Economists say that employee happiness can increase productivity by more than 10% at work. Employee engagement is linked to employee pleasure.
Understanding what motivates employees is critical, as is providing them control over their training and development. TCS’s training programmes are meant to be completed anywhere, at any time, allowing employees to finish them on their own time and without feeling rushed. TCS promotes lifelong learning and encourages its employees to participate in regular learning development courses to stay motivated and obtain skills applied in the workplace.
Another issue in such a massive, worldwide company is allowing employees to form meaningful relationships across geographically scattered teams. TCS has dealt with this in two ways: first, through leadership development. Global managers must comprehend the difficulties of managing teams across borders, building trust, encouraging honesty, and dealing with sensitive topics. TCS has its social network, Knome, open to all TCS workers for business or personal projects collaboration. Knome (pronounced “know me”) uses social networking and gamification features to enable users to interact with colleagues from different countries, share ideas, socialize, and learn – thereby converting each group into a true team.
TCS has cultivated a culture where employees are encouraged to bring their spouses, partners, and families to TCS social events, such as community picnics and festive celebrations.
This not only brings individuals together but also shows the family that the company values them. Whether through children’s contests, family days, or cultural events like Diwali, ensuring that employees have more opportunities to spend meaningful time with their families is critical. It goes a long way toward helping employees understand their coworkers and superiors better since it allows them to see into their personal lives.
Like many other companies, TCS focuses on allowing workers to participate in the hobbies and pastimes they enjoy, whether joining a photographic society or participating in an inter-office sports league. Whether one is participating in the sport or simply watching it, it can bring people together. Most TCS offices have sports teams or leisure activities to encourage coworkers to interact with one another outside of the workplace and start a healthy competition.
Fit4Life, a unique software developed by TCS, aims to promote health and wellness through technology. Employees can use the app to log their physical activity, partake in charity contests, or compare themselves to their coworkers.
Employees have reacted positively, with ‘virtual teams’ participating in competitions or raising funds for various causes.
As a technology company, it is natural that digital innovation plays a significant role in TCS’s training, the way it communicates as a global team, and the employees’ overall engagement. Their involved learning platform allows employees to take part in training courses anytime, anywhere. TCS has a record of training 120,000 employees across 400 different technologies. The ‘virtual teams’ that deliver client projects from multiple locations worldwide are also only possible because of digital technology.
Technology must, however, be matched with a healthy culture; otherwise, employee engagement will suffer. After all, a virtual team cannot have the same level of control and visibility as a physical team, posing a management challenge. As a result, TCS promotes a “trust on credit” strategy, in which team leaders trust their colleagues to complete their work, demonstrating faith and allowing them the freedom to work as they see fit. TCS has put technology at the heart of its business, from Knome to the Fit4Life app.
In 2015, the company received an HR Distinction Award for Innovative Technology Use.
TCS has been named the #1 Most Powerful Brand by Brand Finance and the #1 Most Satisfied Customer by Whitelane. Employee culture is reflected in these awards and recognitions. Importantly, employee engagement efforts result in tangible company benefits. The majority of TCS’s revenue comes from repeat customers, which is a testament to the company’s excellent customer service.
This, in turn, can only be accomplished if personnel are satisfied and driven to provide excellent service to clients.
Human relationships, not human resources, are what matter in the end. Whether one has a team of ten, a hundred, or a thousand people, the secret to success is nurturing those relationships and treating employees like people rather than machines.
Taking COVID-19 Pandemic into the picture, the way TCS has conducted business has transformed. The home-office boundaries have blurred in the new work order. A recent study by Linkedin shows that about 36% of the respondents struggled to balance their personal and professional lives. There seems to be a fundamental shift in the definition of satisfaction and happiness in the lives of TCS employees. Today, the role of the employer has become more critical than ever before. The uncertainty heightened by the pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in the sense of fear and anxiety, and providing safety mechanisms has become a critical imperative.
In today’s virtually connected work world with the dispersed employee setup, organizational engagement has gone much beyond collaborative tools and internal virtual events. Employee empathy has become an essential building block of the corporate culture. An empathetic organization will find its recipe to ensure employees feel Oneness while being distant physically.
TCS never waits for a crisis to put in place practices and policies to support employee well-being. It believes that customer centricity and employee empathy are two sides of the same coin.
The initiative – TCS Cares was put in place long before the pandemic, focuses on employees’ mental health and emotional well-being and encourages a culture of awareness, understanding, and acceptance. All employees have access to counselling sessions, self-help resources, self-assessments, and a host of initiatives focused on maintaining emotional and physical health.
By creating self-help networks of associates with similar interests, TCS has empowered associates to support and guide each other. TCS believes that continuous engagement and a lot of thoughtfulness help build a solid psychological contract between employees and the organization.
