfaction is a broad, attitudinal outcome, like organizational loyalty or pride. It is hard to act on, and some facets of satisfaction are irrelevant to performance. On the other hand, engagement predicts satisfaction, as well as many other business outcomes. The engagement challenge has a lot to do with how an employee feels about the work experience, about how he or she is treated. It has a lot to do with emotions. Engaged employees are psychologically committed to their work, go above and beyond their job expectations and want to play a key role in fulfilling the mission of their organization. In addition to being engaged truly happy employees will be satisfied with their salaries, their benefits, their schedules, and other items that don’t relate directly to engagement. In certain cases, it is found that an employee displays low engagement but high satisfaction. One reason for this could be that the employee is miscast in his or her role. Employees may love the organization for placing them in high –paying positions, but the organization may still fail to hold them accountable for being productive.

A second reason could be that an employee may take pride in theorganisation for which he or she works and enjoy the work he or she is doing, but still have a poor relationship with his or her supervisor and workgroup. Despite low-level of engagement, the employee may be hesitant to leave the organization for other opportunities, particularly in a tight job market. Another case could be an employee displaying high engagement but low satisfaction. First reason for this could be that an employee who is highly engaged with his or her workgroup may be more willing to be patient with the organization as it undergoes change. On the other hand it can be a great warning sign. A team consisting of engaged workers who are unhappy with their organization, could develop an “us-vs.-them” mentality. Employees may love what they do, they may love their co workers and direct supervisors and they may be good at their jobs. However if they feel disconnected from the organization, they may be less likely to work for the good of the overall organization. Cynicism may be the result – a consequence that’s all the more detrimental coming from otherwise engaged employees. A person who is engaged may not be satisfied while a person who is satisfied may not be engaged.

There’s lot of difference between an employee being satisfied and employee being engaged. An employee may be satisfied with the facilities that he is getting and that would be sufficient enough to continue with the organization. On the other hand an employee may be 100% engaged to his work yet may not be satisfied one of the reasons could be that he does not have a supportive boss. Employee Engagement is the key to successful use of an organization’s capital. However, employee satisfaction has not become an irrelevant issue. Used appropriately within the larger framework of engagement, employee satisfaction can provide useful insight for the organization. The scales of employee satisfaction relate to employee perspectives on stress, job satisfaction and quality of service. The scales of employee engagement relate to employee perspective on inspiration, personal involvement, and supportiveness. While recognition of great work places is worthy of celebration, there is also a direct correlation between employees who are aligned with the employer’s goal and bottom-line success. “Highly engaged employees directly equates to highly loyal customers”. Engaged employees not only understand their company’s products and services, they enthusiastically convince customers of their value. Engaged employees will enthusiastically endorse their company to prospective job candidates. The crux of the difference between an engaged employee and a satisfied employee is the discretionary effect, the likely hood that the employee will go the extra mile to get the job done. A satisfied worker probably will not, but an engaged One doesn’t think twice before pulling out all of the stops.

“Satisfaction is a measure of the past; engagement is more future looking” Mosley Though certain studies have treated employee engagement and satisfaction in water tight compartments, it is felt that employee satisfaction is a key antecedent to employee engagement Employee satisfaction and engagement are related to meaningful outcomes. The business outcomes that are predicted by satisfaction and engagement are customer satisfaction, productivity, profit etc. Best levels of employee engagement are achieved by highest employee – employer relationships. It is a high involvement model: involvement in what the workers give to an organization, and in what they receive from it. It is ironic that among the most satisfying aspects of life in an organization – as of life in general – are those that can be achieved only by hard work. This is especially true of attempts to change relationships: how people treat one another in their pursuit of earning a living. The overwhelming majority of people in organizations want to act in simple pursuit of equitable treatment, a sense of achievement, and camaraderie There is no definitive all-purpose list of engagement ‘drivers’. However, CIPD research into employee attitudes found that the main drivers of employee engagement were: (a) Having opportunities to feed your views upwards

Organizations drive engagement by proactively leveraging three sources of influence for change: employees, leaders, and organizational systems and strategies. These three drivers work in concert to build an engaging work environment. Although engagement has multiple drivers, the ultimate ownership of engagement rests within the individual employee. Organizations hoping to drive engagement must tap into employees’ passion, commitment, and identification with the organization. This is accomplished by having the right employees working on the right jobs. The second engagement driver is exceptional leadership. Many of the work environment factors are directly affected by the quality of leadership. Leaders have the influence and power to serve as catalysts for higher levels of engagement, not only in one or two areas, but in all aspects of leadership

The third driver is the strong systems and strategies that foster and support engagement. Hiring, promotion, performance management, recognition, compensation, training and career development are some of the systems that can further engagement.

Engaged Employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest the discretionary effort. Engaged Employees feel a strong emotional bond to the organization that employs them.

1. Trust and integrity- how well the managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
2. Nature of job – Is it mentally stimulating day to day.
3. Line of sight between employee performance and company’s performance.
4. Career growth opportunities – Are there future opportunities for growth
5. Pride about the company – How much self esteem does the employee feel by being associated with the company.
6. Co-workers / team members – significantly influence one’s level of management.
7. Employee development – Is the company making efforts to develop employee’s skills.
8. Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his/ her relationship with the manager.

The drive for an engaged workforce needs to build on good people management and development policies, and the active support of line managers. People management strategies and policies need to be aligned with those of the wider business. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to organizational outcomes. A minority of employees may not want to be engaged; organizations may need to give particular attention to recruitment and communications. There is No short-cut to building and maintaining employee engagement, but the time, effort and resource required will be amply repaid by the performance benefits.

