The Hindu Business Line : Taking the lead

Employee efficiency programmes, undertaken by organisations such as Saint Gobain Glass India Ltd, are found to help employees not only on the professional front, but also on the personal.

I am a much more focussed person now, I am able to prioritise my activities both on the professional as well as on the personal front, and most importantly, I am able to spend quality time with my family without neglecting my work".

This is the refrain one hears and sees the glitter of satisfaction in the eyes of the employee at the Saint Gobain Glass factory in Sriperumbudur, on the outskirts of Chennai.

They say they have become "complete individuals". Not only are they able to involve themselves in high-payoff activities, thereby giving their best to the organisation, they also have enough time to attend to their personal commitments, which they had been neglecting due to pressures at the work place.

Padma Kumar, Team Leader, Human Resources, Saint Gobain Glass India Ltd, attributes this change in the attitude of its employees to the recent mid-career training programme that the top and middle-level management of the company has undergone. The programme, called Effective Personal Productivity (EPP), focuses on personal growth, attitude and self-image, and is a licensed programme of Leadership Management International (LMI).

The programme stretches over a period of three-four months, and is supposed to help people evaluate their attitude and make productive behavioural changes, increase productivity by controlling priorities and set goals and achieve results.

"After being in the business for four years, and having made the necessary capital investments, we felt that it was time to invest in improving people's skills. We had always been a number-focused company, and we have till date always succeeded in achieving our targets. But in order to do better, we felt that it was necessary to re-look at things with a different approach, and concentrate on the attitude of the employees," says Kumar.

This programme, he says, has taught the employees valuable things such as time-management, identifying high pay-off activities, setting long-term and short term goals for themselves and delegating work to the team members in a way to improve the productivity of the team.

While undergoing the training, each employee was asked to set two professional and two personal goals for himself each week, the results of which were discussed in the subsequent week. "We shared with each other how far we had been able to achieve those goals. Being able to achieve the goals gave us the enthusiasm to do better. And, sharing our goals helped us to get more involved with each other. It helped us to respect each other's priorities," explains Kumar.

"The programme helped us to get started and not to postpone," says Unni Krishnan, Team Leader, Customer Service, Saint Gobain Glass India Ltd. He says that by setting goals for themselves, they got to know the amount of idle time they usually spent on a particular task. "We are now able to channelise our energy and resources better. Now each of us carry an activity and discussion planners, which help us to prioritise our activities."

On the personal front, points out Krishnan, "There were many issues such as buying a house, or getting a master health check-up done, which used to keep getting postponed. But by setting long-term and short-term goals for ourselves both on the professional and personal front, we have succeed in balancing these areas well."

Agreeing with Krishnan, Kumara Devan, Team Leader, Information Technology, Saint Gobain, says that apart from prioritising, the programme has also taught him to deal with interruptions. "Each time you get a call or make a call, one's focus on work generally goes haywire. By carrying a discussion planner, I jot down all the points that I have to discuss with a particular colleague and get everything clarified in a single call. By doing this, I not only prevent interruption in my work but also in my colleagues' work."

Devan adds that the programme has taught him to rearrange his office layout in order to prevent interruption. "Previously, I used to sit facing the corridor, which created quite a few interruptions with passers by stopping to greet me. Now that my chair no longer faces the corridor, I am able to concentrate better on my work with few interruptions."

He claims his productivity increased tremendously and he can now differentiate between high payoff and low payoff tasks. "Previously I was in the habit of sitting over paper work. But I now make sure that I clear my paper work then and there," he says.

Kumar says that while most mid-career training programmes concentrate on upgrading technical skills of the employees, a training programme of this nature is a critical boost for any organisation. "This is where the role of human resources comes in. The role of HR is to enable changes in people by influencing their thoughts."

Agreeing with Kumar, Latha Ramakrishnan of LMI says, "Saint Gobain has always been a goal-driven company, but a weekly monitoring system has helped the employees reduce their stress levels and measuring results on a weekly basis motivates them to do to better."

Saint Gobain has already spent close to Rs 25 lakh on this mid-career training programme, with as many as 75 employees from the top and middle management undergoing LMI's EPP programme. Kumar is confident that this programme will have a positive impact on the company's profit on a long term. "The motivational levels of the employees are already high after this programme," he says.

Picture by Shaju John

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Learn, relearn... or unlearn

What the bosses say ...

Flowering on the job

As good as their skills...