Employee Retention - Bengaluru Edition

The All things Talent forum returned to Bengaluru after amazingly insightful discussions on “Employer Branding” & “Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace”, this time with a topic that affects countless human resource professionals around the world – “Employee Retention”.

The event mainly catered to HR Professionals who were interested in obtaining a better understanding of the current trends in employee engagement, tackling the issue of attrition & sharing their own experiences with respect to the retention of the top talent at their own organizations.

Speakers at the event –

The event began with a brief description of “All Things Talent” as a forum that aims to build an exclusive HR community, filled with professionals focused on learning from peers & industry stalwarts.

The first speaker session of the day was conducted by Sandeepa Samuel . Sandeepa, using a wonderfully detailed presentation, took us through the engagement or retention life cycle for an employee, which was broken down across four major phases:

“Employ” which covers practices of the pre-on boarding process like 10-day paid projects before joining, online sessions, invitation to official events, giving the option to spend a day at the offices.
“Engage” where we must involve the leadership to be involved in the On boarding process & the use of activities with a personal touch like sending “Thank You” cards to families of new joinees with an image of their new workplace!
“Empower” which is the aspect that focuses on individual development plans for our employees to understand their aspirations as well.
“Excel” which focuses on providing the opportunity to take the next step & work alongside senior leaders in the organization on special impact projects

Up next, we had Paul Jacob who chose a wonderfully honest approach & discussed his own experiences across almost 2 decades. Like all seasoned professionals, Paul’s session was strictly driven by statistics that discussed the major reasons for attrition as backed by data – limited growth opportunity, transparency in the organization, lack of a solid PMS Software.

He spoke about the paradigm shift in requirements & how it isn’t just about the money anymore, especially for the millennials in today’s workplaces. He also discussed in great detail the we must not over estimate requirements without any honest feedback & that on many occasions, employees tend to focus on improvement in basic workplace details like hygiene in the washrooms, coffee & snacks quality as well as the Air conditioners cooling! While these issues may not seem very attractive problems to solve, these basic touch points are often ignored.

In conclusion, he discussed the importance of a Pro-active Retention strategy instead of a Reactive retention plan.

With so many experiences shared & countless notes taken by the audience, we broke for a 20-minute break, with the audience discussing & connecting amongst themselves as well as with the speakers!

To bring us back & restart the event, we had Khalid Raza. Khalid, who has now been with IBM for close to a decade, started by talking about his own personal story & delved into the opportunity, provided to him work across major verticals at IBM. He shared that the opportunity to work across multiple roles from the same organization is something that helps retain great talent & should be looked into across all industries. He discussed the plan for 24 months covering education, exposure, experience, and growth for each EPS, providing them platform to become an effective seller at IBM. He also highlighted the importance of ensuring alignment of focus between the employee & the business, as it at the end of the day, productivity of the organization will drive all aspects forward.

He concluded with an extremely simple yet important thought – “Don’t invest in technology and use people. Rather invest in people and use technology!”

An event on employee retention would be incomplete without discussing the challenges of attrition faced in an Insurance Company. This is why we were delighted to have Vinay Trivedi close the event. While discussion bordered around attrition rates 10%, 20% & 30%, Vinay shared with us that he grapples with attrition rates close to 100% every year. He discussed that in an industry as extreme as Insurance, it is extremely important to provide elements of enjoyment within the workplace. Organizing small-scale events & parties helps leaders like Vinay gain the brutally honest feedback from the people that work in his teams. He also shared that he welcomes venting sessions where his team members can go all out & discuss the issues in great detail.

In summary, he believed the challenges of his industry are unlike any other & any feedback or suggestions he could gain from the audience would help him greatly as well!

While all four speakers shared great insights & thoughts on Employee Retention, the extremely knowledgeable HR folks in the audience played a huge role in driving the event with great questions & conversations!

The event concluded with the presentation of mementos to all the panelists and proceedings were taken forward to a lunch session, which marked the end of all the sessions.