During the past five years, there has been a surge in the popularity of employee engagement. The primary drivers for this sudden surge could be the following:- 3.4 Ten Cs of Employee Engagement. As discussed earlier organization leaders are a great influence on Employee Engagement. Employee Engagement is not only about employees but also about practicing effective leadership. Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of their ‘brand’. Engaged employees will help promote the brand and protect the employer from the risks associated with poor service levels or product quality. Similarly, a strong employer brand will help in attracting and retaining employees. The Ivey Business Journal has come out with “The ten C’s of Employee Engagement which provides a number of insightful pointers as to what is required to improve Employee Engagement. The article explains how leaders can engage employees’ heads, hearts and hands. An extract of the article is appended below:

Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. In ‘First, Break all the Rules’,Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that managers trump companies. Employee-focused initiatives such as profit sharing and implementing work–life balance initiatives are important. However, if employees’ relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks will persuade employees to perform at top levels. Employee Engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss. Employees look at whether organizations and their leader walk the talk when they proclaim that, “Our employees are our most valuable asset.”One anecdote illustrates the Connect dimension well. In November 2003, the CEO of West Jet Airlines, Clive Beddoe, was invited to give a presentation to the Canadian Club of London. Beddoe showed up late, a few minutes before he was to deliver his speech. He had met with West Jet employees at the London Airport and had taken a few minutes to explain the corporate strategy and some new initiatives to them. He also answered employees’ questions. To paraphrase Beddoe, “We had a great discussion that took a bit longer than I had antic pated.”Beddoe’s actions showed that he cares about the employees. The employees, sensing that he is sincere, care about Beddoe and the organization; they “reward” his behavior with engagement.

Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do organizations provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals? Do leaders hold people accountable for progress? Are jobs enriched in duties and responsibilities? Good leaders challenge employees; but at the same time, they must instill the confidence that the challenges can be met. Not giving people the knowledge and tools to be successful is unethical and de-motivating; it is also likely to lead to stress, Frustration and, ultimately, lack of engagement. In her Ivey Business Journal March/April 2006 article ‘Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End’, Rosabeth Moss Kanter explains that confidence is based on three cornerstones: accountability, collaboration, and initiative.

Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. People want to understand the vision that senior leadership has for the organization, and the goals that leaders or departmental heads have for the division, unit, or team. Success in life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want to achieve. In sum, employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they are important, and how the goals can best be attained. Clarity about what the organization stands for, what it wants to achieve, and how people can contribute to the organization’s success is not always evident. Consider, for example, what Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings Corp., wrote about the importance of teaching the basics of business: The most crippling problem in American business is sheer ignorance about how business works. What we see is a whole mess of people going to a baseball game and nobody is telling them what the rules are. That baseball game is business. People try to steal from first base to second base, but they don’t even know how that fits into the big picture. What we try to do is break down business in such a way that employees realize that in order to win the World Series, you’ve got to steal x number of bases, hit y number of RBIs and have the pitchers pitch z number of innings. And if you put all these variables together, you can really attain your hopes and dreams … don’t use information to intimidate, control or manipulate people. Use it to teach people how to work together to achieve common goals and thereby gain control over their lives.

Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their functioning in the organization. Good leaders establish processes and procedures that help people master important tasks and facilitate goal achievement. There is a great anecdote about the Legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden. He showed how important feedback – positive and constructive – is in the pursuit of greatness. Among the secrets of his phenomenal success was that he kept detailed diaries on each of his Players. He kept track of small improvements he felt the players could make and did make. At the end of each practice, he would share his thoughts with the players. The lesson here is that good leader’s works daily to improve the skills of their people and create small wins that help the team, unit, or organization perform at its best.

Congratulate: Business leaders can learn a great deal from Wooden’s approach. Surveys show that, over and over, employees feel that they receive immediate feedback when their performance is poor, or below expectations. These same employees also report that praise and recognition for strong performance is much less common. Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.

Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to the organization’s success in a meaningful way. This might be easy to articulate in settings such as hospitals and educational institutions. But what about, say the retail industry? Sears Roebuck & Co. started a turnaround in 1992. Part of the turnaround plan was the development of a set of measures – known as Total Performance Indicators – which gauged how well Sears was doing with its employees, customers, and investors. The implementation of the measurement system led to three startling conclusions. First, an employee understands of the connection between her works – as operational zed by specific job-relevant behaviors – and the strategic objectives of the company had a positive impact on job performance. Second, an employee’s attitude towards the job and the company had the greatest impact on loyalty and customer service than all the other employee factors combined. Third, improvements in employee attitude led to improvements in job-relevant behavior; this, in turn, increased customer satisfaction and an improvement in revenue growth. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel how they are contributing to the Organization’s success and future.

Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create opportunities for employees to exercise this control. Do leaders consult with their employees with regard to their needs? For example, is it possible to accommodate the needs of a mother or an employee infected with HIV so that they can attend to childcare concerns or a medical appointment? Are leaders flexible and attuned to the needs of the employees as well as the organization? Do leaders involve employees in decision-making, particularly when employees will be directly affected by the decision? Do employees have a say in setting goals or milestones that are deemed important? Are employees able to voice their ideas, and does leadership show that contributions are valued? H. Norman Schwartzkopf, retired U.S. Army General, once remarked: I have seen competent leaders who stood in front of a platoon and all they saw was a platoon. But great leaders stand in front of a platoon and see it as 44 individuals, each of whom has aspirations, each of whom wants to live, each of whom wants to do well. A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being given opportunities to participate in decision making often reduces stress; it also creates trust and a culture where people want to take ownership of problems and their solutions.

There are numerous examples of organizations whose implementation of an open-book management style and creating room for employees to contribute to making decisions had a positive effect on engagement and organizational performance. The successof Microsoft, for example, stems in part from Bill Gates’ belief that smart people anywhere in the company should have the power to drive an initiative. Initiatives such as Six Sigma are dependent, in part, on the active participation of employees on the shop floor. 8. Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration. Surveys indicate that being cared about by colleagues is a strong predictor of employee engagement. Thus, a continuous challenge for leaders is to rally individuals to collaborate on organizational, departmental, and group goals, while excluding individuals pursuing their self-interest. 9. Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain a company’s reputation and demonstrate high ethical standards. People want to be proud of their jobs, their performance, and their organization. West Jet Airlines is among the most admired organizations in Canada.

The company has achieved numerous awards. For example, in 2005, it earned the number one spot for best corporate culture in Canada. On September 26, 2005, WestJet launched the “Because We’re Owners!” campaign. Why do WestJet employees care so much about their organization? Why do over 85 percent of them own shares in the company? Employees believe so strongly in what West Jet is trying to do and are so excited about its strong performance record that they commit their own money into shares. 10. Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high ethical and performance standards. To illustrate, consider what happened to Harry Stonecipher, the former CEO of Boeing. He made the restoration of corporate ethics in the organization a top priority but was soon after embarrassed by the disclosure of an extramarital affair with a female employee. His poor judgment impaired his ability to lead and he lost a key ingredient for success –credibility.

