The Indian job market is on a roll. With tremendous opportunities and opening up of new lines of businesses, the job seeker never had it better. On the other hand organizations are increasingly finding it tough to retain employees. Further to this effort, several organizations have implemented several employee benefit incentives for retaining and nurturing their staff. DH Avenues checks out what employers are doing today to keep their employees’ morale high.
An important factor that merits attention is using monetary incentives.
“Our high performance work culture based on transparency, rewards and recognition gives employees a sense of ownership and fulfils their entrepreneurial desires.
We have a very aggressive Employee Stock Option plan (ESOP) covering all our managers and outstanding performers across all levels to facilitate wealth creation.
Last year, we launched one of the most employee friendly policies in the industry, giving our employees the option of converting ESOPs to Restricted Stock Units (RSU). Our board recently approved a new RSU programme to cover a wider employee base. RSU’s are options that are granted to employees at a discounted price compared to the prevailing market rate in which the shares are traded,” explains Dr Srinivas Kandula, Global Head-Human Resources, iGATE Global Solutions. In fact using monetary incentives has always been successful as a retention strategy.
“The response has been very encouraging as it creates value for them, and we are seeing higher retention among the recipients of the programme,” adds Kandula. Employees see a sincere attempt by the organization in aiding their wealth accumulation and this works as a long-term motivator. “Every employee is given an opportunity to add value to one’s personal savings by being a part of the International Share Save Scheme (ISS). Under ISS, every employee can opt to purchase shares in Standard Chartered Bank at discounted rates.
He/she can choose either a 3 or 5-year investment period and can save between £5 and £250 per month (or equivalent in local currency). At the end of the savings period, he/she can take their money as lump sum; use a portion to buy Standard Chartered Bank shares/share price units at a preset price and encash the remaining,” explains Satish Austin, Senior Vice-President, Human Resources Development, Scope International Private Limited.
Says Sameer Khanna, Head - Compensation & Training, LogicaCMG, “we have several employee motivation and benefit schemes in place. Unique to LogicaCMG is a robust employee club called Syntillations.
Employees contribute Rs 50 per month per employee to this club that is completely governed by employees. The Company matches this contribution. The club organises events as varied as movie bookings to facilitating special interest groups for activities like sports and trekking.”
Personal touch
Today organizations want to go that extra mile to maintain a professional atmosphere at workplace and yet create an ambience so the employees feel at home. “It is with this purpose that the concept of celebrating birthdays of all the employees was introduced,” says Madan Kumar, CEO, Synaptris. Employees are given a card signed by the founder and the top management of the company apart from a birthday cake sponsored by the company. This apart, every team goes on a company-sponsored lunch every quarter to promote better bonding and sharing amongst them.
Naveen Sagar, CEO, Vmoksha says, “The entire culture is such that the organization is a fun place to work and participate actively.”
The activities are intended to keep the employees motivated as the industry by nature is a high-stress one and one is under constant pressure to perform and deliver. Increasingly organizations have realised that the intellectual capital is its greatest assets.
In fact if you do not like your job profile the Career Advancement Opportunities at Scope helps you to mould your career in line with your aspirations. Under the mantra, ‘Shift Jobs Without Quitting; Join one Business; Explore Five others’, Scope encourages talent moves across functions (business units), verticals (organization hierarchy), horizontals (banking, technology, shared service centre) and geographies (56 countries) within the Standard Chartered Group.
Scope has a unique block leave policy stipulates that every employee has to go on 10 consecutive days of vacation aimed promote work-life balance.
The organization also has flexi-time and part-time working options. Concierge services are made available within the campus by an external vendor to all employees. Services ranging from house search, payment of bills, tickets booking etc. to name a few are in the big list of services. Travel abroad is also part of the incentives.
“We have an India soccer team that represents the Indian arm of LogicaCMG in inter company soccer matches held in Europe. Last year the team travelled to Scotland and this year our team is slated to travel to Portugal for the matches,” says Khanna. he primary objectives of these unique benefits are to motivate, retain and offer rewarding careers to employees, foster a high-performing culture and create a unique total employment experience. Says Manish Sinha MD, Microsoft Customer Service and Support, APAC, “we believe that employee benefit is beyond just compensation and monetary take homes, it is the work environment, the company culture and feeling of belonging that you create for employees, to make work a great place.”
And true to this there are rooms provided in the office for employees to take a quick nap if they have had a long day. Air-conditioned cabs provide door-to-door pick up and drop 24 hours. This apart, a comprehensive medical insurance covering the employee’s immediate family members is also in place. Two state of the art gyms with trainers, which are free for employee use .
Engaging employees
It is important to bring about employee engagement to have employees who share the vision of the organization. The fundamental principle behind this approach is that an engaged employee is psychologically and intellectually connected to the organization. In fact at Microsoft, there is a recreational area on each floor, with pool tables, plasma TV, TT tables and other indoor games.
Says Sama Taneja, HR Manager, marketRx, “some are traditional benefits which have now become industry standards (e.g., transport to all employees, medical insurance) and are based on compensation benchmarks. From time to time based on industry trends, changing employee and business needs we have added benefits like company leased accommodation and car.” Apart from the run of the mill medical insurance coverage, Analog Devices, introduced a unique vision/ dental coverage for employees only by which employees can go ahead with a complete vision care/ dental care for themselves. In order to keep the physical well being of employees of Analog Devices, every year, the organization allocates individual budget for employees to keep themselves as well as their immediate family members physically fit.
“It is the core work that individuals do that keeps them motivated. They enjoy to work on the cutting edge of technology on products that the market is yet to see,”says Sinha.
