Rajeev Kumar, Vice President - HR, NIIT Technologies

How often does a person leave home for work and think, ‘I’m going to have fun at work today!’ – Never! It is extremely sad to think that the scenario mentioned above is true and almost every day people go to work without any enthusiasm or motivation to pursue their profession. However, it does not have to be this way. Corporate has realized that “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing,” -Dale Carnegie.  This realization has encouraged many organizations to provide various facilities to their employees which help them in retaining the talented people. Companies are now conducting various camps and festivals to bring more life to the work culture. There are also holidays for outing. Sports tournaments are organized to help them follow their interests and in turn building a team spirit. So, by doing all of this they are also helping in building soft skills of the employees.

The load of work and lack of perks is forcing most of the professionals to switch organizations in search of a more fulfilling environment. For the same reason, the organizations are rolling out attractive human resource policies to make life-at-work complete in every aspect. There is an obvious effort put in by all the corporate players to make the workplace a second home for the employees. There are also options like ‘work from home’ which are redefining the methodologies. There are many leading companies which are becoming more and more unconventional in their approach. Google is one of those companies which have a series of schemes to enrich the life at work. If an employee is satisfied with the work culture and environment of the company only then can he/she give her best at work. Corporate world is ready to take any step which increases the productivity while providing a happier life to the workforce. The companies can see it now and they are making efforts to increase the productivity of the employees in a positive way.

Making Work a Rejuvenating Experience

Corporate entities have devised many ways to make work a more engaging and rejuvenating experience. They are providing benefits which are attractive and full of prospects for a bright future. There are boot-camps to foster career advancement and growth by providing training in different areas. Companies are supporting and encouraging the employees to go for various certification courses to widen the bandwidth of their expertise. Promotion of higher education is also a hot trend now. We can find a lot of professionals who are pursuing higher education through correspondence and at the same time working for their respective organizations. There are also various freebies which are offered by the organizations for instance NIIT offers allowances for birthdays and anniversaries. There are also new allowances like special dating allowance. Such freebies connect the personal life of workers with life at work and raise their comfort level.

New trends are taking form of responsibilities such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) which encourages positive impact through its activities on environment, consumers and employees. Industrial organizations are encouraging any public welfare work by its employees and they are supporting them to contribute to the society and the environment. It is also bringing a feeling of self-satisfaction to the employees as they are getting to know about bigger and better platforms to provide their services as a citizen. NIIT gives a leave of four days to any employee who wants to work for an NGO. Such appraisal of work towards noble causes is helping to take work closer to life.

There are several programs such as team building programs or behavioral skills programs which are being run for the personality development of the employees. This is becoming one of the most attractive aspects which the workforce is looking for. Today people are looking for jobs with a work culture which in addition to providing expertise also instills leadership qualities. This is giving them hope for fast career growth while making them more committed to the organization. The organization becomes a second home for the employees and they believe that their career growth is inherent to the growth of the company.