Thus the board asked him to resign. Employees working at Qwest and Continental Airlines were so embarrassed about working for their organizations that they would not wear their company’s uniform on their way to and from work. At WorldCom, most employees were shocked, horrified, and embarrassed when the accounting scandal broke at the company. New leadership was faced with the major challenges of regaining public trust and fostering employee engagement. Practitioners and academics have argued that competitive advantage can be gained by creating an engaged workforce. The data and argument that that we present above are a compelling case why leaders need to make employee engagement one of their priorities. Leaders should actively try to identify the level of engagement in their organization, find the reasons behind the lack of full engagement, strive to eliminate those reasons, and implement behavioral strategies that will facilitate full engagement. These efforts should be ongoing. Employee engagement is hard to achieve and if not sustained by leaders it can wither with relative ease.

Most organizations have a range of programmes to improve the engagement level of their employee. It should start right at the selection stage. Choosing the right fit and giving a realistic job preview.

Strong introduction and orientation programme. Rigorous training and development from technical to soft skills to leadership development programme. To keep up the morale of people and drive them towards excellent performance, incentives can be given such as recognition letter, profit sharing schemes, long performance awards, ESOPs, building assets like home. Regular feedback to all employees.

Communication forums like the in-house magazine and regular surveys and conferences. To maintain the quality of work-life and a balance between personal/professional lives, there are recreational activities like festivities, get- together, sports etc. An open and transparent culture to empower its people and develop entrepreneurs.

In order to move the employee engagement process from ownership by corporate HR to ownership by employees, several things must happen- 1. Measurement of employee engagement must be done more than once in a year. We need multiple ways to assess engagement; the engagement metrics must include performance measures. 2. You can’t have engaged employees without super engaged managers. Engagement improving efforts must start at top and work their way down. The most senior executive must be assured that they are engaging their senior team and that team has to work on creating a high engagement environment for its direct reports and so on. Engagement must be done by leadership through example.

This process of top down engagement is owned by each level of management. Each manager himself benefits from the process, and then they share the benefits with their own employees. In this teaching process managers “Own “employee engagement. 3. Engagement is about getting rid of things that block productivity We bring people to work, then put lots of obstacles in the way of their being able to succeed. Creating an engaged workforce means getting barriers out of the way for your employees to be effective. We cannot create a magic set of 20, 40, 80 survey questions that will assess the things that are getting in the way of productivity and performance.

These things can be lumped into categories but they differ from company to company, department to department and employee to employee. These productivity blockers and de motivators are not taught in a basic introduction to management book. They are not going to disappear with the purchase of some new technology or from hiring the latest management guru. Engagement will happen when each individual manager learns what’s getting in the way of his/her employees performance and each manager choose to take action. 4. The Process of engagement is a process; you can’t get it right at the year end. You have to create a continuous learning, continuous improvement, continuous measurement and continuous action process to maximize productivity.

Conclusion

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of their ‘brand’. Engaged employees will help promote the brand and protect the employer from the risks associated with poor service levels or product quality. Similarly, a strong employer brand will help in attracting and retaining employees. Perceived managerial fairness in dealing with problems impacts significantly on individual performance, although it is not significantly related to engagement. Employers should pay more attention to creating an engaged workforce. The employment relationship requires regular attention and maintenance but, if not carefully managed, HR business partnering can lead to neglect of the ‘employee advocacy’ with damaging effects on engagement. Adopting an effective engagement strategy can provide an opportunity for HR practitioners to acquire new skills and work alongside professionals in other parts of the business, including those responsible for marketing and corporate social responsibility. The development of a robust employee proposition or employer ‘brand’ can also support a positive psychological contract between employer and employees.

Engaged employees are more likely to act as organizational advocates than disengaged employees and can play a powerful role in promoting their organization as an employer of choice. HR professionals need to recognize that engagement is a strategic issue That cannot simply be left to manage it. Organizations should review their communications and particularly their arrangements for listening to employee opinions. Line managers need support in designing challenging jobs and managing effective teams. The positive linkages which research has found between employee engagement, advocacy, performance and intention to quit mean that it is in employers’ interests to drive up levels of engagement amongst their workforce. But levels of engagement have significant benefits for employees as well, since engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction and experiences of employment.

Chapter – 3 Research Methodology

The study aim at finding out the level of the employee engagement in Religare Technologies Limited. Ms Ritika Sharma my respected guide was the sole source of everything which was important for my easier-said than-done- project to materialize. She guided my footsteps whenever and wherever I stumbled on the way to my objective and not only this she was also my torch bearer and gave me all the moral and material support.

Available with me was the employee’s data base which was a reliable and authentic source of employee address. And from those documents maintained by HR Department I used to distribute the questionnaire to the employees. Sampling Method : Rendom sampling

Survey as we know well, is the keyword around which the whole magic of my project revolves hence, this calls for the urgency of following the below mentioned steps which can be considered as the methods I have followed in doing the survey.

The first and foremost thing I did was the task of formulating a well framed questionnaire which could aptly help me in eliciting the essential information from the respondents. The questionnaire was designed on a five point likert scale where 1 represented very high extent and 5 represented very low extent. Now I was equipped with the required weapon in the form of questionnaire and the next step was to circulate the questionnaire to the employees which I did. A sample size of 50 employees was chosen out of 1000 employees. The sampling type was probability sampling based on systematic random sampling. Altogether 50 questionnaires were distributed out of which 48 were usable. The scores of individual items are summated to produce a total score for the respondent’s score; the more favorable is the attitude. After recollecting the questionnaire which was a very tough job to carry out I interpreted it and jotted down the queries and complaint welling up in my mind.

Chapter 4-Data Analysis and Interpretation

From the chart no. 1 it seems that employees are highly motivated for reward and recognition programme of the company, the engagement level is found 86 percent for this attribute. Operation dept. have scored lowest in terms of manager’s feedback, the percentage scored for engagement level on this attribute is 60 % which can be improved further. The engagement level is found to be 78 % and this dept has scored high in terms of work environment, training and development, communication job and reward and recognition attributes.

Sales department has scored lowest percentage 48 % in the future growth attribute. Employees seems to be dissatisfied with the reward and recognition programs of the company in sales department they have scored 52 % for this attribute. Employee engagement level is found low in terms of training and development programs conducted in Sales department. It indicates that employees are not satisfied with the training and development programme of the company there is a need to develop the communication between managers and the Executives for better employee engagement since the employee engagement level is found to be low for manager’s feedback in sales department. Employees seem to be loyal toward the image of the company and scored highest 82% for this attribute.

