Employee Engagement of Field Employees?

[Gunjan Banerjee]

Hi,

I am new to this group, so let me first introduce my self. I am Gunjan Banerjee working for an IT services company in Hyderabad , India.

We are starting our employee engagement program for the field employees. These employees sits in various locations in the country.
I have to design a employee engagement program for them. I need suggestion from all of you, as what should be the basic criteria to design such program .

Hope to get some help from all of you.


Regards,
Gunjan

[Delphine Bondran]

Hi Gunjun,

Here is an intersting mission!

I guess the first step to start an EE program is to define which type of engagement the company wants to improve : do you need more emotional engagement and sense of belonging or rational engagement to favour retention (vs. loyalty) ?

Maybe, a small survey could help you to assess present employee engagement (are they actively engaged to their job or to the company ? are they disengaged / non-engaged ? etc.) and what they need to be engaged (do they need more tangible or intangible enablers ?).
This measure is also important to prove the company's engagement to its employees (assuming that the company will share the results and try to reach the realstic expectations).

I think the survey's results would be a strong basis to find creative and major actions improving employee engagement wanted.

Hope those small advices could help you.

Best,
Delphine

[Gunjan Banerjee]

Hi Delphine,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I Will definitely work on these points.

Regards,
Gunjan

[Terrence Seamon]

Welcome to the EE network, Gunjan. And congratulations on jumping right in with a discussion thread

I will "second" Delphine's answer about gathering some data from the field employees. Very good idea.

What I will add is just a thought about field employees.

Sometimes field employees will complain about being remote from HQ, feeling like forgotten step-children. At the same time, however, field employees may enjoy being apart from HQ, feeling autonomous and free from the culture of HQ.

So my suggestion is to design an engagement strategy that balances their need to feel connected, included and remembered with their need to feel independent.

Terry

[Gunjan Banerjee]

Hi Terry,

Thanks alot for the guidance.

Regards,
Gunjan

[Brandon Hull]

Good luck, Gunjan.

I think you almost have to start with a survey, to get a feel for the sentiments that exist out there. Of course, only a percentage of the employees will reply to the survey, keep that in mind.

One thing I've just started doing is turning my visits with some key field employees into recorded interviews. The purpose is to generate a "library" of content that can be shared across the rest of the field employees; it also serves as a unique way to show respect for the people being interviewed. They share their wisdom and ideas, the rest of the employees learn from it...all without holding long conference calls or dealing with excessive costs of single-location meetings.

But again, that's an element of the engagement effort, not the program itself.