Namaskar,
Myself Rahul Vitthalrao Bhoite, HR professional with 16 years of experience
from manufacturing, Telecom, Infrastructure industry.
“Be the change that
you wish to see in the world.” ... this is the learning for me during this
Corona Pandemic. Many think Corona created negative impact on the minds of
Human beings. But I will say we have to be positive in every situation we came
across and this will help us in positive results.
So here I start with my HR story –
Its slow down of businesses all over the world since last November 2019
whatever the market trends & company performances every employer has to pay
salaries to their employees as its “right
of the employee.”
The days are passing and we are going
deep in the financial crunch, suddenly we heard the terms like Corona, Covid 19 around late January
2020 ours is Small Scale Manufacturing company which not mostly dealing with
other countries so the impact of term Corona
reached us late than other IT or MNC companies. In continuation with industry
trend we also started prevention, care and employee first approach by starting
Sanitization, social distancing, temperature checks for employees. But with
guidelines of Government Of India we stopped our Operations from 22nd
March 2020.
The time was running with culture of
WFH but being manufacturing facility we have limitations as well. Unless until
we manufacture we can’t build the revenue. Money is the necessity of every
business, if can’t generate then we have to look for options like Salary Cut
downs, manpower reductions etc. Here Balance of employee satisfaction &
employee engagement is again will be the big challenge. Employees are working
from home & always having pressure of all emotional, financial; social
needs satisfaction which is very different condition for all of us. Every
individual is experiencing the word “VUCA”
in reality by the end of March 2020 as the new financial year was calling for
new targets, new budgets.
Role of HR is very crucial in this
period we have started to connect employees over calls, started zoom meeting
with Functional heads & there second lines, but yes there is always fear in
mind everyone how to cope the situation & what will be the future. We as
organization having employee meetings wherein we are discussing about
well-being & learning opportunities for every individual.
I personally taken this situation as
learning time & completed 12 HR Certification courses which includes How to
Engage employees, How to motivate employees and many more like this. These
courses helped me to be more positive & focused to face the Pandemic
situation.
We as organization having culture of
celebrating Family day every year in the month of May. Fortunately I witnessed
the program for last 3 years. The common agenda of this program is to connect
with employees & make them feel proud of the organization they work for.
This program was become DNA of the organization & every individual is
waiting for the same every year.
Every year we use to arrange the
event for employees & all there family members including contract
employees. The program consists of Cultural events, Dance. Singing, Plays,
Motivational programs & dinner with families will be icing on cake.
Corona has stolen our Cake ??
During one of the zoom meeting of our
top officials in the month Of April new thought came why we should not do
Family Day Online? And here the spark ignited… But for us its again new
challenge as Skype, Zoom are the words for many of us, then what about
Operators, Contract labours??
We initiated the thought and started
to act on this by creating various departmental groups & started guiding
them for use of Zoom/ Skype. Here comes the concept of new learning &
leadership for all those line supervisors who took the lead in starting the
concept of virtual family day.
Many of them use to conduct Zoom
calls for their respective team members who are ITI Operators, SSC passed
contract labours, but yes we delegated them & we have easily complete the
task of training 400 employees in the span of 2 days. The plan was of having
program of 30 minutes.
The next challenge was to increase
the participation of individuals. We have created whatsapp group of employees
wherein we have branded our event with help of last year event photographs,
event teasers, we have asked individuals to shoot there songs/ dance videos/
Music videos of 2 minutes and asked them to share to Event coordinators who are
our employees only. Slowly the momentum was getting build and we were getting
many vidoes, stories, paintings made by employees & their family members.
Few employees shared the Kaizens which they implemented at their homes.
This in turns motivated the employees
& their families as well. We implemented virtual Deep Prajvalan (Lighting
the lamp). And good part is that many employees did this while managing there
WFH meetings, Official calls as well. And at the end we got 30 entries for
program which results in 1 hour Virtual
Family Day program.
The day came where we have planned
for launching the YouTube link around 5 pm with all employees & enjoys the
program with families at home. Suddenly I receive call from my top officials
around 4.30 pm that we need to create more enthusiasm by putting few live
videos for more participation. Was seating with my kids & was unaware of
the sudden demand. I dressed up in Marathi traditional dress & did video of
appealing employees for participation which created impact & appreciated by
many employees.
Finally we realised the YouTube Link
with all employees & employees watched the event video online along with
their families. Many employees shared their photographs, selfies with their
families & friends. This was really motivating for me as individual as I
receive many calls from employees & management for appreciation.
For the size of 300 employees its
great success & new learning for me, which definitely created the positive,
impact on the minds of employees & their families too. It really boosts the
employee moral & motivated them to work for the organization which brings
the family culture.
We experienced the same as with the
permission of Government authorities we stated our production operations in the
first week of May where employees participated on their own without any
compulsion from management for attending the duties.
The learning from above story is,
·
Take care of people & people will
take care of you.
·
Change is always good, accept it
& get succeed..
·
Together we can & together we
will!!
Written by- Rahul Viitthalrao Bhoite
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulbhoite1378