About Us

Religare Technologies is the IT services business of a large diversified Indian transitional business group. The group pursues aggressive business interests globally in IT products (Religare Technova), Financial Services (Religare Enterprises) Healthcare (Fortis Health care), Wellness (Religare Wellness, Formerly Fortis Health World), Diagnostics (Super Religare Laboratories, Formerly SRL Ranbaxy) and Aviation and Travel (Religare Voyages).

The Religare Technologies umbrella includes offerings in Business Solutions, Infrastructure Solutions, and Business Process & Knowledge Services & Information Services. Currently with over 2000 employees and presence in over 10 countries, Religare Technologies is poised to be a leader in the global IT Services space. Religare Technologies focuses on clients in key verticals such as financial services, Insurance, Capital Markets and Health Sciences (Health Care and Pharmaceuticals) Our Group:-

Religare is an emerging markets financial services group with a presence across Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In India, Religare’s largest market, the group offers a wide array of products and services including broking, Insurance, asset management, lending solutions, investment banking and wealth management. With 10000 plus employees across multiple geographies, Religare serves over a million clients, including corporate institutions, high net worth families and individuals, and retail investors.

Religare SRL Diagnostics

Super Religare Laboratories Limited (Formerly SRL Ranbaxy) within 11 years of inception has become the largest Pathological Laboratory network in South Asia. It started a revolution in diagnostic services in India by ushering in the most specialized technologies, backed by innovation and diligence. The current footprint extends well beyond India in the Middle East and part of Europe.

Religare Wellness

Religare Wellness Limited (Formerly Fortis Health world) is one of the leading players in the wellness retail space with a footprint of 100 stores across India. The group envisaged setting up a pan India world class retail network of wellness stores that would provide comprehensive solution under one roof.

Religare Voyages

The group also operates in the domain of integrated Air Charter and Travel, anchored under the holding company Religare Voyages Limited. The Air Charter business is one of the largest in the non schedules space in the county with its own top of the line fleet that comprises jets, helicopters and turbo props. The travel business is duly accredited for complete management of both in-bound and out bound domestic and international travel.

Fortis Healthcare Limited

Fortis Health Care Limited, established in 1996 was founded on the vision of creating an integrated healthcare delivery system, with 22 hospitals in India, including multi-specialty & super specialty centers, the management is aggressively working towards taking this number to a significant level in the next few years to provide quality Health Care facilities and services across the nation.

Board of Directors

Mr. Shivinder Mohan Singh, aged 36 years, one of our Promoters and a Director of our Company was an alumnus of Doon School and an Honours graduate in Mathematics from St. Stephens College, Delhi and has done his MBA with specialization in health sector management from the DukeUniversityBusinessSchool, USA. He is the Managing Director of Fortis Healthcare (India) Limited. He is a young entrepreneur who aims to change the way Healthcare is delivered in the world. He is also one of the principal promoters of Religare Enterprises Limited, Super Religare Laboratories Limited and Fortis Clinical Research Limited. He was, till recently, one of the key promoters of Ranbaxy Laboratories and served as Director on the Board of the Pharma Major. He played a strategic role in the sale of Ranbaxy, thereby taking the company to the next level and creating significant long term value for all stakeholders. Mr. Shivinder’s significant contribution in Indian Healthcare is widely acknowledged.

His strategy for Fortis and its execution has been recognized by Harvard Business School in the form of a case study. He has been playing an important and active role in shaping the private healthcare space in India. He was the Chairperson of Health Services Committee of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Presently, he is the Chairperson of FICCI Youth Committee and Board member of Indo British Partnership Network (IBPN), Board Member of National Accreditation Board for Hospital and Healthcare Providers (NABH) and chair of the healthcare committee of UKTI (UK Trade & Investment).

He is also on the National Board of Advisors of AIESEC, a global, non-political, and independent, not-for-profit organization run by students and recent graduates of institutions of higher education. Even though healthcare is a passion for Mr. Shivinder, his dream is to see a vibrant India in his lifetime. This motivates him to get involved in various activities directed towards bringing about positive social change in our country and engaging with different aspects of Building India. He is also one of the trustees of an NGO ‘Joining Hands’. In addition to this, he is also keenly involved in various CSR initiatives focused on the Girl Child, HIV education, providing quality healthcare to Rural India to name a few. Mr. Shivinder is on the Board of Visitors of Fuqua School of Business; Duke University, U.S. and a fellow of Aspens India Leadership Initiative. He is also a Director of Step by Step school. Mr. Singh joined our Board on October 11, 2010.

Mr. Harpal Singh, aged 61 years, holds a Bachelor’s (honours) degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the California State University at Hayward, California, U.S.A. Mr. Singh has had diverse experience of over 36 years in the corporate sector and has held senior positions in various companies including TATA group companies, Hindustan Motors Limited, Mahindra and Mahindra Limited and Shaw Wallace. Mr. Singh was in the past the Non-Executive Chairman of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited and is the Mentor and Chairman Emeritus of Fortis Healthcare (India) Limited. Further, he is also associated at the board level with some of India’s most renowned schools which include the Doon School, the Scindia School, the Yadavindra Public School and Salwan School where, he is Vice Chairman of the Trust. Mr. Singh is also a member of the National Round Table on School Education and is a member of the Board of Governors of IIT, Indore and NIIT University.He is also a member of India-UK Round Table, India-US Strategic Dialogue and of the Public Health Foundation of India. Further, he is Founder and Chairman Trustee of NanhiChhaan and Chronic Care Foundations. Mr. Singh is also the Chairman of INDIA 800 Foundation, India Office. Mr. Singh is currently the Chairman of the Save the Children, India and is also a Director of the Global Board of Save the Children International. He joined our Board on October 11, 2010. Mr. Sunil Godhwani

Mr. Sunil Godhwani, aged 50 years, holds a B.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering and a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Finance from Polytechnic Institute of New York. Mr. Sunil Godhwani is the Chairman and Managing Director of Religare Enterprises Limited (“REL”). He spearheads REL’s management and global operations, strategizing and directing it through its next phase of growth. He believes in nurturing a culture that is entrepreneurial, result oriented, customer focused and based on teamwork. He has given strategic direction to REL’s growth since his joining in 2001. He has been instrumental and endeavours to take the REL to new heights by managing various acquisitions, finding new partners for joint ventures and exploring new avenues for the business.

