MNCs enjoy higher level of employee engagement in India than back home'

New Delhi, March 8 : Multitiols enjoy a much higher level of employee engagement in India as against what they do on their home turf and this has sent out a powerful message about the commitment and loyalty of the Indian workforce, Prof. Veronica Hope Hailey, Vice President, The University of Bath and the Dean of its School of Magement, has said.

“Recently, we were funded by a US foundation to do research in India comparing levels of employee engagement in multitiols here to the levels of engagement in the home countries of those multitiols. In the study we found out that multitiols enjoy a much higher level of employee engagement in India as compared to what they did back on their home turf.

“This is what businesses around the world now understand about India, that the Indian workforce is highly engaged, highly committed and very loyal to their work,” Hailey told IANS in an email interview.

She’s been researching organisatiol change for over 30 years, and her research elaborates the extent to which one can lead the change in employees.

Noting that since the fincial crisis of 2008, she has written six reports on trustworthy leadership and organisatiol change, she said the West has “a lot to learn” from the Asian styles of leadership formation and culture.

“One of the stark things in the Western style of leadership is that they understand it’s not simply about the competence and capabilities, predictability and reliability of the organisation or leader to deliver good business results; if you want the customers, employees, local communities and government to trust you, you have to demonstrate two other elements,” she said.

Thus, the first area is concern for others, an understanding that business serves many stakeholders and not just the shareholders. This means growing young leaders who know they have an obligation to give back to the society. The second area is the integrity or moral code of the leader as well as the organisation, as people are getting concerned about the moral code and ethics of businesses. “I’ve seen an increasing number of fresh graduates who are inclined to work for organisations with a sense of ethics and integrity. My research deeply illustrates how businesses can prevent workforce and communities from losing trust in them. If one recalls the founding of the greatest multitiol organisations of today’s age, be it Tata or Unilever; all of them were instituted on robust foundation of ethics and integrity. They should be the source of learning for modern-day business conglomerates,” Hailey explained. (IANS)