The key for businesses today is striking a balance between fuelling business growth and optimising costs – all this while ensuring the health, wellness, and engagement of the workforce. At Raymond Lifestyle, our endeavour is to ¬find ways to tackle these challenges and emerge stronger. How do we do it? The answer is -we believe in keeping things simple but not simplistic!
In the last 18 months, we have witnessed an extraordinary environment at work and for our workforce. What enabled us to thrive during this period has been the unwavering focus on our employees. Our HR strategy was to drive a 3-fold approach that was – Respond -Recover -Refresh.
1) RESPOND – The increasing volatility with passing of second and onset of third wave, cost rationalisation emerged as a clear mandate across board. We were committed to managing this without compromising the health, safety, and engagement of our employees. Launching counselling services, sustained focus on talent engagement and development, virtual employee listening sessions and CEO townhalls were some of the key initiatives that were implemented across teams and locations.
2) RECOVER – We invested significant resources to ensure an in-depth study reviewing the future trends in employee lifecycle, post-pandemic renewed expectations from employers, and the leadership styles that will empower us to thrive in the future. Our in-depth visioning exercise and 3-year roadmap have provided us clarity to be future-ready. The overhaul of talent philosophy with a 2R approach to ‘Revise and Revamp’ has showcased early signs of success.
CHRO Raymond Lifestyle
3) REFRESH – The last 9 months were the most exciting period for us at Raymond Lifestyle Business as numerous strategic initiatives fructified to reap dividends. Having deployed a mechanism to continuously listen to our employees and have real-time insights concerning their sentiments.
To ensure the success of the initiatives and maximum reach, we ensured that below mentioned 5 steps were followed –
• End-to-end initiative planning
• Leadership Buy-in
• Customised orientation for each concerned stakeholder in the process explicitly
clarifying their role in the process
• Effective and creative communication to cascade initiatives across the organisation
• Post-launch feedback and corrective actions for next season
• Linking back Actions to Survey feedback to drive the message that ‘Your opinion is
valued’ and ‘We are listening’.
Our initiatives have led to a significant increase in engagement levels, enhancing business performance, and has curbed attrition. We intend to sustain the momentum and are committed to making Raymond the preferred employer for top talent.