Under his overall supervision REL has emerged as a force to reckon with and enjoys a leadership position in its businesses and has also achieved further expansion of activities in other areas in a profitable manner. The growth in the financial services industry achieved by REL is also marked by the involvement of international strategic partners such as Aegon in Life Insurance and Macquarie in Wealth Management as well as through the acquisition of majority stake in entities such as Northgate Capital and Landmark Partners. He has a wide-ranging experience of over two decades in managing large scale businesses. He has been awarded with many awards and accolades. He has been conferred ‘India Business Leader of the Year’ award at the Global Indian Business Meeting hosted by Horasis, in Madrid, Spain and “CEO of the year Award” at CEO CLUBS INTERNATIONAL Awards. Mr. Godhwani joined our Board on October 11, 2010. Mr.Maninder Singh Grewal

Mr.Maninder Singh Grewal, aged 59 years, isa graduate in Mechanical Engineering with a B. Tech (Hons.) degree from IIT, Kharagpur, and has more than 25 years of experience in the information technology sector. He has been involved with growth and evolution of the industry right from DOS to cloud/Saas/ tablets and from basic spread sheets to social networking era. In the 1990s, he set up an Apple dealership recognising the potential of the brand and of the Apple OS. Having general management, sales and marketing experience in the IT industry, Mr. Grewal has successfully played the end to end role of formulating strategies, implementing and executing them excellently. He was associated with Wipro from its start up days as their principal vendor in the North and was instrumental in setting up Ludhiana Stock Exchange / Securities IT migrating from manual trading to computerization. He has done successful implementations of ERPs on Solaris, Linux and Windows and helped computerize branches of State Bank of India, Punjab & Sind Bank and Bank of India among others.

His experience in Healthcare and healthcare IT goes back to 1989 when he was instrumental in the systems and the software that got implemented in 2 major 750+ bed teaching hospitals in North India. In the imaging and diagnostic space he has been working on interoperability and on projects for cross referencing imaging across technology sets leading up to electronic medical records and healthcare information Exchanges CRM systems. He joined Religare Group in 2006 and has been instrumental in the growth of the IT vertical comprising the Company and the finance IT vertical and its constituent companies from scratch to group revenue of over 200 Cr with over 1500 employees globally. He has been a driving force to making IT a key enabler in business decisions and execution going beyond mere reporting and dashboards. His experience and recognition of the potential of enabling technologies like SaaS/Cloud/Android /IOs etc. and knowledge of how these can be interfaced with business, is a key attribute and special passion. He has given many keynotes in Industry forums and is widely known throughout industry as an innovative and game changing technocrat. He is widely travelled and is an avid Bridge player. Mr. Grewal joined our Board on October 11, 2010.

Mr. PadamBahl aged 59 years, is an Independent Director in our Company. Mr. Bahl holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the Kurukshetra University and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. He is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He has also received a Diploma in Information System Audit from SSI, Amritsar. Mr. Bahl has been practicing as a Chartered Accountant and an income tax advisor since 1979 and has more than 30 years of work experience. He was the Chairman of the Northern India Regional Council, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Amritsar Chapter for the year 1998-99 and was a member of the Income Tax Advisory Committee, Amritsar Chapter during the years 2002-03 and 2003-04. Mr. Bahl joined our Board on May 22, 2009. Dr. P. S. Joshi Dr. P. S. Joshi, an eminent Cardiologist, holds an M.B.B.S. degree from Medical College, Amritsar and M.D. degreein Cardiology & General Medicine from Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi. Dr. Joshi was awarded membership of Royal College of Physicians, UK in 1978. He is a Fellow American College of Cardiology, Fellow Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) and Fellow Cardiological Society of India. He has over 40 years of experience in medical profession in India and abroad. During his career in Clinical Medicine and Cardiology, he has held many positions of responsibility including Directorship and Head, Department of Medicine & Cardiology Divisions of Escorts Medical Centre (1981-84), Birla Centre for Medical Research, New Delhi (1984-85) and MaharajSawan Singh Charitable Hospital, Beas (1985 – till date).. Dr. Joshi joined our Board on May 22, 2009.

Dr. Amit Varma completed his MBBS and MD from University of Delhi, his residency from the State University of New York, fellowships in critical care at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and sub specialized in cardiac critical care at the Cleveland Clinic and also attended courses for an Executive MBA at the University of Chicago. After almost a decade in USA, Dr. Varma began his professional journey in India at the Manipal Heart Foundation in Bangalore. He subsequently moved on to the Narayan Hrudayalaya Hospital as the consultant- in-charge of Critical Care. Early in 2003, Dr. Varma joined Fortis Healthcare, where he has and continues to perform multiple administrative and clinical roles. He currently runs the integrated critical care services for Fortis Healthcare ICU network, which today comprises of a strong three-hundred beds and helps in formulation of Medical Strategy.

From 2009, Dr. Varma is actively engaged in all healthcare initiatives of Religare Enterprises Limited, playing an advisory and steering role, overlooking and further initiating all healthcare related businesses, providing medical expertise, insight and credibility in all healthcare related verticals such as Health Insurance venture, Healthcare IT, Super Religare Labs and Religare Wellness. He also sits on the Board and Investment committee of the 125$ million Milestone Religare Private Equity fund which is investing domestically in the healthcare and education fields. Apart from his medical and management background, Dr. Varma continues to be a visiting faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and the Cleveland Clinic. Having functioned as healthcare consultant to the World Bank and the European Commission with special interest in quality, he is currently on the editorial board and a member of various healthcare and management groups and societies. Dr. Varma also acts as the Medical Editor for CNN-IBN. Dr. Amit Varma currently operates as President Health Care, Religare Enterprises Limited and Director, Critical Care Medicine, Fortis Escorts group of hospitals, India. Dr. Varma joined our Board on October 11, 2010.

Mr. Vikram Sahgal has completed hisMechanical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) and Masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi. He has over 30 years of diverse experience in the mechanical engineering industry. He is the Chairman & Managing Director of Micron Instruments Pvt. Ltd., a company engaged in the manufacture of high precision engineering products for defence, aerospace and healthcare. Micron Instruments which has been spear headed by Mr. Vikram Sahgal is one of the pioneer private sector company manufacturing strategic precision products for the Indian Ministry of Defence. Currently, Micron Instruments is also a preferred supplier to several large defence and aerospace companies worldwide.

