In any organisation, most of the rank-and-file employees work in an environment in which they get instructions from their seniors and are exposed to their limited work profile. This hampers their imagination and they end up being a small part of a big company. Such an environment can never foster future leaders and these employees constantly look for jobs in other companies as this is the only option left for them to move up the corporate ladder and have career growth.

Looking from an organisational point of view (and as already explained in one of the moonshots), In deciding to spend millions of dollars to enter a new market or back a new technology, senior leaders seldom seek the advice of rank-and-file employees. However, those on the ground are often best placed to evaluate the issues that will make or break a new strategy. Thus, by limiting the role of these employees, the organisations are at a even bigger loss.

Solution

A typical day in the life of an employee - He goes to the office in the morning, sits on his desk, gets instructions from his manager, performs his daily routine work and goes back home thinking about promotion, salary hike and related issues.

According to a recent study, most of the employees view themselves as a separate entity from their organisation. My solution tries to bring the employees and their organisation closer, help the top-level management gain a better understanding of their views and opinions and make better strategic decisions.

My solution consists of two parts -

A team of 4 employees is selected and given a chance to work with the CEO for a day. The selection of the employees can be completely random or based upon certain criteria like minimum work period in the organisation or self nomination by the employees.

The team will be informed a week in advance so that they can contact the other members and get to know each other. On the day of the programme, the teams will report to the "1 Day CEO" room instead of their usual departments. They will have a meeting with the CEO in-person or through Audio/video conferencing. The CEO will brief them about the latest issues and challenges which their company is facing. The team then needs to select an issue of their choice to act upon. Additionally, the CEO will also be giving a task to this team to conclude upon by the EOD.

The team will be in touch with the CEO and other top-level executives throughout the day and submit their solution on the same day. The solution can be in the form of a brief presentation which will be shown to the CEO and also mailed to other employees for their feedback and awareness.

This activity can be carried out on a monthly or a weekly basis.

Practical Impact

Impact 1: Employees will have an increased sense of belongingness towards the organization. They will be empowered to initiate a change in their work environment.

Impact 2: Motivation to the employees towards bringing innovation and express their opinions freely on issues related to their specific domain and team interest.

Impact 3: Improved quality of top-level decision making with fresh perspective and innovative ideas brought in by the rank-and-file employees.

First Steps

An organisation can perform this activity with a self-nominated team of rank-and-file employees and a senior executive of the company. The activity can be carried out on weekends so that their is no work issue in the respective departments from which the employees have been selected. However, the consent and willingness of the employees to work on weekends must be taken into account. At the end of the programme, the employees and the senior executive can give their feedbacks about the usefulness of the activity and the achieved results.

Credits

Rashmi Mendhegiri
Associate Consultant
Capgemini India Pvt Ltd

Images

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March 23, 2011 at 3:21am

Mylan Rubil

Both an interesting title and a relevant concept. I run a distribution company in Geneva. It was started 6 years back. I have found that most of the attrition comes from the newly hired since they do not seem to associate themselves with the company. However, the employees who were hired 6 years back are still working with me. Involving new employees in the strategic decision making sounds good to start with.

April 3, 2011 at 5:50am

Diana Marie

Good start to breach the challenge.

There are several experiential training companies that have developed games that have the same impact where employees and teams get first hand experience on the demands of more leadership, impact on their decisions, and gap between their plan, execution, and the result.

I find having dynamic teams formulating for a certain task or project to handle specific issues come together through to completion better as people have a true stake in what is going on - it needs a leader who isn't a control freak and actually believes in empowerment and a committed and capable team to deliver. Great way to increase employee engagement.