Road to Disengagement - Apple and Facebook Pay for Women to Freeze Eggs

The two major corporate houses of technology and social media have declared a benefit package for women employees which is the option of “Egg Freezing”. Apple and Facebook will pay about $20,000 per woman to freeze their eggs and store them.

Note: Egg freezing is a process in which a woman's eggs (oocytes) are extracted, frozen and stored. Later, when she is ready to become pregnant, the eggs can be defrosted, fertilized, and transferred to the uterus as embryos. (Reference: Wikipedia)

These organizations might believe that the key to success of a women employee to achieve their career goal is to delay their pregnancy and have an option to enjoy their motherhood later in life. But the message that these companies are sending out to the women employees is that “the only way to succeed in corporate life in America is not by having a family.
Moreover, this policy of egg freezing can make an American women employee feel that if they opt for a maternity in their mid career, the opportunity to climb up the ladder may be delayed or lost.

This policy may be a clear way of disengaging the women work force at Apple and Facebook.

For engaging the women employees, facilities like flexi timing, extended maternity leave, quality day care facility and kids at work policies should be promoted which will give them a better chance to manage their family and work life hand in hand, leading to a successful career.

Instead of paying a perk of $20000, if they pay the same amount to have a full-time baby nurse/care taker for the initial six months, women employees could continue a successful career track, enjoy their motherhood and at the same time feel the support from their organizations

Employee Engagement by discontinuing the bell curve method of appraisal

The most preferred method of performance appraisal has been the bell curve where it is believed that most of the employees are average performers and very few employees are above and below the average performance level. During this process many high performers miss the chance of getting into the top rank in-spite of their excellent performance level since there is no space left for them to get into the top 5 percent. Hence it disengages them leading to attrition of the top performers. Not only this, in order to get into the top 5 % top performers list, lot of unwanted internal competition, office politics crops up. Even this discourages the employees to share resources and information with the peers. This leads to huge level of disengagement among the employees leading to attrition.

Looking at this scenario, many leading employers such Google, KPMG, Accenture, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Infosys, Ola Cabs have stopped the usage of bell curve method of appraisal and started following the absolute rating of employees.

On the other hand, there are still some companies such as Tech Mahindra, Fortis Healthcare who are following this method of bell curve of rating since they believe that bell curve constantly raises the performance level of the employees. Some of them have tweaked the model by raising the cap of 5 percent of top performers to 6.5 percent so that more top performers are included in the merit list.

Facebook announces PAID Paternity Leave for 4 months

The social media giant, Facebook has taken an initiative to engage the men employees who are going to be the proud father. The company has announced a paternity leave for PAID 4 months effective from January 2016 across the globe. This engagement practice will give the new dads to be more supportive at home shouldering their responsibility equally with their spouse and the child.

In western countries extended paternity leave provision is a culture. An Italian employee can avail 13 weeks of leave with 80 percent pay. Similarly a Swedish employee can take for 8 weeks. In Norway, it is 45 weeks with 80 percent pay, followed by in Canada with 35 weeks of leave with 55 percent pay.

Some of the companies in Western countries with extended paternity leaves are Bank of America: 12 weeks; Yahoo: eight weeks; Google: seven weeks; Twitter: six weeks; Microsoft: four weeks; Trip Advisor: four weeks; PricewaterhouseCoopers: three weeks and Deloitte: three weeks.

In India, Godrej provides 2 weeks of paternity leave from 2015. In fact SAP Labs has started the option of flexible timing and work from work option for the new fathers in addition to the 5 days of paternity leave. The Central government employees can avail the facility of paid paternity leave of up to 15 days. Some companies allow employees to take the paternity leave in intervals. For e.g. Sapient has a policy that the men employees take a few days of leave after the delivery followed by again some days of leave when required at home. Not only this, they can even take a break of 2 hours between their works too. Even organizations like Citi encourage employees to take 3- 6 months of flexible work time options after the delivery.
Extended paternity benefits have been utilized as big tool for retaining and engaging the male employees

Shift in Employee Engagement from Traditional Companies to E Commerce Start Ups

The Chief Financial Officer and Advisor to the CEO of India’s leading IT Organisation, Infosys has quit the lucrative role and joined Ola cabs as the CFO.

