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