As a member of the National Committee on Defence of CII for over 10 years he has been instrumental in influencing various policies to promote the role of the private corporate sector in India in the defence arena which historically was the domain of the Indian public sector and foreign multinational companies. He is on the board of directors of several companies and has been the member of the Managing Committee of PHDCCI, Chairman of Chandigarh Committee, and member of Administrator’s Advisory Council, Chandigarh. Mr. Sahgal joined our Board on October 11, 2010.

Mr. R.K. Shetty holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Karnataka University, Dharwad and has completed an executive development program from the Jamunalal Bajaj Institute of Management in Product Management Control in Mumbai. Mr. Shetty has received the National Productivity Award in the year 1992 and is presently the President of Indian Hockey Federation, and Karnataka State Hockey Association. Mr. Shetty has more than 31 years of work experience. Mr. Shetty joined our Board on October 11, 2010.

Award and Recognition

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner : Religare technologies have been awarded membership of the elite Microsoft Dynamics President’s club 2008. The president’s club consist of only 13 members across India and we are proud to be the only ones who have achieved this in less than 12 months. The elite club recognizes about 100 Microsoft Business Solution Partners worldwide and their constant dedication to delivering solution that meet their customers’ unique needs, active pursuits of product and technological advancement and impressive sales Performance Religare technologies was also honoured with the Star Emerging SI Sales Award by Microsoft in 2008. The prestigious Amity HR Excellence Award was awarded to Religare Technologies at the fifth Global HR Summit 2008. The award was received by Ms Kirti Manucha, vice president, HR, Religare Technologies. Religare Technologies has been appointed ASP for Lenovo. The relationship is for a Pan India footprint and pertains to Lenovo PC’s and Laptops. Post launch of Lenovo’s Servers, the ASP for Servers would be extended to the company as well. Religare has been awarded the mantle of CISCO Premier Certified Partner in India Sub- Continent. The company has demonstrated its excellence in selling, installing and supporting Cisco Solutions in the Indian Sub-Continent. Religare Technologies has achieved “Information Worker Solutions” – Competency from Microsoft. This recognition enables the organization to use certain exclusive sales tools and gives

Mr. Maninder Singh Grewal, MD – Religare Technologies Ltd. A member of the board of Religare Technologies, Maninder Singh Grewal has more than 30 years of experience in information technology sector. Prior to Religare Technologies, Maninder was associated with Wipro from company’s initial days as it’s principal vendor in North India and was instrumental in setting up Ludhiana Stock Exchange / Securities, migrating from manual trading to computerization. He has successfully implemented ERPs on Solaris, Linux and Windows and has helped computerize branches of State Bank of India, Punjab & Sind Bank and Bank of India among others. He joined RTL in 2006 and has been instrumental in growth of the IT vertical comprising of erstwhile Religare Technova Ltd and its subsidiaries.

Mr. Pankaj Vaish, CEO – HealthFore

Mr. Pankaj Vaish heads Healthfore – the Healthcare IT division at Religare Technologies. Pankaj has over 26 years of IT experience across a wide portfolio of technologies, service delivery and industry segments. He is a high energy, result oriented executive with a track record of creating revenue & margin growth with deep hands-on operational experience in global operations and delivery. At Healthfore, Pankaj is leading the company to becoming a provider of choice in delivering Integrated Healthcare Solutions using innovative platforms enabled by ICT in the Asia-Pac and MEA region. Pankaj has a rich experience in setting up IT product and service units from start and building them into global sustainable businesses. Prior to joining Religare in August 2010, Pankaj worked at Perot Systems for 14 years. During this period, he helped setup and manage the Telecom and Travel Transportation & Logistics business followed by running the P&L for their Retail, Government and Manufacturing line of businesses. Pankaj managed global operations for the Application Division and expand delivery capability by setting up Offshore Engineering Delivery Centre at Hyderabad and Global Applications Delivery Centre at Changsha, China. In his last assignment, Pankaj was working as Sr. Vice President – Global Business Operations. Prior to Perot Systems, Pankaj worked in the US with Unisys for 10 years playing a multitude of technical and managerial roles. Pankaj is an engineering graduate from BITS Pilani – batch of 1981 and a MBA. Nitin Goyal, Sr. Vice President, HealthFore

Nitin brings with him more than 21 years of experience in the IT industry spanning SI sales, IT services, and projects delivery in the Government and Commercial sectors. His vast experience includes IT outsourcing, Consulting, Project & Program Management, Business Development and Sales support, systems integration and general management. He has significant experience in SE Asia having spent more than 12 yrs in the region. Prior to his joining Religare, Nitin spent 11 years with Dell Services (erstwhile Perot Systems) where he headed the Commercial Solutions group, responsible for delivering a wide range of services across multiple industries in the US, UK and Apac regions. His remit included the sales and delivery of large complex projects across Manufacturing, Government, Telecom, Retail and Legal industries. Prior to this he was based in Singapore heading the delivery and sales support for the APac region. Nitin is an alumnus of Delhi University and Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. Post his graduation, Nitin started his careers with HCL and spent many years with the various group companies like HCL, HCL HP, Far East Computers, and HCLTech. Nitin has previously worked with Cap Gemini and lead the relationship with a major bank, managing their regional implementations across 13 countries in Asia and transitioning two of the banks IT units into the Cap Gemini service. Mr. Malav Kapadia, Vice President- Sales, HealthFore

In this role Malav drives the strategy for Sales, Business Development and Partnership functions for the Healthcare Product Portfolio. Malav has more
than 15 year’s extensive experience across Sales and Technology domains. With a career split equally within India and overseas, Malav brings with him a wealth of experience as a senior business leader with rich business management experience across Indian and global markets. In his previous stints at HCL Technologies, iGATE & Perot Systems, Malav successfully created sizable revenue streams from direct customers as well as through the partner ecosystem. Complementing his professional affiliations, Malav also works with the Age foundation, a not-for-profit organization committed to a productive living and dignified existence for the 50+ age group. Malav holds an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University and a BE from Victoria Jubilee Institute of Technology (VJTI), Mumbai University. Mr. Surendra Nath Shukla, Sr. Vice President – HealthFore

Surendra brings with him more than 24 years of experience in the IT industry with over 12 years at senior management positions in the Healthcare IT, ERP and Core IT products and services. His vast experience includes Global Product Management, Program Management, Business Development, Delivery Management, and Customer Relationship Management. Surendra was working in iSOFT prior to joining Religare Technologies. At iSOFT, Surendra was heading the Global Services and was responsible for assisting the Global Operations in Deployment of iSOFT Products, Presales, Business Development and Implementation. He was also responsible for developing Tools, Methodologies and Process for the implementation of LORENZO, developed on the Service Oriented Architecture concept.

