Small Blackbird Plover removing tiny morsels of food from African Crocodile’s Teeth – the phenomenon, we were told as students in our school – is termed as Symbiosis.
Amazingly, the crocodile remains still while the small blackbird plover picks meat from its mouth. This cleans the crocodile’s teeth and prevents infection and what does the hungry bird do with the food thus picked? Eat them, of course. The former gets the teeth cleaned ‘free of cost ‘and the later gets the food – both the parties gain out of association.
The school room
logic surprisingly applies in our day-to-day corporate world.Here it goes !!!!!
The CEO of a
multinational after a meeting with his core team is headed for a crucial appointment
at one of the famous 5-star hotels. He is scheduled to have a breakfast meeting
with a senior manager from one of the units of his company. It is no doubt an
ordinary meeting.
The senior manager,
who has got a chance to have a breakfast meeting with the CEO, has won CEO’s
time in an auction. For an hour, over piping hot idlis and fruit platters, CEO shares
mentoring and leadership lessons that he is unlikely to forget in a hurry.
Few corporates
have floated such first-of-its-kind employee engagement initiatives. The
employees associated with these corporates are enjoying a taste of such unique
corporate social responsibility (CSR ) peppered with human resources (HR ) management
through an on-line auction with host of innovative bid items . One of them is “time
with senior management".
An employee can
bid for breakfast or dinner with Senior Vice President, lunch with Joint
Managing Director at 5-star hotel or a golf session with Managing Director or a
game of squash with Deputy General Manager or Country Head of any particular
businesses in the group.
The biggest
takeaways of the auction are : the cause, the connect and of course the great
fun as the employees will always be ready and highly interested in bidding for
senior management’s time. The proceeds from these bids are used for noble
causes under the company’s CSR initiatives and the company on the other hand contributes
equal amount, adding value to it.
This is a noble
task and the auction would create an excitement among the employee community as
this is not a hard core sell of CSR with brochures and leaflets ; it is more than that in terms of employee ‘s
direct connect with the senior management. The is one of
its kind creatively innovative ideas, as seniors in their day to day lives
rarely get to interact with employees who are not their direct reports.
These are the
best interactions for employee engagement blend with unique CSR initiatives. Both
the parties derive benefits out of such interactions .The employer’s motive of
employee engagement and making their employee community socially aware through
their CSR activities has symbiotic relationships with employees aspirations for
a time with senior management.
I would call it ‘Dovetailing
HR with CSR ‘.And my learning is that business corporations are not only
economic institutions but are also social institutions that profoundly affect
the communities in which they operate with larger responsibility to manage
and engage their employee community effectively and constantly.
An Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.
An Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.
What are your
takeaways – think it through.
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