EVP Is Why Your Employees Join Your Organization: Pooja Lal,BI Worldwide

In an exclusive conversation with Dataquest,  Pooja Lal, Head - Strategic Initiatives, BI WORLDWIDE India,  talks about how HR  is witnessing the digital transformation, importance of EVP and what engagement and recognition strategies help build a happier workplace. Excerpts:

Q. According to you, what brings employee value proposition to life?

There’s no secret recipe to creating an effective EVP. It’s a combination of understanding your employees, your organisation’s culture, values and practices, and then designing an EVP that fits your objectives. The first step is understanding what makes your employees thrive in their role and journey in your organization. You need to think through what is your organization’s purpose and cascade that through to what is the employee’s purpose as well.

I generally recommend the ‘Make Every Moment Count’ framework and the ‘Moment Sparklers’ to make each moment of an employee’s journey come to life. The former emphasizes what you need to do to attract, engage and retain talent in your organization through meaningful everyday engagement, right through the first day in the hiring process to the last day of their tenure and even beyond. On the other hand, Moment Sparklers are special ways in which you can amplify the way in which the employees experience the various engagement activities part of the EVP framework..

Q. How Important is Employee Value Proposition framework to keep employees motivated in an uncertain job market. And how does your company do that?

The EVP is why your employees join your organization, stay with you and go on to become your brand advocates. An EVP designed well will attract the right employees - those that fit into your culture. From there on, if you engage them in emotionally powerful ways, they will remain supremely motivated and loyal to their work.

At BI WORLDWIDE we engage our employees across all points of the employee journey and create memorable experiences through moments of elevation, pride, insight, and connection. We strive to create an environment where they feel at ease and deliberately make efforts to give their best every day.

Q.  What Engagement and Recognition Strategies help build a happier workplace

There are plenty of strategies to get desired results but you should follow what works for you. At BI WORLDWIDE, we have a process called the Design Code which we use to co-create engagement and recognition strategies that are best suited for each individual organization.

There is no one size fits all approach to it. It goes without saying that employees are the third eye of the organization. So every experience, every touch point and every moment has to be curated based on the insights we get from the workforce. Building a happier workplace is a constantly evolving process that needs vital elements such as leadership involvement, manager training, awareness and solid communication.

Q. How does the technology solve the engagement and balanced work culture challenge?

Technology is an important enabler. With millennials making up for such a large part of the global workforce and working across various locations, you need technology to connect all the dots while creating a balanced and thriving work culture. However. technology is only the platform! How you bring it to life depends on how you create those offline experiences and moments to make the employee feel valued, appreciated and engaged.

Q. According to you, how can HR leaders draw a line between tech and human intervention and how can HR leaders respond to these technological advancements? 

HR leaders should keep things simple; retain the human touch first. We need to create regenerative communities at work, shared meaning, shared purpose and an emotional infrastructure that amplifies the social tranquility in the organization. We must put human emotions at the forefront when enabling technology to drive our strategies.

Q. How is HR witnessing Digital transformation?

Every day you hear of new apps and new platforms that promise to simplify HR processes. Some of these are actually great from the perspective of new ideas and opportunities; improvement in employee engagement being the biggest development.

However, we must not isolate ourselves from those moments in the employee journey. Digital transformations will continue to disrupt many more processes than just HR. What’s important is that we don’t lose out on our human emotions. Even with all the technological aids at our disposal, without empathy for our peers, we are only as human as robots.