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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

September - 2007 - issue > Cover Feature

How to improve employee morale and motivation

Ravi Kanniganti
Monday, September 3, 2007
Ravi Kanniganti
One of the biggest concerns of IT executives is attrition and the fear that their top performing employee might walk away the next day. The most common approach to tackle this issue has been to organize team building exercises, create lavish pay packages, arrange dinners at expensive restaurants, or even worse locking employees with legal contracts; none of which is successful in improving employee morale and preventing attrition.

Employees decide to change jobs when they begin to feel that they are not part of the company, when their voices are not heard, and when they feel their worth is not recognized.

We are forgetting the fact that it is better and cost effective to retain the existing experienced employees than going after new employees. The market trend indicates that HR and senior managers are spending more time in recruiting new talent than taking care of existing employees. The vigor and energy spent in recruiting an employee is not shown in retaining the employee.

In my experience of managing large scale global supply chain management programs, following simple rules helped me to win the confidence of the employees and the stakeholders.

Be honest and encourage open communication:
Put your cards on the table; share your constraints and your pains. Don’t dance around the facts. By sharing your pains and constraints, you are giving an opportunity for your employees to solve the problem and hence they feel they are part of the solution. This improves their job satisfaction and they feel connected to the organization.

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