Employee Engagement - Low Attrition , Higher Productivity

During my span of work at my previous organization, I have come across several brilliant associates who excel at their deliverables. They efficiently complete their piece of code but I don't find them thinking "out of the box". They work on their respective modules of an application and are well informed about that particular module. However, when it comes to the complete application/product knowledge, I see the domain awareness missing. This lack of overall awareness about the application/product severely restricts their ability to innovate and come up with newer and more effective solutions that will benefit the product/application.

Another issue is , due to this lack of awareness, associates don't realize the significance/importance of their work. For example, we always encounter cases where associates are not keen on prod-support work. This is because they don't realize the criticality of prod-support to create a reliable, repeatable customer experience. Once, associates recognize the impact their work is creating, they would approach it with more passion & enthusiasm. We often hear about 'Employee Engagement'. It's a concept that is generally viewed as :- managing discretionary effort, that is, when employees have choices, they will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests. An engaged employee is a person who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work.

It has been proved that engaged employees are 62% more productive than disengaged employees. This additional productivity results in higher quality in their deliverables, hence higher costumer satisfaction.

I strongly feel that , to create Engaged employees, we need to ensure that they need to realize the importance of their work. This will happen only if they have knowledge about the complete product/application (know the complete domain of the product/application ) . To ensure this, we need create an environment in the organization, where domain knowledge sessions are encouraged and supported. I acknowledge that a process is already in place for this. However, I don't see it (to be ) functioning ideally. One way we can increase the inclination of associates to gain knowledge on the domain of their work(learn the domain ) is through creating a system where its made mandatory for all teams to conduct one domain knowldege session every fortnight/month.

To summarize the idea, we need to put stronger focus on learning the domain & functionality of the products/applications associates are working on. This domain knowledge helps to get the overall picture, thus creating an opportunity to innovate and improvise. The domain also ensures higher Employee engagement, resulting in higher productivity and enhanced costumer experience.

Dissatisfied employee in IT company - A cliche

There is this trend I have been noticing in the Indian IT industry . A good percentage of young IT employees are focussing on higher studies. This is not very different from the US or Europe, but the startling difference is that in the Western economies, MBA aspirants are of average age 28 years. In India this figure is 24.
Some facts for you ...
250,000 students appeared for CAT 2007. In 2008, the expected figure is 300,000. Thats a staggering 20 % rise.
Talking about Indians going abroad for MBA or MS, there is steep hike in those figures as well. Last year 16000 Indians took the GMAT, the flagship exam for access to MBA degree abroad. No of GRE ( standardized test for all other PG programs except MBA ) takers summed upto 31000.

These facts and figure and indeed astonishing. More over because many of these students are engaged in high paying jobs at multinational and private companies.

I was an IT guy for first 2 years of my professional life, and my observation was that many of these IT professional voluntarily/involuntarily joined a cult. A cult, whose members want to denounce an IT career. I hate to admit it, but I also belong to this cult. Somehow, I feel that this is very unfair to the IT Industry in India.
On one side, Indian IT inc is facing severe talent crunch with majority of the Indian students passing out being unemployable, while on the other side, the brains of the industry are moving out.
If these professionals are discontent / dissatisfied/ unhappy in their IT professional livee, I would request those professionals to divert their attention to other verticals such as manufacturing or financial services or medical services or entertainment. On a detailed look at these careers, there will definitely be an enlightment for many.
IT industry has regularily been the highest spender on employee perks as compared with other industries. While the concept of HR is kind of abstract in other sectors, in IT and ITes, they are looked upon as vital component of the organisation. Talking about world travel, no sector offers the kind of opportunities which IT does.
and finally, the CTC aspect, IT industry is one of the highest salary payers in India leaving manufacturing, UG level sales, finance way behind.

So all those (not-so-cool) IT guys. You have a choice to make here. Think about it, Isolate the IT-hating cult and start loving what you do.. and trust me , you ll start loving ur work .