He has held key responsibilities in the implementation of LORENZO in the Regional Care Program of NHS in UK. Prior to iSOFT, Surendra has worked with MTech India as COO and lead the Business Development and Implementation of TrakCare in India. He also implemented TrakCare in Indian hospitals including Fortis Escorts, Fortis Mohali and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. An IIT Kanpur post graduate, Surendra did his MS in Computer Science & Applications from Queen’s University of Belfast UK. Surendra is a recipient of “Clinical Safety” Certification from NHS UK and has keen interest in studying the clinical process and workflows of Hospitals. Surendra is also an Honorary Vice Chairman of IT committee of Delhi Management Association and a visiting and guest faculty at several Management and Engineering Colleges. Mr. Tanmaya Das, Vice President-
Finance – HealthFore

Work life@ Religare Technologies

“Our people, with Individual talents and creative minds, deliver our promises” We’re determined to help our people achieve their potential. When our people reach their potential and achieve their best, we can help our clients achieve their best too. Our talented and motivated people make RTL a great place to work. They help us deliver on our promises to clients. We’re committed to attracting them, retaining them, and helping them be the best they can be — now and always. We deliver professional services in accordance with RTL’s employee-centric policies and values.

RTL has an energetic and open workplace environment and a collaborative culture that is based on teamwork. Pulling together is a central tenet of work ethic. Energetic and full of enthusiasm, employees look forward to their day at work. Life at RTL is a stimulating and exciting experience. Not only do offices have the best infrastructure and technology, but also the employees work at defining business success and hence fulfill their achievement need. Not only this, we enjoy ‘Enjoyable’ culture, thereby promoting work-life balance with Achievement and Enjoyment being the two sides of a coin of value in life, where you can’t have one without the other, no more than you can have a coin with only one side. We are an equal-opportunity employer and we take pride in the diversity of our workforce and view it as a strategic advantage to be nurtured and expanded. We actively seek to build on it by attracting talented individuals from a wide range of cultural, geographic and educational backgrounds “If you’d like to spend your career in an extremely vibrant, stimulating and fun place, RTL is where you have to be”.

It is the responsibility of each of us to follow the Code of conduct and RTL policies consistently and appropriately and help others to do so, we treat our colleagues, clients and others with whom we do business with respect, dignity, fairness and courtesy. We at Religare Technologies Ltd. espouse that “people are our most important asset” and work towards achieving this collectively. To us culture is paramount because it is the way of life. We foster knowledge culture and manage knowledge through integrating people, technology, strategy, leadership, operational management and processes. We actively promote, facilitate, and reward collective learning and have hence have recently launched the e-learning model, focusing on making Religare Technologies a Technology destination.

At Religare Technologies, our purpose is to bring prosperity and peace of mind to our customers; it’s at the core of everything we do. We will bring about this purpose to our customers by realizing our values: “Trust, Reliability and high Quality Delivery”. All HR endeavors are aimed at strengthening the strategic priorities – ‘Boosting Productivity’ and building a ‘Customer Centric’ organization. In line with organizational vision, our HR philosophy revolves around the twin themes of equipping our employees with ‘Strong Roots and Powerful Wings’. Strong ‘roots’ arise from, among other things, a strong culture, competitive remuneration and sustained developmental initiatives.

And, they manifest themselves in when employees engage with the organization at a more visible and emotional level, are confident and enjoy the experience of working for their company. The ‘wings’ build on strong roots by encouraging a culture of risk taking, learning, experimenting and taking bold decisions – across all levels of the organization. The concept of ‘Strong Roots and Powerful Wings’ underlines the profoundness of our mission as HR professionals: we are in business of equipping our employees with competencies that enable them to perform optimally. These competencies become the ‘strong roots’ that enables building of core functional and behavioral competencies. At the same time, we aim to provide ‘powerful wings’ to our employees to use the strong roots as a launch pad to spring leap and reach out to take on newer roles, bigger assignments and higher responsibilities. The stronger our roots, better is our ability to deliver on our performance criteria.

The more opportunities we provide to ‘learn, grow and contribute’ the more engaged an employee becomes to Religare Technologies. Strong roots, with powerful wings of growth lead to stasis. Merely, equipping our employees with wings may result in lack of depth and application. This symbiotic relationship aims to engage employees on a continuous basis to help build fabric of Religare Technologies. At Religare Technologies– We dream big and have a vision to ACHIEVE. We all are living in this dynamic world where change is the only constant. If we talk about Today, Technology talks about tomorrow. So, here in Religare Technologies Technologies, we talk about today as well as tomorrow. Hence, we venture Technology today and take a trip to the future. However, in this challenging journey, we attempt to make this journey more interesting filled with fun, excitement and contentment.

We at Religare Technologies share the attributes that are required to be successful. We always thrive to build an employee centric organization. Hence, we are always ready to serve our employees at their doorsteps. Our teams prosper in an environment that is dynamic and interactive. Here you may compete against colleagues at our periodically scheduled Cricket matches or get to know them better at an offsite or informal parties. Every month, we reward outstanding performance via our ‘Employee of the Month’ program. We celebrate all the festivals and organize cultural events and fun activities to stay connected. We believe our people are our greatest strength and try to make the workplace an exciting place to be. We nurture a stimulating, positive environment by hiring talented people who share our commitment towards perfection.

Chapter 6 Introduction of the Project

HR functions at Religare Technologies are handled in a professional manner. Employee satisfaction surveys have been carried out by specialists in the field. The company has been doing progressively well over the years and is expected to continue so. Like any other successful organisations, at Religare also work force or human resources is considered to be the greatest strength. However it is felt that working environment and production can be further improved by improving the engagement levels of employees.

Various programmes initiated by HR Department to enhance the engagement level of employees at Religare Technologies are praiseworthy. We need to see whether these programs are sufficient to meet the employee’s engagement need. Engagement begins with employees’ clear understanding of what they should be doing on the job. At Religare Technologies employees are aware that their skills are valued and their contributions are critical to achievement of the organisational goals. This alignment requires strong communication. At Religare Technologies employees are satisfied with the vertical and horizontal communication.

