A BRIEF ABOUT THE COMPANY
Telecom giant Bharti Airtel is the flagship
company of Bharti Enterprises. It is the India’s largest
integrated and the first private telecom services
provider with a footprint in all the 23 telecom circles.
Airtel Enterprise Services is a solution based
communication group, specially created to deliver
Integrated and Superior service to enterprise customers.
The customized offering of the AES is through its
portfolio of Mobile, borad band and Telephone and data &
internet solutions.
CONTEXT AND NEED
This was done for around 1000 participants as a two day
offsite. Three of our consultants spend around 75 days
on site for doing this workshop, and spend 10 days for
designing and monitoring.
Due to the rapid changes in the business model, high
pace of growth in terms of number of people and revenue
and change in senior management and leadership was
effecting employee engagement, satisfaction and
ownership. This was reflected in employee engagement
surveys and other feedback mechanisms. The need was to
create a climate of care and trust and inter personal
connect.
ODA
METHODODOLOGY SUPPORTING THE TRANSFORMATION
1. Diagnostic Stage
We Conducted Deep Structured Interviews with key stake
holders and designed a 2 day intervention. We decided
that the group will be multi functional and will have
diverse hierarchy levels. We also felt that the
intervention needs to be an outbound experiential
format to break down formal boundaries and barriers of
social interaction. The intervention was then divided
into 4 regions and each region was managed by an ODA
consultant in coordination with a representative from
Airtel.
2. Structure of the Intervention
An outbound program for around 1000 employees for 2 days
and 1 night was designed.
We used tools like Belbin, Theatre and various outdoor
activities to remove the communication barriers between
teams and create strong interpersonal relationships.
Belbin gave participants a platform to look at their
behaviour and others and understand the key strengths
they bring into the table. Also as we were addressing
large number, we felt a tool like Belbin would add value
to the individual and address the question, what’s in it
for me? Participants also got the insight that while an
individual can never be perfect, a team can be. The
outdoor activities were activities around team dynamics
and inter personal skills. Using theater, we were able
to connect participants at a deeper human level breaking
boundaries and hierarchies. Theater also helped them to
understand Role Clarity and lack of role clarity was
mentioned as one of the key issues while we did the
diagnostics.
ODA managed the lodging and boarding of the participants
and indoor and outdoor part of the training. Each
workshop was facilitated by two ODA facilitator and one
adventure leadership expert. We used a Forest in the
High ranges of Palghat in Kerala and Elagiri, a small
hill station near Chennai to the South workshops. The
North workshops took place in Jim Corbett, Sataal, Simla
and Naukutiataal. The offbeat locations provided a
safe, secluded and ideal place for learning and bonding.
The east workshops took place in Gangtok and the west in
Lonawala.
The CEO wrote personally to everyone to participate in
the intervention and explained the context of the
intervention. This helped to place this as an important
step and a CEO concern.
We also created a social networking site thinking that
we could make this a virtual home for people who went
through this workshop but failed to create enough
traffic to it. The objective was to create a sharing
ground to enhance the learning’s of the intervention and
cement the relationships created. We learned that while
creating social networking site can be easy, making it a
happening place is difficult.
3. Immediate Feedback
4. The Impact
One of the regions that was really scored low in the
diagnostic exercises and engagement surveys was the
North and the last months’ engagement score shows
remarkable improvement in the Northern Region when it
comes to employee engagement. Other regions showed
improvement from their April engagement score
