Employee Engagement- III

Make the job more meaningful…

Is there any injection of motivation and engaging employee in the organization? How would you create the passion? How would influence their passion towards right steps?

Employees generally like the job if it is meaningful. The question is how you would make their job more meaningful. Employee perceives the organization’s larger purpose through their contribution in the organization. They see the value in products produced or services offered.

There is a company which manufactures some parts which is actually used in tanks; the tanks, which are used by Indian army. One of the parts is round ring which is a vital part of the tank. Without this part, the firing from the tank is not possible. Making this ring involves precision and workmen working who are making the part require to do lot of machining job. Workmen working in the organization are skilled and they know how to make the quality product.

However the job is monotonous. The culture in the organization is typical like in old organizations. Workmen are senior and working from the date of joining. Sometimes if there is no change it also brings frustrations. The stress of the job and lot of work brings this frustration at home. Workmen have limited wages and have to manage their life with all they earned. Combination of all this creates turmoil at family level also.

This story is of one of the workmen, name Shantaram. Shantaram is the workman who works for 8-9 hours on machine and doing machining of specific ring. However he does not know where that rings produced by him go.

One of the young engineers, Shantanu joins the organization as production engineer. Normally workmen don’t respect the young engineers. They just do what they want and specified as per the job. This is a real challenge to all young engineers working in unionized organizations. After few days trouble between Shantaram and Shantanu on the quality issue, one day Shantanu asks Shantaram, “Shantaramji, do you know where this part which you make goes?”

“What are you asking me this? I send it to next assembly line.” Shantaram replied.

“I know this uncle. But do you know at the end where this part goes and what is the function of this ring?” On this question, Shantaram got confused. “I don’t know. Somebody told us that this part goes in tank, but they never told what the function of this ring is.”

“Shantaramji, the ring which is machined by you is critical part of the next assembly line where bearings are fixed. The whole ring with bearings is fixed in the tank. If you don’t do the machining well, our soldiers will not be able to fire on enemies.” Shantanu explains in simple language.

“Is it so? I never thought that I am making a critical job. Nobody told me this in past. Thank you sir.”

Shantaram was so enlightened to understand the explanation about ring he use to made that he called his helpers and other colleagues and told the same story.

When he went home, he called his children and wife and told them the whole story. “Do you know what I made in the company? I do the machining of the ring which goes in tank and you know these tanks are used by our Indian Army. If I don’t do the machining as per the standards, it will not work and our soldiers will be in trouble.”

Shantanu helped Shantaram to make his job more meaningful. He showed the real big picture and highlighted his contribution in the organization and nation.

(To be continued...)