@changemakers
Featuring grassroot stories and initiatives that spark change through upliftment, empowerment and inspiration
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 2:12
Srikanth Acharya, Founder and CEO Offineeds & Employee Engagement Academy on the relevance of creating a culture of appreciation.
While gifting has been an integral part of the Indian ital, especially during the valley or Christmas, in today's world, corporations are increasingly looking at gifting as a means to drive employee engagement and employees fail not just a sense of pride, but also love talking about it on their social media pages, turning brand ambassadors for the organization. But can these small gestures really help establish deeper values such as loyalty and ownership? Or is it just a trend that will soon pass on?
Gifts play a very important role in transforming the feelings that we have, in transforming the emotions that we have for that particular location or for that particular relationship into something tangible. And even in business, it's exactly the same when a company wants to communicate how they feel about the relationship, employee employer relationship or a relationship with a customer, or if somebody wants to say that we value that you are a dealer and you've been a dealer and channel partner for a long time
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:23
Thank you, Srikanth, for that very insightful response. My next question is, you know, businesses have barely managed to survive the pandemic, let alone think of ways to keep their employees happy. How did you and your team navigate the last two years and manage to stay on course?
We tried doing that, and to be able to do that, to be able to understand the concept of how do you create merchandise, how do you design merchandise, how do you build a website? Within the organization, we ran a premier league kind of a contest on who would build the best merchandise stores
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:56
Thank You, Srikanth. I think. Not just surviving, but thriving. That is a wonderful lesson, I think, for all of us to pick up from that experience that you have shared. I think it's very critical to keep the morale high in many ways. Right. And I think as a founder, you sort of led the way by not letting the situation at hand cloud your vision for the company's growth
So I started connecting them to those contacts and I started creating a lot of content around employee engagement. And recently we did HR conclave at our office, which was attended by close 200 HR professionals. And the topic of conversation, there were panel discussions and networking and everything. And the common theme around the conversations were all related to employee engagement. So I put all of these things under one umbrella and launched it as a website called Employeeengagementacademy.com
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:42
Brilliant. That seems to be a very seamless and natural transition for you. You know, putting people at the center of everything, I guess. So that introspection during the pandemic has helped you considerably as you take a leap in the direction of making everything people centric and inclusive, I guess, via employee engagement. So how receptive. Have organizations in turn being to your insights? And do you see increasing interest, especially now with the workforce working in hybrid work environments?
So, given all these circumstances, every single organization wants to learn about new ideas, new strategies and learn from other companies what they're doing. Once case studies on what's going on and at the base of everything, to be able to address all of these problems is to improve employee engagement. Employee engagement is something that encompasses all of these different areas across all the different life cycles from attracting to hiring to onboarding to retention all the way to even offboarding employees leaving the organization as well
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:23
Thank you. Shikhan, it has been wonderful talking to you here on The Changemakers and we'll reach out to you from time to time to understand, you know, what's happening at the ground level in the industry with regard to employee engagement practices is and also at offer needs and look forward to hearing your voice as well. Thank you so much for your time. Bye
Thank you, Sreeja. It's been awesome speaking to you. It's my first time on swell. It's been good fun. Keep up the good work. Look forward to more action on Sul. See you