Innovative Interventions

ECCENTRICITY is not the sole province of absent-minded academicians. A touch of the absurd does a great deal to regenerate a dreary workplace into one where employees come in early, bright-eyed and bushy tailed and leave gossiping happily, way after hours! Companies would do well to occasionally let their collective hair down and make the workplace a fun place.

Out-of-the-box thinking has been the saving of many a staid old- economy company. There are, in fact so many ways of innovative work practices that boost employee morale that adopting some may actually bring back the spring in people's steps! A case in example is the practice of ``awarding'' 5-rupee coins to a star employee for getting a job done in record time. Employees typically stick them to their monitor edges and ``wear'' them like medals. Cost? Five Rupees! Another practice is a take off on the ``Empowerment'' model.

Appointing ``key account managers'' is good and certainly provides a feeling of ownership and responsibility, but a further classy touch will be to get the company to allow all employees to have visiting cards in their own name. Some sales organisations have cards with a blank line with a pre-script baldly stating: ``Rep.by'', where the representative scrawls his name. Gauche!

Much more dignified for the company to permit employees to get their own cards made with approved designations, and get the employees to pay for it themselves! A sign of seniority could be the company picking up the tab for the cards. Or a variation could be a reward in the shape of the first box of cards, ceremoniously handed over by the employee's immediate boss at an impromptu meeting.

Today, many companies provide lunch (either subsidised or free). It often transpires that employees need to entertain but they can't because they need to take the day off to prepare for the feast. Companies can make available to the employee, the services of the organisational caterer to arrange for a take out meal at subsidised rates. In that way the organisation gets a full workday output from the employee and on his part, the employee returns home, tension free and ready to party.

Then there is Sarguja Synthetics, Dabra, which has a clever way of showing their appreciation for employee productivity. They name their shop floors after the employee of the month. These names are used in official correspondence and are used as venues for company get-togethers. There are always ways to infuse novelty in the workplace and the HR community is constantly on the lookout for a means to bring in enthusiasm and participation.

CCDC, Hyderabad initiated an intervention where a Vice President invited groups of junior colleagues home for a five-course dinner that he cooked himself. The CEO of the company, not being a gourmet chef, regularly holds ``Breakfast with the Boss'' sessions so that he can connect more with the people who work for him. In today's flat hierarchies, adherences to old norms are anachronistic. Employees find it difficult to break the habit of calling a superior officer ``Sir'' despite being asked to use his first name. It is these interventions that help the transition.

Carpembach Chemicals Mumbai has a parking problem, apart from the CEO and two vice presidents; they have one other parking space. Instead of alienating five of their six GMs by allotting it to the sixth GM, they decided to permit the most productive junior employee to use it as his personal parking space for the month. The spot is officially painted over with the employee's name and the privilege is his as long as he remains the most productive employee. TMI Network, one of the country's largest placement companies, takes the employee referral rewards scheme a little further by awarding the referring employee a box of sweets every time the employee he suggested performs superlatively.

One practice that is gaining currency in many organisations is the induction of young B-school students for four months' association and making it a point to give them a near-independent responsibility to make the required decisions and sales calls if so required. This has proved an excellent way to attract B-school talent, as the summer interns tend to talk about their exciting experiences and enthuse their classmates into taking an interest in the company when the time comes for them to choose a salubrious place to work.

Taking leave has also morphed into a new dimension. HR managers across organisations have come out with a novel way of arranging leave. It is an incontrovertible fact that the need for a particular employee is never felt till the day he happens to be absent. In order that people are available for the larger part of the day to take care of every possible exigency caused by their absence, extended hour substitution is brought into play.

This involves the leave applicant working for two hours more each day till he accumulates enough hours to compensate for the day he is going to take off. Like this his earned leave remains unaffected, which he can encash if he so wishes and the organisation itself loses no employee productivity.

I personally have worked for organisations where my people devoted large amounts of personal time to achieve last-minute company requirements. When the job is done, I always felt it was a nice touch to call on the employee on home and reward his family for their sacrifice in sparing their son/husband/father to the organisation for all those extra hours spent in the office. This, I noted, did at least two things; firstly, the family feels appreciated by the organisation, secondly the employee feels relieved that the flak he receives at home will be mitigated due to recognition given to the efforts of the family.

Making the office a fun place to work in is quite easily the best thing to boost morale and productivity. Being mildly eccentric keeps employees guessing the next ``stunt'' you are going to pull, and the feeling of joy that a novel HR initiative generates is worth all the trouble of thinking out and implementing a zany best practice!

ABHIMANYU ACHARYA

abhimanyu@india.com