This is not the only top executive who has quit a leadership role at a traditional MNC and has joined the emerging start-up company. Some of the other top executives who have done the same are as follows:

• Sriram Venkataraman joined Flipkart as CFO after quitting the Head of Finance position at HUL
• Hardeep Singh joined Snapdeal as Head of Infrastructure after quitting the Head of Supply Chain position at Bharti Retail
• Samardeep Subandh joined Flipkart as Chief Marketing Officer after quitting the Chief Sales officer position at Marico
• Ananth Narayan joined Myntra as CEO after quitting the Director position at McKinsey India
• Manpreet Ratia joined Amazon as Head of Operations after quitting the Regional Director(APAC) at Citibank

The Key Elements to engage these top executives to these E-Commerce Start ups is as follows:

• Larger opportunity for creativity and innovation
• Higher Growth Opportunities
• Entrepreneurial Mindset 
• Total ownership at projects
• Thrill of shaping a new age industry
• Flexible Hours at workplace
• Room for Diversity to take decisions
• Innovative Compensation

On the other hand, the traditional companies also have tweaked their ways to engage their key talents. Some of the engagement strategies are as follows:

• Offering Higher Salaries
• More International Exposure
• Giving Employees more Freedom and Accountability
• Job Rotations

In fact majority of them who joins these start ups have an entrepreneurial mindset of working. Hence companies such GODREJ has come up with innovative ways to engage the key talents. It has launched a program called “LOUD –Live Out Your Dream” where the organisation will fund the employees to fulfill their entrepreneurial ambitions. In fact the company offers those employees with scholarships for a series of activities such as film making, cycling in Europe to CSR activities. Similarly WIPRO has created a fund called “WIPRO VENTURES” which funds the start up ideas of the employees.

Adapted from Business Today,November 2015

Work Life Balance Initiative for LIC Employees

Recently it was declared that the second and the forth Saturday of the every month will be an off day for all Government bank employees with effect from September 2015. Soon after this decision, the management of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and the associated trade unions after fifteen rounds of joint meetings has arrived at the final agreement that the LIC employees will also enjoy the benefit of alternative Saturdays off.

Not only this, the salary also has been hiked to 15 percent out of which 13.5 percent would be in the basic pay and the remaining 1.5 percent in HRA, CCA (city compensation allowance) and daily commuting allowance

This initiative is expected to increase the work life balance among the LIC employees thus taking the employees to the next level of engagement towards the work and the organisation.

Employee Engagement Initiative to build the team spirit and morale by InMobi

InMobi, a leading company in the mobile advertisement industry has started an employee engagement initiative called 'Live. Laugh. Leap.'  Under this program 4 clubs have been formed which will encourage the employees to form their own teams based on their common passion and interest across the organisation and plan the get together activity or outing program  at their own cost.

The four clubs formed are Runners' Club, Cycling Club, The Nomads Travel Club and the Bar Raisers' Club

• Runners' Club- This club is for the employees who love jogging
• Cycling Club -This club is for those who like the feel of enjoying cycle rides.
• Nomads Travel Club is for those would like to explore remote and far way destinations from the official environment.
• Bar Raisers' Club aims to invite the employee who takes pleasures in visiting places with good food and drink

Such initiatives do not force the employees to join on mandatory manner in official parties and get together gatherings. Here they have the freedom to form their own team and liked minded employees who can share their passions and have lively conversations among them, thereby boosting the team morale and creating best friends at work place.

Employee Engagement Post Maternity via Flexi Timing and Location at Genpact

Genpact, one of the largest BPO in India has 400 to 500 women employees who take maternity leave annually and post maternity majority of them found it difficult to return back to the work since they had to face the challenge in maintaining a balance between the family and professional responsibility.

Hence Genpact has come out with 'Returning Moms Programme', an initiative to engage the female employees post maternity phase where they can select the shift timings according to their choice and convenience.  Not only this, the new mothers can also start working from the nearest branch of the organisation from their residence. This initiative will definitely encourage and engage more women employees to return back for their second innings.

Under this program, Genpact already has facilities such as day care for employee’s children and stock parking i.e reserved space in a parking lot for cars driven by pregnant women or new mothers.

IN-HOUSE INCUBATION CENTER- An Unique Employee Engagement Tool by SimpliLearn.com

Simplilearn.com, an e-commerce company which provides professional certification opportunities has an attrition rate of 18%. It had witnessed that 15% of the employees use to quit Simplilearn to start their own venture but rarely could they be successful in their ventures. Hence the organisation came up with an idea of setting up an incubation center, where the employees with an entrepreneurial spirit will get an opportunity on work on their idea and at the same time get mentored within the organisation. Every year during February and August, four ideas will be screened, selected and converted into product or service within 90 days. Simplilearn will invest up to Rs.30 lacs into each team to execute and transform the idea into reality.

Organisation such as Google has a best practice allowing their employees to work 20% of their time on the project of their choice. In fact Gmail and Google News is an outcome of such best practice.