"Digital technology can transform employee engagement much like it has enabled intimate consumer engagement"

In an interaction with BW People, Samarth Masson and Sanjeev Grover, co-founders of Dockabl, an employee experience platform discuss about employee engagement and organisations preparing for the future among others.   

How must the organizations innovate in different ways to prepare for the future?

Samarth Masson: Organisations need to break the org hierarchies and structures and embrace working in frameworks of distributed teams, gig workers and freelancers as the future organisation will be a fluid hybrid of employees, project teams, distributed teams and individual contributors joining and dismantling for various gigs. 

Sanjeev Grover: Organizations today are operating in an era of unpredictability where competition comes from all forms of unexpected disruptors. Organization models, earlier designed for efficiency, must be redesigned for adaptability and agility. An example is moving from Talent 'Management' to Talent 'Experience', which is adopting tools which help improve the work and well-being of employees instead of focusing on the needs of HR

How do digital workplace technologies change employee engagement?

Samarth Masson: Employee engagement is an outcome of how effectively do you get performance, recognition, continuous feedback, compensation and development in a single continuum, such that, for an employee, the entire experience is one flow which enables the employee to stay productive and engaged. Digital workplace technologies or tech, in general, is only an enabler. 

Sanjeev Grover: Digital technology can transform employee engagement much like it has enabled intimate consumer engagement. A seamless digital experience for employees which enables effective work management, curated learning, on-the-go feedback, etc. can create an improved employer value proposition and loyalty. 

How does agility in human resources take the organization forward?

Samarth Masson: The was today's human resources is designed and delivered to employees, there is nothing agile about it. HR can become agile if it works closely with business and enables organisational growth, HR can also become agile by breaking the silos of performance, recognition, compensation, engagement, development and bring all of this into a single continuum for employees. 

Sanjeev Grover: Organisation-wide HR processes become irrelevant if they do not suit the individual needs of the employees and fail to make a positive impact on the employees' work. HR can solve this by adopting the principles of agile. Which is: develop employee-centric solutions (with the customer) and seek continuous feedback to keep improving the solutions.

What can help bridge the gap between the company and the employees? What are the engagement solutions? 

Samarth Masson: Flat organisational structures and 100 percent transparency and objectivity in every transaction with the employees.

Sanjeev Grover: Invest in each employees' growth and development to draw maximum benefit from their potential. Clearly defined expectations (individual goals), rewarding discretionary effort, timely feedback and finally recognition for expected behaviours go a long way in building an effective partnership.

How important is feedback and transparency in terms of engagement?

Samarth Masson: Feedback can contribute towards engagement only if it's continuous and in context or inflow of work. Retrospective feedback does not work. As mentioned to the response of point 4 above, the highest levels of transparency can drive trust and engagement. 

Sanjeev Grover: There are four simple principles of feedback: timely, relevant, transparent and most importantly actionable. Organizations must invest in creating and deploying a feedback architecture which encompasses these principles to drive engagement.

How do organizations start using workforce data to create a culture of engagement?

Samarth Masson: They study periods of high engagement (assuming that we are measuring & recording engagement continuously) over the years and extrapolate this data to map it to various initiatives and decisions taken, which would then give insights into what might be impacting engagement and positive work culture.