Listen to feedback
When you’re communicating before and immediately after a major companywide change, you’re probably trying to disseminate a large amount of information and keep it in front of people. It’s an environment that doesn’t offer many opportunities for listening to your employees.
But Harris says it’s a necessity. If you don’t set up channels for employee feedback and listen to what others in the company are saying, you might miss a correctable problem in its early stages. If you miss a problem early, it will find you later and probably in a far more menacing form.
The amount of employee feedback you receive goes hand in hand with your willingness to listen to feedback, seriously consider it and implement the ideas that fit your overall goals. If you don’t use the feedback you get, at some point you won’t get any more.
Again, it’s a process that starts in your office.
“One, you need to consistently communicate the importance of employees having ownership over what you are trying to accomplish,” he says. “You do that through giving them a feeling of attachment to objectives, by showing them how they are helping the company reach its goals.
“You also need to be critical and be complimentary when necessary, which is why we’ve really reached out to everyone and communicated our desire for feedback. The other important element is that when you get feedback, you hold yourself accountable for doing something about it. How we do that is that in all of our quarterly communication sessions, our executives are responsible for communicating progress against the feedback they receive directly. That is part of the agenda for every session we hold each quarter.”
Giving employees a voice within the organization is a critical element in stimulating their interest in the change process. Employees are your company’s face to your customers, so if they are engaged, the picture painted for your customers will become far brighter than if employees are asked to follow orders and otherwise left in the dark.
“People want to earn money, but they also want to be involved in exciting objectives and initiatives. They want to be a part of something meaningful within the industry,” Harris says. “We want to get our employees to think of the big picture. There is no question that big-picture thinking is critical to our objectives as a company. When we rebranded the company earlier this year, the whole exercise was really focused on exciting our employees about what we were trying to build — not just in the context of the individual business units or the customers they are supporting, but in the context of the overall market we are looking to serve.”
Between 75 and 80 percent of the rebranding budget was spent on internal rollout. Harris says it sent a message to employees that, just like the acquisition scenario of four years ago, their buy-in on the rebranding initiative was essential.
“A lot of it goes back to having those antennae within the organization,” he says. “Developing those presences really allows you to engage people and tap into what is going on in the different areas of the organization. And there are many ways to do that. I make it a point as I go through our different geographies to have many town-hall meetings. I spend a lot of time on the road with different business units, different lunch and dinner meetings. There isn’t one particular playbook to follow. It’s a collection of things that aggregate up, providing those eyes and ears within the organization.”
How to reach: Tata Technologies, (248) 426-1482 or www.tatatechnologies.com