By this project we would try to find the impact of engagement factors on Religare Employees and the engagement level for each Individual. Also we will try to find the area of improvement so that the engagement level can be further improved, by knowing the employees expectations and What they feel about the organization and work culture in Religare .

Observation

This lace under the heading is the most appropriate place formed to pour my heart and acknowledge my observation with due integrity and earnestness. Here I have made up my mind to discuss my survey work including Employee Engagement, Employee Suggestion, Their opinion and problems at length. I have segregated the different aspects of the survey into different sub heading. I commence with the discussion above.

I first went through the structure and a function of the TRL who’s over all ambiences was aesthetically maintained. In the process I came to know the rationale behing the Tag Line of RTL “Value that binds”

After observing all the departments meticulously, I tried to elicit the information as to which part or the aspect of the activity taken care by whom. I gradually got the information of the roles and duties of each head of the departments.

Prominent observation is made in connection to the feedback which I received from the employees. We know jolly well that no five fingers are the same, similarly the opinions, comprehension and thought process of the various employees are also diverse and many.

I have a remarkable and flabbergasting experience when I approached the employees and personally asked them about their suggestion, comments compliments or grudges, if any which they have for their job in RTL. I deem it appropriate and prudent to make a mention of a fact that the attitude which the employee possessed were diverse, but I can categories those attitude under three categories , employee attitude by and large , are of three kinds. Cognitive Approach: – Suggest that attitude is based on cognition (thoughts). It consists of belief, knowledge and information held by a person regarding an object or an issue.

The knowledge comprises of the knowledge about the existence of the product, belief about its different characteristics. Affective Approach: – Suggest that attitudes are based n affect (emotions). A person’s emotions or feelings towards an object comprise the affective component of an attitude such feelings, which are called the affective component of attitude, may transform themselves into emotionally charged states such as anger happiness shame distress guilt and so on. Behavioral Approach- Behavioral component comprises of a person’s future action and intentions. It is concerned with the likelihood or tendency that an individual will behave in a particular fashion with regards to an attitude object.

As far as the limitation of the project is concerned, I faced many problem and adversities in course of my project.

Because of the size of the organization the population of employees was very large. Therefore it was very tough on my part to conduct the survey by going to them personally. The distance and the departments are more in number which took much of the time and energy to visit each department which was the bottleneck of my project.

It was also very disappointing for me at times when the feedback given by the employees were below expectation. The lack of cooperation by the departmental heads, to which the responsibility of handling the questionnaire was given, was one of the most important factors which leaded to de-motivation and exhortation.

Chapter 9 Conclusion

Engagement levels are influenced by employees’ personal characteristics: a minority of employees are likely to resist becoming engaged in their work. But people are also influenced by the jobs they do and the experiences they have at work. The way in which both senior management and line managers behave towards, and Communicate with, employees, plus the way in which work is organized and jobs defined, contribute significantly towards making work meaningful and engaging.

An employee engagement initiative would turn out to be an exercise in futile if there is no true commitment towards taking positive action to enhance the engagement levels of the employees. Having engaged employees can be a competitive advantage for the organisation. This study has tried to analyse the engagement levels of employees at Religare Technologies ltd. with the available inputs.

Certain points that require attention have been brought out in Chapter 8 It is certain that adequate attention if paid to these points would definitely improve the engagement levels. This survey has also developed a feeling among the employees that they are listened to. However this feeling may vanish if no change happens within a reasonable period. Engagement survey may be carried out at regular intervals (once in a year) to gauge the engagement levels. It may be ensured that these surveys are not clubbed with any other surveys. Results of an engagement survey can fail miserably if the Recommendations are not translated into action to improve the engagement level within the organization. Before carrying out the survey, an assessment of the points brought in the previous survey is analyzed. Based on the inputs of this survey senior leadership may examine the results from a strategic perspective and decide on the actions to be initiated to create a more engaged work force.

The drive for an engaged workforce needs to build on good people management and development policies, and the active support of line managers. People management strategies and policies need to be aligned with those of the wider business. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to organisational outcomes. A minority of Employees may not want to be engaged; organisations may need to give particular attention to recruitment and communications.

There is no short-cut to building and Maintaining employee engagement, but the time, effort and resource required will be amply repaid by the performance benefits. Perceived managerial fairness in dealing with problems also impacts significantly on individual performance, although it is not significantly related to engagement. Engagement levels are influenced by employees’ personal characteristics: a minority of employees is likely to resist becoming engaged in their work. But people are also influenced by the jobs they do and the experiences they have at work. The way in which both senior management and line managers behave towards, and communicate with, employees, plus the way in which work is organised and jobs defined, contribute significantly towards making work meaningful and engaging. Monitoring levels of employee engagement is a key element in managing human capital.

The drive for an engaged workforce needs to build on good people management and development policies, and the active support of line managers. People management strategies and policies need to be aligned with those of the wider business. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to organisational outcomes. A minority of employees may not want to be engaged; organisations may need to give particular attention to recruitment and communications. There is no short-cut to building and maintaining employee engagement, but the time, effort and resource required will be amply repaid by the performance benefits.

The positive linkages which research has found between employee engagement, advocacy, performance and intention to quit mean that it is in employers’ interests to drive up levels of engagement amongst their workforce. But levels of engagement have significant benefits for employees as well, since engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction and experiences of employment.

Perceived managerial fairness in dealing with problems also impacts significantly on individual performance, although it is not significantly related to engagement. Engagement levels are influenced by employees’ personal characteristics: a minority of employees are likely to resist becoming engaged in their work. But people are also influenced by the jobs they do and the experiences they have at work. The way in which both senior management and line managers behave towards, and communicate with, employees, plus the way in which work is organised and jobs defined, contribute significantly towards making work meaningful and engaging.

Chapter 11 References

1. [email protected]
2. http://humanresource.about.com/od/careerdevelopment/tp/besthrbooks1.htm
3. http://www.promo.haygroupinsight.com/employee_eng.asp?code=( accessed on 17.05.2008)
4. www.employeeengagementlibrary.com/SiteGen/Uploads/Public/Non
5. http://personnel.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/F251B19C-4054-4E0C-92FF-2938A647CEE3/0/abcsemployeeengagementkeys.pdf
6. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/246182/strategies-employee-engagement.html
7. Employee ort.in/employee+incentives
8. http://www.blessingwhite.com/EEE__report.asp
9. http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.php?id=408